Psych final exam part 1

What is psychology? pre-1900 definition

“study of the mind”

problem: mind is difficult to observe

What is psychology? Early 1900s definition

study of behavior (behaviorism)

problem: not all mental processes are explained by just behavior

what is psychology? current definition

“systematic suited of behavior and experience”

* mental processes
* language
* sleep
* memory

3 general themes of psychology

* “it depends”
* progress depends on good measurement
* conclusions depends on the strength of evidence

dualism

mental activity and brain activity are separate entities

desecrates hypothesis

the minds activity determines what the brain does

monism

view that mental activity and the brain activity are one and the same

* contrasted with dualism
* the common consensus of psychology and neuroscience
* general approach taken

determinism

everything that happens is determined by preceding events/causes

* your choices are all part of the causes chain
* an essential assumption of science

free will

capacity to make choices are seemingly independent of external causes

* rationalization of ourselves and actions
* alien hand syndrome

ailen hand syndrome

using right hand to flip book pages, left hand closes book and throws it without warning

free will- decision making tasks

* brain is still active well before a person is couscous of their decisions
* brain comes up with rationalizations AFTER certain actions (not before)

nature vs. nurture

does a given trait exist because of genes/heredity or because of experiences

* almost always both
* usually an interior between the two

nature vs. nature causes

* genetically based traits may bias you toward specific environments
* environments may cause silencing of expression of different genes
* predisposed genes
* epigenetic genes

predisposed genes

gets flu or cold often

epigenetic genes

different traits are different with interactions and influences in the environment

Wilhelm Wundt

founded the 1st psychological laboratory in 1879

* introspection
* describing thought processes

introspection

reporting your subjective experiences in thought and detail

Edward tichener

* followed Wundt’s approach
* developed structuralism

developed structuralism

breaking down the experiences into distinct properties

williams james

* helped develop psychology into formal discipline
* promoted functionalism

functionalism

focus on the mental processes in terms of their motives/purpose/value/function, rather than their parts (structuralism)

study of intelligence

compare different species on general intelligence tasks (comparative psychology)

* problem: different species are suited to different environments and tasks

Galton’s suggestions

suggested heredity in human intelligence

* men of high status tended to have children who later become men of high status
* problem: correlation does not equal causation

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beginnings of psychoanalysis

therapy focusing on the unconscious mind, repression of memories, dream interpretation

psychology late 1800s

* wilheilm wundt
* Edward tichener
* williams james
* suede of intelligence
* galton

early 1900s

* WW1
* rise of behaviorism
* WW2
* rise of cognitive psychology

WW1

Rise of I/O psychology in solider testing and assignment

search for unifying theories

seek out mathematical laws that govern learning

* formulas in Newtonian physics

rise of behaviorism

* the mind is impossible to objectively measure, so avoid theorizing about it
* instead, focus on observable physical behavior
* emphasis on stimulus réponse relationships, behl conditioning

WW2

* behaviorism continues
* rise of human factors p

psychology 1960s

rise of cognitive psychology and decline of behaviorism

psychology today

* clinical
* developmental
* social
* cognitive
* biological
* evolutionary

clinical psychology

addressing psychiatric illness and treatments

* what are effective therapeutic treatments to depression?

developmental psychology

growth and aging

* what are the consequences of childhood neglect on social skill development?

social psychology

how do peers influence risky behavior

cognitive psychology

thought, decision making, memory, learning

* what are the limits of a persons memory?

biological psychology

neural basis of psychological processes

* how do different hormones predict aggressive behavior

psychiatrist

medical degree + psychiatric residency and can prescribe medication

clinical psychologist

psych degree and internship

other applied settings of psychology

* school psychology
* community psychology
* human factors psychology
* industrial psychology
* organizational psychology
* military/experimental (aviation) psychologist

scientific method

* make an observation
* develop a hypothesis
* collect data to test
* data consistent with hypothesis?

falsifiability

a litmus test for good scientific theory

* when an explanation is capable of being rejected by some evidence, at least in principle

karl popper

wanted to draw a line between science and psudeoscience

parsimony

occams razor

among completing theories, prefer the one with fewer assumptions

occams razor

“entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity

* simplest theory is the best to go with when comparing

burden of proof

extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence

* in order to get people to buy in against this theory, you would need high quality evidence to disprove the theory

replicability

repeating the same experiment should give you the same results

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2 crucial elements of scientific method

* generate alternative explanations
* evaluate explanations through rigorous observation

basic parts of a study- measurement

Operational definition: what are you actually doing to measure what you claim to be measuring?

basic parts of a study- measurement examples

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* pain= subjective rating on the pain scale
* memory= % items remembered in a recall task
* Processing speed= time on response task
* Brain activity= level of blood oxygenation

basic parts of a study- sampling

the people participating in the study

aspects of sampling

* selection bias
* representativeness

selection bias

when your sampling method causes certain people to be overrepresented or underrepresented

representativeness

when participants are similar to the people you’re making generalizations about

convince sample

recruiting the participants who are easiest to recruit

* strong selection bias and possibly not representative

random sampling

selecting participants at random; helps eliminate bias

cross cultural samples

sampling from multiple different cultures

basic parts of a study: basis of inference

correlation

* measure how one variable corresponds to another
* easier to do, but failed to rule out alternative explanations

correlation coefficient

number between -1 and 1 indicating degree correlation

problems with correlation

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* Fails to rule out alternative explanations
* Spurious correlations: correlations due to change, not due to causal relationship
* Possible solutions:
* Experiment
* Study design rules out alternative explanations

independent variable

the variable you later between groups so that control and experimental groups are different

dependent variable

what you measure to determine the effect of IV manipulations

experimental control

independent variable is the ONLY THING that different between groups

problems with experiments

* experimental control is very difficult
* experimenter bias
* depend characteristics

experimenter bias

experimenters expectations affects the results

* solution- blind studies

demand characteristics

when the participants behavior is affected by their speculations about what he experimenter wants

* “I think they’re testing the influence of color perception on strength”


* Potential solution: don't tell participants what the IV is

descriptive statistics

just describe the sample (no conclusions down)

central tendency

distribution

central tendency

the most representative value measures

* mean- add up all the scores divide by the # of participants
* median- find the participant who scores higher than 50% of the group
* mode- the most common score

distribution

how “scattered” are the results?

indicated by standard deviation

inferential statistics

support a conclusion about larger population that the sample represents

* significance
* effect size

significance

degree to which your statistical test rules out the possibility of that the results are due to change alone

* p- value

p-value

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the probability that randomly generated results would resemble the observed results

effect size

the severity of the test’s results, bigger when:

* different between groups is larger
* correlation between variables is stronger
* the bigger the effect size, the easier it is to get significant results

types of studies

* experiments
* case studies
* observational studies
* survey studies

case studies

studies examining the unique circumstances of a single individual

phineas gage

personality changes following brain damage

Henry molasion

amnesia following brain damage

case study problems:

* representativeness
* correlational
* data insufficient for statistical analysis

observational studies

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* Naturalistic observation- just observing individuals (no intervention) in their natural setting (as opposed to a lab)
* Jane goodall

survey studies

* examining peoples responses to questionnaires
* generally very large sample
* good for statistical analysis

problems with survey studies

* question wording influences responses
* careless wording
* correlational

priori

before the study hypothesis

post hoc

after study hypothesis

HARKing

hypothesizing after the results are known, and then pretending your post hoc hypothesis was a priori

p- Hacking

changing your procedure analysis to get significant p-value

* re running the analysis in different ways until you eventually get statistical significance

ethics

past studies

* Injecting people with adrenaline and telling them its a vitamin shot (schachter & singer 1962)
* Little albert: making an infant distressed whenever a rabbit is nearby so that the infant is afraid of rabbits

informed consent

participants agree to participate after being told what to expect in the study

* risks are explained

phototransduction

converting light to neutral signal


1. Light rays are emitted from light sources (the sun) and then bounce all over the place
2. Some rays enter the eye through the pupil
3. Lens focuses the light rays so they can make clear image on retina
4. Rays impact photoreceptor cells
5. Photoreceptors relay a signal to the rest of the retina

retina

layered neutral structure lining the interior of the eye, converts light stimuli (light rays) to a mural signal

fovea

central part of the retina with very high acuity

* sharper image

periphery

the rest of the retina, relatively low visual acuity

* fuzzier image

optic nerve

bundle of axons belonging to the ganglion cells

blind spot

area in which visual field where the eye cannot see

the retinas blind spot

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* Each eye has a blind spot corresponding to the optic nerve forms n the retina
* Each eye is able to see the blind spot of the other

from retina to cortex

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* Half the visual input crosses over to the other hemisphere
* Right visual field processed in left hemisphere and vice versa
* Retina→ optic chiasm → lateral geniculate nucleus→ visual cortex

photoreceptors

the neurons that convert light to neural signal

rods

photoreceptors that detect light intensity, most abundant in periphery

* \~120 million
* very sensitive
* lower acuity

cones

photoreceptors that detect colors, most abundant in the fovea, less sensitive

* \~ 6 million
* less sensitive
* greater acuity

retinal ganglion cells

not for vision, but for circadian rhythm

trichromatic theory of color vision

color vision is a result of 3 different types of color receptors being activated in different proportions

* it is partially correct

3 types of photoreceptors

* short wavelength (blue)
* medium wavelength (green)
* long wavelength (yellow)