psych 10 final

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operations

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. develop sense of object permanence

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. do not pass conservation tests because they have centration and a lack of reversibility. egocentric: do not pass three mountains task.

concrete operational stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. difficulty about thinking abstractly or reasoning hypothetically

formal operational stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

short-term memory (STM)

A limited-capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for about 20 to 30 seconds. holds around 5-9 chunks of information.

working memory

the manipulation of the short-term memory in order to use it for the task you are doing

Atkinson-Shiffrin Model

a memory system that contains: sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory

long-term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

explicit long term memory

also called declarative memory, it can be verbally stated and is knowing "what." episodic vs semantic

episodic long-term memory

memories of actual events or things you can visual the environment/situation of

semantic long-term memory

facts and knowledge, but you do not know how/why you know it.

implicit long-term memory

expressed behaviorally. knowing "how". procedural memory, classical conditioning, priming

procedural implicit long-term memory

skills, knowing how to do something

classical conditioning implicit long-term memory

associative learning, operant learning

priming implicit long term memory

exposure to things influences behavior

amnesia types

retrograde and anterograde

anterograde amnesia

cannot form new memories after the "accident/event"

retrograde amnesia

inability to retrieve information before a particular date/time

encoding

the process of transforming what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory

storage

retaining encoded information over time

retrieval

pulling memories out of storage. depends on cues/hints. similar context helps. for studying, if you study in a lot of different places, you have more retrieval cues

how to recall what you know

recall, recognition, reaction time

memory failures

transience, absentmindedness, blocking, memory misattribution, suggestibility, bias, persistence

transcience

forgetting over time

absentmindedness

lapses in our attention that result in memory failure

interference types

proactive and retroactive

proactive interference

old learning gets in the way of the new

retroactive interference

new learning gets in the way of the old

blocking

failure to recall something even though you know it, like when it is at the tip of your tongue

schema

organized knowledge structure/mental model that we've stored in memory

mnemonics

memory aids that use vivid imagery/stories to memorize long strings of info

Sperling's Iconic Memory Experiment

-people couldnt remember all of the letters in the display

-later he cued only one row and people could remember the entire row

-capacity is essentially unlimited, but sensory memory fades very quickly

misinformation effect

incorporating misleading info into one's memory of an event

flashbulb memory

highly detailed, vivid memory of an emotionally significant event

language

system that relates sounds or gestures to meaning

generativity

the desire, in middle age, to use one's accumulated wisdom to guide future generations

components of language

phonemes, morphemes, syntax

phoneme

smallest unit of sound, like bah vs pah

morpheme

smallest unit that carries meaning, like a word

syntax

sentence structure

theories of language development

behaviorist, nativist, interactionist

behaviorist: language development

language is learned through reinforcement and nurturing.

issues: parents respond to content more than grammar, it doesn't explain why kids know words they've never heard before, and speech errors reflect overgeneralization of grammatical rules

nativist: language development

innate mental structures that guide language acquisition. language is learned easier in critical period. noam chomsky

interactionist: language development

innate capacity for language interacts with experience. supported by creation of sign language by Nicaraguan children when growing up in a deaf school.

categorical speech perception

tendency to perceive as identical a range of sounds that belong to the same phonemic class

perceptual narrowing for phonemes

infants tune into the sounds of their native language. lose ability to see contrasts in other languages by 10-12 months.

early speech production

birth: crying

1 month: cooing

6 months: babbling

1 yr: words

telegraphic speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—"go car"—using mostly nouns and verbs.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

language shapes thought

decision-making

evaluating alternatives and making choices among them

availability bias

items that are more readily in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently

framing effects

changing how an issue is presented can change people's decisions

loss aversion

people want to avoid losses more than they want to achieve gains

sunk-cost fallacy

decisions are tainted because of emotional investment we have accumulated

anchoring bias

tendency to fixate on initial information, even if that anchor is arbitrary or random, and insufficiently alter our judgements away from that anchor

confirmation bias

searching for confirming evidence instead of disconfirming evidence

developmental psychology

scientific study in changes of behavior from birth until death

major themes of developmental psychology

nature vs nurture

perceptual development: hearing

all sounds that reach the womb are low-pass filtered (no high frequencies). newborns prefer their mother's voice to other women, their mother's language to other languages, and books/songs they heard in utero

perceptual development: taste

mother's amniotic fluid is affected by what she eats. baby develops affinity for those foods.

infant testing methods

we must infer since they cannot tell us these things. infants will orient to stimuli they find interesting. they prefer stimuli they have heard/seen before (familiarization). if they are repeatedly exposed to stimulus to point of boredom, they will prefer novel stimuli (habituation).

Fantz experiment

infants will look at interesting stimuli longer than non-interesting stimuli.

three mountains task

child faces a model of 3 mountains and a doll is placed at a different angle. when told to draw/describe what the doll sees, the child describes what THEY see, not realizing the doll's view is different.

criticisms of piaget

underestimated children's abilities, vague in respect to processes/mechanisms of change, doesn't account for variability in performance, undervalues SES

theory of mind

people's ideas about their own and others' mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict. also empathy

social development: delayed gratification

marshmallow test: 2/3 of 4 yr olds fail after 15 min. those who wait have shown higher education, SAT scores, better self-control, etc. Lower SES families have no association with outcome, possibly bc of scarce resources, so they take immediately.

social psychology

concerned with the way individual's thoughts, feelings, behaviors are influenced by others

social cognition

processes by which people come to understand others

how skilled are we in evaluating others?

very skilled. 57% correct in thin-slice judgements.

schema+stereotypes

schema: mental model/representation that organizes info about things/person/event

stereotype

stereotype: widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics bc of membership in a certain group

stereotype threat

fearing identifying with a negative stereotype about own group

stereotypes can be

inaccurate, overused, self-perpetuating, automatic

impression formation task

illusory correlation: when people estimate that they have encountered more confirmation of an association between social traits they have actually seen

ex. minority groups and negative events are attention-grabbing, so it skews our frequency perception

implications of impression formation task

schemas/stereotypes are often helpful, but can bias us

how to reduce negative impact of stereotypes

friendship, contact, stereotype results

attributions about behavior

attribution: inference about cause of person's behavior

fundamental attribution error

tendency to overestimate dispositional influences on our behavior, underestimate situational influences on someone else's behavior.

1. actor-observer effect, conformity

adjusting one's behavior to match what others are doing

obedience

following an authority figure

Solomon Asch Experiment

70% of subjects conformed to a wrong answer rather than giving a correct answer

what influences conformity?

presence of an ally, if the majority can hear your answer, how many of the majority there are

Milgram's Obedience Study

study of the phenomenon of obedience to an authority figure, examined the effects of punishment on learning (shock treatment for mistakes, 65% shocked dangerous amounts when ordered)

variations of Milgram

closeness of confederate, closeness of experimenter, respectability of environment, number of other teachers

Stanford Prison Experiment

Philip Zimbardo's study of the effect of roles on behavior. Participants were randomly assigned to play either prisoners or guards in a mock prison. The study was ended early because of the "guards'" role-induced cruelty.

Deindivualization

being in a group makes you lose self-awareness, making you do things you wouldn't normally do

bystander effect

failure to offer help to people in need when other bystanders are not doing anything either/when there are others present

Kitty Genovese

Murdered outside apartment- prompted to investigate bystander effect due to diffusion of responsibility

Latane and Darley

diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance

diffusion of responsibility

people feel a diminished sense of responsibility for their actions when surrounded by others acting the same way

pluralistic ignorance

majority of group members privately reject a norm but incorrectly assume that most others accept it, so they go along with it