Psych 100 uoft

What happened to Phineas Gage?

An iron rod went through his skull and damaged his cerebral cortex resulting in a personality change. He survived for 13 years.

The Astonishing Hypothesis

"You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules

Dualism

the presumption that mind and body are two distinct entities that interact (Descartes)

What are the 2 Arguments of Dualism?

1. The creativity and spontaneity of human action
2. "I think, therefore I am"

What "treatment" showed that the mind and body are separate in old times?

Exorcisms

What are the current views about Dualism?

They are wrong because the Mind=Brain

How does info flow through a neuron?

from the dendritic end through the cell body to the axon/terminal end

Motor Neurons

neurons that carry signals from the spinal cord to the muscles to produce movement

Sensory Neurons

neurons that carry incoming information from the sensory receptors to the brain and spinal cord

Interneurons

neurons within the brain and spinal cord that communicate internally and intervene between the sensory inputs and motor outputs

What is the gap between neurons called?

synapse

Nicholas Steno

First to recognize fossils were remains of organisms

Medula

the base of the brainstem; controls heartbeat and breathing

Hypothalamus

a neural structure lying below the thalamus; directs eating, drinking, body temperature; helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland, and is linked to emotion

limbic system

neural system located below the cerebral hemispheres; associated with emotions and drives

Hippocampus

A neural center located in the limbic system that is used for long term memory and locations

Pituitary Gland

Responsible for hormones involved with sex and reproduction

Agnosia

the inability to recognize familiar objects.

Left Side of the Brain

seems to control language, writing, logical thought, analysis, and mathematical abilities
processes information sequentially, and enables one to speak

Right Side of the Brain

controls emotional expression, spatial perception, recognition of faces, patterns, melodies, and emotions
it processes information globally and cannot influence speech

Right Hemisphere of Brain

The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for control of the left side of the body, and is the more artistic and creative side of the brain.

Left Hemisphere of Brain

The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for control of the right side of the body, and is the more academic and logical side of the brain.

Drugs: Agonists

Drugs that build you up

Drugs: Antagonist

Drugs that bring you down

Aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding).

Corpus Callosum

Major pathway between hemisphere

Freud's theory

basic principles include the unconscious mind, early childhood experiences, and influence of sexual drives, includes id/ego/superego and psychosexual stages

The Pleasure Principle

tendency of the id to strive for immediate gratification

The Reality Principle (ego)

tendency of the ego to postpone gratification until it can find an appropriate outlet

The Reality Principle (super ego)

Restraint of ones self

Freud's Developmental Theory Stage 1

Oral Stage: Mouth associated with pleasure (0-1)

Freud's Developmental Theory Stage 2

Anal Stage: Anus is associated with pleasure (1-3)

Freud's Developmental Theory Stage 3

Phallic Stage: Pleasure in genitalia (3-5)

Freud's Developmental Theory Stage 4

Genital Stage: Sexual feelings and healthy sexual relationships with pleasure (Puberty onwards)

Freud Defense Mechanism Idea

Taking unacceptable desires and making them more acceptable

Freud Defense Mechanism Types

Sublimation, Rationalization, Displacement, Projection, and Reaction Formation

Skinners Focus

Focus on internal psychological processes (Behaviourism)

Different Schools of Behaviorism

Centrality of Learning, No interesting differences between species, Antimentalism

Antimentalism

Reflects how people think and shows that the self is active

Behaviourism

Stimulus and Response

Classical Conditioning

a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events

Positive Reinforcement

Increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response.

Negative Reinforcement

Increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli, such as shock. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. (Note: negative reinforcement is not punishment.)

Operant Conditioning (Edward Thorndike)

The law of effect ; any behavior followed by desirable consequences is likely to be repeated , undesirable ones are likely to stop.

Partial Reinforcement

reinforcing a response only part of the time

Verbal Behaviour

Caused by environment

Freud was a

psychoanalyst

Skinner was a

behaviorist

Electra complex

Penis envy for woman

The Id

Instinctual drives since birth

Demonstrations of the Unconscious mind

Dreams, Myths, Religion

Karl Popper

falsifiability

The Unconscious in Modern Psychology

Language, Habit, Likes and Dislikes,

Instrumental Conditioning

Process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their consequences. Also known as operant conditioning.

Who is Piaget?

Father of cognitive development
Observed children
Four stages of cognitive development

Egocentrism

the inability to see the world through anyone else's eyes (children)

Opperational Stage

Difficulty with abstract ideas and reasoning

Habituation

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

Objects are Cohesive

Objects are connected by masses

Essentialism

a belief that things have a set of characteristics that make them what they are, and that the task of science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that essence is prior to existence.

The curse of knowledge

Pervasive assumption that others have the same knowledge as you

Phonology

Aspect of language that connects to physical realization and there are no real gaps between language

Phoneme

in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

Morphology

structure of words

Morphemes

The smallest units of meaning in a language.

Recursion

Repetition of language (infinity mechanism)

Association

a group of people who have gathered based on similar goals or beliefs

Critical or sensitive periods of development

When language is best learned

Pragmatics

the practical use of language that includes the ability to adjust language communication according to audience and context

Whorphian hypothesis

Describes linguistic differences and assumes they reflect different thoughts

Positive Framing

Making interventions to correct student behavior in a positive constructive way

Negative Framing

Being negative and only looking at the bad

Cognitive Psychology

the scientific study of all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Is Language Natural?

Yes, every society and human deals with language with ease

primary auditory area

part of the temporal lobe in which auditory information is first registered

Wernicke's area

controls language reception - a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

Broca's area

Controls language expression - an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

motor areas

control voluntary motor functions

Arcuate fasciculus

a bundle of axons that connects Wernicke's area with Broca's area; damage causes conduction aphasia

What do all languages share?

Creativity

Syntax

Sentence structure

Ambiguous Sentences

Different rules to interpret the same string of words

Empiricism

everything we know is learned

Nativism

A substantial amount of things are built into our brains

Constructivism

A philosophy of learning based on the premise that people construct their own understanding of the world they live in through reflection on experiences

Piaget Theory

States that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development

Schemas

Concepts or mental frameworks that organize and interpret information.

Assimilation

Process of taking new information or a new experience and fitting it into an already existing schema

Accommodation

process by which existing schemata are modified to encompass new information

Piaget's Approach

Primary method was to ask children to solve problems and to question them about the reasoning behind their solutions
Discovered that children think in radically different ways than adults
Proposed that development occurs as a series of 'stages' differing in how the world is understood

Sensorimotor Stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Object Permanence

the knowledge that an object exists even when it is not in sight

Preoperational stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

Concrete Operational Stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from 7 to 12 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events

Perception

Unconscious guesses and experience about the world prior to interpretation or processing

Attention

we miss a surprising amount of what happens and only pay attention to specific things

Memory

Key to memory is organization and understanding (some memories can't be trusted)

Weber's Law

Proportions, not absolutes

What are some unconscious assumptions we make about how the world works?

Colour, Objects, and Depth

Types of Unconscious objects (Gestalt Principles)

1. Proximity
2.Similarity
3.Closure
4.Good Continuation
5.Common Movement
6.Good Form.