Running head: LEARNING AND COGNITION 1 LEARNING AND COGNITION 9 Learning and Cognition Lana Eliot Psychology 620 Professor Jackson November 30, 2017 Learning and cognition are two words which are seen to be similar since both need each other for the processes to work. Learning is acquiring knowledge from one’s experience, from what is taught or through studying while cognition one acquires knowledge and understanding thorough senses, experience and from one’s thoughts. So basically, these two relate in that cognition process requires learning and for learning to take place cognition must be involved. All learning happens through interactions with one’s surrounding and it’s a dynamic process with regards to an organism’s life span. Operant conditioning Operant conditioning is a mode of learning through which reinforcers stimulus are involved following one’s action. It focuses on the cause of action and consequences afterwards, in attempt of understanding behavior. Operant conditioning can be used to modify behavioral patterns of children, adults as well as pets. It is based on the fact that when a response is followed by a good state of affairs, learning is fortified (Martin & Pear, 2015). It involves use of both positive and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is used to increase a desirable behavior of people. It includes praising someone, treats and giving out prices. For instance, when you give a child a reward for having good grades in the examination, he or she will always work hard to have even better grades next time so that he or she can have the reward. For this to work, one should give a reward which the person likes. If you give a reward which the person you’re giving to does not like, then it will have no impact to him or her. Negative reinforcement involves undermining undesirable behaviors by removing an unpleasant reinforcer. This can be done by introducing some form of paying fines in places where you’ve gone wrong or when not doing as expected. Another way is by use of positive and negative punishment. Punishment is usually used in cases where an increase in undesirable behaviors tends to decreases behavior. Positive punishment involves putting consequences in place in order to weaken the undesirable behavior. An example of a positive punishment is by grounding a child for misbehaving. This will alter the child’s behavior in that he or she will not misbehave due to fear of being grounded. Negative punishment involves removal of favorable outcomes after an occurrence of undesirable behavior (Mason, 2017). In adult situation, if a person is employed and doesn’t satisfy his employer’s demands on a particular day, the employer may decide not to pay the person payment for that particular day. This will make other employees work to well to avoid not being paid and will also have an impact on the one not paid. Punishment as a method of decreasing undesirable behavior has some challenges: it may increase ...

1. Running head: LEARNING AND COGNITION 1
LEARNING AND COGNITION 9
Learning and Cognition
Lana Eliot
Psychology 620
Professor Jackson
November 30, 2017
Learning and cognition are two words which are seen to be
similar since both need each other for the processes to work.
Learning is acquiring knowledge from one’s experience, from
what is taught or through studying while cognition one acquires
knowledge and understanding thorough senses, experience and
from one’s thoughts. So basically, these two relate in that
cognition process requires learning and for learning to take
place cognition must be involved. All learning happens through
interactions with one’s surrounding and it’s a dynamic process
with regards to an organism’s life span.
Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning is a mode of learning through which

2. reinforcers stimulus are involved following one’s action. It
focuses on the cause of action and consequences afterwards, in
attempt of understanding behavior. Operant conditioning can be
used to modify behavioral patterns of children, adults as well as
pets. It is based on the fact that when a response is followed by
a good state of affairs, learning is fortified (Martin & Pear,
2015). It involves use of both positive and negative
reinforcement.
Positive reinforcement is used to increase a desirable behavior
of people. It includes praising someone, treats and giving out
prices. For instance, when you give a child a reward for having
good grades in the examination, he or she will always work hard
to have even better grades next time so that he or she can have
the reward. For this to work, one should give a reward which
the person likes. If you give a reward which the person you’re
giving to does not like, then it will have no impact to him or
her. Negative reinforcement involves undermining undesirable
behaviors by removing an unpleasant reinforcer. This can be
done by introducing some form of paying fines in places where
you’ve gone wrong or when not doing as expected.
Another way is by use of positive and negative punishment.
Punishment is usually used in cases where an increase in
undesirable behaviors tends to decreases behavior. Positive
punishment involves putting consequences in place in order to
weaken the undesirable behavior. An example of a positive
punishment is by grounding a child for misbehaving. This will
alter the child’s behavior in that he or she will not misbehave
due to fear of being grounded. Negative punishment involves
removal of favorable outcomes after an occurrence of
undesirable behavior (Mason, 2017). In adult situation, if a
person is employed and doesn’t satisfy his employer’s demands
on a particular day, the employer may decide not to pay the
person payment for that particular day. This will make other
employees work to well to avoid not being paid and will also
have an impact on the one not paid.
Punishment as a method of decreasing undesirable behavior has

3. some challenges: it may increase fear as one may live in fear of
going to places where he or she was once punished e.g. schools,
when punishment is not present the suppressed behavior might
be repeated, while reinforcement tells what needs to be done
punishment only tells you what to do it doesn’t necessarily tell
you to do desirable deeds and it can also make a person adopt to
aggressiveness as a way of tackling with punishment.
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a way of learning where a new
behavior is learnt through linkage of two stimuli; environmental
stimulus and natural occurring stimulus. It is based on natural
responses performed by animals including humans. Examples of
classical conditioning include involuntary responses like
increase or decrease of heart rate, nausea, salivation,
constrictions amongst others. It has three stages including
before conditioning, during conditioning and after conditioning
(McLeod, 2014).
Before conditioning
In this stage an unconditioned stimulus is introduced in an
environment, producing a natural response which is not taught
nor learnt. Another stimulus known as neutral stimulus is also
introduced and doesn’t produce a response since it is not paired
with the unconditioned stimulus.
During conditioning
Learning takes place when the unconditioned stimulus is linked
with the neutral stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus and the
neutral stimulus should be associated several times for response
to be produced. The neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned
stimulus.
After conditioning
After the association of unconditioned stimulus with the
conditioned stimulus, conditioned response is formed.
In human beings, a conditioned response can be formed in many
cases. For instance, when a person bums into a snake one’s
heart rate increases automatically. The increase in heart rate is a
conditioned response. A response that occurs involuntary.

4. Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a theory looks into the observable behaviors
acquired from the surroundings without those involving the
mind. It is based on the assumption that behavior is shaped by
the environment either through reinforcement or punishment.
There are three types of behaviorism including methodological
behaviorism, logical behaviorism and psychological
behaviorism.
Methodological behaviorism
Is a theory concerned with the scientific conduct of both human
and animal’s psychology by looking into their actions in order
to understand why they behave the way they do? It shows that
psychology should associate with the organism’s behavior
rather than the organism’s mental state. Owing to
methodological behaviorism approach, mental states like
animal’s beliefs are private entities, which cannot help much in
the understanding of behavior.
Analytical or Logical behaviorism
This concept attempts to transform sentences using
psychological terms into sentences without these psychological
terms replacing them with terms referring to a body behavior. It
claims that not all sentence that uses psychological terms infer
to mental states, but rather we can use those sentences to refer
to objects, materials or events. So, every mental sentence can be
translated into a behavior.
Psychological behaviorism
Psychological behaviorism concept attempts to explain human
and animal behavior in relation to external stimuli,
reinforcements, responses and learning histories in that person’s
observable behavior can be able to explain his or her
psychology. A person’s psychology includes emotions,
personality and learning. It explains that a person’s personality
can easily be able to predict the kind of behavior this person
will exhibit. With the concern of education, psychological
behaviorism postulates that children undergo cumulative
learning before the other complex repertoires are built. Learning

5. of languages help in learning of other things of higher
intelligence. Psychological behaviorism relates emotional words
as either rewards or punishment of behaviors which can be
encouraging one towards a desirable behavior or be an
undermine to undesirable behaviors. Hence emotional words are
a means of forming an emotional response.
Social learning theory
Social learning theory explains that people learn new behaviors
from each other through imitation, observation and modeling.
Observational learning
Many children learn their behaviors through observing their
models (individuals who are observed). this helps children in
creating a behavior in them. It could their parents, siblings,
characters from the television and/or the people of the
community surrounding them (McLeod, 2016). How their
models behave translates to how the child will be likely to
behave. They learn how to do what their models do through
observation, afterwards they respond by imitating what they
observed. The children imitate the observed behavior whether
the behavior is appropriate or not.
The children will tend to imitate behaviors of people who looks
like them, but later they’ll imitate behaviors of their own
gender. The continuity of the children imitation of certain
behavior will depend on their model. Whether their models will
punish or reinforce the behavior. If a child is rewarded for
imitating his or her model’s behavior, he or she is likely to
continue with the behavior. If the child is punished for a
behavior he or she imitated, it is likely that the child will stop
imitating the behavior. Reinforcement can be internal or
external. External reinforcement is when a child seeks approval
from his or her parents while internal reinforcement is the
feeling the child feels on approval of what he or she desires.
Whether negative or positive reinforcement will always lead to
a modification of one’s character. However, reinforcement may
not have impact on the child if the reinforcement; especially a
positive one does not match its desires.

6. A child also learns by observing the consequences that happen
to others before imitating them. For instance, if he or she
observes his or her older sibling punished from doing a certain
behavior, he or she will be likely to take caution and not to
repeat the same but if the sibling is rewarded out of behaving
well the behavior is likely to be repeated by the child.
Observational learning has three models including Live model
which involves watching a person performing a behavior, verbal
instruction model that involves describing a behavior by word
of mouth and symbolic model where a character whether real or
fiction demonstrates a behavior through sources like television,
movies and many others (Akers & Jensen, 2011). Observational
learning may lead to identification. Identification entails
adoption of observed behaviors, attitudes and beliefs of the
person (model) one is identifying with.
Principles of social learning
The following are some of the principles of social learning that
explains why and how things are conducted in such a manner.
Attention
This principle explains that people learn when their focus is on
the task they are performing. If they see something being
different they tend to shift their attention to that thing making
social places important in improving these perceptions.
Retention
Most of the time people tend keep memories which in turn helps
them in learning. The memory is recalled especially when one
needs some information in order to solve a similar situation.
The previously acquired information learnt becomes helpful in
solving future similar situations.
Reproduction
People reproduce the learnt information in terms of skills,
knowledge or behavior which later improves their responses.
Motivation
When people see others being rewarded or punished for
something they have done, this motivates them to do something
so as to be rewarded or not to do something in order to avoid

7. punishment.
People have different behaviors depending on their mode of
learning. For instance, some people’s behaviors are from
observable behaviors during their childhood period from their
model including family, friends and even TV characters while
others are from other modes of learning for example classical
conditioning and operant conditioning. Their behavioral
patterns differ depending on the extent of their reinforcements
and punishments. According to behaviorism, people’s behavior
is acquired from their surroundings, hence we can be able to
predict peoples character through analyzing their environments.
References
Akers, R.L, and Jensen, G.F. (Eds.). (2011). Social Learning
Theory and the Explanation of Crime (vol.1). Transaction
Publishers.
Baum, W.M. (2017). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior,
culture, and evolution. John Willey and Sons.
Martin, G, and Pear, J.J. (2015). Behavior modification: What it
is and how to do it. Psychology Press
Mason, S.A. (2017). Behaviorist Theory. Encyclopedia of
Autism Spectrum Disorders, 1-3.
McLeod, S.A. (2016). Bandura-social learning theory. Retrieved
from www.simplypsychological.org/bandura.html
McLeod, S.A. (2014). Classical conditioning. Retrieved from

8. www.simplypsychological.org/classical-conditioning.html
Seligman, M.E., and Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Positive
psychology: An introduction. In Flow and the foundations of
positive psychology. Springer Netherlands.
Vurbic, D., and Bouton, M.E. (2014). The Wiley-Blackwell
handbook of operant and classical conditioning.
9
Running head: ATTENTION AND MEMORY 1
ATTENTION AND MEMORY 4
Attention and Memory
Lana Eliot
Psychology 620
Professor Jackson
December 05, 2017

9. The ability to do complex tasks rely critically on the
capacity to retain relevant information concerning the task in a
state which is accessible over a period of time (memory) and to
process the information selectively in the environment
(attention) (Fougnie, 2008). As an example, we may consider
driving around a city that is not familiar, directions must be
retained and in the working memory so as to get to your
destination. Furthermore, one is obliged to be capable of
attending to the important objects selectively because there is
much information in a single scene which may be processed by
our perpetual systems. As a matter of fact, the contents of
attention and working memory overlap normally. If stored
directions in working memory tell you to turn right after the
water tower, yellow in color, objects resembling yellow water
tower draw your attention.
The relationship between these two constructs is not understood
fully despite the fact that the working memory contents and
attention are normally the same. Individual aspects of their
relationship are focused on by empirical work, asking questions
like; 1) Do the working memory contents guide attention
automatically? 2) Can task demanding attention and memory
task be performed at the same time? 3) Does our memory
capacity predict performance on tasks needing attention?
Insights can be provided by these questions themselves into our
complex cognitive machinery. Nevertheless, a general
understanding of working memory and attention remains elusive
unless effort is extended for the integration of answers into a
coherent framework. Attention and memory have been the
center stage as a basic process of intellective function
throughout the modern history of neuroscience and psychology
(Chun, 2007).
Attention at encoding
How to improve memory is a primary question that many people
ask themselves. It is safe to say that attention aids in the
improvement of in encoding of memory although the details
concerning this modulation are still unresolved. Additionally, it

10. is less clear how attention enhances and modulates implicit,
although it is controversial that focusing or attending an event
or fact will improve the chances of later memory.
But what is the meaning of attention? It may mean to process
resources that tasks are allocated in one sense. In another sense,
attention may involve the selection of what is worthy of these
resources and prevention of other from getting them. As an
analogy, you may consider exercising. Do I have the energy
(resource) and time to do the exercise? If that's the case, should
I swim laps or run all over the neighborhood? (Selection). The
difference between selection and resources is essential for the
understanding of how memory is modulated by attention. For
example, in the research of behavior, explicit memory is faulty
if resources processing is split amongst two tasks that can be
done regardless of an urgent secondary task. The stimuli must
be attended selectively inclusive of such cases.
How selection and resources interact with memory encoding
The two memory neural measures;
Explicit epidemic memory- Typically correlates with medial and
frontal activities temporal regions the time of encoding
(subsequent memory).
Implicit perpetual memory- Typically revealed by reduced
ventral visual cortex activity when there are repeated visual
stimuli (known as functional magnetic resonance, repeated
attenuation or repeated suppression).
Attentional resources
A popular means to examine the effects of attention is to need
subjects to accomplish two tasks. Essentially, the effects of
attention division on memory rely on the way attention is
divided. Basically, easy versus complex auditory tasks of
monitoring impair words for memory which at similar moment
are presented. Nevertheless, such tasks don’t regulate activity in
the left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPC), which is essential for
word encoding into long-term memory. A complex task of
monitoring decreases activities related to encoding in superior
parietal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, of which cognitive

11. control resources allocation is mediated by both regions.
Generally, the secondary task impaired, whether or not the
processes of episodic encoding were engaged while leaving the
processes of encoding in the LIPC intact. Processes of encoding
may be directly affected by other types of secondary tasks if
they engage in similar circuitry of LIPC.As an example, if
needed to select between two incidental tasks of encoding
(versus repetition of the same tasks), the performance of
memory reduces and activities of LIPC increases, presumably
because switching tasks interrupt information of episodic
memory and engages the LIPC. The explicit episodic memory
may rely on resources of cognitive availability in the parietal
and frontal region; this is not true for implicit perpetual
memory.
Selective attention
Having the resources does not necessarily mean you can do
everything at one time (Driver, 2007). You have to still select
what to do. In the same manner, resources of attention
availability are not adequate for encoding of memory. As an
example, subjects can remember only what they attended to
selectively when scenes and faces are joined into overlapping
composite fully.
Attention enhances future remembering retrieval of memory
Research suggests that attention division during learning leads
to diminished declarative memory relative to dictating attention
fully at times of learning (DUDUKOVIC, 2009). Nevertheless,
divided attention impacts during retrieval of memory seem to be
less severe than they are during encoding. The extent at which
memory retrieval is influenced by attention relies on the type of
process involved in the decision of memory.
Decisions of recognition memory can be based on either
familiarity-sense of encountering something without certain
details retrieval or recollection- retrieving specific details
concerning an item.
Emotions have influence on memory
Various ways to which memory can be changed by emotions

12. have been specified by both neuroscience and psychological
studies (STANLEY, 2010). It has been proposed that the entire
three memory stages; encoding, storage, and retrieval can be
can be altered by emotions. The memory of episodic relies on
the orchestration of various regions of the brain, the
hippocampal complex most critically, that lies adjacent to the
amygdala in the medial temporal lobe.
References
Chun, M. M. (2007). Interactions between attention and
memory. Retrieved from http://ntblab.yale.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2015/01/Chun_CONB_2007.pdf
Abstract
Attention and memory work hand in hand. The review focus on
the evidence that supports the interdependence. Memory has the
capacity that is limited, and thus encoding will be determined
by the attention. Prevention of conscious memory information is
prevented by attention division during encoding, although the
duty of attention is complex in unconscious memory
information. Even when there is another concurrent task,
encoding of such memories can take place, though the stimuli to
be encoded must be chosen from other competing stimuli.
Driver, J. (2007). A selective review of selective attention.
Retrieved from
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.473.2
890&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Abstract
Selective processing of incoming sensory information is what
the attention of research is forwarded to. Our alertness of the
world relies on what we select to attend to in some extent and

13. not only stimulation entering our senses. Having the resources
does not necessarily means you can do everything at one time.
You still have to choose what to do.
DUDUKOVIC, N. M. (2009). Attention during memory retrieval
enhances future remembering. Retrieved from
https://web.stanford.edu/group/memorylab/Publications/papers/
DUD_MC09.pdf
Abstract
Retrieval of memory is an essential event of learning that
affects whether an experience in the future will be remembered.
Division of attention during retrieval can reduce the
remembering power as an event of encoding, although in
distraction presence, there can be successful retrieval. This
article focuses to explain how attention during retrieval of
memory enhances future remembering.
Fougnie, D. (2008). The Relationship between Attention and
Working Memory. Retrieved from
http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/students/fougnidl/Fougnie-
chap1.pdf
Abstract
The capacity to process information (attention) selectively and
to retain information in a state that is accessible (working
memory) are essential aspects of our capacity of cognition. The
relationship between these two constructs has never been well
understood despite the much work done to understand working
memory and attention. This article examines the duty of
perpetual and central attention in the process of encoding,
maintenance and information manipulation in the working
memory. Research suggests the duty of attention to maintain
information is less, despite the fact that attention and working
memory interact closely at the time of encoding and
manipulation. Furthermore, manipulation of information in the
working memory, only the central attention is essential
according to research. The article focuses on the relationship
between working memory and attention.
STANLEY, D. (2010). Neural Perspectives on Emotion: Impact

14. on Perception, Attention, and Memory. Retrieved from
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dstanley/publications/2009_Stanley
_et_al_Handbook_of_Neuroscience_for_the_Behavioral_Scienc
es.pdf
Abstract
Research on the impact and structure of emotion have
traditionally occurred within social, personality and clinical
psychology in behavioral science. This article focuses on the
impact of emotion towards perception, attention, and memory. It
has been thought that emotion has an impact on perception and
attention in two ways; emotions facilitates perceptual and
attentional processes thus increasing the salience stimuli of
emotions and secondly our attention is captured by our emotions
resulting to impaired nonemotional stimuli existing in the
environment.