Bryan Ye 12/08/24

Psych Test #3

History of Psychology

Psychology Development

Study of Psychology

• William James prompted psychologists to collect data for studies
• Psychology found to be affected by biology, genetics, experiences and culture
• Psychology collaborated with other fields such as biology, computer science, physiology, anthropology and sociology

Behaviorism (1st half of the 20th century)

• Movement that emphasized a focus on observable behaviors with exclusion of mental events such as thoughts
• Modern research in memory, language and development found that behaviorism was unable to explain certain psychological phenomena causing a turn to a study of mental functions, not just overt actions

Cognitive Revolution

• 1950s, George A. Miller and his colleagues launched the cognitive revolution in psychology
• 1967, Ulna Neissr wanted a study of psychology with more integrated examination of cognitive processes (attention, memory, inhibitory control, …)
  • Advancements in mathematical models of behavior offered emphasis on the underlying processes behind such phenomena

Big Data Approach

• Modern movement characterized by the usage of collections of large data sets leading to the expansion samples and the field of study
• There was often controversy with such an approach as the data was often repurposed for things other than psychology leading to greater emphasis on data ethics

Open Source Collaboration Review

• Study that less than half of experiments from psychology journals were replicated
• Reproducibility Project found a 39% replicability of studies of 100 studies from My of 2018
• Found that there was a need to reform and increase the reliability of results
• Replication allows for insights on random factors in experiments
• Replication limits the uncertainty related to random factors

Open Science Movement

• Movement that emphasized improvement of psychological scientific methods for the creation of studies with greater transparency
  • Improvements were widely adapted and regulated including sharing data

Reforms of the Open Science Movement

Increased Transparency

• There is documentation of hypotheses in advance
• There is articulation of analyses, plans, research materials, data and reports
  • Readers are thoroughly informed on studies and can draw valid inferences from progress

Preregistration

• There is layout of hypotheses, methods and analysis ahead of time with publishment with timestamp
• Ensures proper procedure and proper order of procedure
• Inclusion of analysis will offer insight into proper of sample size and proper results

Meta Analysis

• Combination of studies that focus on similar issues to create a summary
• May offer contextualization of studies in weighing studies based on their accuracy and results

Psychology Methods

Psychology as a Science

Psychology as a Science

• Accurate knowledge can only be obtained through observation of the world and measurement (empiricism)
• There is involvement of data collection and analyses
• Requires careful and systematic steps
• Description: what a phenomenon is
• Prediction: when and where it will occur
• Explanation: why it occurs

Psychological Study Varieties

Descriptive Research

• Observing behavior to describe behavior objectively and systematically
• Helps describe human’s neutral life and behavior
• Can sometimes allows for prediction of when or how behaviors might occur
  • Cannot explain psychological phenomena
• Include case studies, observations, and self-report methods
• Should be followed by experiments

Case Studies

• Intensive observation, recording and description of an atypical person or organization
  • Individuals usually have a special aspect
  • Organizations usually are doing something uniquely poorly or uniquely well
• Often describes events or experiences that lead to or result from exceptional features
• Cannot usually generalize to different groups
• Cannot replicate case studies, therefore cannot provide concrete proof for a theory
• Allows for very in depth analysis of an individual
• Is a good starting point for other research studies

Observational Studies

• Include participant observation and naturalistic observation
• Participant observation: researcher involved in the situation
• Naturalistic observation: researcher passive, separate front he situation
  • Doesn’t change or alter behaviors
• Includes systematic assessment and coding of overt behaviors
  • Coding may involve narrative summaries of patterns of behavior
  • Coding may be a general count of incidence

Self-Reports and Interviews

• Include surveys, interviews and questionnaires
  • May include questions on demographics, past behaviors, personal attitudes, beliefs, recall of events or reflection upon mental and emotional states
  • May have a numerical scale
• Interviews allow for interactions with people who are inaccessible to surveys
  • Allows for more in depth view of respondent opinions, experiences and attitudes
  • Can offer new areas of inquiry
  • Common practice for sociologists
• Are much more interactive than observations
• Allows for collection of a lot of data very quickly, easily and cheaply

Response Bias

• Self-reports and interviews are only as good as the data that individually are willing to respond with
• There may be bias based on populations who do or don’t answer

Correlational Studies

• Show how variables are related in the real world without attempts to alter variables and find causality
  • May be morally reprehensible to alter variables especially with experimentation of animals or humans
• Correlation Coefficient: numerical value that shows the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables, ranges from -1 to 1
  • The greater the magnitude of the correlation coefficient, the stronger the correlation
  • The sign of the the correlation coefficient reflects whether the correlation is negative or positive correlation
• Positive Correlation: higher values of one variable predicts higher values of the second variable
• Negative Correlation: lower values of one variable predicts higher values of the second variable
• Zero Correlation: change in one variable doesn’t predict change in second variable
• Scatterplot: diagram that is important in the demonstration of direction and strength of data in correlational studies
• Correlational studies does not allow for predictions
  • Meaningfulness of relationship can be heightened by statistical disproving of the third variable and directionality problem

Directionality Problem

• Correlational studies cannot effectively show the direction of the relationship between variables in a correlational study
  • Which variable is independent and which variable is dependent

Third Variable Problem

• Correlational studies cannot effectively account for a third variable that may be responsible for the two variables with correlation
• Third variable may be obvious or harder to identify

Experimental Method

• Manipulation of one variable to measure the effect on a second variable
• Independent Variable: the variable being manipulated through assigning participants to different levels of the variable
• Dependent Variable: the variable being measured after manipulation of the independent variable occurs
• Is the study variety with the greatest control over a situation, allowing for greatest inference on causality

Manipulation of Independent Variables

• Can be through varying the task that participants are assigned or through varying the exposure to stimuli
• Assignment or exposure should be fair and unbiased
• Best assignment should be done from random assignment, there should be at least two levels of independent variables
• Experimental Group: those who receive treatment
• Control Group: those who don’t receive treatment

Repeated Measure Design

• Is an experimental design where some people receive both treatments but the order of treatments or order of absence of treatments are randomly assigned
• Difference in responses are better attributed to treatments
  • Sometimes double exposure with prior knowledge may influence performance

Causality from Experimental Method

• Control group attempts to ensure that the manipulation of the independent variable is the only difference between the experimental and control group, limits confounding variables
• Confounding variable: anything that affects dependent variables and may vary a studies experimental condition
  • Introduces uncontrolled differences between groups
  • May act as an undetected third variable that accounts for observed relationship
  • Controlling confounding variables is fundamental to the experimental approach
  • The fewer the confounding variables, the more confident a researcher is that the changes in dependent variable is due to the independent variable

Random Assignment

• Assigning participants to experimental and control groups, ensures that potential participants have an equal chance of being assigned to any level of independent variable
• Small difference by chance is expected, but will even out when assigning other groups
  • Should be equivalent on average
• Without random assignment, there will be introduction of confounding variables

Sampling

• Sample: is a subset of the population
  • Should be representative of the population we want to infer about
  • Larger samples should yield more accurate results
  • The sample size is limited by resource constraints
• Sampling: is the process of selection from populations to be in the sample

Limits to Sampling

• It is difficult to randomly sample for the entire population of humans
  • There is often language and cultural differences between more local populations
• Cross-cultural research is used to identify which aspects of psychology are universal and which aspects vary across populations
• Culturally sensitive research considered the effect of culture on how individuals think, feel and act
  • Especially important in very large and diverse populations where there is many different cultures in close proximity
  • Must be vigilant not to apply a concept tested in one culture to another separate culture

Convenience Sampling

• Sampling of individuals who are conveniently available
• Is almost always biased, therefore it is best to be acknowledged as limiting factors when a study is published

Psychological Research

Scientific Method

• The method of research best for supporting a claim, through collection, analysis and interpretation of scientific evidence
• Ordered scientific method: pose a research question, research background, form a hypothesis, design a study, conduct the study, analyze the data
• There is an interaction between research, theories and hypotheses
• After research on a hypothesis there may be a refinement of a theory
  • Allows for more comprehensive and more accurate explanation of phenomena

Theories and Hypotheses

• Theory: is an explanation or model of how a phenomenon works
  • Uses interconnected ideas and concepts
  • Explains prior observations and predicts future events
• Hypothesis: is a specific testable prediction
  • Narrower than its theory basis
  • Multiple hypotheses reflects on the big theory

Good Theories

• Produces a variety of testable hypotheses
• Should be falsifiable, contradicting information should allow for expansion and improvement of the theory
• Typically tends towards simplicity

Research Question

• Should be testable and specific

Background

• Researchers should learn about what is already known about the theory/theories that the research question contributes to
• There should be a literature review
  • Can look at prior research of similar questions
• Allows for further specificity on the direction of the research

Forming Hypotheses

• Acts as a guide for the study through noting evidence that confirms and contradicts the hypothesis
• Testable research studies performed should test the hypothesis

Designing a Study

• Picking the research method best suited to test the hypothesis
• Descriptive studies, correlational studies, experiments

Conducting a Study

• Special focus should be given to the variables used

Procedure

• Procedure should be standardized, allowing consistency through many trials

Variable

• Something in the experiment that can be manipulated or measured by a scientist
• Variables should be defined in a way that reflect the method used to assess the variables
• Operational Definition: qualify (describe) and quantify (measure) variables for objective understanding
  • Allows for accurate display of information to other scientists
  • Better allows for experimental replication

Analyzing the Data

• Describing the data and understanding the conclusions derived from the data
• Statistics is often used to interpret meaningfulness of the data so that the conclusions can be generalized

Reporting the Data

• Research should be made public for the benefit of society, support of scientific culture and for the expansion of further research
  • Can be through presentation of preliminary work at conferences
  • Can be through full reports published in peer reviewed scientific journals
• Peer review allows for assurance of the quality of materials and validity of conclusions
• Reports allow for more rapid presentation of research to other scientists and the public
  • Full reports should include background, significance, full methodology, complete statistical analysis, context of prior research and complete discussion

Failure Replication in Psychology

Replication

• Is the repeating of a study to see if results agree
  • Allow for more confidence of results
  • Is especially important if it is by independent researchers
  • Decreases the possibility that results are just the result of the random variables of a setting
• No single studies can provide definitive answers and replication is necessary

Confounding Factors

• Sometimes other factors are hypothesized to be not relevant actually may confound the results

False Positive

• When the theory and the hypotheses are incorrect, but the study creates result that supports the hypothesis

Small Samples

• Large samples are more resistant to skew from confounding factors
• Scientists may assume a small sample is sufficient when a larger sample is actually necessary

HARK-ing (Hypothesis After the Results are Known)

• Is the act of hypothesizing after the results are known
• The result can support any number of hypotheses instead of the one hypothesis prior to the conducting of the study
• Scientists must be explicit in the distinction between post-hoc explanations and priori predictions

P-hacking

• Is that act of performing many statistical tests with different variations until a statistical significant is produced
• May be unintentional in the search for the optimal subset of data
  • Belief that further analysis improves the quality of data
• Only reporting statistically significant tests and omitting the other results overestimate the strength of results

Underrepresenting Null Effects

• Null effects are findings that show no difference between conditions or no relationship between variables
• Researchers sometimes run several studies or include redundant measures that all test the same hypothesis
  • Allows researchers to only report data that supports the hypothesis
• Underrepresented null effects overestimates the strength of results

Biological Foundation of Psychology

Biology in Psychology

Brain Anatomy

• It was long known that alterations of the brain can lead to changes in the mind and behavior
• Pierce Paul Broca found that damage to specific regions causes psychological changes
• Advances in brain imaging has offered great insight into neurological phenomena
  • Initially offered insight into basic processes, now offer insight into more specific brain phenomena

Electroencephalogram (EEG)

• Imaging study that measures changes in the magnetic field in the brain from changes in blood flow to certain regions

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

• Imaging study that can study the brain as it performs psychological functions in real time
• Shows regional activation in certain tasks
  • Promotes the theory of the localization and specialization of brain anatomy for different functions

Genetics

• The human genome is the basic genetic code of the body
  • Specific genes may affect thoughts, actions, behaviors or disorders
  • Genetic manipulation offers future treatment options
• Almost all aspects of psychology and behavior offers at least a small genetic component
  • Combinations of genes can predict psychological characteristics

Epigenetics

• The study of how environmental factors gene expression
  • There is especially a focus on early life and its influence on the mind and behaviors
• Epigenetics doesn’t typically change the genetic code, just its expression

Immunology

• The immune system protects the body, interacts with systems that respond to stress, regulate digestive processes and metabolized energy
  • There is a unique interplay between immune functions and brain function, structure and development
  • Relative novel perception of psychological phenomenon

Gut-Brain Axis

• There is a relationship between the gut microbiome, the immune system and the mind/behavior
• The composition and diversity of the gut microbiome can alter and be altered by the body’s response to stress
• The gut microbiome can mount an immune response or direct attention to certain issues
• There is a possible correlation between irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), autism and anxiety

Levels of Psychological Analysis

Biopsychosocial Model

• Combination of the biological, individual and social level of psychological analysis
• There is a trend of greater involvement of different levels of psychological analysis
  • Allows of a more complete picture of mental and behavioral processes

Biological Level of Psychological Analysis

• How physical body contributes to mind and behavior

Individual Level of Psychological Analysis

• How individual differences in personality and mental processes affect individual perceptions of the world

Social Level of Psychological Analysis

• How group contexts affect interactions and influence individuals

Cultural Level of Psychological Analysis

• How people’s thoughts, feelings and actions are similar or different across cultures
• Differences highlight the importance of cultural experiences in shaping psychological processes
• Similarities highlight universal phenomena independent of cultural experiences

Psychology in Education

Education System

• There is a recent integration of psychology into the world of education

Distributed Practice

• Learning information in bursts over a long period of time
• May be more work to remember after switching to another topic
• Each new study period may remind students of previous study periods
  • Recalling strengthens memory

Retrieval-Based Learning

• Being tested on material helps learning due to repeated recall
  • Recalling strengthens memory

Elaborative Interrogation

• Asking “why”, is especially helpful with factual information
• Links a new fact to existing knowledge
  • Allows for integration of new information with previous understanding of the world

Interleaved Practice

• Switching between different types of skills or topics during studying
• Allows for comprehension of different types of skills and topics

Neural Function

Nervous System

Organization of a Nervous System

• Nervous system is responsible for everything we think, feel or do
• Are organized into two basic units, the Central Nervous System and the Peripheral Nervous System which are anatomically separate but rely heavily on each other
• Neurons are the basic units of the nervous system

Central Nervous System

• Include the brain and spinal cord
• Is responsible for all processing of actions, thoughts, feelings and sensations
• Are responsible for both conscious processing and reflexes as well

Peripheral Nervous System

• Includes all other nerve cells
• Includes the somatic and autonomic nervous system
• PNS carries signal to CNS for organization and evaluation and from the CNS

Somatic Nervous System

• Involves voluntary behavior
• Carries messages from the sensory receptors to the CNS
• Carries messages from the CNS to motor neurons
• CNS directs the PNS to perform behaviors or make bodily adjustments

Autonomic Nervous System

• Autonomic nervous system regulates the body’s homeostasis through stimulation of glands and maintaining internal organs
• Carry somatosensory signals from the glands and internal organs to the CNS to inform about the body’s current state
• Involuntary functions can sometimes be consciously controlled
• Is split into the two branches, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems

Sympathetic Nervous System

• Is the emergency system which is the first response to danger
• Often synonymous with fight or flight reactions
• Can be activated by psychological states such as anxiety, unhappiness, sexual arousal

Parasympathetic Nervous System

• Is the calm after the sympathetic reaction
• Allows for conservation of energy and return to baseline homeostasis

Neurons

Neuron Function

• Receive, integrate and transmit information
• Networks of neurons are the functional basis of psychological activity
• The complexity of a human is the result of billions upon billions of neurons
• Each neuron communicates with 10s of 1000s of other neurons
• Are specialized for communication as they are excitable
  • Powered by electrical impulses and communicate with other nerve cells with chemical signals
  • In reception phase, neurons take in chemical signals from neighboring neurons
  • In integration phase, neurons assess and process signals
  • In transmission phase, neurons pass their own signals to other receiving neurons

Neuron Structure

• Neurons consist of dendrites, a cell body, an axon and terminal buttons

Dendrite

• Dendrites are short and branch-like structures that detect chemical signals from neighboring neurons

Cell Body or Soma

• Cell body or soma is where information is received, collected and integrated from the dendrites

Axon

• Axon is long and narrow structure that transmits an electrical impulse after processing by the cell body
• Can be from a few millimeters long to more than a meter long
• A nerve is a bundle of axons that carry information between the brain and other specific locations in the body

Terminal Button

• Terminal buttons are the termination of axons where there is a release of neurotransmitters into the synapse

Synapse

• Synapse is where chemical communication occurs between the neurons
• Is between the terminal buttons of the sending neuron and the dendrites of the receiving neuron
• Chemicals are released from the terminal button of the sending neuron and received by the dendrites of the receiving neuron

Neuron Membrane

• Outer surface of the neuron that is a fatty hydrophobic barrier
• Is selectively permeable and contains ion channels that allow ions to pass in and out of the cell when an electrical impulse is propagated
• Regulates the concentration of electrically charged molecules that are the basis of neuronal electrical activity

Glial Cells

• Cells in the nervous system that hold neurons together and facilitate neural transmission
• Offer structural role: support neurons, guide newborn neurons to appropriate locations in the brain, provide nutrients to neurons
• Offer housekeeping role: remove pathogens, damaged and dead neurons
• Offer insulatory role: form the myelin sheath
• Offer protective role: form the blood brain barrier to prevent poisonous substances in blood from reaching the brain, produce the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cushion

Myelin Sheath

• Myelin sheath encases and insulates axons
• Are made by the glial cells and grows along an axon in short segments

Nodes of Ranvier

• Nodes of ranvier are small gaps between the myelinated segments
• Due to myelination the action potential can skip from node of ranvier to node of ranvier
• Myelination then increases the speed which an axon potential travels down the axon

Neural Networks

• Neurons communicate selectively with other neurons
• Are developed through genetic influence, maturation and experiences

Sensory Neurons

• Sensory neurons detect information from the physical world and pass the information to the brain
• Somatosensory Neurons: sensory neurons providing information from the skin and muscles

Motor Neurons

• Motor neurons direct muscles to contract or relax which allows for movement

Interneurons

• Interneurons facilitate communication between sensory and motor neurons
• Sensory and motor neurons work together to control movement
• Are responsible for reflexes, the conversion of sensory information into motor activity without conscious thought

Signal Propagation

Stimulus

• When a signal passes into the dendrite they are either excitatory or inhibitory
• A neuron is bombarded by thousands of excitatory and inhibitory signals
  • Firing is dependent on the the number and frequency of the signals
  • If the sum of the excitatory and inhibitory signals leads to a positive change in the voltage above the firing threshold of -55 mv an action potential is generated

Excitatory Signals

• Excitatory signals depolarize the cell membrane (decreases the polarization by decreasing the negative charge inside the cell relative to the outside of the cell)
  • Increase the likelihood that the neuron will fire

Inhibitory Signals

• Inhibitory signals hyperpolarizes the cell (increases the polarization by increasing the negative charge inside the cell relative to the outside of the cell)
  • Decreases the likelihood that the neuron will fire

Resting Membrane Potential

• When a neuron isn’t active, the inside is more negative than the outside (-70 mv)
• There is a greater concentration negative ions inside than outside, the neuron is polarized, allows for the electrical energy necessary to power the firing of the neuron
• Most important ions are the sodium and potassium ions which pass through the neuron membrane at the ion channels

Sodium Channels

• Sodium channels allow sodium ions but not potassium ions to pass through the membrane

Potassium Channels

• Potassium channels allow potassium ions but not sodium ions to pass through the membrane
  • Flow of ions is controlled by a gating mechanism
  • When a gate is open, the ions flow in and out of the neuron
  • When the gate is closed, ions cannot flow in and out of the neuron
  • Ion flow also dependent on the membranes selective permeability

Sodium Potassium Pump

• Sodium potassium pump contributes to the polarization of the membrane
  • Increases potassium and decreases sodium inside the neuron to help maintain the resting membrane potential

Action Potential

• Action potential or neural firing is the electrical signal that passes along the axon
• Causes the terminal buttons to release chemicals that transmit signals to other neurons
• Action potential is composed of depolarization, repolarization, hyperpolarization and return to resting potential
• Any one signal has some influence on whether the neuron fires or not
  • The entrance of sodium ions cause adjacent sodium channels to open, creating a series of openings

Refractory Period

• Includes the absolute refractory period and the relative refractory
• Allows the passage of an action potential to only be in one direction

Absolute Refractory Period

• Absolute refractory period once an ion channel opens and closes there is a period of time when it cannot open again

Relative Refractory Period

• Relative refractory period there must be increased stimulus to cause more neuronal firing

Excitation Threshold

• Once a neuron reaches the excitation threshold, an action potential is generated
• This the all-or-nothing principle: neuron fires with the same potency each time, it either fires or it doesn't
• Strength of the stimulation changes how often the neuron fires: stronger faster action potentials are generated
• The threshold needed for neuronal firing is -55 mv

Depolarization

• When a neuron fires the sodium gates of the membrane open which causes sodium to rush into the neuron
  • Makes the the neuron more positively charges
  • This change from a negative to a positive charge is the basis of the action potential
• Creates a maximum polarization of 35 mv

Repolarization

• The sodium ion channels then start to close stopping the entrance of potassium ions
• Potassium gates open, causing the potassium ions to rush out of the neuron, causing the membrane potential to turn negative again
• The membrane potential is now more negative than the resting potential, requires a more excitatory input to trigger another action potential
  • Creates a minimum polarization of -75 mv
• This period is the relative refractory period
• The sodium potassium pump then returns the cell to the resting potential

Neurotransmitters

Neurotransmitters

• Neurotransmitters are stored and released from the terminal buttons
  • Transform electrical signals into chemical signals
• They are either made in the axon or cell body and then are transported in vesicles to the terminal buttons
• Neurotransmitters are either excitatory or inhibitory, although some neurotransmitters produce more complex effects
• Vary between receptor and location in the brain

Excitatory Neurotransmitters

• Excitatory neurotransmitters increase the likelihood of action potential firing

Inhibitory Neurotransmitters

• Inhibitory neurotransmitters reduce the likelihood of action potential firing

Neurotransmitter Reception

• Neurotransmitters are released into the synapse and bind to receptors of the postsynaptic neuron
• Receptors are specialized protein molecules that respond to the chemical structure of the neurotransmitter
• Each receptor can be influenced by only one type of neurotransmitter
• Can cause ion channels to open or to close more tightly
• Produces and excitatory or inhibitory signal to the postsynaptic neuron

Agonists

• Agonists enhance the actions of neurotransmitters
• Can introduce a substance that helps produce the neurotransmitter (a precursor) increasing the amount of neurotransmitter made and released
• Can block the receptors of the presynaptic cell that triggers the reuptake of neurotransmitters
• Can mimic the actions of neurotransmitters in the postsynaptic cell
  • Activates the receptor or increasing the neurotransmitter impact

Antagonists

• Antagonists inhibit the actions of neurotransmitters
• Can introduce a substance that reduces the amount of neurotransmitter made and released
• Can introduce a substance that facilitates the destruction or breakdown of the neurotransmitter
  • Reduces the time that the neurotransmitter is present in the synapse
• Can block the postsynaptic receptors, preventing neurotransmitter activation

Termination of Neurotransmitters

• Termination of the influence of a neurotransmitter can be from reuptake, enzyme deactivation or autoreception

Reuptake

• Reuptake occurs when the neurotransmitter is taken back into the presynaptic terminal button
  • Action potential stimulates release but also reuptake later on

Enzyme Deactivation

• Enzyme deactivation occurs when an enzyme destroys the neurotransmitter in the synapse

Autoreception

• Autoreception occurs when neurotransmitters bind with receptors on the presynaptic neuron
  • Autoreceptors monitor how much neurotransmitters are released
  • Signals the presynaptic neuron to stop production when excess is detected

GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid)

• Is an inhibitor that lessens the firing of neurons
• High amounts of GABA reduces anxiety
  • Valium and alcohol mirrors the effects of GABA to reduce anxiety
  • Low levels of GABA are linked to high anxiety
• GABA inhibits dopamine
  • Whereas dopamine leads to alertness, GABA leads to sleep
• GABA is responsible for controlled movement
  • Huntington’s Disease: GABA receptors are lost, resulting in too much dopamine
  • Symptoms include inability to control or to stop movement
  • Insufficient GABA may also be involved in epilepsy

Glutamate

• Is an activator that enhances the firing of neurons
• Glutamate transmits information within the brain, and therefore is essential for cognitive functions such as learning and memory
• High amounts of glutamate are important for emotional responses, learning and memory
• Excessive glutamate is linked with seizures, strokes, ALS and Alzheimer’s disease
  • May be signs of overexcited neurons
  • Glutamate is toxic in large quantities
  • Strokes lead to cell death resulting in the release of large quantities of glutamate
• Are found in all proteins and is related to the flavor of umami

Acetylcholine

• Controls arousal levels, movement and is also important for learning and memory
• Is responsible for contracting muscles, slowing heart rate and starting digestion
  • Is responsible for fight or flight type arousal and recovery from fight or flight depending on the area of the brain
  • Is essential for motor neurons
• High levels of acetylcholine are important for cognition, formation of memories and attention
  • Rats have high levels of acetylcholine when learning new tasks
  • People with Alzheimer’s have low levels of acetylcholine

Epinephrine and Norepinephrine

• Epinephrine or adrenaline and norepinephrine are very similar as they both control arousal
• Norepinephrine is responsible for the fight or flight response
• Both norepinephrine and epinephrine control excitement (sympathetic nervous system responses), thus changing between sleep and awakening
• Norepinephrine is also responsible for regulating mood
  • Depression may be a lack of norepinephrine receptors

Serotonin

• Regulates sleep/waking, eating and aggression
• High amounts of serotonin leads to positive feelings
  • Too much serotonin is linked with obsessive behaviors
• Low amounts of serotonin leads to aggression and depression
  • Clinical depression can be treated by increasing serotonin in certain areas of the brain (like Prozac) or increasing serotonin sensitivity
  • Post menstrual syndrome is associated with low serotonin
• Malfunctions of the serotonin system is linked with obesity
  • Serotonin helps regulate intestinal movements
• Works with melatonin to control sleep – and increase in serotonin is associated with exercise and natural light

Dopamine

• Controls voluntary movement, emotional behavior, memory and attention
• High amounts of dopamine leads to emotional arousal
  • Marijuana, heroin and nicotine increase dopamine, leading to pleasure and satisfaction but also hallucinations
  • Dopamine reward pathway: animals will continue to work for dopamine rewards in the brain
  • Dopamine receptors can “wear out”, requiring more and more drug to fire
• Too much dopamine occurs in schizophrenia
  • Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, disturbed emotions and thought
• Low amounts of dopamine occurs in Parkinson's Disease
  • Symptoms include uncontrollable shaking and difficulty initiating movement

Endorphins

• Reduces feelings of pain and increases well-being, counteracts stress
• Has a major function as pain-killers
  • Opium and morphine mimic the effects of endorphins
  • Self-medication is possible through exercising such as with “runner’s high”
  • Acupuncture works via endorphins
• Endorphins have a memory function
  • Stress leads to the formation of memory, endorphins help focus brain on learning (especially learning to avoid stressors)
• There are twenty types of endorphins, depending on particular amino acids in different areas of the brain

Histamine

• Is involved in immune functioning elsewhere in the body
  • Has varying functions depending on the part of the body
• As a neurotransmitter it helps to control alertness and arousal
• Is capable of crossing the blood/brain barrier
  • More histamine leads to more alertness
  • Prevents convulsions and reduces stress responses
• Has an important role in memory and learning
  • Low amounts of histamine may hinder memory formation
• Functions as an antipsychotic
  • Some antipsychotic medicines increase histamine production

Neuroanatomy

Brain Imaging

Franz Gall and Johann Spurzheim

• Neuroanatomist Franz Gall and his assistant physician Johann Spurzheim hypothesized the effects of mental activity on brain anatomy
• Greater usage of certain mental function would result in increased development and growth
• Growth would then cause a bump in the overlying skull
• Feeling the bump can describe the personality of the individual
• This process became known as phrenology
• Was a pseudoscience

Pierre Paul Broca

• Pierre Paul Broca was a physician who saw that one of his patients had lost the ability to say anything other than tan
• Was still able to understand language
• In 1861 Broca performed an autopsy and found damage in the front left side, which he concluded to be important for speech
• This area became known as broca’s area

Brain Lesion Methodology

• The study of behavioral deficits of patients with discrete brain lesions informed most of human knowledge of the brain
• Nowadays the advent of brain imaging technology enables a view of the brains of living patients
• Can only study people with naturally occurring brain lesions, injuries or surgical interventions to treat a disease

Functional Brain Imaging

• Can be through measurement of electrical activity, the changes of the flow of blood carrying oxygen and nutrients
  • Are typically correlational, to find causational must test a task when an area is working effectively and when it is not

Electroencephalography

• EEG (electroencephalography) is the measure of electrical activity in the brain
• Small electrodes put on the scalp pick up brain electrical activity
• Different behavioral states produce different and predictable EEG patterns
• Recordings are too imprecise to locate specific responses to stimuli

Event Related Potentials

• Event related potentials (ERP) examines how brain activity changes in response to a stimulus by averaging many trials of one individual
• Provides information about the speed at which the brain processes events and their timing
• Difficult to pinpoint where in the brain the processes take place

Positron Emission Tomography

• Injection of radioactive substance into the bloodstream
• Allows for researchers to find the most active brain areas by ragging brain chemicals with a radioactive tracer
• Increases radioactive materials in brain regions emit more radiation to be detected
• Can be dangerous with the injection of radioactive substances

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

• Powerful magnet disrupts the magnetic forces around the body
  • Shifts the orientation of the polarized ions
  • Energy is released from tissues that can be measured by detectors
  • Different types of tissues release energy differently
• Researchers can adjust MRI scanner to measure specific tissues or substances in the body
• fMRI makes use of the brain’s blood flow to map the working brain
  • Detect blood blow indirectly by assessing the changes in the blood’s oxygen levels within the brain
  • Researchers compare experimental and control images to examine differences in blood flow and brain activity

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

• Transcranial magnetic stimulation uses a magnetic field to disrupt neural activity momentarily in specific brain regions
  • Can only be used for short durations to examine brain areas close to the scalp
  • Can be used with functional imaging to see which brain regions are necessary for specific psychological functions

Brain Anatomy

Brain

• The brain is a large collection of neurons that uses about twenty percent of the energy of the body
  • Most of that energy is for basic unconscious functions such as cell maintenance and breathing
• Psychologists are most interested in the frontal lobe of the brain which is responsible for engagement, behavior and decision making
  • The back portions of the brain are mostly responsible for basic functions
  • Brain develops from the simplest to most complex structures

Meninges

• Are the three layers of membrane that protect the brain and spinal cord
• Meningitis is the acute inflammation of the meninges
  • Can cause fevers, headaches and low tolerance to light
  • If swelling is not released, it could be fatal

Forebrain

Forebrain

• Forebrain is the largest part of the human brain
• Is made up of the cerebral cortex and underlying subcortical areas
• Consists of two hemispheres

Cerebral Cortex

• Cerebral cortex is the outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres and has a wrinkled appearance
  • Is relatively large and is folded over itself
  • Has two grooves, the lateral fissure and the central fissure which divides the brain into the 4 lobes (occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal)
• Outermost layer of the cerebral cortex consists of gray matter
  • Cell bodies, dendrites and unmyelinated axons that communicate only with nearby neurons
• Innermost layer is made up of white matter
  • Myelinated axons that travel between brain regions
• Gray matter and white matter distinguishable throughout the CNS as well
• 4 lobes are the sites of all thought, detailed perceptions and complex behaviors
  • Enables comprehension of ourselves, other people and the outside world
  • The cerebral cortex is the source of culture and communication

Occipital Lobe

• Occipital lobes is in the back of the head and is devoted exclusively to vision
• Primary visual cortex is the largest visual area and the major destination of visual information
• Visual information organized to preserve spatial relationships
• Around the primary visual cortex are secondary visual areas for attributes of visual information such as colors, forms and motion

Parietal Lobe

• Parietal lobes are devoted partially to touch, is divided between the central hemispheres
• Left hemisphere receives touch from the right side
• Right hemisphere receives touch from the left side
• Info is directed to the primary somatosensory cortex, a strip in the front of the lobe along the central fissure
  • Groups nearby sensations, allowing for a representation of the body as a somatosensory homunculus
  • Somatosensory homunculus is based on brain maps by Wilder Penfield who examined patients undergoing surgery for epilepsy
• Other parts of the parietal lobe are involved in attention
  • Stroke or focal damage can result in hemineglect
  • Hemineglect has patients failing to pay attention to anything contralateral to the damage

Temporal Lobe

• Temporal lobes hold the primary auditory cortex, responsible for hearing
• The intersection of the temporal and occipital lobes in the fusiform face area
  • More active when people look at faces
  • Damage can cause impairment in recognizing people but not objects
• Other areas of the temporal lobes are much more active when looking at objects

Frontal Lobe

• Frontal lobes are essential for planning and movement
• The back parts of the frontal lobes along the central fissure is where the primary motor cortex is located
  • Has neurons the project directly to the spinal cord to move muscles
  • The mapping is also split between the cortexes and are contralateral
• The rest of the frontal lobes make up the prefrontal cortex which occupies 30% of the brains in humans

Prefrontal Cortex

• Rather complex relative to other species, a lot of rational activity, a lot of human social life
• Are responsible for directing and maintaining attention, keeping ideas in mind from distractions, developing and acting on plans
• Understanding what people are thinking, behaving according to cultural norms, contemplating existence
• Sense of self and the capacity to empathize with others

Split Brain

• Split brain, when the corpus callosum is severed, leaving the two hemispheres almost completely isolated
  • Can be used to treat epilepsy where the connections between hemispheres are severed, isolating the sites where seizures begin
  • Has provided insights into the basic organization and specialized functions of each brain hemisphere
• Split-brain patients are surprisingly normal, have no immediately apparent problems
• However the mind was split in two, the hemispheres function as completely independent entities with its own perceptions, thoughts and consciousness
  • Allows for examination of the function of each hemisphere without the influence of the other hemisphere

Interpreter

• Left hemisphere will interpret the other hemispheres action in a manner consistent to the other’s knowledge
• This propensity of the left hemisphere to construct a world that makes sense is called interpreter
  • Interprets actions after they have occurred

Corpus Callosum

• Corpus callosum is a bridge of millions of myelinated axons that connects the hemispheres and allow for info flow between the two hemispheres

Left Hemisphere

• Left hemisphere has contralateral sight and speech capacity
• When flashed two images only the right image can be explained
• Terrible at spatial relationships

Right Hemisphere

• Right hemisphere is typically mute but still has contralateral movement capacity
• Very proficient at spatial relationships

Contemporary Left Brain and Right Brain

• Journalists may oversimplify research findings and apply them in a way that is out of scope
  • Can overshadow the research that has been done
  • Created the rhetoric of left-brain and right-brain people
  • Where the left-brain people are logical types (analytical, rational and objective) and the right-brain people are artistic type (creative, holistic and subjective)
    • Different people differ by which hemisphere dominates their thinking styles
    • Left-brain supposedly suppresses the right-brain curiosity
  • This false rhetoric has permeated our culture
• In truth each hemisphere is capable of carrying out most cognitive processes in different ways
  • They are specialized for specific functions though
  • Most cognition involves the coordinated efforts of both hemispheres
  • There is no difference between people in the extent at which their hemispheres are active

Subcortical Regions

• Below the the surface of the cerebral cortex is the insula and the subcortical regions
• The insular cortex lies within the folds of the lateral fissure
• Important subcortical structures to psychological functions include the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala and basal ganglia

Insula

• Insula has the primary gustatory cortex and play a role in awareness to many bodily states related to emotion and plays a role in experience of pain/empathy towards pain
  • The primary gustatory complex is necessary for taste and is important for perceiving disgust

Limbic System

Limbic System

• Is the border around the brainstem
• Is the main structure for memory and emotional responses

Thalamus

• Thalamus is the gateway to the cortex
• Receives almost all incoming sensory information, organizes it and relay it to the cortex
• The exception is the sense of smell which has a direct route to the cortex
• During sleep the thalamus partially shuts the gates on sensations so that the brain can rest

Hypothalamus

• Hypothalamus is the brain’s main regulatory structure
• Located just below the thalamus, it receives input and projects influence to almost everywhere in the body
• Affects the function of many internal organs, regulates body temp, regulates body rhythms, regulates blood pressure, regulates blood glucose levels
• Involved in many motivated behaviors such as thirst, hunger, aggression and sexual desire

Pituitary Gland

• Is contained within the hypothalamus
• Is the main endocrine organ in the brain which allows for hypothalamus regulation of body wide responses

Hippocampus

• Hippocampus is names from the greek for “sea horse” due to its shape
• Important in the formation of new memories through new interconnections within the cerebral cortex with new experiences
• Important in memory of arrangements of places and objects in space
• May be important for navigating our environment

Amygdala

• Amygdala comes from the latin for almond due to its shape
• Is located immediately in front of the hippocampus
• Involved in learning from biologically relevant stimuli such as those important for survival
  • Especially important in the response to stimuli eliciting fear
  • Emotional response to frightening stimuli is hardwired to evolutionarily protect from danger
• Important in evaluating facial expression’s emotional significance
  • Automatically directs visual attention to the eyes when evaluating facial expressions
  • Activation of amygdala especially strong in response to a fearful face
• Intensifies the function of memory during times of emotional arousal
  • Influence what people attend to in their environments

Midbrain

Midbrain

• Functions as a relay station for information as well as some auditory and visual processing
  • Helps with locating and tracking visual information
• Is located above the hindbrain

Ventricles

• Are four hollow structures within the brain that is filled with cerebrospinal fluid
  • Include two lateral ventricles, a third ventricle cerebral aqueduct and a fourth ventricle
• Provides cushion against blows to the head

Hindbrain

Pons

• Is a swelling of tissue right above the medulla
• Functions as the bridge for information from higher structures of the cortex to the cerebellum

Reticular Formation

• Is where the medulla and pons meet
• Has great importance for consciousness
• Projects up into the cerebral cortex and affects general alertness
• Is involved in inducing and terminating different stages of sleep

Medulla

• Is located at the base of the brain above the spinal cord
• Is responsible for life-sustaining functions such as breathing, heart rate, swallowing

Basal Ganglia

• Basal ganglia is crucial for planning and producing movement
• Receive input from the cerebral cortex and send input to the motor centers of the brain stem
• Through the thalamus that send input from the motor planning area of the cerebral cortex

Nucleus Accumbens

• Nucleus accumbens, part of the basal ganglia, is important for experiencing reward and motivating behavior
  • Any pleasurable experience involves dopamine activity in the nucleus accumbens
  • More desirable, the more they activate basic reward circuitry

Cerebellum

• Cerebellum is a large protuberance connected to the back of the brain stem
• Bottom nodes are important for balance, compensation of eye position with head movement and head tilt
• Ridge on the back important for walking
• Bulging nodes on either side are important for limb coordination
• Important for motor learning and motor memory, operates unconsciously
• May be important in cognitive processes (planning, remembering events, using language and experiencing emotion)
• Is heavily affected by alcohol

Brainstem

• Brain stem composed of the medulla oblongata, pons and the midbrain
• Houses the nerves that control most basic functions of survival: heart rate, breathing, swallowing, vomiting, urination and orgasm
• If damaged can lead to death
• Perform reflexes for the head such as gagging

Spinal Cord

• The spinal cord is a rope of neural tissue that runs inside the vertebrae from the base of the skull to below the pelvis
• Has the function of coordinating reflexes
• Carries sensory information up to the brain
• Carry motor signals from the brain to the body parts to initiate action
• Spinal cord thickens and complexifies as it transforms into the brain stem

Neuroplasticity

Plasticity

• Plasticity is the brain’s adaptivity in response to experience or injury
  • Especially prominent in childhood
• Allows for reorganization due to nurturing after injury or damage
• Social environment and stress can strongly affect brain plasticity

Critical Periods of Plasticity

• Has critical periods when particular experiences must occur for development to proceed normally
  • Connections form between brain structures when growing axons are directed by certain chemicals to tell them where to and where not to go
  • Established by chemical messengers but governed by experience
  • During brain development ongoing activity in the visual pathways is necessary to refine the visual cortex enough for function
  • Experience important for superior development as well
  • Physical exercise might be the most beneficial in terms of brain development and learning
• Plasticity decreases with age but new connections between neurons and even new neurons are still possible
  • Rewiring and growth represents the basis of learning

Neurogenesis

• Production of new neurons is called neurogenesis
  • Environmental conditions important for neurogenesis
• Stress may interfere with neurogenesis
• Higher social status may increase neurogenesis

Reorganization

• Following an injury to the cortex, surrounding gray matter may assume the function of the damaged area
  • Happens immediately and continues for years
• Can occur in all parts of the central nervous system, from the cortex to the spinal cord
  • Can occur in accord with the critical periods
• Young children with uncontrollable epilepsy may undergo a radical hemispherectomy to remove and entire hemisphere
  • Other hemisphere may take on most of the lost hemispheres functions
  • Cannot be done with adults due to loss of plasticity, will lead to permanent paralysis and loss of function

Brain Injury

Concussion or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

• Is a very broad term in describing acute injuries to the brain
• Is most commonly caused by physical damage resulting in shearing of the axons, damage to the myelin and disruption of brain chemistry
• Often results in behavioral effects such as loss of consciousness, dizziness, blurred vision, slurred speech, memory loss and brain fog
  • Such symptoms often vary based on severity of injury or location of injury
• Nowaday treatment airs on the side of safety

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

• Is the result of cumulative repeated blows to the head
  • Long term damage can be from repeated concussions and even microtraumas
• Is often diagnosed in athletes such as boxer, football players or hockey players who keep playing after “having their bell rung”

Sleep

General on Sleep

Human Sleep

• During sleep some brain regions are more active
• Average person sleeps 8 hours a night, but it may differ a lot
  • Variance may be due to a genetic difference
• People sleep less when they age
• During sleep conscious experience of the outside world is turned off
• You are still somewhat aware of your surroundings and the brain still processes information
  • Mind analyzes potential dangers, controlling body movements and shifting body parts to maximize comfort

Function of Sleep

• Sleep is adaptive for three functions, restoration, avoiding danger at certain times of the day and facilitating learning

Restorative Theory of Sleep

• Sleep allows the body, including the brain, to rest and repair itself
  • Increased vigorous activity is associated with increased sleep
• Growth hormone, which is primarily released during deep sleep, facilitates the repair of damaged tissue
• Sleep enables replenishment of energy stores and strengthening of the immune system
• Sleep may help the clearing of toxic metabolic by-products of neural activity
  • Are cleared out through the interstitial space (fluid filled space between the cells of the brain)
  • During sleep there is a 60% increase in interstitial space

Circadian Rhythm Theory

• Sleep has evolved to keep animals quiet and inactive during times of the day when there is the greatest danger (usually in the dark)
• Animals need only a limited amount of time each day to accomplish necessary activities for survival
• Adaptive to spend the remained of the time inactive/hidden
• Animal’s typical amount of sleep depends on the time needed to obtain food, its ability to hide and its vulnerability to attack
  • Small animals sleep a lot
  • Large animals sleep much less
• We sleep at night because we are a visual animal, without vision we are more vulnerable
  • Sleeping at night increased fitness

Facilitation of Learning

• Neural connections made during the day are strengthened during sleep
  • People who sleep after learning have better recall
• Learning a task might require neural changes that normally occur only during sleep
  • Both REM and slow wave sleep seem important
  • People who dream about the task might learn the task better
• Evidence that when students study more they experience more REM
  • Allows for greater consolidation of information
  • Younger humans who learn more also have more REM
  • Sleep may prepare the brain for its memory needs the day following

Circadian Rhythm

• Patterns that regulate brain activity, body temp, hormone levels, sleep and wakefulness
• Are influenced by the cycles of light and dark
• Cycle continues even with removal of light stimuli

Natural Circadian Rhythm

• After lunch there is drop in alertness often seen with drowsiness
• 12:00 PM is when the best sleep occurs
• 7:30 AM is when most people wake up
• 10:00 AM is around the time of peak alertness
• 4:00 PM is second peak alertness
• 6:00 PM when alertness becomes to drop

Suprachiasmatic Nucleus

• Structure in the hypothalamus that receives info about light detected by the eyes
  • Sends signals to the pineal gland

Pineal Gland

• Pineal gland secretes melatonin
  • More light suppresses the production of melatonin
  • Darkness triggers the release of melatonin
• Melatonin: hormone that travels through the bloodstream and affects receptors throughout the body
  • Melatonin aids in people falling asleep

Beta Waves

• Beta waves are read on an EEG as short, frequent and irregular brain signals
• Occurs when people are awake and receiving many sources of sensory information

Alpha Waves

• Alpha waves are read on an EEG as slower and more regular brain signals
• Occurs when people focus their attention or close their eyes and relax

Sleep Stages

Sleep Cycle

• Sleep cycle repeats around 5 times, from slow-wave sleep to REM and back to slow-wave sleep
  • Deep sleep only really occurs in the first two hours
• As morning approaches the sleep cycle shortens and sleepers spend more time in REM sleep
• During the cycle people awaken many times during the night but do not remember doing so
• As people age they have more difficulty going back to sleep after awakening

Stage 1 Sleep

• Stage 1 sleep occurs when you are drifting off to sleep
• There are short bursts of irregular waves called theta waves along with alpha waves
• You are easily aroused and will not be cognizant that you were sleeping
• Experience fantastical images or geometric shapes
• May feel like you are falling or your limbs are jerking

Stage 2 Sleep

• Stage 2 occurs when your breathing becomes more regular and you are less sensitive to external stimulation
  • Theta waves are accompanied by occasional bursts of activity called sleep spindles and large waves called K-complexes
    • Sleep spindles and k-complexes are believed to be involved with shutting out external stimuli and maintaining sleep
  • Abrupt noises can trigger K-complexes
  • Older people with lighter sleep show fewer sleep spindles

Stage 3 and 4 Sleep

• Stage 3 and 4 are pretty indistinguishable and are called deep sleep
• There are large regular brain patterns called delta waves, giving the name slow-wave sleep
• People are hard to arouse and may be disoriented if aroused
  • There is still evaluation of surroundings for potential danger

REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep

• REM sleep occurs after 90 minutes when the sleep cycle reverses
• There is a flurry of beta wave activity, like with an awake and alert mind
• The eyes dart back and forth beneath the eyelids, hence the name REM for rapid eye movements
• Often called paradoxical sleep due to the activity of the brain in sleep
• There is more activity in the occipital cortex and brain stem region
• Most of the body’s muscles are paralyzed, although there is sign of genital arousal (erections and clitoral engorgement)
• Has a relation to dreaming

Dreams

Dreams

• Dreams are the product of altered states of consciousness
• Biological function, if there is one, is unknown
• Most people do not remember their dreams, although everyone does dream
• Occur in REM and NREM sleep, although the dreams are different
  • May be due to activation and deactivation of different brain regions
• Significance of dreams are proposed but hindered by many’s inability to remember
  • Any memory of dreams are cloudy whether they reflect the actual content or an elaborated interpretation
• As a countermeasure studies have had people sleep in an MRI and awaken subjects multiple times to inquire about the contents of their dreams
  • Compare brain activity before dream report to brain activity when presented with related imaging
  • Find similarity in brain activity

REM Dreams

• REM dreams are usually quite bizarre and may involve intense emotions, visual and auditory hallucinations
• There is often an uncritical acceptance of illogical events
• There is activation of brain structures associated with motivation, emotion and reward
• There is activation of the visual association areas
• There is deactivation of parts of the prefrontal cortex which is associated with self-awareness, reflective thought and conscious input from the outside world
• Appears that the brain’s emotion centers and visual association areas interact without conscious monitoring
  • REM does not produce the dream state, REM is correlated with the contents of dreams

NREM Dreams

• NREM dreams are often very dull
• May concern mundane activities like deciding what clothes to wear or taking notes in class
  • There is a general deactivation in many brain regions

Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)”

• Sigmund Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
• Speculated that dreams contain hidden content that represents unconscious conflicts within the mind of dreamers
• Manifest content: the dream the way the dreamer remembers it
• Latent content: what the dream symbolizes
  • Materials that has been disguised to protect the dreamer from confronting a conflict directly
• Virtually no evidence for Freud’s ideas
  • There is evidence that daily life experiences influence the content of dreams
  • Content of dreams is more likely to reflect aspects of your conscious thoughts while awake
  • Dreams sometimes have similar themes across people

Activation Synthesis Hypothesis

• Activation Synthesis Hypothesis was proposed by researchers John Alan Hobson and Robert McCarley (1977)
  • Theorized that random brain activity occurs during sleep
    • Activate mechanisms that interpret sensory input
  • Sleeping mind tries to interpret sensory activity by synthesizing it with stored memories
  • Dreams are the side effects of mental processes produced by random neural firing
• Critics of the activation synthesis hypothesis argue that dreams less chaotic as proposed
  • Conscious experience is similar to waking life
  • Differences are lack of self awareness, reduced attention and voluntary control, increased emotionality and poor memory

Effect of Sleep Deprivation

Short Term Sleep Deprivation

• Sleep deprivation of a period of 2 or 3 days have little effect on strength, athletic ability of the performance of complex tasks
  • Will however hinder quiet tasks or mundane tasks
• Allnighters seem to cause reduced activity in the hippocampus
  • Therefore have poorer memory

Long Term Sleep Deprivation

• Long periods of sleep deprivation cause mood problems and decreased cognitive performance
• Chronic sleep deprivation may result in lapses in attention and reduced short-term memory
  • Maybe due to a build-up of toxic by-products
• In rats extended sleep deprivation compromises the immune system
• Makes people prone to microsleeps where they fall asleep for a few seconds to a few minutes
• Leads to increased activation of serotonin receptors which may alleviate depression
  • For people not suffering from depression, foul mood more likely

Sleep Disorders

Insomnia

• Insomnia is a sleep disorder where individual’s mental health and ability to function are compromised by difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep
• Associated with diminished psychological well being
• More common in women than men and more common in older adults than younger adults
• Effect and estimated 12% to 20% of adults
• Many insomniacs overestimate how long it takes them to fall asleep and underestimate how much sleep they get
• One of the major causes of insomnia is worrying about sleep
  • May be tired enough to sleep but anxiety about falling asleep or effect of lack of sleep keeps them awake
  • Anxiety leads to heightened arousal which interferes with sleep patterns
  • May use sleep pills, but can cause dependency on sleep pills
• Poor sleeping habits may also play a factor

Pseudoinsomnia

• Pseudoinsomnia is when people dream that they are sleeping
  • When roused, they will claim to have been awake

Insomnia Treatment

• Most effective treatment for insomnia combines drug therapies with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
• CBT helps people overcome their worries about sleep and relieves the need of drugs which will be discontinued after therapy

Obstructive Sleep Apnea

• Obstructive sleep apnea stops breathing when the throat closes for short periods of time during sleep
• Causes people to awaken and gasp for air
• Main symptom is loud snoring
• Most common with middle-aged men and is associated with obesity
  • Obesity not clear to be a cause or a consequence
• People with sleep apnea are often unaware of their awakenings
• Causes people to have poor sleep which is associated with daytime fatigue and other problems (inability to focus while driving)
  • Association with cardiovascular problems and stroke

Treatment for Sleep Apnea

• Physicians often prescribe a continuous positive airway pressure device (CPAP)
  • Blows air into person’s nose or nose and mouth

Narcolepsy

• Narcolepsy is a rare disorder that causes excessive sleepiness from seconds to minutes during normal waking hours
• During episodes of narcolepsy, people may experience muscle paralysis that accompanies REM sleep
  • Causing them to collapse or go limp, need to be vigilant of activities where such symptoms might be dangerous
• May be due to a low level of a neurochemical that regulates wakefulness and REM sleep
• There may be a genetic component
• Narcolepsy may also be an autoimmune disorder
  • Treating it as such may have beneficial outcomes

REM Behavior Disorder

• REM Behavior disorder has a disability of normal REM sleep paralysis
• May act out their dream while sleeping
• There is no treatment for such a condition
• It is associated with neurological deficit
• Most often seen in elderly males

Somnambulism

• Somnambulism is sleep walking that occurs during slow-wave sleep
• Occurs within the first hour or two of falling asleep
• Is most common with young children
• The person is glassy-eyed and disconnected from other people and the surroundings
• Should gently walk the person back to the bed
• No harm is done with arousal during sleepwalking

Restless Leg Syndrome

• An aching or burning in the legs causing a need to move legs while resting
• Is more a disorder of the nerve pathway than of neurotransmitters
• Found in around ten percent of the population

Improving Sleep

Sleep Hygiene

• There are four steps of sleep hygiene strategies: planning, prioritizing, sticking to your plan and saying no
• Plan: create a weekly calendar
  • Classes, study time, social time, exercise, down time with sufficient time
• Prioritize: know what to drop and what not to drop
• Stick to your plan: do not procrastinate
  • Can work with mental health practitioner to overcome tendency to procrastinate
• Say No: be selective in activities you work with

Preparing for Sleep

• Establish a regular routine: sleep and wake at regular times
  • Allows for consistent sleep cycle
• Avoid alcohol and caffeine: alcohol interferes with your sleep cycle and may make you wake early and caffeine is a stimulant that interferes with adenosine which helps you sleep
• Exercise regularly: helps to maintain your sleep cycle
  • Do not exercise before bed as it causes arousal
• Leave your bed just for sleeping
• Relax: do not worry about the future
  • Have a warm bath or listen to soothing music
  • Deal with chronic stress
• If you can’t sleep get up and do something else
  • Wait until you feel sleepy again

How Not to Prepare for Sleep

• Do not try to catch up on sleep, no napping the next day
  • Go to bed sleepy, napping and staying up late interferes with the next night’s sleep
• Do not use electronic devices, blue light signals the brain to stay awake
  • Can try to stop using it earlier
  • Can try to use red light to signal the body to wind down

Processing of Images and Illusions

Perception vs. Sensation

Sensation

• Is the information taken from the outside world

Perception

• Is the processing of sensation, which helps to organize and understand information

Sensation → Perception

• Not a direct relationship, sometimes things that are sensed aren’t perceived and likewise
• Is an active process often altered by understanding
• Is an adaptive process often altered by individual relevance of stimuli

Attention

• Attention is the first part of perception, what is noticed is what is perceived
• A lot of information is processed automatically with some having attention drawn to it and others not having attention drawn to it

Perception of Two Dimensional Images

Vision

• Info from the retina project to the brain in a 2D representation of edges and colors
• Brain automatically transforms into a 3d world of objects and background
• Uses organizing principles to determine the meaning of visual input or the most likely interpretation based on experience with the world
• Perceptual psychologists characterize principles behind visual perception

Optical Illusions

• Optical illusions are tools used by psychologists to understand how the brain organizes and interprets information
• Illusions often reveal the automatic perceptual systems that underlie the determination of identity of objects, their sizes and their distances within the environment
• Show how we form accurate representations of the 3d world
• Cannot not see the illusion even though we know they are not accurate
  • Visual system is a complex interplay of constancies that enable us to see a stable world

Reversible Figure Illusion

• Reversible figure illusion, can either see a full vase or two faces
• After assigning anything as a figure, the rest is assigned as background
• The figures periodically reverse as the visual system strives to interpret the illusion
  • The visual perception is dynamic and ongoing

Dalmatian Illusion

• Dalmatian illusion, there is many black spots on a white background
• There is a lack of contours that define the edges of the dalmatian figure
• Able to find a detail that allows for discernment of a figure
• Once seen, it is hard to not see the figure
• Experience can inform how we identify figures and distinguish them from the background
• Have to use experience to make judgment about what is figure and what is background

Figure and Ground

• Visual system distinguished between figure and ground (objects and background)
  • Determination of what is figure/object changes the perception of the visual cues

Similarity and Proximity

• Principles of similarity and proximity, we cluster elements of the visual scene into distinct groups
• Law of Good Continuation: tend to group together edges or contours that are smooth and continuous as opposed to those that have abrupt or sharp edges
• Closure: we tend to complete figures that have gaps
  • Good continuation and closure allows us to see contours, shapes and cues to depth when they aren’t actually there
• Common fate: we tend to see things that move together as belonging to the same group

Grouping

• Grouping occurs of many different elements of items
• Grouping principle of proximity, grouping principle of similarity, grouping principle of continuity, grouping principle of connectedness, grouping principle of closure

Object Constancy

• Once we perceive a collection of sensory information as belonging to the same object we perceive the object as unchanging despite changes in sensory data concerning the object
• Changing an object’s angle, distance or illumination doesn’t change our perception of its size, shape, color or lightness
  • Perception of size, shape, color or lightness needs understanding of the relationship between the objects and one other factor
  • To see objects as constant, the brain computes the relative magnitude of the sensory signals, rather than the absolute magnitude
  • Perceptual systems respond to sensory inputs and are tuned to detect changes from baseline conditions
• Size constancy: need to know how far away the object is from us
• Shape constancy: need to know what angle or angles we are seeing the object from
• Color constancy: need to compare the wavelengths of light reflected from the object with those reflected from it background
• Lightness constancy: need to know how much light is being reflected from the object and from its background

Lateral Inhibition

• Is the visual enhancement of a clear boundary when none is present
• Neural ganglias often enhance edges for contrast

Facial Recognition

• Face is particularly sensitive to, any pattern in the world that has face-like qualities with look like a face
  • We are able to see subtle differences in facial features allows for differentiation of unique individuals and perception and interpretation of facial expressions
  • Human faces reveal special information that is not available from other stimuli
• We are much worse at recognizing upside down faces than recognizing other inverted objects
  • Likely due to different process
  • Inversion interferes with the perception of the relationship between facial features
• Process the features of upright faces holistically
  • Encode all features as a configuration so that altered features are easily detected
• Process the features of inverted faces separately
  • Less sensitive to the relations among them, so minor alteration doesn’t have as big of an impact
• Processing of faces different from the processing of other objects
  • Better at finding subtle differences in the facial features of upright faces relative to other objects
• Fusiform face area (fusiform gyrex) devoted to processing faces

Inverted Facial Recognition

• We are much worse at recognizing upside down faces than recognizing other inverted objects
  • Likely due to different process
  • Inversion interferes with the perception of the relationship between facial features
• Process the features of inverted faces separately
  • Less sensitive to the relations among them, so minor alteration doesn’t have as big of an impact

Prosopagnosia

• Deficits in the ability to recognize faces, not the ability to recognize other objects
• Cannot tell one face from another but can tell whether something is a face and if it's upside down or not
• Facial recognition differs from non facial object recognition
• Can be present from birth
• Developmental prosopagnosia can affect up to 2.5% of the population
  • Can be related to genetic factors
  • Difficulties identifying unique individuals
  • Learn to rely on other cues such as voice
  • Usually don’t know they have a specific deficit recognizing faces until adulthood
• Can be acquired after brain injury, relies on a region of the fusiform gyrus in the temporal lobe
  • Responds most strongly to upright faces

Thatcher Illusion

• Demonstrated using a picture of Margaret Thatcher where the eyes and the mouth are inverted
  • When upright it is quite disturbing
  • Problem isn’t much recognized when the face is upside down
  • Observed with most human faces and with monkeys looking at monkey faces

Experience Hypothesis

• Isabel Gauthier argued that faces are a special class of objects due to extensive experiences with them
• Faces are special because they have special properties
• By becoming experts in identifying faces, the processing becomes different from processing of objects that we are not experts at
• To test maybe you can use objects with similar properties with faces and see whether there is a difference in processing

Perception of Three Dimensional Images

Three Dimensional Vision

• Depth, size and motion perception in a 3D world is a more complex way of inferring information from surroundings
  • Perception depends on certain internally generated cues, external cues and experience with these cues

Depth Perception

• Depth perception is understandable in both standard 2D images and 3D worlds because of the external cues available
• Include usages of both binocular and monocular depth cues

Binocular Depth Cues

• Binocular cues are available from both eyes and are present only when viewing the 3D world
  • Typically better for closer objects

Monocular Depth Cues

• Monocular cues are available from each eye and provide organizational information to infer depth
• Can distinguish relative distance of even farther objects
• Sometimes are called pictorial depth cues due to the usage with artists
• Many use the knowledge of how depth changes perceptual features to determine how far away something is
• Others depend on motion

Binocular Disparity

• Binocular depth cue caused by distance between two human eyes
• Each eye has different view of the world, we see overlapping retinal images
  • Allows for brain to use differences in images to determine distances to nearby objects
  • Is called stereoscopic vision

Convergence

• Binocular depth cue based on the sensation of the eye muscles as they turn the eyes inwards to view objects
  • Close objects needs more internal rotation of the eyes
  • Farther object needs less internal rotation of the eyes
  • Uses feedback from the eye muscles to perceive distance
  • Less prominent with farther objects

Occlusion

• Monocular depth cue that makes objects blocking other object appear closer

Relative Size

• Monocular depth cue
• Makes farther objects project a smaller retinal image than closer objects, if the far-off and close objects are the same size

Familiar Size

• Monocular depth cue that tells how far away things are based on the apparent size of familiar objects

Linear Perspective

• Monocular depth cue that makes seemingly parallel lines appear to converge in distance

Texture Gradient

• Monocular depth cue that makes receding uniformly textured surface appear to have continuously denser texture

Position Relative to Horizon

• Monocular depth cue that makes objects below the horizon that appear higher in the visual field and objects above the horizon that appear lower in the visual field are appear farther away

Motion Parallax

• Monocular depth cue that uses the relative speed of objects across the retina as a person moves to predict depth
• View of objects closer to us changes more quickly than our view of objects that are farther away
• Provides information about how far away things are
• Motion depth cues are from movement through space
  • Depend on relative changes in visual input with motion

Size Perception

• The size of an object’s retinal image depends on the object’s distance from the observer
  • Farther objects are smaller on the retinal image
• Usage of depth perception to measure distance
  • Allows for computation of an object's size
  • Is not flawless and can fail
• When normal perceptual processes incorrectly represent the distance between the viewer and stimuli, size perception can fail
• Lack of depth cues can make us fail to see depth when it is present

Ames Box

• Ames Box: crafted in the 1940s by Adelber Ames (painter turned scientists)
• Rooms play with linear perspective and other distance cues
• One box makes the far corner seem as close as the near corner
• Alteration of depth cues can augment perception of size

Ponzo Illusion

• Ponzo illusion: first described by Mario Ponzo in 1913
• Here monocular depth cues make a two dimensional figure seem three dimensional
• Two lines converge, seen as converging parallel lines in distance
• Two other lines of equal length are parallel and seemingly running perpendicular to the converging lines
• The the line closer to the convergence seems larger
  • Perceive them at different distances and therefore different in relative size

Motion Perception

• Often uses the relative movement of visual information
• When your head is still and your eyes move when tracking an object it is evidence of movement
• Relative size used to see motion when objects change position in a frame of reference
• Can often provide for illusions of motion
• Stroboscopic movement: subtle changes in static visual images that are presented in rapid succession give the illusion of movement
  • Occurs when two or more slightly different images are presented in rapid succession
• There are specialized neurons in a secondary visual cortex that respond to movement
  • Some are responsive to upward movement, some to downward movement, etc

Motion Aftereffects or the Waterfall Effect

• Motion aftereffects or the waterfall effect: provides evidence of the motion sensitive neurons in the brain
• Occur when you look at a stationary scene after looking at a moving image for a long time
• There is a momentary impression that the new scene is moving in the opposite direction of the moving image
• When you look at a stimulus long enough the direction-specific neurons adapt to the motion
  • Become fatigued and less sensitive
• When the stimulus is removed the neurons the motion detectors neurons that respond to all other directions of movement are more active than the fatigued motion detectors

Learning

General Learning

Learning

• Learning is a relatively enduring change in behavior resulting from experience
• Animal benefits from experience so that it is better adapted to its environment and more prepared to deal with it in the future
• How we adjust our behavior based on repetition of stimuli or on predictive association between stimuli, action or consequences
  • There is nonassociative, associative and social

Memory

• How we acquire, store and retrieve knowledge about facts, places and skills
• Often distinguished from memory however those are related

Nonassociative Learning

• Simplest form of learning from repeated exposure to a stimulus or event
• Two most common types of nonassociative learning is habituation and sensitization
• Is a change in response to a stimulus

Associative Learning

• Linking of two events that take place one right after the other
• Coming to understand through personal experience how stimuli or events are related
• Association between events are through conditioning, the connection between environmental stimuli and behavioral responses

Social Learning

• Acquiring behaviors and predictive associations between stimuli or events through interactions with others
  • Learning association of stimuli and events through social means

Nonassociative Learning

Habituation

• Decrease in a behavioral response after repeated exposure to a stimulus
• If repeated stimulus isn’t harmful or rewarding, habituation leads us to ignore it
• You can still perceive the stimuli, just don’t respond to them as you have found it unimportant
• Importance of neurotransmitters in synapses, decrease in neurotransmitter after continued stimulation

Dishabituation

• Increase in response because of a change in something familiar

Sensitization

• Increase in a behavioral response after exposure to a stimulus
• If repeated stimulus is threatening or painful, sensitization increases response
• Importance of neurotransmitters in synapses, increase in neurotransmitter after continued stimulation

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

• Neural stimulus elicits a response because it has become associated with a stimulus that already produces that response
• Classical conditioning is a way that animals predict the occurrence of events
• Strength or likelihood of classical conditioning is determined by how accurately the conditioned stimulus predicts the unconditioned stimulus
• Unconditioned response: unlearned response
  • i.e salivation
• Unconditioned stimulus: unlearned stimuli
  • i.e food
• Conditioned stimuli: learned stimuli
  • i.e metronome
• Conditioned response: learned response to learned stimuli
  • i.e salivation
• Conditioned response often weaker than the unconditioned response
  • Conditioned response and unconditioned response are not always identical
• Acquisition: the gradual formation of an association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli
• Classically conditioned responses are not voluntary actions but behaviors that occur naturally in response to the unconditioned stimulus

Pavlov’s Dog

• Ivan Pavlov, russian physiologist who studied the digestive system
• Interested in the salivary reflex, the automatic, unlearned response that occurs after food stimulus of a hungry animal
• Measured saliva secretion when placing different types of food into a dog’s mouth
• Found dogs started secreting salivas when the lab technician walked into the room or when they say bowls
  • This was not an automatic response, must be acquired through experience
• Neutral stimulus, metronome, unrelated to the salivary reflex is presented alongside a stimulus that reliably produces the reflex
  • Pairing of stimuli is called a conditioning trial, repeated multiple times
• Neutral stimulus is presented alone and the salivary reflex is measured
  • Neutral stimuli presented alone is called the test trials
  • Found that neutral stimulus now provided the reflex
• Pavlov concluded that the critical element in the acquisition of learned association is the temporal association of stimuli
  • Strongest conditioning is from a brief delay between the onset of the conditioned stimuli and the unconditioned stimuli

Extinction

• Extinction: conditioned stimulus no longer predicts the unconditioned stimulus
  • When the conditioned stimulus is not presented with the unconditioned stimulus over multiple trials, the conditioned stimulus no longer is a good predictor of the unconditioned stimulus
  • New learning results in gradual disappearance of the conditioned response to the conditioned stimulus
  • Form of learning that overwrites the previous association

Spontaneous Recovery

• Spontaneous recovery: extinguished conditioned stimulus again produces a conditioned response
  • Occurs after some time after extinction
  • Recovery is temporary, will fade unless the conditioned stimulus is again paired with the unconditioned stimulus
    • A single pairing will reestablish the conditioned response
  • Shows that extinction replaces the associative bond but doesn’t eliminate the bond

Rescorla-Wagner Model

• Psychologist Robert Rescorla (1966) conducted some of the first studies highlighting the role of expectation and prediction in learning
• Cognitive model of classical learning was published by Rescorla and Allan Wagner, created the Rescorla-Wagner model
• States than an animal learns to expect that some predictors (potential conditioned stimuli) are better than others
• Conditioned stimulus should occur before the unconditioned stimulus, sets up an expectation
• The acquisition, maintenance, strength or extinction of the conditioned association is determined by the extent to which the unconditioned stimulus’ presence or absence is surprising or unexpected
• Difference between expected and actual outcomes is called the prediction error

Prediction Errors

• Difference between expected and actual outcomes

Positive Prediction Errors

• Positive prediction errors strengthen the association between the conditioned stimuli and the unconditioned stimulus
  • After a stimulus something surprising occurred (unexpected event or especially strong stimuli)
  • Presence of something unexpected
  • Eventually learning will reach its maximum

Negative Prediction Errors

• Negative prediction errors weaken the association between the conditioned stimuli and the unconditioned stimuli
  • After a stimulus, the expected event does not occur
  • Absence of something expected

Stimulus Generalization

• When stimuli similar but not identical to the conditioned stimulus produce the conditioned response
• Is adaptive in nature as the conditioned stimulus is rarely repeated identically
• Differences in variable causes differences in the perception of a conditioned stimulus
• Animals learn to respond to variations in the conditioned stimulus

Stimulus Discrimination

• Differentiation between two similar stimuli if one is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus and the other is not
• Can be trained to be very fine-tuned

Second Order Classical Conditioning

• Conditioned stimulus associated with conditioned stimuli that are associated with an unconditioned stimulus, so the conditioned response can be elicited by the first conditioned stimulus
  • When there is strong association between a conditioned stimulus and and unconditioned stimulus where there is a consistent generation of a conditioned response, the conditioned stimulus can take on value
  • conditioned stimuli associated with conditioned stimuli can produce conditioned responses without direct association with unconditioned stimuli
  • Helps to account for the complexity of many learned associations

Operant conditioning

Operant Conditioning

• We learn that that behaving in certain ways lead to rewards and that not behaving in other ways keeps us from punishment
• Learning is better when stimuli or events are associated closer in time
• Associations are learned more easily if the unconditioned stimulus elicits a strong unconditioned response or if the reinforcer is highly valued
• Operant conditioning or instrumental conditioning depends on taking action leading to a consequence
  • Behaviors represent a way to attain something (a reward) or avoid something (a punishment)
  • Operant conditioning is instrumental, done for a purpose
  • Learn predictive associations between an action and its consequences that determine the likelihood of that action being repeated

Thorndike Experiments

• William James, Harvard psychologist, had a graduate student, Edward Thorndike, working under him
  • Thorndike performed experiments in comparative animal psychology
  • Shows that nonhuman animals showed signs of intelligence
  • Created a puzzle box, a cage with a trap door
  • Trapdoor opened if the animal inside performed a specific action
  • Placed food-deprived animals inside the box
• Thorndike moved to Columbia and continued his experimentation with cats
  • Motivated cats by placing food outside the box
  • Cats first attempted to escape through numerous unsuccessful behaviors
  • Cats would then accidentally press a lever that opened the door
  • Cat would be returned to the box
  • In subsequent trials, the cats would press the lever more quickly
  • Thorndike creates the law of effect

Law of Effect

• Any behavior that leads to a “satisfying state of affairs” is likely to occur again, any behavior that leads to an “annoying state of affairs” is less likely to occur again
  • The frequency that a behavior occurs is influenced by its consequences

John B. Watson

• John B Watson was an author who wrote Behaviorism
  • Contradicted unscientific psychology’s study of conscious and unconscious mental processes
  • Believed that if psychology needs to stop focusing on mental events that could not be observed in order to be a science
  • Created behaviorism which emphasized environmental effects on observable behaviors

BF Skinner

• BF Skinner, psychologist created a formal learning theory based on the law of effect developed by Thorndike
  • Chose operant to show that animals operate on their environments to produce effects
  • Believed he could dramatically change an animal’s behavior by providing incentives for performing certain behaviors
• Skinner coined the term reinforcement
  • Believed behavior is a result of reinforcement

Operant Chamber

• Skinner experiment, created a skinner box or operant chamber which exposed animals to repeated conditioning trials without having to do anything but observe
• Skinner creates a small chamber or cage with a lever or response key connected to a food supply and a second lever or response key connected to a water supply
  • Animals learn to use levers or keys for food or water
• Skinner created mazes where a specific turn would get access to a reinforcer
• Skinner would create mechanical recording devices to allow continuous conduction of trials without manual labor

Reinforcers

• Stimulus that occurs after a response and increases the likelihood that the response will be repeated
  • Primary reinforcers: obvious stimuli that act as reinforcers as they are necessary for survival
  • Secondary reinforcers: stimuli that serve as reinforcers but do not satisfy biological needs
    • Are established through classical conditioning
• Positive: something is added
• Negative: something is taken

Punishment

• Punishment: stimulus that occurs after a response and decreases the likelihood that the response will be repeated
• Positive: something is added
• Negative: something is taken

Positive Reinforcement

• Positive reinforcement: administration of a stimulus after a behavior increases the probability of a behavior being repeated
  • Is often considered a reward

Negative Reinforcement

• Negative reinforcement: removal of an unpleasant stimulus after a behavior increases the probability of a behavior being repeated

Positive Punishment

• Positive punishment: administration of a typically unpleasant stimulus after a behavior decreases the probability of a behavior being repeated

Negative Punishment

• Negative punishment: removal of a typically pleasant stimulus after a behavior decreases the probability of a behavior being repeated

Shaping

• Reinforcing behaviors that are increasingly similar to the desired behavior
• Reinforcing successive approximations eventually produces the desired behavior
• Animal learns to discriminate which behavior is being reinforced

Premack Thoughts

Premack Theory

• David Premack, theorized about how a reinforcer’s value could be determined
• Premack theory: reinforcer value depends on the amount of time a person, when free to do anything willingly engages in a specific behavior associated with the reinforcer
  • Reinforcer’s value is dependent on differences in individuals’ values
  • Reinforcer’s value can change with context

Premack Principle

• Premack principle: a more-valued activity can be used to reinforce the performance of less-valued activity
• Longer the delay between an action and its consequence, the worse the learning
  • Has implications on the application of operant principles
  • Rewards in the future are less potent and less valuable

Temporal Discounting

• When the value of a reward diminishes over time
  • Important in efforts to achieve long-term goals

Continuous Reinforcement

• Continuous reinforcement: reinforce a behavior each time it occurs
  • Best for fast learning, behaviors do not last

Partial Reinforcement

• Partial reinforcement: intermittent reinforcement of a behavior
• Effect of partial reinforcement on conditioning depends on the reinforcement schedule
• Schedules vary in the basis for providing reinforcement and the regularity with which the reinforcement is provided
• Can be on a fixed schedule or a variable schedule
• Greater resistance to extinction

Reinforcement Schedule

• Ratio schedule: based on the number of times the behavior occurs
• Interval schedule: based on a specific unit of time

Fixed Interval Schedule

• Reinforcement provided after a certain amount of time has passed
  • There is an increase in behavior just before the opportunity for reinforcement and a drop off after reinforcement

Variable Interval Schedule

• Reinforcement is provided after an irregular amount of time has passed
  • Unable to predict when the reinforcement will occur, more constant behavior

Fixed Ratio Schedule

• Reinforcement provided after a certain number of responses have been made
  • More responses leads to more reinforcement
  • Typically produces high rates of responding

Variable Ratio Schedule

• Reinforcement provided after an irregular number of responses
  • Typically produces high rates of responding that last over time
  • Feel that there will eventually be a reinforcement

Partial Reinforcement Extinction Effect

• Greater persistence of behavior under partial reinforcement than under continuous reinforcement
  • Continuous reinforcement: easy to know when reinforcement stops
  • Partial reinforcement: need to repeat behavior more to know whether the reinforcement has stopped
    • Especially if the reinforcement is variable
• To condition a behavior so it persists, start with continuous reinforcement and transition to partial reinforcement

Principle of Equipotentiality

• Any object or phenomenon could be converted to a conditioned stimulus when associated with any unconditioned stimulus or any behavior can be learned as long as it is reinforced
  • Found that some conditioned stimuli were more likely than others to produce learning, some behaviors were more likely to be learned
  • Timing and intensity not sufficient to learn predictive association in classical and operant conditioning
• John Garcia and co. found that certain pairing of stimuli are more likely to be associated with each other

Conditioned Taste Aversion

• Association between food and illness sometimes even when not experienced temporally proximal
• Are likely to develop if that taste is not part of the person’s usual diet
  • Can be formed after a single trial
• Some people cannot stand the smell of a food associated with stomach-related illness
• Easy to develop an aversion to taste, harder to do with other stimuli
  • Evolutionary sensible, there is strong correlation between smell/taste and illness
  • Notably easy to induce in rates and humans, less so in birds

Biological Preparedness

• Theory by psychologist Martin Seligman animals are genetically programmed to fear specific objects
• Animals have a hard time learning behaviors that run counter to evolutionary adaptation
  • Conditioning is most effective when the association between the stimuli and the reinforcement is similar to that animal’s built-in predisposition

Neurotransmitter Basis for Associative Learning

Dopamine

• Dopamine is the neural basis of reward and reinforcement
• Sets the value of a rewarding unconditioned stimulus in classical conditioning or a reward reinforcer in operant conditioning
• Release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens in the basal ganglia when animals are given food
  • There is more dopamine when animals are hungrier
• Drugs that enhance dopamine activation increase the reward value of stimuli

Wanting and Liking

• Terry Robinson and Kent Derridge create a distinction between wanting and liking aspects of reward
• Wanting: desire or craving to consume substance
  • Dopamine very important in this pathway
• Liking: subjective sense of pleasure users receive from consuming substance
  • Other neurotransmitters like endogenous opiates are more important in this pathway

Prediction Errors and Dopamine

• Prediction error form the basis for the expectancies and predictions underlying classical conditioning and are also important for operant conditioning
  • Prediction errors alert us to important events in our environment
• Dopamine activity in the brain reward regions underlies prediction errors in classical and operant conditioning

Wolfram Schultz and Co

• Wolfram Schultz and Co performed classical conditioning with hungry monkeys and measured dopamine levels
  • They used fruit juice as the unconditioned stimulus
  • They used a light or tone as the conditioned stimulus
  • Before conditioning they found increased dopamine activity with the unconditioned stimulus
    • Positive prediction error → increased dopamine activity
  • After conditioning they found increased dopamine activity with the conditioned stimulus and not the unconditioned stimulus
    • Positive prediction error → increased dopamine activity
    • Due to conditioning, the unconditioned stimulus is no longer a surprise (no prediction error)
  • After conditioning they found decreased dopamine activity when the conditioned stimulus did not result in the unconditioned stimulus
    • Negative prediction error → decreased dopamine activity
  • As animal learns that certain cues signal rewards, the cues produce dopamine activity
  • Dopamine helps to explain second-order conditioning and secondary reinforcers in operant conditioning

Application of Associative Learning

Phobias

• Is an acquired fear that is out of proportion to the real threat of an object or situation
• According to classical-conditioning theory, phobias develop through generalization of a fear experience

Fear Conditioning

• Classical conditioning to fear neutral objects
  • Observed in animals during the first few weeks of life
  • Fear conditioning observed to cause fear responses such as freezing (keeping still)
    • Seems to be a hardwired response to avoid notice of predators

John B. Watson and the Little Albert Experiment

• John B Watson one of the first researchers to demonstrate the role of classical conditioning in the development of phobias
• Taught an infant Albert B. “Little Albert” to fear neutral objects
• Watson and his lab assistant Rosalie Rayner presented Albert with neutral objects to which he showed natural curiosity but no overt emotional response
• Watson and Rayner than used one of these objects, a white rat as a conditioned stimulus and used a loud smashing sound as a unconditioned stimulus
• The rat then produced the conditioned response of a fear response
• The conditioned stimulus was then generalized to all the neutral stimuli that Albert initially showed curiosity but no overt emotional response to
• There was also an operant conditioning side, avoiding the conditioned stimuli had a reinforcer of less fear response

Mary Cover Jones and Extinction

• Mary Cover Jones showed extinction of conditioned fear responses
• Jones eliminated the fear of rabbits in a 3-year old named peter
• Brought the rabbit closer and provided peter with his favorite food

Drug Addiction

• Drug addiction also has factors of classical and operant conditioning
• With operant conditioning the taking of a drug is associated with the pleasurable effects of the drug as a positive reinforcer
• With classical conditioning there is association with certain stimuli with drug usage (coffee smell, needles) which has the pleasurable conditioned response or cravings
• Without drugs, there is often withdrawal symptoms that serve as positive punishment
• Tolerance increases when drugs are taken in similar locations
  • Learned to expect the drugs in that location, compensates by altering neurochemistry or physiology
  • Decreased tolerance in novel settings

Social Learning

Social Learning

• Social learning is a powerful adaptive tool, do not personal experience a stimulus or event to learn whether its good or bad
• Basic skills can be learned through watching others perform the skills
• Fears of dangerous objects and situations can be learned
• Can acquire beliefs through observation and instruction
• Children are particularly susceptible to social learning
• Believed to underlie the uniquely complex nature of human culture

Modeling

• Is the imitation of observed behavior
• People are reproducing the behaviors of models
• Generally modeling is after the actions of models who are more attractive, have higher status and are somewhat similar
• Modeling is effective only if the observer is physically capable of imitating the behavior
• Influence of models are often implicit, without people being aware that their behaviors are being altered or they are unwilling to accept their modeling

Vicarious Learning

• Is learning to engage in a behavior or not, after seeing others being rewarded for performing that action

Instructed Learning

• Humans can be verbally instructed about the associations between stimuli or associations between actions and consequences
  • Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky found social interaction leads to increased level of knowledge and changes in child’s thoughts and behaviors

Social Basis of Fear

• Fear can be learned through social means
• Socially learned fears may be similar to classically conditioned fears
  • The circuitry necessary for acquiring such fears may be different but they all rely on similar brain systems for their bodily expression

Amygdala

• Small almond-shaped structure in the medial temporal lobe that is responsible for the acquisition and expression of conditioned defensive responses (freezing, autonomic nervous system arousal)
  • The defensive responses are reflexive reactions
  • Similar brain mechanisms underlie conditioned, observational and instructed fear learning

Memory

General Memory

Memory

• Memory is the ability to store and retrieve information
  • Can range from trivial to vital
  • Can be incomplete, biased or distorted
• Reflects our personal history and is crucial in every aspect of everyday life
  • Composes one’s sense of self or identity
• Enables organisms to take information from experiences and retain it for later use
  • Expressed in a response or behavior that is modified by past experiences
• Memories are influenced by situation or context and the way we process, interpret and use information
  • Individual memories of similar events can vary vastly

Henry Molaison

• Henry Molaison was born in 1926 and died in 2008
• HM suffered from severe epilepsy leaving him with several grand mal seizures daily
  • Seizures are uncontrolled random firings of groups of neurons
  • Can spread across the brain
• HM seizures started at the temporal lobes and spread, uncontrollable by medication
• HM had surgery in 1953 to remove parts of his medial temporal lobe including his hippocampus
  • Removal of the seizure causing parts of the brain
• HM lost the ability to remember new info for more than a few moments
  • Able to remember life prior to surgery, IQ was above average
  • Could still remember things for short periods of time as he was able to maintain a conversation
• HM could still learn new motor tasks, capable of priming
• Henry Molaison had distinction between working and long term memory
  • Long Term before his surgery was intact
  • Working memory was intact
  • Transfer of working memory into long term memory was not intact

Brenda Milner Experiments

• Milner asked HM to trace the outline of a star while watching his hand in a mirror
• Asked to do so 10 times in three consecutive days
• His performance improved over the three days
  • Retained information about the task even if he couldn’t recall doing the task
  • Allowed him to get a job mounting cigarette lighters in cardboard cases

Amnesia

• The inability to retrieve vast quantities of information from memory as a result of brain injury or psychological trauma
• Retrograde amnesia: lose past memories for events, facts, people or even personal information
• Anterograde amnesia: lose the ability to form new memories

Neuroanatomy of Memory

• Areas in the temporal lobes, specifically the hippocampus are important for storing new memories for life events that can be consciously expressed after a short time
  • Less important for memories expressed by motor skills or after priming
• Neural specialization → different memory systems exist in the brain
  • Underlie the ability to retrieve information beyond a minute or so after you perceive it
  • Each memory system is specialized for specific types of information and/or memory expression

Implicit Memory

Implicit Memory

• Implicit memory are memories from past experiences that are expressed in responses, actions or reactions
  • Are often called unconscious or automatic memories
• Include associative learning, nonassociative learning, procedural memory and priming

Associative Learning

• Associative learning such as classical conditioning include structures such as the basal ganglia, amygdala and cerebellum

Nonassociative Learning

• Nonassociative learning such as sensitization and habituation has changes in the response to a stimulus based on repeated experience with that stimulus
  • Depends on changes in the responsiveness of neurons involved in perceiving the repeated stimulus

Procedural Memories

• Procedural memory, which include skilled and goal-oriented behaviors that become automatic, are reflected in knowing how to do something
• Include motor skills, cognitive skills and habitual behaviors
• These responses can become habits
• Procedural memories are resistant to decay
• Include the basal ganglia and the cerebellum for fine motor skills
• Sometimes conscious thought about these automatic behaviors interferes with the automatic behaviors

Priming

• Priming is the facilitation of a response to a stimulus based on recent experiences with that stimulus or a related stimulus
• Can be perceptual in which a response to the same stimulus is facilitated
  • Include the brain regions that underlie perceptual processing
• Can be conceptual in which a response to a conceptually related stimulus is facilitated
  • Include brain regions that underlie conceptual processing

Explicit Memories

Explicit Memories

• Explicit memories or declarative memories are memories that can be declared as being known
• 1972, psychologist Endel Tulving proposed that explicit memory can be divided into episodic memory and semantic memory

Episodic Memories

• Episodic memory consists of a person’s memory of past experiences that can be identified as occurring at a time and place
• Medial temporal lobe is responsible for the formation of new episodic memories
• Hippocampus critical for forming new episodic memories but not for retrieving older episodic memories
  • Forms links or pointers between different storage sites and then directs the gradual strengthening of the connections between these links
• Long-term storage of episodic memories involve particular brain regions engaged during the perception, processing and analysis of the material being learned
  • Recalling has the reactivation of cortical circuits relating these different storage units

Semantic Memory

• Semantic memory consists of a person’s knowledge of concepts, categories and facts independent of personal experience
  • Other medial temporal lobe regions play a role in the acquisition of semantic memories

Stages of Memory

Three Stages of Memory

• Encoding or acquisition is when you experience an event that results in a memory
• Storage is when the memoir of this experience is formed and maintained
• Retrieval when the memory of the past experience is expressed
• Throughout these three stages there are many factors that determine whether or not a memory is strong or weak, remembered or forgotten, accurate or distorted

Encoding

Encoding

• Encoding is the perception of a stimulus or event that gets transformed into a memory
  • Can be automatic or effortful: we can simply remember some things we attend to and not others or we can manipulate how we process information to enhance the likelihood of encoding information

Effect of Attention

• Encoding starts with attention, you are more likely to remember something you attended to and perceived initially
  • Manipulation of attention affects the likelihood of memory encoding
  • Little evidence that explicit memories can be formed without attention and conscious perception

Dual Coding Hypothesis

• Information that can be coded visually and verbally will be remembered more easily than information that can be coded only verbally

Effect of Meaning

• Encoding is affected by the extent to which information taps into existing knowledge structures in the brain

Mental Processing Model

• Mental Processing Model created by psychologists Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart (1972) suggested that the more deeply an item is encoded, the more meaning it has, the better it is remembered
  • Proposes that different levels of rehearsal leads to different levels of encoding
  • There are two kinds of rehearsal: maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal

Maintenance Rehearsal

• Maintenance rehearsal is repeating the item over and over

Elaborative Rehearsal

• Elaborative rehearsal encodes the information in more meaningful ways be elaborating on basic information by linking it in meaningful ways to existing knowledge
• Visual processing has the least amount of processing, and therefore less likely to be remembered
• Acoustic processing has the second least amount of processing, and therefore is more likely to be remembered
• Semantic processing has the most amount of processing, and therefore is most likely to be remembered

Schemas

• Schemas are cognitive structures in semantic memories that help us perceive, organize, understand and use information
• Guide attention to relevant features
• Allows us to construct new memories by filling in holes within existing memories, overlooking inconsistent information and interpreting meaning based on past experiences

Chunking

• Chunking information is the process of breaking down information into meaningful units
• The greater your expertise with the material, the more efficiently you can chunk information during encoding

Mnemonics

• Mnemonics are learning aids or strategies to improve memory by focusing attention on organization incoming information and linking it to existing knowledge structures
• Method of loci or memory palace is a mnemonic strategy of associating items you want to remember with physical locations
• Peg method is a mnemonic strategy of establishing mental pegs to hang memories on

Storage

Multi-Store Memory Model

• 1968, psychologists Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin proposed a three-part model of memory
• Consists of sensory memory, short-term or working memory and long-term memory
  • Are differentiated by the length of time the information is retained in memory
• After the ending of perception and the perceived information is still available for processing
  • Can be stored anywhere for less than a second and forever

Sensory Memory

George Sperling Experiment

• George Speling proposed the existence of sensory memory through an experiment with three rows of letters that were flashed on a screen of 1/20 of a second
  • Participants were asked to recall all the letters
• Most people believed that they had seen all the letters but could only recall three or four
• Sperling then introduced a high, medium and low pitched sound as soon as the letter disappeared
  • High pitched sound meant the participants should recall the letters in the top row
  • Medium pitched sound meant the participants should recall the letters in the middle row
  • Low pitched sound meant that the participants should recall the letters in the bottom row
• When sound was produced immediately after the image, participants were correctly remembered almost all the letters in the signaled row
  • The longer the delay, the worse the performance

Sensory Memory

• Sensory memory is a temporary memory system closely tied to the sensory system
• Lasts only a fraction of a second, normally we are not aware that it is operating
  • When a stimuli leaves a vanishing trace on the nervous system after the sensory information is gone
  • Memory contains all that was perceived but stores only around three or four items
• Sensory memory only stores three or four items
• Sensory system transduce, or change sensory information into neural impulses

Iconic Memory

• The visual sensual memory where you can look at something and quickly glace away and still briefly picture the image and recall some of its details
  • Contains all visual information but only persists for about ½ of a second

Echoic Memory

• The auditory sensory memory where you can hear something and repeat back some of what is heard without paying attention

Short Term Memory

Short Term or Working Memory

• Short-term memory or working memory is an active memory process that deals with multiple types of information
• Maintains and manipulates multiple pieces of temporary information from different sources
• Represented what we are consciously focused on at any point in time
• Remains in working memory for 20-30 seconds
  • Will disappear unless actively prevented from doing so
  • Information is retained through monitoring it (thinking or rehearsing it)
• Attention turns information from sensory memory to short-term memory

Capacity of Short Term Memory

• New items in working memory interferes with the recall of older items because working memory can hold a limited amount of information
• Generally the limit is seven items, plus or minus two, is called the memory span
• Newer research suggests that the limit may be lower at as low as four items
• Capacity of working memory increases as children develop and decrease with advanced age
• Memory span varies between individuals, and is often used as part of the measure of IQ
  • Can be improved through training exercises but such exercises do no transfer to other cognitive abilities involved in intelligence
• Chunking and organizing information expands the amount of information that can be maintained in working memory
  • Efficient chunking improves the information held in working memory

Long Term Memory

Long Term Memory

• Long Term memory can last from a few minutes to forever, it has a limitless capacity
  • Longer duration and greater capacity relative to working memory
• Long term memory and working memory are greatly interdependent
  • Chunking relies on long term memory to make connections
  • Recall of long term memory has transfer into the working memory

Serial Position Effect

• Items presented early or late in a list were remembered better than those in the middle
• Is evidence of the separateness of long-term and working memory
• Earlier items are rehearsed first and therefore is more likely to be stored into long-term memory
• Later items are still in working memory

Primacy Effect

• Better memory of items presented at the beginning of a list
  • Delays between presentation and recall of list doesn’t interfere with the primacy effect

Recency Effect

• Better memory of most recent items of a list
• Delays between presentation and recall of list interferes with the recency effect
• May not be entirely due to working memory

Consolidation

Donald Hebb Model

• 1949, Donald Hebb proposed that memory results from alterations in synaptic connections
• In Hebb’s model memories are stored in multiple regions of the brain linked through memory circuits
• When one neuron fires, change takes place that strengthens the connection between the two neurons
  • Firing of one neuron is likely to cause the firing of other neurons in the circuit: “cells that fire together wire together”

Kandel Experimentation

• Kandel experimentation with Aplysia slugs showed long term storage of information was the result from the development of new synaptic connections between neurons
  • Supports Hebb’s model of neural circuitry and memories

Consolidation

• Process of forming lasting connections that represent long-term memory
  • Storage of long-term memory results from active processes over time
  • Gradual process that can be interrupted by physical trauma

Slow Consolidation

• Slow consolidation is argued to have benefits such as allowing things that happen after an experience to influence the storage of memory for that event
• Memories that aren’t consolidated are forgotten
  • Better if memories that are stored are those that are more important or more consequential
  • Memories that are more often elicited are more likely to be important

Emotion on Consolidation

• How emotional a memory is may increase it’s consolidation
• Stress hormones released during autonomic arousal causes the amygdala to influence the consolidation of memory

Long Term Potentiation

• Long term potentiation, discovered by psychologists in the 1970s, is a process that is central to neural changes underlying memory storage
  • Long term potentiation (LTP) is the strengthening of synaptic connections to make postsynaptic neurons more easily activated by presynaptic neurons
• Serves as a model of how neural plasticity could underlie long-term memory
  • As the synapse between neurons fire together, the two neurons become better connected
    • Stimulation of the first neuron is more likely to cause firing in the second neuron

NMDA Receptor

• NMDA receptor is found on the postsynaptic neuron of the neuronal circuit
  • Is a glutamate receptor that responds only when large amounts of glutamate are available in the synapse and when the postsynaptic neuron is sufficiently depolarized
• LTP leads to increase in the number of glutamate receptors on the postsynaptic neuron
  • Increases its responsivity to glutamate
  • Produces more synapses between neurons
  • The strengthening of synaptic connections results in memory

Memory Replay

• When the neural circuit representing the memory fires again
  • Reminders of the memory during wakefulness often causes memory replay
  • Memory replay may also occur during sleep
    • Stimuli that act as reminders of events during sleep may improve memory

Flashbulb Memory

• 1977, flashbulb memories were termed by Roger Brown and James Kulik: vivid memories of the circumstance in which people first learn of surprising and consequential or emotionally arousing events
• Often they can be inconsistent with reality, although individuals may be adamant about its accuracy
  • Forgetting of details take place but people tend to repeat the same story over time and the repetition increases confidence in the accuracy of their memory
  • Central details and select details accuracy are typically maintained
  • Personal details and general memory accuracy are as accurate as memories of ordinary events despite confidence

Reconsolidation

Reconsolidation

• Consolidation after retrieval of a memory, modifying a memory
• Offers memory updating and memory strengthening
• Thought to be triggered when aspects of the retrieval context cue that there may be new, relevant information to learn
  • Acts similar to a prediction error
• Relevant to what it means to remember and the accuracy of memories
• Possibility that distressing memories can be changed through retrieving and interfering with reconsolidation

Memory Updating

• When memory for a past event is retrieved and the information in the current circumstance is relevant for that memory
  • New information is incorporated into the original memory causing reconsolidated memories to differ from the original versions

Memory Strengthening

• Memory becomes stronger, may related to the benefits of retrieval practice for learning

Retrieval Practice

• Retrieval practice is the strategy of bringing information to mind by deliberately trying to recall it
• Better than spending the same amount of time reviewing information you have already read
• Appears better for reconsolidation and memory strengthening

Fear Memories

• Fear memories can be altered through extinction during periods when the memories are being reconsolidated
  • Seems to apply only to some forms of memory expression

Retrieval

Memory Retrieval

• Expression of a memory after encoding and storage
• Indication that a memory was encoded and stored
• What happens in earlier stages of memory effects retrieval

Retrieval Induced Forgetting

• Retrieval induced forgetting occurs when an item from long-term memory impairs the ability to recall a related item in the future
  • Retrieval of certain details may hinder the retrieval of details not retrieved in previous practice

Retrieval Cue

• Anything that helps an individual's recall a memory
• Can be a stimulus that can unintentionally trigger memories
• Can lead individuals to intentionally search for memories

Encoding Specificity

• Any stimulus encoded along with an experience can later trigger a memory of the experience
• Similar retrieval contexts and encoding contexts can cause better memory retrieval
• Encoding stores not just the item but also other aspects of the encoding context or situation

Context Dependent Memory

• Memory enhancement resulting from when the recall situation is similar to the encoding situation
• Can be dependent on physical location, odors and background music

State Dependent Memory

• Memory enhancement resulting from a person’s internal states matching during encoding and retrieval
• Internal cues can affect the recovery of information as well

Prospective Memory

• Remembering to do something at some future time
  • Can be more challenging than memories concerning the past
• Retrieval cues can help prospective memory, although sometimes it is difficult to find retrieval cues for prospective memories in particular environments

Forgetting and Persistence

Hermann Ebbinghaus Experiment

• Hermann Ebbinghaus examined how long it took people to relearn lists of nonsense syllables
  • Ebbinghaus had evidence that forgetting occurs rapidly initially and then levels off
  • Forgetting appears to continue until at least 5 years after learning
  • Even if you cannot remember things, traces of memory might exist

Forgetting

• Memory is an active process with consolidation and reconsolidation of info manipulated in working memory
  • Is therefore biased, distorted and prone to forgetting
  • We forget more than we remember
• Forgetting may be through disuse of a memory
• Forgetting helps individuals retain and use the most meaningful information
  • Not being able to forget is maladaptive

Persistence

• Persistence is when unwanted memories are remembered despite the lack of desire to have them
  • Can have very traumatic effects on the lives of individuals

Savings

• Difference between the original learning and relearning

Interference

• Interference: forgetting through proactive interference or retroactive interference
  • Competing information displaces information we are trying to retrieve
• Proactive interference: old information inhibits the ability to remember new information
• Retroactive interference: new information inhibits the ability to remember old information

Blocking Interference

• Blocking: person in temporarily unable to remember something
• Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: experience great frustration as people try to recall specific somewhat obscure words
  • May not be able to recall the word but can remember the first letter or the number of syllables
  • Even with partial memory individual may be unable to pull the precise work into working memory
  • Increases with age
• Blocking in the case of tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon may be due to interference from words that are similar in some way such as in sound or meaning

Absentmindedness

• Shallow encoding of events
• Most often it is due to a lack of attention, sometimes as a result of being caught up in a separate activity

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Post traumatic stress disorder is an example of persistence where traumatic memories are habitually retrieved causing significant distress
  • Cues and contexts that pose no threat evoke the memory can cause the sufferer to relive the event
  • Memory persistence leads to prolonged stress reactions that have significant consequences for physical and mental health
• Mental health disorder with a estimated prevalence of 7% if US
• May include recall of events that threaten people or those close to them
  • Deaths, physical/sexual assault, accidents, disasters or sights

Inaccuracy of Memories

Memory Bias

• Changing of memories over time to be consistent with current beliefs, knowledge or attitudes
• Memories often are revised with changing contexts
• There is often exaggerations or understatements of an individual’s actions due to favorable bias for a person
• Societies can offer similar biases

Source Misattribution

• People misremember the time, place, person or circumstances involved with a memory
• False fame effect: might recall a name but not remember from where
• Sleeper effect: occurs when an argument that is not very persuasive due to it’s questionable source becomes more credible over time as the source is forgotten

Source Amnesia

• Misattribution that occurs when people have a memory for an event but cannot remember where they encountered the information
• Infantile amnesia: inability to remember specific episodic memories from before age 3 or 4
  • Lasting episodic memories though to be the result of development of the prefrontal cortex and language abilities

Cryptomnesia

• Misattribution in which people think they came up with a new idea
• Have actually retrieved an old idea from memory and failed to attribute the idea to its proper source

Suggestibility

• Tendency of people to develop biased memories when provided misleading information
• Suggestibility may be more heavily emphasized in lab setting than in the real world

False Memories

• Memories influenced by other factors
• Related words produce overlapping patterns of brain activity in the frontmost portion of the temporal lobe
  • Where semantic information is processed
  • False memories can therefore often create confidence in the person who remembered the information
• Imagination of an event creates a mental image of the event
  • This might be confused with the mental image of a real memory, is a problem with monitoring the source of the image
• Children particularly susceptible to false memories, although unusual events are hard to make false memories of

Repressed Memories

• Memories of traumatic events that are repressed from retrieval
• Some assume to be possible to retrieve memories through therapy
• Others are doubtful of whether or not memories are repressed or are false
  • May be implanted by well meaning but misguided therapists
  • Hypnosis, age regression and guided recall can implant false memories

Test Preparation

Studying

• Prepare for and attend classes, want to maximize the likelihood you will learn the information
• Distribute your learning, spreading studying over multiple sessions will help the retainment of information
• Elaborate the material, the deeper the level of understanding, the more likely you will remember materials
• Practice retrieval, protects memories from the negative effects of stress
  • Better than reviewing the material continuously
  • Test yourself after reviewing information
  • Can produce your own practice materials to test recall
• Overlearn, review continuously even after you believe you know the material
  • Makes it so that you are not only recognizing the material but recalling as well
• Use verbal mnemonics for rote memory, for learning lists without actually having to understand what is on the list
• Use visual imagery to create a mental image of materials
  • Can doodle to link ideas or create a flow chart or drawing a concept map
  • Allows for mental visualization of relationships

Decision Making

Thought and Cognition

Cognitive Psychology

• The study of mental functions such as intelligence, thinking, language, memory and decision making

Cognition

• Mental processes involving acquisition and comprehension of knowledge through thoughts and experiences

Thinking

• Mental process that enables consideration of information for developing ideas, representing those ideas in the mind, using the ideas to make decisions, solve problems and communicate with others

Theory Concerning Knowledge, Explanation of Thinking

• Information about the world organized into representations for better understanding of objects encountered in the environment
• Analogical representations are concrete representations of objects with characteristics of what they represent, are typically mental images
• Symbolic representations are abstract representation with no physical qualities of the objects they represent
  • Are usually words, number or ideas

Theory Concerning Thinking, Explanation of Thinking

• The mental manipulation of knowledge representation for the development of models of the world, the development of goals and the planning of actions

Concepts

Concepts

• Symbolic mental representations of categories or classes of related items
• Allows for abstract representation based on properties shared between items or ideas

Well-Defined Concepts

• Concepts with properties that are distinct from other concepts

Fuzzy Concepts

• Concepts that are not easily defined or reliably understood due to different meanings in different contexts

Categorization

• Grouping of items based on shared properties, allowing for the reduction of knowledge held in memory
• Limits the inefficiency of storing the same information many times
• Different categories of objects are represented in different regions of the brain based on the sensation used to interpret the object

Prototype Model

• Developed by Eleanor Rosch in 1975, theorized that concepts are thought of by the best example or prototype of that concept
• Theorized that new items are categorized based on similarities to the prototype
  • Members of a category vary based on how much they match the prototype

Exemplar Model

• Developed by Medin and Schaffer in 1978, theorized that concepts are thought of as a combination of all the concept members encountered
• Theorized that concepts have no single best representation and therefore are fuzzy images developed by experience
  • Prototypes are assumed to be concept members that have been encountered most often

Schemas

Schemas

• Consistent rules among common situations that allow for efficient perception, organization, understanding and processing of information
• Are adaptive, are typically effective in most situations, minimizing the attention required to navigate familiar environments
  • Enables recognition and avoidance of unusual and dangerous situation
  • May produce prototypes that reinforce sexist, racist or stereotypical perceptions

Scripts

• Schemas that direct behavior over time within a situation for more efficient understanding and processing of information
• Are typically effective in most situations

Gender Roles

• Unconscious schemas that direct behaviors towards females and males within a culture
• Conscious thought concerning unconscious schemas may assist in dealing with unconscious biases

Heuristics

Decision Making

• The identification of important criteria and the selection among alternatives based on satisfaction of those criteria
• Decision making is not always rational as there is often the usage of heuristics
  • Decisions are often made based on irrelevant criteria or biased by emotions

Maximizers

• Individuals who attempt to identify the ideal choice among a set of options that is maximally beneficial
  • Are prone to second guessing decisions
• Tend to select the objectively superior choice but receive the least happiness

Satisficers

• Individuals who attempt to identify a satisfactory choice that meets a minimum requirement
• Tend to select less superior choices but receive greater happiness

Problem Solving

• The overcoming of obstacles from a present state to reach a desired goal state

Heuristics

• Unconscious shortcuts in thinking that assist in the making of decisions
  • Can result in biases leading to errors, faulty decisions, erroneous beliefs and false prediction
• Heuristics are typically adaptively fast and efficient, requiring minimal cognitive resources, allowing for focus on other tasks

Confirmation Bias

• Bias arising from heuristics where individuals focus only on information that supports their view

Hindsight Bias

• Bias arising from heuristics where individuals develop after-the-fact explanations to events contrary to prior predictions

Anchoring

• A relative comparison where individuals rely on the first piece of information they encounter or the first piece of information that comes most quickly to mind as a reference point in decision making
• After making a judgment, subsequent information is used to adjust from that anchoring reference point until a reasonable conclusion is reached
  • Conclusions are often insufficient, resulting in erroneous judgment

Framing

• A relative comparison where individuals are swayed by the emphasis on potential loss or potential gain from different alternatives
  • Can capitalize on loss aversion

Availability Heuristic

• Heuristic where individuals display a tendency to make decisions based on the answer that comes most easily to mind
• Overconfidence effect is the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s belief and judgements

Representativeness Heuristic

• Heuristic where individuals display a tendency to place a person or object in a category if the person or object is similar to the prototype in that category
  • The decision is based on the extent to which each option reflects what we already believe about a situation
• Can lead to insensitivity to base rate, the size of samples or prior outcomes

Base Rate Fallacy

• Phenomenon where individuals fail to take the relative frequency of occurrences leading insufficient attention
• Gambler's Fallacy is an extent of the base rate fallacy in which individuals believe that certain outcomes are dependent on prior outcomes

Emotional Bias

Emotions

• Emotion can influence decisions by providing an internal signal about the value of different choice options
  • Choices anticipated to elicit a better feeling are better valued

Loss Aversion

• Phenomenon where there is a placement of greater emotional impact on a potential loss relative to a potential gain, swaying decisions to avoid losses

Affective States

• States of emotions which can bias decisions

Incidental Affective States

• States of emotion which have subtle influence on everyday decisions

Affective Forecasting

• Phenomenon where there is a preference for alternatives that will potentially increase future happiness and avoidance of alternatives that will potentially decrease future happiness (regret)
  • Errors occur with overestimation of happiness as a result of a positive event and overestimation of detriment as a result of a negative event
  • Individuals are generally poor at affective forecasting

Response to Negative Events

• Individuals are typically quite good at manufacturing positivity after negative events and poor at predicting positivity from negative events
• Individuals often rationalize negative events through minimization of the event’s importance for the benefit of individual mental health

Endowment Effect

• Phenomenon where there is a tendency for individuals to overvalue things they own, relative to the value they would assign to a similar item they haven’t owned
• Is most prominent in individuals with a positive affective state
• Is often reversed in individuals with a negative affective state

Appraisal Tendency Framework

• Theory that states that affective state elicits tendencies which influence the appraisal of unrelated information and choices encountered in that affective state
  • Tendencies include tendencies to move forwards or move away from situations
• Even incidental affective states are found to have noticeable impact in large scale studies

Problem Solving and Mental Sets

Problem Solving

• The process of using available information to achieve goals
• Problems may have no simple or direct means of attaining a particular goal

Process of Problem Solving

• In order for the solution of a problem there must be the development of a plan to reach an attainable goal, the development of strategies to overcome obstacles, the monitoring of progress and the evaluation of results to measure attainment of a goal
  • The thought process concerning a problem may hinder the ability to solve problems
• When facing a complex problem with no obvious next step, identifying appropriate steps or subgoals and their order can be challenging
• When facing a complex problem with no obvious next step, restructuring a problem in a novel way may reveal a solution, not visible under the old problem structure

Mental Sets

• Previous strategies that are applied which can hinder the production of solutions

Functional Fixedness

• A mental set where there are fixed ideas on the typical functionality of objects
• In restructuring of the problem, there must be a reinterpretation of the object’s potential function

Algorithm

• A conscious strategy for problem solving, where a guideline that, when followed correctly, will always yield the correct answer, is used

Working Backwards

• A conscious strategy for problem solving, where individuals proceed from the goal state to the initial state to determine appropriate steps for solving a problem

Analogical Problem Solving

• A conscious strategy for problem solving, where two problems with analogous constraints or structural similar is solved by transferring problem-solving strategies
• Can potentially lead to the development of a schema to solve similar problems

Sudden Insight

• An unconscious phenomenon where there is a metaphorical mental epiphany that occurs when a solution to a problem is realized through a leap of logic
  • Include selective encoding, selective combination and selective comparison
• Can potentially provide new solutions for overcoming functional fixedness
• Selective encoding: a leap of logic involving separating the relevant information from the irrelevant information
• Selective combination: a leap of logic combining relevant information in the right way to achieve a correct result
• Selective comparison: a leap of logic in seeing a non-obvious relationship between old and new information, usually through the usage of analogies

Development

Newborn Developmental Milestones

Reflexes

• Motor reflexes aid in the survival of newborns, although they are unable to survive independently
• Motor reflexes pave the path towards more complex behavior patterns as the brain develops

Grasping Reflex

• The reflex where newborns grasp onto objects placed in their hands
• Is adaptive to carriage of children

Rooting Reflex

• The reflex where newborns turn and suck when stimulated by objects around their mouths
• Is adaptive to finding nipples for drinking breast milk

Sucking Reflex

• The reflex where newborns suck on object in their mouths
• Is adaptive to drinking breast milk

Progression of Developmental Milestones

• Derived from biological factors, environmental influences and differences in infant care between cultures
• Generally developmental milestones occur at predictable intervals although sometimes there may be skipping or reversal of these milestones

List of Developmental Milestones

• 6 weeks, first social smile
• 2 months, raise heads
• 2.8 months, roll over
• 4 months, sit up with support
• 5.5 months, sit up without support
• 5.8 months, stand holding onto large objects
• 7.6 months, pull up to standing
• 9.2 months, walk holding onto furniture
• 10 months, crawl
• 11.5 months, stand alone
• 12.1 months, walk
• Months, talk

Dynamic Systems Theory

• Theory that views development as a self-organizing process in which new forms of behavior emerge from the process of an organism repeatedly engaging and interacting with its environment and cultural contexts
• New advances are through active exploration of an environment and feedback provided by the environment
• Factors that influence such active exploration include motivation, personality and environmental cues

Newborn Capabilities

Newborn Thought

• Newborns are innately capable of imitation, categorization and interaction with others
• Newborns are capable of categorizing objects into biological objects, inanimate objects and people
  • There are special neural networks that are present for biological movement, inanimate object movement and faces/facial movement
• Newborns are capable of engaging with other people, offering connection in a social world
• Newborns use what they already know to process new information

Newborn Smell

• Newborns are born with a relatively acute sense of smell, especially with smells associated with feeding, which develops as children age

Newborn Taste

• Newborns are born with rudimentary senses of taste which develop as children age
• Newborns show a preference for sweeter foods

Newborn Hearing

• Newborns are born with a relatively acute sense of hearing, especially with distinguishing between distressing stimuli, which develops as children age
• Newborns will turn their bodies towards loud sounds and will become distressed in response to other crying infants
  • Newborns can distinguish between their own cry and the cry of others
• By 6 months of age children have nearly adult levels of auditory function as the auditory cortex fully develops

Newborn Sight

• Newborns are born with a rudimentary sense of sight which develops as children age
• Newborns are capable of distinguishing among faces, shapes, patterns and colors
  • Newborns show visual preferences for objects of higher-contrast patterns
• Newborn sight develops rapidly within the first 6 months of life, likely through the practice of looking at different objects in the environment
  • Such practice helps with the development of the visual cortex of the brain and cones in the eye

Preferential Look Technique

• Is a habituation technique where infants will look at new or different items for a longer period of time relative to old items they have been habituated to

Infantile Amnesia

• The inability for most adults to remember most events that occurred before the ages of three or four as the ability to retain explicit information develops with age
• Hypothesized to be due to immature memory systems in the brain
• Hypothesized to be due to a lack of language acquisition
  • Assumed that retainment of explicit memories are from the development of autobiographical memories based on personal experience which develop with language acquisition as language aids with memory retention
• Hypothesized to be due to a lack of context perception
  • Assumed that improvement in the encoding, retention and retrieval of new information underlies the decrease in infantile amnesia as contexts are perceived well enough for memories to be remembered
• Hypothesized to have cultural factors

Adolescence

Illusion of Invulnerability

• Phenomenon where adolescents believe that are less likely than average to have negative events occur on them
• Is due to incomplete frontal lobe development, decreasing the capacity to plan for future events
• Is maintained when consequences are not visible

Attachment Theory

John Bowlby

• The architect of the attachment theory who hypothesized that infants have attachment behaviors that motivate adult attention and promote future social-emotional development of infants
• Used the distress of infants in the absence of caregivers and the rejoice of infants in the return of caregivers as evidence

Attachment

• Dynamic relationship that facilitates the survival of the infant and parental investment for the caregivers
  • Are partially biologically responsive and partially culturally responsive
• Attachment responses increases when children are isolated from caregivers
• Positive affects of infants, such as with social smiles, induces love in caregivers and promotes proximity between caregiver and child
• Interactions and socialization with caregivers allows for the development of social skills in infants with the establishment and maintenance of relationships
  • Socialization may affect characteristics such as gender roles, personal identity and moral reasoning
• Interactions and socialization with caregivers provide physical touch and reassurance for the aiding of social development

Imprinting

• Development of attachment to an object of attachment shortly after birth, whereas an infant will follow that object of attachment
  • There may be preferential implanting to the female of the species
• Is most common with animals that are physically mobile after birth and capable of straying

Strange Situation Test

• Developed by Mary D. Salter Ainsworth, has the classification of infant/caregiver paris into secure, insecure, anxious and later disoriented-disorganized attachment styles
• Secure children are distressed when isolated from attachment figures and quickly comforted when the attachment figure returns
• Insecure/avoidant children are not distressed when isolated from attachment figures and avoidant when the attachment figure returns
• Insecure/ambivalent children are very distressed when isolated from attachment figures and seek and reject caring contact when the attachment figure returns
• More attentive and temperamental children are more likely to be securely attached and less likely to be anxiously attached
• Neurodivergent children are less likely to be securely attached
• Children with incapacitated caregivers unable to exhibit proper work or responsive behaviors are less likely to be securely attached

Oxytocin

• A hormone responsible for behaviors in both mother and child for the survival of the child
• Oxytocin is key in the maternal tendencies of nursing, social acceptance and bonding
  • Is released when infants suckle and hence stimulates the movement of breast milk into the ducts

Language

• Dynamic process between children and caregivers which provides support for development
• “Baby talk” or “Parentese” is the cross-cultural tendency for adults to raise the pitch in their voice and dramatize facial expressions when talking to infants to assist with comprehension
  • Parsing of words, phrases and sentences strengthen the bonds between children and caregivers and assists in the development of children’s verbal capacity
  • Children attend to high-pitched voices by maintaining eye contact which elicit behaviors from the caregiver that benefits both parties

Piaget’s Theory of Stages of Development

Jean Piaget

• Psychologist who believed that children were active learners, cognitively different from adults, who interacted with the objects around them and used the stimuli from the interactions to understand the world around them
• Found that children make consistent illogical, from the perspective adults, mistakes which Piaget proposed to be due to differing sets of assumptions from adults
• Proposed four stages of development: the sensorimotor, the preoperational, the concrete operations and the formal operational

Schemes

• Structured ways of thinking, similar to schemas, based on personal experience that allowed children to make sense of new experiences
  • Are dynamic and flexible in the exposure to new information acquired by objects and events

Adaptation

• Formation of a scheme through direct interaction with the environment

Assimilation

• Placement of a new experience into an existing scheme with minor modifications of the scheme

Accommodation

• Creation of a new scheme or drastic alteration of an old scheme to fit new information contrary to the old scheme

Sensorimotor Stage

Sensorimotor Stage of Development

• Stage that occurs between birth and two years of age where children are situated in the present and acquire information through senses and motor exploration
• Children’s understanding of object develops from reflexive reactions to sensory inputs to reflective representations of the world and experiences
• Increasingly complex schemes representing the objects by the actions that can be performed on them develop as children begin to control their motor movements

Object Permanence

• The understanding that objects continue to exist even after it is hidden from view, develops during the sensorimotor stage of development at around 9 month
• There is still demonstration of the A-not-B error where children limit their search capacities by assuming presence of objects in habituated locations despite visual demonstration of movement

Preoperational Stage

Preoperational Stage of Development

• Stage that occurs between two years of age and seven years of age where children begin to think about objects not in their immediate view
• Increasingly complex schemes representing objects symbolically develop
• Children are do not think operationally, they are unable to imagine the logical outcomes of performing certain actions on certain objects
  • Children instead perform intuitive reasoning based on superficial appearances

Error of Conservation

• The understanding that quantity of an object is conserved as shape is altered, develops between the preoperational and concrete operational stage of development
• Many preoperational children are unable to understand the conservation of volume as a liquid is poured into thinner or wider containers

Error of Egocentrism

• The perception of the world solely through one’s individual experiences without accounting for the perspective of others, exists in the preoperational stage of development
  • Children are still capable of understanding how others feel and can still care about others
• Hypothesized to maximize the development of understanding of individual minds and bodies and their interactions with the world before expansion of individual schemes to a broader scope

Error of Animism

• The perception that inanimate objects are alive allowing for the development of empathy

Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind

• Theory developed by David Premach and Guy Woodruff that proposed the individuals can form theories about other’s desires, intentions, beliefs and mental states allowing for prediction of other’s behavior
• Large focus has been given to the demonstration of empathy in children which involves the understanding of emotional states in others
• Environments of greater sympathy increases focus on others and decreases hostility, allowing for beneficial expression of negative emotions and the development of sympathy

Prosocial Behavior

• Voluntary action with the sole intent of benefiting others, higher prosocial behavior is correlated with higher theory of mind capacity
• Higher prosocial behavior promotes better relationships with caregivers

Development of Theory of Mind

• Development of theory of mind in children correlates to the development of the frontal lobes during the preoperational stage
• In infancy, children begin to understand the presence of reasons behind actions of others
  • Allows for the development of critical abilities to understand, predict and influence behavior in others
• In the first year, children develop prosocial behavior
• In the thirteenth to fifteenth month, children become quite good at reading intentions and considering emotional perspectives despite egocentric behavior

Concrete Operational

Concrete Operational Stage

• Stage that occurs between seven years of age and twelve years of age (until adolescence) where children begin to develop mental operations by performing mental operations on concrete objects in the world
  • Is the beginning of logical thinking where logical and deep understanding of other’s perspective of the world and objects develop
  • Can understand classic operations, reversible actions upon an object
• Children are incapable of thinking abstractly or hypothetically

Formal Operational

Formal Operational Stage

• Stage that occurs between twelve years of age and adulthood where children develop sophisticated and abstract mental operations
  • Is the development of critical thinking, the formulation of hypotheses, deductive reasoning; all of which rely on formal or abstract cognitive operations
• Children are capable of systematically using information to find answers to problems
  • Are capable of considering abstract notions and multiple viewpoints at once

Errors of Piaget

Contrary to Concrete Stages

• Many children shift between different stages of thought when confronted with novel tasks of varying skill levels
• Theorized that different areas of the brain are responsible for different skills and that development does not necessarily follow strict and uniform stages
  • Certain concepts of different operational stages must be taught

Contrary to Concrete Timing

• Contemporary researchers have found that Piaget’s time span generally underestimates the age at which skills develop

Actual Physic Understanding

• Developmental psychologist Elizabeth Spelke found that Piaget underestimated infants and young children’s (sensorimotor and preoperational) understanding of physics
  • Infants are found to have a better, although primitive, understanding of physics and object continuity earlier than predicted by Piaget

Actual Numerical Understanding

• Psychologists Jacques Mehler and Tom Bever found that Piaget underestimated infants and young children’s (sensorimotor and preoperational) understanding of numbers
  • Piaget assumed that younger children learned counting and other number-related skills through memorization
  • Piaget assumed that children understand quantity, like the concepts of more than and less than, in terms of length
  • Mehler and Bever found that children can understand primitive numerical concepts when properly motivated

Social Effects of Child Development

Lev Vygotsky

• Contemporary of Piaget who emphasized social and cultural contexts over objects in thinking about cognitive development and language
• Vygotsky believed humans were unique due to their usage of symbols and psychological tools such as speech, writing, maps and art
  • Vygotsky believed that culture dictated material that needed to be learned and skills that needed to be developed
• Vygotsky distinguished between elementary mental functions and higher mental functions

Zone of Proximal Development

• The difference between what children can do on their own and what children can do with the assistance of others who are more competent, proposed by Zygotsky
• A child can learn with experience if cognitive development is sufficient
• A child cannot learn with experience if cognitive development is insufficient
• Learning therefore is determined by both experience and cognitive ability

Elementary Mental Functions

• Innate sensory experiences that are gradually transformed as children age with culture exerting a primary influence

Higher Mental Functions

• Includes language, perception, abstraction and memory, which are gradually transformed as children age with society and culture exerting a primary influence

Language and Cognition

• Vygotsky believed that social and cultural influences contribute to language development which influences cognitive development
  • Interactions between self and environment becomes crucial in the process of universal developmental milestones
• Children initially direct speech towards specific communications
• Children then direct speech towards themselves
• Children then internalize their speech into inner speech creating verbal thoughts that direct behavior and cognition
  • These thoughts, shaped by language acquired through society and culture, reflects higher order cognitive processes

Moral Behavior and Stage Theory of Moral Judgement

Morality

• Divided into moral reasoning and moral emotions which interplay off of each other, causing enhancement
• Moral reasoning is dependent on cognitive processes
• Moral emotions is dependent on societal interests which motivate individuals to do good things and avoid bad things
  • Includes shame, guilt, disgust, embarrassment, pride and gratitude

Stage Theory of Moral Judgement

• Theory developed by Lawrence Kohlberg that involved three main levels of moral reasoning: the preconventional level, conventional level and the postconventional level
• Kohlberg asked hypothetical questions concerning an ambiguous moral dilemma and generalized the reasoning behind answers given
  • Emphasized the cognitive aspects of moral reasoning and their negative impacts of emotional aspects of moral reasoning
  • Therefore he underplayed the significance of moral emotions on morality

Preconventional Level of Moral Judgement

• Individuals classify answers in terms of self-interest or pleasurable outcomes

Conventional Level of Moral Judgement

• Individuals classify answers in terms of conformation to the rules of law and order or the disapproval of others

Postconventional Level of Moral Judgement

• Individuals classify answers in terms of complex reasoning around abstract principles and the value of life
• Is the highest level of moral reasoning

Inequity Aversion

• The dislike of receiving less than someone else even if receiving more than what was expected
• Begins as young as 19 months of age and increases in strength throughout childhood
• Stronger inequity aversion allows for later moral behavior and trustworthiness of an individual

Emotions

Emotion General Characteristics

Affects/Emotions

• Immediate specific negative or positive responses to triggering events, whether they are environmental changes or internal thoughts, which prompt changes in thought and behavior
• Is composed of an affective component, a physiological component and a cognitive component
  • The affective component is the immediate negative or positive response to an emotion
  • The physiological component is the relatively fast generally non differentiable chemical response
  • The cognitive component is the slowest interpretative response to the affective and physiological response
• Vary between primary and secondary emotions

Primary Emotions

• Emotions that are innate, evolutionarily adaptive and universal such as anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise and contempt

Secondary Emotions

• Emotions that are blends of primary emotions, feelings concerning emotions or emotions related to culturally specific values or concepts such as remorse, guilt, shame, jealousy, pride, love and contentment
  • Culturally specific emotion includes the feeling of loss of face, sense of respect, honor and social regard

Feeling

• The subjective representation of an emotion that is based on cognitive appraisal of the situation and interpretation of bodily states

Mood

• The vague, diffuse and long-lasting emotional states that do not have an identifiable triggers, specific behavioral responses or specific physiological responses
  • Have the capacity to subtly color thoughts and behaviors

Circumplex Model of Emotions

• Model that plots a certain emotions along the continuum of valence and the continuum of arousal
• Valence is the generic term used to describe how positive or negative an emotion is
• Arousal is the generic term used to describe the level or physiological activation or increased autonomic responses from an emotion
• Is a useful tool for basic classification of mood states
  • Is often contradicted with secondary emotions

Emotion Biological Influences

Biological Evolution

• Evolutionarily experiences have guided the development of emotions to serve and adaptive function of guiding successful behaviors
• Emotions provide information about the importance of stimuli to personal goals and guide actions towards those goals

Expressive Aspects of Emotions

• Facial expressions, specifically the eyes and mouth, may be adaptive in the communication of feelings for interpretation to predict individual behavior
  • May communicate whether performed behavior is pleasing or not to others and their possible reactions
  • May be important in the maintenance of social bonds and status in group environments

Emotion Social and Cultural Influences

Emotional Nuance

• Universal emotions that extend across cultures may include anger, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise
• Other emotions differ across cultures, often with dependence on gender identity, sexuality or political affiliation

Display Rules

• Implicit rules that govern how and when people exhibit emotions according to situation within a culture/society
• Are learned through socialization and partially explains cross-cultural stereotypes and different perceptions of emotions

Ideal Affect

• Types of emotions that a specific culture values and encourages the display of

Action Control

• Emotions that function to change the behavior of the individual experiencing the emotions

Interpersonal Regulator

• Emotions that function to change the behavior of other individuals, acting as a relationship maintenance tool
• Includes guilt and anger

Anger

• Negative emotion associated with displeasure towards behaviors of other, allows for control by those of higher power

Guilt

• Negative emotion associated with anxiety, tension and agitation which results from the perception of responsibility for another individual’s negative affective state
• Guilt discourages behaviors that harm relationships and encourages behaviors that benefit relationships, hence protecting and strengthening interpersonal relationships

Social Impact on Guilt

• Guilt is more dependent of social environments than biological determinants, arises from healthy and happy relationships
• Guilt develops with the capacity to empathize and therefore feel responsibility for transgressions

Embarrassment

• Negative emotion associated with blushing which results from a violation of a cultural norm or experience of threat to self-image
• Embarrassment may restore social bonds through recognition of a transgression and demonstration of respect and affiliation with a social group

Neuroanatomy of Emotions

Emotion Origin

• Emotions involve the activation of specific patterns of responses within the autonomic nervous system to prepare the body for environmental challenges
• Dimensions of the circumplex model of emotions are represented in both cortical and subcortical areas of the brain
• Regions of the prefrontal cortex are the primary structures for generating emotions
• The insula and amygdala are the primary structures for understanding emotions

Limbic System

• Subcortical areas of the brain which border the cerebral cortex theorized by neuroanatomist James Papez to be involved in emotion
• Many regions of the limbic system and surrounding the limbic system are responsible for emotions
• Many regions of the limbic system are not responsible for emotions

General Pathway of Stimuli

• All sensory travels to the thalamus before entering the brain structures and related cortical areas

Insula

• Region within the limbic system that receives and integrates somatosensory signals from the body and provides subjective awareness of bodily states
  • Includes sensing heartbeat, providing awareness of hunger and providing awareness of need to urinate
• Insula is particularly activated by disgust, anger, guilt and anxiety

Amygdala

• Region within the limbic system that processes the emotional significance of stimuli and generates immediate emotional and behavioral reactions
• Theorized by emotional theorist Joseph LeDoux to be evolutionarily involved in protecting animals from danger through emotional learning
  • Includes the classically conditioned fear responses
• Important in the perception of social stimuli and the storage of emotional events
• Contains two main pathways, the fast path and the slow path

Amygdala and Emotional Events

• Amygdala believed to modify hippocampus consolidation of memory allowing for improved recall of harmful situations to avoid in future

Amygdala and Social Stimuli

• Amygdala important in the deciphering of facial expressions with particular sensitivity to fearful faces allowing for alert of potentially dangerous situations for immediate attention

Fast Path

• Circuitry that processes sensory information almost instantaneously through direct synapsing with the amygdala allowing for preparation of individuals to threats
• Sensory information undergoes priority processing through synapsing of the thalamus to directly to the amygdala

Slow Path

• Circuitry that processes sensory information more deliberately and evaluatively through synapsing with the cortex and the amygdala allowing for confirmation of threat and potential subsequent usage of fast path preparation
• Sensory information undergoes deeper processing through synapsing of the thalamus to either visual or auditory cortex and then to the amygdala
  • The cortex offers scrutiny before transport of information to the amygdala

Theories of Emotions

William James and Carl Lange

• Psychologists who independently proposed the argument that a person’s interpretation of distinct patterns of physiological changes leads to the feeling of specific emotions

James-Lange Theory of Emotion

• Theory that proposed that individuals perceive specific patterns of bodily responses and generate emotions from those patterns
• Applicable to automatic and instinctive responses, not so much for subtle negative or positive responses

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

• Theory proposed by Silvan Tomkins in 1963 which proposed that molding of facial muscles into an expression can activate and associated emotion
  • Experimentation appeared to show a stronger effect on individual experience of emotion than judgment of emotion shown in stimuli

Walter B. Cannon and Philip Bard

• Physiologists who presented objections to the James-Lange Theory of Emotion in 1927 and proposed the Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion
  • Cannon was the student of William James and mentor to Philip Bard
• Cannon and Bard believed that autonomic nervous system was too slow to account for the distinguishment between bodily responses to produce an emotion

Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

• Theory that proposed that emotional stimuli is processed in subcortical structures that communicate information to the cortex and body independently

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer

• Social psychologists who combined the James-Lange Theory of Emotion with the Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion to create the Schachter-Singer Two Factor Theory of Emotions
• Believed that the James-Lange Theory correctly equated perception of bodily reaction with emotions
• Believed that the Cannon-Bard Theory correctly faulted the possibility of generating a multitude of emotions from a few nonspecific autonomic responses

Schachter-Singer Two Factor Theory of Emotions

• Theory that proposed that emotional stimuli creates general undifferentiated physiological arousal which is interpreted based on the situation to generate an emotional label
  • In complex situations an individual’s belief of what causes the emotion will determine how the emotion is labeled

Misattribution of Arousal

• Outcome proposed by the Schachter-Singer Two Factor Theory of Emotions where physical states caused by a situation can attributed to the wrong emotion

Emotional Regulation

Suppression

• Commonly used unsuccessful strategy for emotional regulation where individuals attempt to not respond to an emotional stimulus by suppressing behaviors such as facial expressions or cognitions
• Suppression can lead to a rebound effect where individuals think more about something that they attempt to suppress

Rumination

• Commonly used unsuccessful strategy for emotional regulation where individuals attempt to respond to an emotional stimulus by thinking, elaborating and often getting stuck in a cycle of undesired thoughts or feeling
• Rumination can prolong an emotion and impede proper emotional regulation strategies

Reappraisal

• Successful strategy for emotional regulation where individuals respond to an emotional stimulus by redefining an event in neutral terms, directly altering the emotional reaction
• Reappraisal alters the activity of different brain regions in the experience of emotions

Self-Distancing

• Successful strategy for emotional regulation where individuals respond to an emotional stimulus by taking a different “fly-on-the-wall” perspective
  • Mental distance is provided through second-person perspective between an individual and the emotional stimulus

Humor

• Successful strategy for emotional regulation where individuals respond to an emotional stimulus by finding humor
• Humor increases the positive affect, stimulates endocrine secretion and improves the immune system
  • Corresponds to the release of dopamine, serotonin and endorphins
  • Generates mental distance from negative emotions and strengthens connections with other people

Refocusing

• Successful strategy for emotional regulation where individuals respond to an emotional stimulus by redirecting attention to emotional parts of the stimuli

Distraction

• Successful strategy for emotional regulation where individuals respond to an emotional stimulus by redirecting attention to other activities
• Distraction temporarily limits focus on the problem but may result in focus on other problems or engagement in maladaptive behaviors

Motivation and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need

Motivation

• Force that promotes behavior through energization, guidance and maintenance of behavior towards a goal

Motivational States

• Internal states that are energizing, directive, persistent and variable in strength
• The energizing or stimulating capacity of motivational states allows for activation of behaviors
• The directive capacity of motivational states allows for guidance of behavior towards a specific goal or need
• The variance in motivational states are dependent on psychological and external forces

Need

• State of biological, social or psychological deficiency that leads to goal-directed behaviors
• A failure to satisfy a need leads to psychosocial or physical impairment

Drive

• Specific psychological state that motivates an organism’s behavior to satisfy a need by creating arousal which increases in proportion to the amount of deprivation
  • For biological states, drive encourages behaviors to satisfy homeostasis
• Positive reinforcement occurs when specific behaviors reduce drive
• Individuals choose activities that fits their level of optimal arousal

Habit

• Dominant response to arousal which develops as one behavior consistently reduces drive
• The interaction between drive and habit influences the likelihood that a behavior occurs

Yerkes-Dodson Law

• Psychological principle that dictates that performance on challenging tasks increase with arousal only up to a moderate point, where afterwards performance on challenging tasks decrease with additional arousal
• Produces an inverted U graph when presenting quality of performance on the y-axis and arousal on the x-axis

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need or Need Theory of Motivation

• Theory that proposes that people are driven by a hierarchy of needs where survival needs are at the base and personal growth need are at the top
  • Physiological Needs → Safety Needs → Belonging and Love → Esteem → Self-Actualization Needs
• Lacks empirical evidence, sometimes survival needs are removed in preference for other needs

Personality

Personality Definition

Personality

• Culmination of characteric thoughts, emotional responses and behaviors

Gordon Allport Definition of Personality

• Dynamic organization within an individual consisting psychophysical systems that determine characteristic behavior and thought
  • Indicates that people do and think and feel things relatively consistently over time
• Dynamic indicates the goal-seeking capacity and the adaptivity over time to the environment and particular contexts
• Psychophysical system indicates the mental, biological and environmental factors

Dispositions

• Genetically controlled tendencies to react in a specific way to a certain stimulus which are controlled by assortments of thousands of genes

Rank-Order Stability

• Lack of change in where an individual stands on traits relative to other traits

Mean-Level Change

• Consistent changes of traits at similar stages of life which vary from individual to individual
• There is increased conscientiousness, increased self-control, decreased neuroticism, decreased extraversion, increased agreeability, increased emotional stability in response to times when expectations and experiences associated with age-related roles change

Temperament

Temperaments

• Stable general tendencies to feel or act in certain ways that depend on gene differences affected by biological structures
• Temperament of children predicted personality structure and behaviors in adulthood

Inhibited/Uninhibited Children

• Inhibited used to describe newborns who become startled and distressed by new stimuli
  • Inhibited groups shows greater activation of the amygdala when exposed to novel faces relative to uninhibited individual
• Uninhibited used to describe newborns who don’t become startled and distressed by new stimuli
  • Uninhibited groups shows lesser activation of the amygdala when exposed to novel faces relative to inhibited individual
• Inhibition is biologically determined and predictive of future social anxiety
• Supportive and calm environments set by children can overcome inhibited temperaments to decrease shyness as adults

Arnold Buss and Robert Plomin

• Psychologists who considered three characteristics in 1984 when considering temperament: activity level, emotionality and sociability
  • Temperaments related to choices made throughout life
• Activity level is the overall amount of energy and action a person exhibits
• Emotionality is the intensity of emotional reactions
• Sociability is the general tendency to affiliate with other
• New temperaments such as the extent to which children are able to control their behaviors are added

Five Factor Theory

Big Five Theory of Personality

• Theory created by McCrae and Cost in 1999 which identified five basic personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism
• The personality traits describe broad traits made up of several related and specific facets and are represented by continuums from low to high
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Neuroticism
  • Openness to Experience
• Specific factors becomes predictive of many specific behaviors and life outcomes, specifically due to connections between traits and results (predicting patterns of behavior and individual aspirations)

Biological Trait Theory

Biological Trait Theory

• Theory developed by Hans Eysenck in 1967 which proposed that personality traits have two major dimensions: introversion/extraversion and emotional stability/neurotic
  • Introversion refers to how shy, reserved and quiet a person is
  • Extraversion refers to how sociable, outgoing and bold a person is
  • Emotional stability refers to how consistent a person’s moods and emotions are
  • Eysenck later proposed psychoticism or constraint as a major dimension which refers to how controlling an individual is of their impulses
• Eysenck proposed that personality traits are based on biological process that produce differences in arousal which produce differences in behaviors, thoughts and emotions

Eysenck on Introversion vs. Extraversion

• Eysenck believes that resting level of arousal is higher in extraverts relative to introverts
• Extraverts typically have below optimal levels of arousal, and are chronically underaroused
• Introverts typically have above optimal levels of arousal, and are chronically over aroused

Approach/Inhibition Model

Approach/Inhibition Model

• Jeffrey Gray refined the biological trait theory with the incorporation of approach learning and avoidance learning which proposed that personality is rooted in two motivational functions: to approach rewards and to avoid pain for the purpose of respond to reinforcement and punishment

Behavioral Approach System

• The behavioral approach system consists of brain structures that lead organisms to approach stimulus in pursuit of rewards
  • Is the go system
  • Is linked to extraversion, more influenced by rewards then punishment

Behavioral Inhibition System

• The behavioral inhibition system consists of brain structure that lead organisms to slow behaviors in response to noxious stimuli in avoidance of punishment
  • Is the slow down system
  • Might be more related to anxiety than to fear
  • Is related to neuroticism, where eop;e become anxious when they anticipate negative outcomes

Fight-Flight-Freeze System (FFFS)

• The fight-flight-freeze system (FFFS) promotes behaviors that can protect the organism from harm in response to noxious stimuli in avoidance of punishment
  • Is the stop or escape system

Personality Biological Influences

Biological Factors

• Genes, brain structures and neurochemistry that are affected by experience and determines personality
• Genetic makeup may predispose certain personality traits or characteristics, accounting for half of the variability in personality
  • Certain genes have strong influence on how available certain neurotransmitters are
• Genetic expression depends on the circumstances faced by individuals

Gene-Environment Correlation Phenomenon

• Phenomenon of how genes and environment affect decisions and each other
• Become complementary over time because of decisions people make which introduce new environments that shape behavior

Personality Social and Cultural Influences

Prenatal Influences

• Exposure to stress hormones prenatally also partially accounts for differences in personality

Postnatal Influences

• Establishment of friendships with different individuals partially accounts for differences in personality
• Variances in household environments, often associated with the decrease in social status when more kids are birthed or moving, partially accounts for differences in personality
• Different circumstances may cause epigenetic changes and selective expression of certain genes

Humanistic Approach to Personality

Carl Rogers

• Psychologist who introduced a person-centered approach to understanding personality and human relationships which emphasized subjective understanding of individual lives
• Believed that therapists should create supportive and accepting environments
• Believed that parents show conditional love and support dependent on activities that parents want children to participate causing children to abandon true feelings, dreams and desires for the sake of parental love and support

Unconditional Positive Regard

• Parenting technique proposed by Carl Rogers which encouraged acceptance and prizing their children no matter how the children behave for the encouragement of healthy self-esteem and the development of children into a fully functioning person
  • Expression of disapproval to bad behavior should still express parental love for the children

Personal Narratives

• Stories that individuals tell ourselves about where individuals came from and where individuals are going as part of understanding their own identity that followed consistent themes
  • Redemption is where things start out badly but transform for the better
  • Contamination is where things start out good but transform for the worse
  • Meaning-making is where things yield a deep insight about life

Behaviorist Approach to Personality

Behaviorism

• Behaviorists viewed personality as learned response to patterns of reinforcement

Julian Rotter

• Psychologists who, in 1945, proposed that behavior is a function of expectancy, an individual's expectancy that reinforcement will come from their behavior, and values, the weight individuals put on certain rewards

Locus of Control

• The variance in control that individuals believe that they have over what happens in their lives
• Those with internal locus of control believe they bring about their own rewards
• Those with external locus of control believe rewards result from forces outside of control

Reciprocal Determinism Model

• Model made by psychologist Albert Bandura in 1977, which proposed personality was expressed through behavior which is influenced by person factors and environment
  • Person factors include individual characteristics, self-confidence and expectations

Need for Cognition

• Concept which reflects how much a person enjoys and tends to engage in complex thought, which can predict how cohesive individual’s work is before decision making
  • Those high in need for cognition enjoy tasks that require a depth of thinking
  • Those low in need for cognition avoid tasks that require a depth of thinking

Environmental Approach to Personality

Situationism

• Theory made by Walter Mischel which proposed that behaviors are more determined by situation than personality traits, creating a debate on the importance of situational forces vs individual disposition

Self-Monitoring

• Sensitivity to the cues of situational appropriateness
• Those high in self-monitoring match the situation and exhibit low levels of consistency
• Those low in self-monitoring less match the situation and exhibit higher levels of consistency

Cognitive Affective Processing System

• Theory made by Walter Mischel which proposed that specific individuals react in predictable ways to specific conditions as a result of their personality
  • Hence individuals place themselves in their unique situation as a result of their own preferences
• Strong situations mask differences in personality because of the power of the social environment
• Weak situations reveal differences in personality because of weak social implication

Interactionism

• Theory derived from the cognitive affective processing system which proposed that behavior is determined jointly by situations and underlying dispositions
  • Reciprocal interactions between individuals and their social environment and the social environment and individuals have simultaneous influence of individuals and their environments

Measurement of Personality

Idiographic Approaches

• Person-centered measurements of personality which focus on individual lives and individual characteristics
• Central traits are distinct traits used to personally describe individuals
• Secondary traits are less distinct traits that are less personally descriptive and less personally applicable

Nomothetic Approaches

• Population-centered measurements of personality which focus on characteristics within a population that are variable from individual to individual

Projective Measures

Projective Measures

• Measurements of personality that map out response patterns by having individuals describe or tell stories about ambiguous stimulus items

Rorschach Inkblot Test

• Test where individuals looks at meaningless inkblots and describe them

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• Test developed in the 1930s by Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan where an individual is shown an ambiguous picture and told to tell a story which is scored based on emerging motivational schemes
• Useful for measuring motivational traits, especially relating to achievement, power and affiliation

Self-Report Questionnaires

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

• Questionnaire developed in the 1930s which uses 567 true/false items to assess emotions, thoughts and behaviors
• Has 10 scales to measure psychological problems allowing for comparison of scores on those scales with average responses to generate a profile of likelihood of having a psychological disorder
• Response errors occur when individuals try to create favorable impressions through evasive or defensive behaviors

California Q-Sort

• Technique for the assessment of individual traits where participants are given 100 cards with statements which are sorted into 9 piles based on accuracy of the statements in describing an individual

Electronically Activated Record (EAR)

• Technique for the prediction of personality where a recorder is used to track a person’s real-world moment-to-moment interaction

Intelligence

Intelligence Definition

Intelligence

• Ability to use knowledge to reason, make decisions, make sense of events, solve problems, understand complex ideas, learn quickly and adapt to environmental challenges
• Good indicator future success in school, other intelligence tests or complex careers

Detterman and Sternberg Definition of Intelligence

• An individual's global capacity to learn from experience, adjust to the environment and use metacognitive processes to enhance learning

Hockenbury and Hockenbury Definition of Intelligence

• An individual's global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully and deal effectively with the environment
  • Is effective, rational, goal oriented behavior

Psychometric Approach

• Measurement of intelligence with the usage of standardized tests to assess mental abilities
  • Can either be achievement tests or aptitude tests which are both influential to the lives of many individuals
• Achievement tests assess individuals’ current level of skill and knowledge
• Aptitude tests predict what tasks people will be good at in the future

Intelligence Influences

Social Multiplier

• Environmental factor or an environment that increases what might have started as a small advantage possibly due to education or epigenetics

Prenatal Factors

• Parental nutrition, substance use

Postnatal Factors

• Family, social class, education, nutrition, cultural beliefs, breastfeeding and individual substance use

Flynn Effect

• Phenomenon where IQ has risen dramatically during the past century of intelligence testing, possibly due to environmental, epigenetic, educational, nutritional, social or cultural factors

Factor Analysis of Intelligence

Two Factor Theory of Intelligence

• Theory proposed by Charles Spearman that viewed performance of intelligence testing as a measurement of general intelligence (g) and specific skills (s)
• General intelligence (g) is a factor that contributes to performance on any intellectual task, was proposed by psychologist Raymond Cattell to be split into fluid and crystallized intelligence
• Specific skills (s) is a factor that contributes to performance on specific intellectual tasks

General Intelligence (g)

• Fluid intelligence is the intelligence associated with the understanding of abstract relationships and thinking logically without prior knowledge through techniques such as reasoning, drawing analogies and thinking quickly and flexibly
• Crystallized intelligence is the intelligence associated with knowledge acquired through experience used to solve problems
• Strong crystallized intelligence aids strong fluid intelligence

Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner

• Psychologist who proposed different kinds of independent intelligences with influences on different aspects of life
• Includes, verbal linguistic intelligence, logical mathematical intelligence, visual spatial intelligence, musical rhythmic intelligence, bodily kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence

Verbal Linguistic Intelligence

• Ability to form and use language and words effectively benefitting reading, writing, and telling stores

Logical Mathematical Intelligence

• Ability to use logic, abstraction, reasoning, numbers and critical thinking effectively benefitting the understanding of underlying causal principles

Visual Spatial Intelligence

• Ability to use spatial judgment effectively benefitting visualization and mental manipulation

Musical Rhythmic Intelligence

• Ability to understand sounds, rhythm tones and music benefitting the composition, consumption and playing of music

Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence

• Ability to control one’s body movements and handle objects skillfully benefitting physical activity and coordination

Interpersonal Intelligence

• Ability to understand other individuals emotions, motives and intentions effectively benefitting communication and interpersonal interactions

Intrapersonal Intelligence

• Ability to understand individual’s own emotions, motives and intentions effectively benefitting introspection and understanding of one’s own strengths and weaknesses

Prodigies

• Individuals who are exceptional in one domain of intelligence and average in other domains of intelligence

Savants

• Individuals who are exceptional in one domain of intelligence and below average in other domains of intelligence

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

• Theory proposed by Robert Sternberg which proposed that intelligence can be split into analytical, creative and practical intelligence
• Analytical intelligence is the ability to problem solve, complete analogies, figure out puzzles and academic challenges
• Creative intelligence is the ability to gain insight and solve novel problems
• Practical intelligence is the ability to deal with everyday tasks

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

• Intelligence that consists of management of one’s emotions, usage one’s emotions to guide thoughts and actions, recognition of others’ emotions and understanding of emotional language
• Higher EI allows for recognition of personal emotional experiences productive response to such experiences, is correlated to increased quality of social relationships and greater high school grades

Neurological Explanation of Intelligence

Francis Galton

• Psychologist who believed that intelligence was related to the speed of neural responses and the sensitivity of the sensory and perceptual systems
• Measurement of electrical activity of brains find that more intelligent people work faster than less intelligent people
  • The relationship between general intelligence and working memory may be connected to attention

Reaction Time

• Simple reaction time is the ability to react to a stimulus with a nonspecific response, is correlated with higher intelligence
• Choice reaction time is the ability to react to a stimulus with a specific response, is higher correlated with higher intelligence
• Inspection time is the viewing time for a stimulus to answer a question about the stimulus, is correlated with higher intelligence

Neuroanatomy of Intelligence

• Different kinds of intelligence appear to be related to the size of certain brain regions which are associated with working memory, planning, reasoning and problem solving
• Volume of gray matter in frontal lobe and other regions associated with attentional control related to fluid intelligence

Psychometric Measurements of Intelligence

Sir Francis Galton

• Cousin of Charles Darwin who tried to measure mental ability at the International Health Expo in London in 1884 by testing reaction time, visual abilities, hearing abilities, head sizes and muscle strength
• The test was not an accurate representation of intelligence

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon

• Alfred Binet with the assistance of Theodore Simon developed and applied a method of assessing intelligence in 1904 through two hour one-on-one tests of vocabulary, memory, skill with numbers and other mental abilities to identify children in the French school system who needed extra attention and special instruction
  • Assumed that success in certain components was up to chance but average success across many components indicates overall intelligence
  • Introduced the concept of mental age which determined a child’s intellectual standing relative to those of a similar age

Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale

• First standardized test of intelligence created by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon to test French school children’s need for instruction in school
  • Truthfully measured cognitive ability and other factors
• Created a test where the average was 100 with a standard deviation of 15

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

• Measurement developed by psychologist Wilhelm Stern which takes a child’s mental age divided by a child’s chronological age multiplied by 100 or by comparing adult intelligence to that of an average adult
• Forms a normal distribution or bell curve centered at 100 with a standard deviation of 15
  • 68% of people fall within one standard deviation of the mean
  • 98% of people fall within two standard deviations of the mean

Stanford-Binet Test

• Test developed by Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman in 1919 which modified the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale with the inclusion of greater verbal information and the assessment of intelligence with a single score to quantify the intelligence of children
• Used the intelligence quotient for quantification of individual intelligence capacity

Army Alpha and Beta Test

• Test developed by the US army to establish a soldier’s abilities in a quick setting
• The army alpha test was administered as a written test for those with greater than six years of education and adequate writing skills
• The army beta test was administered as an oral test for those with less than six years of education and inadequate writing skills

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

• Test developed by psychologist David Wechsler in 1939 which measures intelligence quotient, true cognitive capacity, in adults through comparison of a score relative to other individuals of the same age
• Is composed of four sublevels: verbal comprehension, working memory, perceptual reasoning index and processing speed
  • Verbal comprehension includes information, vocabulary, similarities and comprehension
    • Necessitates the usage of vocabulary skills, which can be a measure of intelligence
  • Working memory includes arithmetic, digit span and letter number sequences
  • Perceptual reasoning includes block design, matrix reasoning, visual puzzles and picture completion
  • Processing speed includes symbol search, coding and cancellation

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)

• Test similar to WAIS which measures intelligence quotient, true cognitive capacity, in children through comparison of a score relative to other individuals of the same age

Psychology of Stress

Stressors and Stress

Stress

• Response that involves an unpleasant state such as anxiety or tension
• Falls into three categories: major life stressors, chronic stress and daily hassles
• Eustress: the stress associated with positive events
• Distress: the stress associated with negative events

Stressor

• An object in an external situation that is perceived as threatening or demanding, producing stress

Major Life Stressors

• Changes or disruptions whether by decision or not that strain central areas of individual’s life

Chronic Stress

• Ongoing challenges often linked to long-term illness, poverty or caretaking
• Most harmful when unpredictable and uncontrollable

Daily Hassles

• Small day-to-day irritations and annoyances that may threaten coping responses by wearing down resources
• If daily hassles occur often and consistently, it can act as a chronic stressor
• If daily hassles are accumulated it can be comparable to a major life change

Discrimination Related Stress

• Unpredictable, uncontrollable and ambiguous stress associated with group membership

Degree of Stress

Rule #1

• Negative events are more stressful than positive events as there is greater danger signals and greater likelihood of threat situations
• Positive events however are also stressful

Rule #2

• Events that lead to a change in situations are stressful, giving explanations for variability in the stress of positive events
• Individuals differences therefore matter as different situations cause variable identity changes in different people

Rule #3

• Making decisions are stressful even if the decisions aren’t major

Rule #4

• Uncontrollable events are more stressful than controllable events
• Having the possibility of exit of a stressful event or having the ability to control an event decreases the associated stress

Cognitive Appraisal Model

Cognitive Appraisal Model

• Model that explains the individual differences in stress response using differences in primary and secondary appraisals

Primary Appraisal

• Appraisal of the difficulty or stressfulness of a situation

Secondary Appraisal

• Appraisal of the resources or skills available in a situation

Threat Situation

• Assessment when primary appraisal is larger than the secondary appraisal leading to freezing response

Challenge Situation

• Assessment when secondary appraisal is larger than the primary appraisal leading to fighting response

Coping

Coping Responses

• An attempt to avoid, escape or minimize stressor in order to counteract stress and return mind and bodies to baseline

Emotion-Focused Coping

• Coping process where an individual tries to prevent an emotional response to the stressor, helps to distract or numb the pain
• Can functional in some circumstances or maladaptive in other circumstances
• By definition don’t solve the problem or prevent recurrences, are effective only in the short run

Avoidance

• Emotion-focused coping with the minimization of a problem or feelings through distancing of oneself from the outcomes of the problem often through engagement in behaviors such as overeating or drinking

Positive Reappraisal

• Cognitive coping process where an individual compares themselves to those who are worse off

Creation of Positive Events

• Coping process where an individual creates positive meaning to ordinary events

Problem-Focused Coping

• Coping where an individual takes direct steps to solve the problem such as generating alternative solutions, weighing costs and benefits
• Occurs when stressors are perceived as controllable and are only experiencing moderate levels of stress
• Can backfire when deployed against uncontrollable stressors, can create frustration and heightened sense of loss of control

Hardiness

• Personality trait that describes resistance to stress, has three components: commitment, challenge and control
• High hardiness has commitment to daily activities, viewing of threats as challenges with opportunities for growth and see themselves as in control of their lives
• Low hardiness has alienation, fear or resistance to change, viewing of events as being under external control

Resilience

• Personality trait that describes capacity to cope in the face of adversity
• High resilience has flexible usage of emotional resources to meet demands of stressful situations, exhibition of positive emotions under stress
• Can be developed through an understanding of which emotions are adaptive, learning of specific techniques for regulating emotions and creation of healthy social and emotional relationships

Broaden-and-Build Theory

• Theory that proposed that positive emotions of resilient people cause them to expand their view of what is possible in a situation (broaden) and develop new ideas and relationships (build)

General Adaptation Syndrome

General Adaptation Syndrome

• The patterns of physiological changes that are consistent with response to long-term stress particularly with the immune system
• Is divided into three stages: alarm, resistance and exhaustion

Alarm Stage

• Stage of general adaptation syndrome that consists of a brief reduction in immune activity followed by a significant increase in immune activity
• The initial reduction in immune activity is the result of sympathetic redirection of energy away from the immune system towards a fight or flight response
• The later uptick in immune activity is the result of HPA axis redirection of energy back towards immune activity

Sympathetic Response to Stress

• The faster nervous system response to stress in the alarm stage that promotes the redirection of energy towards a fight-or-flight response in reacting to stressors
• Hypothalamus initially activates the sympathetic nervous system which activates the adrenal glands to release epinephrine and norepinephrine
• Results in increased heart rate, redistribution of blood supply from skin and viscera to muscles and brain, deepening of respiration, dilation of pills, inhibition of gastric secretions, increase in glucose release from liver

Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis

• The slower endocrine system reaction to stress in the alarm stage that promotes a more long-term response to stressors
• Hypothalamus initially activates the pituitary gland which activates the adrenal cortex to release cortisol
• Results in increased glucose, slowed digestion, encoding of memories and emotions associated with stress
• Cortisol has a negative feedback loop with the hypothalamus resulting in deactivation of the HPA axis

Tend-and-Befriend Response

• Individual responses to stressors that include a pattern of protection and care of offspring through alliances with social groups
• May or may not be a gendered phenomenon, is due to flexibility in the response to the sympathetic nervous system and HPA axis signalling

Resistance Stage

• Stage of general adaptation syndrome that consists of a gradual increase in immune activity followed by a gradual decrease in immune activity
• The initial increase in immune activity is the result of preparation for sustained defenses against a stressor
• The later decrease in immune activity is the result of exhaustion

Effects of Excess Cortisol

• Brain regions can become resistant to cortisol over time if exposed too often
• Cortisol can damage neurons in brain areas such as the hippocampus, disrupting working memory and long-term memory

Exhaustion Stage

• Stage of general adaptation syndrome that consists of a sharp decrease in immune activities
• The sharp decrease in immune activity is the result of failure of various physiological and immune systems

Allostatic Load

• The underlying phenomenon for the exhaustion stage where there is a change in biological systems in response to chronic stressors with some systems becoming stuck in certain states and other systems becoming less responsive to changing conditions

Immune System

B Cells

• Lymphocytes that create protein antibodies which attach to foreign agents and mark them for destruction
• Are capable of recognizing antigens after initial exposure

T Cells

• Lymphocytes that attack intruders directly and increase the strength of the general immune response

Natural Killer Cells

• Lymphocytes that are specialized for killing viruses and tumors

Health Psychology

Obstacles Health Psychology

Health Psychology

• Psychology that focuses on the importance of lifestyle factors for physical health

Biopsychosocial Model

• Model that places emphasis on the relationship between biological, psychological and social factors and their impact on health

Health Disparities

• Differences in health outcomes among different groups of people often correlated with differences in social factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, disability and homelessness

Health Behaviors

• Actions partaken for the promotion and wellbeing and prevention of illness and disease
• Healthy diets are a important health behavior, generally recommends consumption of natural, less-processed foods in small amounts with heavy emphasis on fruits and vegetables
• Maladaptive eating habits linked to poor nutrition causes metabolic syndrome, con constellation of risk factors such as high blood sugars, insulin resistance, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease

Actions to Improve Health (30% Reduction in Cancer Risk)

• Lack of adherence often due to views of personal choice and self-presentation
• 1. Exercise
• 2. Stop using tobacco (vaping, smoking, chewing)
• 3. Maintaining a healthy body weight
  • Ideal to slightly overweight, not obese
• 4. Minimal drinking of alcohol

Group Membership and Interactions

Ingroups

Ingroups

• Groups to which particular individuals feel that they belong
• Creation is based on reciprocity and transitivity between members
• Thoughts, emotions and action influenced by desire to be good group members, to fit in with a group and to avoid ostracization
• Medial prefrontal cortex is more active when seeing individuals as ingroup members

Reciprocity

• Treatment of others by another individual similarly to how others treat that individual

Transitivity

• Sharing of opinions among people

Social Identity Theory

• Theory that states the individuals identify with, value and experience pride with membership in a group
• Group membership then drives the differential behavior towards ingroups and outgroups

Ingroup Favoritism

• Tendency to provide preferential treatment to ingroup members

Outgroups

Outgroups

• Groups to which particular individuals feel that they do not belong
• Medial prefrontal cortex is less active when seeing individuals as outgroup members

Outgroup Homogeneity Effect

• Tendency to treat outgroup members as less varied than ingroup members

Intergroup Anxiety

• Tendency to be more comfortable with members of their own group

Conformity and Group Dynamics

Conformity

• The alteration of behaviors or opinions to match those of others or what others expect due to either normative or informational influence
• Increased group size results in gradual increased conformity
  • After the group size reaches a certain size, the increase in conformity levels off
• Lack of consensus and dissent results in decreased conformity
• Social and cultural influences results in differential conformation in different regions
  • Conformation is more expected with collectivist and homogeneous groups

Normative Influence

• Conformation of behaviors to fit in and avoid perceptions of foolishness in spite of individual moral distaste to actions

Social Norms

• The expected standards of conduct that influence behavior

Informational Influence

• Conformation of behaviors to what is presumed to be appropriate behavior when individuals are uncertain or ambiguous on the appropriate behaviors in the situation

Risky-Shift Effect

• Phenomenon where groups make riskier decisions than individuals within the group would make individually
• Determined by the initial attitudes of group members

Group Polarization

• Phenomenon where groups make more drastic decisions than individuals within the group would make individually

Group Think

• Phenomenon of group polarization that occurs when a group face intense pressure, external threat and general bias causing the creation of bad decisions for the sake of maintaining cohesiveness within the group
• Prevention should be from refrain from portraying strong opinions initially and encouragement of alternative ideas

Social Loafing

• Phenomenon where individuals in a group work less than they would when working alone as individuals feel less responsible for group output
• Individuals that knowingly have their individual efforts monitored engage in less social loafing

Social Facilitation

• Phenomenon where the presence of others leads to enhanced performance of an individual

Robert Zajonc on Social Facilitation

• The presence of others of the same species generates arousal
• Individual arousals leads to enhancement of dominant responses or the responses that are most likely to be performed in the situation
• Enhancement occurs when the the dominant response is easy or well-learned and impairment occurs when the dominant response is difficult or not well-learned

Deindividualization

• Phenomenon where there is a loss of individuality when part of group as individuals are not self-aware and lose their moral personal standards allowing for behaviors they would not otherwise have performed
• This phenomenon is accentuated in situations of arousal and anonymity
• Actions are in accordance to the expectations of the situation and the surrounding people

Attitudes

Attitudes

• Flexible conscious or unconscious feelings, opinions and beliefs learned through a social context about yourself and other objects/people used for behavior towards others
  • Can be developed through experience or through others attitudes
  • Can be changed by others or by individual action
• Negative attitudes, due to adaptivity, are developed quicker than positive attitudes

Explicit Attitudes

• Attitudes that are conscious and can be reported to others

Implicit Attitudes

• Attitudes that are unconscious and implicitly influences feelings and behaviors
• Are easily accessible from memory with limited conscious effort or control

Mere Exposure Effect

• Phenomenon where greater exposure and familiarity with a person or object causes greater positive attitudes towards the person or object

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

• Test used to assess implicit attitudes through reaction time in association of concepts or objects with positive or negative words
• Is best used as an aggregate measure of bias in a group of people as the reliability and stability of the IAT test is in question

Cognitive Dissonance

Attitude-Behavior Consistency

• Phenomenon where the stronger, more specific and/or more personally relevant an attitude, the more likely it is to predict behavior and remain stable in the face of challenges
  • Explains why attitudes formed through direct experience better predicts behavior

Attitude Accessibility

• Phenomenon where the easier an attitude is retrieved from memory, the more likely it is to predict behavior and remain stable in the face of challenges

Factors Affecting Attitude-Behavior Consistency

• Aspects of the situation such as norms, time pressure and the similarity in attitudes of peers impact attitude-behavior consistency
• Aspects of attitude such as origin, strength and specificity influences the attitude-behavior consistency

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state to be avoided due to psychological inconsistency arising from conflicting attitudes and behaviors
• Cognitive dissonance is particularly prominent if the attitude is important, the attitude is held strongly and if the individual is motivated to notice and reduce the conflict
• Cognitive dissonance motivates, in order from least severe to most severe, the change of behaviors, the rationalization of behaviors, the change in attitude

Post-Decisional Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance arising from the the psychological inconsistency of picking between multiple items that are held with positive attitudes
• Motivates an individual’s often automatic focus on the positive aspects of some choices rather than the negative aspects of others choices

Attributions

Foundational Theory of Attribution

• Theory made by Fritz Heider that created the distinction between personal attribution and situational attribution
• Considered attributions to have variable dimensions in stability over time and controllability
  • These attributions that create the basis of feelings and arising behavior towards events

Attributions

• Explanations for events or actions which provide a sense of order and allows predictability for future behavior

Personal of Dispositional Attribution

• Explanation for events or actions that place emphasis on internal factors such as mood, abilities or efforts

Situational Attribution

• Explanation for events or actions that place emphasis on external factors such as luck, accidents or the actions of others

Attributional Bias

• The tendency to vary processing of social information due to the inability to know the situational and social factors of others

Correspondence Bias

• Attributional bias that has the overemphasis of the importance of personal attribution and the underestimation of the importance of situational attribution in the prescribed attribution on others

Fundamental Attribution Error

• Attributional bias that has the mistaken association of behavior on the fundamental feature of a person

Actor/Observer Discrepancy

• Attributional bias that has the overemphasis of the importance of personal attribution and the underemphasis of the importance of situational attribution in the prescribed attribution on personal success and the overemphasis of the importance of situational attribution and the underemphasis of the importance of personal attribution in the prescribed attribution on personal failure

Stereotypes

Stereotypes

• The automatic cognitive schemas in which group membership organized information about people which allows for efficient processing of information and unconscious motivation of behavior
• Are innately neutral as they include information that is negative or positive and can be based in truth
• Are maintained over time through the guidance of attention towards information that conforms with or contradicts the stereotype
• Can alter the standards against which and act is measured based on group membership
• Can develop into prejudice when the schema becomes negatively associated

Illusory Correlations

• An example of the psychological reasoning error where there is unfounded associations of information relative to stereotypes
• Attention is drawn more heavily to information that confirms stereotypes, corroborating the unfounded relationship allowing for the creation of implicit biases

Subtyping

• The categorization of exceptions of stereotypes in a separate category, allowing for maintenance of a stereotype

Prejudice and Discrimination

Realistic Group Conflict Theory

• Theory that states that prejudice and discrimination are a direct result of competition between groups for limited resources

Prejudice

• Negative feelings, opinions and beliefs associated with a stereotype

Stereotype Threat

• Concern or fear from individuals who believe their performance could confirm negative stereotypes regarding the group they have membership in
• Creates distraction and anxiety resulting in reduction in short-term memory capacity, undermined confidence and undermined motivation ultimately resulting in interference in performance

Self-Affirmation

• Writing or literature about individuality within a stereotype domain offers lessening of the effects of stereotype threat

Social Connections

• Greater social and peer relations accompanied with the sharing of goals can reduce prejudice and lessen the effects of stereotype threat

Reframing

• The transformation of a negative stereotype from a weakness into a strength which can reduce the effects of prejudice by altering individual perceptions of a situation

Self-Labeling

• The embrace of slurs used against an individual for greater power as stigmatized individuals, reduced negative associations of the slur and reduced effects of prejudice by altering individual perceptions of a situation

Perspective Giving

• Individuals share with others their experiences as targets of discrimination for communication of their struggles to majority groups

Discrimination

• Differential treatment towards individuals based on a prejudice associated with their group membership

Prejudice Habit-Breaking

• Interventions to reduce the effect of individual’s biases through nondiscriminatory acts with simultaneous consciousness of stereotypes
• Is an incredibly difficult process as the self-control requires a frontal lobe override of the amygdala

Perspective Taking

• Active contemplation of the psychological experiences of others to understand the impacts of discrimination and prejudice
  • Can often be preceded by perspective giving
• Offers reduction of racial biases, reduction of stereotyping and the smoothening of awkward interracial interactions
• Often difficult for members of minority groups due to their perspectives of majority empowered groups as threatening

Traditional Discrimination

• Overt forms of prejudice with outward racism in behaviors and speech

Modern Discrimination

• Subtle forms of prejudice that coexist with outward rejection of racist ideation
• Individuals who do not consider themselves racist still indirectly endorse actions or policies that have the same effect as overt discrimination
  • Can be seen as a result of shifting societal structures that emphasize the benefit of the majority

Persuasion

Persuasion

• The active and conscious effort to change an attitude or behavior with a message
• The effectiveness is based on the factors of the source, content and receiver

Source

• The individual who delivers the message
• Higher persuasion is associated with more attractive, more credible and more similar sources

Content

• The contents of the message
• Memorable messages that appeal to memories are more impactful, stable and persuasive
• Repetitive messages may use the mere exposure effect to increase persuasiveness
• One sided arguments work best when the audience is on the speaker’s side or is gullible
• Two sided arguments work best when the audience is skeptical or undecided

Receiver

• The person who processes the message
• Receivers who are more attentive are easier persuaded

Elaboration Likelihood Model

• Model of persuasion using either a central route or a peripheral route

Central Route

• The creation of strong, stable and defendable attitudes through the conscious logical appeal to receivers who are motivated and rationally cognitive

Peripheral Route

• The creation of weak and unstable attitudes through the unconscious appeal to receivers who are unmotivated and inattentive through peripheral cues
• Are swayed by certain unconscious factors such as attractiveness or status of the person

Compliance

• The persuasion of receivers to perform an action through request
• The better the mood of the receiver and the inclusion of reason increases the persuasion

Foot in the Door Technique

• Compliance of a receiver by providing a smaller request before providing a larger and more undesirable request
• Receivers commit to a course of action and therefore must be consistent with the commitment

Door in the Face Technique

• Compliance of a receiver by providing a rejectable larger and more undesirable request before providing a smaller request
• Compliance is reliant on reciprocity as the receiver feels compelled to compromise to reciprocate the requester’s compromise
  • The second request appears more modest, receivers feel implicit need to appear reasonable

Lowballing

• Compliance of a receiver by providing a lower price and adding on fees to provide payment for a larger price
• Receivers commit to a course of action and therefore must be consistent with the commitment
  • The smaller increments seem like smaller commitments then the commitment to make the payment

Psychopathology

Introduction to Psychopathology

Psychopathology

• An illness or disorder of the mind, typically defined due to maladaptiveness
• Thought to have both environmental and biological factors
• Must be maladaptive, irrational and cause distress to oneself or others

Qualities of Psychopathology

• Deviations from cultural norms for acceptable behavior
• Maladaptivity is the interference with the ability to respond appropriately in some situations
• Self-destructivity is the creation of personal distress and threatening relationships with others and the community

Etiology

• Factors that contribute to the development of psychopathology, an area of continued research

Biological Model of Psychopathology

• Model that attributes underlying biological factors such as structural abnormalities, biochemical processes and genetic influences as key to developing psychopathology

Sociocultural Model of Psychopathology

• Model that attributes underlying sociocultural factors such as culture, expectations, opportunities as key to interpreting behaviors as maladaptive or not

Cognitive or Cognitive-Behavioral Model of Psychopathology

• Model that attributes learning and reinforcement of cognition and behavior as key to developing psychopathology

Internalizing Disorders

• Disorders characterized by negative emotions associated with distress and fear
• Include depressive disorders and anxiety disorders
• Are typically more prevalent in those who identify as women

Externalizing Disorders

• Disorders characterized by impulsive or uncontrollable behavior
• Include addiction, conduct disorders and antisocial personality disorder
• Are typically more prevalent in those who identify as men

Cultural Syndromes

• Disorders with symptom clusters found in specific cultural groups or regions

Approaches to Psychopathology

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)

• The standard in psychology and psychiatry that undergoes continued refinement which attempts to describe psychopathology
• Groups disorders based on similarities in symptoms, providing shared language and classification scheme for scientists and practitioners to communicate what they have learned about psychopathology
• Takes a categorical approach which either diagnoses an individual with an disorder or doesn’t

Dimensional Approach

• Approach that considers psychological disorders along a continuum of varying degree, recognizing that psychological disorders are often extreme versions of normal feelings

Assessment

• Examination of an individual’s mental functions and psychological condition to diagnose a psychological disorder allowing for further treatment
• Includes the usage of self-reports, psychological testing, neuropsychological testing, observation and interview with others

Evidence Based Assessment

• Approach to clinical evaluation where research guides the evaluation of psychopathology, the selection of testing, the diagnosis and the treatment
• Is typically more accurate than typical methods such as projective measures which can be impacted by individual measures

Neuropsychological Method

• Individual performance of actions that require cognitive and neurological abilities to highlight actions which a participants does poorly
  • Can be indicative of issues with certain brain regions

Ongoing Assessment

• Examination of an individual’s mental functions and psychological condition after diagnosis to understand the progression of the individual through treatments and the unique factors of the individual

Comorbidity

• The occurrence of more than one psychological disorder with characterization by the categorical DSM approach
• Dual diagnoses often do not present advantages in treatment
• Often is due to common underlying factors

Modeling of Psychopathology

P-Scores

• p factor hypothesized by Avshalom Caspi and co. as an underlying factor involved in all types of psychological disorders
• Higher scores on the p factor are constant throughout life and are associated with greater life impairment and predicted progressive worsening of impairments over time

Diathesis-Stress Model

• Model that considers individuals as having unique underlying vulnerabilities to psychological disorders called a diathesis
• Stress in combination with the diathesis is proposed to present the development of psychological disorders
  • Psychological disorders occur when the stress levels exceed the capability to cope with the stress

Biological Factors

• Genetic factors are a physiological factor that can affect the production of neurotransmitters, the levels of neurotransmitters, the receptor sites and the structure of the brain
• The structure of the brain is a physiological factor the influences the development of disease

Environmental Factors

• Include fetus conditions, childhood and adolescence conditions, epigenetic processes and situational factors

Family Systems Model

• Model that considers the social context, especially in family interactions, that impacts individual behavior
  • Considers individual issues as manifestation of family problems, allowing for profiling of families to assist in diagnosis and therapy

Sociocultural Model

• Model that considers psychopathology as the result of interactions between individuals and their cultures
• Explains differences in psychopathology prevalence in socioeconomic classes as the result of differences in expectations, norms, opportunities, perceptions and access to resources

Cognitive Behavioral Model

• Model that considers maladaptive behaviors and emotions as the result of learned thoughts and beliefs
• Provides cognitive and behavioral therapy as an important method for treating psychopathology

Treatment of Psychopathology

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy

• Techniques used to treat psychopathology through interaction between practitioners and clients aimed to help a client understand the symptoms, problems and solutions to their psychopathology
• Most therapists follow an eclectic approach using various methods that seem appropriate for a given client

Psychoanalysis

• Psychotherapy that has the reduction of inhibitions for the uncovering of unconscious feelings and thought processes that are assumed to give rise to maladaptive thoughts and behaviors
• Includes techniques such as free association and dream analysis
• Is typically expensive and time consuming with minimal empirical evidence of success

Free Association

• Psychoanalysis technique where clients say whatever comes to mind and therapists look for signs of unconscious conflicts particularly with resistance to certain topics

Dream Analysis

• Psychoanalysis technique where therapists interpret the hidden meaning of the client’s dream

Psychodynamic Therapy

• Psychotherapy that developed off psychoanalysis for the assistance of client examination of their needs, defenses and motives to understand their distress
• There is often exploration of avoidance of distressing thoughts, looking for recurring themes and patterns in thoughts and feelings
• Advances offers fewer sessions and more focus on relationships than childhood experiences

Behavior Therapy

• Psychotherapy where unwanted behavior is unlearned and desired behavior is learned through classical and operant conditioning
  • Based on the assumption that maladaptive behaviors are learned
• Desired behaviors are rewarded and unwanted behavior are ignored or punished
• Social skills training is used to elicit a desired behavior through modeling, rehearsal and application so the behavior may be rewarded and promoted
• Exposure component where people are continually exposed to an anxiety-producing stimulus or situation in the absence of negative consequences is used to help the development of new, nonthreatening associations through classical conditioning

Cognitive Therapy

• Psychotherapy where thought patterns are modified to eliminate maladaptive behaviors and emotions
  • Based on the assumption that distorted thoughts can produce maladaptive behaviors and emotions

Cognitive Restructuring

• Cognitive therapy technique where clinician helps clients recognize maladaptive thought patterns and replace them with adaptive perceptions

Rational Emotive Therapy

• Psychotherapy where therapist acts as a teacher explaining a client’s errors in thinking and demonstrating adaptive ways to think and behave
  • Based on the assumption that maladaptive behavior is a result of individual belief systems and ways of thinking rather than objective conditions

Interpersonal Therapy

• Psychotherapy where circumstances and relationships are emphasized, treatment focuses on helping clients explore their interpersonal experiences and express their emotions
• Integrates cognitive therapy with psychodynamic insight therapy to develop insight into client relationships

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

• Psychotherapy where mindfulness meditation of eastern origin is used to prevent relapse of psychological disorders following treatment
• Assists in the awareness of their negative thoughts and feelings and disengagement from ruminative thinking at times of vulnerability

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• Psychotherapy where techniques from cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy are used to correct faulty cognitions and train engagement in new behaviors
• Is the most widely used psychotherapy, particularly effective for depression and anxiety disorders

Client-Centered Therapy

• Psychotherapy where there is the encouragement of the fulfillment of individual potentials for personal growth through self-understanding
• There is the creation of strong client-therapist relationships with usage of unconditional positive regard and reflective listening

Reflective Listening

• Client-centered therapy technique where therapists repeats clients concerns to help clarify their feelings

Motivational Interviewing

• Psychotherapy where there is a usage of client-centered approach over a short period to address ambivalence and problematic behaviors
• Helps identification of discrepancies between their current states and where they would like to be, sparking motivation for change
• Useful for people seeking help with drug and alcohol abuse and those struggling with eating and exercise habits

Family Therapy

• Psychotherapy where there is a usage of systems approach to analyze an individual as part of a larger context
• Believed to provide people with adequate support and better therapy outcomes with prevention of relapses
• Expressed emotion: pattern of negative actions by a client’s family member, includes critical comments, hostility and emotional overinvolvement

Group Therapy

• Psychotherapy where there is either a highly structured group with specific goals and techniques designed to modify the thought and behavior patterns of group members or a less structured groups increase insight and provide social support

Biological Therapy

Biological Therapies

• Techniques used to treat psychopathology through medical approaches to disease and to illness, based on the notion that psychological disorders are from abnormalities in neural and bodily processes

Psychopharmacology

• Practice of prescribing medications that affect the brain or body to treat psychological disorders
• Long-term success may require continued treatment, sometimes indefinitely

Psychotropic Medications

• Medications that affect mental processes by changing brain neurochemistry classes include anti-anxiety drugs, antidepressants and antipsychotics

Treatment Resistance

• Individuals who are unsuccessful with treatments such as psychotherapy or medication forcing alternative biological methods with more serious side effects to be recommended

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

• Biological therapy that has the placement of electrodes on a person’s head and the administration of an electrical current strong enough to produce a seizure, generally in one hemisphere under anaesthesia and muscle relaxants

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

• Biological therapy that has a powerful electrical current run through a wire coil creating a rapidly oscillating magnetic field, inducing an electrical current in the brain region directly below the coil interrupting the neural function in the region
• Single pulse TMS: the disruption of brain activity occurs only during the brief period of stimulation
• Repeated TMS: occurs over an extended period of time causing long-term disruption

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)

• Biological therapy that has the surgical implant of electrodes within the brain and the usage of mild electricity is used to stimulate the brain at an optimal frequency and intensity

Anti-Anxiety Drugs

Anti-Anxiety Drugs or Anxiolytics

• Psychotropic medications used for short-term treatment of anxiety

Benzodiazepine

• Highly addictive anxiolytic that increases the activity of GABA, the main inhibitory neurotransmitter, for the reduction of anxiety, promotion of relaxation and inducement of drowsiness

Antidepressants

Antidepressants

• Psychotropic medication used for treatment of depression alongside anxiety and other disorders

Monoamine Oxidase (MAO) Inhibitors

• Antidepressants that inhibit monoamine oxidase destruction of serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine resulting in increased neurotransmitter availability in the synapse
• Interacts with the tyramine amino acids in many foods such as red wine, cured meats, aged cheeses and other drugs, often resulting in lethal elevations of blood pressure

Tricyclic Antidepressants

• Antidepressants that inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, norepinephrine and histamine neurotransmitters resulting in increased neurotransmitter availability in the synapse
• Side effects include drowsiness, weight gain, sweating, constipation, heart palpitations and dry mouth

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)

• Antidepressants that inhibit the reuptake of serotonin and other neurotransmitters to a lesser extent resulting in increased neurotransmitter availability in the synapse
• Side effects include headache, weight loss and sexual dysfunction

Antipsychotics

Antipsychotics or Neuroleptics

• Psychotropic medication used for treatment of schizophrenia and other disorders with psychosis
• Typically are dopamine antagonists that bind and block to dopamine receptors reducing positive but often not negative symptoms

Reserpine

• Neuroleptic drug that is synthesized from dogbane that reduces positive symptoms of schizophrenia

Chlorpromazine

• Neuroleptic drug that is a synthetic version of reserpine that reduces anxiety, promotes sedation and reduces positive symptoms of schizophrenia
• Side effects include constipation, weight gain, cardiovascular damage, immobility of facial muscles, trembling of extremities, muscle spasms, uncontrollable salivation, tardive dyskinesia, shuffling walk and tardive dyskinesia

Haloperidol

• Neuroleptic drug that provides a less sedative effect then chlorpromazine
• Side effects include immobility of facial muscles, trembling of extremities, muscle spasms, uncontrollable salivation, tardive dyskinesia and shuffling walk

Atypical Antipsychotics or Second Generation Antipsychotics

• Psychotropic medications used for mood stabilization and reduced levels of mania

Clozapine

• Atypical antipsychotic used for treatment of negative and positive symptoms of schizophrenia
• Side effects include lesser parkinson-like symptoms, lesser tardive dyskinesia, seizures, arrhythmia, weight gain and severe drop in white blood cells

Risperdal and Zyprexa

• Atypical antipsychotics similar in structure to clozapine without the immune depression

Tardive Dyskinesia

• Side effect of many neuroleptics that has involuntary twitching of muscles especially in the neck and face
• Is typically permanent after onset as a side effect of neuroleptics but can be treated with other medications

Anxiety Disorders

General Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders

• Psychopathology characterized by excessive fear and anxiety in the absence of true danger
• Different anxiety disorders have some shared emotional, cognitive, somatic and motor symptoms
• Is often comorbid with other disorders such as depression
• Effects 25% of the population

Development of Anxiety Disorders

• Can have a biological basis as inhibited children are more likely to develop anxiety disorders later in life than uninhibited children
• Biased thinking and learning often plays a factor as many individuals perceive ambiguous situations as threatening due to excess focus on perceived threats
  • There may be greater memory of threatening events more than non-threatening events

Symptoms of Anxiety Disorders

• Feelings of tensions, apprehension, and irritability due to inability to deal with the anxiety
• Impairment of sleep, attention and concentration
• Sweating, dry mouth, rapid pulse, shallowing breathing, high blood pressure and increased muscular tension
• Restlessness and pointless motor behaviors such as an exaggerated startle response, toe-tapping and excessive fidgeting
• Allostatic load may create impairment of cognitive functions

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

• Anxiety disorder characterized by nearly constant anxiety not associated with a specific stimulus for more than 6 months
• Affects under 19.1% of Amerivcans with men more diagnosed than men

General Anxiety Disorder Symptoms

• Distractibility, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension and sleep problems

Specific Phobia

Specific Phobia

• Anxiety disorder characterized by a specific fear of an object or a situation disproportionate to the threat
• Affects 1 in 8 people

Social Anxiety Disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder

• Anxiety disorder characterized by a fear of being negatively evaluated by others in a social setting
• Affects 1 in 8 people in their lifetime and 6.8% of Americans
• Typically develops at the age of 13 and can be followed by comorbidity with disorders such as depression and substance abuse disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder Symptoms

• Fear of public speaking, speaking in class, meeting new people and eating in front of others

Panic Disorder

Panic Disorder

• Anxiety disorder characterized by sudden attacks of overwhelming terror and worry over continued panic attacks
• Highly comorbidity with depression and phobias

Panic Attacks

• Episodes of overwhelming terror and worry that last several minutes
• Often involve fears of having additional panic attacks
• Can appear suddenly or be triggered by external stimuli or internal thought processes

Panic Attack Symptoms

• Sweating, trembling, racing heart, shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, light-headedness, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet
• Are recurring

Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia

• Anxiety disorder characterized by a fear of being in situations without escape

Symptoms of Agoraphobia

• Avoidance of open spaces or places where crowds may occur

Treatment for Anxiety Disorders

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• Is most effective and long-lasting with most adult anxiety disorders, especially panic disorder especially due to the exposure therapy

Systematic Desensitization

• Is effective for the treatment of specific phobias resulting in decreased activation in the regions related to processing and responding to threats
• Occurs through the creation of a fear hierarchy and exposure to items on the fear hierarchy

Anxiolytics

• Is effective for short-term treatment but has side effects, addiction and relapse risks

Antidepressants

• Is effective for short-term treatment of generalized anxiety disorder

Depressive Disorders

General Depressive Disorders

Depressive Disorders

• Psychopathology characterized by the presence of sad, empty or irritable mood along with bodily symptoms and cognitive problems that interfere with daily life
• Are diagnosable with long-lasting episodes of impairment
• More often diagnosed in women than men, 70% more common in women
• 12% men, 21% women will seek treatment
• Often associated with stigma and shame in some cultures

DSM Depressive Disorder Symptoms

• Feelings of sadness unrelated to external events (may be a single episode or recurring)
• Sadness persists for more than a few weeks
• Sadness is severe enough to disrupt everyday functioning

List of Depressive Disorders

• Major depressive disorder
• Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder
• Persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia)
• Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
• substance/medication-induced depressive disorder

Development of Depressive Disorders

• Genetic factors associated with depression seem to be less than that of other disorders
• Evidence that major depressive disorder may involve one or more monoamine neurotransmitters that regulate emotion, arousal and behavioral motivation
• Situational factors such as life stressors are also associated with depression
• Cognitive processes such as negative thoughts and beliefs may result in depression
  • Are typically detectable prior to depression onset

Cognitive Triad Model

• Model that frames depression as the result of negative perceptions of one’s self, future and the world
• Typical thought patterns include attribution of negative occurrences to personal defect, attribution of positive occurrences to situational factors, overgeneralization of specific events and thoughts in extremes
  • There is an absence of typical positive self-illusions

Learned Helplessness Model

• Model that frames depression as the result of perceptions of the inability to have any effect on events in one’s life
• Those who experience learned helplessness expect bad things to happen and believe they are powerless to avoid negative events as they have an external locus control
  • There is attribution of negative events to stable and global personal factors instead of temporary and specific situational factors

Major Depressive Disorder

Major Depressive Disorder

• Depressive disorder characterized by the episodes of depressed moods or loss of interest in pleasurable activities for two weeks
• Can persist for several months to a couple of years and gradually worsens without treatment
• Affects 7-8% of Americans at any one time, 13% of Americans will experience in their lives

Major Depressive Disorder Symptoms

• Appetite changes weight changes, sleep disturbances, loss of energy, difficulty concentrating, feelings of self-reproach, feelings of guilt, frequent thoughts of death, thoughts of suicide
• Persistent sad, anxious or “empty” mood
• Diminished pleasure in pleasant things, including hobbies
• Feelings of hopelessness and pessimism
• Significant weight loss or gain
• Intense feelings of worthlessness and guilt
• Restlessness, irritability and agitation
  • Often this translated to difficulty in sleeping, concentrating and making decisions
• Decreased energy, passivity, fatigue, lack of motivation
• Recurring thoughts of suicide and death
  • About 15% will attempt suicide

Persistent Depressive Disorder or Dysthymia

Persistent Depressive Disorder

• Depressive disorder characterized by mild to moderate severity depressive symptoms lasting 1-2 years
• Typically persists for 5-10 years but can last 2-20 years

Persistent Depressive Disorder Symptoms

• Low energy
• Weight loss or gain
• Sleep issues
• Diminished pleasure in pleasant things
• Can manifest as stress, irritability

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder

• Depressive disorder characterized by episodes of depression that are most likely to occur during the winter

Depression Treatment

Psychotropic Drugs

• MAO inhibitors are used to treat depressive disorders unresponsive to other treatment, tricyclics treat severe depressive disorders and SSRIs treat most other depressive disorders

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• Is effective for long term treatment of the the cognitive triad thought patterns that drive depression for adaptive improvement of mood and behavior
• Is most effective when done with antidepressants, especially for chronic major depressive disorders

Phototherapy

• The exposure of clients to high-intensity light sources for part of the day
• Is more effective for treatment of seasonal affective disorder than cognitive behavior therapy

Aerobic Exercise

• Is effective for treatment of seasonal affective disorder due to the release of endorphins, regulation of bodily rhythms, improvement of self-esteem and the social support

Electroconvulsive Therapy

• Is effective for treatment of severe depression unresponsive to conventional treatment
• Has high relapse rates and short-term and long-term memory impairment

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

• Is effective when administered to the left frontal regions of the brain

Deep Brain Stimulation

• Is effective for treatment of severe depression unresponsive to all other treatments

Bipolar Disorder

Mania and Depression

Bipolar Disorders

• Psychopathological mood disorder characterized by extreme fluctuations in mood with manic and depressive episodes lasting at least one week
  • Baseline varies from normal to dysthymia
• Much less common than depression, estimated to occur in around 2.6% of Americans
• Arise in late adolescence and early adulthood
• Equally prevalent in women and men
• Often causes high risk of suicide due to the contrast between depression and mania with drugs often toning down mania towards depression

Development of Bipolar Disorder

• Genetic factors have a strong and consistent correlation with bipolar disorder with successive generations experiencing more severe disorder and younger ages of onset
  • Linkage is to more than one gene

Mania

• Variable state of elevated mood that has the increase in energy level, agitation, restlessness and physical activity
• Individuals often feel as if they are “on top of the world”
• Often results in engagement in rash and regrettable decisions

Manic State Symptoms

• Abnormal and persistent mood elevation, activity increase, diminished need for sleep, grandiosity, racing thoughts and extreme distractibility
• Engagement in sexual indiscretions, buying sprees, risky disturbances and hallucinations
• Abnormally strong, very positive mood (euphoria) lasting at least a week
• Grandiose ideas (overly high self-esteem) and self-importance
• Decreased need for sleep
• Distractibility and difficulty staying with one train of thought
• Pressured speech because of racing thoughts
• Frantic, sometimes unrealistic activity
• Involvement in pleasurable but very high risk activities

Bipolar I Disorder

Bipolar I Disorder

• Bipolar disorder characterized more by manic episodes than by depressive episodes, meaning depressive episodes are not necessary for diagnosis
• Diagnosed at a younger age than bipolar II disorder

Bipolar II Disorder

Bipolar II Disorder

• Bipolar disorder characterized by less severe hypomanic mood elevations

Hypomania

• State of slightly elevated mood characterized by heightened creativity and productivity that can be pleasurable and rewarding

Treatment of Bipolar Disorder

Lithium

• Psychotropic drug that is a mood stabilizer that modulates neurotransmitter levels, balancing excitatory and inhibitory signals
• Is most effective when paired with an antidepressant, preferably SSRI, in treating the depressed mood
• Side effects include thirst, hand tremors, excessive urination and memory problems but often diminish after several weeks of treatments

Anticonvulsants

• Psychotropic drug that is a seizure reducer and a mood stabilizer
• Is effective for treatment of relatively intense bipolar episodes

Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder

Psychosis

Schizophrenia

• Psychopathology characterized by alterations in thought, perception or consciousness with a heavy emphasis on psychosis
• 1 in 200 people have schizophrenia, similar rates for men and women
• Diagnosed in the 20s or 30s but signs may be present in childhood
• Must experience continuous signs of disturbances for at least six months according to DSM-5
• Must show two or more of the five major DSM-5 symptoms including at least delusions, hallucinations or disorganized speech

Development of Schizophrenia

• Dopamine hypothesis that schizophrenia may be the result of alterations in the dopamine pathway leading to atrophy of the right hemispheres of the brain
• Genetic factors play a strong role in the development of schizophrenia as the possibility of developing schizophrenia is 10% if a first degree relative has schizophrenia relative to 1% if not so
  • Possibility that there is a malfunction of brain chemicals, older father or changes in the ventricles
• Developmental hallmarks of family history of schizophrenia, greater social impairment, higher levels of suspicion/paranoia, history of substance abuse, greater frequency of unusual thoughts predict the development of schizophrenia
• Possible schizovirus can explain the development of schizophrenia

Dopamine Hypothesis

• Blocking of dopamine decreases schizophrenic symptoms
• Increase of dopamine increases schizophrenic symptoms

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

• 1. Delusions
• 2. Hallucinations
• 3. Disorganized Speech
• 4. Disorganized or Catatonic behavior
• 5. Negative symptoms

Positive Symptoms

Positive Symptoms

• Symptoms that are present in schizophrenia but are not typical behaviors
• Include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and disorganized or catatonic behavior

Delusions

• Positive symptom of schizophrenia characterized by false beliefs based on incorrect inferences about reality
• Delusional individuals persis in beliefs despite evidence that contradicts those beliefs
• Delusions often follow a social nature with common perceptions of persecution or elevated social standing
• Is theorized to be alterations of social processing, affiliation and group perception

Hallucinations

• Positive symptom of schizophrenia characterized by false sensory (auditory, visual, olfactory or somatosensory) perceptions that are experienced without an external source
• Are vivid, clear and appear real to the hallucinatory person
• Auditory hallucinations often present as accusatory voices telling a person with schizophrenia that they are evil or inept or a cacophony of intermingled voices
• Are associated with activation of the cortex that processes external sensory stimuli
• Theorized that auditory hallucinations are caused by a difficulty distinguishing normal inner speech from external sounds

Disorganized Speech

• Positive symptom of schizophrenia characterized by incoherent speech with the failure to follow a normal conversational or grammatical structure
• Response to questions are often tangentially related or unrelated
• Loosening of associations and frequent change in topics is common, often makes speech unfollowable
• There may be display of strange and inappropriate emotions when talking

Schizophrenia-Associated Speech and Thought Disorders

• Loose Associations: fixation on unrelated or tangentially related topics
• Neologisms: invention of new words
• Clang Associations: fixation on the ending or beginnings of words
• Echolalia: imitation of words just said
• Echopraxia or Word Salad: part of disorganized speech characterized by totally incomprehensible speech with severe cases of schizophrenia

Disorganized Behavior

• Positive symptom of schizophrenia characterized by strange actions such as unpredictable agitation or childish silliness
• May wear many layers of clothing even on hot days, walk muttering to themselves, alternate between anger and laughter, pace and wring their hands as if they were worried
• Makes performance of many activities necessary for life very difficult leading to isolation and distress for people with schizophrenia

Catatonic Behavior

• Positive symptom of schizophrenia characterized by decreased responsiveness to the environment
• May include a rigid, mask like facial expression with staring into the distance
• May include echolalia, the mindless repetition of words heard as a symptom of catatonia

Negative Symptoms

Negative Symptoms

• Behavioral deficits or reductions in feelings and behaviors which are more common in men than in women
• Is typically associated with poorer prognosis, often persists despite antipsychotics while positive symptoms subside or reduce

Examples of Negative Symptoms

• Avoidance of eye contact and apathy
• Lack of expression of emotion even when conversing about emotionally fueled subjecture
• Slowing of speech with monotony and decreased content
• Pauses before answering and failure to complete or initiate utterance
• Reduction in motor behavior with little initiation of behavior or interest in social participation
• Flat affect: low emotionality
• Lack of pleasure in everyday life
• Lack of motivation to begin or sustain planned activities
• Lack of speech even when forced to interact

Schizophrenia Treatment

Neuroleptic

• Haloperidol is most effective for general cases of schizophrenia
• Chlorpromazine is most effective for more severe cases of schizophrenia

Atypical Antipsychotics

• Clozapine is most effective for most severe cases of schizophrenia
• Risperdal and zyprexa is most effective for general cases of schizophrenia

Social Skills Training

• Is most effective in combination with medication to manage social deficits of schizophrenia through regulation of affect, recognition of social cues and prediction of the effects of behaviors in social situation

Eating Disorders

Development of Eating Disorders

Eating Disorders

• Psychopathology associated with maladaptive behaviors concerning food
• Diagnosed for frequently in women, assumed to be underestimated in men
• Three most common are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder
• Majority of people with eating disorders are symptom free five years after diagnosis

Social Stigma

• Stigma associated with heavier bodies results in greater stress leading to maladaptive behaviors for weight loss such as rugs, fasting, excessive exercise and purging
• Chronic engagement of maladaptive behaviors in term lead to helplessness and depression

Genetic Factors

• Eating disorders have genetic components that provides a predisposition to maladaptive behavior when given an abundance of food

Anorexia

Anorexia Nervosa

• Eating disorder characterized by excessive fear of becoming fat and altered body perception with severe restriction of food intake leading to unhealthy low body weight
• Most often begins in early adolescence (2%), many weight controlling behavior is common but fewer than 1 in 100 are diagnosed with anorexia in accordance to the DSM 5
• Initially they receive positive comments from peers but later as emaciation occurs, peers grow concerned
• 15-20% die from the disorder, 5% die within 4 years of diagnosis

Anorexia Nervosa Symptoms

• Restrictions of energy intake relative to requirements, leading to significantly low body weight
• Intense fear of gaining weight, even if underweight
• Distorted body image
  • Believes that body image is crucial self-esteem and worth
  • Believes that body is still overweight even when underweight

Anorexia Nervosa Complications

• Suicide attempts
• Electrolyte imbalances
• Amenorrhea
• Organ damage
• Heart problems
• Bone weakness

Bulimia

Bulimia Nervosa

• Eating disorder characterized by excessive fear of becoming fat and altered body perception with alternation between binge-eating and maladaptive compensatory behaviors such as dieting, abusing laxative, exercising compulsively and purging leading to slightly elevated to slightly low body weight
  • Binge-eating is a response to stressors and negative emotions which generates further stress concerning weight gain, leading to typically secretive compensatory purging behavior
• Often develops in late adolescence, 1-2% of women in high school and college meet the criteria for bulimia nervosa
• More frequently diagnosed in women than in men

Bulimia Nervosa Symptoms

• Recurrent episodes of binge eating
• Feeling lack of control over eating during binge episode
• Compensatory behaviors to prevent weight gain
• Distorted body image with the belief that body image is crucial to self-esteem and worth

Bulimia Nervosa Complications

• Mood instability, depression and anxiety
• More likely to abuse drugs and alcohol
• Electrolyte imbalance, dehydration, anemia
• Problems with teeth (erosion of enamel)
• Salivary glands irritated, enlarged
• Esophageal ulcers

Binge-Eating Disorder

Binge-Eating Disorder

• Eating disorder characterized by seemingly uncontrollable intake of food once a week without purging leading to variable weight from overweight to obese
• Often experience feelings of guilt and embarrassment and may binge-eat alone to hide the behavior

Addiction Disorders

Addiction Characteristics

Addiction

• Psychopathology characterized by drug usage and dependence that persists despite negative consequences
• Typically has the usage of a substance longer than intended, inability to stop usage despite attempts, craving of the substance, and experiencing daily impairment despite the usage of the substance
• There can be psychological dependence on the drug even without tolerance or withdrawal

Tolerance

• Phenomenon were addicts must consume more of a drug to achieve the same subjective effect

Withdrawal

• Physiological and psychological state of anxiety, tension and cravings resulting from an addict’s failure to ingest a drug
• Differs from drug to drug and individual to individual

Biology of Addiction

Neurobiology of Tolerance

• Desensitization of the brain’s reward system in response to drug intake results in decreased euphoria, pleasure and enjoyment in both the drug and other activities
• Often leads to neglect of friends and family member for satisfaction of obsession with the drug
• Addicts are unable to understand why they continue to the take the drug despite the loss of pleasure

Insula and Limbic System

• Dopamine activity in the nucleus accumbens in the limbic system underlies the wanting properties of drug use
• Insula underlies the craving component of addiction

Genetics of Addiction

• Inheritance often provides clusters of characteristics or risk factors such as risk-taking, impulsivity, reduced concern about personal harm, chronically low arousal and a predisposition to finding chemical substances pleasurable
• Adolescents high in sensation seeking are more likely to associate with deviant peer groups that use substances

Social Factors of Addiction

Popular Culture

• Social learning theorists emphasize the role of parents, mass media, peers and high-risk groups
• Adolescents experience period of social reorientation away from family and towards family
• Teenagers learn to fit in and earn acceptance in peer groups that may be perceived as deviant

Addiction Treatment

Psychotherapy

• First step in treatment is the agreement to seek treatment and cease drug use
• Cognitive behavior therapy, family therapy and group therapy after withdrawal aims to keep clients drug free through treating desires and comorbid disorders
  • Cognitive behavior therapies assist in modification of attitudes and beliefs
  • Exposure therapies reduce cravings in response to cues and contexts associated with drug use

Psychotropic Medications

• Methadone is an agonist that produces the same effects as opioids in the brain without the high, is proven to produce better outcomes that just abstinence and psychotherapy

Trauma Disorders

Traumatic Stressors

Trauma

• Prolonged psychological and physiological response to a distressing event that often profoundly isolates a person’s beliefs about the world
• Is a subjective response to an event varies based on the individual

Development of Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

• Distressing events during childhood such as abuse and neglect are particularly likely to lead to trauma and other long-term effects
  • Children exposed to these events are more likely to develop psychopathology and altered stress responses
• Protective factors can buffer children from harmful effects of early-life stress such as warm, nurturing parenting and positive memories of childhood experiences

Risk Factors for Developing Trauma Disorders

• Living through dangerous events and traumas
• Having a history of mental illness
• Getting hurt
• Seeing people hurt or killed
• Feeling horror, helplessness or extreme fear
• Having little or no social support after the event
• Dealing with extra stress after the event, such as a loved one, pain and injury or loss of a job or home

General Trauma Disorders

Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders

• Psychopathology characterized by individual difficulty overcoming exposure to highly stressful event often in the inclusion of unwanted and intrusive thoughts

Adjustment Disorder

• Trauma and stressor-related disorder characterized by difficulty adjusting to the stressor

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• Trauma and stressor-related disorder characterized by frequent and recurring unwanted thoughts related to trauma such as nightmares, intrusive memories and flashbacks
• Those with PTSD often try to avoid situations or stimuli that remind them of their trauma
• PTSD is associated with attentional bias, the hypervigilance to stimuli associated with traumatic events, due to overconsolidation of memory by the amygdala
• Lifetime prevalence of PTSD is around 7%, though women are more likely to develop the disorder

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms

• Chronic tension, anxiety, memory and attention problems
• Avoidance of trauma-related reminders or emotions
• Hyperarousal
• Negative mood or cognition, inability to recall event, persistent negative beliefs, self blame, trauma-related emotions
• Re-experiencing intrusive symptoms with intrusive memories, traumatic nightmares, flashbacks, distress emotional reactivity

Resilience Factors

• Seeking out support from other people ,such as friends and family
• Finding a support group after a traumatic event
• Feeling good about one’s own actions in the face of danger
• Having a coping strategy, or a way of getting through the bad event and learning from it
• Being able to act and respond effectively despite feeling fear

Personality Disorders

General Personality Disorders

Personality Disorders

• Psychopathology characterized by long-lasting maladaptivity and unresponsive of individuals to feedback mechanisms with the world that causes distress and impairment of daily life
• Are seen as extreme versions of normal personality traits creating a continuum between what is normal and what is psychopathological
• Many that are diagnosed with personality disorders may also be applicable to trauma-based disorders
• Personality disorders may also be stigmatizing and may affect individual’s lives even after the diagnostic criteria are no longer met

DSM-5 Interpretation of Personality Disorders

• DSM-5 describes an alternative model confronting the negative issues associated with personality disorders
• Personality disorders are then viewed as impairments in specific areas of personality sometimes with displays of pathological personality traits
  • Allows for the diagnosis with a personality disorder - trait specified with impairment of functions with pathological levels on some traits even if criteria for specific personality disorders are not met

Personality Disorder Symptoms

• Distorted thinking patterns
• Problematic emotional responses
• Impulse control (over or underregulated)
• Interpersonal difficulties

Cluster A Personality Disorders

Cluster A: Odd or Eccentric Behavior

• Personality disorders characterized by reclusivity and suspicion that often interferes with the development of personal relationships
• Includes Paranoid, Schizoid and Schizotypal Disorder

Paranoid Personality Disorder

• Cluster A personality disorder characterized by tense, guarded and suspicious behavior with the holding of grudges
• Common delusions are that other people are coming to get them

Schizoid Personality Disorder

• Cluster A personality disorder characterized by socially isolated behavior and restricted emotional expression

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

• Cluster A personality disorder characterized by peculiarities in thought, appearance, and behavior that are disconcerting to others leading to emotional detachment and isolation

Cluster B Personality Disorders

Cluster B: Dramatic, Emotional or Erratic Behavior

• Includes Histrionic, Narcissistic, Borderline and Antisocial Disorders

Histrionic Personality Disorder

• Cluster B personality disorder characterized by seductive behavior, rapidly changing moods and shallow emotions due to needs for immediate gratification and constant reassurance

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

• Cluster B personality disorder characterized by self absorbed behavior, expectation of special treatment, expectation of adulation and envy of attention given to others

Borderline Personality Disorder

• Cluster B personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relations, self-image and affects with marked impulsivity
• Individuals lack a strong sense of self, cannot tolerate being alone and fear abandonment
• 1-2% of adults reach the criteri\a for borderline personality disorder
• DSM-V diagnostic criteria include the inclusion of five symptoms

Development of Borderline Personality Disorder

• Hypotheses that those with borderline personality disorder have caretakers that don’t accept them or are unreliable or unavailable
  • Constant rejection and criticism decrease the learning of emotional regulation and emotional comprehension
• Hypotheses that those with borderline personality disorder have caretakers that promoted dependence, preventing adequate development of sense of self that is separate from others evaluations of them
• Hypotheses that those with borderline personality disorder have

Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonments
• A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships
• Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
• Impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially myself-damaging (eg. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
• Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
• Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood, with periods of extreme depression, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (eg displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
• Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms
• Experiencing uncertainty in how they see themselves and their role in the world
• Often view things as extreme - all good or all bad

Conduct Disorder

• Psychopathological precursor to antisocial personality disorder characterized by persistent pattern of inappropriate behavior such as bullying, cruelty, theft, lying and violation of social norms

Antisocial Personality Disorder

• Cluster B personality disorder characterized by a lack of concern for people, hedonism and seeking immediate gratification of their wants and needs
• 1-4% of the population has antisocial personality disorder
• Most apparent in late adolescence and early adulthood, cannot be diagnosed before 18 but there must be displayed antisocial conduct before the age of 15
• Many patients with antisocial personality disorder typically improve after 40, possibly due to biological drives

Development of Antisocial Personality Disorder

• Physiological factors such as slower alpha-wave activity demonstrating lower arousal and aversion to punishment prevents learning from punishment and promoting sensation-seeking behavior
• Physiological factors such as decreased size of amygdala demonstrating decreased response to pain of others
• Social factors such as low socioeconomic status, dysfunctional families and childhood abuse and childhood malnutrition associated with the development of antisocial personality disorder in the future

Symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder

• Repeatedly breaking the law
• Repeatedly being deceitful
• Being impulsive or incapable of planning ahead
• Being irritable or aggressive
• Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others
• Being consistently irresponsible
• Lack of concern for others
• Lack of remorse for behaviors
• Not aware of social cues involving empathy

Psychopathy

• Descriptive continuum used to describe the willingness to hurt and take advantage of others without evidence of concern or remorse
• Psychopathy according to the DSM 5 describes people with antisocial personality disorder who are also extremely uncaring, are willing to hurt others for personal gain and display behaviors that are more extreme than those associated with antisocial personality disorder

Symptoms of Psychopathy

• More extreme in terms of traits such as glibness, grandiose sense of self-worth, shallow affect and manipulativeness
• Believed to be on the same continuum as antisocial personality disorder
• Are typically more callous and dangerous, willing to kill intentionally

Cluster C Personality Disorders

Cluster C: Anxious or Fearful

• Personality disorders characterized by prominence of symptoms when interacting with others that are similar to that of anxiety
• Includes Avoidant, Dependent and Obsessive Compulsive Disorders

Avoidant Personality Disorder

• Cluster C personality disorder characterized by consistent routines to avoid new and possibly stressful experiences, are typically easily hurt and embarrassed and have few close friends

Dependent Personality Disorder

• Cluster C personality disorder characterized by the need for constant advice and reassurance due to a fear of abandonment and a need for other to make decisions

Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorders

• Psychopathological behavioral disorder characterized by frequent intrusive thoughts and compulsive actions
• Affects 1-2 percent of the population, is more common in women than in men and onset generally occurs in early adulthood
• Often anticipate catastrophe or loss of control, fear that they might do or might have done something
• People are aware that their obsessions and compulsions are irrational but are unable to stop them

Obsessions

• Recurrent, intrusive and unwanted thoughts, ideas or mental images that increase anxiety

Compulsions

• Particular acts that people with OCD feel driven to perform over and over to reduce anxiety

Development of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders

• OCD may arise from conditioning in which anxiety is paired with a specific event through classical conditioning
  • Engagement in behavior that reduces anxiety is reinforced through operant conditioning, increasing the likelihood of repeat behavior
• OCD may have genetic factors, with specific control over the glutamate neurotransmitter

Personality Disorder Treatment

Clomipramine

• SSRI most effective with OCD due to the blockage of the reuptake of neurotransmitters

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• Is most effective and long-lasting with OCD especially due to exposure therapy and response prevention

Response Prevention

• Cognitive behavioral therapy technique with exposure of clients to triggering stimuli with prevention of engagement in maladaptive behavioral responses
  • Hopes to break the conditioned link between a particular stimulus and a compulsive behavior

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

• Is slightly effective for treatment of borderline personality disorder through combinations of behavioral and cognitive treatments with a mindfulness approach
• First stage has therapist target of extreme and dysfunctional behaviors in hope of replacing maladaptive behaviors with appropriate behaviors
• Second stage has the exploration of past traumatic experiences that may be the root of emotional issues
• Third stage has the development of self-respect and independent problem solving in hope of preventing reversion into prior dependent characteristics

Deep Brain Stimulation

• Is effective and long-lasting with OCD, especially when other treatments fail
• DBS leads to clinically significant reduction of symptoms and improvements of quality of life