PSYCH Test 2

**Consciousness**

**a state of awareness (state of awareness about self, thoughts, environment, self-awareness)**

Loss of consciousness

Lack of awareness and the environment

Amnesia

the loss of memories, including facts, information and experience

Post-traumatic amnesia

a period after unconsciousness caused by a brain injury when a person suffers from memory loss and confusion

Alteration of consciousness

the mind is aware, but not wakeful

*Why do we sleep…?*

1. repair and restore - Sleep is allowing your body to rest and repair, and growth hormones are being released, very essential to physical growth when you're a child and when you’re an adult it helps your immune system (people who are sick more often are usually sleep deprived) The pituitary gland releases hormones to repair the body Resets overstimulated neurons depressed people want to sleep all the time, want to sleep during the day, and might not want to sleep at night

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2. Protect and conserve - Protect us against danger Less likely to die from predators when sleeping in the dark (evolutionary perspective) Reduce energy demands Says that the body decreases metabolism up to 10% while you're asleep, this is why people say don’t eat before you go to sleep

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3. Learn and Remember - Consolidate information learned during the day from short-term memory and store it in long-term memory… helps memory if you get a full 8 hours of sleep (why you shouldn’t pull all-nighters when preparing for a test) When we sleep, our body is prepares to store the information from the following day

*Sleep and wakefulness*

* REM (Rapid eye movement) - sometimes called a paradoxical sleep (20% of your sleep in REM state, thought to be where your dream states) 
* You remember your dreams better if you wake up in REM state, everyone dreams its just a matter of if you remember or not 
* Non-REM - Three Stages of deepening sleep (80% of sleep is in this Non-REM state) 
* Largest state that you’ll be in while sleeping, a deeper level of sleep

Stage 1 of sleep (doesn’t really mean you’re asleep, just means you’re getting into that restful state, we see this during sleep and during things like meditation) (only about 5% of your night is spent here)

* Shallow sleep 
* Awareness of the outside world remains 
* Theta waves 
* Hallucinations may happen during this stage because mind is still sort of awake but not fully awake 
* Hypnic jerks usually take place during this stage (sensation of falling then jerking up)

Stage 2

* K complexes sleep spindles (rapid burst of brain activity, sleep spindles occur to try to block out outside noises, and distractions, to help you sleep) 
* Relatively light but transitioning into a deeper stage 
* Heart rate goes down, eye movement slows, body movement slows, etc 
* The longest sleep stage you’ll be in 
* About 50% of your sleep is here

(you do not want to nap longer than 20 minutes because if you allow your body to go into stages 3&4 of sleep because it will disrupt your overall sleep schedule, however, if you go past the 20-minute mark… your body will go into stages 3&4 of sleeping and you’ll end up in a deeper sleep)

Stage 3 & 4 of Sleep

* Much deeper sleep 
* Hear 100 decimals or louder and still not wake up 
* Harder to wake up from this
* Essential for actual restfulness
* If you never enter into stage 3&4 sleep, you’ll never be fully rested 
* If you wake up during stage 3 or 4, you will experience mental grogginess

REM or Dreaming Sleep stage

* Brain is active
* Body is immobile 
* Dreams feel real 
* Will occur about 90 minutes after falling asleep and will only last 10 minutes usually, its easier to wake up and remember dreams later down the line because REM sleep has become normal for you

*Dreaming*

* A mental state that usually occurs during sleep that features visual imagery 
* There’s no solid way to understand the meaning behind dreams but there are a few theories…

**Activation-synthesis Theory For Dreams**

*  dreams arise from the interpretation of neural signals triggered by brain activity
* Confusing dreams usually fall under this category… it's just your brain attempting to make sense of random neural firing

**Problem-Focused approach for dreams:**

**Dreams involve unconscious attempts to solve challenges that have occurred during waking life** 

* **Sometimes those who face depression have really fun and good dreams to sort of compensate for their daily struggles**

**Cognitive Integration Approach for Dreams:**

Dreams involve the integration of new experiences with existing knowledge and memories… taking everything you’ve thought about previously and just rethinking it, integrating things you've experienced throughout the week into a dream

Drug classifications

Stimulants, **Depressants, Opiates**

**Stimulants**

* speed up activity in the CNS 
* Caffeine (a top stimulant used) 
* Nicotine 
* Cocaine 
* Amphetamines (synthetically produced compounds ex: methamphetamines)

**Depressants**

* Alcohol - (behavior change, varying effects, can lead to frontal lobe damage if consumed in high doses it could damage, reasoning, hippocampus, forming memories and keeping memories) 
* Sedatives (ex: barbiturates and benzodiazepines) - barbiturates are usually used for anesthesia for surgery, and benzodiazepines are used to induce calm and relaxation… ex: valium and Xanax 
* Opioids aka Narcotics (morphine, heroin, fentanyl) - a class of drugs derived from opium (pain reliever) - made to mimic our own bodies pain-relieving endorphins, act on the brain as our own body would at varying degrees, they provide a level of bliss and relaxation (high potential for abuse) 
* The opioid crisis started in the 90s (Pharmaceutical companies pushed for giving opioids to people experiencing high levels of pain) (it takes about 5-7 salt specs to overdose on fentanyl)

**Opiates**

Relieve pain,

* Opium
* Morphine
* Codeine
* Heroin

* **Hallucinogens**

* - disrupt normal thought process 
* Marijuana (would have to take this in high doses to hallucinate) (can develop cravings for marijuana) (not significant research to back up that smoking marijuana can cause lung cancer) (could offer health benefits for pain relief and medical treatment, severe cancer could benefit) (synthetic marijuana could kill you) 


* LSD
* Increases serotonin and dopamine… hallucinations usually take place (negative trips can happen) 
* Some are made in a lab; others are natural 
* Effects include changes in perceptions

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Traumatic Brain Injuries

* A type of brain injury that results from a jolt or blow to the head that disrupts normal brain functioning 
* 10% of all TBIs are the result of sporting injuries or recreational activity injuries

Traumatic Brain Injury symptoms

* Pain
* Motor dysfunction 
* Sensory changes… Hard time dealing with lights and other sensory changes 
* Cognitive difficulties 
* Speech problems... Slurred speech, can’t find the word they wanna say 
* Confusion 
* Shorted attention spans

Concussions 

* Occurs when a blow or jolt of the head results in the brain moving around 

Affects brain messaging, (A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury)

**Second impact syndrome**

brain swelling caused by a second concussion before the brain has healed from a first concussion (relatively rare.. But has a high mortality rate, 90% of people who get it, will die from it. Brain can’t handle that level of trauma)

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

brain condition thought to be linked to repeated head injuries and blows to the head, cannot diagnose CTE until death (One study looked at 115 retired dead football players and examined brains, 114 had some levels of CTE… a lot of those who committed homicide or suicide, had CTE BUT just because someone experiences brain trauma, doesn’t mean they’ll commit crimes but it does raise the concern rates)

4 Stages of consciousness with head trauma

Coma, Unresponsive wakefulness Syndrome, Minimally conscious state, and brain death

Coma

* Prolonged unconsciousness 
* Not awake or aware 
* Usually doesn’t last longer than a few weeks

Unresponsive wakefulness Syndrome

* Awake but unaware 
* Vegetative state 
* After four weeks of this, they’ll be considered in a permanent state of vegetation, this is when people decide whether or not to pull the plug

Minimally conscious state 

* Somewhat conscious of self and surroundings 
* For some people, that’s as far as they get when it comes to healing

Brain death

* Permanent loss of brain stem functioning 
* Generally considered to be dead at that point

Sleep is a part of the body’s __circadian rhythm__ (biological patterns)

* The natural cycle that lasts 24 hours 
* Managed by the suprachiasmatic nuclease (SCN) (SCN will send out messages like its time to go to sleep, and it sends a message to send out melatonin) 
* The role of melatonin 
* Internal desynchronization (when biological rhythms are not in tune with each other) - ex: jet lag
* Rhythm also affected by artificial light 

(the reason why you don’t roll over things, pets, or people in bed is that your brain is still working and knows that there’s something there… same goes for rolling off the bed) 

* Part of whether or not you’re a night owl or if you’re a morning person is somewhat based on genetics 
* If you use lights before bed such as a reading light, watch tv, using a phone - your levels of melatonin are having a delayed release and it makes it hard to sleep 

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Learning

a relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavioral potential) due to experience

Types of learning

Non-associative, Associative

Non-associative

1. learning that occurs through repeated exposure 


1. **Habituation** - the diminished effectiveness of a stimulus in eliciting a response, following repeated exposure to the stimulus 


1. Frequency: greater duration between exposure to stimulus → slower habituation 
2. Duration: short exposure → slower habituation 
3. Intensity: very intense stimuli → slower habituation 
2. **Dishabituation:** the reappearance or enhancement of a habituated response 
3. **Sensitization: When repeated exposure to a stimulus results in an increased behavioral response**


1. **May happen when the stimulus is potentially harmful or threatening, but it can just be annoying as well (Ex:.... parents can’t sleep through the sound of their baby crying but may be able to sleep through the sound of a train passing by)**

Associative - learning occurs through the pairing of stimuli

1. **Classical conditioning: when a previously neutral stimulus is linked with a stimulus that already elicits a response and, in turn, that stimulus leads to a similar response (Discovered by Ivan Pavlov through his study of dogs)** 
2. Principles of Classical Conditioning - 


1. Acquisition - the US-CS pairing leads to initial learning 
2. Extinction - if the CS is repeatedly presented without the US, the CR will eventually go away 
3. Spontaneous recovery - if the CS is presented again after some time, it can produce a weaker CR 
3. Higher-order conditioning - once a CS consistently creates a CR, other stimuli can become associated with the CS and produce a CR, even though the new CS has never been directly paired 
4. Stimulus discrimination - the tendency to respond to two or more stimuli that are similar but, yet different on some dimension 
5. Stimulus Generalization - After conditioning, the tendency to respond to a stimulus that resembles one involved in the original conditioning

**Classical conditioning elements…**

Unconditioned stimulus - the stimulus that elicits a response without learning (food naturally produces a response) 


1. **Conditioned stimulus… an initially neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a response after being associated with an unconditioned stimulus (a bell (neutral stimuli) is repeatedly paired with the presentation of food)** 
2. **Unconditioned response…. The response elicited by the unconditioned stimulus (Salivation is a natural response to a presentation of food)** 
3. **Conditioned response…. The response that is elicited by the conditioned stimulus after being paired with? (Through repeated pairings, eventually, the bell alone can elicit salvation even without food)**

Positive prediction Error

More reward is given than expected. This strengthens the relationship between the CS and US

Negative prediction Error

 Less reward is given than expected. This weakens the relationship between the CS and US.

John Watson

little Albert experiment (could condition humans to expect or prepare for scary things, allowed us to understand the associations we make in real life)

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Like many children, Albert was afraid of loud sounds - they provoked an unconditioned fear response. The experimenters left Albert alone with the rat, but each time he reached for it, they would hit a hammer against metal, causing a banging noise. After several pairings, experimenters only showed Albert the rat.

Drug conditioning

environmental cues become an active part of an addict’s life, the body has learned to expect the drug in a specific location and compensates by altering neurochemistry or physiology to metabolize it 

* If a drug addict takes a drug in a new place, they’re more likely to overdose. That’s why in order for someone to drop an addiction, they have to move, they have to surround themselves with people who they don’t associate with drug use 

Operant conditioning

* The process by which a response becomes more or less likely to occur, depending on the consequences 
* Studied by Edward Thorndike and B.F. Skinner

Law of Effect

Any behaviors that lead to a satisfying outcome are more likely to occur, and any that lead to a non-satisfying outcome are less likely to occur (cats found out how to escape a puzzle box to obtain food)

Partial Reinforcement schedules

* Fixed interval 
* Reinforcement is provided at a specific time (ex: getting a paycheck every 2 weeks) 
* Fixed ratio
* Reinforcement is provided after a certain number of responses have been made (ex: behavior chart) 
* Variable interval 
* Reinforcement is provided after a time, but the time is not set (ex: waiting for an elevator or getting paid every two weeks sometimes then every 2 months another time) 
* Variable ratio 
* Reinforcement is provided after several responses, but the number is not fixed (ex: slot machines) 

Punishment

* Positive vs Negative
* Positive: Adding something undesirable to decrease the frequency of the behavior occurring 
* Negative: taking something desirable away to decrease the frequency of something happening

Different types of punishers

* Primary: stimuli that is inherently punishing (painful stimuli… shocks, spanking, or physical violence) 
* Secondary: Stimuli that is considered punishment because of stimuli paring (bad grades, fines, etc)

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* Positive: adding something
* Negative: taking something away 
* Reinforcement: increase the behavior 
* Punishment: decrease the behavior

When punishment can work

* When it does not involve physical abuse 
* Negative punishment should be used more (ex: time out) 
* When it is given consistently 
* Certainty over severity 
* When it is accompanied by information about the kind of behavior that is appropriate 
* When it is followed, whenever possible, by the reinforcement of desirable behavior 
* The extent of punishment isn’t as effective as being punished every time

Why punishment is Hard to Make Work

* Those who receive harsh or frequent punishment may respond with anxiety, fear, or rage 
* The effectiveness of punishment is often temporary 
* Most behavior is hard to punish immediately 
* Punishment, alone, conveys little information 
* An action intended to punish may instead be reinforced because it brings attention

Are rewards always good?

* Extrinsic 
* Reinforcers that come from an outside source and are not inherently related to the activity being reinforced (ex: toys, money, praise) 
* Intrinsic
* Reinforcers that come from an internal source and are inherently related to the activity being reinforced (ex: personal enjoyment, satisfaction)

Latent Learning

a form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response and occurs without obvious reinforcement

Observational learning: the limits to learning

* There are sometimes limitations on a species on what can be learned 
* Koko the gorilla 
* Activities that attempt to override biological constraints usually do not endure 
* Raccoons and coins

Elements of observational learning

Attention: the learner must pay attention to the model 

Memory: the learner must retain the memory of the behavior

Imitation: The learner must be able to imitate the behavior

Motivation: The learner must have the desire to perform the action

Violent Media & Aggression: Is there a link?

* There is a relationship between violent media & aggression 
* Video games are active; violence is often rewarded (ex: advancing to the next level) 
* Bottom line: violent media, alone, cannot solely account for aggression, but do play a role

Learning styles

* The idea that students learn best through visual, auditory, or kinesthetic methods 
* Should teaching styles be matched to learning styles? 
* Do learning styles actually exist?
* Content is important 

…There is no such thing as a learning style, people learn when they have a mixture of all three “learning styles”, content is far more important than style (if you’re taking an art class, you learn best through visual… if you’re taking a spanish class, you’ll probably learn best through auditory)

Reinforcement

* Strengthens the response
* Behavior is more likely to occur 
* Positive vs Negative (something that always reinforces behavior) 
* Positive: adding something desirable to increase the frequency of the behavior occurring 
* Negative: taking something undesirable away to increase the frequency of the behavior occurring

Punishment

Weakens the response, Behavior is less likely to occur

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Types of reinforcers

* Primary & Secondary 
* Primary: 
* Stimuli that satisfy biological needs…. Food, water, sleep 
* Secondary: 
* Stimuli that reinforce but do not satisfy any biological needs… Approval, money

Memory

Memories can be incomplete, biased, or distorted - two people who experience the same thing can have completely different memories

What memory involves & Stages

* Memory involves processing information 
* 1st stage: Encoding 
* 2nd Stage: Storage (consolidation) 
* 3rd Stage: Retrieval
* Reconsolidated memory can be different from the original memory

Memory biases

* Misinformation effect: when a person mistakenly recalls misleading information 
* Elizabeth loftis studied biased memories and how memories change
* One group looked at a video of a car approaching a stop sign 
* One group had a group look at a video approaching a yield sign 
* Another study, she showed a car crash

Association networks

in our brain where we have nodes of information connected to each other, broad network of nodes linked to each other

Repressed memories

* The idea that specific threatening or upsetting memories can be pushed into the unconscious and recalled accurately later 
* The debate erupted in the 1990s with claims of recovered memories of sexual abuse 
* “The problem for most people who have suffered disturbing experiences is not that they cannot remember, but rather than they cannot forget” 
* Once people develop a false memory, they strengthen their belief that the memory is true 
* Michelle smith story… she went to therapy and hypnosis, then remebered being a part of satanic rituals (wrote a book about it, ‘Michelle Remembers’) 
* When we experience trauma, our brain releases cortisol 
* It’s hard to accurately tell if repressed memories actually happened

Planting memories

Client’s trust is needed, suggest: something might have happened, Ask: do you remember this happening?

Eyewitness Testimony

* Eyewitness testimony is among the strongest evidence in a case… and often the most unreliable 
* People are more likely to be convicted if there’s an eyewitness 
* Encoding errors 
* weapon focus effect - you aren’t looking at the perp, you’re paying attention to the danger you’re in 
* Another race effect - have difficulty identifying faces of other race 

Reconsolidation and retrieval errors

* Unconscious transference 
* Police line-ups 
* Suggestible questions

Making memories meaningful

Making memories meaningful


1. maintenance rehearsal
Rote repetition of material
2. Elaboration rehearsal
Association of new information with already stored knowledge
Self - reference
Encoding info in relation to the self
Semantic
Encoding meaning
Acoustic
Encoding sound
Visual
Encoding images 2

The multistore model of memory

a model proposing that information flows from our senses through three storage levels in memory: sensory, short-term, and long-term

Sensory memory

* Most temporary type of memory we have 
* A storage level of memory that holds sensory information on the order of milliseconds to seconds 
* A fleeting sensory memory is made when each sensory system initially processes information 
* Eye (iconic) 
* Ear (echoic) 
* Touch (Hepatic)

Short-term memory

a storage level of memory where information can be held briefly, from seconds to less than a minute 

* Information from all senses can be held for under a minute 
* Can be forgotten or transferred to long-term memory

Working memory:

Limited storage Lasts about 20-30 seconds unless rehearsed 7 items + 2 items Chunking: a meaningful unit of information C 3 P O = C3PO THECATATETHERAT = THE CAT ATE THE RAT 2 P H Q =?

Rehearsal:

* Phonological loop: repeating information to keep it in short-term memory 
* Brain processing overlaps with areas involved in language 
* Visuospatial sketchpad: seeing mental images 
* Central executive function: allows for the manipulation of information in short-term memory

Amnesia Case Study

Henry Moliason is known as Patient HM - we know a lot about amnesia because of him. Born in the 1920s, passed away in 2008 - he lived a good portion of his life thinking he was 27 years old, it was always going to be 1953. When he was young, he suffered an epilepsy episode and doctors took out the part of the brain that was creating seizures and took out the hippocampus. His seizures stopped but he lost the ability to remember new information, couldn’t remember new info but retained memory prior to surgery. Hard to have a convo because he couldn’t remember so much. He was able to learn new info but couldn’t remember how he learned it.

2 types of amnesia

* Retrograde - inability to remember anything before the brain trauma 
* Anterograde - inability to form new memories 
* Clyde - an example from class has dual amnesia - lost previous memories and is unable to form new memories but is able to remember some things. He can remember he has a wife Deborah, but can’t remember how they met… how they married... Etc

Memory consolidation

* Consolidation: the process whereby memory storage is integrated and becomes stable in the brain 
* Occurs after experiences have passed 
* Consolidation is a time-dependent biological process 
* Myth that if you play information, your memory will be able to learn it in your sleep - not true

Explicit memories

A form of memory that involves intentional and conscious remembering

Declarative memory

example: remember your first bicycle ride including recollecting the time and place you learned to ride

Implicit memories

a form of memory that occurs without intentional recollection or awareness

Nondeclarative memory

* Example: remembering how to ride a bicycle - when you’re riding your bike you don’t have to tell yourself to pedal in order to move every second

Episodic memories

* the explicit recollection of personal experience that requires piecing together the elements of that time and place 
* Example: what you had for lunch yesterday

Semantic memory

explicitly memory supporting knowledge about the world, including concepts and facts 

Example: the capital of the US is Washington, DC… you might know what jello is even if you haven’t been there, you might know that three strikes in baseball means you’re out even if you haven’t ever played baseball or watched it

Retrospective memory

memory for things we have done in the past

Prospective memory

memory for things we need to do in the future

Emotional memories:

* Flashbulb memory: a vivid memory for an emotionally significant event, thought to be permanent and detailed as if frozen in time like a photograph 
* Are they accurate? 
* Emotionally arousing events may be perceived as more vivid, and this is later associated with confidence in the memory

Recall vs Recognition

* Free recall: accessing information from memory without any cues to aid your retrieval 
* Example: open-ended essays or short-answer questions 
* Cued recall: a form of retrieval that is facilitated by providing information related to the stored memory 
* Example: fill-in-the-blank questions that provide information in the question

Encoding specificity principle

* The idea that retrieval is best when the present context recreates the context in which information was initially encoded 
* Context-dependent retrieval 
* State-dependent retrieval 
* Mood-dependent retrieval

Forgetting

* The forgetting curve: the retention of information over various delay times 
* Trace decay theory of forgetting: over time, our memory simply decays 
* Interference theory of forgetting: forget old information because of new information

7 Sins of Memory

1. Transience - the decreasing accessibility of memory over time.

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2. Absent-mindedness - lapses of attention and forgetting to do things. 

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3. Blocking - temporary inaccessibility of stored information, such as tip-of-the-tongue syndrome.

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4. Suggestibility - incorporation of misinformation into memory due to leading questions, deception and other causes. 

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5. Bias - retrospective distortions produced by current knowledge and beliefs.

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6. Persistence - unwanted recollections that people can't forget, such as the unrelenting, intrusive memories of post-traumatic stress disorder.

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7. Misattribution - attribution of memories to incorrect sources or believing that you have seen or heard something you haven't.

What is thought?

* Mental representations 
* Analogical: mental representations that share some physical characteristics of objects 
* Symbolic: abstract mental representations of the object

categories

Biases

* Confirmation bias: focusing attention on information that supports our views 
* Hindsight bias: creating after-the-fact explanations 
* Overconfidence bias: overestimating the accuracy of one’s knowledge and judgments

Anchoring

* the tendency to rely on the first piece of information encountered or information that comes most quickly to mind.
* Ex:  If you got a 75 on a test, you would feel better knowing that most everyone else got a 65.   
* Ex: If you saw something for $300 you might not buy it but if you know it was originally $1,000… it might seem like a great deal

Framing

The tendency to emphasize the potential losses or potential gains from one alternative 

* Gain framed messages focus on what can be gained by choosing one alternative over another 
* Ex: Using sunscreen to avoid skin cancer makes people want to use sunscreen more 
* Loss-framed messages focus on what can be lost by choosing one alternative over another 
* These often promote protection. Ex: get a mammogram to ensure you protect yourself from cancer

Availability heuristic

Making a decision based on the answer that most easily comes to mind: 

* Struck by lightening chances 1 in 79,746 
* Shark attack chances 1 in 3, 748,067

Linguistic determinism:

Different languages impose different ways of understanding the world that can shape our thinking

Broca’s area

important for producing grammatical sentences and motor movement for speech (ex: moving lips)

Broca’s aphasia

can understand words, but have trouble putting words together

Wernicke’s area

* important for understanding speech 
* Wernicke’s aphasia: can speak, but what they say doesn’t make sense. They have trouble understanding written and spoken language.

G factor

a general intellectual ability assumed to underlie specific mental abilities and talents

Crystalized intelligence: cognitive skills and specific knowledge acquired over a lifetime 

* Dependent on education 
* Relatively stable over the lifetime

Fluid Intelligence

the capacity to reason and use the information to solve problems 

* Independent education 
* Tends to decrease with age

Emotional intelligence

the ability to identify emotions accurately, express your emotions clearly, and regulate emotions in yourself and others

* People high in emotional intelligence use their emotions to motivate themselves, spur creative thinking, and deal empathetically with others 
* People often low in EI are often unable to identify their own emotions, may express emotions inappropriately, and may misread non-verbal cues 

Measuring intelligence

* Alfred Binet created the first intelligence test in 1904, IQ = (mental age/chronological age) x 100… he did this to see which kids were slow learners and which were working at a normal level 
* Issues with American Version 
* Original purpose was lost since it was originally a french test 
* Overlooked cultural and ethnic differences 
* Average IQ is 100
* Around 75 is considered to be a developmental disorder