Unit 1 - History and Approaches of Psychology

1.1 Introduction to Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes

Do our feelings always match our behaviors?

• No

• People learn how to monitor their behaviors but not their feelings

History of Psychology

• Although the science of psychology started in the late 1800’s the concept has been around for much much longer

• There was evidence of trephination back in the stone age

  • Trephination - drilling holes into a skull to “let evil spirits out”

    • It's disgusting

    • Don't look at it

    • He’ll show a movie clip of it

Waves of Psychology

• The science of psychology has gone through waves

  • Wave One - Introspection

    • Started with William Wundt

    • He created the first psychological laboratory

    • The idea of structuralism was born

      • The idea that the mind operates by combining subjective emotions and objective sensations

    • William James wrote The Principles of Psychology and discussed functionalism - What is the purpose of the mind?

    • In reality these ideas do not have much impact on psychology today

    • Turned psychology into a science not a philosophy

  • Wave Two: Gestalt Psychology

    • Max Wertheimer

    • Focused not on feelings but how we experience the world

    • The whole of an experience can be more than the sum of its parts

  • Wave Three: Psychoanalysis

    • Started with Sigmund Freud

    • People believed that most of your feelings come from a hidden place in your mind called the unconscious (the “id”)

    • We protect ourselves from our real feelings by using defense mechanisms

  • Wave Four: Behaviorism

    • People started to ignore how you feel inside

    • All that mattered was how you acted

    • If you could change your behavior, who cares how you feel

    • Very popular during the conservative 1950’s when social appearance mattered more than self expression

  • Wave Five: Eclectic

    • All about variety

    • Psychologists pick and choose what theories to use depending on the situation and the client

I Guess Psychologists Behave Eclectically

1.2 Schools of Psychology

Now psychologists pick and choose from 7 perspectives of psychology to help you with your problems

• Seven Schools of Psychology

  • Humanistic Perspective (60s-70s)

    • Focuses on spirituality and freewill

    • Striving to be the best we we can be “Self Actualization”

    • Happiness is defined by the distance between our “Self-Concept” and “Ideal Self”

  • Psychoanalytic Perspective

    • Focuses on the unconscious mind

    • We repress our true feelings and are unaware of them

    • In order to get better we must bring forward the true feelings we have in our unconscious mind

      • EX. If a man has intimacy issues and cannot form relationships with others. What do you think someone from this school of psychology would think?

      • Something in the unconscious mind is keeping him from getting close with others

      • Maybe he was bullied when he was younger and that caused this fear of close relationships (repressed memories)

  • Biopsychology/Neuroscience Perspective

    • All of your feelings and behaviors have an organic root

    • In other words, they come from your brain, body chemistry, neurotransmitters, etc..

      • EX. Let us imagine for a second that your dog dies. You become depressed. You stop eating and sleeping. What would a psychologist from this school say is going on and how might they help you?

      • Medication to alter the chemical balances in your brain

  • Evolutionary Perspective

    • Focuses on Darwinism

    • We behave the way we do because we inherited those behaviors through natural selection

    • Thus those behaviors must have helped ensure our ancestors survival

      • EX. Why are we afraid of snakes?

      • In the past our ancestors were killed by snakes

      • The ones that were not afraid of snakes were killed by snakes and could not reproduce

  • Behavioral Perspective

    • Focuses on observable behavior and sets feelings to the side

    • We behave in ways because we have been conditioned to do so

    • To change behaviors we have to recondition the client

      • EX. Pretend that you fail AP Psychology. You become depressed. In turn you begin to binge eat and gain weight. What would a behaviorist do?

      • They would progagby ignore that you are depressed and focus on your habits

  • Cognitive Perspective

    • Focuses on how we think

    • How do we see the world?

    • How did we learn to react to sad or happy events

    • Cognitive Therapists attempt to change the way that you think

      • EX. You meet a girl! Hopes are high!! She rejects you.. Not even a number. How do you react?

      • Some learned get back on the horse and try again

      • Some learned to give up and live a lonely life of solitude

  • Social/Cultural Perspective

    • Says that much of your behavior and your feelings are dictated by the culture you live in

    • Some cultures kiss each other when greeting, some bow, some shake hands

    • Does your culture place value on individuals or groups?

      • Western culture is usually more individualistic

      • Eastern culture is usually more collectivist

• Psychology has three main levels of analysis

  • Biological Influences

    • Natural selection

    • Adaptive traits

    • Genetic predispositions responding to the environment

    • Brain mechanisms

    • Hormonal influences

  • Social-cultural Influences

    • Presence of others

    • Social, cultural, and familial expectations

    • Peer and other group influences

    • Compelling models (such as in the media)

  • Psychological Influences

    • Learned fears and other learned expectations

    • Emotional responses

    • Cognitive processing and perceptual interpretations

Unit 2 - Research Methods

2.1 Introduction to Psychological Research

Psychology is first and foremost a science - it is based on research

• Criticism is important in psychological research

  • Critical Thinking - Getting to the truth even if we have to put your own ideas aside

    • Look for hidden assumptions (and decide if you agree)

    • Look for hidden bias (political values, religious values, social values, and personal connections)

    • Put aside your own bias and look at the evidence

    • See if there is a flaw in how the information/data is collected

    • Consider if there are other possible explanations for the facts or results

Psychologists study a wide variety of topics like:

• Language development

• Effects of sensory deprivation

• Behavior

Psychological Research Subfields

• Biological

• Developmental

• Cognitive

• Educational

• Personality

• Social

Applied Research Subfields:

• Industrial/Organizational

  • Studies and advises on behavior in the workplace

• Human Factors

  • Studies how people and machines interact resulting in the design of machines and environments

• Counseling

  • Helps people cope with problems in living and in achieving greater well-being

• Clinical

  • Studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders

They use scientifically testable models and methods to conduct research

Researchers use the following terms:

• Variables - events, characteristics, behaviors, and/or conditions that researchers measure and study

• Subjects/Participants - An individual person or animal a researcher studies

• Sample - A collection of subjects researchers study. Researchers use samples because they cannot study the entire population

• Population - the collection of subjects from which researchers get their sample. They study the sample population and the tested population

Purposes of Research

• Three main goals of research

  • To find ways to measure and describe behavior

  • To understand why when and how events occur

  • To apply this knowledge to solving real world problems

2.2 The Scientific Method

• Scientific Method

  • Ask a questions

  • Do background research

  • Construct a hypothesis

  • Test your hypothesis with an experiment

  • Analyze your data and draw a conclusion

  • Communicate your result

Psychologists use the scientific method to make observations and conduct research

They have to come up with a theory to explain their observations

• Theory - An explanation that organizes separate pieces of information in a coherent way.

Hypothesis

• Predicts a relationship between two or more variables

• Variables are anything that can vary among participants in a study

In order for a hypothesis to be viable it must be:

• Replicable

  • It can be repeated

  • Developing a hypothesis - a testable prediction of what will happen after a set of conditions

  • They must define the research method

    • Naturalistic observations

    • Case studies

    • Surveys

    • Experiments

  • Operational definitions make replications possible

• Falsifiable

  • A good theory must be able to be false in some way

  • This is so researchers don't fall victim to confirmation bias - scientists favoring their hypothesis and twisting the evidence to make it correct

• Precise

  • If hypotheses are precise then they can be easily tested and replicated

  • Psychologists use operational definitions to define the variables they study

Operational Definitions

• Explain what you mean in your hypothesis

• How will the variables be measured in “real life” terms

• How you define the variables will allow future researchers to replicate your study

• Almost over-define everything

2.3 Research Methods

• Basic Research

  • Explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended to be immediately used

• Applied Research

  • Seeks to find practical solutions to real life issues

• Correlation Research Methods

  • We just want to prove that two things are related somehow

    • As more ice cream is eaten, more people are murdered (TRUE but ice cream is not causing the murders)

  • Descriptive methods:

    • Case studies

    • Surveys

    • Naturalistic observation

    • Laboratory observations

  • Can describe:

    • Events

    • Experiences

    • Behaviors

  • Remember that correlation is not the same as causation

  • Scientists have to be careful to confirm if one factor is causing or correlating with the other factor

  • Measuring Correlation

    • Correlation coefficient measures the strength of a relationship between two variables

    • Measured between -1 and +1

      • Positive correlation (0 - +1) means that as one variable increases the other does as well and vice versa

      • Negative correlation (-1 - 0) means that as one variable increases the other decreases and vice versa

    • The larger the absolute value of of that number the stronger the correlation is

  • Illusory Correlation

    • The perception of a relationship where no relationship actually exists

      • Like superstition

      • If you see a black cat you will have bad luck

• Descriptive Research - Any research that observes and records

• Doesn’t measure any relationships. It just describes

  • Case Studies

    • One/a few subject(s) studied in depth

    • Does not give us correlation data

    • No cause and effect

    • Data collected through

      • Interviews

      • Direct observation

      • Psychological testing

      • Examination of documents

      • Records about subjects

  • Surveys

    • Can be descriptive or correlational

    • Getting information about a specific type of behavior, experience, or event

    • Researchers give out questionnaires or interview subjects

    • Subjects fill out surveys about themselves. This is called Self-Reporting Data

    • Can easily

      • Be cheap

      • Be anonymous

      • Be diverse

      • get random samples

    • This data can be misleading because the subjects may

      • Lie intentionally

      • Give answers based on wishful thinking rather than truth

      • Fail to understand the questions the survey asks

      • Forget parts of the experience they need to describe

      • Low response rate

    • Wording effects - how the question is worded can affect the results

      • Should cigarette ads not be allowed on television? (Many said yes)

      • Should cigarette ads be forbidden to be on television (Many said no)

  • Naturalistic Observation

    • Researchers collect information about subjects by observing them unobtrusively

      • Recording behavior in a natural environment

    • The subjects will not be interfered with in any way

    • The downside of this is that researchers may not get a clear view of the events without being noticed by the subjects

    • No control can be given to the scientists

  • Laboratory Observation

    • Set in a lab not a natural setting

    • Researchers can use sophisticated equipment

    • Offers a degree of control over the environment of the experiment

• Experimental Research

• Can provide information about cause and effect relationships between variables

  • One particular variable is manipulated and controlled

    • This tested/changed variable is called the independent variable

    • The affected variable is called the dependent variable

  • Random sampling makes sure that every individual in a population has an equal chance of being in your sample

    • Randomly picking subjects out of a population

  • Random assignment makes sure that your experimental group and control group are randomly assigned on top of the random sampling

  • A control group is a group where the independent variable is not manipulated. This gives something to compare the dependent variable to.

  • Researchers try to make the control group and the experimental group as similar as possible to get accurate results

  • Variables that are not the independent variable but could still influence the dependent variable are called extraneous variables

  • One way to control these extraneous variables is to use random assignment

    • This is when subjects have equal chances of being put into the control or experimental group

  • Confounding Variables are anything that can change the result but are not what is being changed/studied in the experiment

    • Background

    • Placebo effect

    • Family history

    • Unconscious bias

  • Experiments usually cannot fully reflect the real world because the situations are artificial

  • Experiments MUST be kept ethical

• Psychological Testing

  • Psychological tests collect information about

    • Personality traits

    • Emotional states

    • Aptitudes

    • Interests

    • Abilities

    • Values

    • Behaviors

  • Psychological Tests must be

    • Standardized

      • The test must be pre-tested to a representative sample of people and form a normal distribution or bell curve

    • Reliable

      • The extent which a test measures consistent results over time

    • Valid

      • Does the test measure what it is supposed to measure

  • test-retest reliability

    • If a test is given more than once it should yield about the same results

  • A reliable test will produce similar results no matter which version of the test is used

  • A test is valid if it accurately measures the quality of which it claims. The two types of validity are:

    • Content validity - a test’s ability to measure all important aspects of the measured characteristics. Usually well rounded and cover all parts of the content measured.

    • Criterion/Predictive validity - Not only measures a trait but uses that measurement to predict another criterion of that trait

• Bias in Research

  • Bias is the distortion of results by a variable there are multiple types of bias

    • Sampling Bias

      • When the samples do not correctly represent the population

    • Subject Bias

      • Research subject’s expectations affect/change the subject’s behavior

        • Placebo effect - Subject receives a fake drug/treatment but it actually works even if it is fake. A single-blind experiment is on where the subjects don’t know if their drug/treatment is real or fake.

        • Social Desirability bias - the tendency of some subjects to describe themselves in an idealized way

    • Experimenter Bias

      • An unconscious confounding variable

      • Occurs when the researchers preference or expectations influence the outcome of their research.

      • Double-blind procedures neither the experimenter nor the subjects know whether the subject is in the control group or the experimental group

    • Hindsight Bias

      • The tendency to believe that you knew the outcome all along (even if they had no idea before the outcome)

• Review of Research Methods

  • Advantages and disadvantages of:

    • Surveys

      • Yields a lot of information

      • Provides a good way to generate hypotheses

      • Can provide information about many people since its cheap and easy to do

      • Provide information about many people since its cheap and easy to do

      • Provides information about behavior that cant be observed directly

      • Relies on self-report data, which can be misleading

      • Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships

    • Case Studies

      • Provides a good way to generate hypotheses

      • Yields data that other methods can’t provide

      • Sometimes gives incomplete information

      • Sometimes relies only on self-report data, which can be misleading

      • Can be subjective and thus may yield biased results

      • Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships

    • Naturalistic Observations

      • Can be useful for generation hypotheses

      • Provides information about behavior in the natural world

      • Sometimes yields biased results

      • May be difficult to do unobtrusively

      • Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships

    • Laboratory Observations

      • Enables use of sophisticated equipment for measuring and recording behavior

      • Can be useful for generating hypotheses

      • Sometimes yields biased results

      • Carries the risk that observed behavior is different from natural behavior

      • Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships

    • Tests

      • Gives information about characteristics such as personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes, interests, abilities, values, and behaviors

      • Requires good reliability and validity before it can be used

      • Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships

    • Experiments

      • Identifies cause-and-effect relationships

      • Distinguishes between placebo effects and real effects of a treatment or drug

      • Can be artificial, so results may not generalize to real-world situations

2.4 Interpreting Data

• Statistics - analysis and interpretation of numerical data

• Descriptive Statistics

  • Researchers need to convert their data into numbers

  • They can use histograms and bar graphs to show how this data can be read

• Measuring Central Tendency

  • This is the

    • Mean

      • The most common used

      • Adding up all of the scores and dividing the sum

    • Median

      • The middle score when all the scores are arranged from lowest to highest

    • Mode

      • Most frequently occurring score

  • A distribution of very high scores is called positively skewed distribution

  • A distribution of very low scores is called negatively skewed distribution

  • Watch out for extreme outliers

• Statistics

  • Measuring Variation

    • Range is the difference between the highest and lowest scores in the distribution

    • Standard deviation provides more information about the amount of variation in scores

2.5 APA Ethical Guidelines

APA - American Psychological Association

• They determine ethical guidelines for human and animal research

IRB - institutional review board

• They review research proposals for ethical violations and procedural errors

• They give permission to actually do the experiment

Animal Research

• Focus on how animals are treated in laboratory experiments

• The APA has provided guidelines

  • They must have a clear scientific purpose

  • The research must be specific and important

• Animals chosen must be best suited to answer the question

• They must care for and house the animals in an ethical and humane way

• They must acquire the animals legally

  • Purchased from accredited companies

  • Trapped in a humane manner

• They must design experimental procedures that employ the least amount of suffering possible

Human Research

• All participation must be voluntary

• All participants must have complete informed consent

  • If their complete awareness gets in the way of the study then the deception must not be so extreme as to invalidate their informed consent

• Participant’s privacy must be completely protected

  • If anonymity cannot be assured, complete confidentiality should be given

• Participants cannot be put in any significant mental or physical risk

• After a study the participants should have a debriefing. In this they should be told the purpose of the study and provide ways for them to contact the researchers about the results

Unit 3 - Neuroscience and Biological Processes

3.1 Introduction to Behavior-Genetics

• Nature versus nurture debate

  • Nature (Heredity)

    • How we are born

  • Nurture (Environment)

    • How we are raised

• While we know that hair color, height, and other physical characteristics are obviously dependent on genes

• Behavior, intelligence, and personality also be dependent on genes

• Behavior Genetics

  • The study of the relative power and limitations of genetic and environmental influences on our behavior

  • Examines the genetic base of behavior and personality differences among people

  • They used to use behavioral genetics for racial discrimination - Eugenics

  • Now geneticists consider political repercussions

3.2 Principles of Genetics

• Where are genes? What are they made of? What do they do?

  • In the nucleus of a cell we have chromosomes

  • On these chromosomes we have DNA

  • In that DNA are our genes

  • Genes contain codes for proteins that make us who we are (height, eye color, personality type, speed)

• All cells have 46 chromosomes except for gametes

• Chromosome breakdown

  • Chromosomes are “books” (largest)

  • DNA are “pages”

  • Genes are “words”

  • Nucleotides are “letters” (smallest)

• Percentages of shared genes

  • Identical twins 100%

  • Parents 50%

  • Siblings + Nonidentical twins 50%

  • Grandparents 25%

• Types of genetic traits

  • Monogenic

    • Traits determined by a single gene

      • Alcoholism

      • Schizophrenia

  • Polygenic

    • Traits determined by many genes

      • Intelligence

      • Height

      • Weight

• Heritability

  • A mathematical estimate that indicates how much of a trait’s variation can be attributed to genes

  • Three important principles of heritability

    • Don’t reveal anything about how much genes influence a person’s traits. They only tell us to what extent trait differences between people can be attributed to genes

    • Depends on the similarity of the environment for a group of people. In groups of people who share similar environments, heritability of a particular trait may be high. However, that same trait may have low heritability in a group of people who operate in different environments

    • Even if a trait is highly heritable, it can still be influenced by environmental factors

3.3 Types of Genetic Studies

• Family studies

  • Looking at similarities among members of a family

  • If the trait is genetic then it should be similar in blood relatives

  • Family studies alone don’t reveal whether a trait is genetically inherited

  • Caution: a family shares genes but also environments (Correlation does not equal causation)

• Twin Studies (Suggest Genetic Influence)

  • What are the different types of twins?

    • Identical

      • Same biological sex

      • Any difference between them will be nurture not nature because their genes are completely the same

    • Fraternal

      • Same or opposite sex

  • Countless studies have been done on twins to study how similar they are

    • Whether or not they are raised in the same environment they are usually very alike in many ways

  • Separated Twin Studies

    • Twins separated at birth still had so many similarities

    • This pushes the ideas that psychology can be genetic

    • Look at the Jim Twins

• Experiences and Behavior

  • Experiences affect behavior partly because environmental stimulation forms and maintains neural connections

• Adoption Studies (Suggest Environmental Influence)

  • Adopted children share genes but their living environments often influence them more than genes

• Interaction of Genes and Environment

  • Highly influential environmental factors include

    • Prenatal influences

    • Child-rearing and other parental influences

    • Nutrition

    • Experiences throughout life

    • Peer influences

    • Culture

• Cultural Norms

  • Set societal expectations that influence behavior

  • Says what's “Appropriate”

3.4 Evolution and Natural Selection

• Evolutionary Psychology

  • Studies the evolution of behavior and mind using principles of natural selection

    • Surviving and reproducing

  • Adaptive behaviors are those that promote reproductive success

• Theory of Natural Selection

  • Charles Darwin made this theory

  • 1831 on the HMS Beagle

  • 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species

• Russian Fox Study 1959

  • The effort to make a tameable breed of fox

  • 40 males and 100 females were mated and only the tamest foxes were kept

  • After 40 years later this cycle made a new tameable breed of fox

• Reproduction of the Fittest instead of Survival of the Fittest

• Reproductive Advantage

  • Helps an organism mate successfully and pass on its genes to the next generation

• Survival Advantage

  • Helps an organism to live long enough to reproduce and pass on its genes

• Inclusive Fitness

  • W.D. Hamilton in the 1960s

  • Reproductive fitness of an individual organism plus any effect the organism has on increasing reproductive fitness in related organisms

  • People might risk their lives to save their children or close relatives because they share genes

• Adaptations

  • Inherited characteristics that become prevalent in a population because it provides a survival or reproductive advantage

• Mutations

  • Essential to evolution

  • Raw material of genetic variation

  • Caused by

    • An error during DNA replication

    • Random rearrangement of small pieces of DNA in a chromosome pair

  • Can result in a new trait

• Mating Behavior

  • Studied to investigate aspects of evolutionary psychology

• Parental investment

  • Refers to all of the resources spent to produce and raise each offspring

• Sexual selection

  • The tendency of females to choose mates based on certain characteristics which should then be passed on to the male offspring

• Sexuality and the Evolutionary Psychology

  • Casual sex is more accepted by men

    • This is because men can have almost infinite children but women can only get pregnant every once in a while

    • Sperm is cheap

    • Eggs are not

  • Men typically look for

    • Health

    • Youth

    • Birthing capability

  • Women typically look for

    • Wealth

    • Power

    • Safety

Unit 4 - Neuroscience

4.1 Introduction to Neuroscience

• Neuroscience chemically and scientifically explains why we feel different feelings

• The nervous system is made of

  • The brain (the center)

  • Nerves

  • Electrochemical signals

• Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)

  • Most famous physician of the ancient world

  • Theorized that our thoughts, feelings, and ideas came from the brain instead of the common theory at the time that these came from out heart or stomach

• Researchers now think that our minds and brains might be separate things

  • They focus on hormones and experiences

• Franz Gall (1800)

  • Phrenology

  • He would feel the bumps on people’s skulls and how that represented their mental abilities

  • His theory was incorrect but this started the thought that the brain was modular

4.2 The Nervous System

• A complex highly coordinated network of tissues that communicate via electrochemical signals

• Nervous System Structure

  • Peripheral Nervous System

    • Autonomic Nervous System

      • Sympathetic Nervous System

      • Parasympathetic Nervous System

    • Somatic Nervous System

      • Afferent Nerves

      • Efferent Nerves

  • Central Nervous System

    • Spinal Cord

    • Brain

• Central nervous system

  • Receives and processes information from the senses

  • Brain and spinal cord are filled with cerebrospinal fluid

    • Cushions and nourishes the brain

  • The brain is the main organ of the nervous system

  • The blood-brain barrier protects the cerebrospinal fluid

    • Blocks drugs and toxins

  • Spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body and sends messages around it

  • Spinal reflexes are automatic behaviors that require no input from the brain

• Damage to the Spinal Cord

  • Can lead to

    • Paralysis

    • Loss of feeling

    • Imparied organ function

    • Loss of muscular control

  • These injuries are usually permanent

• Peripheral Nervous System

  • All parts of the nervous system except for the brain and spinal cord

  • Somatic Nervous System

    • Takes “som” effort

    • Nerves that connect the central nervous system to the voluntary skeletal muscles and sense organs

    • Two Types of Nerves

      • Afferent Nerves/Sensory Neurons

        • Carry information from the muscles and sense organs to the central nervous system

      • Efferent Nerves/Motor Neurons

        • Carry information from the central nervous system to the muscles and sense organs

      • Interneurons

        • Help with communication between sensory and motor neurons

  • Autonomic Nervous System

    • Automatic

    • Nerves that connect the central nervous system to the heart, blood vessels, glands, and smooth muscles

      • Smooth muscles are involuntary muscles that help organs carry out their functions

    • Sympathetic Nervous System

      • arousing

      • Gets the body ready for emergencies

      • Slows down digestion

      • Draws blood from the skin to the skeletal muscles

      • Releases hormones

    • Parasympathetic Nervous System

      • calming

      • Activates when the body is relaxed

      • Helps the body conserve and store energy

      • Slows heartbeat

      • Decreases blood pressure

      • Promotes digestion

• Crisis Mode

  • Thumping heart

  • Sweaty palms

  • Pale skin

  • Panting breath

4.3 Neurons: Cells of the Nervous System

• Two types of cells in the nervous system

  • Glial Cells

    • Make up the supporting structures of the nervous system

    • Provide structural support to the neurons

    • Insulate neurons

    • Nourish neurons

    • Remove waste products

  • Neurons

    • Communicators of the nervous system

    • Receive information

    • Integrate information

    • Pass information along

    • Communicate with:

      • Eachother

      • Cells in sensory organs

      • Muscles

      • Glands

    • Has a soma, a central area. The soma contains the nucleus and other structures common to all cells

    • Dendritic trees have dendrite branches that reach out from the neuron.

      • These branches receive information from other neurons and sense organs

    • An axon is a long fiber that extends from the neuron

    • Nerves are actually bundles of axons coming together from many neurons

    • Some axons have a myelin sheath. This is a coating produced by the glial cells.

      • When an axon has this shealth impulses travel faster and vice versa

    • Terminal buttons are bumps at the end of each axon

    • Terminal buttons release neurotransmitters

      • Neurotransmitters are chemicals that cross into neighboring neurons and activate them

    • The junction between an axon and the cell body or dendrite of a different neuron is called a synapse

• Role of Myelin

  • Multiple sclerosis

    • Disintegrated myelin

    • Difficulty controlling muscles

  • Poliomyelitis

    • Damages myelin

    • Can lead to paralysis

• Communication between Neurons

  • Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxlet 1952

  • Made discoveries about how neurons transmit information

  • Studied giant squid

  • Found that nerve impulses are really electrochemical reactions

• The Resting Potential

  • Nerves are built to transmit electrochemical signals

  • Fluids inside and outside of the neurons contain charged atoms called ions

    • Sodium Ions (+)

    • Potassium Ions (+)

    • Chloride Ions (-)

  • An inactive neuron is in its resting state

    • When the inside of a neuron has a higher concentration of negatively charged ions than the outside

  • Acts as a store of energy called resting potential (-70 millivolts)

• How the Neuron Fires

  • Electrochemical process

  • Electrical inside of the neuron

  • Chemical outside of the neuron

  • Firing is called Action Potential

• The Action Potential

  • Dendrites receive neurotransmitters from another neuron across the synapse

  • Once the neurons have reached its threshold it fires

  • The neuron has portals that open and let in positive ions that mix with its negative ions that are already inside of the neuron

  • The mixing of positive and negative ions cause an electrical charge that opens up the next portal and close the original portal

  • The process continues down the axon to the terminal branches and terminal buttons

  • The terminal buttons turn electrical charge into chemical neurotransmitters and shoot messages to the next neuron across the synapse

  • The membrane then remains closed and can’t send impulses

    • This is called the absolute refractory period

  • It lasts for about 1-2 milliseconds

• The All-or-None Law

  • All neural impulses conform to the all-or-none law

  • Neurons either fire and generate action potentials or don’t

  • Neural impulses are always the same strength no matter the strength of the stimuli

  • Stronger stimuli may send impulses faster

  • It's like a gun

• The Synapse

  • The gap between two cells at a synapse

  • The signal-sending neuron is the presynaptic neuron

  • The signal-receiving neuron is the postsynaptic neuron

4.4 Neurotransmitters

• Chemical messengers that cross the synaptic cleft/gap after being released by the terminal buttons

• Then bind to receptor sites and pass their messages

• Reuptake is the absorption of the excess neurotransmitter molecules in the synaptic gap

• Examples

  • Acetylcholine

    • Muscle action

    • Learning

    • Memory

  • Dopamine

    • Movement

    • Learning

    • Attention

    • Emotion

  • Serotonin

    • Mood

    • Hunger

    • Sleep

    • Arousal

  • Norepinephrine

    • Alertness

    • Arousal

  • Gamma-aminobutyric acid

    • Inhibitory neurotransmitter

  • Glutamate

    • Excitatory neurotransmitter

    • Memory

• Agonists and Antagonists

  • Agonists

    • Chemicals that mimic the actions of particular neurotransmitters

    • Bind to receptors and generate postsynaptic potential

    • Example: Nicotine

      • Acetylcholine agonist

  • Antagonists

    • Chemicals that block the action of a particular neurotransmitter

    • They still bind to receptors but can't produce postsynaptic potentials

    • They take up the receptor site and prevent neurotransmitters from acting

    • Example: Paralysis and Poison Arrows

4.5 Studying the Brain

• To examine the brain’s function researchers have to study a working brain

• Humans can’t have invasive studies done

• Invasive animal studies

  • Lesioning studies

    • Researchers use an electrode and an electric current to burn a specific small are of the brain

    • Certain parts of the brain are removed or destroyed

  • Electric stimulation of the brain

    • Researchers activate a particular brain structure by using a weak electric current sent along an implanted electrode

• Human brain studies

  • Examining people with brain injuries or diseases and see what they can and can’t do

    • Phineas Gage

      • Different parts of the brain have different functions

  • Electroencephalography (EEG)

    • Records the overall electrical activity in the brain via electrodes placed on the scalp

    • Used mainly for sleep and seizure studies

• High-tech innovations have made studying human brains easier

  • Computerized (Axial) Tomography (C(A)T)

    • X-rays are taken of the brain from different angles

    • The computer combines the x-rays to produce a picture of a horizontal slice through the brain

    • Good for tumor location but isn’t useful for function

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

    • Both brain structure and function can be visualized

    • Computer-enhanced pictures produced by magnetic fields and radio waves

    • Functional MRIs look at blood flow and can tell what parts of the brain are active when we are thinking and feeling different things

  • Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

    • Researchers inject people with a harmless radioactive chemical which collects in active brain areas

    • The pattern of radioactivity in the brain is monitored using a scanner and computer

    • Researchers can use this to figure out which parts of the brain are active during specific tasks/movements

    • Often used to detect cancer,tumors, brain disorders, and heart diseases

4.6 Structure and Function of the Brain

• The Hindbrain

  • Medulla (Brain Stem)

    • Next to the spinal cord

    • Controls functions outside of conscious awareness

      • Breathing

      • Heart Rate

      • Blood Pressure

  • Pons (Brain Stem)

    • Affect sleep, dreaming, waking up

  • Cerebellum

    • Back of the brain stem

    • Controls balance and movement coordination

    • Processes sensory information

    • Fine motor skills

• The Midbrain

  • Between the hindbrain and the forebrain

  • Helps up locate events in space

  • Releases dopamine

  • Reticular formation (Brain Stem)

    • Runs through the hindbrain and midbrain

    • Involved in sleep, wakefulness, pain perception, breathing, and muscle reflexes

• The Forebrain

  • The biggest and most complex part of the brain

    • Thalamus

      • “Sensory Switchboard”

      • Deals with all sensory information except smell

      • Directs inputs to their specific place in the cortex

    • Hypothalamus

      • Lies under the thalamus and helps control the pituitary gland and the autonomic nervous system

      • Regulates body temperature, hunger, thirst, sex drive, aggression

• Limbic System

  • Emotions and drives

    • Hippocampus

      • Processing and storage of memories

      • Helps make new memories

      • Amygdala

        • Aggression and fear

        • Emotional memories

      • Septum

    • Cerebrum/Cerebral Cortex

      • Wrinkly part of the brain

      • Biggest part of the brain

      • Controls abstract thought and learning

      • Information processing center of the brain

      • Corpus callosum

        • Band of fibers that runs along the cerebrum from the front to the back of the skull

        • Divides the cerebrum into two halves

        • Four lobes in each hemisphere/half

Occipital

Visual information

Parietal

Touch

Sensing body position

Made up of association areas

Not involved in motor or sensory functions

Higher mental functions like learning, remembering, thinking, and speaking

Temporal

Auditory information

Wernicke’s area (left lobe)

Language comprehension

Wenicke’s aphasia

Unable to understand language: syntax and grammar jumbled

Frontal

Logic + Reasoning

Muscle movement

Memory

Palling

Goal-setting

Creativity

Rational decision making

Social judgment

Broca’s area (left lobe)

Speech production

Broca’s Aphasia

Damage to Broca's area

Unable to make talking movements

• Motor Cortex

  • Movement

  • Sensory Cortex

    • Touch and sensations

• Brain Hemispheres

  • Lateralization

    • Right and left hemispheres

      • Left - Verbal/Logic

        • Writing

        • Reading

        • Talking

      • Right - Nonverbal/Creative

        • Music

        • Drawing

        • Recognizing childhood friends

  • Roger Sperry + friends

    • Conducted research in lateralization

    • Examines people who had gone through split brain surgery

      • Cut the corpus callosum and separating the two hemispheres

      • Can treat epileptic seizures

• Control of the Body

  • Left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and vice versa

  • Vision and hearing is different

    • What is seen goes to the entire brain

    • Images in the left side of the visual field stimulate the right side of both eyes then goes to the right hemisphere

    • Information from the right visual field ends up in the left hemisphere

  • Auditory

    • Both hemispheres receive input from each ear

    • Information goes to the opposite hemisphere first then the closer hemisphere second

  • The two hemispheres share information via the corpus callosum

  • Severing the corpus callosum will cause impaired perception

• Brain Plasticity

  • When parts of a brain are damaged other parts will reroute messages to still be able to perform

  • Children’s brains are more plastic than adults

• Split Brain Studies

  • Studies done to show the differing functions of the separated hemispheres of the brain

  • Impaired perception caused by a cut corpus callosum will show which side of the brain is connected to what senses and functions

4.7 The Endocrine System

• Slower system - deals with hormones not neurotransmitters

• Endocrine System

  • Hormone-secreting glands

  • Affects communication inside of the body

• Pituitary gland

  • Close to the hypothalamus in the brain

  • “Master gland” of the endocrine system

• Hormones

  • Chemicals that help regulate bodily functions

  • Thyroxine

    • Produced by the thyroid gland

    • Regulates Metabolic rate

  • Insulin

    • Produced by the pancreas

    • Regulates blood sugar level

  • Melatonin

    • Produced by the pineal gland

    • Regulates biological rhythms and sleep

  • Cortisol, Norepinephrine, Epinephrine, Adrenaline

    • Produced by the adrenal glands

    • Regulates bodily functions during stressful and emotional states

  • Androgens

    • Produced by the testes

    • Regulates male secondary sex characteristics and sexual arousal

  • Estrogen

    • Produced by the ovaries

    • Regulates breast development and menarche

  • Progesterone

    • Produced by the ovaries

    • Regulates preparation of uterus for implantation of a fertilized egg

Unit 5 - Developmental Psychology

5.1 - Introduction to Developmental Psychology

• The study of YOU from womb to the tomb

• From conception to death

• Physical, social, cognitive, and moral changes over our lifetime

• Nature versus nurture returns

  • Are you who you are because of the way you were born or

  • Are you who you are because of the way you were raised

• Research Methods used for developmental psychology

  • Cross-sectional Studies

    • Studying a lot of similar people of different age groups at the same time

    • Much faster but have flaws (different environments/genetics/etc)

  • Longitudinal Studies

    • Studying one group of people over a period of time

    • Much more reliable but takes much longer to complete

5.2 - Prenatal Development

• Conception begins with the drop of an egg and the release of about 200 million sperm

• The sperm seeks out the egg and attempts to penetrate the eggs surface

• Germinal Stage (weeks 0-2)

  • Once the sperm penetrates the egg we a have a fertilized egg or a zygote

  • This lasts for about two weeks and consists of rapid cell division

  • Less than half of zygotes survive the germinal stage

  • After 10 days the zygote attaches itself to the uterine wall through implantation

  • The outer part of the zygote becomes a placenta which

    • filters nutrients and protects the zygote from teratogens

    • Passes oxygen and nutrients from the mother’s blood into the embryo/fetus

    • Removes waste materials from the embryo/fetus

• Embryonic Stage (weeks 2-8)

  • The zygote turns into an embryo

  • Lasts about 6 weeks

  • The heart begins to beat

  • Organs begin to develop

  • Teratogens are chemical agents that harm the prenatal environment

    • Alcohol

    • Tobacco

    • STDs

      • HiV

      • Herpes

      • Genital Warts

• Fetal Stage (week 8 - birth)

  • At this point we have a fetus

  • By about the 6th month the stomach and other organs have formed enough to survive outside of the mother

  • The baby can hear, recognize sounds, and respond to light

  • After one month sex organs begin to form

  • Brain increases rapidly in size

  • Respiratory and digestive systems start to work independently

• He will show a video of childbirth now so LOOK DOWN

• Fetal Viability (22-26 weeks after conception)

  • The baby has potential to live outside of the womb if born prematurely

  • The chances of the babies survival increase significantly with each additional week it remains in the womb

• Adverse Factors that Affect Fetal Development

  • Poor nutrition

  • Use of alcohol

  • Smoking

  • Use of certain prescription or over-the-counter drugs

  • Use of recreational drugs such as cocaine, sedatives, and narcotics

  • X-rays and other kinds of radiation

  • Ingested toxins like lead

  • Illnesses

    • AIDS

    • German measles

    • Syphilis

    • Cholera

    • Smallpox

    • Mumps

    • Severe flu

• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

  • An incurable condition that occurs if the mother drinks too much during pregnancy

  • Side effects

    • Small head size

    • Heart defects

    • Irritability

    • Hyperactivity

    • Mental abnormality

    • Slowed motor development

5.3 - Theories of Development

• Development - series of age-related changes that happen over a lifespan

• These changes can be separated into stages

• These stage theories share these assumptions

  • People pass through stages in a specific order with each stage building on capacities developed in the previous stage

  • Stages are related to age

  • Development is discontinuous, with qualitatively different capacities emerging in each stage

• Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Personality

  • Personality develops in stages

  • Early childhood is the most important

  • Most personality development is done by age five

• Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development

  • Agreed that childhood development is important but personalities continue to develop over a person's whole lifespan

  • Stages built off of challenges

    • Stage 1 - Trust vs Mistrust - 1st year

      • Having basic needs met

    • Stage 2 - Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt - 1-3 years

      • Gaining independence

    • Stage 3 - Initiative vs Guilt - 3-6 years

      • Acting in a socially acceptable way

    • Stage 4 - Industry vs Inferiority - 6-12 years

      • Competing with peers, preparing for adult roles

    • Stage 5 - Identity vs Role Confusion - Adolescence

      • Determining one’s identity

    • Stage 6 - Intimacy vs Isolation - Early adult

      • Developing intimate relationships

    • Stage 7 - Generativity vs Stagnation/Self-Absorption - Middle adult

      • Being Productive

    • Stage 8 - Integrity vs Despair - Old Age

      • Evaluating one’s life

  • Addresses personality stability and personality change

  • Doesn’t address differences between individuals

• Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

  • Thought processes change as people mature and interact with the world around them

  • Schemas change through

  • Schemas - mental models that represent the world

    • Children view the world through schemas (adults do to)

    • Schemas are the ways we interpret the worlds around us

    • What we picture in our head when we think of something

    • Schemas can change

    • Assimilation

      • Broadening of an existing schema to include new information

    • Accommodation

      • Modification of schema as information is incorporated

  • Stage 1 - Sensorimotor Period - birth - two years

    • Children learn by using senses and moving around

    • By the end of it children become capable of symbolic thought

    • Children achieve object permanence (knowing that something is still there even if you can’t see it)

  • Stage 2 - Preoperational Period - two years - seven years

    • Children are more capable of symbolic thought

    • Extremely literal

    • Children are not capable of conservation

      • The ability to recognize that measurable physical features of objects (length, area, volume) can be the same even when the objects are different

    • Children still have these weaknesses

      • Centration

        • Tendency to focus on one aspect of a problem instead of the problem as a whole

        • Cannot classify objects on more than one level (hierarchical classification)

      • Irreversibility

        • Inability to reverse an operation

      • Egocentrism

        • Inability to take someone else’s point of view

        • Animism - belief that inanimate objects are living

  • Stage 3 - Concrete Operational Period - seven years - eleven years

    • Children become capable of performing mental operations

    • Can only perform operations with tangible objects and real events

    • Children achieve conservation, reversibility, and decentration during this stage

    • Reversibility - ability to mentally reverse actions

    • Decentration - ability to focus on several aspects of a problem

    • Children become less egocentric

  • Stage 4 - Formal Operational Period - twelve years - adulthood

    • Capability of applying mental operations to abstract concepts

    • Ability to reason, imagine, and make hypotheticals

    • Abstract, systematic, and logical thought processes

  • Critiques of Piaget’s Theory

    • Recent research shows that children have much greater capabilities than Piaget thought

    • Children can develop skills that are from more than one stage at once

    • Cultural influences

    • Some people never develop the capacity for formal reasoning even as adults

• Lawrence Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development

  • Level 1 - Preconventional Level

    • Children depend on adults to show them what is right and wrong

    • Punishment = wrong

    • Reward = right

  • Level 2 - Conventional Level

    • Children value rules and follow them for social approval

    • 1st Stage

      • Children only care about the approval of those closest to them

    • 2nd Stage

      • Children care about the approval of society as a whole

  • Level 3 - Postconventional Level

    • People consider what's personally important to them

    • 1st Stage

      • People still want to follow society’s rules but don’t see them as absolute

    • 2nd Stage

      • People figure out what's right and wrong for themselves based on abstract ethical principles

      • Only a small percent of people reach this last stage

  • Critiques

    • People often show characteristics of multiple levels at the same time

    • Favors cultures that value individualism

5.4 Infancy and Childhood

• Can turn their heads towards voices

• Can see 8-12 inches from their face

• Love to stare at human face like things because those things are “safe” (evolutionary speaking

• Reflexes - inborn automatic responses that are tested right after birth

  • Rooting

    • Testing if the baby will search out food

  • Sucking

    • Testing if the baby will instinctively suck anything that touches the roof of their mouth

  • Grasping - (Palmer - hands | Plantar - feet)

    • Testing if the baby with absolutely man handle anything that touches their hands/feet

    • If this reflex last too long then there may be issues with the nervous system

  • Moro

    • Dropping the baby and see if it'll try and grab something to not fall

  • Babinski

    • Seeing if the baby can spread out its toes ig

• The brain and Infancy

  • Although the brain does not develop many new cells, the existing cells begin to work more efficiently and form more complex neural networks

• Maturation

  • Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

  • To a certain extent we all maturate similarly but the time can vary depending on the person

• Motor development

  • Sequence is the same but once again time can vary

  • Babies learn in this order

    • Roll over

    • Sit up unsupported

    • Crawl

    • Walk

  • These are usually explained by maturation but it is also influenced by experience

• Walking

  • 25% learn to walk by 11 months

  • 50% within a week of 1st birthday

  • 90% by 15 months

  • Once its been over a year they are considered late walkers

  • Walking time varies by culture (NURTURE)

    • if the culture emphasizes walking then the babies usually learn to walk at younger ages

  • Identical twins tend to walk on the same day (NATURE)

• Toilet Training

  • NO MATTER WHAT THE BABY NEEDS THE PHYSICAL MATURATION TO HOLD THEIR BLADDER OR BOWEL MOVEMENTS BEFORE TOILET TRAINING

  • NO TRAINING WILL WORK IF THE CHILD IS NOT PHYSICALLY READY

  • Why is this in caps? I dont know dont ask me I copied the slides

• Temperament

  • Personality features that babies are born with

  • Typically from nature not nurture (biological)

  • Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess found three types of development

    • Easy - 40%

      • Happy and adapt easily to change

      • Have regular sleeping and eating patterns

    • Slow-to-warm-up - 15%

      • Cautious about new experiences

      • Have less regular sleeping and eating patterns

    • Difficult - 10%

      • Glum and irritable

      • Dislike change

      • Eating and sleeping patterns are irregular

• Attachment

  • The most important social construct an infant must develop is attachment

  • Contact comfort is comfort derived from physical closeness with a caregiver

  • Lorenz discovered that some animals form attachments through imprinting

  • Harry Harlow and his monkeys

    • Harry showed that monkeys needed touch to dorm attachments

  • Critical Periods are the optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produce proper development

    • Those who are deprived of touch have trouble forming attachment when they are older

  • Attachment Styles

    • Attachment happens through a complex set of interactions between mothers and infants

    • Strange Situation - Mary Ainsworth

      • Mothers brought their infants into unfamiliar rooms

      • After a while a stranger would come in

      • After a little while the mother would leave

      • Then the mother would come back in and the stranger would leave

      • Then after a while the mother would leave the child alone

    • Results:

      • Secure Attachment

        • Most infants were unhappy when their mothers left but still played with the strangers

      • Anxious-ambivalent Attachment

        • Some infants were upset when their mothers left but were not as thrilled when they returned

      • Avoidant Attachment

        • Some infants didn’t seem upset when the mothers left

        • Treated mother and stranger the same way

    • Culture heavily influences attachment

    • Most babies experience separation anxiety

• Gender

  • Gender Schema Theory

    • suggests that we learn a cultural “recipe” of how to be a male or female, which influences our gender based perceptions and behaviors

  • Social Learning Theory

    • proposes that we learn gender behavior like any other behavior- reinforcement, punishment, and observation

  • Biological sex and gender are not the same thing

  • Gender role

    • How society expects men and women to behave

  • Gender Identity

    • How a person views himself or herself in terms of gender

  • Gender is a learned distinction between girls and boys attitudes

  • SOME gender differences exist but not as many as stereotypes suggest

  • This is probably just due to those stereotypes anyway

• Self - Concept

  • A sense of one’s identity and self-worth

  • Children with a positive self concept are more confident

  • Children with a negative self concept are more shy

5.5 Adolescence

• Physical changes

  • PuBeRtY

    • Sexual maturation

    • Starts at about eleven for girls and thirteen for boys

  • Primary Sexual Characteristic

    • Body structures that make reproduction possible

  • Secondary sex characteristics

  • Sex-speciic physical characteristics that are not essential for reproduction

    • Girls

      • Breasts

      • Widened pelvic bones

      • Wider hips

    • Boys

      • Facial hair

      • Broader shoulders

      • Deeper voices

  • Menarche

    • Marks the beginning of puberty for guys

    • First menstrual period

    • Average age in America is 12.5

  • Nocturnal Emissions (wet dreams)

    • Marks the beginning of puberty for guys

    • Usually about 14 years of age

  • Girls usually are fully sexually matured at age sixteen

  • Guys usually are fully sexually matured at age eighteen

  • Early onset of puberty

    • People generally reach puberty earlier not in the US than they did a few generations ago

    • Menarche for Western Europe and the US - 12-13 years old

    • Menarche for poorer regions of Africa - 14-17 years old

  • Varying Maturation Rate

    • Early-maturing girls and late-maturing boys tend to have more psychological and social problems compared to their peers

    • In girls there is a correlation between early maturation and poor school performance, early sexual activity, unwanted pregnancies, likelihood of eating disorders

    • Both boys and girls who mature early tend to use more drugs and alcohol and have more problems with the law compared to their peers

• Moral Development

  • Lawrence Kohlberg’s three stage theory

    • In 5.3

• Identity

  • James Marcia’s four identity states

    • Identity Foreclosure

      • A person prematurely commits to values or roles that others prescribe

    • Identity Moratorium

      • A person delays commitment to an identity. They are usually experimenting with various values and roles

    • Identity Diffusion

      • When a person lacks a clear sense of identity and still hasn't explored issues related to identity development

    • Identity Achievement

      • When a person considers alternative possibilities and commits to a certain identity and path in life

5.6 Adulthood

• Social clocks indicate the typical life events, behaviors, and issues for a particular age.

• A midlife crisis is a time of doubt and anxiety in middle adulthood

• The empty nest refers to the time in parents’ lives when their children have grown up and left home

• Physical abilities peak by your mid-twenties

• Then it all goes downhill

• Menopause is the transition out of menstruation that starts around 45-55. Causes hot flashes and sometimes leads to strong emotional reactions

• Aging

  • As people get older they lose more neurons

  • This sometimes causes dementia

  • Vision and hearing decline

  • Some aspects of memory decrease in old age due to a decline in the speed of mental processing it’s not always dementia

• Crystallized intelligence

  • Accumulated knowledge

  • Intelligence based on a life span of knowledge and skills. Either goes up or stays constant

  • Physical exercise and mental stimulations can form new connections between neurons in the brains of older adults

  • Most people’s overall sense of well-being increases as they get older

• Fluid Intelligence

  • Ability to solve problems quickly and think abstractly

  • Peaks in the 20s and then decreases over time

• Life expectancy keeps increasing (its about 75 now)

• Women outlive men by about 4 years

• We have weaker immune systems but gain antibodies

• Recognition stays stable

• Recall ability declines

• Social Clock

  • When is it socially acceptable to do things

• Erik Erikson

  • A neo-Freudian (studied and learned from Freudian)

    • Worked with Anna Freud

  • Thought that our personality was influenced by our experiences with others

  • Stages of psychosocial development based on social conflicts (Yes you’ve already seen this in 5.3)

  • Stage 1 - Trust versus Mistrust - birth - 18 months

    • Can we learn to trust the world or do we learn that the world is an untrustworthy place

    • Usually leads to trust with caregivers but mistrust of strangers

    • Can carry on with the child for the rest of their lives

  • Stage 2 - Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt - 18 months - 3 years old

    • Can you control yourself? Will you doubt yourself?

    • Child’s energies are directed towards physical skills

    • Children need to learn how to control their emotions

    • Learn the word “NO”

  • Stage 3 - Initiative versus Guilt - 3 years - 6 years

    • Will their curiosity be scolded or encouraged

    • Learn the word “WHY?”

    • Want to understand the world and ask questions

    • Children become more assertive, take initiative, become more forceful

    • Gain a bit of independency

  • Stage 4 - Industry versus Inferiority - 6 - 12 years old

    • Do we feel good or bad about our accomplishments

    • The children must deal with demands to learn new skills while risking a sense of inferiority and failure

    • Can lead to us feeling bad about ourselves for the rest of our lives.. An inferiority complex

  • Stage 5 - Identity versus Role Confusion - Adolescence

    • WHO AM I??

    • Teens must achieve self-identity while deciphering their roles in occupation, politics, and religion

    • If I do not find myself I may develop an identity crisis

  • Stage 6 - Intimacy versus Isolation - young adult

    • What are my priorities?

    • The young adult must develop long term relationships while combating feelings of isolation

    • Learning how to balance relationships, work, education, money, etc

    • Marriage (haha thats funny)

  • Stage 7 - Generativity versus stagnation - middle adult

    • Is everything going as I planned? Am I happy with my life?

    • Parenting

    • Midlife crisis

    • Wanting to continue your family lineage (welp)

  • Stage 8 - Integrity versus Despair - old decrepit adult (late adulthood)

    • Was my life meaningful? Do I have regrets?

    • Reflecting on life

    • Accepting your lifetime accomplishments or waste

    • Passing down wisdom to younger generations

5.7 Parenting

• Parenting Styles

  • Authoritarian Parents

    • Impose rules and expect obedience

    • “Why? Because I said so!!”

  • Permissive/Indulgent Parents

    • Submit to their children’s desires, make few demands and use little punishment

  • Neglectful Parents

    • Dismissive of children’s emotions or opinions

    • Emotionally unsupportive, but provide for child’s basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc)

  • Authoritative Parents

    • Parents are both demanding and responsive

    • Exert control by setting rules but explain reasoning behind the rules

    • Encourage open discussion

• Parenting styles vary with culture

Unit 6 - Sensation and Perception

6.1 - Introduction to Sensation and Perception

• Sensation is the WiNdOw To ThE wOrLd

  • The process of our sensory receptors and nervous system receiving stimuli from the environment

• Perception is how we interpret what we see through that window

  • The process of our brain organizing and interpreting sensory information letting us recognize objects and events

• Bottom-Up Processing

  • Starting with the basics and needing to decipher it

  • Like this as a language: 🥲🍑🔋🌼🍓🥱

• Top-Down Processing

  • Using experience and prior knowledge to process it

  • Lkie tpynig like tihs you can raed tihs cnat you

6.2 - The Senses

• If we could sense everything then it would not be good

• Psychophysicists - study the relationship between physical stimuli and our psychological experiences to them

• Selective Attention

  • The focus of conscious awareness on a particular stimuli

  • Cocktail Party Effect

    • In a situation where you are talking to someone and even though everything around you is going insane if you are focused on the person in front of you you can focus only on them and carry on a conversation

• Selective Inattention

  • Missing things because you are too focused on something

  • This leads to Inattentional Blindness

    • You know that one video of the basketball players passing the ball and the moonwalking bear that you don’t see if you're watching the basketball? Yeah that one

  • Or Change Blindness

    • When you are focused on something you can’t tell if something around you changes.

• Absolute Threshold

  • The minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time

• Difference Threshold

  • The minimum difference that a person can detect between two stimuli

  • Also known as the just noticeable difference

  • Weber’s Law

    • The idea that in order to perceive a difference between two stimuli they must differ by a constant percentage instead of a constant amount

• Signal Detection Theory

  • Predicts how we detect a stimulus amid other stimuli

  • Assumes that we do not have an absolute threshold

  • We detect stuff based on our experiences, motivations and fatigue level

• Subliminal Stimulation

  • Stimulation that is below one’s absolute threshold for conscious awareness

  • You might not know that you know it

  • Can subconsciously influence you in certain ways

• Sensory Adaptation

  • The decrease in sensitivity to an unchanging stimulus. The stimulus does not disappear yet the person becomes less sensitive to them

    • Ex. Going noseblind

• Transduction

  • The conversion of one form of energy to another

  • Stimulus energies to neural impulses

    • Light energy to vision

    • Chemical energy to smell and taste

    • Sound waves to sound

• Development of the Senses

  • Babies are born with basic sensory abilities but they fo develop and grow over time

• Sensitive Periods

  • Even innate perceptual skills need the right environment to develop properly

  • A lack of certain experiences might impair a person’s ability to perceive the world around them

• Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

  • Perception without sensory input

  • Paranormal phenomena include astrological predictions, psychic healing, communication with the dead, and out-of-body experiences, but most relevant are telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.

  • Claims of ESP

    • Telepathy: Mind-to-mind communication. One person sending thoughts and the other receiving them.

    • Clairvoyance: Perception of remote events, such as sensing a friend’s house on fire.

    • Precognition: Perceiving future events, such as a political leader’s death.

  • Tests of ESP

    • In an experiment with 28,000 individuals, Wiseman attempted to prove whether or not one can psychically influence or predict a coin toss. People were able to correctly influence or predict a coin toss 49.8% of the time.

6.3 - Vision

• Vision is the most thoroughly studied sense and is highly sophisticated due to its constant use

• Light is electromagnetic radiation that travels in the form of waves and makes vision possible

• People experience three different aspects of light

  • Color (Hue)

    • Depends on wavelength

      • The distance between the peaks of the light waves

      • Short wavelengths are bluer

      • Long wavelengths are redder

  • Brightness

    • Depends on the intensity of the light or wave amplitude

      • The height of the wavelengths

    • Can also be influenced by wavelength - yellow light can usually be “brighter” than violet light

  • Saturation

    • Depends on light complexity

    • The more spectral colors in a light, the lower the saturation

• White light is a mixture of all wavelengths of light

• The visible spectrum for humans is ROY G. BIV

• Ultraviolet light causes sunburns and has too short of a wavelength to be seen by the human eye

• Infrared light has a wavelength that is too long to be seen by the human eye

• We can only see about 10% of light

• Parts of the eye

  • Cornea

    • Transparent, protective outer membrane of the eye

  • Iris

    • The colored ring of muscle in the eye

    • Controls the size of the pupil

  • Pupil

    • The opening that the iris surrounds. It can restrict in bright light to protect the eye and expand to increase light intake in the dark

  • Lens

    • Lies behind the pupil and iris

    • Accommodation - the lens can adjust its shape to focus light from objects that are near or far away.

  • Retina

    • Thin layer of neural tissue

    • The image on the retina is always upside down

  • Fovea

    • The center of the retina and where vision is sharpest

• Parallel Processing

  • The processing of several aspects of a problem simultaneously

    • Color

    • Motion

    • Form

    • Depth

• Eye troubles

  • Nearsightedness is the inability to clearly see distant objects

  • Farsightedness is the inability to clearly see close objects

  • A cataract is a lens that had become opaque and impaired vision

• Photoreceptors are specialized cells that respond to light stimuli

  • Rods

    • Long narrow cells

    • Highly sensitive to light and allow vision even in dim conditions

    • No rods in the fovea

    • There are many more rods than cones

  • Cones

    • Distinguish between different wavelengths of light

    • Allow people to see color

    • Don’t work well in dim light

• Adaptation to Light

  • Dark adaptation is the process by which receptor cells sensitive to light and allow clear vision in dim light

  • Light adaptation is the process by which receptor cells desensitize to light and allow clear vision in bright light

• Connection to the Optic Nerve

  • Rods and cones connect via synapses to bipolar neurons while connects them to ganglion cells

  • The axons of the ganglion cells come together to make the optic nerve

  • The optic nerve connects to the eye at a spot in the retina called the optic disk which is also called the blind spot because it has no rods or cones

• Transmission of Visual Information

  • Light reflected from an object hits the retina’s rods and cones

  • Rods and cones send neural signals to the bipolar cells

  • Bipolar cells send signals to the ganglion cells

  • Ganglion cells send signals through the optic nerve to the brain

  • Bipolar and ganglion cells gather and compress information

  • Ganglion cells axons from the inner half of each eye cross over to the opposite half of the brain

  • Signals from the left eye goes to the left hemisphere and vice versa

• Visual Processing in the Brain

  • Visual signals eventually reach the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe of the brain’s cerebrum.

  • David Hubel and Tortsen Wiesel - 1960s

    • Feature detectors are specialized cells that respond to visual signals in the primary visual cortex and respond to specific features of the environment like lines and edges

  • Visual signals often travel to other parts of the brain from the visual cortex

  • The deeper the cells the more specialized they generally are

  • Psychologists theorize that perception occurs when a large number of neurons in different parts of the brain activate

• Color Vision

  • Color is only a psychological experience that occurs because objects reflect light

  • Our eyes and brains convert these reflections into colors

  • Color vision happens because of two different processes

    • Retina - The Trichromatic Theory

      • Thomas Young

      • Hermann von Helmholtz

      • States that the retina has three different types of cones

        • Red

        • Green

        • Blue

      • Activation of these cones results in color perception

      • Mixing lights is called additive color mixing

      • Mixing paints is called subtractive color mixing

      • Dichromats are sensitive to only two of the three wavelengths of light

      • Accounts for color blindness

    • Retinal ganglion cells and in the cells in the thalamus and visual cortex - The Opponent Process Theory

      • Ewald Hering

      • States that the visual system has receptors that react in opposite ways

        • Red vs green

        • Yellow vs blue

        • Black vs white

      • Explains why most people perceive four primary colors

      • Afterimages are colors perceived after other complementary colors are removed

  • Form Perception

    • Gestalt Psychology explores how people organize visual information into patterns and forms. It proposes that the perceived whole sometimes has properties that didn’t exist in the parts that make it up. An example is the phi phenomenon, in which an illusion of movement occurs when images are presented in a series, one after another.

    • The Phi Phenomenon is an illusion of movement that happens when a series of images is presented and swapped quickly

  • Gestalt Principles

    • Figure and ground

      • Figure

        • Stands out

      • Ground

        • Background that a figure stands on

    • Proximity

      • When objects lie close to each other people tend to perceive them as a group

    • Closure

      • People tend to fill in objects with gaps to interpret familiar incomplete objects

    • Similarity

      • People tend to group similar objects together

    • Continuity

      • People tend to perceive objects ad continuous by filling in the gaps

    • Simplicity

      • People tend to perceive forms as simple and symmetrical rather than irregular

  • Depth Perception

    • Binocular Cues

      • Require both eyes

      • Retinal Disparity

        • Marks the difference between two images

      • Convergence

        • Eyes turn inward at objects that are close to the face

    • Monocular Cues

      • Only requires one eye

      • Interposition

        • When one object is blocking part of another, the viewer sees the blocked object as farther away

      • Motion Parallax/Relative Motion

        • When the viewer is moving it looks like still objects are moving the other way. The closer the object the faster it appears to move

      • Relative Size

        • People see objects that make a smaller image on the retina as farther away

      • Relative Clarity

        • Objects that appear sharper clearer and more detailed are seen as closer

      • Texture Gradient

        • Smaller objects that are more thickly clustered appear farther away than objects that are spread out in space

      • Linear Perspective

        • Parallel lines that converge appear far away. The more the lines converge, the greater the perceived distance

      • Light and shadow

        • Patterns of light and shadow make objects appear three-dimensional, even though images of objects on the retina are two-dimensional

    • Perceptual Constancy

      • The ability to recognize that an object remains the same even when it produces different images on the retina

        • Shape constancy

Objects that appear to have the same shape even though they make differently shaped retinal images, depending on the viewing angle

• Size constancy

Objects that appear to be the same size even though their images get larger or smaller as their distance decreases or increases

• Brightness constancy

People see objects as having the same brightness even when they reflect different amounts of light as lighting conditions change

• Color constancy

Different wavelengths of light are reflected from objects under different lighting conditions

• Location constancy

Stationary objects don't appear to move even though their images on the retina shift as the viewer moves around

• Visual Illusions

  • An illusion is a misinterpretation of a sensory stimulus

  • Muller-Lyer illusion

    • Two lines that are exactly the same length but look like they are different lengths because of the arrows around them

  • Perceptual Set

    • The readiness to see objects in a particular way based on expectations, experiences, emotions, and assumptions

    • Reversible figures are ambiguous drawings that can be interpreted in more than one way

  • Selective Attention

    • The ability to focus on some bites of information and ignore others

    • Context can influence how we perceive things

6.4 - Hearing (Audition)

• Sound waves are changes in pressure generated by vibrating molecules

• Sound has three features

  • Loudness

    • depends on amplitude

    • The higher the crest of the wave is the louder the sound is

    • Volume can be measured in decibels

      • The absolute threshold of human hearing is 0 decibels

      • A whisper is about 20 decibels

      • Sounds over 120 decibels can damage the auditory system

  • Pitch

    • Determined by frequency

    • Number of complete wavelengths that pass through a point at a given time

  • Timbre

    • the quality of a sound and depends on the complexity of the sound wave

• Frequency is the number of times per second a sound wave cycles

• Frequency is measured in hertz

  • Humans can hear sounds that are between 20 and 20000 hertz

• The structure of the ear

  • Outer Ear

    • Pinna

      • The visible part of the ear which collects sound waves

  • Middle Ear

    • Chamber between the eardrum and the inner ear

    • Ossicles

      • Three bones that vibrate to concentrate the sound into the eardrum

  • Inner Ear

    • Cochlea

      • A fluid-filled tunnel with cilia that are embedded in the basilar membrane

      • Vibrations that reach the inner ear move the fluid in the cochlea which moves the cilia

    • The movement of the cilia triggers neurons that form the auditory nerve

    • Neurons in the ear form the auditory nerve, which sends impulses from the ear to the brain. The thalamus and auditory cortex receive auditory information.

    • Has semicircular canals and vestibular sacs

• Pitch Perception

  • Place Theory

    • States that sound waves of different frequencies trigger receptors at different places on the basilar membrane

    • The brain figures out the pitch of the sound by detecting the position of the hair cells that sent the neural signal

  • Frequency Theory

    • Status that sound waves of different frequencies make the whole basilar membrane vibrate at different rates and therefore cause neural impulses to be sent at different rates. Pitch is determined by how fast neural signals move along to the brain

    • This theory has trouble explaining high pitch sounds because our hairs cannot vibrate at certain speeds.

    • This problem can be explained using the volley principle.

• Locating Sounds

  • The left ear receives sound waves coming from the left slightly faster than the ones on the right

• Hearing Loss

  • Conduction Hearing Loss - damage to the mechanical system of the ear

  • Sensorineural hearing loss - damage to the cochlea’s receptor cells or auditory nerves

6.5 - Taste and Smell

• Taste and Smell are chemical reactions

• Taste (Gustation)

  • Happens when chemicals stimulate receptors in the tongue and throat. These receptors are located inside of taste buds which are located in the tiny papillae of the skin

  • Traditionally, taste sensations consisted of sweet, salty, sour, and bitter tastes. Recently, receptors for a fifth taste have been discovered called “Umami”.

• Smell (Olfaction)

  • Happens when chemicals in the air enter the nose

  • Smell receptors lie in the top of the nasal passage and send impulses through the olfactory nerve to the brain

  • Odorants enter the nasal cavity to stimulate 5 million receptors to sense smell. Unlike taste, there are many different forms of smell.

  • Smell is closely connected to memory

    • The brain region for smell is closely connected with the brain regions involved with memory (limbic system). That is why strong memories are made through the sense of smell.

  • Ability to identify smell peaks during early adulthood, but steadily declines after that. Women are better at detecting odors than men.

• Sensory Interaction

  • When one sense affects another sense, sensory interaction takes place. So, the taste of strawberry interacts with its smell and its texture on the tongue to produce flavor.

6.6 - Position, Movement, and Balance

• Kinesthesis is the sense of position and movement of body parts

• The vestibular system senses balance

  • Made of three fluid-filled tubes in the ear called semicircular canals

6.7 - Touch

• The sense of touch encompasses pressure, pain, cold, and warmth.

• Pressure has specific receptors.

• Gate-Control Theory of Pain (1960s)

  • Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall

  • States that pain signals traveling from the body to the brain must go through a gate in the spinal cord. If this gate is closed then the pain signals will never reach the brain

• Pain Control

  • Pain can be controlled by a number of therapies including, drugs, surgery, acupuncture, exercise, hypnosis, and even thought distraction.

Unit 7 - States of Consciousness

7.1 - Introduction to Consciousness

• We’ll talk about sleep, drugs, and hypnosis

• Consciousness is the awareness we have over ourselves and our environment

• Different states of consciousness are associated with with different patterns of brain waves

• Brain waves

  • tracings of electrical activity in the brain

  • Electroencephalography (EEG) can be used to record these waves by monitoring electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp

• Four types of brain waves

  • Alpha Awake and Relaxed

  • Beta Awake and alert

  • Theta Lightly asleep

  • Delta Deeply asleep

7.2 - Sleep

• Sleep is composed of several different states of consciousness

• Biological Rhythms

  • Rhythms are regular, periodic changes in a body’s functioning

  • There are three types of biological rhythms

    • 90-minute cycles

      • Sleep cycles

      • Broken into parts

      • We have multiple sleep cycles a night

    • Circadian rhythms

      • Occur about every twenty-four hours

      • What follows this rhythm

        • Sleep

        • Hormone secretion

        • Blood pressure

        • Body temperature

        • Urine production

    • Infradian rhythms

      • Take longer than twenty four hours to cycle

      • Women's menstrual cycles occur about every twenty-eight days

    • Ultradian rhythms

      • Occur more than once a day

      • Sleep follows an ultradian rhythm of about ninety minutes

      • Alertness and hormone levels also follow ultradian rhythms

• Annual cycles

  • Migrations and hibernation

    • Humans experience seasonal variations in appetite, sleep, and mood

  • Endogenous biological rhythms synchronize with environmental events like daylight and changes in temperature

  • Biological clocks exist because of endogenous biological rhythms

    • The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN) is the main biological clock in the hypothalamus. The SCN sends signals to the pineal gland, which secretes melatonin, a hormone that regulates the sleep cycle.

    • Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder people experience during dark winter months

  • Jet Lag

    • While traveling drains energy, time change also contributes to fatigue

    • People experience jet lag when their biological clocks and the environment does not match up

• The Function of Sleep

  • We spend about ⅓ of our life sleeping

  • The true function of sleep is unknown but there are some theories

    • To conserve energy by sleeping periodically

    • To keep people tucked away from predators at night

    • Restores and repairs body tissues that are depleted during daily activities

    • To restore and rebuild memories

    • The pituitary gland releases growth hormones during sleep.

• Sleep Research

  • The study of sleep is relatively new

  • Researchers study sleep by monitoring subjects who spend the night in labs

  • They can use different instruments for different purposes

    • Electroencephalographs (EEGs) - record brain waves

    • Electromyographs (EMGs) - record muscle activity

    • Electrooculographs (EOGs - record eye movements

    • Electrocardiographs (EKGs) - record the activity of the heart

    • Other instruments can be used to monitor breathing, temperature, and pulse

• Sleep Stages

  • NREM 1

    • When people fall asleep they enter into this stage

    • Only lasts a few minutes

    • Theta waves

    • Everything slows down and relaxes

    • Fantasies or bizarre images might float around in the mind

    • Mild hallucinations (like a feeling of falling)

  • NREM 2

    • Fully asleep

    • Lasts about twenty minutes

    • Still Theta waves

    • Short bursts of brain activity called sleep spindles

  • NREM 3

    • Slow wave sleep

    • Delta waves

    • Slow and limp body/body functions

    • When the body restores growth hormones and good overall health

    • Where sleepwalking is possible

  • REM (Rapid-Eye-Movement)

    • People go back through the stages again in reverse then they enter REM sleep

    • Brain activity is that of an alert awake person

    • The body is basically paralyzed

    • Beta waves

    • Also called paradoxical sleep

    • People get aroused in their sleep I guess?

    • Most vivid dreams

    • When sleep paralysis is possible

  • People usually go through about four sleep cycles a night

  • With each cycle the NREM stages get shorter and the REM stage gets longer

• Sleep Deprivation

  • Some people can function with fewer than six hours of sleep a night

  • Some people need at least nine hours of sleep a night to function

  • Insufficient sleep can lead to negative effects on health, productivity, and performance

    • Fatigue and maybe death

    • Impaired concentration

    • Emotional irritability

    • Depressed immune system

    • Greater vulnerability

  • REM sleep deprivation leads to an REM rebound effect where the person spends even more time in the REM stage to make up for past losses

  • You can die from lack of sleep

• Aging and Sleep

  • As people age they tend to sleep less and less

  • The proportion of REM sleep to NREM sleep decreases over time as well

• Sleep Disorders

  • Insomnia is a chronic problem with falling or staying asleep

  • Narcolepsy is a tendency to fall asleep periodically during the day. Goes directly to REM sleep

  • Sleep apnea is when people stop breathing during a night’s sleep. This prevents them from getting enough deep sleep

  • Night Terrors actually can be a sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified. These occur in NREM 3 sleep and are often not remembered

  • Sleepwalking is a sleep disorder that affects about 10 percent of all humans at least once in their lives. Usually occurs in NREM 3 sleep

7.3 - Dreams

• No one knows the exact function of dreams

• What do we dream about?

  • Negative Emotional Content - 8 out of 10 dreams have negative emotional content

  • Failure Dreams - People commonly dream about failure, being attacked, pursued, rejected, or struck with misfortune

  • Sexual Dreams - Sex dreams are rare. About 1 in 30 for women and 1 in 10 for men

  • Dreams of Gender - Women dream about genders equally while men tend to dream about men

• Freud’s Dream Theory

  • Wish fulfillment

  • Believed that dreams allow people to express unconscious wishes they find unacceptable in real life.

  • Manifest content

    • The plot of the dream

    • Who’s in the dream

    • What happens

  • Latent content

    • They hidden meaning

    • Symbolic representation

    • The manifest content is a disguise that masks the real meaning of the dream

  • Freud theorized that psychological problems stem from repressed sexual urges

• Activation-synthesis Theory

  • Proposes that neurons in the brain randomly activate during REM sleep

  • Dreams arise when the cortex of the brain tries to make meaning out of these impulses

  • Dreams are basically just brain sparks

• Problem-Solving Dreams

  • Some researchers believe that dreams express concerns and might help to solve problem in day-to-day life

  • Dreams might give you clues to help solve the problem

• Neural Housekeeping

  • Dreams come from the brain’s housekeeping functions

  • Dreams clean up the brain’s “files”

  • Periodic stimulation and preserving neural pathways

• Cognitive Development

  • Dreams are a part of brain maturation

  • Dreams reflect our cognitive development

• Lucid Dreams are when people are aware that they are dreaming and can control their actions

7.4 - Altered States

• Some states of consciousness don’t occur naturally

  • Hypnotic States

  • Meditative States

  • Drug Induced States

• Hypnosis

  • Opens people to the power of suggestion

  • Hypnosis Can

    • Cause people to be relaxed, have a narrowed focus of attention, and be highly engaged in fantasies

    • Produce anesthesia and treat a range of psychological and medical problems

    • Cause hallucinations and distortions in sensory perception

    • Reduce inhibitions

    • Cause changes in behavior after the hypnosis has ended

  • Hypnosis Can’t

    • Work effectively well for everyone

    • Force people to do things against their will

    • Make people act in ways that would normally be beyond their physical or mental abilities

    • Reliably increase the accuracy of memories

    • Allow people to actually re-experience past events or lives

  • Posthypnotic Suggestion - Suggestion carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized

  • Posthypnotic Amnesia - When people are instructed to forget what happened during hypnosis will later claim to have no memory of it

  • Unlike sleep, brain waves do not reliably change like they do in sleep

  • There are two main theories about hypnosis

    • Divided Consciousness Theory - Ernest Hilgard

      • Hypnosis causes people to dissociate or divide their consciousness into two parts

        • One part responds to the outside world

        • The other observes but doesn’t participate

      • Hypnosis can make people not react to pain

    • Social Influence Theory - Theodore Barber/Nicholas Spanos

      • Hypnosis happens when a suggestible person plays the role of a hypnotized person. Hypnotized people simply behave as they think they are expected to

  • Mesmerism

    • Anton Mesmer noticed that his patients would get in a trancelike state

• Meditation

  • Practice of focusing attention to enhance awareness

  • Repetitive chanting and breathing exercises

  • Increase in alpha and theta brain waves

  • Slowed pulse and breathing

  • Improves physical and mental health

• Psychoactive Drugs

  • Change sensory experience, perception, mood, thinking, and behavior

  • Called recreational drugs

  • Some have legitimate medical uses

  • Types of psychoactive drugs

    • Stimulants

      • Drugs that stimulate the central nervous system

    • Sedatives/Depressants

      • Drugs that slow down the central nervous system

    • Narcotics

      • Opiates

      • Drugs that can relieve pain

    • Hallucinogens

      • Drugs that cause sensory and perceptual distortions

    • Some researchers consider cannabis drugs as a separate type of drug because they contain features of more than one type of drug

  • How do Psychoactive Drugs Work

    • Psychoactive drugs affect neurotransmitters and how they function

    • Drugs can

      • affect multiple neurotransmitters

      • Cause more or less of a neurotransmitter to be released at a synapses

      • Block reuptake of a neurotransmitter by presynaptic cells

      • Stimulate or block neurotransmitter receptors on postsynaptic cells

    • Hallucinations

      • Sensory or perceptual experiences without any external stimulus

      • Trick the brain into perceiving stimuli that aren’t present

    • Influences on Psychoactive Drug Effects

      • Psychoactive drugs don’t always have the same effect on different people

      • Things that can change the effect of a drug

        • Amount of the drug

        • Potency of the drug

        • How the drug is administered

        • How much previous experience a user has with the drug

        • The user's age and body weight

        • The user’s mood, personality, and motivation

        • The environment in which the drug is used

        • The user’s expectations about the drug’s effects

    • Chronic Use of Psychoactive Drugs

      • When people regularly use a drug they develop a tolerance for it

      • When people stop using a drug after a long period of regular use they will go through withdrawal

      • People can become physically (withdrawal) and psychologically (craving) dependent on drugs

      • Overdoses can be lethal

      • Some drugs may cause dangerous behavior

Unit 8 - Learning and Cognition

8.1 - Introduction to Learning and Cognition

• Learning is long lasting change in behavior due to experience

• There are many different types of learning

  • Classical conditioning - linking stimuli and anticipating events (basically just any sort of association)

8.2 - Classical Conditioning

• A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events

• Pavlov’s Dogs - Ivan Pavlov

  • Studied the digestion of dogs

  • Whenever he brought the dogs food they would start to drool

  • When the dogs heard him walking towards them they would anticipate food and start to drool regardless of whether he had food or not

  • He started ringing a bell before feeding them

  • Whenever he rung the bell the dogs would start to drool even if he didn’t bring them food

  • The dogs learned to salivate whenever he rung the bell (Conditioned Reflex)

• Classical Conditioning is a passive learning process

  • Starts with an Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) - Which causes a natural and or reflexive response

  • The Unconditioned Response (UCR) is the response to the UCS

    • Food makes dogs drool

    • Shots make the old lady flinch and say ow

    • Pills make someone nauseous

  • Next you find a neutral stimulus (something unrelated to the UCS/UCR)

  • Then you repetitively present the neutral stimulus with the UCS

  • The subject will then connect the natural stimulus and the UCS (Acquisition)

  • Learning has taken place once the neutral stimulus elicits the same response as the UCS

  • The neutral stimulus is now called the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditional response is now called the conditioned response (CR)

• Acquisition does not last forever

• Extinction

  • When the subject no longer associates the CS with the UCS

• Spontaneous Recovery

  • Sometimes after extinction the CR will occasionally appear after the CS is presented

• Generalization

  • When something is similar enough to the CS that you get the CR

• Discrimination

  • When something is different enough to the CS that you do not get the CR

• Classical Conditioning in Humans

  • Baby Albert - John Watson

  • John Watson picked up some nine month old baby from an orphanage and had no morals apparently

  • He conditioned this child to be mortified of fluffy white animals

  • Albert was pretty cute and loved animals including white rats

  • Then whenever he was brought a white rat Watson would bang some metal pipe with a hammer and would scare Albert

  • Albert was then mortified of white rats

  • He was also mortified any other fluffy or white things

  • Albert was never conditioned to not be afraid of white fluffy things and was just dropped back off at the orphanage

  • He died at age six

  • This type of conditioning is also called aversive conditioning

• First Order Conditioning

• Bell + Meat = Salivation becomes Bell = Salivation

• Second/Higher Order Conditioning

  • After first order conditioning

  • Light + Bell = Salivation becomes Light = Salivation

• Learned Taste Aversions

  • Food paired with sickness is incredibly strong conditioning

  • Even when food and sickness are hours apart

8.3 - Operant Conditioning

• Non-passive learning

• Learning based on consequences - Rewards and punishments

• Edward Thornsike’s Law of Effect

  • Instrumental learning - behavior changes based on its consequences

  • Rewards strengthen behavior

  • Punishments weaken behavior

• B.F. Skinner

  • Nurture over nature

  • Used skinner boxes or operant conditioning chambers to prove his concepts

  • Skinner Box

    • A box with stimuli, punishments, and rewards

    • There’s a myth that he made one for his own child but this is false

• Reinforcers

  • Anything that increases a behavior

  • Positive Reinforcement

    • The addition of something pleasant

  • Negative Reinforcement

    • The removal of something unpleasant

• Punishment

  • Anything that decreases a behavior

  • Positive Punishment

    • The addition of something unpleasant

  • Negative Punishment

    • The removal of something pleasant

• Shaping

  • When the subject does something similar to the desired behavior they will be rewarded

  • Reinforcing small steps on the way to the desired behavior

  • Primary Reinforcers

    • Food, water, affection, naturally satisfying things

  • Secondary/Conditioned Reinforcers

    • Money, fast cars, good grades, things you have to learn to value

  • Money is a generalized reinforcer which means that it can be traded for anything

  • Primary Punishers

    • Pain, freezing temperature, naturally unpleasant thing

  • Secondary/Conditioned Punishers

    • Failing grades and social disapproval, things you have to learn to not want

• Acquisition

  • the connection between the behavior and the consequence

• Token Economy

  • Every time a desired behavior is performed, a token is given

  • Tokens can be traded for prizes

  • Used in homes, prisons, mental institutions, and schools

• Premack Principle

  • You have to take into consideration the reinforcers used

  • Is the reinforcer wanted? Or at least is it more preferable than the targeted behavior?

• Reinforcement Schedules

  • How often do you give the reinforcer?

  • Continuous Reinforcement

    • Reinforce the behavior everytime it is exhibited

    • Usually done when the subject is first learning to make the association

    • Acquisition comes fast

    • Extinction also comes fast

  • Partial Reinforcement

    • Reinforce the behavior only sometimes after it is exhibited

    • Acquisition comes slowly

    • Extinction is less likely

    • There are four types of partial reinforcement schedules

      • Ratio Schedules

        • Fixed Ratio

Provides reinforcement after a set number of correct behaviors (the dog gets a treat after sitting three times)

• Variable Ratio

Provides reinforcement after a random number of correct behaviors (like the lottery or gambling)

Hard to acquire but also very resistant to extinction

• Interval Schedules

  • Fixed Interval

Requires a set amount of time to elapse before giving the reinforcement (She gets a cookie every ten days she works out)

• Variable Interval

Requires a random amount of time to elapse before giving the reinforcement (Phone notifications)

Hard to acquire but also very resistant to extinction

8.4 - Biological Influences

• Taste Aversion

  • John Garcia found that aversion to taste is only conditioned by pairing a taste to nausea

  • This conditioning is extremely quick and strong

  • This could be an evolutionary adaptation

• Instinctive Drift

  • The tendency for conditioning to be hindered by natural instincts

  • Keller and Marian Breland found that through operant conditioning they should teach raccoons to put a coin in a box only when using a reinforcement

8.5 - Cognitive Influences

• Conditioning involves some information processing

• Robert Rescorla - pairing two stimuli doesn’t always produce the same level of conditioning. Conditioning is more effective when the stimulus acts as a reliable signal that predicts the appearance of the unconditioned stimulus

8.6 - Observational Learning

• BoBo Doll Experiment - Albert Bandura

  • We learn through modeling behavior from others

  • Observational Learning + Operant Conditioning = Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

  • Antisocial models (Family, neighborhood, TV) may have antisocial effects in young children

• Positive Observational Learning

  • Prosocial (positive or helpful) models have prosocial effects

• Elementary school children who are exposed to violent media at a young age tend to exhibit more violent behavior

• Mirror Neurons

  • Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so

  • The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy

• Latent Learning

  • Latent learning is hidden learning

  • Rat Experiment - Edward Toleman

    • Sometimes learning is not immediately evident

    • Rats needed a reason to display what they have learned

• Intrinsic Motivation - Internally motivated. Doing it just to do it

• Extrinsic Motivation - Externally motivated. Doing it for a reward or to avoid a punishment

• Insight Learning

  • Wolfgang Kohler’s Chimpanzees - Some animals learn through “ah ha” experiences

Unit 9 - Memory

9.1 - Introduction to Memory

• The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information

• Memory helps make us who we are

• Memory is the capacity for storing and retrieving information

• Memories are selected, constructed, and edited by the world around us

• Memories can have holes or distortions

• Recall

  • Retrieving the information from memory

• Recognition

  • Identify the information from possible information

• Elizabeth Loftus - mac-daddy of memory research

  • If false memories are implanted, these memories often become fabricated

9.2 - Memory Processes

• Memory Construction

  • While tapping out memories we filter of fill in missing pieces of information to make our recall more coherent

  • Misinformation and Imagination Effects

    • Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event

    • Eyewitnesses often construct incorrect information when asked to recall the scene of the crime

• Encoding

  • The processing of information into the memory system

  • Structural encoding

    • Focuses on what words look like

      • Length

      • Handwriting

  • Phonemic encoding

    • Focuses on how words sound

  • Semantic encoding

    • Focuses on the meaning of words

  • Visual Encoding

    • The encoding of visual information

  • Acoustic Encoding

  • Semantic Encoding

  • Primacy Effect

    • Tending to know the first things on a list

  • Recency Effect

    • Tending to know the last things on a list

  • Serial Positioning Effect

    • Tending to know the most significant things on a list

• Storage

  • The retention of encoded information over time

  • Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin’s three stage model of memory storage

    • Sensory Memory

      • Stores incoming information in detail but only for an instant

      • The information is unprocessed and dumped after a few seconds

      • Iconic Memory - visual sensory memory

      • Echoic Memory - auditory sensory memory

    • Short-Term Memory/Working Memory

      • Some of the information from sensory memory is transferred to short-term memory

      • Holds about seven items for twenty seconds unless rehearsed then it lasts longer (we also remember numbers better than letters)

      • Can be achieved through rehearsal

        • ex. Repeating someone’s phone number over and over to remember it for later

      • Chunking - More can be put to memory if the information is chunked into big familiar pieces of information

        • HO TB UT TE RE DP OP CO RN IN AB OW L

        • HOT BUTTERED POPCORN IN A BOWL

      • Mnemonic Devices -

        • ROY G. BIV

        • No-one Eats Soggy Waffles

        • Dead King Philip Coughed On Fancy Glitter Socks

      • Working Memory is an active system that can be kept working in order to keep a memory as long as it is needed

        • Ex. store information while trying to make decisions

    • Long-Term Memory

      • Long-Term Memory usually stays with a person for the rest of their life

        • Sometimes these memories cannot be recalled but are remembered

      • Unlimited capacity

    • Organization of Memories

      • People would never be able to retrieve any memories if they weren’t organized in some way

      • Psychologists believe that the brain organizes memories by category

      • Long-Term memory also seems to be organized by familiarity, relevance, or connection to other information

      • Flashbulb memories are vivid, detailed memories of important events

  • Retrieval

    • The process of getting information out of memory storage

    • Retrieval cues are stimuli that help the process of retrieval

    • There cues are

      • Associations

        • The brain stores information as networks of associated concepts

        • Priming - recalling a particular word becomes easier if another, related word is recalled first

      • Context

        • People can often remember an event by placing themselves in the same context they were in when the event happened

      • Mood

        • If people are in the same mood there were in during an event, they will probably be able to recall the event easier

        • This is also called Mood Congruent Memory

      • State Dependent Memory

        • You are more likely to remember something if you are in the same situation as you were when you first experienced it

    • Lost Memories are not actually lost, just hard to retrieve

• Automatic Processing

  • We process a lot of information effortlessly

    • Space

      • While reading a textbook, you automatically encode the place

    • Time

    • Frequency

• Effortful Processing

9.3 - Types of Memory

• Explicit Memory

  • Conscious, intentional remembering of information

• Implicit Memory

  • Procedural memories - unintentional muscle memory

  • Conditioned memories - a conditioned response (stopping at a red light)

• Declarative Memory

  • Recall of factual information such as dates, words, faces, events, and concepts

• Procedural Memory

  • Recall of how to do things such as swimming of driving a car

• Semantic Memory

  • Recall of general knowledge and concepts

• Episodic Memory

  • Recall of personal experiences and events

9.4 - Forgetting

• Hermann Ebbinghaus - the first person to do scientific research about forgetting

  • He used himself as a subject

  • Spent time memorizing lists then tested his memory and its duration

• Meaningful information fades more slowly than nonsense

• Retention is the proportion of learned information that is retained or remembered

• A Forgetting Curve is a graph that shows how quickly information is forgotten over time

• Researchers measure forgetting through

  • Recall

    • Remembering without any external cues

  • Recognition

    • Identifying learned information using external cues

    • True/false or multiple choice

  • Relearning

    • Seeing how learning something for a second/third+ time affects memory and how long it takes to learn

• Causes of Forgetting

  • Ineffective coding

    • The way that information is encoded affects the ability to remember it

    • learning things with meaning usually leads to better memory of them

  • Decay

    • Memory can fade over time

    • If something is in long-term memory then they will not be forgotten while in the long-term memory

  • Interference

    • People forget information because of interference from other learned information

      • Retroactive interference is when newly learned information makes people forget old information

      • Proactive interference happens when old information makes people forget newly learned information

  • Retrieval failure

    • Failing to retrieve information can lead to the memory being lost

  • Motivated forgetting

    • People forget because they push unpleasant information deep into their unconscious through repression

    • Also called psychogenic amnesia

  • Physical injury/trauma

    • Anterograde amnesia is the inability to remember events that occur after an injury or traumatic event

    • Retrograde amnesia is the inability to remember events that occurred before an injury or traumatic event

  • Source Amnesia

    • Attributing an event to the wrong source that we experienced, heard, read, or imagined

    • Not being able to remember where you learned something

  • False Memories

  • Children’s Eyewitness Recall is typically unreliable

• Memories of abuse are often repressed

• Memories of abuse are sometimes constructed

9.5 - Enhancing Memory

• Memory can be lost and forgotten but it can also be enhanced

• Processes of memory enhancements

  • Rehearsal

    • Practicing material and repeating it for memory

  • Overlearning

    • Continuing to practice material even after it is learned

  • Distributed Practice/Spacing Effect

    • Learning material in short sessions over a long period of time

    • The opposite of cramming

  • Minimizing Interference

    • People remember material better if they don't learn similar material right before or after

  • Deep Processing

    • People remember material better if they learn about its deeper meaning

    • Elaboration involves associating the material with other materials

  • Organizing Material

    • Organizing material in a coherent way helps people to remember it

  • Mnemonic Devices -

    • Acronyms

      • ROY G. BIV

    • Acrostics

      • No-one Eats Soggy Waffles

      • Dead King Philip Coughed On Fancy Glitter Socks

    • Narrative methods

      • Involve making up a story to remember words

    • Rhymes

    • Visual Imagery

    • Method of Loci

      • People picture themselves walking through a familiar place

      • They imagine each item on their list in a particular place as they walk

      • They mentally walk around again when they need to remember the items

    • The Link Method

      • People associate items on a list with each other

    • Peg-Word Method

      • People remember a rhyme that associates numbers with words

9.6 - The Biology Of Memory

• Researchers don’t know exactly how and where memory works on a physiological level

• The hippocampus and memory

  • Long term memory involves the hippocampus

  • Some researchers think that the hippocampus coordinates all elements of memory throughout the brain

  • Other researchers think that the hippocampus helps with consolidation, the transferring of information into long-term memory

• The visual cortex holds memories of visual information and so on

• Long-term potential is a lasting change at synapses that occurs when long-term memories form

  • As you do something over and over again it becomes easier for your brain to signal

  • Muscle Memory

9.7 Distortions of Memory

• Memories aren’t exact records and can’t be completely trusted

• Schemas or mental models can distort memory

• Source Amnesia is when people can’t accurately remember the origin of the information

• The Misinformation Effect is when people’s recollections are distorted by information given to them after the event occurred

• Hindsight Bias can distort memories

• People tend to overestimate their ability to recall information correctly

• Confabulation is when people claim to remember something that didn’t happen or think that something happened to them when it actually happened to someone else

Unit 10 - Language and Cognition

10.1 - Introduction to Language and Cognition

• Cognitive psychology concerns both language and thought

• Popularity originated in the 1950s

• René Descartes - “I think, therefore I am”

• How does language affect thought?

• Why are humans motivated to create art?

• Can a “thinking” machine really be made?

10.2 - The Structure of Language

• Language is a system of symbols and rules that are used for communication

• Spoken, written, or gestured words and how we combine them to communicate meaning

• Communication must meet this criteria

  • Uses symbols (sounds, gestures, or written characters) that represent objects, actions, events, and ideas.

  • Is meaningful and possible to understand by others that know that language

  • Generative, symbols of a language can be combined to produce an infinite number of messages

  • Has rules that govern how symbols can be arranged. This allows people to understand the language

• The building blocks of language

  • Phonemes

    • Smallest distinguishable units of language

    • Consonants

    • Vowels

    • Singular sounds

      • “Ch” “sh” “th”

  • Morphemes

    • Smallest meaningful units of language

    • “I” or “a”

    • Prefixes

    • Suffixes

    • Word stems

  • Grammar - a system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate and understand

    • Syntax

      • A system of rules that governs how words can be meaningfully arranged to form phrases and sentences

    • Semantics

      • Adds meaning to the word

      • -ed means past tense

      • Periods and exclamation/question Marks

• Language Development in Children

  • Language development is done in stages

  • 3 months - can distinguish between the phonemes from any language

  • 3-6 months - babbling and producing sounds that resemble any language

  • 6 months - adjusting babbling to their language

  • 12-24 months - children start producing simple sounds from their language (one word language “no” “stop”)

  • 24 months - children begin to combine two or three words to make small sentences. This is usually telegraphic speech

    • Telegraphic Speech - Contains no articles or prepositions

    • “Yellow car” “no sleep”

  • 3 years - Children can usually use tenses and plurals

  • Children’s language abilities continue to grow throughout the school-age years. They grow to recognize tone, puns, metaphors, and sarcasm. These abilities come from metalinguistic awareness.

    • Metalinguistic Awareness - The ability to think about how language is used

• Ambiguous Language - Language is sometimes used correctly but still have an unclear meaning

  • “Avoid biting dogs”

10.3 - Theories of Language Acquisition

• Nature vs. nurture is here too.

• Researchers acknowledge that both play a role in language

• Some think that learning influences language acquisition but others believe that the influences are biological

• Receptive Language before Expressive Language

  • Children’s ability to understand language develops faster than their ability to speak it

  • Receptive language is the ability to understand

  • Expressive language is the ability to communicate

• Environmental Influences on Language Acquisition

  • Behaviorist B.F. Skinner believed that language is acquired through principles of conditioning (social learning theory)

    • association, imitation, and reinforcement

  • Children learn words by associating sounds with objects, actions, and events

  • Critics of these theories argue that

    • Learning cannot account for the rapid rate at which children acquire language

    • There are an infinite number of sentences in a language. They can’t all be learned by imitation

    • Children make errors like over-regularizing verbs

    • Children acquire language skills even though adults do not consistently correct their syntax

• Neural Networks

  • Cognitive neuroscientists have created neural networks that can acquire some aspects of language

  • Using examples of language, the neural networks have been able to learn the language’s statistical structure and accurately make the past tense form of verbs.

  • The developers of these networks speculate that children may learn language in the same way

• Biological Influences on Language Acquisition

  • Noam Chomsky - argues that human brains have a LAD (language acquisition device). This allows children to develop language skills. All children are born with a universal grammar

    • We learn language too quickly to learn it through the social learning theory

  • Evidence

    • The stages of language development occur at about the same ages in most children despite their environments

    • Children’s language development follows a similar pattern across cultures

    • Children generally acquire language quickly and effortlessly

    • Deaf children who have not been exposed to a language may make up their own language. These new languages resemble each other in sentence structure, even when they are created in different cultures.

  • Biology and Environment

    • Some researchers emphasize the importance of both nature and nurture in language

    • Humans do have an innate ability to acquire the rules of language

    • Children develop language skills through interaction with others rather than acquire the knowledge automatically

• Language, Culture, and Thought

  • Researchers disagree about the extent to which language and culture influence the way people think

• Benjamin Lee Whorf - 1950s - Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis / Linguistic Determinism

  • Language determines the way people think

  • Most subsequent research has not supported this hypothesis

  • It’s probably more accurate to say that language influences the way people think

• Semantic slanting

  • A way of making statements so that they will evoke specific emotional responses

• Name Calling

  • A strategy of labeling people in order to influence their thinking. In anticipatory name calling, it is implied that if someone thinks in a particular way, he or she will receive an unfavorable label

• Bilingualism

  • Some people assume that bilingualism impairs children’s language development, there is no evidence to support this assumption.

  • Bilingual children develop language at the same rate as children who speak only one language

  • In general, people who begin learning a second language in childhood master it more quickly and thoroughly than people do in adulthood

10.4 - Language and Non-Human Primates

• Some researchers have tried to teach apes to use sign language

  • Apes cannot say words due to their lung structure but they can communicate through sign or computers

  • Koko the gorilla

  • Honeybees communicate through ✨Dance ✨

  • Washoe the Chimpanzee

    • Washoe is a chimpanzee that can speak in sign

    • She can

      • Sign meaningful combinations of words

      • Follow instructions

      • Respond to questions in ASL

    • Washoe’s foster child Loulis learned sign language from Washoe

  • Skepticism about Ape Language

    • Apes unlike people can be trained to learn only a limited number of words and only with difficulty

    • Apes use signs or computers to get a reward. They might be taught how to sign/use the computer without real meaning only for the reward

    • Apes don’t have a sense for syntax

      • No difference between “me eat apple” and “apple eat me”

    • Trainers may be reading meanings into signs apes make and unintentionally providing cues that help them respond correctly to questions

  • Non-primates can communicate

    • Parrots can communicate meaningfully

    • They have the ability to distinguish between objects and colors

    • Can make requests

    • Alex the African gray parrot can speak hundreds of words and seems to express unique meaningful thoughts

10.5 - The Structure of Cognition

• Cognition involves…

  • Thinking

  • Knowing

  • Remembering

  • Understanding

  • Problem solving

  • Decision making

  • Creativity

• The building blocks of cognition

  • Concepts/Schemas

    • Mental category that groups similar objects, events, qualities, or actions

    • Summarize information

  • Prototypes

    • A mental image or best example of a category

      • Think of a bird (Do you see a cardinal)

    • Used to decide whether a particular instance of something belongs to a concept

  • Cognitive Schemas

    • Mental models of different aspects of the world

    • Contain

      • Knowledge

      • Beliefs

      • Assumptions

      • Associations

      • Expectations

10.6 - Theories of Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget’s Stage Theory

  • Children’s thinking goes through a set series of four major stages

  • Cognitive skills unfold naturally as they mature and explore their environment

• Lev Vygotsky’s Theory of Social Influences

  • Children learn to think through playing and interacting with others

• Private Speech

  • Children use language to control their own behavior

  • First they talk to themselves out loud

  • Then they learn how to tell themselves how to behave silently as they grow up

• Current Research

  • Children have complex cognitive abilities as early as four months old

  • Infants seem to understand basic physic

  • Humans might have been born with some basic cognitive ability

10.7 - Problem Solving

• Trial and Error

  • Keep trying and failing until you get it right

• Algorithms

  • Methodical trial and error

  • A logical set of rules that guarantee that you solve the problem

  • Might take longer but success is guaranteed

• Deductive Reasoning

  • Conclusions are drawn from a set of general premises or statements

• Inductive Reasoning

  • A general conclusion is drawn to from examples

• Heuristics

  • A rule-of-thumb strategy that lets us make judgements and solve problems efficiently

  • Prone to error

• Dialectical Reasoning

  • Pros and cons list

• Forming Subgoals

  • Coming up with intermediate steps to solve a problem

  • Simplifying the problem

• Comparing to similar problems

  • Problems can be easier if it can be compared to a similar problem

• Insight

  • A sudden “aha!!!” moment where you just get the answer

10.8 - Decision Making

• Additive Strategies

  • Listing the attributes of each element of the decision, weights them according to importance, and adds them up

• Elimination Strategies

  • Eliminating alternatives based on whether they do or do not possess aspects the decision maker deems desirable

• Obstacles to Problem Solving

  • Representative Heuristic

    • Your prototype/stereotype might be wrong

    • Can cause us to ignore important information

  • Availability Heuristic

    • Estimating the likelihood of events based on the availability of our memory

    • If it comes to mind easily we presume it is common

  • The Gambler’s Fallacy

    • The mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during a given period it will happen less frequently in the future

  • Confirmation Bias

    • A tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions

  • Fixation

    • The inability to see a problem from a new perspective

  • Functional Fixedness

    • You can only think of the one “true function”

      • You can only buy something with a quarter not use it for anything else thats just silly

  • Mental Set

    • A tendency to approach a problem in a particular way especially if it has worked in the past

    • Why do we need to change it? We’ve always done it that way?

    • May or may not be a good thing

  • Overconfidence

    • The tendency to be more confident than correct

    • Overestimate the accuracy of your beliefs and judgments

  • Belief Bias

    • The tendency for one’s preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning

    • Sometimes making invalid conclusions valid or vice versa

  • Belief Perseverance

    • Clinging to your beliefs even when they’ve been disproven

10.9 - Creativity

• Creativity

  • Divergent Thinking

    • Explore possibilities

    • Going from specific to general

    • Brainstorming

    • Think of all possibilities

  • Convergent Thinking

    • Deciding what to do

    • Narrowing down ideas

  • Characteristics of Creativity

    • Expertise

      • Training, knowledge, and expertise

    • Imaginative Thinking Skills

      • The ability to see things in novel ways, recognize patterns, and to make connections

    • Nonconformity

      • The ability to think independently and not care as much about what people think of you

    • Curiosity

    • Persistence

      • The will to work hard to overcome obstacles and take risks

      • Seeking new experiences

      • Tolerate ambiguity and rissks

      • Preserver in overcoming obstacles

    • Intrinsic Motivation

      • Longing for a sense of accomplishment or satisfying curiosity

    • A creative environment

      • People best realize their creative potential when they are in a creative environment

Unit 11 - Intelligence

11.1 - Introduction To Intelligence

• What makes us intelligent

  • Hard work

  • Practice

  • Our environment

  • Genetics

• Intelligence is..

  • The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

  • socially constructed and not the same in every environment (culturally specific)

  • A concept!! NOT a thing

• Everyone has intelligence.. just some people have different kinds of intelligence

11.2 - Theories of Intelligence

• Factor Analysis

  • A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test

• Charles Spearman - General Intelligence

  • G - Factor

• L.L. Thurstone - Primary Mental Abilities

  • There is not a single scale of general intelligence

  • Seven clusters of primary mental abilities

    • Word Fluency

    • Verbal Comprehension

    • Spatial Ability

    • Perceptual Speed

    • Numerical Ability

    • Inductive Reasoning

    • Memory

  • Since then there has been evidence that there is a “G”

• Howard Gardner - Multiple Intelligences Theory

  • Also disagreed with the G but in a different way

  • Studied savants - people with limited mental ability but are exceptional in one area

  • Gardner’s Eight Multiple Intelligences

    • Visual/Spatial

    • Verbal/Linguistic

    • Logical/Mathematical

    • Bodily/Kinesthetic

    • Musical/Rhythmic

    • Interpersonal

    • Intrapersonal

    • Natural

• Savant Syndrome

  • found in some individuals with autism

  • Exceptional talent in one specific area but poor mental function in other areas

• Emotional Intelligence

  • the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions

11.3 - Intelligence Testing

• How do we assess intelligence

• Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon

  • Concept of mental age

  • They discovered that by discovering someone’s mental age they can predict future performances

• Lewis Terman - Stanford-Binet Test

  • *Intelligence Quotient = (mental age/chronological age )100

• Issues with the IQ Formula

  • Doesn’t work when you’re older (typically older than 12)

• Wechsler Tests

  • More common way to test IQ. does not use the formula but uses the same scoring system (100 is still average)

  • WAIS - Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

  • WISC - Wechsler Index for School Children

  • WPPSI - Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence

• Aptitude versus Achievement Tests

  • Aptitude

    • A test designed to predict a person’s future performance

    • The ability for that person to learn

  • Achievement

    • A test designed to assess what a person has learned

• Tests must be

  • Standardized

    • Tests must be pretested to a representative sample of people

    • Form a normal distribution or bell curve

  • Reliable

    • The extent to which a test yields consistent results over time

  • Valid

    • The extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure

      • Content Validity

        • Does the test sample a behavior of interest

      • Predictive Validity

        • Does the test predict future behavior

        • Sometimes called criterion related validity

• Biological tests of intelligence

  • Reaction time

    • The amount of time a subject takes to respond to a stimulus

  • Perceptual speed

    • The amount of time a person takes to accurately perceive and discriminate between stimuli

• The influence of culture

  • Tests that are constructed primarily by white, middle-class researchers may not be equally relevant to people of all ethnic groups and economic classes

  • Cultural values and experiences can affect factors such as. attitude toward exams, degree of comfort in the test setting, motivation, competitiveness, rapport with the test administrator, and comfort with problem solving independently rather than as part of a team effort

  • Cultural stereotypes can affect the motivation to perform well on tests