PSYCH EXAM3

Classical condition

A basic form of learning in which one stimulus predicts the occurrence of another

Ivan P. Pavlov

Behavior comes to be elicited by a stimulus that has acquired its power through an association with a biologically significant stimulus

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

Any stimulus that naturally elicits a behavior
E.g., food

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

The behavior elicited by the UCS
E.g., salivation

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A neutral stimulus that is able to elicit behavior only after association with the UCS
E.g., bell tone

Conditioned Response

The behavior elicited by the CS
E.g., salivation

Pavlov's Experiment

​​- Before conditioning, food (Unconditioned Stimulus, US) produces salivation (Unconditioned Response, UR). The tone (neutral stimulus) does not.
- During conditioning, neutral stimulus (tone) and US (food) are paired resulting in salivation (UR). After conditioning neutral stimulus (now Conditioned Stimulus, CS) elicits salivation (now Conditioned Response, CR)

Acquisition

The initial stage in classical conditioning. during which the association between a neutral stimulus and a US is established.

- Neutral stimulus needs to come before the US for conditioning to occur (most cases).
- The time between the two stimuli should be very brief (half a second for Pavlov’s study).

Extinction

When a US (food) does not follow a CS (tone), CR (salivation) starts to decrease and at some point goes extinct.

Spontaneous Recovery

After a rest period an extinguished CR (salivation) spontaneously recovers and if CS (tone) persists alone becomes extinct again.

Stimulus Generalization

The ability to behave in a new situation in a way that has been learned in other similar situations.
- Tendency to respond to stimuli similar to CS is called generalization.

- Pavlov conditioned the dog’s salivation (CR) by using vibrators (CS) to the thigh. When he subsequently stimulated other parts of the dog’s body, salivation still happened with weaker strength.

Stimulus Discrimination

Discrimination is the learned ability to distinguish between a CS and other stimuli

Classical conditioning in life (application)

- Traumatic experience (fire, food poisoning)
- Canned laughter in sitcoms
- Former drug users should avoid cues (people, places) associated with previous drug use.

Operant Conditioning

A type of learning in which behavior is rewarded or punished
→ The law of effect

Skinner box

The operant chamber, or Skinner box, comes with a bar or key that an animal manipulates to obtain a reinforcer like food or water. The bar or key is connected to devices that record the animal’s response.

Positive reinforcement

Adding a desirable stimulus
- For example, food, other incentives

Negative Reinforcement

Removing an aversive stimulus
- Mom stopped nagging after you did something she asked
- Gangster stops harassing once business owner pays “protection fee”

Immediate Reinforcement

Reward right away

Delayed Reinforcement

- Doesn’t work on animals. Uniquely human
- Our ability to control impulses

Reinforcement

Desirable consequence to induce certain behaviors.

Punishment

It applies undesirable consequence to the subject to prevent certain behaviors

Continuous Reinforcement

Behavior reinforced every time – leads to fast learning, but also fast extinction

Partial Reinforcement (intermittent reinforcement)

Behavior reinforced on and off
- Works even better than continuous reinforcement – slow in learning, but very resistant to extinction

Observational Learning

- The majority of human learning occurs indirectly
- The modeling process

Bandura's Bobo Doll Study (1961)

Indicated that individuals (children) learn through imitating others who receive rewards and punishments.

Thinking

Refers to a process that involves knowing, understanding, remembering, and communicating.

Concepts

Mental grouping of similar objects, events, people.
- Fruit
- Birthday party
- Mother

Prototypes

The best example that incorporates the features we associate with the category.

Hierarchy

Concepts are often organized into hierarchies

Trial and Error

Solving a problem through trying different strategy, learning from errors and eventually being successful
- For instance: when you learn to parallel park

Algorithms

Which are very time consuming, exhaust all possibilities before arriving at a solution.
- Computers use algorithms.

Heuristics

Simple, thinking strategies that allow us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently. It is less time consuming, but more error-prone than algorithms.

Representativeness Heuristic

To decide whether a person or an event belongs to a certain category by comparing the person/event to the prototypical ones in that category

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision.

Insight

Involves a sudden novel realization of a solution to a problem. Humans and animals have insight.
- That “ah-ha” moment

Conformation Bias

A tendency to search for information that confirms a personal bias.
- Police shootings of unarmed suspects
- Polarization of opinion

Fixation

An inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective. This impedes problem solving. An example of fixation is functional fixedness.
- Think “inside the box” (e.g.How to divide a cake into 8 pieces with only 3 cuts?)

Effects of Framing

When presenting the same issue in different, but logically equivalent ways
- 75% lean vs. 25% fat
- 80% survive vs. 20% die

Language

Our spoken, written, or gestured work, is the way we communicate meaning to ourselves and others.

Phonemes

The smallest distinctive sound unit in a spoken language. For example:
- bat, has three phonemes b · a · t
- chat, has three phonemes ch · a · t

Morpheme

The smallest unit that carries meaning may be a word or a part of a word.

For example:
- Milk = milk
- Watermelons = water. melon. S
- Unkind = un. Kind

Word

Meaningful units (290,500)
- meat, pumpkin

Phrase

Composed of two or more words (326,000)
- meat eater

Sentence

Composed of many words (infinite)
- She open the jewelry box

Grammar

A system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate with and understand others

Semantics

Set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences.

It rule tells us that adding –ed to the word laugh means that it happened in the past.

Syntax

The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

In English syntactical rule is that adjectives come before nouns; white house. In Spanish it is reversed; casa blanca.

Aphasia

An impairment of language abilities that occurs while other mental abilities remain intact

Broca's area

A region of the frontal lobe in the left hemisphere of the brain needed TO PRODUCE SPEECH

Wernicke's area

A region in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere of the brain needed TO UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE AND TO PRODUCE MEANINGFUL SENTENCES

Babbling Stage

Beginning at 4 months, the infant spontaneously utters various sounds, like ah-goo. Even deaf children babble.

One-Word Stage

Beginning at or around his first birthday, a child starts to speak one word at a time and is able to make family members understand him.
- The word doggy may mean look at the dog out there.

Two-Word Stage

Before the 2nd year, a child starts to speak in two-word sentences.
- This form of speech is called telegraphic speech because the child speaks like a telegram: “Go car,” means I would like to go for a ride in the car.

Longer Phrases

After telegraphic speech, children begin uttering longer phrases (Mommy get ball) with syntactical sense, and by early elementary school they are employing humor.

Linguistic Determinism

Whorf (1956) suggested that language determines the way we think. For example, he noted that the Hopi people do not have the past tense for verbs. Therefore, the Hopi cannot think readily about the past.

Intelligence

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

Contemporary theory on intelligence

Howard Gardner (1983, 1999) supports the idea that intelligence comes in multiple dimensions. Gardner notes that brain damage (or genetic defect) may diminish one type of ability but not others.
- People with savant syndrome excel in abilities unrelated to general intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence

Is the ability to:
Perceive emotions
Understand emotions
Use emotions

Intelligence Test

- Psychologists define intelligence testing as a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with others using numerical scores.

- WAIS measures overall intelligence and 11 other aspects related to intelligence that are designed to assess clinical and educational problems.

Flynn Effect

In the past 60 years, intelligence scores have risen steadily by an average of 27 points.

Consciousness

An awareness of ourselves and our environment.

Circadian Rhythms

Occur on a 24-hour cycle and include sleep and wakefulness. Termed our “biological clock,” it is most sensitive to sunlight, but can be altered by artificial light (blue light on your screen).

- Light (morning) triggers the decrease of melatonin from the pineal gland and increases (evening) it at nightfall.

Sleep stages

Pre-sleep, light stages (1 &2), deep sleep (3 & 4), REM sleep. (understanding the differences of the stages)

→ When an individual closes his eyes but remains awake, his brain activity slows down to a large amplitude and slow, regular alpha waves (9-14 cps).A meditating person exhibits an alpha brain activity.

Sleep Stages 1-2

During early, light sleep the brain enters a high-amplitude, slow, regular wave form called theta waves (5-8 cps). A person who is daydreaming shows theta activity.

Sleep Stages 3-4

During deep sleep, brain activity slows down. There are large-amplitude, slow delta waves (1.5-4 cps).

Stage 5 REM Sleep

After reaching the deepest sleep stage (4), the sleep cycle starts moving backward towards stage 1. Although still asleep, the brain engages in low- amplitude, fast and regular beta waves (15-40 cps)much like an awake-aroused state. A person during this sleep exhibits. Rapid Eye Movements (REM) and reports vivid dreams.

Relationship between REM sleep and dreaming

During REM, your brain is going through waking-like activity – even your motor cortex is active, however, your brainstem blocks the messages from reaching your body. You are essentially paralyzed, and cannot be easily awakened. This is your body’s protective function.

Sleep Paralysis

Sometimes the immobility during REM sleep may linger after you wake up

90 minute sleep cycle for adults

- Measuring sleep: For adults, about every 90 minutes, we pass through a cycle of five distinct sleep stages.
- With each 90-minute cycle, stage 4 deep sleep decreases and the duration of REM sleep increases.

Depressant Drugs

Are drugs that reduce neural activity and slow body functions.

Alcohol

Formally known as ethanol, the oldest recreational drug in human history.

- Affects motor skills, judgment, and memory…and increases aggressiveness while reducing self awareness.
- Alcohol can slow down neural activities
- Long term consumption of large quantities of alcohol can cause irreversible damage to the brain and other organs – alcohol can penetrate the blood brain barrier.

Barbiturate

Drugs that depress the activity of the central nervous system.

◦Used to be used widely in sleep aids and anti-anxiety drugs
◦Impairs short term memory and judgment
◦Long-term damage to the body as well.
◦Very addictive
◦Nowadays they have largely been replaced by benzodiazepines in sleep aids and anti-anxiety drugs

Opiate

Naturally occurring alkaloids found in poppy plants. (Opioid refers to ALL substances - natural or synthetic - that bind to opioid receptors in the brain.)

-Morphine and Heroin are natural opioid substances. Methadone is a synthetic opioid substance
-Depress neural activity, temporarily lessening pain and anxiety.
-Very commonly used in prescription pain-killers.
◦Highly addictive
◦Long-term use will cause the brain to stop producing endorphins (our brain’s “pain killing” neurotransmitter)
More than 2 million Americans are addicted to prescription painkillers or illegal street drugs.
Heroin related overdose deaths increased 533% from 2002 to 2016

Stimulant Drugs

Are drugs that excite neural activity and speed up body functions.

Caffeine and Nicotine

The world’s most consumed psychoactive drug. They increase heart and breathing rates and other autonomic functions to provide energy. Both are very addictive

Cocaine

Induces immediate euphoria followed by a crash. Crack is a form of it.

- It works by quickly depleting the brain’s supply of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine (high) and it’s followed by crashing depression when the drug effect wears off.
- It is addictive due to its effect on the reward center in the brain.

Ecstasy

Is a stimulant and mild hallucinogen. It produces a euphoric high and can damage serotonin-producing neurons, which results in a permanent deflation of mood and impairment of memory.

Amphetamine

A potent central nervous system stimulant.

- Causes euphoria, increased wakefulness, improved cognitive control, decreased reaction time, fatigue resistance, increased muscle strength.
- Commonly used in the treatment of ADHD, narcolepsy, and obesity.
- Abused by some athletes as a performance enhancement drug.

Methamphetamine

Is similar to amphetamine in its chemical structure, but significantly faster acting, more potent, and more addictive.

- It is never prescribed medically. It’s widely used in recreational drugs.
- It works by stimulating the reward center of the brain to release norepinephrine and dopamine.
- Crystal meth is a synthetic form of methamphetamine
- The addicts lose their teeth abnormally quickly regardless of the form of administration. (meth mouth)

Hallucinogen

Psychedelic (mind-manifesting) drugs that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input.

LSD

(lysergic acid diethylamide) powerful hallucinogenic drug that is also known as acid.

THC

(delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol): is the major active ingredient in marijuana (hemp plant) that triggers a variety of effects, including mild hallucinations.

Marijuana

- Decline of IQ / poor school performance / impaired thinking, learning
- Lower life satisfaction
- Higher risks to mental illnesses
- Gateway drug
- Addiction (although the rate is lower than other “hard” drugs, it’s not zero): 9% adults, 17% adolescents who started using marijuana become addicted.

Insomnia

A persistent inability to fall asleep. (1 in 10 adults, and 1 in 4 older adults)

Narcolepsy

Overpowering urge to fall asleep that may occur while talking or standing up. (1 in 2000)

Sleep Apnea

Failure to breathe for short periods (hundreds per night) when asleep. (associated with snoring and obesity)