PSYC 100 final exam flashcards

What is semanticity?

Meaningful representation

What is generativity?

Whether we have an infinite number of words

What is displacement?

Language refers to things that are not physically present

What is common ground?

• A set of knowledge the speaker and listener share

• EXAMPLE = When Ben says : “For Mary isn’t it?” He takes for granted that Adam knows who Mary is

What is audience design?

• Constructing utterances to suit the audience’s knowledge

• EXAMPLE = Ben used Mary’s name because Ben knew that Adam knows Mary

What are the 4 levels of language use?

• Lexicon

• Syntax

• Speech rate

• Accent

What are situation models?

Mental representation of an event, object or situation constructed ay yhje time of comprehending a linguistic description

What is priming?

When thinking about one concept, it reminds you of other related concepts

Characterize psychological consequences of language use.

• When emotion is involved, thoughts and feeling shape the linguistic representation rather than original experience

• Linguistically labeling one’s own emotional experience alters the speakers neural processes

• A certain type of language use repeated by a large number of people can have an effect

What is theory of mind?

The ability to understand what another person is thinking

Enumerate the many domains of social life in which theory of mind is critical.

• Humans need to understand minds in order to engage in complex interactions that social communities require 

• Teaching another person new actions or rules by taking into account what the learner knows or doesn’t know and how one might best make him understand.

• Learning the words of a language by monitoring what other people attend to and are trying to do when they use certain words.

• Figuring out our social standing by trying to guess what others think and feel about us.

• Sharing experiences by telling a friend how much we liked a movie or by showing her something beautiful.

• Collaborating on a task by signaling to one another that we share a goal and understand and trust the other’s intention to pursue this joint goal.

Describe some characteristics of how individuals diagnosed with autism differ in their processing of others’ minds.

• May perceive others in an analytical way 

• Lack of automatic processing of people information  (fixating on it later)

Name all the concepts and processes that compromise the human understanding of minds.

• Agent - Allows humans to identify moving objects in the world that can act on their own

• Recognizing goals - To see the systematic and predictable relationship between a particular agent pursuing an object across various circumstances

• Accessing intentionality - Humans understand the different between intentional and unintentional

• Imitation - Humans tendency to carefully observe others’ behaviours and do as they do

• Automatic Empathy - Empathizing to someone else’s behaviour or emotion

• Joint attention - Actively engaging with other people’s mental states

• Visual perspective taking - Adopt the other person’s spatial view point

• Stimulation - Using one’s own mental states as a model for other’s mental states

• Projection - Assumption that another person wants, knows or feels the same as the perceiver wants, knows or feels

• Mental State Interference - Stepping out of your own perspective to represent the other person;s perspective

What is the false belief test?

• The child is asked where sally thinks the ball is located when she comes back in the room

• Is she going to look first in the box or in the basket

What are concepts?

• The most fundamental unit of symbolic knowledge

• Can be captured in a single word/symbol

What are categories?

• A collection of concepts

• Organized by the basis of shared characteristics

What are fuzzy categories?

• Concepts that have varying degrees of fit in a category

• No clear “membership” border

• Its not quite a member but not a non-member

What is typicality?

• Concepts that are “better” category members than others

• Greater typicality creates faster categorization and earlier learning

What is the category hierarchy?

1. Superordiante (global) - Vehicle

2. Basic (natural) - Car

3. Subordinate - Sedan

What is the difference between the prototype theory and exemplar theory?

• Prototype Theory

  • When you learn a category, you learn a general description that applies to the category as a whole

  • When you try to classify an item, you see how well it matches that weighted list of features

• Exemplar Theory

  • Denies summary representation

  • When you see an object, you (unconsciously) compare it to the exemplars in your memory, and you judge how similar it is to exemplars in different categories

What is psychological essentialism?

People believe that some categories (most commonly natural kinds) have an underlying property that is found only in that category and causes its other features 

How does knowledge influence the concept of learning?

• When we learn new concepts, we try to connect them to the knowledge we already have about the world 

• The knowledge approach to concepts emphasizes that concepts are meant to tell us about real things in the world, and so our knowledge of the world is used in learning and thinking about concepts

What is cognitive development?

• Cognitive development refers to the development of thinking across the lifespan

• Includes perceiving objects and events, acing skillfully to obtain goals, and understanding and producing language

What are the 3 main theories of cognitive development? Describe each.

• Piaget’s stage theory 

  • Focuses on whether children progress through qualitative stages of development 

• Sociocultural theories (Lev Vygotsky)

  • Emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs surrounding culture influence children’s development 

• Information processing theories (David Klahr) 

  • Examines the mental processes that produce thinking at any one time and the transition processes that lead to growth in that thinking 

How do nature and nurture work together to produce cognitive development?

• Depth perception depends on seeing patterned light and having normal brain activity in infancy (it is not only nature) 

• Parents will provide more sensitive and affectionate care to easygoing and attractive infants 

• When children are young, their parents largely determine their experiences

Why is cognitive development seen as discontinuous?

• Whether changes are sudden

• Due to qualitative changes

Why is cognitive development seen as continuous?

• Whether changes are continuous

• Due to quantitative changes

How is cognitive development integrated into education?

• Cognitive developmental research has shown that phonemic awareness is a crucial skill in learning to read and then applied to the curriculum 

• Middle and upper income families engage more frequently in numerical activities ie. board games like chutes and ladders 

  • Improves knowledge of numerical magnitudes (size of numbers) 

• Research into cognitive development has shown us that minds form through a combination of influencing factors

What are the basic symptoms of autism?

• Difficulties in social interactions and communication

• Presence of repetitive or restricted interests, cognitions and behaviours

• Difficulties with social interaction processing (both visual and auditory) 

What is the social brain? And what are its components?

The social brain is a set of interconnected neuroanatomical structures that process social information, enabling the recognition of other individuals and the evaluation of their mental states (e.g., intentions, dispositions, desires, and beliefs).

1. Amygdala - Helps us recognize the emotional states of others

2. Orbital Frontal Cortex - Supports the “reward” feeling we have when we are around other people

3. Fusiform Gyrus - Detects faces and supports facial recognition

4. Posterior STS Region - Recognizes biological motion that helps us to interpret the actions and intentions of others
   

What is social referencing?

• Infant refers to caregivers’ response in the face of the novelty of uncertainty

• Calm face = safe

• Distressed face = unsafe

What does the development of attachment look like?

1. Pre-attachment (0 - 6 weeks)

   • no discrimination between different caregivers

2. Attachment in the making (6 weeks - 8 months)

   • Prefers familiar caregivers, but not distressed from strangers

3. Clear-cut attachment (8 - 18 months)

   • Prefers specific caregivers, separation anxiety evident

4. Goal corrected partnership (18 - 24+ months)

   • Understands caregivers absence, decreased protest & increased negotiation

What are the 4 types of parenting styles?

1. Authoritarian (affectionless, punitive)

2. Authoritative (high freedom, consistent boundaries)

3. Uninvolved (neglectful, disinterested)

4. Permissive (lots of freedom, few demands)

What are some benefits of a secure attachment style?

• Better relationships with peers

• More positively evaluated by teachers

• Try harder on challenging tasks

• Less likely to be bullies

• Resilient & competent adults

What are the 4 types of adult attachment?

• Secure

  • Comfortable with intimacy and independence; optimistic and sociable

• Dismissing

  • Self-reliant and uninterested in intimacy; indifferent and independent

• Preoccupied

  • Uneasy and vigilant toward any threat to the relationship; needy and jealous

• Fearful

  • Fearful of rejection and mistrustful of others; suspicious and shy

Describe the Harlow Monkeys experiment.

• Goal = Maternal deprivation & isolation

• IV: contact comfort, milk 

• DV: time, behaviour

  • Milk vs. no milk 

  • Response to novelty 

• Implications: 

  • It's not just about food 

  • 1^st empirical evidence of parent-child attachment

Describe the Strange Situation experiment.

• Goal = How the infant reacts when the mother leaves the room 

• Secure (60%)

  • Seeks parents as a safe base 

  • Loving & caring caregiver

• Anxious resistant (20%)

  • Amplify negative affect in an attempt to elicit care 

  • Inconsistent/unpredictable caregiver 

• Avoidant (20%)

  • Avoids caregiver when distressed 

  • Hides negative affect 

  • Rejecting or ignoring from caregiver

• Disorganized*

  • May act fearfully or show contradictory behaviours 

  • Atypical behaviours of caregiver

How do peer relationships foster social skills and personality in children?

• In peer relationships, children learn how to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children 

• Friendships provide another source of security and support to those provided by parents 

• Peer relationships influence the growth of personality and self-concept positively and negatively 

Define temperament.

Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitues a foundation for personality development

What is social and emotional competence?

• Social and emotional competence means to live according to meaningful moral values, to develop a healthy identity and sense of self, and to develop talents and achieve success in using them 

What are intrapersonal emotions? Provide an example.

• The roles that emotions play within each of us individually

• EXAMPLE: The emotion of disgust stops us from consuming expired food

What are interpersonal emotions?

• The meanings of emotions in our relationships with others

• EXAMPLE: trying to cheer up a friend or calm a stressed coworker. 

What are the social and cultural functions of emotions?

• The roles and meanings that emotions have in the maintenance and effective functioning of societies and cultures at large.

• Worldviews related to emotions provide guidelines for desirable emotions that facilitate norms for regulating individual behaviors and interpersonal relationships

Why is puberty occurring earlier in females?

• Better nutrition 

• Greater adiposity (how much fat tissue someone has) → used in women's menstrual cycle

• More father absence (not well evidenced)

• Endocrine disrupting chemicals 

  • E.g. prenatal phthalate exposure contained in plastic containers, food packaging, etc. 

What are the types of aggression?

1. Adolescence-limited 

   • Normative pattern emerging at puberty 

   • Mimicry of antisocial models 

   • Distress due to desire for autonomy & maturity gap 

   • Associated with non-violent offences in adulthood

2. Life course persistent

   • Emerges in early childhood 

   • Predicted by cognitive & affective dysfunction 

   • Aggravated by an impoverished environment 

   • Associated with violent offences in adulthood 
     

What are the types of identity formation (in adolescence)?

1. Foreclosure (decide too soon)

2. Diffusion (not a priority)

3. Moratorium (Not deciding yet)

4. Achievement

What are Arnett’s realms of Identity (during emerging adulthood 18-25)?

1. Love (what kind of romantic partner do I want?)

2. Work (what am I good at? What are my chances?)

3. Worldview (What are my beliefs and values?)

What is emerging adulthood?

• New stage

• Extended adolescence 

• Independence is acquired more gradually and at later ages 

  • Later marriage and higher education 

• Mostly in industrialized countries 

• 5 FEATURES 

  1. Identity exploration 

  2. Instability (mobility, status changes)

  3. Self-focus 

  4. Feeling neither adult nor adolescent 

  5. Future possibilities (optimism about success)

What does working memory and long-term memory look like in aging individuals?

• Working memory 

  • Slower processing speed 

  • Reduced attentional focus & increased distraction by task irrelevant stimuli 

• Long term memory 

  • Impaired recall but not recognition (e.g. vocabulary)

  • Prospective memory declines, but procedure does not

What are the physical changes during adolescence?

• Pubertal changes are driven by hormones 

  • Increase in testosterone for boys 

  • Increase in estrogen for girls

What are the cognitive changes during adolescence?

• Shift from concrete to more abstract and complex thinking 

• Improvements in attention, memory, processing speed, and metacognition

What are the social changes during adolescence?

• Parents: 

  • renegotiation of parent-child relationships (more salient)

  • psychological control - involves manipulation and intrusion into adolescent’s feelings and pressuring them to think in particular ways

• Peers: 

  • peer groups evolve from primarily single-sex to mixed-sex

  • peer groups tend to be similar to one another in behaviour and attitude (function of homophily) 

    • adolescents who are similar choose to spend time together

  • crowds are an emerging level of peer relationships in adolescence 

    • often linked with social status and paper perceptions of their values or behaviours

• Romantic Relationships

Why is adolescence a period of heightened risk taking?

• Early in adolescence, changes in the brain’s dopaminergic system contribute to increases in adolescents sensation-seeking and reward motivation 

• Later in adolescence, the brain’s cognitive control centers develop increasing adolescents self regulation and future orientation

• The difference in timing of the development of these different regions of the brain contributes to more risk taking during middle adolescence because adolescents are motivated to seek thrills that sometimes come from risky behavior, such as reckless driving, smoking, or drinking, and have not yet developed the cognitive control to resist impulses or focus equally on the potential risks

What does differential susceptibility model mean?

Particular genetic variations are considered riskier than others, but genetic variations can also make adolescents more or less susceptible to environmental factors

What is the life course theory?

• Highlights the effects of social expectations and the normative timing of life events and social roles 

  • E.g. Becoming a parent or retirement

• Cumulative effects of membership in specific cohorts (generations), sociocultural subgroups (race, gender) and exposure to historical events (war, natural disasters)

What is the life span theory?

• Greater focus on processes within the individual (e.g. the aging brain) 

• Emphasizes the patterning of lifelong intra- and inter- individual differences

What does cognitive aging look like?

• Perform poorer on memory tasks that involve recall information

• Working memory (ability to store/use information) becomes less efficient 

• Lower processing speed 

• Hearing and vision decline 

• Inhibitory functioning (ability to focus on certain information while suppressing attention to less pertinent information) declines

• With age comes expertise → pointing to some areas where older people perform better than younger people

What is subjective age?

A multidimensional construct that indicates how old/young a person feels and into which age group a person categorizes themself

What are the three criteria for successful aging ?

1. Relative avoidance of disease, disability, and risk factors like high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity

2. The maintenance of high physical and cognitive functioning

3. Active engagement in social and productive activities.

List at least 2 common strategies for measuring intelligence.

1. Standardized IQ test 

   • Score is derived by dividing a child’s mental age by their chronological age to create an overall quotient 

2. WAIS

   • Assesses people’s ability to remember, compute, understand language, reason well, and process information quickly 

What is fluid intelligence?

• abstract reasoning ability & speed, independent of knowledge 

• philosophical thinking 

• reasoning

What is crystalized reasoning?

• General knowledge, vocabulary, and reasoning based on known information 

• What we’ve learned and what we remember 

• trivia, language, math

What is the difference between satisfaction and satisfactoriness?

• Correspondence between abilities and ability requirements constitutes satisfactoriness (competence) 

• Correspondence between an interest and reward structures constitutes satisfaction (fulfillment)

List personal attributes other than interests and abilities that are important to individual accomplishment.

1. Realistic (R) = working with gadgets and things, the outdoors, need for structure

2. Investigative (I) = scientific pursuits, especially mathematics and the physical science, an interest in theory

3. Artistic (A) = creative expression in art and writing, little need for structure

4. Social (S) = people interests, the helping professions, teaching, nursing, counseling

5. Enterprising (E) = likes leadership roles directed toward economic objectives

6. Conventional (C) = liking of well-structured environments and clear chains of command, such as office practices

What is bounded rationality?

Framework says humans try to make rational decisions but are cognitively limited 

What are cognitive biases?

Ways of thinking that leads our decisions array

What is anchoring?

Anchoring is a cognitive bias that occurs when individuals rely too heavily on the first piece of information they encounter (the "anchor") when making decisions. This initial information can overly influence their subsequent judgments, regardless of its relevance to the decision at hand.

What are framing effects?

• Framing effects refer to the cognitive bias that occurs when individuals respond differently to the same information depending on how it is presented or framed.

• For example, people may react more positively to a product advertised as '75% fat-free' rather than '25% fat,' even though the two descriptions convey the same content.

What is the difference between system 1 and system 2 thinking?

System 1 Thinking

• Automatic, unconscious, effortless, fast thinking 

• First response 

System 2 Thinking

• Controlled, conscious, intentional, effortful thinking 

• Provides filter/checks for automatic processing

Name all the bounded biases.

1. Willpower is bounded 

   • We give greater weight to present concerns than to future concerns 

   • The failure to stay on a diet

2. Self interest is bounded 

   • We care about the outcomes of others 

   • Foregoing our own benefits out of a desire to harm others 

3. Bounded ethicality 

   • Our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves 

4. Bounded awareness 

   • The ways in which we fail to notice obvious and important information that’s available to us 

What is homeostasis?

Self-regulation to keep all physiological systems stable to allow survival

What is attentional bias and capture?

• Focus is allocated towards drive satiating related cues

• Hard to think about anything else

What is time expansion & delay discounting?

• Time goes slower

• We get impatient, want it “now”

What is egocentrism?

Focus on the self & own needs related to drive above all else

What does the cycle of eating look like?

1. Low blood glucose 

2. Lateral (LH) creates the feeling for hunger

3. You eat 

4. Blood glucose is high 

5. Ventromedial (VMH) is high and you are full 

6. Continues again 

What is hedonic hunger?

Some eating is about the pleasure of food rather than just homeostatic mechanisms

Name the structures implicated in the reward network.

• Amygdala

• Nucleus accumbens (wanting) 

• Frontal cortex (i.e., prefrontal cortex)

• Hypothalamus (e.g. LH)

• Communicate via neurotransmitter dopamine

What is a drive state?

an affective experience that motivates organisms to fulfill goals that are generally beneficial to their survival and reproduction

What are the two key factors by which homeostasis is maintained?

1. The state of the system being regulated must be monitored and compared to a set point

2. Mechanisms for moving the system back to set point

How does personality form?

Personality results from an interaction between inborn temperament & the environment

What is extroversion?

• Invigorated by socializing

• High positive feelings

What is neuroticism?

• Rapid arousal & slow relaxation

• High negative feelings

• People who score high in neuroticism have more traits of pessimism, frustration, etc.

What is outlook?

• Optimism, hope, gratitude, positivity

• Subjective Well Being positively associated with:

  • Cognitive hope

  • Emotional hope

What is resilience?

• Ability to adapt to changes & challenges

• Positively associated with happiness

What are the 5 resilience factors?

1. Coping

   • Actively address the event

   • Reduce feelings of stress

2. Control & self-efficacy

   • Perception of control is beneficial (e.g. better immune functioning)

   • Self-efficacy = belief that you can do what is needed to achieve goal

3. Social relationships

   • Loneliness: cognitive and physical decline, drug misuse, increased mood disorder

4. Dispositions & emotions

   • Type A: competitive, ambitious, time urgency, controlling, impatient

   • Type B: relaxed, laid-back, flexible, tolerant, even-tempered

5. Stress management

   • We may have little control over the stressor, but can influence our response to it

What is the biopsychological model of health?

This model posits that biology, psychology and social factors are just as important in the development of disease as biological causes

What is general adaptation syndrome?

Excessive stress causes potentially damaging wear and tear on the body and can influence almost any imaginable disease process

How does stress impact the development of disease?

• Major life stressors (e.g. family death, natural disaster) that increase the likelihood of getting sick 

• Small daily hassles (e.g. getting stuck in traffic) can raise your blood pressure, alter your stress hormones, and even suppress your immune system function

What are the 3 major forms of happiness?

1. Life satisfaction

   • Causes: a good income, achieving one’s goal, and high self-esteem

2. Frequent positive feelings

   • Causes: supportive friends, interesting work, and extroverted personality

3. Infrequent negative feelings

   • Causes: low neuroticism, one’s goals are in harmony, and a positive outlook

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome. It can manifest as a reaction to stress or a fear of future events and can be experienced as a normal emotional response or as a more pervasive disorder.

What are the symptoms of general anxiety disorder (GAD)?

• Excessive, intrusive, uncontrollable worry

  • Even for “no reason”

  • For at least 6 months

• Physiological manifestation: sleep disturbance, fatigue, nervous energy, muscle tension

• Symptoms are not better explained by another mental or physical illness, drug effects

What is panic disorder?

Panic disorder is characterized by recurrent, unexpected panic attacks, which are sudden surges of intense fear or discomfort that peak within minutes.

What are the symptoms of panic disorder?

Symptoms may include heart palpitations, shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, and a fear of losing control or dying.

What is agoraphobia?

• Excessive fear of having a panic attack and being unable to escape situation

• Avoidance of panic-inducing or associated situations

  • Leaving the house alone

  • Waiting in line

  • Crowded, public places

  • Enclosed spaces (e.g. theaters, lecture halls)

  • Public transportation

What is a specific phobia?

Irrational fear of specific object/situation 

What are the 4 major subtypes of specific phobia?

1. Animal: snakes, spiders, dogs

   • Most common

2. BII: Blood-injury-injection

   • E.g. dentist, injections, blood draw

3. Situational: planes, elevators, enclosed spaces

4. Natural environment: heights, storms, water

What is social anxiety disorder?

• Intense fear & anxiety of everyday social scenarios

  • 1:1 conversations

  • Eating in public

  • Using public restrooms

  • Reading on a train

  • Giving a presentation

  • Asking for help

• Avoided entirely, or endured with difficulty

• Fear of negative evaluation, rejection, embarrassment

What is PTSD?

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that is triggered by experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event. It can result in flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, and uncontrollable thoughts about the event.

What is OCD?

• Irrational, non-sensical intrusive thoughts or irresistible compulsions

  • Doubting

  • Contamination

  • Aggressive

• Compulsions may be linked to quieting the thoughts

  • Repetitive, excessive

How do benzodiazepines work?

• Act on the neurotransmitter GABA, produce feelings of calmness and may help sleep

• More effective for physiological than psychological symptoms

• Fast acting, few side effects if used in the short-term