Psychology Exam 1

What is psychology? How can psychology be studied from different levels of analysis?

• Psychology is the study of the mind, brain, and behavior

• You can look at a single question from different viewpoints, theres many different ways to explain the same thing:

  • Societal level

  • Behavioral level

  • Mental level

  • Physiological level

  • Neurochemical level

  • Molecular level

What are some of the current debates in the field? 

• Nature v. Nurture

  • Nature: our genetics determine our behavior. Our personality traits and abilities are in our “nature”

  • Nurture: our environment, upbringing, and life experiences determine our behavior. We are “nurtured” to behave in certain ways

• How much free will do you have

  • How in control of your happiness are you? Or is it something more encoded within us?

What discipline did Psychology come from? 

• Psychology originated in philosophy

  • Many philosophers wrote about human development, interpersonal relationships, and other contemporary topics

• Wilhelm Wundt established psychology and laboratory science in 1879 by setting up a lab

  • Defined psychology as a separate science that tests hypotheses and uses the scientific method, whereas philosophers used intellect and intuition to create theories

What are the aims of the different theoretical perspectives that have shaped psychology?

• Six primary schools of thought have shaped modern psychology:

  • Structuralism: aimed to identify the most basic elements or “structures” of psychological experience through introspection

    • Introspection: reporting on moment-to-moment experiences and thoughts

  • Functionalism: aimed to understand the adaptive purposes of thought and behavior (why do we do what we do?)

  • Behaviorism: aimed to uncover how animals learn behaviors through environmental experiences, and why people behave differently under different conditions

  • Cognitive: aimed to demonstrate how mental processes shape our behavior

  • Psychoanalysis: aimed to uncover mental processes that may be operating below conscious awareness

    • Attempts to uncover the role of early life experiences

  • Humanistic and positive psychology: aimed at understanding how individuals find meaning and meet their full potential

What are some of the current trends in psychology?

• Psychology keeps up with whatever the current issues are:

  • Child mental health, personalized medicine, artificial intelligence, AI neuroscience, digital companions (chatbots)

• More relevant to individuals rather than assuming things about you

What type of education do you need to be a psychologist?

• Complete an undergraduate major and a PhD in psychology

What are the different types (e.g., clinical) of psychologists?

• Clinical psychologists:

  • Perform assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders

  • Conduct research on people with mental disorders

• Counseling psychologists:

  • Work with people experiencing temporary or relatively common life problems such as career uncertainty, relationship conflict, grief, and loss concerns

• School psychologists:

  • Work with teachers, parents, and children to remedy students’ behavioral, emotional, and learning difficulties

• Forensic Psychologists:

  • Work in prisons, jails, and other settings to assess and diagnose inmates and assist with their rehabilitation and treatments

  • Conduct research on eyewitness testimony or jury decision-making

• Industrial-Organizational Psychologists:

  • Work in companies and businesses to help select productive employees, evaluate performance, and examine the effects of different work settings

  • Design equipment and work spaces to maximize employee performance

What are the characteristics of the scientific method?

• Empiricism: objective observations of the world

• Replication: demonstrating and observing a phenomenon more than once

• Publication: making observations available to everyone so that others can evaluate the claims

How do psychologists consider and approach claims about behavior?

• They are skeptical: they examine the evidence behind claims

• They are open-minded: they are willing to consider new ideas, but they will not accept those ideas unless the evidence supports them

• They understand that they can be fooled and they design research that protects against it

What are ways that psychologists get fooled into believing what is NOT true?

• Repetition of false information

• Desire for easy answers and quick fixes

• Selective perception and memory

• Inferring causation from correlation

• Exaggeration of a truth

What are the goals of the scientific study of behavior?

• Describe behavior

  • Ex: 5% of preschoolers exhibit aggressive behavior

• Predict behavior

  • Preschoolers who watch more violent TV shows exhibit more aggressive behavior

• Identify causes of behavior

  • Control and change behavior

• Explain behavior

What is observational, experimental, and correlational research?

• To achieve description and prediction:

  • Observational research: objectively observe and record behavior

  • Correlational research: measure two variables and determine if a relationship exists between them

• To achieve identifying causes of behavior and explaining behavior:

  • Experimental research: control or manipulate one variable (independent variable), determine if changing the IV causes changes in the other/DV

What is a scientific theory? What is a hypothesis? How does support for hypotheses affect our use of theories?

• Scientific theory: a systematic body of ideas that organizes what is known about a topic from past observations and makes predictions about future observations

  • Theories are used to generate hypotheses: a prediction about the outcome of our research

  • If our hypothesis is supported, we have evidence of the correctness of the theory

What is peer review?

• Research manuscripts are evaluated by other knowledgeable researchers in the field

  • Reviewers provide feedback, revisions are made

  • Ensures only high-quality research is published

What are variables?

A quality or characteristic that can take on different values for different observations

What is the difference between a manipulated and measured variable?

• Manipulated: can control and manipulate in an experiment

• Measured: have a particular value

What are operational definitions?

• Psychologists use operational definitions of variables that define variables in terms of the operations performed to measure them, as many psychological variables are often abstract and cannot be observed directly

  • This makes measurements clear to others so that they understand what was done

What is a sample? What is a population?

• Sample: small group measured

• Population: large group of interest

What is a biased sample?

• A sample that is not like the population because of the way the sample was formed

• The results for the sample are different than what is expected from the population

What is random sampling? What is biased sampling?

• Random sampling: all members of the population have an equal chance of being selected for the sample

  • Likely to be similar to the population, but not guaranteed

• Biased sampling: a sample collected in a way that some members of the intended group have a lower or higher chance of being chosen than others

How are naturalistic observational studies performed?

• Researcher makes observations of people/animals in their normal environments without intervening in the situation

  • Might conceal themselves or remain visible

What is the purpose of a coding scheme?  How is a coding scheme created and used?

• A way to categorize and quantify behaviors

  • Operationally define behaviors of interest

  • Count the number of times those behaviors were observed

• Example:

  • Aggressive behavior = behavior intended to harm another person, behavior intended to damage objects, etc

  • Non-aggressive behavior = behavior that is helpful/cooperative

• Then count how many times the subject engages in a particular behavior

What is the case study approach?

• Sometimes, individuals will have rare or unusual conditions

  • A sample of individuals with that condition might not be available

• Case study: detailed observation of a single individual

  • Provides a description of the condition and its development

  • Case studies are of limited usefulness because of the lack of comparative information (what would have happened if the conditions were any different?)

  • Can help provide direction for future research

How can we use correlational research to predict behavior?

• Correlational research: identifies relationships between variables and can allow you to predict the value of one variable when you know the value of the other

• A computational procedure: measure 2 variables and compute a correlation

What are correlation coefficients?

• Results of correlational research

• Tells you how strongly two variables are related and the form of that relationship

• “Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient”

  • Quantifies the degree of linear relationship between 2 variables, symbolized by r

  • Between -1 and 1

  • Linear relationship

How can we interpret the strength and direction of a correlation?

• The closer to -1 or 1, the stronger and more linear the relationship is

• The closer to 0, the less likely there is a linear relationship

What is meant by “correlation is not causation”?

• If two variables (A and B) are correlated:

  • Changes in A may cause changes in B

  • Changes in B may cause changes in A

  • Changes in some third variable C may cause changes in A and B

  • A and B may be related by coincidence

• Spurious correlation: when two variables are connected, but just by coincidence

What does experimental research allow researchers to do?

• It is when one variable is manipulated to measure another

• Experimental research allows a researcher to identify causal relationships between variables

What are the differences between experimental and correlational research?

• Correlational research utilizes two measured variables, while experimental research manipulates one variable to measure another

What is an independent variable? What is a dependent variable?

• IV: the manipulated variable

• DV: the measured variable (response variable)

What is “random assignment”?

• Creating groups that are statistically equivalent (on average) by randomly assigning people to different groups

  • You can create two equivalent groups by randomly assigning people to one group or the other

How is random assignment different from random sampling?

• Random assignment assigns people to a random group to create equivalent groups

• Random sampling chooses a sample from a population so that the sample is similar to the population

What is a confound?

• Any factor that covaries perfectly with the IV

• Provide alternative explanations for differences in the DV

In psychological measurement, what is reliability?  What is validity?

• Reliability: When we make a specific measurement, do we get the same answer every time?

• Validity: Are we really measuring what we think we’re measuring? (also called construct validity)

Why do we need statistics in behavioral research?

• Different people behave differently in identical situations, there is variability in the world

• Allows you to figure out if the difference between groups is due to chance or a real difference representing an effect of the IV

What is a p-value?

• Probability that you would obtain the difference that you obtained just by chance (if the IV really had no effect

• Small p-values (usually <0.05) conclude that the difference is a real effect of the IV

What is meant by statistical significance?

The difference between groups is so large that it was likely not due to chance, but due to differences in the IV

What are the core ethical principles of research with humans?

• Beneficence: maximize the benefits to society while minimizing harm to research participants

• Autonomy: allow research participants to give concent to participate in research. Don’t force or coerce people to participate

• Justice: don’t conduct research on a small segment of the population (one type of person). Ensure that the people bearing the burden of participating are representative of those who can benefit from the research.

What are measures of central tendency?

Single numbers that describe a data set by finding its typical or middle value: mean, median, and mode

What are descriptive statistics?

Brief informational numbers or graphs that summarize the main features of a specific data set

• Mean, median, mode (central tendency)

• Variability measurements

What are inferential statistics?

A branch of statistics that uses information from a small sample to make predictions, test ideas, or draw conclusions about a larger population

Who was Phineas Gage and what does his story suggest about the brain?

• A rail-road worker in the 1800s who experienced an injury

  • A metal rod went through his head, and he survived

  • His memories and abilities were still intact, but many aspects of his personality changed

  • Suggested that certain areas of the brain control distinct aspects of human behavior and mental processing

What is “Hemispatial neglect”?

• Caused by damage (usually a stroke) in the brain’s cerebral cortex on one side

  • In the parietal lobe, close to the temporal lobe (gray region marked ‘A’ and especially the black spot within it

• Patient is unaware of the left half of the world and usually doesn’t realize that they’re unaware

Who was H.M. and what does his story suggest about the brain?

• Had severe epilepsy

• Underwent surgery to remove temporal lobes, which had unusual electrical activity

  • No longer had seizures following the procedure, but was no longer able to form memories (hippocampus)

  • Gave another clue as to how the brain is organized, but also served as a warning that damaging or removing parts of the brain can have detrimental effects

What is the Central Nervous System?

The brain and the spinal cord

What is the Peripheral Nervous System?

Nerves connecting the CNS to the rest of the body

What is the somatic nervous system?

• Controls voluntary muscle movement (PNS)

• Responsible for:

  • Communicating information about our environment via sensory fibers

  • Up to the CNS which makes an assessment of our environment, and communicates a set of →

  • Actions (both voluntary and involuntary) which are executed via motor fibers

• Our actions, in turn, expose us to new information and the cycle continues

What is the autonomic nervous system?

Controls involuntary movement (such as heartbeat, pupils, hormones) (PNS)

What are the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system?

• Sympathetic nervous system

  • Fight or flight

  • Increase function of systems needed to do the thing right now

  • Decrease function of systems that can wait for better times

• Parasympathetic nervous system

  • Rest and digest

  • Relaxed

What are the key components of the endocrine system?

How do your endrocrine glands operate when you are stressed?

1. Brain, including the hypothalamus, detects a stressor that →

2. Hypothalamus directs pituitary to release a hormone into the bloodstream that increases the function of adrenal glands

3. Adrenal glands release more cortisol into the bloodstream

4. Cortisol changes the way multiple systems work, such as the release of glucose from the liver to power muscles, and changes brain function (memory, attention)

5. Brain eventually detects elevated cortisol, tells hypothalamus to stop, and the feedback loops slows things down again to baseline

How does the brain vary across species?

• The central nervous system follows the same plan across a wide variety of animal species

• Differences in size and wrinkles mostly have to do with differences in the amount of cortex

• Mammalian brain structure and organization is highly similar across species

What are the names the lobes of the brain?

• Frontal

• Parietal

• Temporal

• Insular

• Occipital

What are the main functions of each of the lobes?

• Frontal: complex thought, planning, control of movement, map of the body’s muscles

  • Plans and executes our intentions

• Parietal: touch, spatial awareness, map of the body’s skin surface

  • Helps us understand where our body is and what it is touching and seeing

• Temporal: hearing, object memory

  • Necessary for auditory processing, knowing what things are, and emotional memory

• Insular: taste, awareness of internal organs

• Occipital: vision

  • Turns information about light into lines, borders, surfaces

What area of the brain may have contributed to HM’s difficulties?

Temporal lobe, specifically the hippocampus and amygdala

What is aphasia?

• A language disorder caused by damage to the parts of the brain that control how you speak, understand, read, and write

What are Wernicke’s aphasia symptoms?

Damage in temporal lobe, cant understand but can speak

• Saying many words that don’t make sense

• Unable to understand the meaning of words

• Able to speak well in long sentences, but they don’t make sense

• Using the wrong words or nonsense words

• Unable to understand written words

• Trouble writing

• Frustration

What area of the brain is disrupted in hemispatial neglect?

Parietal lobe

What is the somatotopic map in the “somatosensory cortex”?

• An organized, point-for-point representation of the body's surface mapped across the brain tissue:

  • Heavily distorted: the more area is devoted to a body part, the more sensitive it is to touch

  • In parietal lobe

What is proprioception?

• Sense of where/how our body is moving, helps with:

  • Knowing where our body parts are

  • Understanding how much force to use

  • Coordination between body parts and senses

How does the frontal lobe execute our intentions?

• The motor cortex in the frontal lobe is right next to the somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe

  • The somatosensory cortex processes sensory signals and executes body movements

  • These can communicate very quickly

What is Broca’s aphasia?

Damage in the frontal lobe, can’t speak but can understand

• Difficulty forming complete sentences

• Leaving out words like “is” or “the”

• Saying something that doesn’t resemble a sentence

• Trouble understanding sentences

• Making mistakes in following directions like “left, right, under, and after”

• Using a word that’s close to what you intend, but is not the exact word

What are the functions that the prefrontal cortex regulates?

Executive functions, which are high-level mental skills used to plan, focus attention, regulate emotions, and make decisions

How is the insula different from the other lobes? What are the functions?

• The insula is a distinct, hidden fifth lobe of the cerebral cortex tucked deep within the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure), unlike the other outer lobes that are fully exposed on the surface of the brain

• Maps internal body sensations, helps generate emotional feelings, and plays a major role in self-awareness

How are the subcortical regions different from the cortex? What is the limbic system?

• The subcortical regions lie deep inside the brain, sitting beneath the cerebral cortex

• Support memory, emotions, motivation, etc

• The major subcortical forebrain structures are often called the limbic system (regulating emotion, memory, and basic survival drives)

What type of memories is the hippocampus essential in forming?

• Represents and distinguishes different times and places

• Essential for forming memories about “what happened to us, when, and where”

  • Also called episodic memories

What is the amygdala? What is the impact of losing amygdala function?

• Processes: What emotional content did this experience have?

• Lack of function can be seen as a “lack of fear,” but it can diminish the ability of both strong good and bad things to affect our decisions and memories

What brain regions are important for motivation and habit formation?

• The limbic system, specifically basal ganglia

  • Motivation: nucleus accumbens

  • Habits: caudate and putamen

What do the thalamus and hypothalamus do?

• Thalamus: a relay between cortical and subcortical regions (but a very complex one)

• Hypothalamus: communicates information and from endocrine/hormone systems (stress, feeding, reproduction)

  • Homeostasis

Which areas of the brain produce a lot of dopamine? What does dopamine do?

• Midbrain: contains several clusters of cells that release neurotransmitters all over the brain

• Dopamine teaches us about how to get more of things we like (by increasing motivation and action initiation)

  • Not the same as the experience of pleasure

What regions of the brain are part of the hindbrain?

• Pons, medulla oblongata: automate fundamental behaviors for life

• Cerebellum: fine motor coordination

What are the parts of a neuron?

• Dendrites: receive input (chemical and electrical) from other neurons; enough input will make the cell “fire”

• Cell body: integrates information from dendrites; contains DNA and protein machinery to make receptors, grow, etc

• Axon: when the cell fires, transmits electricity down to all cells it communicates with (faster when myelin is wrapped around)

• Terminals: release neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) when electrical activity reaches them)

What is myelin?

• From glia, “white matter” is made of fat, insulate the nerve fibers

• Speeds up the transmission of signals between neurons

What is glia?

• Non-neuronal cells in the central and peripheral nervous systems that support, nourish, and protect neurons

• The myelin sheet is not a glial cell itself, but is produced and wrapped around nerve axons by glial cells

How do neurons send messages to other neurons?

• Neurons tend to be organized; for example, in the cerebral cortex they are in layers

• Different layers get different mixes of inputs from different regions and send them to different outputs; with organization, complexity is possible pretty quickly

• The dendrites and cell bodies are located within a brain region, but the axons and terminals can go all over

How do neurons generate action potentials?

• Neurons maintain a negative voltage state

• A stimulus raises the membrane potential

  • When sufficient stimulation occurs, positive ions enter the cell and depolarize the cell to a positive voltage

• Then repolarizes to the resting state

• This process triggers the neighboring axon to depolarize and travel

• An action potential travels down an axon to cause the release of neurotransmitters

What is the synapse?

• The space between an axon terminal and the receiving neuron

What happens when neurotransmitters leave the synapse?

• An action potential travels down an axon to cause the release of neurotransmitters from the terminals

• Neurotransmitters cross the synapse to activate receptors, which let in positive ions that change the charge of the neuron from - to +

What’s the difference between an agonist and antagonist?

• Agonist: an external chemical that mimics the endogenous neurotransmitter

• Antagonist: an external chemical that prevents the receptor from being activated by blocking activity of endogenous neurotransmitters

What are endogenous opioids?

Released in small doses, linked to the experience of pleasure and pain relief (made in body)

What do sensory neurons do? Motor neurons? Interneurons?

• Sensory neuronsdetect environmental stimuli and transmit that information to the central nervous system

• Motor neurons carry commands from the central nervous system to muscles and glands to trigger action

• Interneurons connect sensory and motor neurons within the brain and spinal cord to process and integrate the signals

What are the three primary portions of the brain visible in early development in the womb?

The three primary portions of the brain visible in early development (during the fourth to fifth week of pregnancy) arethe forebrain, the midbrain, and thehindbrain

How does the size of the cortex vary across species?

As total brain size increases, the cerebral cortex disproportionately enlarges and takes up a greater fraction of the total brain volume

What is the difference between an excitatory and an inhibitory signal?

• Excitatory: Messages that increase the chance that a neuron will fire an action potential

• Inhibitory: Messages that decrease the chance a neuron will fire an action potential

What is neural plasticity? What is phantom limb syndrome?

• Neural plasticity is the nervous system's ability to change, reorganize, and form new connections in response to new experiences, learning, or injury

• Phantom limb syndrome is a condition where a person continues to feel sensations or pain in a limb that has been amputated or is no longer physically present.

What are our five main senses?

• Vision

• Hearing

• Touch

• Smell

• Taste

Why is the study of sensation and perception part of psychology? In what ways do the study of sensation and perception contribute to the study of behavior?

• Sensation and perception are processes of identifying objects and events in the world so that we can move through our environment and take action

• This overlaps with biology, consciousness, and cognitive psychology

• Studying it:

  • Helps us understand behavior and mental activity, which depend on our ability to gather information about the world

  • How our sensory systems should work and how to fix problems when they don’t

  • Design better and more effective ways of presenting information to people

What is sensation?

• Occurs in an organism when physical energy produces a change in a specialized element of the nervous system called “receptors”

  • “I see a spot of light”

What is perception?

• The result of psychological processes in which sensations are interpreted and organized to give meaning to the objects or events that produced the sensations

  • “I see the moon”

What is transduction?

• Converting physical stimulus to neural signals that the brain can interpret

What are the different ways to measure perception?

• Phenomenological methods: present a stimulus, ask the person to describe it

  • Less useful for complex stimuli; not very precise and doesn’t work for animals

• Psychophysics: the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the resulting psychological experiences

  • Objective measurement (quantification) of the stimulus AND the response

What is the field of psychophysics?

• The study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the resulting psychological experiences

What is the difference between detection and discrimination?

• Detection: what is the “weakest” stimulus we can detect

• Discrimination: what is the smallest difference between stimuli that we can discriminate

Answered by psychophysics

What is an absolute threshold?

• The lowest level of physical energy or sensory input—such as light, sound, or touch—that a person can detect at least 50% of the time

What is an action potential?

• Brief electrical signal carried by a neuron

When do neurons fire action potentials?

When incoming signals cause the internal voltage to rise and cross a specific limit called the threshold

What does it mean to say that an action potential is an "all-or-none" event?

• Action potentials in a neuron are always the same “size” (same change in electrical potential), either happens or it doesnt

When measuring the absolute threshold in a detection task, what introduces uncertainty to our decision as to whether or not a signal is present?

Noise

• External: environmental sounds, etc

• Neural/internal:

  • Neurons fire action potentials when stimulated; therefore, neurons encode different intensities by changing their firing rate

    • Spontaneous activity (noise in the neural potential): neurons fire action potentials in the absence of stimulation

What do the terms hit, miss, false alarm, and correct rejection refer to in Signal Detection Theory?

• Signal detection theory: a way to measure sensitivity and bias

What is Weber’s Law as it applies to discrimination?

• The just noticeable difference (JND) in the intensity of a stimulus is proportional to the intensity of the standard stimulus

  • More change needed to notice a difference when starting stimulus intensity is high