Intro to Psychology

What are the three steps of the scientific method?

1. Develop a research question based on theory

2. Design a study to test

3. Collect, analyze, and interpret data

What are some things you might be thinking about when you make it to the second step of the Scientific Method?

Operationalizing your variables, pre-registering your study before data collection, and whether it will be correlational or experimental.

What is the difference between a research question and a hypothesis?

A research question is a broader question about a behavior of variables, while a hypothesis is the actual testable, falsifiable, statement about what you predict will occur in the study.

What is a operational variable?

An operational variable is a variable that can be properly measured in a research design

What is test-retest reliability?

Whether a study can be reproduced and still show similar results

What is inter-rater reliability?

Whether two researchers would see the same data and came to the same conclusion.

What is construct validity?

Whether the right variable was being measured in relation to the theory.

What is External Validity?

Whether the results of a study can be applied to a larger population

What is internal validity?

Whether confounds can be found within the study.

Autonomy in Research

The right of each participant to choose not to participate in the study without intimidation.

Beneficence in Research

The right for the benefits of the study to outweigh the risks of harm.

Justice in Ethics

The right of participants bearing the burden of research to benefit from the research.

What is the somatic nervous system?

The part of the peripheral nervous system that is responsible for voluntary muscle movements and conscious sensory perception.

What the parts of a neuron?

Dendrites, Axon, Meylin Sheath, Terminal Branches, and Cell body

What happens during the resting potential stage?

The neuron is at rest, and the Na+ is concentrated outside the cell, and K+ is concentrated inside the cell.

What happens during the Depolorization phase?

A stimulus causes a small influx of Na+, but it then begins to come in rapidly as the voltage decreases, the inside of the cell quickly becoming positive.

What happens during the Repolarization phase?

At the peak, the sodium channels finally close and become inactive, but now the K+ channels are open, allowing the K+ to live the cell. Making it more negative than the start.

What happens during the hyperpolarization (Refractory Period) phase?

While in this stage, the cell is still more negative than at the start and goes into a refractory period where it is hard or impossible for the neuron to fire another signal immediately.

What are Excitatory Receptors?

Receptors that trigger electrical signals in receiving neurons

What are Inhibitory Receptors?

Receptors that suppress electrical signals in receiving neurons.

Agonist

A molecule that increases a neurotransmitter’s action

Antagonist

A molecule that inhibits or blocks a neurotransmitter’s action.

What are the primitive brain structures?

Medulla, Pons, Cerebellum, and Reticular Formation

Thalamus

“relay station”, direct information to/from the body and brain.

Cerebellum

“balance” - coordinates movement, balance, and posture.

Medulla

Controls heart rate, blood pressure, and swallowing reflexes.

Pons

Controls automatic breathing.

Reticular Formation

Regulates attention, sleep, and wakefulness.

What parts of the brain are in the limbic system?

Amygdala, Hypothalamus, and Hippocampus

Amygdala

Responsible for Emotions, especially fear and aggression.

Hippocampus

Responsible of memories, especially autobiographical memories.

Hypothalamus

Responsible for hunger and reward seeking behaviors.

What are the five cortices of the brain

Frontal Lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe, and Insular lobe.

Where is Broca’s area located?

Frontal Lobe

Where is Werknick’s area located?

Temporal Lobe

Function of Broca’s area

Controls speak production

Function of Wernicke’s area

Controls language comprehension.

Frontal Lobe

Responsible for managing voluntary movement (motor sensory cortex), executive functioning, and personality regulation.

Parietal Lobe

Interprets sensory information (Somatosensory cortex), tracks the position and movement of the body, and controls cognitive integration (sensory signals with visual or auditory data)

Insular Lobe

Awareness of organs within the body and taste sensations.

EEG

Electrocardiogram - gives good information about the timing of activity in the brain, but not location.

fMRI

Gives good information about the location of activity in the brain, but not timing.

Neural Plasticity

The nervous system’s ability to reorganize itself in response to learning, experience, age, and injury.

Critical Periods

A specific time-specific window in early life when the brain is super sensitive to its environment and rapidly builds key skills like vision, hearing, or language.

Glial Cells

Provides support, protection, and maintenance to neurons rather than carrying impulses.

Young-Helmholtz Trichromic color Theory

The theory of color vision states that the retina contains three distinctive types of color receptors (cones), that are sensitive to red, green, and blue, which combine to produce the perception of any visible color.

Hering’s opponent-process theory

The theory of color vision stating that opposing retinal processes enable color perception through three pairs of opposing receptor mechanisms: red-green, blue-yellow, and black-white.

Cones

Color and sharp edges

Rods

Sensitivity (Small changes, peripheral, and dim lighting)

The principles of Gestalt

Connectedness, Closure, Similarity, Continuity, Proximity, and Synchrony.

Perceptual Constancy

Our tendency to perceive objects as having certain constancies.

Types of Perceptual Constancy

Size constancy, Color constancy, and Shape constancy.

Multimodal Perception

The brain’s process of combining information from multiple senses, such as vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, into a single unified experience.

McGurk Effect

An illusion where seeing a person’s lips pronounce one syllable while hearing a different syllable played on the audio tricks your brain into hearing a third, blended sound.

Perceptual Set/Learning

A mental predisposition, developed from experience, that influences what aspects of sensory data we perceive and what we ignore.

Perceptual Narrowing

We lose the ability to perceive differences that we are not exposed to.

Habituation

Gradually becoming less responsive to a constant stimuli

Dishabituation

Recovery in responsiveness that were loss in habituation.

Principle of Contiguity

The US must be presented very quickly after NS for conditioning to occur.

Principle of Contingency

The NS and US must be slightly separated in time, giving the sense that NS = US.

Acquisition

Initial process of learning an association

What is the difference between Operant vs Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning uses association of stimuli to create an involuntary automatic response, while operant conditioning uses reinforcement and punishment to either increase or decrease voluntary behavior.

Continuous vs Partial reinforcement

Continuous reinforcement rewards the individual every time they do the desired behavior, while partial reinforcement rewards the individual only sometimes for the desired behavior.

Positive Reinforcement

Something is awarded to increase the likelihood of a behavior

Positive Punishment

Something is rewarded to decrease the likelihood of a behavior

Negative Reinforcement

Something is removed to increase the likelihood of a behavior

Negative Punishment

Something is removed to decrease the likelihood of a behavior

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivated to perform due to an internal factor (Mastering a skill, wanting to learn it , enjoying the subjects or sport, ect)

Extrinsic Motivation

Motivated to perform an activity because of an external factor (Good grades, avoid punishment, honor roll, ect)

Primary Reinforcers

Reinforcers that tie to our biology, whether it be food, sleep, water, ect.

Secondary Reinforcers

Reinforcers that do not tie to our biology, whether it be money, Verbal Praise, Clickers, Whistle, etc.

Vicarious Reinforcement & Punishment

An increase/decrease in behavior by witnessing another person being praised/punished for a behavior.

Encoding

When the brain converts sensory input into retrievable memories.

Sensory Memories

momentary “recording” of images and sounds. Usually forget after like 4 seconds.

Working Memory

“short-term memory” — temporarily stores information, executes operations on information.

Long-term Memory

Stored for long durations, limitless storage.

Types of Explicit Memory

Episodic and Semantic

Episodic Memory

Personally experienced Events.

Semantic Memory

Facts or General Knowledge

Types of Implicit Memories

Procedural and Classical Conditioning

Procedural Memory

Motor skills, “muscle memory”

Retrograde Amnesia

You can’t recall or retrieve previous memories.

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to form new memories.

Shallow Processing

Encoding sensory level information (E.g., skim reading, finding and highlighting words in bold, re-copying notes, and re-reading notes.

Deep Processing

Encoding significant and meaningful information via elaboration, making links between known information and new information. (Ex; Connect concepts to own life, creating mental image of a word.)

Chunking

Chunk information into meaningful units allowing us to remember more.

Primary and Recency Effect

People best remember the first and last items in a sequence and worse remeber the items in the middle.

Role of the Frontal Lobe in Memory

Helps to process and store explicit memories

Role of the Basal Ganglia in Memory

Helps to facilitate the formation of procedural memories

Role of the Hippocampus in Memory

Helps to process and store explicit memories

Role of the Cerebellum in Memories

Role in the formation and storage of conditioning

Role of the Amygdala in Memories

In charge of emotional memories, which can lead to the formation of ‘flashbulb’ memories

Misinformation Effect

When a person’s recall of an episodic memory becomes distorted or less accurate after they are exposed to misleading post-event information.

Retrieval Process

The act of actively pulling information out of your memory rather than passively re-reading it or looking at notes.

Spacing Effect

The fact that your brain remembers things much better when you spread your study or practice session out over time, rather than cramming it all into one long session.

What are the three ways that your brain retrieves information from long-term memory?

Recognition, Free recall, and Cued Recall

Recognition

Identifying information that you have seen or learned before when it is presented right in front of you. (e.g., a multiple-choice test or recognizing someone in public)

Cued Recall

Retrieving stored information when given a hint, prompt, or associated clue. (e.g. fill-in-the-blank questions)

Free Recall

Retrieving stored information completely from memory without any hints, prompts, or choices. (E.g., short-answer questions or reciting a grocery list from memory)

Encoding Specificity Principle

Memory recall is most successful when the conditions and context at the time of retrieval match the conditions and context present when the information was originally encoded.