Psych 1010 (University of Lethbridge)

Levels of Psychology

- Social

- Biological

- Individual

- Cultural

What does Studying the mind account for??

- Sensation and perception

- Movement (why and how do we move?)

- How does the brain produce movement and why are some easier than others?)

- Learning and memory,

- Language (enables categorization of things),

- Emotion,

- Spatial reasoning

- Thought and consciousness (aware of own thought processes),

- Sleep and dreaming

- Development of the characteristics in individuals(proximate cause and behaviour

- Expression of these characteristics in a social context.

Functionalism

- William James:

sought to understand mental processes by understanding their goal/function of those processes.

- More observable but still dependent on subjective data

Behaviourism

John Watson and B.F Skinner:

manipulating environment made individuals behave a certain way, arose out of problems with introspection not giving insight into why behaviours occur, mental events cannot be directly observed and introspection doesn't explain behaviours,

- Nervous system as black box that is plays no role/unimportant, every behaviour is a simply reaction to environment

Aristotle

- Wrote about memory,sleep, and sensation

Mind/Body Problem

- Dualism and Descartes (mind is separate, non-material thing that transcends body),

- How can we study an ethereal concept?

- Is the mind a product of the brain and its activity?

Nature vs Nurture

Many characteristics have genetic components but not causes (intelligence, mental illness, ability to metabolize drugs, developmental disabilities, etc)

- Experiences shape how the characteristics develop and execute, interationist perspective

- * Interactionist perspective*:

- What does the environment do?

- How do experiences influence us?

- How does it alter gene expression (which are turned on/off)?

- Genes + environment = a new form (cell decision in first stage of development is caused by environment [epigenesis])

Brain Hypothesis

- brain produces mind and behaviour. Structure and functions determine mind.

Interactionist perpective

- Experiences shape how the characteristics develop and execute

Structuralism

- Wundt and Tichener:

analyzed elements of sensations/feelings using introspection/trained self-report to find out when individuals became aware of sensation

Classical conditioning

Pavlov

Operant Conditioning

Skinner

Information Processing Theory

- Brain development and learning reflects changes in hardware (brain/NS) and Software (mental processes)

- Hardware changes unlike in computer view, software can get better at running some programs,

Cognitive Revolution

- Grew out of post WWII era and computers; human mind receives input, performs operations on that input (first being perception), and generates output

Modern Scientific Psychology

- Eclectic, drawn from several theoretical perspectives, acceptance based on scientific data

Evolutionary Psychology

- Roots in biology and ethology

- . . . why do ducks imprint on the first moving object they see? (behaviorism)

- Darwin, Lorenz, Tinbergen (rooted in Darwinian theory)

- Innate traits (not shaped by the environment, but by our own biology)

- Adaptive value of behavior

What is Science?

- Method for acquiring knowledge about the world by combining:

- The principles of logic (deductive and inductive reasoning) WITH

- Information derived from systematic measurements of the object of study (empirical research)

Why use the Scientific method?

- We need an objetive way to answer questions about the mind

e.g., preferential looking: an experiment to gauge whether a child (who cannot yet speak) preferentially looks at one of two shapes

- Conclusions depend wholly on the quality, reliability, and validity of the data gathered

Beyond the Research

- Methods used translate into conclusions that influence our theoretical and practical view of what and whom we are as humans and as individuals

e.g., the notion that "babies cannot feel pain", surgeries were done on babies without the use of anaesthetics

- So what? The Dangers of Pseudoscience

- Educational policies (1917: Lev Vygotsky talked about how children learned better when they had tutors around them that knew more than they did)

- Legal Policies (What we can or cannot do, legally speaking)

- Medical Policies

What do we measure?

- The DEPENDENT variable

- Operational Definition: to define something so that it can be measured

- Not a "dictionary" definition of a word, but to describe something sothat it can be measured

Examples of Operational definitions

- Milkshakes consumed after a fast as a definition of "hunger"

- Willingness to perform a task for an incentive as a definition of"motivation"

- Number of errors made on a task as a measure of "performance"

- IQ test score as a definition of "intelligence"

- When writing a research paper, defining the measure is essential so that it can be universally understood by the reader.

Randomn Assignment

Division of subjects into control/experimental groups with no bias.

Cohort Effect

- differences between test subjects based on life experiences

Longtitudinal Design

- Same person measured repeatedly over a long time span

- Long and expensive

Cross Sectional Design

- Persons of different ages or age groups cohort measured at the same time.

Who will we measure?

- Selecting participants

- Random sampling and the ability to generalize from results

- True random samples vs. convenience samples

Population: group you want to know about (e.g., Canadian university students)

- Random sample: taken at random from this population (e.g., selecting students from

every school in your country OR

- Convenience sample: taken at random from an available subgroup in the population

(e.g., students in your school)

...not PERFECT, but convenient (and not as impossible to do as the "ideal" sample that is

representative of the entire population)

Types of research methods?

Descriptive methods: describe what is happening observational studies - look at what someone is doing

self-reports - ask someone what they do

Experimental methods: investigate what causes an outcome How will you design your research?

case studies - used for things that are "rare", e.g., certain genetic disorders

Correlational methods: test the relationship between factor

How will you design your research?

- Descriptive methods used to observe, measure, and describe behavior and experience

• Record what a person does, says, feels, believes, etc.

• Useful to direct the research, but cannot provide explanations for the causes of the behavior

• Anecdotes and testimonials (invalid)

note: Piaget is briefly mentioned; he is a pioneer in experimentation involving children

Observation

Naturalistic vs. Structured Observation

Case Studies

- Research effort is focused on one or a few individuals who are studied in great depth--often because of unusual life experiences or brain injury

- Case HM

- Case Genie

Case Hm

(motor winder who suffered epilepsy; did a procedure which separated the parts of his brain which caused the epilepsy)

Case Genie

(child who was completely isolated from the outside world; could not speak--she never learned to walk properly, nor language because she was outside the critical developmental stage of children)

Correlation Research: Predicting Behaviour

- A correlation measures the direction of, and the strength of, the relationship between two things:

• does NOT measure the causal relationship (whether one thing causes another)

• correlation = = causation

- No random assignment to groups or control of the situation

- There is no way to assess cause and effect (the "third" variable problem)

- Correlations vary between +1.00 and -1.00; 0.00 = no relationship

Experimental Research: Explainng Behaviour

- Active manipulation of the experimental situation allows you to make cause-and- effect conclusions

- Isolation and manipulation of the INDEPENDENT variable

- differences BETWEEN the groups

- MUST include adequate control groups

- Cornerstone is Random Assignment to groups (each person that has been selected

for the sample is assigned at random to be in the control group or experimental group)

- Ensures that variability in subjects is distributed across different conditions note: a "blind observer" in psychology is someone who is not aware of the hypothesis

Time Span of your Research?

- Regardless of research design, the timespan of data collection also matters

- Longitudinal designs

- Same person measured repeatedly over long timespans

- Cross-sectional Designs

- Persons of different ages or groups (cohorts) measured at the same time

Genes

- Engine of the Evolution and of Development

- Make a protein

- The Genes you inherit = your genotype

- Two copies of each gene = potential variations in the DNA code = Allele

Alles

-Alleles same = Homozygous

- Alleles different = Heterozygous.

Chromosomes

Paired and homozygous except XY in males

Sex

in the genome

Genotype

The actual DNA you possess, the genes you "carry".

Phenotype

The characteristics that come about according to how those genes are expressed (i.e, is a protein made or not?)

If you have a gene will you have a trait?

- Environment plays a role in gene expression

- Depends wheter you have genotype or phenotype

What is your phenotype?

- Dominance and Recessiveness

- If two different alleles, one will dominate and the other will not be expressed

- A carrier = the heterozygous condition(carrying a recessive gene that may only be expressed in subsequent generations).

Simple Mandelian genetics

Hair colour, eye colour, skin colour etc., (dark is dominant over light)

How do we find out about genetic influences on human behaviour?

- Behaviour Genetics

- Kinship Studies

Kinship Studies

- Comparing identical and fraternal twins

- Comparing those raised apart with those raised together

- Comparing adopted children to their biological and adoptive parents

What does "Nervous System Structure" equal?

Nervous System Function

Neurons

- Neurons = brain cells = fundamental unit of the nervous system

- Different shape(morphology) - different function

Glia

- "support cells = many kinds, many functions

- Special functions Include:

- Blood - brain barrier(astrocytes)

- Electrical insulation for axons

- Myelin producing cells

- Schwann cells and oligodendrocytes

Parts of a Neuron

- Dendrites

- Soma

- Axon

- Nodes of Ranvier (generates action potential)

- Terminal buttons

- Synapse (Neurons communicate)

How does the nervous system work?

- Neural "activity" is both electrical and chemical in nature.

- Neural activity involves both intracellular and intercellular communication.

- Electrical activity within a cell is generated by the movement of charged particles(ions).

- Chemical activity between cells is generated by the release and reception of specialized chemical molecules.

Semi - Permeable Membrane

- Some things go through some don't

- In a neuron, these factors result in the resting potential.

= a potential difference across the membrane

= the ability to provide energy to produce an effect

Generating A.P (Action Potential)

- Change in potential, primarily because of messages from other neurons

- All or nothing

- Excitatory messages:

Cell loses the negative charge

Depolarization

Synaptic Communication

- When action potential reaches the end of the axon, it triggers vesicles(sacs) in the terminal buttons to release chemicals called neurotransmitters

- Theses activate specific receptors, most of which are on the postsynaptic membrane

- May be excitatory or inhibitory, depending on the receptor.

Examples of Neurotransmitters

- Acetylcholine: Involved in triggering muscles to contract; learning and memory; sleep.

- Dopamine: Reward, Motivated Behaviours;n voluntary motor control

- Norepinephrine: Arousal and Vigilance

- Serotonin: Involved in dreaming, and emotional states

- Gamma: aminobutyric acid (GABA)

Inhibition, involved in regulating anxiety

- Glutamate: Excitation, learning and memory

Endogenous Opioids (Endorphins)

Endocannabinoids