Northeastern PSYC 1101 Exam 1

Psychology is NOT

Am I sick? Treat me. Magic tricks/mind reading

Psychology is

The systematic study of observable behavior and experience in people and animals

The word psychology was derived from the Greek words psyche and logos, meaning ______

Mind Word

Five Foundations of Psychological Science

Evolution, Materialism, Constructivism, Modularity, Empiricism

What Greek Philosophers viewed the mind as separable from body and continuing after death?

Socrates and Plato

What Greek Philosopher viewed the mind and soul as inseparable from body and believed that principles come from careful observations, and knowledge is not preexisting?

Aristotle

Nativism vs. Empiricism

Nativism- origins of our attributes, learning is a process of recollection

Empiricism- based on experience, we learn by doing

Who was the founder of neuropsychiatry, and developed empiricism and tabula rasa?

Ibn-i Sina (Avicenna)

Who developed the first experimental method for controlled scientific testing, and theorized that vision occurs in the brain, as well as being the father of psychophysics

Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen)

Who coined the phrase "I think, therefore I am" and agreed with plato and socrates that the mind was distinct from the body, and the existence of innate ideas?

Descartes

Who were the founders of modern science who were interested in how the mind failed, as well as tabula rasa, believing knowledge comes from experience?

Bacon and Locke

Who set up a lab in 1879 and performed the first psychology experiment which observed and measured stimuli?

Wilhelm Wundt

Wundt's experiment

In two separate trials, subjects were asked to press a telegraph key as soon as they heard the sound of a ball hitting a platform they were consciously aware of

perceiving the sound. Measured reaction time.

What is structuralism?

an approach to psychology based on the idea that conscious experience can be broken down into its basic underlying components.

Who brought Wundt's ideas to the U.S.

Edward Titchener

What is introspection?

the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes

What are some problems with introspection?

Disagreement over systematic observations, variability, inability to verify, reliance on consciousness

Who began functionalism?

William James

What is functionalism?

asses how the mind functions, not what it contains. Belives learning makes us more adaptable. Used naturalistic observations.

What is behaviorism?

Restricts the study of psychology to objective, observable data. Mind can not be observed so instead observe relationship between stimulus and response. One problem is that it limited science to strictly observable things.

Who came up with the Baby Albert experiment and objected to the study of "the mind"?

John B Watson

Who came up with the Gestalt approach?

Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler

What is Gestalt psychology?

Emphasized the study of thinking, learning, and perception in whole units, not by analysis into parts. Whole is different than sum of its parts.

Who began psychoanalytic psychology?

Sigmund Freud

What is psychoanalytic psychology?

Behavior is influenced by unconcious thought, beliefs, and desire. Repressed thoughts might be revealed through dreams, slips of the tongue, emotions, etc. Psychoanalysis: talking cure.

Timeline of Modern Psychology

Introspectionism, Behavioralism, Cognitive Psych

Free Will vs. Determinism

how much of our behavior is a matter of free will and how much is subject to determinants, causes in the observable world

Dualism vs. Monism

dualism: the mind and body are separate entities

monism: mind and body are unified

Developmental Psychology

how behavior, personality, and performance change with age

Clinical Psychology

a branch of psychology that studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders

Cognitive Psychology

the scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thought, memory, and reasoning

Biological Psychology or Neuroscience

explains behavior in terms of biological factors, such as anatomy, electrical and chemical activities in the nervous system, and the effects of drugs, hormones, genetics and evolution.

Social Psychology

how an individual influences and is influenced by other people.

What is hindsight bias?

I knew it all along phenomenon; the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it

What is overconfidence bias?

the bias in which people's subjective confidence in their decision making is greater than their objective accuracy

What is post-truth?

relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief

What are the steps of the scientific method?

Theory and prior research, research question, hypotheses, methods of measurement, research design, data collection, infrences and interpretation

What are the goals of psychological science?

Describing, predicting, explaining, and controlling behavior

What is falsifiability?

Scientific theories must be stated in a way that predictions derived from them can be potentially shown to be false. Precise predictions.

What is an Operational Definition?

statement about the procedures the researcher used to measure a variable

What is descriptive research?

systematic, objective observation of people

What is observational research?

involves gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions, and situations. case studies.

Who had a 13 pound steel rod impaled in their head?

Phineas Gage

What are some problems with survey research?

problems obtaining a random or representative sample, competence or honesty of those who respons, the difference the wording of the questions makes, surveyor bias

What is naturalistic observation?

observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation

What do mutually exclusive and exhaustive mean?

Mutually exclusive: an observation can only fall into one catagory, it must be one or the other. Exhaustive: there must not be any other potential options

What are some limitations of observations/case studies?

may not help us predict future behavior, does not uncover the underlying mechanisms behind behavior, unable to control behavior to test specific questions.

What is the measure of the degree to which one variable is related to another?

Correlation

What is the mathematical estimate of the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables?

correlation coefficient

What is an experiment?

a technique for establishing the causal relationship between variables

What is holding constant in experimentation?

ensuring that the two groups are treated identically except for the manipulation

What is experimenter bias?

the researcher's unintentional distortion of the procedures or results of an experiment based on the expected or desired values

How can you avoid experimenter bias?

Use blind observers who do not fully know what the researcher is studying, or use a placebo control which alters a person's feelings through the power of suggestion

What is participant bias?

Self presentation bias: the tendency to change ones behavior to appear as your idealized self

Demand characteristics: the aspects of an observational setting that cause people to behave as they think someone wants or expects them to behave.

How can you avoid participant bias?

Ensure anonymity, measure involuntary behavior, keep the subjects blind to the hypothesis, and keep the researcher blind to the hypothesis

What was the halloween experiment?

Hypothesis: children in masks and in groups were more likely to do bad things on halloween.

Rougly how many neurons in the human nervous system?

100 billion

What are the three basic parts of a neuron?

cell body, dendrites, axon

What are dendrites?

bushy, branching extensions which receives signals from other neurons, conducts impulses TOWARD the body of a neuron

What is the cell body of a neuron?

nucleus and metabolic center of the cell

What is an axon?

the long threadlike part of a nerve cell along which impulses are conducted from the cell body to other cells.

What is the myelin sheath?

covers the axon of some neurons and helps speed neural impulses

What are the three types of neurons?

sensory, motor, interneurons

How do neurons function?

They recieve and transmit information electrochemically using action potentials and ion channels. Neurons in the CNS process information, interpret it, and send commands to the muscles, glands, and organs.

What is the communication process between neurons?

Action potential travels down axon, causes a neurotransmitter to release from axon terminal, neurotransmitter travels across synapse, then binds with receptor of receiving neuron.

What is the peripheral nervous system?

the sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous system to the rest of the body

What are the two components of the autonomic nervous system?

Sympathetic NS arouses and expends energy and enables voluntary control of skeletal muscles. Parasympathetic NS calms and conserves energy, allowing routine maintenance activity and controls involuntary muscles and glands.

The three parts out of which the vertebrate nervous system forms

midbrain, brainstem, and forebrain

Medulla

the base of the brainstem; controls heartbeat and breathing

Pons

Sits above medulla and helps coordinate movement

Cerebellum

A large structure of the hindbrain that controls fine motor skills, the judgement of time, sound and texture discrimination, and emotional control. Coordinates voluntary movement and life-sustaining functions. Helps process and store information outside of awareness.

Limbic system

neural system (including the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus) located below the cerebral hemispheres; associated with emotions and drives.

Cerebral cortex

outer region of the cerebrum, containing sheets of nerve cells; gray matter of the brain

Four lobes of the Forebrain's Cerebral Cortex.

Frontal Lobe, Parietal Lobe, Occipital Lobe, Temporal Lobe

Right-Left Differences in the Intact Brain

- each hemisphere has different duties capable

- perceptual tasks (higher performances) are done primarily in the right hemisphere, while speaking and calculating are done more in the left hemisphere

- the left hemisphere is good at making quick, literal interpretations of language

- the right hemisphere is good at making inferences, modulate our speech so that our meaning is clear, and helps orchestrate our sense of self

corpus callosum

the large band of neural fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres and carrying messages between them

In Split-Brain hemispheres

the information sharing between hemispheres using the corpus callosum does not take place.

Where do reflexes ususally originate?

Spinal cord

What is the branch of psychological science that examines how brain injury affects the mind?

Neuropsychology

EEG (electroencephalogram)

shows the brain's electrical activity by positioning electrodes over the scalp. measures brain-wide types of waves rather than specific regions. does not visualize brain activity

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

a method of brain imaging that assesses metabolic activity by using a radioactive substance injected into the bloodstream

fMRI (functional MRI)

A technique for revealing bloodflow and, therefore, brain activity by comparing successive MRI scans. fMRI scans show brain function.

developmental psychology

a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span

Domains of Development

physical, cognitive, emotional and social

What are the three types of research design to study human development?

Cross-sectional study: compares groups of individuals of different ages simultaneously

Longitudinal study: follows a single group of people as they develop

Sequential design: combines both

What are the identifiable stages of prenatal development?

zygote, blastula, gastrula, embryo, fetus

What are teratogens?

any agent that can potentially cause a birth defect or negatively alter cognitive and behavioral outcomes. for example, radiation, chemicals, and drugs

The greatest degree of physical change occurs when?

First 2 years of life

Which parts of the brain are almost fully developed at birth? Which is least developed?

Midbrain and medulla, cortex

Four main infant reflexes

Rooting, moro, babinski, grasping

What is habituation?

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. Infants become bored with a repeated stimulus

Dependent measures for studying infant behavior:

Infants sucking behavior: they suck more vigorously when they hear new or stimulating sounds

Infants gaze: looking time will eventually drop after seeing the same object multiple times, but a new object will increase looking time again. Infants also prefer objects that look like human faces

Infants mnotor development:

rolling over, sitting unsupported, crawling, walking