PSY Exam 2 [BEHAVIORAL GENETICS, LEARNING, & BEHAVIORAL PSYCH]

UMN PSY 1001 Exam 2, Behavioral genetics, learning, and behavioral psychology

What are brains made up of?

• made up of cells, which are made up of proteins, which are coded by DNA

• looking inside of neurons, DNA serving as instruction manual

DNA code serves as instructions for making?

• all the proteins we need to make at the right place at the right time

What creates neuronal diversity?

• The precise order and timing of gene expression

Is the blueprint for a brain conserved across evolution?

• Blueprint for a brain is highly conserved across evolution

What is a phenotype?

• measurable trait, ex. how high you can jump

What is a Genotype?

• The sequence of letters in your genome

• genes contain instructions for making proteins

Do genes work in isolation?

• rarely do single gene changes have large effects on brain development

How do genes, phenotypes, and environments interact? 

• Our environment has a large impact on whether a given genotype affects our behavior.

What is epigenetics?

• DNA needs to be opened up to be “read” only when it is needed, closed up when it is not: Epigenetics

  • The opening and closing processes can be affected by your environment!

What is heritability?

• how much of a phenotype is inherited, presumably due to genetic factors

What do twin studies show about the heritability of phenotypes?

• Twin studies find many phenotypes are somewhat heritable and more heritable in monozygotic versus dizygotic twins.

How is heritability a fraught topic?

• Heritability means that if you know the phenotype in a specific environment, you might be able to guess at genotypes.

• It does not mean that if you know genotypes, you can guess what the phenotypes are

Why can we not make accurate predictions about a phenotype based on genotype?

• Phenotypes depend on the environment, and the risk of eugenics appears;

• We can't know what phenotypes are expressed based solely on genotype because we don't know the environment

Do neuropsychiatric disorders have a genetic basis?

• Multiple cognitive behavioral diagnoses are highly heritable, for example, schizophrenia and autism.

What is learning?

Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior, knowledge, skills, or attitudes that results from experience

What is nonassociative learning? 

• simple learning to reduce (habituation) or increase (sensitization) the amount of responding we do to stimuli that innately drive response

What is habituation? 

• Reducing your responses to something that 

  • Repeats in your environment and

  • Doesnt predict anything 

What is sensitization?

• Increase response to something that

  • Repeats in your environment and

  • Is potentially noxious

What is associative learning?

• linking up stimuli and experiences because something that was previously neutral predicts something important (good or bad)

What is classical conditioning?

Also known as Pavlovian learning, it is the process of learning to associate one stimulus with another.

What is the unconditioned stimulus (US or UCS)?

• Unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response without prior learning.

What are the conditioned stimulus (CS) and conditioned response (CR)?

• conditioned stimulus (CS) is a previously neutral stimulus, that became associated with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS),

• this triggers a conditioned response (CR). The conditioned response (CR) is the learned response to the previously neutral stimulus.

Are classical conditioning responses voluntary or involuntary?

• not usually voluntary

• they prepare you for whats to come

What is acquisition?

Linking up stimuli and experiences because something that was previously neutral predicts something important (good or bad)

What is extinction?

reduced level of response to a neutral stimuli

What is spontaneous recovery?

The reappearance of a conditioned response after a period of time without exposure to the conditioned stimulus.

What is blocking?

When you already know a cue that predicts an outcome, you don't need to learn about a second predictive stimulus.

What is the Garcia effect?

• The conditioning phenomenon where an organism learns to associate a particular taste with illness, leading to aversion for that taste.

What is latent inhibition?

• If you try to learn about a cue you already have much experience with, You may have trouble learning that the cue predicts anything at all

Which neurotransmitter is important in making predictions, particularly if the reward is unexpected?

Dopamine

What is operant conditioning?

• A cue in the environment triggers an action, and that action triggers an outcome

• responses to these can be more voluntary