Category: Psychology and Education

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What is Procedural Memory?

This is the part of long-term memory with the function of keeping relevant details related to performing various actions and skills. Fundamentally, it’s the memory of how to do particular things (or perform certain procedures), such as walking, tying shoelaces, riding a cycle, and cooking an omelet, among others.

Professional athletes and musicians excel, in part, due to their advanced ability to create procedural memories. This type of memory also plays a vital role in language development, as it lets an individual talk without giving a lot of thought to proper grammar and syntax. Some tasks (in addition to the ones mentioned earlier as examples) that depend on procedural memory are skiing, playing the piano, swimming, ice skating, etc.

Procedural memories are typically unconscious. It means people don’t consciously recall them and can perform the actions without investing much mental effort as they become almost automatic. Perhaps that’s why procedural memory is sometimes called automatic memory or unconscious memory. It’s a subset of implicit memory that uses past experiences to recall matters without thinking about them. It’s different from explicit memory or declarative memory, which is made of events and facts that can be explicitly stored and intentionally recalled or “declared.”

To understand how procedural memory forms, it’s important to know about the different parts of the brain and their roles. In the brain, the cerebellum, parietal cortex, and prefrontal cortex are all involved early on in studying motor skills. The cerebellum’ role is particularly vital, as it’s needed to synchronize the flow of movements necessary for skilled motion and such movements’ timing. While humans have all the neurons they need for life when they’re born, they need to be programmed through experience to carry out tasks like hearing and seeing, and later, talking and walking.

Procedural memories are created when repeated signals strengthen synapses (which are neural junctions). The more frequently an individual performs an action, the more often signals are sent through the same synapses. After a while, these synaptic routes grow stronger, and the actions become automatic and unconscious. Although a particular memory can be as fundamental as creating an association between two nerve cells in the fingertip, other procedural memories are more intricate and take longer to form.

It’s difficult to explain procedural memory verbally as it’s usually depicted by doing. For example, it is nearly impossible to put into words how an individual drives a car without actually driving the vehicle. Though the individual can tell someone that he knows how to drive, there’s no way to prove that he actually knows it without performing the action. However, if he was asked how to drive to his house, he would probably talk about the route fairly easily. This happens because remembering the physical process of doing something (such as driving a car in this case) is a procedural memory while remembering the route an individual will have to take to reach somewhere is a declarative memory.

Procedural memory is said to form an individual’s personality as it’s closely related to creating habits since the individual develops automatic responses to particular situations.

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What is Semantic Memory?

This is a part of long-term memory with the duty of keeping facts and common knowledge. In other words, it refers to concepts and facts that people have accumulated throughout their lives. Typically, semantic memory includes matters commonly considered common knowledge. They’re neither immediately nor exclusively drawn from personal experiences. Some examples of semantic memories are:

  •         Recalling that Shakespeare was born in April 1564.
  •         Knowing that giraffes and elephants are both mammals.
  •         Recalling the type of food people in China eat.

Semantic memory is related to facts and continues to grow as people age. Since it has no connection with personal experiences or emotions, it’s different from episodic memory. For example, knowing what happened on 9/11 in the U.S. is semantic memory but remembering where an individual was when 9/11 happened is episodic memory for that person. Another example of semantic memory is knowing what a cat is, while recalling when an individual brought his pet cat home is episodic memory. Thus, episodic memory is specific to an individual, such as his marriage or the birth of a child. However, semantic memory is more general, which can be shared worldwide.

Conditions and consequences of the stored information retrieval are also different between semantic and episodic memory. The circumstances leading to the retrieval of episodic memory can add to or change that memory, which is why such memory gets lost more easily. In contrast, semantic memory remains unchanged with retrieval.

For children and students, semantic memory is extremely vital as it allows them to remember the facts they’re learning and getting evaluated. Even for professionals and those in the workforce, semantic memory is crucial as it lets them retain and retrieve information essential to perform their jobs. For others, semantic memory is important because it allows them to know the surrounding world. If they didn’t have semantic memory, they wouldn’t know that the grass looks green, what a computer or a telephone is, or birds can fly.

There are three chief ways of encoding that people use to assign information to semantic memory. They are meaning, acoustic, and visual. This means people may encode information to semantic memory by

  •         relating them to something else that’s meaningful in their memory;
  •         hearing the information repeatedly; and
  •         through pictures or reading numbers and words.

In the brain, semantic memory could be organized in two different ways for retrieval – thematically and taxonomically. Cross-categorical relationships help thematical organization of information, while hierarchy helps taxonomically organized information. A recent study revealed that children and young adults are likely to use the thematical organization of semantic memory, while adults tend to opt for the taxonomical organization. Past studies have also indicated that with time and as people mature, the organization of semantic memory changes.

Retrieval processes of semantic memory have also triggered a lot of curiosity. Though some neuroscientists and psychologists speculated it to be based on the exact facts, a recent study has found that it’s relational. For example, when a person says that an eagle can fly, it’s because he knows that birds fly, and eagles are birds, which is why they fly.

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What is Episodic Memory?

This is a part of long-term memory that stores pictures of a person’s life experiences. Canadian psychologist Endel Tulving introduced the term in 1972. He used it to mention the difference between “knowing” and “remembering.” He identified knowing as recalling facts (and hence semantic) and remembering as a feeling connected to the past (and hence episodic). Tulving also pointed out that autonoetic consciousness, connection to self, and mental time travel were the three key properties of episodic memory.

Some examples of episodic memory include:

  •         Recalling what one did over the Christmas holidays
  •         Recalling one’s first kiss
  •         Recalling how one felt and what the person did on a family holiday

Closely associated with this is what researchers mention as autobiographical memory or one’s memories of the person’s own life history. As one can imagine, autobiographical and episodic memories play a vital role in a person’s self-identity.

People might have different kinds of episodic memories as the following:

Specific events: These involve recollecting specific moments from a person’s autobiographical history. An example is recalling the first time one dove into the sea. Information about particular events is associated with the situational context in which they happened in the episodic memory system. The person recalls the information about the event and its context of happening.

General events: These involve recalling the feelings tied to a particular type of experience. In general, recalling what it’s like to dive into the sea is an example of this kind of episodic memory. One might not remember every occasion wherein the person dove into the sea. But the person does have a general recollection of having dived multiple times into the sea, upon which his/her feeling is based.

Personal facts: This is the information intricately associated with an individual’s experiences constituting personal facts. Knowing the name of one’s first dog or the color of one’s first bicycle are some examples.

Flashbulb memories: These are highly detailed and exceptionally vivid snapshots of circumstances or moments wherein one learned surprising or important pieces of news. Recalling the moment one heard about a major tragedy like the 9/11 attacks or the death of a close friend may be an example. It’s important to note that there’s much debate about whether a flashbulb memory’s vividness originates from a virtual flash generated by the emotional intensity of a particular experience or from a tendency to rehearse consequential moments that can extremely strengthen the memory.

Researchers have identified that episodic memory may also be interdependent with semantic memory. On learning activities, participants did better when fresh information was aligned with existing knowledge, proposing that a task’s semantic knowledge offers a framework for new episodic learning. Researchers have also identified that episodic memories play a role in retrieving semantic memories. 

In experiments where participants were required to create lists of items in specific categories, those who could depend on episodic memories did better than amnesiac participants who couldn’t access episodic memories. Studies also suggest that there’re sex differences in episodic memory. For example, research has found that women tend to perform better than men on episodic memory function tests, especially on verbal-based episodic memory.

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What is a Rehearsal?

This is a method usually utilized to improve the storage of information, using a great deal of information repetition. Memory researchers use this term to mention mental techniques for helping people remember information. Its technical meaning isn’t very different from its everyday use by people. Actors rehearse their scripts so that they wouldn’t forget them. Similarly, if people want to retain information over time, there’re strategies for improving future recall. There’re two main types of rehearsal: maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal.

Maintenance rehearsal: This involves continuously repeating the material one needs to remember. This method is useful in retaining information over the short term. Almost everyone has faced the incident of looking up a phone number and eventually forgetting it (or its part) before dialing it. This demonstrates the fact that new information will fade from memory pretty quickly unless people make a purposeful effort to retain it. Maintenance rehearsal typically includes rote repetition, either covertly or out loud. It’s useful for maintaining comparatively small amounts of information in memory for short periods but isn’t likely to impact retention in the long run.

Elaborative rehearsal: This is a more effective method to memorize information and maintain it in the long-term memory. Elaborative rehearsal includes associating new information with information already present in the long-term memory. There’re countless occasions on which learners are required to remember large volumes of complex information. In these circumstances, reciting the information lots of times isn’t going to help commit it to long-term memory. Elaboration strategies that engage the student in comprehending the material are effective, both for retaining information and retrieving it later. Elaboration can take different forms.

Some effective examples of using this method to learn and remember the human body’s bones include:

Translating information into own words: Instead of simply reading what the study guide mentions about which bone is connected to the next one, the student can try to rephrase the information and then explain it to another person.

Grouping terms: Students can outline different categories or characteristics of the bones and mark those that fit into each group. They can identify all the bones in the foot, list them in a category, and then follow the same method for other body parts.

Using a mnemonic strategy: Mnemonic strategies can be highly useful in learning terms or names. For instance, students can take the first letter of the bones in the hand and arm and form a new word where every letter refers to one of the bones they need to remember.

While rehearsal can help anyone remember things, some groups might find it especially helpful, including those with early dementia or learning disabilities. Patients with conditions such as fibromyalgia that create “brain fog” might also find rehearsal an effective method to improve memory retention. Multiple studies have been carried out to assess the usefulness of rehearsing information to be able to recall it later. For instance, a 2015 study discovered that rehearsing video clips’ details immediately after watching them substantially enhanced recall of those videos weeks later.

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What is Short-Term or Working Memory?

This is a part of the memory that keeps a very minimum level of information, only for a couple of seconds. It’s commonly proposed that short-term memory can hold just seven items simultaneously, plus or minus two. Most of the information in short-term memory will be stored for around twenty to thirty seconds, but it can be only seconds if active maintenance or rehearsal of the information is prevented. 

Some information can remain in it for up to a minute, but the majority of information spontaneously decays pretty quickly unless the person uses rehearsal strategies like mentally repeating the information or saying it aloud. The information in short-term memory is also highly susceptible to interference. Any new information that enters it will quickly displace the old one. Similar items in the environment may also interfere with short-term memory. For instance, one may have a more difficult time remembering someone else’s name if the person is in a noisy, crowded room or if the person was thinking of what to say to that other person instead of paying attention to the name.

The amount of information that short-term memory can store can vary. According to psychologist George Miller, individuals can store between five and nine items in it. According to more recent research, individuals can store around four pieces or chunks of information in short-term memory.

Memory researchers often use the three-store model to describe human memory. According to this model, memory comprises three fundamental stores: sensory, short-term, and long-term. And each of these can be differentiated based on storage duration and capacity. Short-term memory is brief and limited, while long-term memory comes with a seemingly countless capacity that lasts years. Since short-term memory is limited in both duration and capacity, the retention of memories needs transferring of the information from it to long-term memory. There’re different ways that short-term memories can be transferred to long-term memory. However, the exact processes for how this occurs remain controversial. 

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model proposed that all short-term memories were automatically transferred to long-term memory after a particular period of time. More recently, researchers have suggested that some mental editing happens and that only specific memories are chosen for long-term retention. Factors such as interference and time can impact how information is encoded in memory.

For most people, it’s quite common to have an episode of memory loss occasionally. They may lose their keys, forget the date, have trouble finding the correct word, or miss a monthly payment from time to time. Still, if one constantly forgets things, it may be frustrating, irritating, and even generate the fear that the person is getting Alzheimer’s. Short-term memory loss might even make people worried that their brain is too dependent on devices such as smartphones instead of memory to recall information. 

However, mild memory loss isn’t always an indication of a problem, and specific memory modifications are a normal part of aging. Non-permanent factors such as drug or alcohol misuse, medication side effects, depression, sleep deprivation, grief, stress, and fatigue can also cause short-term memory loss.

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What is Punishment?

This is the negative outcome of certain actions, which is used to stop an individual’s propensity to perform such actions in future circumstances. In operant conditioning psychology, punishment is a term utilized to mention any change that happens after a behavior that lowers the likelihood that the behavior will happen again in the future. 

Both positive and negative reinforcements are utilized to increase behaviors, while punishment is focused on eliminating or reducing unwanted behaviors. Many individuals confuse negative reinforcement with punishment, but they’re two very different mechanisms. Reinforcement, even when it’s negative, always increases a behavior. On the contrary, punishment always reduces a behavior.

Psychologist B. F. Skinner, who first defined operant conditioning, recognized two different types of aversive stimuli that can be utilized as punishment. These are:

Positive punishment: This includes presenting an aversive stimulus after a behavior. For instance, when a pupil talks out of turn in the middle of a class, the instructor may scold the kid for interrupting.

Negative punishment: This includes removing a desirable stimulus after a behavior. For instance, when the pupil from the above example talks out of turn again, the instructor promptly tells the kid that he/she will have to miss recess due to that behavior.

While punishment can be beneficial in some instances, one can probably imagine some examples when a punishment doesn’t consistently decrease unwanted behavior. Prison is one such example. Individuals often continue committing crimes after they’re released from prison after being sent to it for a crime. 

Researchers have identified two contributing factors to punishment’s effectiveness in different circumstances. First, punishment is more beneficial if it’s applied quickly. Prison sentences often happen long after someone committed the crime, which might help explain one reason why sending individuals to jail doesn’t always result in a decrease in criminal behavior. Second, punishment achieves better results when it’s consistently applied. 

It can be hard to give a punishment all the time a behavior happens. For instance, individuals often continue to exceed the speed limit even after getting a speeding ticket because the behavior isn’t consistently punished. Punishment is more likely to result in a decrease in behavior if it’s consistently applied and immediately follows the behavior.

Punishment also has some major drawbacks. First, any behavior alterations because of the punishment are often temporary. Probably the biggest downside is that punishment doesn’t actually provide any information about desired or more appropriate behaviors. While subjects may be learning not to carry out particular behaviors, they aren’t actually learning what they should be performing. Another aspect to consider about punishment is that it may have undesirable and unintended consequences. 

For instance, a 2014 survey in the U.S. identified almost half of parents acknowledged spanking their younger kids (age nine and below) in the past year. According to researchers, this kind of physical punishment may result in aggression, antisocial behavior, and delinquency among kids. This is why Skinner and other psychologists propose that any potential short-term benefits from utilizing punishment to modify behavior need to be weighed against the prospective long-term consequences.

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What is a Premack Principle?

This is a rule that says that recreational activities that cause some form of pleasure can make individuals participate in activities that they don’t find fun. It’s a theory of reinforcement that suggests that a less desired behavior could be reinforced by engaging in a more desired behavior. The Premack principle is credited to its originator, psychologist David Premack.

Before the introduction of the Premack principle, operant conditioning held that reinforcement was dependent on the association of one single behavior and one single consequence. For instance, if students perform well on a test, the studying behavior that led to their success will be reinforced if the instructor compliments them. In 1965, Premack expanded on this idea to demonstrate that one behavior can reinforce another. 

He was studying Cebus monkeys when he noticed that behaviors that an individual spontaneously engages in at a higher frequency are better rewarding than those the individual engages in at a lower frequency. Premack suggested that the high-frequency, more rewarding behaviors can reinforce the low-frequency, less rewarding ones.

After Premack shared his ideas, several studies with both animals and people have supported the principle. Premack himself conducted one of the initial studies. He first determined if his kid participants preferred eating candy or playing pinball. He then used two scenarios: one in which the kids had to play pinball to eat candy and another in which they had to eat candy to play pinball. Premack identified that only the kids who preferred the sequentially second behavior exhibited a reinforcement effect in each situation. 

Brenda Geiger identified that giving seventh and eighth-grade pupils time to play on the playground can reinforce learning by making play dependent on the completion of their tasks in the classroom. Apart from improving learning, this simple reinforcer increased the time students spent on each task and their self-discipline and decreased the need for instructors to discipline them.

The Premack principle has become a hallmark of behavior modification and applied behavior analysis and can successfully be applied in different settings. Two areas where the application of the principle has proven particularly beneficial are dog training and child-rearing. For instance, when teaching a dog playing fetch, the dog has to learn that if it wants to chase the object again (highly desired behavior), it has to bring the object back to its owner and drop it (less desired behavior). 

The Premack principle is utilized all the time with kids. Many parents have told kids that they must finish their homework before they can play a video game or they’ve to eat their vegetables before having dessert. While it can be highly effective with kids of all ages, it’s vital to understand that not all kids are equally encouraged by the same rewards. So, caregivers must decide on the behaviors that are highly motivating to the kids to apply the principle successfully.

The Premack principle has several limitations. For example, an individual’s response to an application is dependent on the context. The person’s preferences and the other activities available to the individual at a given moment will play a role in if the selected reinforcer will generate the less-probable behavior.

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What is a Secondary Reinforcer?

This is an outcome that people appreciate simply because of its link to a primary reinforcement. Secondary reinforcement includes the process of conditioning or learning to understand its association with the primary reinforcement. For instance, food is a primary reinforcer, and money buys food. Therefore, in this case, money is a secondary reinforcer, and its value is relative to food, which is the primary reinforcer. While a primary reinforcer is biological in nature, a secondary reinforcer becomes reinforcing after being associated with a primary reinforcer, such as treats, money, or praise.

Key advantages of secondary reinforcers include:

  •         More convenient to utilize than primary reinforcers
  •         Fit better in natural environment situations
  •         They can be utilized to expand the interest of a person
  •         Utilizing a token economy system can expand the time between new reinforcers’ presentations without the person losing interest

Therapists, teachers, and parents often utilize token economies to motivate clients and kids to engage in adaptive behaviors. While they don’t have any reinforcement value, such tokens can be utilized to buy primary reinforcers such as candy, soda pops, and other privileges. Once the association has been formed, the tokens themselves become reinforcing.

Secondary reinforcement is stronger than primary reinforcement because it isn’t tied to biological needs. For instance, if a dog isn’t hungry, it’s unlikely to listen to its trainer’s commands if it’s used to food being a reward. Likewise, if a kid has just had a large piece of cake, he/she isn’t going to practice the musical instrument in exchange for candy. The child may do it in exchange for a star on the chart (secondary reinforcer) that can be exchanged for candy later.

Any organism would do activities that finally help it survive effectively. However, humans look forward to making their lives better apart from survival. Bring complex organisms, both mentally and physically, humans depend mostly on reinforcement that’s in some way connected to their healthy survival.

Even though humans are omnivores, they don’t go hunting in the forest or graze on grasslands. Humans have different methods to acquire food. They work, for which they receive money. Money buys food that satiates hunger, thus helping survival. So, money is the secondary reinforcer.

Here’s another example that can help one understand secondary reinforcers. Humans feel sleepy due to tiredness. Before going to bed, they brush their teeth, wish good night to others at home, say a bedtime prayer, and then go to sleep. The process becomes a ritual and is connected to the behavior of sleeping. So, even if one isn’t tired someday and doesn’t feel sleepy, performing the ritual will involuntarily hint to the body that it’s time to sleep, and the body will prepare itself to sleep. Therefore, in this case, the ritual is a secondary reinforcer.

Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment is a famous example of conditioned or secondary reinforcement. In the experiment, Pavlov rings a bell and immediately gives food to his dog to which it salivates. After repeatedly performing this exercise, the dog learns to connect the bell to food and salivates when it’s rung (even when food isn’t given).

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What is a Primary Reinforcer?

This is an outcome that satisfies a basic necessity. A primary reinforcer refers to a stimulus that’s biologically vital to an organism, such as sleep, water, food, safety, sex, pleasure, and shelter. It results in involuntary responses, such as drooling, recoiling, and trembling. A primary reinforcer is also called an unconditioned stimulus or unconditioned reinforcer. These reinforcers help in the survival of species in the long run. Here’re detailed examples of two primary reinforcers.

Safety: When one touches a scorching iron, the person’s hand recoils automatically to avoid burning. This is a protective mechanism. The primary reinforcer is the scalding touch that reinforces automatic hand withdrawal.

Hunger: When an infant is hungry, it cries. The caretaker then feeds it to satisfy the hunger. This is a survival reflex that doesn’t need learning. Here, the primary reinforcer is the hunger that reinforces the crying.

Although primary reinforcers are intrinsic drives that occur naturally, they might influence persons depending on their experiences and genetics. For example, some individuals can tolerate more temperature than others. When they touch a hot object, their withdrawal reflex might not be triggered unless it’s scalding. The ability to tolerate higher temperatures might be inborn or because of repeated encountering in the past.

Advantages of primary reinforcers include:

  •         One doesn’t need to learn using them as they come naturally
  •         The desire to get them doesn’t go away

Disadvantages of primary reinforcers include:

  •         They don’t represent natural environment situations
  •         A person’s response to them might fade or satiate over time
  •         One must use a secondary stimulus to make a primary reinforcer more effective

Primary reinforcers are the most fundamental types of reinforcers responsible for fulfilling different biological drives in organisms. For example, to survive, animals need to eat, and to eat, they need to hunt. Food reinforces the behavior of hunting, thus making it a rewarding process. Working all day makes one sleepy, and sleep helps the person relax, so sleep is a primary reinforcer. A hungry person who is promised food for completing the work is more intrinsically motivated to do it than somebody working for free movie tickets.

Behavior chaining stands for the occurrence of basic individual responses resulting in complex behavior. It involves both primary and secondary reinforcers. Every individual response is reinforced and followed by another until the complex behavior is achieved.

Behavioral psychologists consider behavior a result of learning. Operant conditioning is among the three behavioral models of learning. It was first mentioned by Edward Thorndike and developed by B.F. Skinner. According to them, depriving someone of a primary reinforcer like the food until a particular behavior is performed will notably increase that behavior. Kids who receive a sweet or a toy after throwing a tantrum will increase their acrimonious behavior. If kids only receive attention from their parents when they’re being scolded, that attention can reinforce the misbehavior.

It’s important to understand that what constitutes reinforcement might differ from one person to another. For example, in a classroom setting, one student might find a treat reinforcing while another might be unresponsive to it.

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What are Prosocial Behaviors?

These are character traits that reflect care, regard, and respect for the concerns of other humans. Prosocial behaviors include many actions such as sharing, helping, cooperating, and comforting.

Apart from the obvious benefits that prosocial actions offer the recipients, they can have several positive effects on the helper. These include:

Mood-boosting effects: According to research, individuals who engage in prosocial actions are more likely to have better moods. These people also tend to experience pessimistic moods less frequently.

Stress-reducing effects: Research has also shown that engaging in prosocial actions helps reduce the negative emotional impacts of stress. Helping others might be an excellent way to mitigate the effect of stress in one’s life.

Social support benefits: Research has found that social support can leave a strong impact on different aspects of wellness, including lowering the risk of depression, loneliness, and alcohol use.

According to psychologists, there’re different reasons why individuals engage in prosocial behaviors. These include:

Personal benefits: Prosocial actions are often viewed as being compelled by different factors, including reciprocal benefits (doing something good for someone so that the person might one day return the favor), egoistic reasons (doing things to enhance one’s self-image), and more altruistic reasons (doing things purely out of concern for another person).

Evolutionary influences: Evolutionary psychologists often describe prosocial behaviors concerning the principles of natural selection. Scientists have shown some evidence that individuals are often more likely to help others to whom they’re closely related.

Reciprocal behavior: According to the norm of reciprocity, when individuals do something beneficial for another person, that person feels compelled to return the favor. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that this norm developed because individuals who understood helping others may result in reciprocal kindness were more likely to reproduce and survive.

Socialization: In many cases, prosocial behaviors are nurtured during childhood and adolescence as parents encourage kids to help others, share, and act kindly.

Experts have identified different situational variables that contribute to prosocial behaviors. These include:

Fear of embarrassment or judgment: People sometimes fear offering assistance only to find out that their help was unwarranted or unwanted. They simply take no action to avoid being judged by the bystanders.

The number of individuals present: The more the number of individuals around, the less personal responsibility individuals feel in a situation. This is called the diffusion of responsibility.

How other individuals respond: Individuals also tend to look to other people to respond in these situations, especially if the event involves some level of ambiguity. People become less likely to respond if no other person seems to be reacting.

While prosocial behavior is generally presented as a single dimension, some research proposes that there’re different types. These are distinguished based on why they’re produced. These include:

Proactive: These actions cater to self-benefitting purposes.

Reactive: These actions are performed in reaction to individual needs.

Altruistic: These actions are meant to aid others without anticipating personal gain.

Researchers also propose that these prosocial behaviors are generally likely to be influenced by differing factors. For instance, proactive actions were identified to often be influenced by popularity within a group and status-linked goals.