Human Psychology Midterm

Alcmaeon of Croton

Suggested the brain, not the heart, is the seat of thought; linked mental illness to internal brain dysfunction

Humoural theory (Hippocrates)

Four body fluids whose imbalances cause disorders - yellow bile, blood, black bile, phlegm

Søren Kierkegaard

Described dread (anxiety) as a human condition

Ernst Weber

Described the "just noticeable difference"

Wilhelm Wundt

First psychologist; wrote the first textbook and founded the first lab of experimental psychology

William James

American protopsychologist who studied consciousness

Sigmund Freud

Founder of psychoanalysis; studied medicine, spoke 9 languages; shifted toward clinical focus (illness, causes, new treatments, clinical cases)

Vienna Psychoanalytic Society

Group of Freud's followers

Anna Freud

Freud's youngest child; focused on child psychology

Behaviorism

Backlash against psychoanalysis; behavior can be studied objectively and explained without reference to inner mental states

Ivan Pavlov

Russian antecedent of behaviorism who provided the experimental foundation; classical conditioning (Pavlov's dog)

John B. Watson

American behaviorist who emphasized external behavior and reactions to situations over internal mental states; applied conditioning to advertising

B.F. Skinner

Founded radical behaviorism; shaping voluntary behaviors through their consequences; applied operant conditioning to education and therapy

Skinner box

Apparatus showing four outcomes: positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, negative punishment

Aaron Beck

Developed cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT); urged patients to identify and evaluate thoughts; shifted clinical psychology from behaviorism to CBT

Cognitive distortions

Distorted thought patterns that CBT has patients identify and evaluate

Carl Rogers

Humanistic psychology; emphasized personal growth, empathy, unconditional positive regard, and client-centered therapy

Viktor Frankl

Existential psychology; founded logotherapy, which sees the search for meaning as the core of mental health

Martin Seligman

Positive psychology; shifts focus from illness to human strengths and flourishing

René Descartes' dualism

Human being consists of two distinct substances: an immaterial mind/soul and a physical body

Structural view (body-brain-mind)

Brain = hardware that contains the mind = software

Functional view (body-brain-mind)

The mind emerges from the activity of the brain

Phineas Gage

Iron rod passed through his frontal lobe at age 25; personality changed from responsible, reliable, calm to impulsive, irresponsible, emotionally unstable

Charles Darwin

Theory of evolution; Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals argued emotions have biological roots and evolutionary functions

Evolutionary medicine

Symptoms and disorders may appear as deregulations of normal functions

Function to dysregulation (examples)

Anxiety = threat detection; eating disorders = energy and status regulation; addiction = reward learning

Function, symptom, disorder sequence

Psychological process, normal manifestation, alteration/symptom; several alterations form an episode; a symptom or episode (single/recurrent) can become a disorder

Psychological processes

Dynamic mental and behavioral operations that take in information, give it meaning, respond to it, and adjust over time (input, process, response)

Classification of psychological processes

States of consciousness, cognitive, emotional, motivational, regulatory, and motor processes

Consciousness (William James)

Continuous flow/stream; constantly adapting, selective, personal, goal-directed

Consciousness (modern definition)

Capacity to experience internal and external events through awareness, supported by an adequate level of arousal

Wakefulness

Arousal plus awareness; ability to respond to sensory stimuli, self-awareness, awareness of environment, capable of goal-directed behavior

Normal wakefulness

14-18 hours/day; cognitive impairment after 18-24 hours without sleep

Randy Gardner

Holder of the longest voluntary wakefulness

Sleep

Actively generated by the brain and rapidly reversible by sensory stimulation (unlike unconsciousness); reduced awareness, decreased responsiveness, relative immobility

Arousal threshold

Intensity of stimulus required to produce awakening; depends on age, stage of sleep, and relevance of stimulus

Sleep inertia

Grogginess during awakening, the gradual restoration of awareness and sensory responsiveness

Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS)

Brainstem system that maintains wakefulness and arousal, receives sensory input, and activates widespread cortical regions; damage may cause coma

Hypothalamus (consciousness)

Regulates sleep-wake transitions

Thalamus (consciousness)

Gates sensory input during sleep

Quantitative decreases of consciousness

Confusion, somnolence, obnubilation/obtundation, stupor/sopor, coma

Confusion

Disturbance in the clarity and organization of conscious experience

Somnolence

State of near-sleep

Obnubilation

Mild/moderate reduction of consciousness

Stupor

Deep state of unresponsiveness

Coma

No response to any stimuli; brain metabolism may fall to 40-60% of normal

Causes of coma

Trauma, hypoxia, infections, disorders, drugs, hepatic/renal failure

Medically induced coma

Reduces cerebral metabolism, lowers intracranial pressure, prevents seizures, protects injured brain

Syncope

Temporary global cerebral hypoperfusion causing transient loss of consciousness

Vegetative state

Arousal without awareness; eyes open spontaneously, sleep-wake cycles and brainstem reflexes present, no purposeful responses or reproducible evidence of awareness

Minimally conscious state

Arousal with minimal awareness; inconsistent but reproducible signs of awareness that may fluctuate day to day

Delirium (acute confusional state)

Qualitative alteration of consciousness; risk factors are age, change of environment, medications; typical in aged hospital patients

Twilight state

Narrowed awareness, automatic behaviors, and subsequent amnesia

Oneiroid state

Dreamlike state with alterations in perception and impaired contact with reality

Cognition

Set of processes by which an organism acquires, represents, transforms, stores, and uses information to guide behavior

Orientation

Ability to correctly identify oneself and understand one's relationship to time, place, and situation (domains: time, space, person)

Disorientation

Can be partial, global, or fluctuating; lost in order of time, then space, then person; recovery in order of person, then place, then time

Causes of acute-onset disorientation

Delirium, intoxication/withdrawal, infection, injury, sleep deprivation

Causes of progressive-onset disorientation

Dementia, mental disorders, diseases, brain tumors

Attention

Selectively focusing on certain information while ignoring other stimuli

Bottom-up attention

Stimulus-driven, automatic, effortless

Top-down attention

Goal-directed; requires mobilization, time, and motivation; involves dopamine and norepinephrine

Hypoprosexia

Decreased attention (depression, fatigue, boredom)

Hyperprosexia

Excessive, heightened but unstable and poorly focused attention (mania, anxiety, stimulant drugs)

Distractibility

Inability to filter irrelevant stimuli

Lability of attention

Excessive fluctuations or rapid shifts in focus

Perseveration

Inability to shift focus despite changing demands

Paraprosexia

Misallocation of attention (e.g., hypochondria)

Perception process

Stimulus, reception, transduction, transmission, processing, organization and integration, interpretation

Perception vs. representation

Perception: stimulus present, objective, external or internal (own body), independent of will, high sensory quality. Representation: stimulus absent, subjective, internal, dependent on will, low sensory quality

Main human senses

Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, thermoception, nociception, equilibrioception, proprioception

Hyperesthesia

Increased perception (stimulant drugs, traumatic event)

Hypoesthesia

Decreased perception (sedative drugs, depression)

Metamorphopsias

Visual sensory distortions (migraines, epilepsy, retinal disorders, brain injuries)

Micropsia

Objects appear smaller

Macropsia

Objects appear larger

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

Alternating micropsia and macropsia

Derealization

External world feels unreal (dissociative disorders, anxiety, trauma)

Depersonalization

Feeling detached from oneself (dissociative disorders, PTSD, stress, drugs, epilepsy)

Synesthesia

Alteration in perceptual integration (neurological trait, psychedelics)

Illusion

Distortion or misinterpretation of a real external stimulus; low sensory quality, no conviction of reality

Illusion by inattention / of completion

The brain fills in missing details

Affective illusion

Illusion driven by strong emotions

Pareidolia

Perceiving meaningful patterns in random stimuli (visual, less commonly auditory)

Hallucination

Perception without an external object; as vivid as real perception, conviction of reality, high pathological significance

Auditory hallucinations (types)

Commentary voices, conversing voices, command voices, thought echo

Cenesthetic hallucination

Internal bodily sensation hallucination

Kinesthetic hallucination

Hallucination of body movement

Hallucinosis

Hallucination without conviction of reality; usually visual and indicates organic origin

Delirium tremens

Hallucinosis caused by abrupt alcohol withdrawal

Episodic memory

Personal experiences and events (distal = childhood, mid-term, recent)

Semantic memory

Concepts and information

Procedural memory

Skills and habits

Working memory

Short-term holding and manipulation of information

Encoding

Transformation of perceived information into a neural representation

Consolidation

Time-dependent process that makes new memories more resistant to disruption through synaptic change and gradual reorganization across brain networks; helped by sleep

Storage

Maintenance of information over time; different kinds of memory are stored in different locations

Retrieval

Access to stored information through recall or recognition

Reconsolidation

Restabilization of a memory after retrieval

Declarative learning

Learning corresponding to semantic memory