PSYC 1 Final Exam

What is an independent variable?

The variable that the researchers manipulate.

What is an operational definition?

How researchers specifically measure a concept.

What is a dependent variable?

The variable that a researcher measures and does not manipulate

What is a correlational study?

Passively observing phenomena, can identify patterns but not what causes them.

What is an experimental study?

• Random assignment

  • Assigning participants to receive different conditions of a experiment

How does experimental differ from a correlational study?

Correlational studies are not done with experiments and don’t manipulate conditions.

What is the benefit of random assignment?

• to help ensure no pre-existing differences between groups.

How can we tell whether we have a causal relationship?

Random assignment to groups and assures no pre-existing differences

What are some reasons a study might not replicate?

• Faking Data

• Chance

• P-hacking

• Study doesn’t generalize

  • Poor experimental design

What is attention? Why is it important?

• A wide range of psychological and neural phenomena where an identical stimulus is processed in different ways

Describe the invisible gorilla experiment? What did researchers do? What were the (general) results?

Shown a video and told the participants to find how many times a ball was passed, most did not see the gorilla within the video since they were focused on the ball.

What is inattentional blindness?

We attend to one thing but often miss others even if they’re unexpected

Why is selective attention and inattentional blindness important?

We can trust our intuition, marks importance of empirical data

Allows us to find or track an object or conversation in the midst of distraction

Overt

•  Physically directing your attention to something

  • Looking at a noise

Covert

• Directing attention without physically directing attention

  • Passing a ball to a direction you’re not looking at

Describe the Posner cueing paradigm

Participants shifted attention without moving eyes

Voluntary

Focusing on something in controlled manner, even without moving eyes

Involuntary

Features might grab our eyes, surprised

Sensory Memory

A brief store of sensory information and holds info long enough that basic sensory processing can take place

Working memory

Temporary store holding of information currently in our awareness, lasting a few seconds unless rehearsed through maintenance rehearsal.

Long-term memory

Includes everything you know or have learned.

Sensory Memory Capacity

Very short and very high capacity

Working memory capacity

Very short and very limited capacity unless rehearsed

Long term memory capacity

Very long and has a high capacity

Describe how attention, maintenance rehearsal, encoding, and retrieval work in the context of memory

• Capacity limits; we can only process so much there’s so much incoming information. 

• Selection; we have the ability to select what to attend to

  • We don’t know how much attention we need and default to selective attention

Why is sensory memory important?

 it holds information enough for a sensory process to take place.

How does auditory sensory memory differ from visual sensory memory?

Auditory sensory vision has a longer duration than vision.

What is chunking? How does it affect working memory capacity?

• Binding individual items to create a meaningful whole item

  • Increases working memory capacity

Explain what predicts successful encoding 

being able to retrieve the information

Explain what predicts successful retrieval

Being able to retrieve information that has been encoded.

Define encoding specificity

Memory is improved when information available at encoding is also available at retrieval'

What did the months of the year challenge tell us about encoding specificity and memory?

Knowing them in chronological order vs. ABC order; the list of months in the year was encoded to our brains in chronological order, not ABC order– this means that we will only be able to recite it in chronological order, NOT ABC order since we are used to learning it in chronological order

What did a study involving on-land and underwater memorization tell us about encoding specificity and memory?

• Those who were in water were able to recall more underwater words and vise versa

  • Memory is improved when information available at encoding is also available

Describe the role of the hippocampus in memory

• Plays an important role in creating episodic or semantic memories

  •  Plays a critical role in forming and temporarily storing episodic memories

What is anterograde amnesia? What kinds of memories are impaired, and what kinds of memories are NOT impaired?

The inability to create new episodic or semantic memories.

Describe how schematic knowledge affects our memory.

• Our brain can encode/retrieve memories incorrectly because it ‘corrects’ them to what we’re used to seeing.

  • EX: You're always with your friend when you're out socializing. When recalling a party, your memory tells you she was there and you spoke— in reality, she had called off sick and wasn’t here. Your brain just ‘corrected’ it to what you usually see

In a study, participants falsely reported seeing books in an office. Explain these results using schematic memory

Using the experience and schemas we have, our schematic knowledge forced the books into our minds because we were used to seeing it in an office setting.

Describe how memory researchers’ perceptions of memory differs from the public’s perception of memory

• Psychologists: General process by which our behavior changes as a result of experience

  • Public: Learning in classes, from a book

Describe classical conditioning

Learned association between a neutral stimulus and a stimulus that elicits an automatic response.

Describe the results of Pavlov’s experiments with dogs

 Ringing a bell while giving food conditioned the dogs to associate the bell with food, making them drool when the bell was rang.

Unconditioned Stimulus

Stimulus that produces an unconditioned response without training

Unconditioned Response

At automatic response to a stimulus

Conditioned Stimulus

A neutral stimulus that is used in classical conditioning.

Conditioned response

An automatic response to a stimulus that.

Describe conditioned taste aversions

Associating food with nausea or vomiting if those two occurred at the same time.

What is the benefit of scapegoat treatments in conditioned taste aversions?

it helps avoid forming taste aversions to familiar foods that patients eat.

Describe the pinprick experiment

• Despite not being able to remember things that happened recently the doctor kept putting a pin in his hand every time he shook her hand.

  • The patient encoded new implicit memory despite anterograde amnesia.

Describe operant conditioning

• Involves behaviors that are not automatically triggered

  • Behaviors with pleasant effects become more likely.

How is operant conditioning different from classical conditioning?

• Classical Conditioning

  • Associating stimulus with an event

• Operant conditioning

  • Associating behavior with an event

Reinforcement

 pleasant feedback which increases the likelihood of the behavior

Punishment

• unpleasant feedback and decreases the likelihood of the behavior.

System 1:

 Fast, automatic with no sense of voluntary control

System 2:

Attentive, methodological, slow

Explain why we use System 1 thinking

so that we aren’t sitting there thinking about a small decision for a long time, allowing us to make quick decisions.

Define and give examples of the default heuristic

• Choosing the default option (or the first one that comes to mind) when faced with uncertainty

  • Clicking a button or not clicking a button to become an organ donor

Define and give examples of the availability heuristic

• Events that are easy to bring to mind are judged to occur more frequently

• Used to judge frequency or likelihood.

  • What causes more deaths in the United States?

    • Stomach cancer

    • Bee/hornet stings

      • Lung cancer in women

What are factors that make information “available”?

• Hearing about them frequently

  • Hearing about them recently

Define and give examples of the framing heuristic

• The way an issue is framed influences judgement

  • Adding a new size to a menu so that the second most expensive item seems like a good deal.

Define and give examples of the anchoring heuristic 

• Using a reference point to guide decisions

  • How old was Gandhi when he died question

Define and give examples of confirmation bias 

• Seeking information that fits expectations or beliefs

  • Seeing the first link of searching something up siding with your side so it becomes more confirmed.

Define and give examples of the representativeness heuristic 

• Assuming category is represented by an individual category member

  • Thinking that San Diego is farther west than Reno because California is closer to the coast line.

Dualism

 Mental phenomena are different than the physical bodies on which they depend on

Monism

Our mental experiences can be explained by physical processes happening in our brain

Describe the placebo effect, and give experimental evidence

• Ideas and expectations can affect physiological responses

  • Evidence: Participants experienced all experimental conditions and those who got the painkiller reported less activity in the spinal cord.

Biological

Fear prepares us, useful and have physiological correlates

Cognitive

• Anger and fear focuses attention

  • Emotion can guide learning and memory

Social

• Fear alerts our “pack”

  • Embarrassment guides behavior and informs others

Explain the role of the autonomic nervous system.

• Autonomic nervous system is responsible for physiological responses

  • Responsible for internal and involuntary responses.

What are the two branches of the autonomic nervous system?

Sympathetic and Parasympathetic

Sympathetic

Fight or flight

Parasympathetic

Rest and digest

Describe James-Lange theory of emotion. What are some issues with this theory?

• Emotions are a direct result of physiological response

• Problems

  • Non-emotional physical changes don’t always lead to emotional experience

    • Not enough autonomic nervous system responses to encode a wide range of emotions

Describe the Schachter-Singer Two Factor theory of emotion

Emotions are inferences about the cause of physiological response

Describe the short-term consequences of the stress response

• Short term

  • Same ANS response to life-threatening and non-life threatening situations

Describe long-term consequences of the stress response

• Long term

  • Less time to heal injuries

  • Reduced immune system function

  • Digestive issues

  • Higher risk of cognitive impairments

    • Heart disease

What is the relationship between stress and performance?

• Low stress tends to lead to poor performance

  • Too much stress also leads to bad performance

What are neurons?

Cells that make up the nervous system

• Sensory neurons

Relay messages to the brain; input signal

Motor neurons

In brain carry movement information from body to brain, output signal

Interneurons

Send information from one neuron to another, process information

what are the parts of the neuron

•  cell body (soma), dendrites, axon, myelin sheath, axon terminal

Cell body

Contains usual cellular structures and nucleus

Dendrites

Receive signals from neurons

Axon

Cell transmits signals down length of axon

Myelin Sheath

Insulator, speeds up signals to transmit faster

Axon terminal

End of neuron, sends signals to other neurons

Define the action potential

All or nothing signal that travels along the length of the axon

How does the intensity of the stimulus affect the action potential?

More number of action potentials elicited

Describe the steps of neural communication, from an action potential arriving at an axon terminal to neurotransmitter action stopping

• Action potentials arrives on axon terminal of presynaptic neuron

• Neurotransmitters released into the synapse

• Neurotransmitters bind to receptors on postsynaptic neuron

• If there is enough neurotransmitter, postsynaptic neuron fires an action potential

  • Neurotransmitters action stopped by enzymes or reuptake

Agonists

 Increase effect of neurotransmitter

Antagonist

Decrease effect of neurotransmitter

Central nervous system

Brain and spinal cord

Peripheral nervous system

• Everything else

  • Sensory and motor

Brainstem

Basic life support (breathing, heart rate, blood pressure)

Thalamus

Relay station/switchboard (sensory information goes from eyes to skin)

Cerebellum

Fine motor skills

Limbic system

• Border, separates evolutionary old part of brain from newer parts

• Amygdala: Emotions, fear

  • Hippocampus: Memory, navigation

Cortex

• Responsible for complex abilities

• Frontal lobe

  • Planning, personality, judgement, decision making

• Parietal lobe

  • Attention, sense of touch, spatial sense

• Occipital lobe

  • Visual processing

• Temporal lobe

  • Hearing, memory

• Split brain patients have damage to which area?

Corpus callosum

Sensation

Receiving information through sensory organs