PSY1101 - Flashcards for midterm 1

Wilhelm Wundt

• 1832-1920 —> years active

• Defined pyschology as science of mental life

• First established psych lab

• interested in sensation and perception

Key Contributions

• carefully measured observations

• experiments

• introspection

William James

• 1842-1910

• “father of american psych”

• Studied human thoughts, feelings and behaviours

• authored principles of psychology

• taught first experimental psych course at harvard

First women in psychology?

• Mary Whiton Calkins

• Margaret Floy Washburn

Mary Calkins

• 1863-1930

• memory researcher

• First APA female president —> 1905

• Worked at Harvard denied PHD

• fought for right to vote

Historical Themes in Modern Psychology

• Nature v Nurture

• Evolution

• Mind-body connection

Four overall influences in modern psychology

Evolution

Culture

Biology

Cognition

Evolution

• overall influence in modern psychology

• Influenced early psychology

• Fell out of favour, because some behaviours didnt make sense

• Renewed interest due to:

  • Discovery of genetic influence on behaviour

• Focueses on ultimate explanations for behaviours

Culture

• Overall influence in modern psychology

• shared set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviours belonging to specific group

Groups may include: race, ethnicity, nationality, income, sexual orientation, religion, ideas (politics)

What does psychological research focus on in respect to culture?

1. How children develop based on their cultural group

2. differences between culture

Biology

• overall influence in modern psychology

• process oriented explanations of mechanisms in nervous system

How is biology of psychology studied in humans?

Brain imaging studies

• shows where blood flow is to certain areas in the brain

How is biology of psychology studied in animals?

Single cell recording

• electrodes inserted into single neurons to measure cellular activity

Cognition

• overall influence in modern psychology

• process oriented explanations of mental activity

• how do people perceive, learn, remember?

How can psychological researchers study cognition?

Utilise computer analogies; modelling

Why is cognition important for therapy?

• People respond better to a combination of cognitive and medication therapy than soleley medication therapy

• teach people to question their thought and behaviour processes

What is scientific thinking?

Naturally asking empirical (experience and observational based) questions

Qualities associated with scientific attitude

• Curiosity

• Drive to understand

• skepticism

• humility

Critical Thinking

• careful style of forming and evaluating knowledge than simply using intuition

Scientific method

• process of testing ideas about the world by:

  • testing ideas

  • making observations

  • analyzing data

Scientific Method Process

1. Identify the problem

2. Gather information

3. Hypothesis

4. Experiment

5. Data Analysis and Conclusion

6. If data does not fit hypothesis, update hypothesis and start from step 3 again

Research Strategies used in pyschological science

1. Description

2. Correlation

3. Experiments

Important Distinctions in Pyschology Research

1. Reliability

   • will effect be the same if experiment was ran again

2. Validity

   • Do the methods used really measure the variable of interest

Researchers want their test to be both reliable and valid

Test may be reliable but not valid

Description research strategy

Systematic, objective observation of people

Four main kinds of descriptive research

1. Naturalistic Observation

2. Participant observation

3. Case study

4. Survey

Naturalistic Observation

• description research strategy

• observe behaviour of real world

• no control on behaviour, however hard to determine exact cause of behaviour

Hawthorne Effect

• animals and humans change their behaviour knowing they’re being watched

• factory owners experimented with environment and productivity of workers

• however, productivity increase seemed to be associated with workers being watched

Is naturalistic observation really valid?

• due to potential of participants changing behaviour when knowing they are being watched, this research method may not be valid

• potential observation bias

Participant Observation

• Description research strategy

• Researcher interacts with population of study

• allows for research insights from participant perspective

• however, may not be reliable and subject to bias and effect change

Case Studies

• case study

• a report of a single, person, group or situation

• collect detail

• not an experiment

• difficult to compare to other cases than case at hand

Survey

Questions to extract research from participants

• easy to administer

• effective approach to gather information

• susceptible to biases from researchers and participants

Problems with surveys

• sampling bias (who we ask)

• Wording of questions

• participant bias

• response rate

Who to ask for survey?

Random Sample

• everyone should be given opportunity to ask

• volunteer bias occurs with people who respond

How to ask for surveys?

Be careful with how questions are worded

Correlation

• Research Strategy of psychology

• observation that two traits are related to each other

• measure of how closely two factors are related to each other by direction of strength between factors

Scatterplot

Way of representing correlations

• bivariate data

Perfect positive correlation

• both variables increase at the same rate

Perfect negative correlation

• one variable decreases at the same rate the other increases

Zero correlation

No pattern or relationship between the variables

Correlation coefficient

• provides statistical measure for correlation (R)

What possibilities exist for correlation between variable A and B

1. B caused A

2. A caused B

3. A third party caused A and B

Correlation is not causation

Experimentation

Psychological research strategy

• Experiments are concerned with isolating cause and effect (by manipulating certain factors and holding certain factors)

Hypothesis

Educated guess about about outcome of experiment

Simple Random Sample

• everyone has equal chance

Stratified random sample

Divide into subgroups and take representative samples

Non-random sample

• due to study constraints, not equal chances

Convenience Sample

• work with what you have

Experimental and Control Group

1. Experimental group is exposed to experimental variable

2. Control group is not exposed to experimental variable

Results are compared between experimental and control

Placebo Effect

• due to the expectation of receiving treatment, results may be impacted

Internal Validity

• degree results can be attributed to the independant variable and not other variables

External validity

degree to which results can be generalized to other situations

Descriptive Statistics

Simple quantitative descriptions

• mean

• median

• mode

• frequency

• range

• variability

• standard deviation

Inferential Statistics

Tests that infer the significance of differences between groups using mathematical calculations

What is the 5% rule in statistics?

If the probability of an event occurring is less than 5% than it is deemed a rare event

Tuskagee Medical Study

Sample of black participants (many with syphillis) offered free meals and treatment for bad blood.

The experiment continued and when the treatment became available, researchers let the participants die → partners were also affected

5 Main principles of Ethics in Psychology

1. Beneficence and Nonmaleficence

   • Do good, not harm and weigh costs and benefits of research

2. Fidelity and Responsibility

   • developing relationships and protecting participants

   • informed consent

3. Integrity

   • be accurate, honest, non-biased

   • communicate results clearly and truthfully

4. Justice

   • refers to who benefits

   • do not exclude groups

5. Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity

   • protect rights, privacy and welfare of participants

   • anonymity

   • awareness of vulnerabilities

   • no coercion

What organisations exist to check if ethical principles are being followed?

• Internal Review Boards

• Research Ethics Board (2 of them at uottawa)

Facebook Emotional Contagion Experiment

• Researchers manipulated if facebook users were given positive or negative content to determine if they would post positive or negative comments

• Users were not given choice to withdraw or consent about experiment

What is deception in a psychological experiment?

• When researchers do not tell the subjects the intent of the experiment

What do researchers have to do to make sure they can use deception in their experiment?

• seek approval from IRB to ensure the experiment;

→ limits harm to the subjects involved

→ Can only be conducted effectively using deception

→ The participant is debriefed after the experiment and can ask about clarification of the experiment

Decisional Impairment

• a type of vulnerable population

• Cannot make their own decisions due to impairment (children, mentally-disabled)

Situational Vulnerability

• a type of vulnerable population

• Being coerced into the experiment by having to choose whether they will be affected significantly if they do not do the experiment

• financially vulnerable, prisoners, military members

Why were the Miligrim experiments conducted?

• During the Nuremburg trials several defendants stated that they were just obeying orders to kill countless people

• Miligrim wanted to know how far obedience would go

What were the Miligrim experiments

• A teacher (subjects) would teach the students (researchers) words to memorize

• When the student made a mistake, the teachers were told to shock the students with increasing intensities each time

• They wanted to see if the subjects would actually kill in obedience

What principles of ethical guidelines did the Miligrim experiments conflict?

• benificence and non maleficence

• Respect for people’s rights and dignity

What is the CNS made up of?

• Brain and spinal cord

What are Neurons?

• building blocks and functional units of Nervous system

Dendrites

• receive many messages and decide whether to fire more or less

Where do neurotransmitters from other neurons attach?

Dendrite

Soma

• Cell body (contains structures to operate the cell

Function of the Soma

• integrates all the inputs received by dendrite and decides if an action potential should be initiated

Where are action potentials initiated?

Axon Hillock

What type of signals are received by dendrites?

• Electrochemical

What where is the axon hillock located?

• At the beginning of the axon

What is the function of the axon?

• sends information to next neuron

• transmits an electrical signal to be released from the terminal buttons that causes neurotransmitter to be released

What fatty tissue is the axon covered in?

Myelin Sheath

Where are the neurotransmitters held?

In vesicles in the axon terminal

Nodes of Ranvier

• Gaps in myelin sheath

• facilitate movement of electrical signal

• signal moves from node to node

What is the Synapse?

• Gap between cells

• Vesicles send their neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft which attach onto the dendrite of the postsynaptic neuron

Presynaptic Neuron

• sends neurotransmitters

Postsynaptic Neuron

• Receives neurotransmitters

Glial Cells

• support cells

Do Glial cells out number neurons 10:1?

Yes

Function of Glial Cells

• Provide nutrients

• Remove Waste

• Provide structural support to neurons

• Form myelin

• Speed up neural communication

Microglia

• remove waste

• fight infections

• part of immune system

• type of glial cell

Astrocyte

• type of glial cell

• remove waste

• fight infection and part of immune system

• structurally support neurons and provide nutrients

Oligodendrocytes

• Form myelin around axons in CNS

• Speed up transmission of signals

Schwann Cells

• form myelin around axons in Peripheral Nervous System