psych

UNIT 3: 

3.1: Themes in Developmental Psychology:

• Developmental Psychology: A branch of psychology that focuses on how people grow and change throughout their lives 

  • Chronological Order: Focuses on how humans develop in a sequential order

  • Thematic Issue: Focus on a specific theme and topic that spans across a person’s life 

• Stability vs Change: Certain characteristics of an individual will remain constant over time while others evolve

• Longitudinal Studies: Used to gain insight into changes and patterns over an extended period

  • Good for tracking developmental changes, understanding different trends, and even gaining insight into cause-and-effect relationships

  • Can be very expensive and require a lot of time/resources

• Nature vs Nurture: 

  • Heredity: Predisposed characteristics that influence an individual’s physical, behavioral, and mental traits/processes.

  • Environment: External factors that individuals experience

• Continuous Development: The development of a human is gradual and smooth

• Discontinuous Development: The development of a human happens in stages

• Erik Erikson Stages of Development:

  • Example of discontinuous development

• Cross-sectional study: Studying different groups of people and different ages at the same time

  • Allows for quick data gathering

  • Less expensive than longitudinal studies

  • Cannot show relations between variables

• Cohort: A group of individuals who share a common characteristic, generally when we are talking about cohorts and data we are talking about people in the same age ranges

• Cohort Effect: Differences among a group of people cause by circumstances unique to a generation rather than ages

  • Results can vary due to cultural factors rather than age

3.2: Physical Changes from Birth to Death:

• Prenatal Development: 

  • Germinal Stage

  • Embryonic Stage

  • Fetal Stage

• Teratogens: Substances that can cause birth defects or developmental problems in a developing fetus

  • Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Environmental Toxins

• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: Caused by consuming alcohol during pregnancy and can result in physical, cognitive, and behavioral problems for the infant

  • Smoking: Restricts oxygen flow to the fetus, low birth weight, and underdevelopment

• Maternal Illness: A disease of infection that a mother experiences during pregnancy that can affect the developing fetus

• Genetic Mutations can happen spontaneously or be inherited from parents

  • This can lead to various genetic disorders, affecting not only physical development but cognitive development as well

  • Can make a fetus more susceptible to teratogens or environmental toxins

  • Down Syndrome: Missing Chrome 21

  • Turner Syndrom: Faulty X Chrome

• Environmental Factors: Causes genetic mutations or changes gene expression

  • Air Pollution

  • Water Contaminants

  • Radiation

  • Pesticides

• Infancy:

  • Infant Reflexes: Involuntary movements that help with survival

  • Neurological Responses

• Palmar Grasp: A finger placed in a baby’s palm will cause the baby to close their hand around it

• Plantar Grasp: A finger placed under the sole of a baby’s foot will cause the toes to curl

• Babinski Reflex: When the sole of a baby’s foot is stroked then their big toe rises and other toes fan out

• Rooting Reflex: When a baby’s cheek is gently stroked near the mouth, the baby turns in that direction ready to eat

• The order of development is generally consistent but the age at which it happens varies due to environmental, genetic, and cultural factors

• Tummy Time: A child who spends time on their stomach during playtime

• Gross Motor Skills: Involves larger movements such as crawling and walking, allowing a child to navigate their environment

• Fine Motor Skills: Critical for smaller movements such as holding a spoon. These are tasks that are critical for feeding, drawing, and playing

• Visual Cliff Experiment: Experiment to show when babies develop depth perception

  • One side is shallow and one side is glass with a floor lower on the ground. Babies were tasked with crawling over the glass. If they didn’t they had depth perception

• Imprinting: Forming an attachment to the first moving object that the newborn sees, which is generally the mother

• Sensitive Period: A time in which the brain can more quickly learn certain skills

• The first few years are significant for language development

  • If not exposed, children will struggle to develop them later in life

• Puberty: When an individual reaches sexual maturity, meaning that they can now reproduce

  • Hormonal changes and intense emotional swings

  • Primary Sex Characteristics: Traits directly related to the reproductive system and ability to reproduce

  • Menarchie: First time a girl menstruates

  • Spermarchie: First time a boy ejaculates

  • Secondary Sex Characteristics: Traits that are indirectly related to reproduction, such as men having broader shoulders or women having less facial hair 

  • Adolescent Growth Spurt: Rapid increase in height and weight

  • When adolescence begins to slow, this means an individual has reached adulthood, generally the late 20s and early 30s

• Mid 30s Early 40s – gradual decline

  • Muscle mass and flexibility go down

  • Reaction time slows

  • Hearing and vision become slower

• Menopause: Middle adulthood phenomenon that marks the end of a woman’s menstrual cycle and the ability to conceive

3.3: Gender and Sexual Orientation:

• Sex: The biological difference between males and females

• Gender: The social, physical, and behavioral traits that a society considers normal for men and women

• Gender Schema Theory: The ability for children to create mental categories for masculinity and femininity

  • Leads to the creation of gender roles and stereotypes

• Socialization: The process of learning what values, standards, and attitudes are appropriate 

  • Family: Early in your life because you are with your parents and learn indirectly

  • School: Larger impact in adolescence 

  • Peer Groups: Larger impact in adolescence 

  • Media: How is the presentation of ideas and people impacting your personal beliefs

• Sexual Orientation: An individual's sexual attraction toward members of the same or different sex

3.4: Theories of Cognitive Development:

• Jean Piaget: Studied how children think and understand the world

  • Children develop schemas, which are mental frameworks used in organizing information about the world

  • Schemas become more detailed over time

  • Assimilation: Fitting new information into existing schemas

  • Accommodation: Changing a schema to incorporate new information

• Stages of Cognitive Development:

  • Sensorimotor Stage (0 - 2 yr): Children begin to move and they learn through actions

    • Develops Object Permanence: Objects exist even when out of sight

  • Preoperational Stage (2 - 7 yr): Toddlers and children at this age start to develop symbolic thinking, learn language, and engage in pretend play

    • Symbolic Thinking: The ability to think about things not in front of you

    • Animism: Human-like qualities are given to non-living things. Children might say a toy has thoughts

    • Egocentric: Children cannot see from other’s point of view

    • Three Mountains Task: A child is given 3 mountain tops and a picture from each of them. The child then has to determine which perspective is the most accurate given the placement of a doll

    • Theory of Mind: The ability to understand that others have thoughts and perspectives as well

  • Concrete Operational (8 - 10 yr): Children become more logical and can perform more mental operations

    • Conservation: Something stays the same amount even if the shape changes

    • Reversibility: Involves the ability to mentally reverse an action

    • Classification: An individual can organize objects based on multiple attributes, such as sorting objects by color and shape simultaneously

    • Seriation: The ability to arrange items in quantitative order

  • Formal Operational (11 - 12 yr): Children gain the ability to think abstractly, use logic in more advanced ways, consider hypothetical situations, and ponder philosophical questions

• Lev Vygotsky Sociocultural Theory: Children develop skills and knowledge by interacting with the people around them

  • Social Interaction

  • Support

  • Guidance

  • Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding: Three areas:

    • The area of knowledge a child can learn on their own

    • The area of knowledge a child can learn with guidance

    • The area of knowledge a child cannot learn even with guidance

  • Scaffolding: The guide does not tell the answer explicitly but gives the steps/clues up to the answer

• Dementia: The broad term for cognitive disorders that significantly impair memory, reasoning, and other mental abilities

3.5: Language Development:

• Phonemes: The smallest unit of sound, the first sound an infant makes

  • Typically the sound of a single letter

  • No meaning

  • Being able to distinguish them helps with pronunciation

• Morphemes: The smallest unit of meaning in language

  • Prefix or suffix

  • Small words (roots)

  • They tell us how words are formed and allow us to change the meaning

• Semantics: The meaning behind words and sentences

  • Subject

  • Action

  • Object

• Surface Structure Semantics: The literal meaning of words

• Deep Structure Semantics: The underlying meaning of a sentence

• Grammar: A set of rules that govern how words can be combined 

• Syntax: Specific rules for arranging words and phrases into sentences

• Culture affects grammar and syntax

• Language is Generative: It allows for the creation of an infinite number of sentences and ideas

• Nonverbal Gestures

• 4 Stages of Language Development

  • Cooing Stage (2-3 mo): The infant makes soft, repetitive sounds

  • Babbling Stage (4-6 mo): Infants will start combining consonants and vowels

  • One-Word Stage (12-18 mo): Infants will be able to say ] words that have meaning/entire ideas

    • Holophrases: Single words used to communicate a larger meaning

  • Two-Word Stage / Telegraphic Speech Stage (18-24 mo): Children can start to connect two or three-word phrases

• Overgeneralization: An individual who is learning a new language applies grammar rules too broadly

  • Saying “mouses” instead of “mice”

3.6: Social-Emotional Development:

• Ecological Systems Theory: Understanding how different environmental systems impact human development

  • Microsystem: Immediate, daily environment like family and friends

  • Mesosystem: The connections between different parts of the microsystem such as relationships between parents and teachers

  • Exosystem: Social systems that one doesn’t necessarily interact with daily such as a parent’s workplace

  • Macrosystem: Broader cultural, societal, and economic contexts that influence an individual, including cultural norms, values, and laws

  • Chronosystem: The dimension of time, reflecting how life events, transitions, and historical changes develop over a lifetime

• Parenting and Attachment Styles:

  • Authoritarian: Strict parents with lots of rules and little warmth

  • Authoritative: Balanced approach with rules and open communication

  • Permissive: Lenient approach where parents are highly responsive but set little boundaries

  • Indifferent: A parenting style where the parents are uninvolved showing little guidance or responsiveness

• Attachment: The deep emotional bond formed between an individual and a care give, influencing trust and other relationships

• Temperament: Innate traits that determine an individual’s typical emotions, activity level, and adaptability

• Secure Attachment: A strong and healthy emotional bond where the child feels safe, understood, and comforted

• Insecure Attachment:

  • Avoidant: Children suppress their emotional needs often appearing independent or distant

  • Anxious: Children need an increased amount of closeness and reassurance, stemming from inconsistent caregiver responses

  • Disorganized: A lack of clear attachment with confusion and apprehension around caregivers

• Separation Anxiety: A distress response to being separated from a primary caregiver

• Harry Harlow Importance of Touch Experiment: Infant monkeys were separated from their mothers and then two mothers made of wire and cloth. The former was for food and nourishment while the latter was for comfort 

  • The monkeys spent a significantly longer time seeking comfort from the cloth mother

• Parallel Play: Children play alongside each other without actually interacting or coordinating

• Imaginary Audience: The belief in adolescents that others are constantly watching and judging them leading to heightened self-consciousness

• Personal Fable: The belief in adolescents that one’s experiences are unique and not understood by anyone else

• Social Clock: Cultural expectations for the timing of major life events such as starting a career, getting married, or having children

• Psychosocial Development: The progression of emotional and social growth influenced by interactions with others and societal expectations across one’s lifespan

• Psychosocial Conflicts: A challenge or crisis at each stage of life that requires balancing personal needs with societal demands

• Aversive Childhood Experiences: Potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood, such as abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction. They have long-term effects on physical and mental health

  • Sociocultural Variation: Differences in socioeconomic standing, cultural norms, and access to resources can influence the prevalence and impact of childhood adversities

  • Long-Term Outcomes: Increased risks of chronic health conditions, mental health challenges, and difficulties in social and emotional functioning

  • Resilience and Recovery: People can adapt and thrive despite adversity, supported by protective factors

• Identity Statuses:

  • Achievement: The stage in which an individual has explored different options and committed to a particular identity such as careers and beliefs

  • Diffusion: A state of lack of direction or commitment where an individual has not yet fully explored or made decisions about their identity

  • Foreclosure: A stage where an individual makes a commitment to an identity without exploring other options, often due to external pressures

  • Moratorium: A period of active exploration and experimentation with different identities without yet committing to a single one

3.7: Classical Conditioning:

• Behavioral Perspective: Learning from our environment, focusing on how an individual's actions are influenced by it

• Conditioning: Forming associations between two events or responses

• Stimulus: An event, object, or thing that triggers a specific reaction

  • Neutral Stimuli: Stimuli that elicit no reaction from a subject

  • Unconditioned Stimuli: Stimuli that naturally triggers a response without conditioning

    • Unconditioned Response: A natural response to something that happens without any learning

  • Conditioned Stimuli: A previously neutral stimulus is paired repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus to trigger a learned response

• Acquisition: The process of developing connections between neutral and unconditioned stimuli

• Pavlov’s Dog Experiment: He noticed that dogs naturally drool when they taste food

  • Food is an unconditioned stimulus

  • Drooling is an unconditioned response

  • The experiment was to see if he could associate a neutral stimulus (a bell) with food. He rang the bell every time food was given to the dog and eventually, the dog caught on and the bell became a conditioned stimulus

  • Even when the food was not brought out, the dog would still drool at the sound of the bell

  • Demonstrated that learning can be studied objectively

• Extinction: A conditioned response gradually diminishes. This happens when a conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without being paired with the unconditioned stimulus, causing the association between the two to break

• Spontaneous Recovery: The reappearance after a pause of an extinguished conditioned response

• Stimulus Generalization: An individual responds to a stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus

  • In the Pavlov experiment, an example could be a ding sound from metal clashing

• Stimulus Discrimination: An individual learns to differentiate between the conditioned stimulus and other similar stimuli

• Higher/Second Order Conditioning: A neutral stimulus that has become a conditioned stimulus is paired without another unconditioned stimulus

• Counterconditioning Therapy: Therapists use classical conditioning to help unlearn harmful emotional responses. Examples include fear such as arachnophobia

• Taste Aversion: A type of classical conditioning where an individual learns to avoid a particular taste, flavor, or food because they associate it with illness

  • One Trial Learning: Only one pairing of stimulus and negative responses is necessary for a strong association

• Biological Preparedness: This is a survival technique where people and animals naturally form associations between certain stimuli and responses

• Habituation: An organism gradually stops responding as strongly to a stimulus over time 

• Sensory Adaptation: An individual gets used to an unchanging stimulus (THESE ARE DIFFERENT)

3.8: Operant Conditioning and Reinforcement Schedules:

• Operant Conditioning: Learning by associating behaviors with consequences, either through reinforcement or punishment

• B. F. Skinner: A behaviorist who believed that individuals are more likely to do certain behaviors when they receive certain reinforcements

• Law of Effect: Behaviors resulting in positive outcomes become strengthened and those resulting in negative outcomes are weakened

• Positive: Adding a stimulus

• Negative: Removing a stimulus

• Reinforcement: Trying to increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring

  • Positive Reinforcement: Adding something desirable to increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring

  • Negative Reinforcement: Removing something unpleasant to increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring

• Primary Reinforcers: Naturally rewarding because they satisfy basic needs like food, water, and warmth

• Secondary Reinforcers: Learned rewards, often associated with primary reinforcers

  • Ex: Money → can purchase food and water

• Punishment: Trying to decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring 

  • Positive Punishment: Adding something unpleasant to decrease a certain behavior

  • Negative Punishment: Removing something positive to decrease a certain behavior

• Discrimination: Individuals can tell which behaviors do and don’t get rewarded

  • Reinforcement Discrimination: Individuals learn to respond only to specific signals or cues that indicate that a behavior is to be reinforced

• Generalization: Individuals apply what they learn through conditioning to similar situations

  • Reinforcement Generalization: Happens when a response that has been reinforced in the presence of one stimulus also occurs in the presence of a similar stimuli

• Shaping: Reinforcement is used to gradually teach a complex behavior by rewarding small steps that lead to the final desired behavior

• Skinner Box: Used to try and get rats to push a lever to get food

  • First, the rat would get food for going closer to the lever, then they would only get food after pulling the lever

• Instinctive Drift: A limitation in shaping behaviors that is because certain natural behaviors are essentially hardwired into an animal

• Superstitious Behaviors: People mistakenly believe that an action leads to a certain outcome, even though they aren’t actually connected

• Coincidental Reinforcement: Caused by an accidental reinforcement because it coincides with a positive outcome even though the behavior itself is not the cause 

• Extrinsic Motivation: The individual is motivated to perform a behavior because of an external reward or to avoid an external punishment

• Intrinsic Motivation: The individual has a desire to do something for their own sake, not because of a punishment or reward

• Reinforcement Schedules:

  • Continuous: Reinforcement is provided every time a correct behavior is performed

  • Partial: Reinforcement does not occur with every correct behavior, making it resistant to extinction

    • Fixed-Ratio: Reinforcement is given after a specific number of behaviors

      • The fastest response rate 

    • Variable-Interval: Reinforcement is given after an unpredictable amount of time

      • Slowest rate of responding

    • Fixed-Interval: Reinforcement is given to an individual after a certain amount of time has passed 

      • Has a scalloped response pattern 

    • Variable-Ratio: Reinforcement is provided after an unpredictable number of correct behaviors, leading to a high and steady response rate 

• Learned Helplessness: An individual or animal believes they cannot change or influence an event in life, even when in reality they can

  • Generally occurs when the individual or animal is repeatedly in a situation where no matter what they did they had bad outcomes

  • This leads to them believing that they are powerless

3.9: Social, Cognitive, and Neurological Factors in Learning:

• Predictability: The ability to guess and react when an event might occur

• Cognitive Map: A mental representation of the layout of one’s environment. 

  • For example, in the Tolman and Honzik experiment, rats, after exploring a maze, show signs of developing a cognitive map of it

• Latent Learning: Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it

• Insight Learning: Solving problems through sudden insight, which contrasts with strategy-based solutions

  • Sultan the Chimp Experiment: Sultan was given a stick to grab fruit with, but the fruit was placed out of his reach. This led him to discover other solutions. He could use his stick to reach a longer one to get the fruit

• Observational / Social Learning: Learning by observing others, not necessarily by experiencing consequences ourselves

• Social Learning Theory: Individuals learn social behaviors by observing and imitating others

• Modeling: The process of observing and imitating a specific behavior

• Bobo Doll Experiment: A kid and an adult in the same room are working on art and toys respectively. Suddenly, the adult starts attacking an inflated clown for 10 minutes yelling stimulating things such as “hit him” and “kick him”. The kid is then taken to a room full of toys in which the kid is told that the toys are for other children, making the subject child angry. Then they are sent into a room with an inflated clown, where the kid begins to attack it

• Vicarious Conditioning: The act of learning things through observing reactions, attitudes, and emotions of others rather than direct exposure

• Mirror Neurons: Neurons that some scientists believe fire when we perform certain actions or observe another doing so

  • The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy

• Theory of Mind: The ability to understand that others have thoughts and perspectives as well

• Prosocial Behaviors: Positive, constructive, and helpful behavior

• Antisocial Behaviors: Negative, destructive, and harmful behavior

UNIT 2: 

2.1: Perception:

• Perception: The process of interpreting the information we obtain through our 5 senses

  • Interpreting a stimulus

• Sensation: The raw data or information that we receive from our sensory receptors

  • Detecting a stimulus

• Top-Down Processing: Using prior knowledge and experiences to interpret the information 

  • It helps us process things in a relatively efficient and quick manner but sometimes can lead us astray

  • This can lead to skewed interpretations 

  • Proofreaders Illusion 

• Bottom-Up Processing: Building perception from the ground up, organizing and interpreting information as it comes in without relying on prior knowledge

  • A stimuli or experience is complex and not familiar to the individual 

  • It takes longer than top-down

• Schemas: A mental framework built from past experiences

  • Essentially, it is a cognitive structure based on someone’s experiences 

  • Guide our perception and help us interpret and organize our environment

  • You can describe what a birthday party is like because you have been to them before 

  • Environmental factors: Does 13 look like a 13 or a B

• Perceptual Sets: A mental shortcut that your brain uses to quickly interpret what you are experiencing. 

  • Different from a schema because perceptual sets are used to perceive something by categorizing it 

  • A car is a vehicle or an apple is a fruit

  • Mood, culture, emotions, and other internal factors can interfere with both perceptual sets and schema and can lead us astray. 

• Muller Lyer Illusion: An illusion in which 3 lines with the same length have different ending arrows, so the lines appear to be different in length

• Selective Attention: When we focus on a particular stimulus, we often tune out other stimuli in our environment

  • You are at a party with a lot of loud music and people talking, but you are still able to focus on a single conversation with someone

  • Helps manage sensory information

  • Cocktail Party Effect: The ability to focus on a single sound or conversation  

• Inattentional Blindness: When our attention is divided, we often experience inattentional blindness, which is the failure to notice stimuli in our field of vision due to our attention being focused elsewhere

  • Change Blindness: A type of inattentional blindness where we fail to notice changes in the environment

• Apparent Movement: Perceiving motion even when nothing is moving

  • Stroboscopic Motion: Showing a series of images in rapid succession to create the illusion of movement

    • Commonly found in animation, most notably stop motion

  • Phi Phenomenon (Loading symbol): Occurs when lights blink on and off in a sequence, resulting in perceiving objects as moving even when they are stationary 

• Induced Movement: A stationary object appears to move because of the movement of surrounding objects

• Autokinetic Effect: A stationary point of light in a dark environment seems to move

• Gestalt Psychology: This psychology focuses on how humans naturally group elements together to form meaningful patterns

  • It helps to explain how we organize our perceptual world

• Principles of Gestalt Psychology:

  • Proximity: This principle states that when objects are placed close to each other, they are often perceived as a single group, while objects that are spaced farther apart are seen as separate entities

  • Similarity: This principle refers to how we perceive a group of similar objects or patterns as one cohesive unit

    • Even though each object is slightly different from the other ones, we still perceive this as one group

    • Anomaly: When an object is different from the others it becomes the focal point and stands out

  • Closure: This principle explains how our brains subconsciously fills in missing information when viewing a familiar but incomplete object

  • Figure/Ground: This principle describes how our visual system separates what we see into two categories

    • Figure: the object in focus

    • Ground: background

    •  

  • Symmetry: This principle describes the situation in which objects that are symmetrical to each other are perceived as one object rather than individual, separate elements

  • Continuation: This principle addresses why our eyes naturally follow continuous lines or paths

    • Exit sign with an arrow leads your gaze outward in the direction of the exit

• Depth Perception: The ability to perceive the relative distance of an object in one’s field of vision

  • Monocular Cues: Only requires one eye to help us perceive depth on flat or 2D surfaces

    • Relative Size: Objects close to you are bigger than objects far from you

    • Shading and Contour: Parts of an image that appear to be hazy and have less detail appear to be farther away than objects that are more clear and in focus

    • Relative Height: Objects higher in our visual field appear to be farther away

    • Linear Perspective: When parallel lines appear to converge at a point in the distance, this helps us to understand our position and depth

    • Interposition: When an object is blocked by another object, then the one being blocked is farther away

      •  

    • Texture and Gradient: Similar to shading and contour, objects that are clear and in focus are closer than objects that are blurry and lack details

      • Tree in background vs. Car on the left

    • Motion Parallax: Objects closer to you are more blurred and move quickly, whereas objects farther from you move slowly and are more in focus

  • Binocular Cues: Relies on both eyes working together

    • Depending on the distance of an object, our eyes will shift their positions in a process called convergence

    • Retinal Disparity: The difference between the two retinal images

• Perceptual Constancy: The ability to perceive objects as having consistent shape, size, color, and lightness, even when their appearance changes due to varying conditions

• Size Constancy: Our brain’s tendency to perceive objects as the same size

• Color Constancy: Perceiving the color of an object to remain constant even if the lighting changes

• Shape Constancy: The tendency of the brain to perceive an object’s shape as the same, even when it moves

• Lightness Constancy: This refers to our ability to perceive the blackness, whiteness, and grayness of an object as consistent even under different lighting conditions

  • This is essentially the shading of an object

  • If someone moves towards you, they arent getting bigger they are getting closer

  • If someone moves their head while talking, the head is not changing shape

  • If someone turns on a light, their skin color does not change

2.2: Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgements, and Decision-Making:

• Cognition: All forms of knowing and awareness, such as perceiving, remembering, reasoning, judging, conceiving, imagining, and problem-solving

• Concepts: Mental categories that help us organize and understand the world

• Prototype: The most typical or basic example of a concept. It serves as a mental image that illustrates the concept and acts as a cognitive reference point or benchmark

  • Concept: Ball

  • Prototypes: Basketball, Soccer Ball, etc.

• Assimilation: Fitting new information into existing schemas

• Accommodation: Changing a schema to incorporate new information

• Executive Functions: Cognitive processes that help individuals generate, organize, plan, and carry out goal-directed behaviors as well as engage in critical thinking

  • Linked to the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex

  • Rely on skills such as language, judgment, logic, and reasoning

• Algorithm: A person tackles a problem step-by-step in a systematic way

  • If you lose your phone, the algorithmic way of finding it involves searching every room one at a time

• Heuristics: Mental shortcuts based on past experiences

  • Common uses for heuristics:

    • Reduce the mental effort needed to make decisions

    • Simplify complex and difficult questions

    • Fast and accurate way to arrive at a conclusion

    • Helps with problem solving

  • If you lose your form, the heuristic way of finding it involves retracing your steps and focusing on areas in which you most recently had your phone

  • Representative Heuristic: Involves making judgments based on how much something resembles or represents a typical case or stereotype  

  • Availability Heuristic: Involves making judgments based on how easily examples come to mind.

    • This might lead to clouded judgment based on the most recent information and not all information

• Mental Set: A cognitive framework that relies on past experiences and successful strategies to solve new problems

  • Different from schema because a mental set is specific to problem-solving, whereas a schema is specific to organizing information

• Priming: The phenomenon where exposure to one stimulus influences how we respond to a later stimulus

  • Repetition Priming: Occurs when you are exposed to a specific stimulus that makes it easier to recognize that same or similar stimulus later. 

    • If throughout a video you see the word subscribe, and at the end of the video is a list of words, you are more likely to recognize subscribe first because of prior exposure

  • Semantic Priming: Involves the influence of one word on the interpretation of another, related word

    • If you see the word doctor you are more likely to quickly recognize or process related words like nurse or hospital. This is because the first word primes your brain to expect related content 

  • Framing: Refers to how information is presented, which can shape how we interpret and react to it, often influencing our decisions and judgment.

    • 20% fat vs 80% fat free

    • $100 shoe vs $180 shoe discounted to $100

• Creativity: We as individuals create new original ideas and solutions

  • Divergent Thinking: When a person explores many possible solutions, expanding the range of options for solving a problem

  • Convergent Thinking: Narrowing down the possibilities to identify the single best solution

  • Robert Sternberg’s 5 Key Components:

    • Expertise: The more knowledge one has about a subject, the more likely they are to apply it in new and innovative ways

    • Intrinsic Motivation: Individuals must have an internal drive to pursue a goal for personal satisfaction rather than external rewards

    • Venturesome Personality: The individual must be willing to seek out new experiences and embrace challenges that will help them grow and see things from different perspectives

    • Creative Environment: Individuals who surround themselves with other creative people and put themselves in creative environments tend to foster innovation and promote creative thinking

    • Imaginative Thinking: An individual must be able to view concepts in unique and creative ways instead of focusing on the traditional perspective

  • Functional Fixedness: Limits a person to using an object only in its traditional way

• Cognitive Biases:

  • Gambler’s Fallacy: The mistaken belief that if an event occurs more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future, or vice versa

    • If the roulette table’s last 10 spins landed on red, you predict it will have a higher chance of landing on black on the 11th spin

  • Sunk-Cost Fallacy: The tendency to continue to pursue an action in which you’ve already invested money, time, or resources, regardless of its future value

2.3: Introduction to Memory:

• Memory: Information that persists over time acquired through various experiences and can be stored and retrieved later

• Metacognition: The awareness of your own cognitive processes (different from memory)

• Explicit Memory: Involves information that we consciously recall – memories that require thought and effort

  • Episodic Memory: Relates to personal experiences or events

  • Semantic Memory: Involves knowledge, facts, and general information

• Implicit Memory: Consists of information or skills that we learn without being fully aware of it

  • Procedural Memory: Helps us recall how to perform tasks, such as motor skills and routines

• Prospect Memory: Involves remembering to perform future actions, like recalling to take medication at a specific time or attending a meeting next week

• Retention Questions:

  • Can you recall the information?

  • Can you recognize the information?

  • Can you quickly relearn the information?

• Parallel Processing: Your brain is handling multiple streams of information simultaneously

• Long-Term Potentiation (LTP): Process that strengthens the synaptic connections between neurons in the brain through repeated activation

• Working Memory Model: This model explains how our primary memory system, known as working memory, processes and temporarily holds information for cognitive tasks

  • Central Executive: Control center of working memory

    • Tasked with focusing attention, prioritizing tasks, switching between different activities, and integrating information

  • Phonological Loop: Deals with verbal and auditory information

    • Phonological Store: Holds spoken words and sounds for a short period

    • Articulatory Rehearsal Process: Helps you repeat and rehearse verbal information to keep it active in your working memory

  • Episodic Buffer: Explains how long-term memory integrates with working memory and how different types of information, such as sounds and visuals, are combined

    • Acts as a temporary storage system

  • Visuospatial Sketchpad: Handles visual and spatial information, allowing us to visualize objects and their location

• Multi-Store Model: Explains how information is processed, stored, and retrieved, focusing on three key systems that information must pass through if it’s going to be remembered

  • Always start with a stimulus, that goes to our sensory memory

  • Sensory Memory: Consists of the iconic and echoic memories

    • Iconic Memory: Visual sensory memory; lasts for a fraction of a second

      • Why you can see the sparks of a sparkler

    • Echoic Memory: Auditory sensory memory; lasts for 1 to 4 seconds

      • Why you can remember the last words someone said even if you weren’t paying attention

  • Automatic Processing: The information is gathered with little or no conscious effort

    • If something is detected that is interesting, then the information moves to the working memory (short-term memory)

    • To extend the length something stays in the working memory, you can do two things

      • Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeatedly going over information to prevent forgetting

        • Reciting numbers over and over to remember it

      • Elaborative Rehearsal: Connecting new information to something you already know, which makes it easier to remember

  • Encoding: The process that moves information from the working memory to the long-term memory

    • If attention is divided, this will disrupt the encoding process and make it harder to retain and recall information

    • This is why removing distractions is so helpful 

  • Full diagram of the multi-store model below:

• Levels of Processing Model: There are three levels of encoding to memory

  • Structural Processing: The focus is on the physical appearance or structure of the information

  • Phonemic Processing: The focus is on how information sounds 

  • Semantic Processing: The focus is on the meaning of the information

2.4: Encoding Memories:

• Encoding: The process and strategies we use to take in information and store it in our long-term memory 

  • Visual Encoding: Encoding information based on the observed visual elements 

    • Different fonts of writing and titles

  • Acoustic Encoding: The encoding process is assisted by sound elements

    • Creating rhymes to remember information

  • Tactile Encoding: Encoding information with the feeling of touch

    • Remembering the textures of objects

  • Organizational Encoding: Processing information in terms of a specific sequence

    • Lists, groups, hierarchies, relationships, etc.

  • Elaborative Encoding: Pairing new information with prior knowledge

    • Creating connections between what you just learned and what you already know

  • Semantic Encoding: Encoding information with a focus on the meaning and context of the information

    • It is used with deep processing and is one of the most effective methods of encoding

• Mnemonic Device: Remembering information more easily by organizing it in a way that is easier to recall

  • They commonly consist of rhymes, acronyms, associations, or visual images

  • Method of Loci: Remembering information by associating it with specific locations in a familiar setting

• Chunking: Grouping individual pieces of information into larger, more manageable units

• Spacing Effect: When information is learned all at once, we get a false sense of understanding, but when we space out studying and use distributed practice, we have better learning and retention

• Serial Position Effect: When studying, we might have a set order in which information is presented to us, which can affect our ability to remember and connect the right information.

  • Information at the start or end of a list is  much more likely to be remembered than information in the middle of the list

  • Primacy Effect: Information at the beginning of a list is more memorable because it has had more time to be rehearsed and encoded

  • Recency Effect: Information at the end of a list is more memorable because it is the most recent information received

2.5: Storing Memories:

• Types of Memory:

  • Sensory Memory: The briefest form of memory, only lasting for a few seconds

    • Iconic and Echoic memories are a part of this

  • Short-Term Memory: This form of memory holds around 7 items at a time, for around 20 to 30 seconds

  • Working Memory: A more dynamic form of short-term memory, not only storing but also processing information

  • Long-Term Memory: This form of memory has an unlimited capacity and can store information for long periods

• Frontal Lobe and Hippocampus store and process new explicit memories

• Cerebellum and Basil Ganglia store implicit memories

• Memory Consolidation: The process by which short-term memories are transformed into long-term memories

• Flashbulb Memory: Very clear memories that are often formed around events that are extremely stressful, traumatic, or emotional

• Autobiographical Memory: Involves memories that are connected to our own lives, generally those are more memorable because of the personal relevance these memories have

  • Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory: An extraordinary ability to remember events from their own lives, often due to the individual's biological processes

• Damage to the Hippocampus:

  • Left side: Struggling to remember verbal information

  • Right side: Struggling to remember visual information

• Amnesia: The temporary or permanent loss of memory

  • Retrograde: A person can no longer retrieve past information, normally happening due to a blow to the person’s head

  • Anterograde: A person can no longer form new memories, a type of amnesia almost always involving something happening to the hippocampus

  • Source: A person can remember the information but cannot remember where or how they learned it

  • Infantile: An adult cannot remember personal experiences from the early years of their life

2.6: Retrieving Memories:

• Recall: Retrieving information without any hints or cues

  • Giving your phone number at a store or to a new person

• Recognition: Retrieving information after using retrieval cues to help access it

  • Taking a test with multiple-choice options

• Context-Dependent Memory: Retrieval is improved when you are in the same environment as when you first learned the information

• Mood-Congruent Memory: You are more likely to recall memories that match your current mood

• State-Dependent Memory: Retrieval is improved if you are in the same physical or mental state as when the memory was encoded

• Testing Effect: An enhancement in the long-term retention of information as a result of taking a memory test

2.7: Forgetting and Other Memory Challenges:

• Forgetting Curve: A model developed by Herman Ebbinghaus that illustrates how people lose information over time if they don't try to retain it

  • Forgetting Curve with memory retention strategies

• Encoding Failure: Information is not stored correctly, mostly due to attention being divided during the encoding process

• Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon: Knowing what something is but not quite thinking of the word for it

• Proactive Interference: Older memories interfere with the recall of newer memories

  • Proactive means forward-acting

• Retroactive Interference: Newer memories interfere with the recall of older memories

  • Retroactive means backward-acting

• Distress: Stress that is perceived to be detrimental, often caused by negative life events

• Eustress: Stress that is perceived as beneficial, often caused by positive life events

• Types of Ego:

  • Ego: Located in the conscious and works with others by controlling reality

  • Superego: Located in the preconscious and consists of ideals, judgments, and moral components

  • Id: Located in the unconscious and strives to satisfy a person’s basic pleasure

• Defense Mechanisms: Mechanisms allow the Ego to protect itself and reduce anxiety. 

  • Generally, these mechanisms focus on distorting reality and happen unconsciously

  • The most basic mechanism is the repression of memories

• Repression: Believed to be an automatic process that shields a person from confronting difficult emotions or experiences

• Constructive Memory: When we are remembering information, the brain combines actual stored information with additional elements such as assumptions, expectations, and even new information

• Misinformation Effect: If an individual alters a memory with misleading or false information it can distort it. 

2.8: Intelligence and Achievement:

• General Ability Debate:

  • (Spearman’s Theory) If intelligence is a general ability, then people who perform well in one cognitive area then they will perform well in others as well. 

  • If intelligence comprises multiple abilities, then intelligence is not a single trait but a combination of skills such as emotional intelligences, creativity, and problem-solving

• Cattell-Horn-Carroll Intelligence Theory:

  • Fluid Intelligence: The ability to quickly reason and break down abstract problems which decreases when we get older

  • Crystallized Intelligence: The accumulated knowledge and verbal skills an individual has which increases when we get older

• Savant Syndrome: A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as computation or drawing

• Gardner’s Eight Intelligences:

  • Naturalist

  • Linguistic

  • Logical-Mathematical

  • Musical

  • Spatial

  • Bodily-Kinesthetic

  • Intrapersonal

  • Interpersonal

• Sternberg Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:

  • Analytical Intelligence: Assessed with intelligence tests with questions that have a single right answer

  • Creative Intelligence: Innovative smarts: the ability to adapt and generate new ideas

  • Practical Intelligence: Required for every day tasks that may be poorly defined that may have multiple solutions 

• Alfred Binet: Creator of an early intelligence test who introduced the concept of Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

  • IQ = mental age / actual age x 100

  • IQ tests no longer compare mental and actual age but rather performance compared to those around you in the same age group on a standardized scale

  • In the 20th century, there were immigrant IQ tests for US entry

  • IQ tests can be biased and are also affected by outside factors

  • Flynn Effect: Over time, IQ test scores have generally increased because of access to better education, economic stability, healthcare, nutrition, and learning resources

    • More variation in groups than between groups

    • Groups consist of people of the same race, gender, or socioeconomic status

  • Socio-cultural responsiveness

• Stereotype Threat: The fear or anxiety an individual may feel when they are at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group

• Stereotype Lift: An individual benefits from positive stereotypes about their social group

• Psychometrics: A branch of psychology that focuses on the quantification of mental attributes. In order for an intelligence test to be relevant and beneficial to an individual, they must follow the psychometric principles:

  • Reliability: A test produces consistent results each time it is given

    • Test Retest Reliability: The consistency of test results over time when the same person takes a test again

    • Split Half Reliability: The consistency of results within the test itself, such as comparing the results of two halves of the same test

      • Ideally, there should be a high correlation between the scores for two halves

  • Validity: The test must satisfy one of the following types of validity

    • Content Validity: The extent to which a test inquires about the information or behaviors that are of interest to the test

    • Construct Validity: The degree to which a test can actually measure a specific trait or concept to ensure that the test accurately measures the specific concepts or trait it is supposed to

    • Criterion Validity: Checks to see if the test correlates with any outside variables or measures.

      • If this is low the test may not be valid

    • Predictive Validity: Predicts future performance, this validity can only be used when there is a large data set

      • This is used to predict trends and patterns

  • Standardization: Standardized tests allow the test to be administered in a consistent way.

• Achievement Tests: Designed to measure what someone knows at a specific point in time

  • Example: AP Tests, Finals, etc.

• Aptitude Tests: Aims to predict how someone will perform in the future

  • Examples: SAT, ACT, etc.