Psych Exam 3

What is the optimal amount of motivation? How can low levels and high levels of motivation be problematic?

The optimal amount of motivation is a good middle. Low levels make it hard to get anything done, while high levels make it hard to get anything else done.

How does operant conditioning involve learning two different associations?

Operant conditioning involves learning both cues and outcomes.

How can we change an individual's motivation for behavior?

By changing the frequency or reliability of the outcome to drive the behavior and by establishing a really strong habit, so the cue drives behavior even when the outcome isn't there.

What are the four kinds of outcomes?

Positive reinforcer, positive punisher, negative reinforcer, and negative punishment.

What are some of the reasons that punishment does not work?

Punishers don't increase good behaviors, they just (maybe) reduce unwanted ones. It's better to reinforce wanted behaviors.

What is a habit?

After we learn how our actions influence outcomes, we learn when we are cued to do an action, which is a habit.

How are habits useful?

They free up our cognition for other problems.

How do effective habits depend on effective cues?

Cues must not contradict the desired action and outcome, and they must be specific to the situation to form habits.

What is a post reinforcement pause?

"The dips," which commonly occurs when we hit a milestone.

What are the four partial reinforcement schedules?

Fixed-ratio, fixed-interval, variable-ratio, and variable-interval.

In what way is dopamine a learning signal, but not a pleasure signal?

Because once learning has happened, dopamine neurons now fire to the predictive cue, not the pleasurable reward.

What is an emotion?

A relatively brief episode of synchronized physiological, behavioral, and subjective responses.

What are the three aspects of emotions: "feelings," autonomic responses, and somatic responses?

Feelings: Introspection (subjective reaction)
Autonomic: Sympathetic activation, hormonal (physiological component)
Somatic: Behavioral tendency to approach or avoid something, facial expressions (behavioral response)

What are the functions of emotions?

Regulate arousal, direct perception and attention, influence learning and memory, motivate behavior, and communicate with others.

What is the evolutionary view of emotion as originally proposed by Darwin?

Emotions allow us to adapt to different situations and keep us safe from danger.

Why are facial expressions important?

Nonverbal communication is a big part of everyday life, and facial expressions communicate information about how we're doing.

What are Ekman's six (or seven) basic emotions?

Happiness, sadness, contempt, surprise, fear, disgust, and anger.

How was this research done?

Paul Ekman showed pictures of emotional expression to individuals from a variety of different cultural groups.

What evidence suggests that these emotions are innate (inborn)?

A majority of people recognize and understand the seven universal emotions, implying that we are born with the ability to understand the meaning of the emotions.

What are display rules?

Cultural rules that govern the expression of emotion.

What is the discrete vs. dimensional approach to emotions?

Discrete: An approach to analyzing emotions that focuses on specific emotions such as anger, fear, and pride. Treats these emotions as categorically distinct from others.
Dimensional: An approach to analyzing emotions that focuses on dimensions such as pleasantness and activation.

What are the three main contributors to happiness?

Genetics, life circumstances, and intentional activities.

What can we do to change our happiness?

We can cultivate feelings of gratitude, savor positive experiences, and use our strengths.

Using a dimensional approach, what kind of responses do we show to different kinds of images? How do psychopaths and individuals with phobias respond to different kinds of images?

Same for pleasant and neutral, lower than neutral for unpleasant.

What is a motive? What is an instinct?

Motive: Forces that move us to act in certain ways and not others.
Instinct: A genetically endowed tendency to act a certain way.

What is the drive-reduction account of motivation?

It holds that motivated behavior serves to reduce drives.

What is the difference between things that are intrinsically vs. extrinsically rewarding?

Intrinsically rewarding means that an incentive is an inherent part of the activity or object to which we are drawn, while extrinsically rewarding means that the incentive is not an integral part of what we're drawn to.

What are some of the ways that culture influences our eating?

Different cultures set different standards for beauty, which often give us the desire to monitor our food intake. Our culture also shapes when we are hungry and what we are hungry for.

What is anorexia nervosa? How common is it?

People with anorexia nervosa have an intense fear of gaining weight. About 1 in 100 women will have anorexia nervosa in their lifetime.

What is bulimia nervosa? How common is it?

People with bulimia nervosa are extremely concerned with their weight and appearance, which fuels disordered eating. 1-2 women out of 100 will have bulimia nervosa in their lifetime.

What is the thrifty gene hypothesis?

This hypothesis argues that our ancestors lived in times when food supplies were unpredictable and food shortages were common. As a result, the genes regulating fat storage might have been a selective advantage over evolutionary time, rather than the liability they appear to be today.

Is there evidence for a genetic basis of sexual orientation?

Yes, there is evidence of that.

What is the motive to belong? Why does a sense of belonging matter?

The motive to belong influences what we think and feel, and how we behave. We crave belonging because without it, we will feel lonely.

What is the motive to achieve?

We want to avoid failing, but we also want to succeed.

What is a performance vs. mastery orientation?

Performance orientation: characterized by a focus on performing well and looking smart or on avoiding failure and not looking stupid.
Master orientation: characterized by a focus on learning and improving.

What is a fixed vs. growth mindset?

Fixed mindset: assume that their abilities are fixed and unlikely to change in the future.
Growth mindset: assume that their abilities can change and grow in response to new experiences or learning.

What does it mean to say that motives are hierarchically organized?

Motivates are organized from bottom to top in terms of what is most important for our lives.

What is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?

Lower order physiological motives are at the bottom, then safety, then belonging, then desire for esteem, then self actualization, and finally self transcendence.

What is self-control? What are common examples of self-control failures?

Self control is the efforts we make to pursue our longer-term interests when they conflict with momentary impulses. Obesity, drinking, illegal drug use, marital infidelity, road rage, and gambling are examples of self control failures.

What are strategies people use to regulate emotions?

Situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation.

What is a cross-sectional study?

It compares participants of different ages directly to one another at one point in time.

What is a longitudinal study?

It tracks individuals at different time points and looks for differences across those time points.

What is a cohort and cohort effects?

A cohort is a group or population. A cohort effect is an effect or difference that is due to the members of an age group sharing a common set of life experiences.

What are teratogens?

Environmental agents that can interfere with development.

What are newborns born being able to do?

Perform reflexes like rooting, sucking, and grasping, limited control of eye, head and facial movements.

What is cognitive development?

Refers to changes in all of the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

In Piaget's model of cognitive development, how are assimilation and accommodation different?

In assimilation, the child can use an existing schema to interpret the new experience. However, accommodation involves revising their schemas to incorporate information from the new experiences.

What is a schema?

Mental structures that represent our experiences.

What are Baumrind's parenting styles?

Authoritarian, permissive, authoritative, and disengaged parents.

What is Kohlberg's model of moral development?

Moral reasoning develops through three unvarying sequential stages or levels, preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.

What kinds of questions would be of interest to Developmental Psychologists?

How do things like personality, emotion, language, etc develop over time? If things like these go off track, how can we get someone back on schedule?

What is meant by a "cells to society" approach? What kinds of research are done at each level?

Children are influenced by the environment and vice versa. Studying an individual will start at an individual's basic characteristics then progress to examine surrounding influences on the individual that affect development.

What is meant by "bidirectional influences" in developmental psychology?

Each level affects the other. For example, the behavioral level affects the school level, and the school level affects the behavioral level.

What kind of measures do developmental psychologists use?

Molecular level: genes, epigenetics
System level: neuroimaging, hormones
Behavioral level (individual): observations, questionnaires, responses to tasks/tests
Behavioral level: Interactions among dyads, triads, groups
School and neighborhood level
National and cultural levels

According to the Hart & Risley (1995) study, how does SES (Social & Economic Status) of parents affect the size of children's vocabulary?

Children that grew up in homes with parents with college education learned more words than those with parents of lower level education.

In the replication of Hart & Risley done by Fernald (2013) with low-income Spanish Speaking families, what was the relationship between the number of words that kids heard at the age of 19 months and the speed of processing language at 24 months?

Processing efficiency is much higher for those who have heard the word at a younger age.

What is the Post-Hoc fallacy? What would a genetic explanation be for these findings?

The false assumption that because one event occurred before another, it must have caused the event. Most of the time these studies are brought about by correlation, not causation. With post-hoc fallacies there could instead be third variables or shared genetics.

Why is a Randomized Clinical Trial hard to do with children?

It can affect them for the rest of their lives, and once society learns what may be good for a child, it is difficult not to give it to that child (a doctor may start giving away a drug that benefitted kids in a RCT).

What is the relationship between social class and brain development?

Before 5 months socio-economic class doesn't influence brain development but by 3 years it does.

What did Luby and colleagues (2013) find in their study of factors mediating the effects of family income on the size of a child's hippocampus?

They found that factors associated with higher income families (lower stress, needs are met, etc.) correlated with a bigger hippocampus and a smaller hippocampus for lower income children.

What is the Chicago Longitudinal Study? What were the effects of the intervention on school readiness? Repeating a grade? Completing High School?

A preschool service involving children and parents from Chicago living in the projects to see if early on learning can impact their future learning/help be more successful. It increased chances for children to be school ready, less likely to drop out, and more likely to complete HS.

What kind of Return on Investment was obtained for the Chicago Study and why?

Return investment: for every dollar put in, how much of that dollar will be returned. You didn't have to pay to give them special education, or for them repeating a grade (study decreased chances of repeating a grade), and since they're more likely to complete HS they might get a job.

What is attachment and when does attachment develop?

An emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver that develops within the first year.

How does a Behavioral Psychologist Approach explain why babies become so dependent on their parents at a certain age?

Babies are rewarded for crying and smiling, and they associate those rewards with one or a few people.

How does an attachment approach explain the same phenomena?

Describes the dependence as a result of a sense of security and intimate/romantic relationships.

What does the evidence suggest?

Babies still get attached to figures that are close to them (often parents) even if they are not being rewarded.

What is imprinting?

Forging of strong bonds to those who tend to humans shortly after birth. Must occur within sensitive period (early age).

What was the work of Konrad Lorenz?

Found imprinting in geese and goslings.

What is the strange situation?

A laboratory procedure for measuring attachment by evoking infants' reactions to the stress of various adults' comings and goings in an unfamiliar playroom.

What does the strange situation illustrate?

It illustrates secure attachment.

What kinds of things are associated with secure attachment?

Higher self esteem and confidence, better relationships with peers and social competence, trusting relationships with teachers, and they will have better and more secure adult romantic relationships because they are more trusting and equitable.

What are the stages/types of play?

Unoccupied, solitary, onlooker behavior, parallel play, associative play, and cooperative play.

What is a meta-analysis?

Examination of data from a number of independent studies of the same subject, in order to determine overall trends.

What does meta-analysis suggest about the association between infant attachment and the quality of children's peer relationships?

Children who are more securely attached will have wider, more quality relationships with peers.

Why does the relationship between secure relationships and peer relations increase with time?

When trust (through time) builds in relationships - the quality of such relationships increases. Good friendships only begin during adolescence and adulthood.

How do friendships change over time?

They change as we change as people.

What are the different kinds of negative status that kids have: neglected, rejected, bullied, friendless?

Neglected: not liked or disliked, just ignored.
Rejected: few kids like you, many dislike you.
Bullied: picked on, but doesn't mean you're neglected or rejected.
Friendless: Any of the above may have a few friends or be friendless; can be friendless and not any of the above.

When child psychologists look at victims of bullying, what do they conclude?

They are 2-9 times more likely to commit suicide, and being bullied increases emotional problems. They also found that bullied children aren't random, they tend to be shy, anxious, depressed children who may also have neuropsych problems.

Does being the victim of bullying increase a child's problems?

Yes, it increases emotional problems.

What relationship do researchers find between teen romantic relationships and adult romantic relationships?

The quality of relationships as a teen predict adult relationships (only when academic and social competence are controlled for).

What is cognition? What is cognitive development?

Cognition: The mental processes by which knowledge is acquired, stored, and used.
Cognitive development: The study of how children acquire the ability to learn, think, communicate, and remember.

What were some of the beliefs that Piaget had about kids?

Jean Piaget proposed a grand theory of intellectual development that viewed children as actively constructing knowledge through interaction with their environments.

According to Piaget, what are the four stages of cognitive development? What is occurring in each stage?

Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years): infant focuses on physical sensations and on learning to coordinate his body.
Preoperational stage (2-7 years): the thinking is influenced by the way things appear rather than logical reasoning and the child is egocentric.
Concrete operational stage (7-11 years): the child can use operations (a set of logical rules) so he can conserve quantities, he realizes that people see the world in a different way than he does (decentring) and he has improved in inclusion tasks.
Formal operational stages (12 and up): Children gain the ability to think in an abstract manner, the ability to combine and classify items in a more sophisticated way, and the capacity for higher-order reasoning.

What is object permanence? According to Piaget, when does this capacity develop?

Object permanence is knowledge that objects continue to exist even when not in view. Piaget suspected object permanence emerges between 8-12 months.

What is the A-not-B task (or error)?

Hiding an object in one area (A) where the child finds it, then hiding the object after it had been found in another area (B). The child usually returns to area A. Displays object permanence.

According to Rene Baillargeon, what do babies understand about objects by about 3.5 months?

They already understand something about the properties of objects.

What are conservation tasks? How do younger vs. older kids perform on conservation tasks?

Conservation tasks are experiments like the water in a glass experiment, as well as adding and subtracting. Younger children tend to focus exclusively on one dimension, while older children can consider and coordinate multiple dimensions.

What is centration?

The tendency to focus on one salient aspect of a situation and neglect other, possibly relevant aspects.

What is the Wynn task?

Not a classic conservation task, but infants may understand some aspects of number and quantity earlier than Piaget believed.

What is egocentrism?

The tendency to center on oneself or one's POV.

How do preschoolers do on the 3-mountain problem?

Preschoolers tend to assume that everyone sees the three mountains from the perspective that they see them, even after being shown different perspectives.

What is the theory of mind?

The understanding that others can have knowledge, beliefs, desires, intentions, or perspectives that differ from one's own.

What is a false belief task?

A task in which children must infer that another person does not possess knowledge that they possess. For example, a M&M box with pencils in it.

What are the different reasons for false belief failures?

Egocentrism, task demands, weak inhibitory control, and language development.

How did early theorists conceptualize autism?

Autism was originally described as a form of childhood schizophrenia and the result of cold parenting, "feeblemindedness."

What are two pieces of evidence that autism may have a biological basis (Rimland's and Folstein and Rutter)?

Rimland: Associated seizure disorder pointed to congenital brain disorder.
Folstein and Rutter: Systematically reported concordance rates among monozygotic and dizygotic twins.

What are the differences between the classification of autism and autistic spectrum disorders in the DSM-IV and the DSM-V?

DSM-5 collapsed autism, aspergers, PDD-NOS, and CDD into one category, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Rett's syndrome and Childhood Degenerative Disorder are no longer included under ASD.

What are the diagnostic symptoms of autism? What are the associated features?

Symptoms of autism are persistent deficits in social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.

What do epidemiologists mean by incidence and prevalence?

Incidence: An index of the total number of new cases identified within a given population during a specified time.
Prevalence: A count of the total number of people with a specific disease in a given population at a given time.

Why is there an increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism?

Greater public awareness, better case ascertainment, diagnostic substitution, and changes in diagnostic criteria.