Cognitive-Affective Bases of Behavior
Memory and attention
Encoding → storage → retrieval, and depth of processing predicts recall. In a free-recall list, primacy reflects long-term storage and recency reflects short-term/working memory; introducing a delay before recall abolishes the recency effect only. Baddeley's working memory comprises a phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, central executive, and episodic buffer. Implicit (procedural) memory is preserved in amnesia; explicit (declarative) memory depends on medial temporal/hippocampal systems.
Conditioning
Classical conditioning: a CS paired with a UCS elicits a CR. Extinction is new inhibitory learning, not erasure-which is why spontaneous recovery occurs. Operant conditioning: reinforcement increases behavior, punishment decreases it. Negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus and increases behavior-it is not punishment. Ratio schedules depend on responses, interval schedules on time; variable schedules resist extinction best, and variable ratio produces high, steady rates.
Judgment and emotion
Heuristics: availability (ease of recall), representativeness (similarity to prototype while ignoring base rates), anchoring, confirmation. Prospect theory: losses loom larger than equivalent gains, and framing changes choices. Emotion theories: James–Lange (bodily response first), Cannon–Bard (simultaneous), Schachter–Singer (arousal plus a cognitive label-both required).
Worked example
A rat reinforced on a variable-ratio schedule and a rat on a fixed-interval schedule both stop being reinforced. The variable-ratio rat keeps pressing longest because variable schedules generate the greatest resistance to extinction. In stems, look for "variable" plus "high, steady rate."
Trap
Yerkes–Dodson: moderate arousal is optimal, and the optimal level drops as task complexity rises.