Learning and Memory

The first text to integrate behavioral and cognitive approaches to learning and memory, this engaging textbook emphasizes human research, reflecting the field's evolution. Learning and Memory also recognizes the vital contribution of animal research, covering all historically important studies. Written in a lively and conversational style, this second edition encourages students to think critically. One example is its exploration of the Rescorla-Wagner model, the most important theory of conditioning, now further streamlined to improve student comprehension. Another is the addition of critical-thinking questions, which encourage students to evaluate their reactions to the material they've read, and relate findings to their own lives. Research includes an emphasis on practical applications such as treatments for phobias, addictions, and autism; the arguments for and against corporal punishment; whether recovered memories and eyewitness testimony should be believed; and effective techniques for studying. The text concludes with an overview of neural networks and deep learning.

Part I. Learning: 1. Core Assumptions; 2. Classical Conditioning; 3. Conditioning Principles and Theories; 4. Conditioning Applications; 5 Reinforcement; 6. Reinforcement Applications; 7. Punishment; 8. Theories of Reinforcement; Part II. Memory: 9. Memory: An Introduction; 10. Working Memory; 11. Long-term Memory; 12. Retrieval; 13. Applications; Part III. Neural Foundations: 14. From Neurons to Neural Networks.

David A. Lieberman was an undergraduate at Columbia University and received his Ph.D. from Brown University. He taught for four years at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, where he was twice selected as the 'most stimulating' teacher in psychology in university polls of graduating seniors. He then moved to the University of Stirling in Scotland where his course on learning received the highest student ratings of any course in psychology. He served two terms as Associate Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology and was one of only two psychology members of the SERC panel – the UK equivalent of the US National Science Foundation – that awarded research grants in psychology. He is the author of Learning and the Control of Behavior (1974), Learning: Behavior and Cognition (1999), and Human Learning and Memory (2012).