What is the difference between a phoneme and a morpheme in linguistics?

A phoneme is the smallest distinctive sound unit in a spoken language (e.g., /b/, /p/); a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning (e.g., root words, prefixes, suffixes like 'un-' or '-ed').

In operant conditioning, how do negative reinforcement and positive punishment differ in their goals and mechanisms?

Negative reinforcement increases a behavior by removing an aversive stimulus (e.g., buckling a seatbelt to silence a buzzer); positive punishment decreases a behavior by presenting an aversive stimulus.

What did Hermann Ebbinghaus discover regarding the forgetting curve and the spacing effect?

Memory retention declines exponentially and rapidly immediately after learning before leveling off; distributed practice (spacing study sessions over time) produces far greater long-term retention than massed practice (cramming).

What is the Framing Effect in human decision making?

The cognitive bias where people draw different conclusions or make different choices from the same information depending on how it is presented (e.g., framed as potential gains vs potential losses).

What four attachment classifications were identified using Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation paradigm?

1. Secure 2. Insecure-Avoidant 3. Insecure-Resistant/Ambivalent 4. Disorganized/Disoriented (added later by Main & Solomon).

What did Elizabeth Loftus's Misinformation Effect research demonstrate regarding reconstructive memory?

Exposing eyewitnesses to misleading post-event information (e.g., using the verb 'smashed' vs 'hit') distorts their episodic memory, causing them to falsely recall non-existent details (e.g., broken glass).

What is Edward Tolman's concept of latent learning?

Learning that occurs in the absence of reinforcement and remains hidden until an incentive or reward is introduced to demonstrate it (e.g., rats forming cognitive maps in mazes).

According to Craik and Lockhart's Levels of Processing framework, why does elaborative rehearsal produce superior recall compared to maintenance rehearsal?

Elaborative rehearsal involves deep semantic processing (analyzing meaning and integrating with existing knowledge), whereas maintenance rehearsal involves shallow phonological repetition.

In Pavlov's classical conditioning experiments, identify the UCS, UCR, CS, and CR.

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): Meat powder; Unconditioned Response (UCR): Innate salivation; Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Metronome/bell; Conditioned Response (CR): Learned salivation to the CS alone.

How did Noam Chomsky's nativist theory of language acquisition challenge B.F. Skinner's behaviorist model?

Chomsky showed that children acquire grammar too rapidly and creatively (poverty of the stimulus) to be explained by reinforcement alone; humans possess an innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and Universal Grammar.

How does the Garcia Effect (conditioned taste aversion) demonstrate biological preparedness in learning?

Animals readily associate novel tastes with nausea even with delays of hours and after a single trial, but fail to associate lights or sounds with nausea, proving learning is evolutionarily constrained.

What is functional fixedness in problem solving?

A cognitive bias where an individual views an object solely in terms of its customary, traditional function, failing to see novel ways to utilize it to solve a problem (e.g., Duncker's candle problem).

What are Jean Piaget's four stages of cognitive development and their approximate age ranges?

1. Sensorimotor (0–2 years) 2. Preoperational (2–7 years) 3. Concrete Operational (7–11 years) 4. Formal Operational (12+ years).

How is long-term memory categorized into explicit (declarative) versus implicit (non-declarative) memory?

Explicit memory requires conscious recall (subdivided into episodic autobiographical events and semantic factual knowledge); implicit memory operates unconsciously (procedural motor skills, classical conditioning, priming).

What is spontaneous recovery in classical conditioning?

The sudden reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response (CR) following a rest period without any additional paired training.

What is Martin Seligman's learned helplessness theory, and how is it linked to depression?

When an organism is subjected to inescapable aversive shocks, it learns that its actions have no effect on outcomes; later, it remains passive and fails to escape even when escape is readily possible.

What is the core psychosocial conflict of adolescence in Erik Erikson's eight-stage model?

Identity versus Role Confusion: exploring personal values, vocational paths, and beliefs to develop a coherent sense of self.

How does Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) conceptualize learning?

The dynamic difference between what a learner can accomplish independently and what they can achieve with guidance and instructional scaffolding from a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO).

What did Albert Bandura's Bobo Doll experiment demonstrate regarding vicarious learning?

Children exposed to adult aggressive models imitated novel violent behaviors without direct reinforcement, establishing the principles of observational (social) learning.

What Piagetian cognitive limitation is demonstrated when a preoperational child believes liquid volume changes when poured into a taller glass?

Lack of Conservation, caused by Centration (fixating on only one salient dimension, such as height, while ignoring width) and Irreversibility.

How does an algorithm differ from a heuristic in cognitive problem solving?

An algorithm is a step-by-step, exhaustive procedure that guarantees a correct solution; a heuristic is a practical rule of thumb or mental shortcut that speeds problem solving but is prone to systematic cognitive errors.

What are the four components of Baddeley and Hitch's working memory model?

1. Central Executive (attentional supervisory controller) 2. Phonological Loop (auditory/verbal rehearsal) 3. Visuospatial Sketchpad (visual imagery/spatial manipulation) 4. Episodic Buffer (multimodal integrative workspace).

Which intermittent schedule of reinforcement produces the highest response rate and highest resistance to extinction?

Variable-Ratio (VR) schedule (e.g., slot machines, gambling).

What is operant shaping via successive approximations?

Reinforcing progressively closer approximations to a desired target behavior until the complete complex behavior is learned.

What are Lawrence Kohlberg's three levels of moral reasoning?

1. Preconventional (morality governed by obedience, punishment, and self-interest) 2. Conventional (governed by social approval, norms, and law and order) 3. Postconventional (governed by social contracts and universal ethical principles).

Distinguish between proactive interference and retroactive interference in memory retrieval.

Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information hinders recall of newly learned information; retroactive interference occurs when newly learned information disrupts recall of older information.

What is the capacity of short-term memory according to George Miller, and how does chunking expand it?

7 ± 2 items (or ~4 chunks according to modern research); chunking organizes individual units of information into meaningful higher-order cognitive chunks.

Differentiate between the Availability Heuristic and the Representativeness Heuristic identified by Tversky and Kahneman.

Availability: estimating the probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind; Representativeness: judging the probability of an event based on how closely it matches a mental stereotype or prototype.

What explains the Primacy Effect and the Recency Effect in the serial position curve?

Primacy effect: early words receive greater rehearsal and transfer into long-term memory; Recency effect: terminal words remain accessible in the short-term working memory buffer.

What are the three storage stages in the Atkinson-Shiffrin multi-store model of memory?

1. Sensory Memory (iconic and echoic, large capacity, milliseconds to seconds) 2. Short-Term Memory (limited capacity, ~15–30 seconds) 3. Long-Term Memory (unlimited capacity, permanent storage).

What memory deficit characterized Patient H.M. following bilateral medial temporal lobectomy?

Severe, permanent anterograde amnesia (inability to form new long-term declarative episodic or semantic memories), while his procedural memory and short-term memory remained intact.

What cognitive milestones define the end of Piaget's sensorimotor stage and the beginning of the preoperational stage?

The development of Object Permanence (understanding objects continue to exist when hidden) and the emergence of symbolic, representational thought.

Cognitive Psychology (Intermediate): Learning, Memory, Cognition & Developmental Psychology

Classical and operant conditioning, memory stages, cognitive biases, Piagetian stages, attachment theory, and language acquisition

Level: intermediate
Languages: en → en
Cards: 32
Markdown: Cognitive Psychology (Intermediate): Learning, Memory, Cognition & Developmental Psychology (.md)

Flashcards (32)

#	Front (Term / Question)	Back (Definition / Answer)
1	What is the difference between a phoneme and a morpheme in linguistics?	A phoneme is the smallest distinctive sound unit in a spoken language (e.g., /b/, /p/); a morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning (e.g., root words, prefixes, suffixes like 'un-' or '-ed').
2	In operant conditioning, how do negative reinforcement and positive punishment differ in their goals and mechanisms?	Negative reinforcement increases a behavior by removing an aversive stimulus (e.g., buckling a seatbelt to silence a buzzer); positive punishment decreases a behavior by presenting an aversive stimulus.
3	What did Hermann Ebbinghaus discover regarding the forgetting curve and the spacing effect?	Memory retention declines exponentially and rapidly immediately after learning before leveling off; distributed practice (spacing study sessions over time) produces far greater long-term retention than massed practice (cramming).
4	What is the Framing Effect in human decision making?	The cognitive bias where people draw different conclusions or make different choices from the same information depending on how it is presented (e.g., framed as potential gains vs potential losses).
5	What four attachment classifications were identified using Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation paradigm?	1. Secure 2. Insecure-Avoidant 3. Insecure-Resistant/Ambivalent 4. Disorganized/Disoriented (added later by Main & Solomon).
6	What did Elizabeth Loftus's Misinformation Effect research demonstrate regarding reconstructive memory?	Exposing eyewitnesses to misleading post-event information (e.g., using the verb 'smashed' vs 'hit') distorts their episodic memory, causing them to falsely recall non-existent details (e.g., broken glass).
7	What is Edward Tolman's concept of latent learning?	Learning that occurs in the absence of reinforcement and remains hidden until an incentive or reward is introduced to demonstrate it (e.g., rats forming cognitive maps in mazes).
8	According to Craik and Lockhart's Levels of Processing framework, why does elaborative rehearsal produce superior recall compared to maintenance rehearsal?	Elaborative rehearsal involves deep semantic processing (analyzing meaning and integrating with existing knowledge), whereas maintenance rehearsal involves shallow phonological repetition.
9	In Pavlov's classical conditioning experiments, identify the UCS, UCR, CS, and CR.	Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): Meat powder; Unconditioned Response (UCR): Innate salivation; Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Metronome/bell; Conditioned Response (CR): Learned salivation to the CS alone.
10	How did Noam Chomsky's nativist theory of language acquisition challenge B.F. Skinner's behaviorist model?	Chomsky showed that children acquire grammar too rapidly and creatively (poverty of the stimulus) to be explained by reinforcement alone; humans possess an innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and Universal Grammar.
11	How does the Garcia Effect (conditioned taste aversion) demonstrate biological preparedness in learning?	Animals readily associate novel tastes with nausea even with delays of hours and after a single trial, but fail to associate lights or sounds with nausea, proving learning is evolutionarily constrained.
12	What is functional fixedness in problem solving?	A cognitive bias where an individual views an object solely in terms of its customary, traditional function, failing to see novel ways to utilize it to solve a problem (e.g., Duncker's candle problem).
13	What are Jean Piaget's four stages of cognitive development and their approximate age ranges?	1. Sensorimotor (0–2 years) 2. Preoperational (2–7 years) 3. Concrete Operational (7–11 years) 4. Formal Operational (12+ years).
14	How is long-term memory categorized into explicit (declarative) versus implicit (non-declarative) memory?	Explicit memory requires conscious recall (subdivided into episodic autobiographical events and semantic factual knowledge); implicit memory operates unconsciously (procedural motor skills, classical conditioning, priming).
15	What is spontaneous recovery in classical conditioning?	The sudden reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response (CR) following a rest period without any additional paired training.
16	What is Martin Seligman's learned helplessness theory, and how is it linked to depression?	When an organism is subjected to inescapable aversive shocks, it learns that its actions have no effect on outcomes; later, it remains passive and fails to escape even when escape is readily possible.
17	What is the core psychosocial conflict of adolescence in Erik Erikson's eight-stage model?	Identity versus Role Confusion: exploring personal values, vocational paths, and beliefs to develop a coherent sense of self.
18	How does Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) conceptualize learning?	The dynamic difference between what a learner can accomplish independently and what they can achieve with guidance and instructional scaffolding from a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO).
19	What did Albert Bandura's Bobo Doll experiment demonstrate regarding vicarious learning?	Children exposed to adult aggressive models imitated novel violent behaviors without direct reinforcement, establishing the principles of observational (social) learning.
20	What Piagetian cognitive limitation is demonstrated when a preoperational child believes liquid volume changes when poured into a taller glass?	Lack of Conservation, caused by Centration (fixating on only one salient dimension, such as height, while ignoring width) and Irreversibility.
21	How does an algorithm differ from a heuristic in cognitive problem solving?	An algorithm is a step-by-step, exhaustive procedure that guarantees a correct solution; a heuristic is a practical rule of thumb or mental shortcut that speeds problem solving but is prone to systematic cognitive errors.
22	What are the four components of Baddeley and Hitch's working memory model?	1. Central Executive (attentional supervisory controller) 2. Phonological Loop (auditory/verbal rehearsal) 3. Visuospatial Sketchpad (visual imagery/spatial manipulation) 4. Episodic Buffer (multimodal integrative workspace).
23	Which intermittent schedule of reinforcement produces the highest response rate and highest resistance to extinction?	Variable-Ratio (VR) schedule (e.g., slot machines, gambling).
24	What is operant shaping via successive approximations?	Reinforcing progressively closer approximations to a desired target behavior until the complete complex behavior is learned.
25	What are Lawrence Kohlberg's three levels of moral reasoning?	1. Preconventional (morality governed by obedience, punishment, and self-interest) 2. Conventional (governed by social approval, norms, and law and order) 3. Postconventional (governed by social contracts and universal ethical principles).
26	Distinguish between proactive interference and retroactive interference in memory retrieval.	Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information hinders recall of newly learned information; retroactive interference occurs when newly learned information disrupts recall of older information.
27	What is the capacity of short-term memory according to George Miller, and how does chunking expand it?	7 ± 2 items (or ~4 chunks according to modern research); chunking organizes individual units of information into meaningful higher-order cognitive chunks.
28	Differentiate between the Availability Heuristic and the Representativeness Heuristic identified by Tversky and Kahneman.	Availability: estimating the probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind; Representativeness: judging the probability of an event based on how closely it matches a mental stereotype or prototype.
29	What explains the Primacy Effect and the Recency Effect in the serial position curve?	Primacy effect: early words receive greater rehearsal and transfer into long-term memory; Recency effect: terminal words remain accessible in the short-term working memory buffer.
30	What are the three storage stages in the Atkinson-Shiffrin multi-store model of memory?	1. Sensory Memory (iconic and echoic, large capacity, milliseconds to seconds) 2. Short-Term Memory (limited capacity, ~15–30 seconds) 3. Long-Term Memory (unlimited capacity, permanent storage).
31	What memory deficit characterized Patient H.M. following bilateral medial temporal lobectomy?	Severe, permanent anterograde amnesia (inability to form new long-term declarative episodic or semantic memories), while his procedural memory and short-term memory remained intact.
32	What cognitive milestones define the end of Piaget's sensorimotor stage and the beginning of the preoperational stage?	The development of Object Permanence (understanding objects continue to exist when hidden) and the emergence of symbolic, representational thought.