Psyc 101 Rice University Nicolaou Test 1

Psychology

the scientific study of the mind and behavior

Mind

our private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories, and feelings

Behavior

observable actions of human beings and nonhuman animals

H.M.

had a lobotomy to cure his epilepsy; ended up with anterograde amnesia (couldn't create new memories after surgery). taught us that different parts of the brain do different things

Plato

philosopher who believed in nativism

nativism

most basic skills are hard-wired in the brain at birth

Who?

Aristotle

tabula rasa, philosophical empiricism

tabula rasa

blank slate

Who?

philosophical empiricism

the theory that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience

Who?

Genie

woman who grew up in chains without socialization, didn't learn to talk, had limited functioning potential when rescued (teaches us that development periods matter)

Franz Joseph Gall

phrenology

phrenology

specific mental abilities and characteristics are localized in specific regions of the brain.

Who?

Paul Broca

Broca's area

Broca's area

damage to this location causes impairments in language production, but not comprehension

Hermann von Helmholtz

physiology, stimulus, reaction time

physiology

the study of biological processes, especially in the human body.

Who?

stimulus

sensory input from the environment

Who?

reaction time

the amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus

Who?

Wilhelm Wundt

founded the first psychological laboratory

structuralism, consciousness, introspection

consciousness

a person's subjective experience of the world and the mind

Who?

structuralism

a school of psychology seeks to analyze the adult mind (the total sum of experience from birth to the present) in terms of the simplest definable components and then to find how these components fit together to form more complex experiences as well as how they correlated to physical events. To do this, psychologists employ introspection, self-reports of sensations, views, feelings, emotions, etc

Who?

introspection

the subjective observation of one's own experience

Who?

William James

applied scientific approach to psychology, functionalism

functionalism

a psychological philosophy that considers mental life and behaviour in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment

Who?

Jean-Marie Charcot, Pierre Janet

hysteria, multiple conscious "selves"

hysteria

a temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a result of emotionally upsetting experiences

Who?

unconscious

the mental processes of which individuals make themselves unaware

psychoanalysis

a therapeutic approach that focuses on bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand psychological disorders

maslow and rogers

humanistic psychology

humanistic psychology

emphasizes individuals' inherent drive towards self-actualization, the process of realizing and expressing one's own capabilities and creativity, psychologist and client are equal

Who?

john watson

behaviorism, science, Replicable

objective measures observable by others

response

an action or physiological change elicited by a stimulus

Who?

B.F. Skinner

animals learn by interacting with their environment- not passive like Pavlov's dogs

"box"

reinforcement

the consequences of behavior determine whether it will be more or less likely to occur again.

Can shape any behavior with reinforcement

questioned free-will.

Who?

Illusions

errors of perception memory, or judgment in which subjective experience differs from objective reality

Gestalt psychology

a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts

Sir Frederic Bartlett

People remember how a story "should" end rather than how it actually did end

Our memory is influenced by our mind (our knowledge, hopes, aspirations, and desires) rather than a photographic representation of actual events.

information processing systems

model for human mind (both register, store, and retrieve information).

computers

Cognitive psychology

the scientific study of mind and mental function, including learning, memory, attention, perception, reasoning, language, conceptual development, and decision making. The modern study of cognition rests on the premise that the brain can be understood as a complex computing system.

Karl Lashley

Removed parts of rat brains

Observed deficits

Behavioral Neuroscience

Cognitive Neuroscience

Cognitive Neuroscience

Links between cognitive processes and brain activity

Non-invasive "brain-scanning" during mental activities

PET scan

fMRI

John Garcia

Our ancestors' learning histories influence our learning.

Rats learn to associated nausea with food faster than with flashing light

evolutionary psychology

explains mind and behavior in terms of the adaptive value of abilities that are preserved over time by natural selection

Norman Triplett

Cyclists rode faster with peers

Our behavior is influenced by the presence of others

Social psychology

the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

Culture

the values, traditions, and beliefs that are shared by a particular group of people

cultural psychology

the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members

Margaret Mead

Anthropologist

traveled to far regions to study cultural differences in behavior and practices

clinical

47% of psychologists are

Complexity

Variability

Reactivity

Three things that make people especially difficult to study

Theory

Hypothesis

Gather Evidence

Modify Theory

scientific method?

Case Study

Observational Study

Psychological Tests (Assessments)

Surveys

ways to collect data

Case Studies

Detailed description of an individual

Observations, formal psychological testing, drawings, clinical interviews, questionnaires, family interviews

Case Study

Genie is what type of study?

No Gerneralizability

Information is often missing and hard to interpret

Observer Bias

Case study weakness

observational study

Researcher observes, measures, records behavior while trying to avoid intruding on the people being observed

Studying many people

Laboratory Observation:

observation where researchers have more control over situation

Naturalistic Observation

observe people in natural setting (home, school)

Presence of researchers

only correlational and not causal

Problems with Observational Studies

Psychological Tests (Assessments)

Measure personality traits, emotional states, IQ, abilities

objective tests (inventories)

measure beliefs, feelings, or behaviors of which people are aware

projective tests

personality test designed to let a person respond to ambiguous stimuli

standardized tests

scores based on NORMS

reliability (tests)

produce same result across time, place, and scorer

Test-retest reliability

the variation in measurements taken by a single person or instrument on the same item, under the same conditions, and in a short period of time (But people tend to do better the second time)

Alternate-forms reliability:

the authenticity stablished by carrying out two different forms of the same test to the same individuals, multiple choice vs. true/false

valid

a test must measure what it sets out to measure

Construct validity

the degree to which a test measures what it claims, or purports, to be measuring

Predictive validity

ability to predict other measures of the trait in question, related traits

high school GPA predict college GPA

surveys

questionnaires and interviews that gather info by asking people directly about their experiences, attitudes, opinions.

A sample representative of the population in question

What survey need

Volunteer bias

People lie

Researchers bias

Problems with Surveys

Correlational study

expirements

Types of Studies

correlational study

a descriptive study that looks for a consistent relationship between two phenomena

correlation

a measure of how strongly two variables are related to one another

experiment

a controlled test of a hypothesis in which a researcher manipulates one variable to discover its effect on another.

Can draw conclusions about what causes what

Control Group

group to be sure that the behavior you are interested in would not have occurred anyway

Random Assignment

A procedure for assigning people to experimental and control groups in which each individual has the same probability as any other of being assigned to a give group

Experimenter Effects

Experimenters can influence the results of a study (facial expressions (smile), tone of voice)

demand characteristics

Participants in experiments want to please/satisfy the experiment

maze dull and maze bright rats, people running the experiments thought maze bright were better

Explain Rosenthal 1966 experiment

Single-blind study

participants don't know which group they are in (still have EEs)

Also helpful for participants NOT to know purpose of study

double-blind study

neither participants NOR researcher know which group participants in

Descriptive statistics

statistical procedures that organize and summarize data

Inferential Statistics

allow researchers to draw inferences about how statistically meaningful a study's results are.

Significance test

show how likely it is that a study's results occurred merely by chance

cross-sectional

longitudinal

Types of experiments

Cross-sectional

A study in which subjects of different ages (or any groups) are compared at a given time.

Longitudinal

A study in which subjects are followed and periodically reassessed over a period of time.

informed consent

a written agreement to participate in a study made by an adult who has been informed of all the risks

debriefing

a verbal description of the true nature and purpose of a study that psychologists provide to people after they have participated in the study

Neuron

cells in the nervous system that communicate with one another to perform information-processing tasks

cell body

coordinates information-processing tasks and keeps the cell alive

dendrites

receives information from other neurons and relays it to the cell body

axon

transmits information to other neurons, muscles, or glands

myelin sheath

insulating layer of fatty material

nodes of Ranvier

increase efficiency of signal transmission (myelin sheath)

synapse

the junction or region between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites or cell body of another

Sensory neurons

TO BRAIN

receive information from the external world travel through spinal cord convey to brain