PSYC 325 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Winnowing, Amyloid, Vitamin B12 Deficiency
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18 Jun 2015
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Chapter 12: Development and Aging
→Memory Development: Fetal Learning
ability to learn is intact event before birth
by 25 weeks of gestation, brain and sense organs have developed
by 34-36 weeks, auditory habituation:
− a speaker is placed on the mother's abdomen
−sounds initially cause fetal movement
−repeated sounds decreases response
prenatal learned preferences persist after birth
operant conditioning experiment
−mothers read specific books out loud 2X a day for the last 6 weeks of gestation
−2 days after birth, babies given an opportunity to work to hear the familiar story or a novel story
S(artificial nipple) → R (long pause in sucking) → O (familiar story)
S (artificial nipple) → R (short pause in sucking) → O (novel story)
in half the babies, the opposite contingency is given
−babies adapted sucking rates to gain exposure to the familiar story
−the familiar story is more reinforcing to the baby
→Memory Development: Infancy to Childhood
immediately after birth, human infants demonstrate incredible learning abilities:
−Language. motor control, social skills
−some babies will share, and can be shown early in life
some limitations are evident due to immature sensory and motor systems
ability for learning and memory
−classical conditioning, operant conditioning, episodic and semantic memory
infant operant conditioning
−S (flower pattern crib liner) → R (kick leg) → O (Move mobile)
−quickly leads to vigorous leg kicking
−discriminant stimuli:
trained in crib with flower pattern liner
kicking in flower cribs
no kicking in plain cribs
learned to discriminate the flower liners from the plain liners
−memory maintained for days (no reminders) to weeks (with reminders)
infant classical conditioning
−delay eye-blink conditioning
−trace eye-blink conditioning
no possible until age 4
−yet still a bit slower than adults
delay between the presentation of the CS and the US: has to maintain memory of CS until US is
presented
−basics intact from birth, some aspects mature with time:
eye-blink conditioning slower in infants than adults
at 4-5 months of age, able to learn delay but not trace
infants have poor semantic memory, which develops further over time
−difficult to test pre-verbal children
elicited imitation paradigm (can be used to look at semantic memory in young children):
−10-month-old children shown how to operate a toy puppet or the just given the puppet along with no
demonstration
−four months later, presented with the same puppet
−children who had seen the puppet demonstrated were later more interested in it and were better able to
use it
−shows intact recognition for puppet and how to operate it
episodic memory develops more slowly than semantic memory
−children learned question-answer pairs and were later tested for factual recall and source memory
−results:
factual recall increased with age
young children has poor factual and source memory and made extra-experimental errors
older children has good factual memory and rarely made extra-experimental errors
−older children have good semantic memory and at least some episodic memory
−semantic memory increased with age
→Adolescence: childhood and Adulthood
adolescence: the transitional stage between the onset of puberty and full adulthood
−who: 10 to 19 years old
culturally influenced
strong development of working memory and central executive function
−digit span increases through early teens
−more complex executive function develops later and throughout early adulthood
sex differences also emerge during this time
−women perform slightly better (on average) on:
verbal memory (recalling a list/story)
spatial learning of landmark and object locations
slightly better on episodic memory
eye-blink conditioning
−men perform slightly better (on average) on:
spatial navigation (learning of routes)
Mental Rotation
contextual fear conditioning memory
−similar sex differences evident In many mammals
differences are not purely cultural
similar differences can be shown in rats and rodents
→some neurobiological sex differences relevant for learning and memory:
neurobiological sex differences in brain regions implicated in learning and memory