Psychology Exam #2

Consciousness

immediate awareness of you internal states— your thoughts, sensations, memories—and the external world around you

Attention

capacity to selectivity focus senses and awareness on particular stimuli/aspects of the environment

• has limited capacity

• is selective (cocktail party effect)

• can be “blind”

Multi-Tasking

paying attention to two or more sources or stimuli at once

• Creates less attention and impairs attention for each task

• EX: listening to music while doing chores

Task Variation

We tend to do better when there is a lot of variance between tasks, or other words, the tasks are very different

• EX: listening to podcast while driving

• Can be good because its using different senses

Thought Suppression

Conscious avoidance of a thought

(White Bear Study): participants very distracted by white bear, trying not to think of it

Reasons why we need sleep:

• Clears brain metabolic waste products

• Immune system

• Learning and memory

• Regulates mood

Hypnosis

Heightened state of awareness

• used for relaxation

• concentration

• fear/phobia

Myths about hynosis:

• It’s magic

• makes you do terrible things to people

• can’t come out of the trance until the person lets you

Meditation

The goal is to train your attention

Myths:

• sitting cross legged and humming

• not religious

• doesn’t take a long time

Effects of Meditation:

• Improve concentration, attention, and memory

• Improve emotional control and well-being

• Reduce stress and minimize its physical effects

• Increase productivity

Drug Abuse

recurrent drug use resulting in disruption of academic, social, or occupational functioning, legal or psychological problems

Addiction

Psychological/physical compulsion to take a drug

Physical Dependence

body and brain chemistry have physically adapted to a drug

Drug Tolerance

increasing amounts of the drug are needed to gain the original effect

Learning

relatively enduring change in behavior or knowledge as a result of experience

Conditioning

process of learning associations between environmental events and behavioral responses

Classical Conditioning

learning process that involves repeatedly pairing a neutral stimulus with a response-producing stimulus until the neutral stimulus elicits the same response

Extinction (in classical conditioning)

gradual weakening and apparent disappearance of conditioned response; Occurs when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus

Spontaneous Recovery

Reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a period of time without exposure to the conditioned stimulus

• The learned response isn’t erased or eliminated, just weakened

Operant Conditioning

The learning of active, or voluntary behaviors that are shaped and maintained by their consequences

• (a person learns to do something more or less because of consequence)

Consequence

Can be good or bad

1. Is it likely to increase or decrease the behavior in the future?

2. Is something being added or taken away?

Positive Reinforcement

Response is followed by the addition of a reinforcing stimulus, increasing the likelihood that the response will be repeated in similar situation (adding/presenting something good)

Negative Reinforcement

Response results in the removal of, avoidance of, or escape from a punishing stimulus, increasing the likelihood that the response will be repeated in similar situations (taking away something bad)

• Ex: stopping the dinging seatbelt sound in your car, shutting off morning alarm

Punishment

process in which a behavior is followed by an aversive consequence that decreases the likelihood of the behavior being repeated

• Do not confuse this with negative reinforcement

Positive Punishment

a situation in which an operant is followed by presentation or addition of an averse stimulus; also called punishment by application (adding/presenting something bad)

• Ex: speeding ticket/points on your license

Negative Punishment

a situation in which an operant is followed by the removal or subtraction of a reinforcing stimulus; also called punishment by removal (taking away something good)

• Ex: a teenager loses privileges

Shaping

Learning that results from selectively reinforcing successively closer approximations of goal behavior until that goal behavior is displayed

• awarded for going in the right direction - training a dog with treats

Learned Helplessness

Uncontrollable bad events lead to perceived lack of control, which results in generalized helpless behavior

• Seligman and the dog study

Observational Learning

Expectation of reinforcement(by watching someone being rewarded) can act to reinforce a behavior

• Bobo doll study

People are more likely to imitate:

• People who are rewarded for the behavior

• Warm, nurturing people

• People who have control over you (have the power to influence your life)

• People who are similar to you (age, sex, interests, etc.)

• People who perceive you as having a higher social status

• If you’ve been rewarded for imitating the same behavior in the past

Encoding

getting information into memory

Storage

retaining information into memory

Retrieval

accessing or recovering stored information

Stage Model of Memory

we remember by transferring information from one state to another

Sensory Memory

Information from the environment that we got through our 5 senses

Capacity: Large

Duration: Seconds

Short Term Memory

Holds conscious information we’re currently thinking about

Capacity: 7+-2 pieces of information (Miller); 4+-1 (More modern research)

Duration: 15-20 seconds

Maintenance Rehearsal

the process of keeping information in short-term memory by mentally repeating it

Chunking

grouping related items together into a single unit

Explicit Memory

when people consciously or intentionally retrieve past experiences

Semantic Memory

general knowledge, concepts, and facts

• Facts you have to memorize for school

• Stuff I remember (PEMDAS, Mitochondria, 31771)

Episodic Memory

the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place

• When you remember things from a long time ago

Implicit Memory

information we remember without deliberately calling on it

• Riding a bike

Procedural Memory

memory for different skills, operations, and actions

Priming

enhanced identification of certain words/objects

• Advertisers using popular sayings to convince you to do something

Retrieval

the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously concded and stored

Retrieval Cue

a cue, prompt, or hint that helps you bring information into mind

• Reminders set on your phone or writing it down

Testing Retrieval:

Recall information using no retrieval cues

Recognize information from several possible choices

Forgetting: Inability to remember information that was previously available

Encoding Failure: the information never made it to long-term memory in the first place

Decay: memories fade away over time if they aren’t used

Source Confusion: forgetting where you acquired a particular memory

Eyewitness reports may have:

Overconfidence

Weapon Focus

Suggestibility

Cognition

Mental activities involved in acquiring, retaining, and using knowledge

Thinking

Manipulation of mental representations of information in order to draw inferences and conclusions

Mental Image

Mental representation of objects or events that are not physically present

Prototype

Best, or most typical, representation of a particular concept

Exemplars

Individual instances or specific examples

Trial and Error

strategy for problem solving; trying a variety of solutions and eliminating those that don’t work

Algorithms

strategy for problem solving; using a specific rule, procedure, or method (such as a mathematical formula) that inevitably produces the correct solution

Heuristics

strategy for problem solving; following a general rule of thumb to reduce the number of possible solutions

Functional Fixedness

the tendency to view objects as functioning only in their usual or customary way; often prevents seeing the full range of ways in which an object can be used and can hinder problem-solving

• The Candle Problem: attach a lit candle on the wall/ the wax cannot touch the floor

Availability Heuristic

Probability of an event is judged by how easily previous occurrences of that event can be recalled

Organ Donor Study

compared organ rates in different countries

• Smaller percent of organ donors in the U.S. because they are given the choice

• default efforts- countries who want to donate were going to have them donated when they died anyway, so they are more willing to give them up

Intelligence

global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully, and deal effectively with the environment

• Measure: IQ, multiple intelligence theories, all have criticisms

Stereotype Threat

feat that you will confirm a stereotype results in physiological stress, arousal, and distracting thoughts that interfere with cognition and problem-solving

• Aware of negative stereotype

• Fear you will confirm it

• No one is immune - just be aware

• Awareness helps minimize its negative effects

Piaget’s Theory

children actively construct their understanding of the world as they grow through 4 predictable stages

• 4 stages

• cognition

• no stages for adulthood

Erikson’s Theory

• human personality develops in 8 phycological stages that cover whole life span

• outcome of each stage varies along a continuum from positive to negative