PSYC Exam 1

Psychology

scientific study of behavior and mental processes, study of people!

Why is psychology a science?

it’s systematic with a scientific process of hypothesizing, predicting, observing, and interpreting data through experiments

3 levels of analysis

biological, psychological, social-cultural

Biological influences

genetic, natural selection of behavior, genes responding to environmental

Psychological influences

learned fears, emotional responses, cognitive processing

Social-cultural influences

presence of others, cultural and family expectations, peer and group influences, media

Cognitive dissonance

mental conflict when your beliefs don’t line up your actions, psychology is more than common sense!

How do we overuse common sense and make errors?

Hindsight bias, overconfidence, perceiving patterns in random events

Hindsight bias

tendency to think we’re experts after learning an outcome, one’s ability to have overseen it, “I-knew-it-all-along” (ex: oceangate)

Overconfidence

tendency to be more confident than correct, overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs (thinking I did amazing on a test)

Perceiving patterns in random events

people tend to find order in even random and unrelated data, random sequences often do not look random (astrology)

Neuroplasticity

adaptive brain is wired by experience, we’re flexible to learn new things, brain is highly tolerant to high levels of noise (apple)

Parts of the nervous system

peripheral, center

Central nervous system

Brain and spinal cord are the body’s decision makers

Peripheral nervous system

sensory and motor neurons connect CNS to rest of the body to gather and transmit info

Types of neurons

sensory, motor, interneurons

Sensory neurons

carry incoming info from brain’s tissues and sensory receptors to CNS

Motor neurons

carry outgoing info from CNS to muscles

Interneurons

within CNS, communication internally and process between sensory and motor

Somatic

voluntary controls of skeleton movements, intentional control

Autonomic

controls self-regulated action of internal organs, responsible for homeostasis

Types of autonomic control

sympathetic, parasympathetic

Sympathetic nervous system

fight and flight, arouses and increases energy to enable voluntary control of skeletal muscle (ron)

Parasympathetic nervous system

rest and digest, calms and conserves energy to allow routine maintenance activity (hermione)

Spinal cord

receives signals from senses and passes them to brain

three main functions:

-transmit info

-organize rhythmic skeletal muscle activity

-organize reflexes

Brainstem

first part spinal cord comes in contact with, basic survival functions (primitive and old)

-medulla, pons, reticular formation

Reticular formation

helps control arousal

Medulla

heartbeats, blood pressure, breathing

-if hit, you will die

Pons

involuntary movement and controls sleep, complicated reflexes

Thalamus

all sensory info travels through here except smell, relay station!

Cerebellum

voluntary and fluid/graceful movement, life-sustaining functions

Limbic system

separates old part of brain to evolutionary part, controls our emotions and memory

-includes hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus

Hypothalamus

governs endocrine system via pituitary gland, emotion and reward

Amygdala

anger and fear, spider sense to sense danger in environment (kicks up sympathetic system)

Hippocampus

forming new memories, decreases in size and function with age

Cerebral cortex

outer layer, body’s ultimate control and info processing center, has folds to retain more info

Frontal lobe

thoughts, planning, decision making, most developing!

Parietal lobe

sensory input for touch and body position

Occipital lobe

vision

Temporal lobe

auditory processing

Association areas of the cerebral cortex

frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital

Phineas Gage

pole through his frontal lobe that changed his entire personality to become impulsive

Sensory homunculus

size of our brain proportionate to body parts, weird looking thing

Corpus callosum

connects with axon fibers between the two hemispheres, R aids L and L aids R

Apraxia

difficulty with skilled movement caused by a damaged cerebellum

Agnosia

disorder of perception, can’t recognize everyday objects

Sensory neglects

disorders that block out part of the world (ex: left of the world doesn't exist)

Aphasia places in the brain

Wernicke’s and broca’s area

Damaged Wernicke’s area

can’t understand language in spoken or written form, but unaware of their miscomprehension (word salad)

Aphasia

loss of the ability to understand or express speech from brain damage

Damaged Broca’s area

Understand but can’t express, difficulty in language production, adequate comprehension (broken speech)

Lateralization

sensory information is sent to opposite hemisphere leading to the cortex (L controls R)

Split brain

phenomena of breaking the brain into halves to seize communication and control one side at a time

Types of brain scans

EEG, MEG, PET, fMRI, TMS

EEG

electrodes to brain to measure electrical activity in neurons, doesn’t tell us about brain structure, detects brain activity easily

MEG

Brain casing to record magnetic fields in the brain, high temporal resolution (reactions at the moment)

PET

injects radioactive glucose substance into bloodstream to measure flow of substance to the brain, slow temporal resolution

fMRI

measures blood flow to the brain by comparing MRI scans, which areas use the most energy?

TMS

send current through the scalp to activate or inhibit different regions of the cortex

Developmental psychology

study of physical, cognitive, and social changes throughout the human life cycle

What are developmental psychology’s major issues?

Morality, nature and nurture, continuity and stages, stability change

Morality

two competing views:
-we start off as immoral or amoral (Christians)

-we start off as basically good

Nature and nurture

three competing views:

-empiricism, nativism, constructivism

Empiricism

learning (nurture) as a blank slate

Nativism

brain structures (nature) as complex humans already

Constructivism

a little bit of both (learning and interact with environment while having complex brains)

Continuity and stages

what’s the relationship from a kid to adult?

Two views:

-slow and continuous shaping process

-genetically created series of stages

Stability and change

How do our traits persist through life? end of history illusion

End of history illusion

recognize we have changed, but assume we will change very little in the future as elders

Neurogenesis

neutral growth as we develop

Synaptic pruning

cutting back on neuron connections, neurons connect at teenage years to become more dense

Motor development

infants begin to move, experience has little effect on this sequence with different timing

Infant research methods

sucking responses (suck more when excited and interested), habituation (dominant method), brain scans

Habituation

babies attend to novel things, get bored by repetition and gain interest when something new has occurred

Jean Piaget

believed that children think in radically different ways than adults, development occurs in stages

-underestimated the competence of children

Piaget’s stages

sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operation, formal operational

Sensorimotor

(0-2 years)

-experience world through sensory play

-does not reason or differentiate

-stranger anxiety

-object permanence acquired in 6 months

-schemas

Object permanence

understanding that objects exist regardless of actions or perceptions (babies believe everything disappears after they’re gone)

Schemas

mental representations of objects, places, events, etc and differs between everyone, framework to interpret information

How do schemas form for kids?

Assimilation and accommodation

Assimilation

process of taking new information and fitting it into an existing schema (new object can be banged)

Accommodation

schemas are changed or created in order to fit new information (eggs can’t be banged against the table)

Preoperational

(2-7 years)

-objects aren’t disconnected things, connected by other principles

-symbolic thought (pretend play)

-intuitive reasoning (not logical)

-theory of mind

Theory of mind

ideas about their own and other’s mental states and points of view, lack of is called egocentrism

Egocentrism

“everyone knows what I know and see what I see”

Concrete operational

(7-11 years)

-think logically about concrete events

-less egocentric

-inability to reason abstractly

-understand conservation

Conservation

child knows that some object properties remain the same even when you change the appearance (water cups)

Formal operational

(12 years-adult)

-no longer limited to concrete reasoning, abstract and scientific reasoning

-changing in moral reasoning

Kohlberg’s levels of moral thinking

pre-conventional morality, conventional, post-conventional morality

Pre-conventional morality

Self-interest, obey rules to avoid punishment and gain rewards (before age 9)

Conventional moral

uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social order (early adolescence)

Post-conventional morality

actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles (few people reach this stage during adolescence)

What did Piaget’s theory provide?

Interesting and falsifiable claims, rich theoretical framework, striking findings but also showed children may be more competent than the theory

Attachment

emotional tie with another person, stranger anxiety, form attachments because of their needs (cupboard theory) but also comfort (Harlow’s monkeys)

-critical period after birth

-imprinting with animals after birth

Depravity of attachment

Children grow up being resilient and don’t cry because they don’t receive attention, at risk for attachment problems, need a sharp break from abuse past to recover

Strange Situation test

how do children react with parent, stranger, alone and when they reunite?

-secure, avoidant, anxious attachment

Secure attachment

when not stressed: explore, secure base with parent and stranger

CG returns: seeks CG and is comforted

Avoidant attachment

when not stressed: explores and indifferent to CG

CG returns: avoids CG and not comforted

Anxious attachment

when not stressed: anxious, clingy, don’t explore

CG returns: seeks CG and pushes away, angry

What are the limitations to strange situation test?

Doesn’t take into account genetic differences in temperament or cross-cultural differences