JR Tucker

Ganglia

bundles of neurons found outside the brain and spinal cord along the course of peripheral nerves. a cell in the visual system that integrates impulses from many bipolar cells in a single firing rate.  The cones in the central fovea send their impulses to the ganglion cells, while farther out on the periphery of the retina, rods and cones coverage on the same bipolar & ganglion cells.

galvanic skin response (GSR)

physiological measure of the skin’s ability to conduct electricity; often one of the measures in a polygraph (along with respiration, heartbeat, pulse, etc.). The theory is that the more aroused you are (because you are anxious about lying) the more you are likely to sweat

fundamental attribution error

overlooking the influence of the power of a particular situation and thereby jumping to conclusions and crediting or blaming the “person” for what happened.

functional fixedness

inability to use an object in any other way than the way in which it was intended. example, if you cant think of any other use for a paper clip other than holding together papers, they youre suffering from functional fixedness.

frustration-aggression hypothesis

tries to explain anger and violence as stemming from pent up frustration that sort of explodes when it is triggered. People get aggressive not because they are necessarily evil, but because their pent up frustrations reach a threshold and they explode.

Psychosexual Development.

Oral Stage, Anal Stage, Phallic Stage, Latency Stage, Genital Stage.

dream interpretation levels

manifest and latent

“manifest” level of dream interpretation

the surface level of the dream what the dream is about

“latent” level of dream interpretation

the hidden, symbolic level of the dream, what it really means.

frequency polygon

a graph in which one "connects the dots." The picture you get is something like a mountain range.

Free association

technique developed by Freud in psychoanalysis in which a person simply talks about anything that comes to mind. It is a kind of free flow of consciousness.

Francis Galton

amazing early English scientist. His contributions include such things as helping develop the first personality tests, developing the science of eugenics (better humans through breeding), using statistics in research, arguing that nature is more important in personality than nurture. He is most well known for his belief in EUGENICS.

fovea

part of the eye that is the center of the retina. Here on the center of the retina are most of the cones.

cones

photoreceptor sensory neurons that help us detect colors and fine details. generally are not found outside the fovea, unlike rods, which are found everywhere on the retina. Rods help us detect light.

formal operation stage of piaget’s cognitive development

occurs during early adolescence (12-15) when youngsters are now capable of performing at the highest levels of cognitive activity and engage in kinds of thinking such as forming hypotheses, abstract reasoning and symbolic thinking. These more complicated mental "operations" can only be achieved with a developed cerebral cortex which is found during adolescence.

The foot-in-the-door phenomenon

technique that any salesman knows. If you can get someone to make a small commitment then you can ask them later for a larger commitment. If you give someone a penny to save the whales, they will have better success next time they come knocking asking for a dime, then a quarter, then a dollar.

figure-ground phenomenon

has to do with an area of psychology that deals with perception. Basically it has to do with being able to discriminate between an object and its background. For example, if you see a white shooting star against a deep black sky, the star would be the figure and the black would be the ground.

Fetal alcohol syndrome

is caused by a mother drinking alcohol while she is pregnant. Defects in newborn babies include mental retardation, low birth weight, premature birth, brain malformations and a whole host of learning disabilities when the child matures.

Feral children

kids who have grown up in the wild and been raised by animals. There have been about 8 documented cases of such children.

Feature analysis

what the brain does when its scanning objects to help you recognize things. For example, when youre looking for your friends face in a crowd of people your brain is instantly comparing each face for very specific features and rejecting faces that dont match that of your friends face.

Hubel and Wiesel

won the Nobel Prize for discovering “feature detector cells” in the visual cortex.

“feature detector cells”

specific neurons that help decode specific features of what you see. For example, some detector cells only pick up curves, some pick up end points of a line, some pick up horizontal or vertical lines, some pick up spaces, some pick up angles, some pick up movement, etc.

false consensus effect

basically thinking that more people agree with you than really do.

major factors in an experiment

control vs. experimental group, dependent vs. independent variable, operationalizing a definition, measurement of dependent variable, confounding variables, different kinds of biases, placebos, etc.

APA

has certain ethical guidelines researchers must follow prior to doing studies on humans. Some key guidelines are: confidentiality, no lasting harm, debriefing after the study, informed consent.

Erikson has Eight Stages of Human Development.

at each stage of development there are certain psychosocial tasks (developmental markers) that must be resolved successfully so that we can move easily into the next stage. He stressed the “social” and cultural aspects of psychological development versus the “sexual” aspects (Freud), so he called his stages the 8 Stages of PSYCHOSOCIAL development.

equity theory of relationships

basically we like other people because of what they can do for us and vice-versa. We put a lot into a relationship because we expect to get the same in return. The relationship has to do with mutual gain and equitable returns on our personal investment. I like you because you like me. Its 50/50.

Episodic memories

sharp memories of clearly definable event in our lives: our wedding day, graduation day, first battle in war, first kiss, etc. They tend to be vivid snapshots of the event that we can easily recall with great detail.

engram

a tiny bit of memory stored in a specific place. Psychologist have long sought to find the area of the brain that contained all the engrams in human memory. Most memories cant be located in specific areas of the brain but some can be. Its safe, however, to say that most memories are formed by association links to multiple areas of the brain and are not easily located in any one specific area.

Endorphins

brains natural morphine like substances which act as pain killers. When the body is injured or under stress, the brain is flooded with endorphins which help to counteract "substance p" a known pain causing substance in the synapse.

endocrine system

the glands that secrete hormones. The pituitary is called the "master gland" because its chiefly in charge of making sure the other glands do their job. For a complete list of the different glands and the hormones each gland secretes, check your psychology book or any basic biology book. Realize however, that the hypothalamus oversees and supervises the pituitary gland.

Elizabeth Loftus

American psychologist who is one of the worlds leading authorities on memory especially”eyewitness memory” and “recovered memories”; She has written a number of books on the reliability and unreliability of memory, especially when peoples eyewitness testimony is used in court. Her research shows that eyewitness memories are notoriously wrong and prone to be filled with mistakes that the person witness "inserts" into the recovered memory. Her work led lawyers to understand the use & misuse of eyewitness testimony and how gullible juries are when someone claims to have "eyewitness" testimony about an event.

ECT therapy

is most effective in the treatment of chronic and debilitating depression. We think that the small doses of electricity delivered to the frontal lobes helps restore serotonin levels in the brain or helps boost the production of endorphins. Were not exactly sure why it works, but it does work wonders on depression. The only side effects are some short term memory loss for a few days after the procedure.

eidetic memory

what used to be known as a photographic memory. Its the amazing ability to capture material that you "see."

Marijuana

affects short-term memory and motivation. Thats why we dont recommend it for students, it impairs they ability to get stuff to sink into their memories and, if used more than occasionally, usually makes them apathetic and intellectually lazy.

Echoic memory

kind of split second memory you have after initially hearing a sound. Its the lingering of a sound on your eardrum after the sound has occurred. If the sound isnt sent into long term memory, it will fade in a few seconds.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

an early pioneer (1885- Germany) of research on memory. He was a brilliant researcher and most of what we know about memory came from his early work. Among other stuff he developed something known as the RETENTION CURVE OR FORGETTING CURVE He discovered (and graphed) that material that isnt reinforced almost always disappears from our memory in a very short time. Most of the stuff you cram into your head just to pass a vocabulary quiz (if it isnt rehearsed) will leave your head in about two days.

Human drives

initiated by needs. The drive to eat is motivated by the need for food.

Dream analysis

was invented by Freud. Freudians love to believe that dreams can tell us a lot about our unconscious minds. Freud felt there were two levels to dreams. There is the manifest level the stuff of the dream, the surface level, and there is the latent level, the hidden symbolic meaning of dreams. But all dreams represent the unconscious wishes, desires and interest of the unconscious mind. They are a sort of wish fulfillment mechanism of the mind. For Freud, dreaming represented the "Royal road to the unconscious mind."

Down syndrome

neurological and physical disorder that is genetic, caused by an extra chromosome on pair 21. It can lead to mental retardation and physical problems such as heart and respiratory problems.

Social facilitation

the phenomenon in which the actual or implied presence of other people enhances an individuals performance of a task. For example, we tend to eat faster with other people around, we tend to walk faster when other people join us for a stroll, we tend to get more animated with other people around.

Dissociative disorders

are disorders in which we lose some aspect of ourselves. There are three major dissociative disorders: Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personality), fugue states, and amnesia.

Displacement

in Freudian defense mechanisms refers to taking out your emotion on an object other than the one you would like to take it out on. Suppose you are upset at your professor, really mad. You cant take your anger out on him/her (theyre the authority figure and might fail you), so you take it out (displace it) on your boy/girlfriend, you kick the cat, stomp upstairs and slam the door.

discrimination (learning)

being able to distinguish between similar stimuli. For example, I can get a dog to back at the sight of a square, but can I get him to distinguish the difference (discriminate) between a square and a rectangle. You experience this all the time when you discriminate between the sound that sends you to class versus the sound that tells you its a fire alarm and to go outside.

Difference Threshold

refers to how much more of a certain stimulation it takes for you to notice a difference in some sensory experience. For example, suppose I like 1 teaspoon of sugar in my coffee. The jnd would be how many more grains of sugar would it take to make the coffee sweeter? Or how much more light will it take before you say "Oh, now its brighter than before." Or how many decibels will it take before you say "The music is louder than it was before."

DSM-IV

published by the American Psychiatric Association to help diagnose mental disorders. It merely gives symptoms and statistics about the disorders. It does not give causes nor treatments. It is updated about every 20 years.

Developmental psychology

concerned with changes that occur to humans as we grow throughout the life span. It encompasses changes from infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.

Determinism

the belief that human behavior can be boiled down to one or two major factors that "determine" everything about you. For example, biological determinism is the belief that biology is destiny. Everything you are can be explained by a few biological principles. Economic determinism would be the belief that everything about humans could be reduced to a few simple economic principles.

Descriptive statistics

merely describe data, inferential statistics try to infer causation between variables.

Two types of depression

Dysthymic Disorder & Major Depressive Disorder.

dendrite purpose

receive incoming signals from other neurons.

Deinstitutionalization

refers to what happened across America in the 70s when mental hospitals had to open their doors and let all kinds of folks with mental disorders go. This came about because new drugs were developed that could treat symptoms of many disorders and the folks didnt need to be locked up anymore, and the legal proponents who said we cant lock up someone just because they have bizarre thoughts or actions. So, we let close to 80% of folks with disorders go and asked them to come back twice a week for their medications. Of course, they didnt come back, they usually ended up living as street people in the alleys of America.

deindividuation

what happens when people lose a sense of personal identity and accountability (responsibility). We usually think of this happening when people get caught up in a mob and do things that they would never do if acting alone. Factors that contribute to deindividuation are anonymity (darkness, wearing a mask, being one person in a large group) or intense physical activity (dancing, running) which floods a persons senses with feedback and they sort of "lose themselves."

defense mechanism

little mental technique (cognitive strategy) for defending the fragile ego from hurt, shame, embarrassment or guilt. Its sort of a protective device to defend our self-image. Common defense mechanisms are: repression, regression, displacement, projection, sublimation, denial, avoidance, reaction-formation, rationalization, withdrawal, identification, intellectualization, etc.

David McClelland

ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION. His research led him to believe that achievement motivation could be taught and acquired through proper learning. He even went to India once, selected people who fit the personality profile of an "entrepreneur" and then gave them the skills to develop a successful business, or in other words, "taught" them how to be high achievers.

Daniel Golemans Emotional Intelligence:

He argues that this kind of intelligence is more important in life than the traditional math/verbal kind of intelligence that schools seem to glorify to the detriment of developing kids with good emotional skills needed to make sound decisions.

emotional intelligence

the knowledge and ability to manage our emotions, respond appropriately to situations and the ability to make sound emotional decisions.

CS-CR-UCS-UCR:

They stand for conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response.

crystallized intelligence

facet of intelligence involving the knowledge a person has already acquired and the ability to access that knowledge; measures by vocabulary, arithmetic, and general information tests. It generally increases with age, which is why older people know more than younger people.

cross sectional studies

research method in which groups of participants of different  chronological ages are observed and compared at a given time.

45\. cross cultural studies

which researchers try to figure out whether a certain behavior, belief, practice, etc. transcends cultural boundaries or differs from culture to culture.

cerebral cortex

outer surface of the brain.

motor cortex

region of the cerebral cortex that controls the action of the bodys voluntary muscles.

auditory cortex

area of the temporal lobes that receives and processes auditory information.

visual cortex

cortex-  The region of the occipital lobes in which visual information is processed.

association cortex

parts of the cerebral cortex in which many high-level brain processes occur.

correlation coefficients-

statistic that indicates the degree of relationship between two variables

control group

group in an experiment in which all variables are kept constant.  It is necessary to figure out whether or not a certain variable affected an experiment and to what extent.

Approach/Avoidance conflict

having to choose something that has some good qualities but it also has some bad qualities. You want to go to Princeton but its so expensive.

Approach/Approach conflict

having to choose between two things, both of which have something good to offer. You get into Princeton and Harvard and you like them equally.

avoidance/avoidance conflict

Choosing between two equally bad things. Caught between a rock and a hard place. You can eat your spinach (which you hate) or you can eat your asparagus (which you also hate). 

Double Approach/Avoidance

having to choose between two or more things all of which have something good and bad about them. You got into Princeton but its so expensive, you also got into Harvard, but its too far from home.

Complementary colors:

Mostly black/white, red/green, blue/yellow. There are pairs of cones that are antagonistic (work opposite each other) on the retina and they are tuned to these colors.

color blindness

caused because people lack certain photoreceptors (neurons tuned to respond to certain frequencies of light) on their retina. Most common form is distinguishing red/green colors. Mostly in males (attached to the X-chromosome).   Those that cant distinguish any color are very rare.

cognitive dissonance

the state of uneasiness within a persons mind whenever they are "shaken up". Suppose you learned that your minister was secretly a serial killer. You would be taken aback, your mind would be in a state of disbelief. Youd have contradictory thoughts prompting you to reevaluate your attitude toward your minister and probably change your behavior toward him.

clever hans experiment

tendency to think animals are smarter than they actually are. There was a horse trainer in Germany that told everyone his horse, Hans, was super intelligent. The horse could tap out the date with his hooves, nod his head at the saying of the correct Prime Minister of Germany, neigh when he recognized the correct month, etc., etc. Everyone was amazed at Hans. Then we found out the Hans was merely associating certain nonverbal body language cues that the trainer would give after he asked a certain question. The trainer would touch his ear and the horse would neigh, adjust his cap and the horse would tap three times, etc. The horse didnt understand anything, he was just trained to do certain things when he saw the trainer give certain subtle body language cues.

classical conditioning

Pavlov, this is a kind of learning by association. The subject learns to associate a one stimulus with a certain response. This is also called Pavlovian conditioning. Its a very basic yet powerful kind of learning.

chunking

grouping items into smaller chunks so that they can be memorized easier. For example, your social security number is chunked into a 3-2-4 pattern. This is easier than trying to memorize 9 digits as one whole.

character disorders

another name for these is Personality Disorders. There are 10 of them in DSM-IV. They have to do with character "flaws" that interfere with a persons relationship to others, their performance on the job and even their image of themselves. They are not "crazy" in the sense that they have lost touch with reality, but they have inappropriate or disproportional personality traits that often put them at odds with other people. These disorders are a whole different category in DSM and separate from the other major categories.

Chaining

term from learning theory that refers to putting several learned behaviors together to make one complete whole routine. For example, suppose you were to break down all the small routines that might go into a marching band performance. There are lots of little routines going on that when they are all put together make for a grand show.

Carol Gilligans Critique of Kohlberg

His research had a distinct male bias as not many of his subjects that he surveyed and interview were female. He seems to suggest that males often reason through moral issues at higher levels than females. Gilligan pointed out the male bias in Kohlbergs research and argued that females have different ways of reasoning through moral issues, this does not make them inferior to male reasoning, but only points out the females value different things when trying to reason through moral issues.

Carl Rogers Person Centered Therapy:

He sat them up to face him, the therapist, rather than have them lie down and look away, and he believed that if he truly accepted the client, unconditionally, and surrounded the client with unconditional positive regard, then in this accepting and caring relationship he could best help the client grow in the way the client wanted to grow. He didnt see therapists as some aloof, intellectual, who was only there to figure out what was wrong with the patient. His techniques revolutionized therapy as we used to know it.

Cannon/Bard critique of James-Lange Theory of Emotions:

argued that 1) sometimes we feel and emotion first and only after realize what it did to our body 2) different emotions may have similar physiological responses (for example both fear and joy might cause the heart to beat) so how can one certain physiological response lead to any specific emotion? They argued instead that emotions and our perception of them are simultaneous. The raised the question of whether or not ones bodily response (heart beating) occurs before, after or simultaneously with ones perceived emotional reaction (I am afraid).

james lange theory

argued that emotions result from reading our visceral (physiological) reactions and thereby concluding certain emotions. For example, we see a bear, we feel our heart beat, feel our sweat pour out, notice our hair stand on end and we conclude "Im afraid.&quo

Bystander Intervention:

This has to do with the factors or forces that influence whether or not you are likely to come to someone’s aid if you are an innocent bystander. What affects whether or not you stop to help someone in need? Surprisingly enough, there are number of factors: whether or not you are in a hurry, whether you feel competent, whether the person is like you, whether you are with a small group versus a large group, whether or not you are in a good mood.

brocas aphasia

kind of language disorder that is caused by damage to the left frontal lobe. Damage in this area could lead to an inability to "produce speech." A person has a hard time forming the words, moving his mouth, much like a stroke victim that cant actually make the correct sounds for the words he’s trying to say.

Brainstorming:

generate novel solutions to problems. Everyone in the room just sort of shouts out ideas about something and the ideas are written on the board, no one is allowed to criticize the ideas until everyone has said everything they want. By reducing criticism, there is a free flow of ideas from which you can go back later on and judge which ones are good or which ones are bad. But the initial idea is to get those ideas out and on the board. If you know you’ll be instantly criticized, they someone with a good idea might not speak up in the first place.

brain differences in species

frontal, occipital, temporal and parietal.  What part of the brain do we share with animals?  Animals and we share the same basic hindbrain, at the base of our skull where the brain meets the spinal cord. These structures (medulla, cerebellum, reticular system, Pons, etc.) are important for basic vital functions such as heartbeat, balance, digesting and breathing. So humans and animals all have the same lower part to their brains. It’s only the higher parts (cerebral cortex) that distinguish us from the apes, dogs, lions, tigers and bears.

Blood brain barrier-

made up of specialized glial cells (astrocytes) that form a continuous envelope of fatty material around blood vessels in the brain. Protects the brain from poisons and harmful substances that are not fat-soluble.

blind spot

optic disc, which is the region in the retina where optic nerve leaves each eye; contains no receptor cells. You do not experience total blindness for two reasons: The blind spots of the two eyes are positioned so that receptors in each eye register what is missed in the other, and, The brain "fills in" this region with appropriate sensory information from the surrounding area.

binocular diparity

displacement between the horizontal positions of corresponding images in the two eyes.

Benjamin Whorf's theory of linguistic relativism (determinism)-

cross-linguistic exploration, came to the conclusion that differences in language created differences in thought. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: linguistic relativity- structural differences between languages will generally be paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences in the native speakers of two languages. linguistic determinism- the structure of language strongly influences or fully determines the way that its native speakers perceive and reason about the world.

Bell curve (normal distribution)-

used to assess intelligence on a bell shaped curve; most people's scores cluster in the middle and fewer are found toward the two extremes of genius and mental deficiency.

Babinsky response-

reflex produced by stroking the sole of the foot that manifests in dorsal flexion of the big toe.

aversive conditioning

when a stimuli one seeks to avoid is used to condition a subject. ???

attribution theory

social-cognitive approach to describing the ways the social perceiver uses information to generate causal explanations.

attachment

emotional relationship between a child and the regular caregiver.

Asch’s conformity study (line segments):

male college students were led to believe that they were in a study of simple visual perception. They were shown cards with three lines of differing lengths and asked to indicate which of the three lines was the same length as the standard line. Most of the participants, when faced with conflicting beliefs, who yielded to the majority’s opinion, were described as disoriented and doubt-ridden. Two-thirds of the time, however, participants gave the correct, nonconforming answer.

arousal

motivational state of excitement and tension brought about by various stimuli. A result is emotions, which serve as a motivational function.

apparent motion

movement illusion in which one or more stationary lights going on and off in succession are perceive as a single moving light; the simplest form or apparent motion is the phi phenomenon.