Chapter 1.1 & 1.2

Psychological Science: The study, through research, of mind, brain, and behavior.

· Behavior can be simple (eye movement), or complex (planning how to construct a building from the ground up).

· Psychological science can stem from microscopic analysis at the neurotransmitter level.

· Human behavior, in day-to-day life, can be an example of psychological science.

· Strives to teach critical thinking, which means to systematically question and evaluate information using well-supported evidence.

· Amiable skepticism (welcome the idea of questioning the world around you)

Does brain training work?

· In short, no.

· Tools developed in brain training can be applied to activities that require a similar mental process, but they do not improve your general ability to consume and process information in a more intellectual way.

· This idea can be applied to video games. If you are amazing at a certain FPS game, chances are your skills will carry over relatively well to other games of a similar nature. On the other hand, these skills likely won’t improve your skill in non-FPS games.

· You are, however, able to train your brain to reach certain brain states that allow it to function more optimally for certain tasks. This can be achieved through studying neuro-responses.

Chapter 1.3

Noncritical thinking can lead to erroneous (wrong, incorrect) conclusions.

· Just because things happen at the same time as one another, doesn’t mean they are related.

· An example of this would be how ice cream sales are almost perfectly correlated with murder rate.

· Hindsight bias (when we accept explanations for things after the fact)

· An example of this would be violent shooters, when people always say, “the writing was on the wall” or “we should have known”.

· In fact, there is no way of knowing with 100% certainty that something will unfold; it is essential to provide room for the chance of random actions.

· Humans recognize patterns, we use patterns to attempt to sort through all the “noise” around us.

· We are unable to generate random thoughts, everything is influenced.

Chapter 1.4

· Why are people so unaware of their weaknesses?

· Figure 1.6 (Dunning Kruger Effect)

· Aims to capture the difference between your subjective assessment relative to your actual ability.

· Note that the better your actual ability, the closer your results appear when compared to your perceived ability, vice versa.

Why are people so inaccurate in the first place?

· Most people believe they are above average at most things, until they try.

· A lot of the time we are blatantly unaware of how we compare to others.

Chapter 1.7

· The pillars of the psychology discipline: Clinical, Cognitive, Cultural, Developmental, Health, Industrial/Organizations, Relationships, Social-Personality.

Chapter 1.8

· Three major advances in the psychology field:

o Brain imaging

§ Understanding the location of the brain where things occur, does not tell us when things occur.

§ EEG: Good temporal resolution, at the consequence of poor spatial resolution.

o Genetics

§ Scientists have made enormous progress in understanding the human genome: the basic genetic code, or blueprint, for the human body.

§ Epigenetics: The study of biological or environmental influences on gene expression that are not part of inherited genes.

o Immunology and other peripheral systems

§ There is a relationship between our gut microbiome and things like our cognition, immune system, hormones, and brain chemistry.

Chapter 1.9

· Cognitive Psychology:

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

o The computer age accelerated the cognitive revolution.

o Big Data Approach: Uses tools from the computer science world, such as data mining and machine learning, to identify complex patterns in large datasets.

o Replicability: The likelihood that the results of a study would be very similar if it were to run again

o Open Science Movement: A social movement among scientists to improve methods, increase research transparency, and promote data sharing.

§ Open source

§ Open methodology

§ Open peer review

§ Open access

§ Open educational resources

§ Open data

§ “There’s no equity in secrecy and no openness behind paywalls”.

· Tips for improving learning:

o Distributed practice: Learning material in several bursts over a prolonged time frame.

o Retrieval-based learning: Learning new information by repeatedly recalling it from long-term memory.

o Elaborative interrogation: Learning by asking yourself why a fact is true or why a process operates the way it does.

o Self-explanation: Reflecting on your learning process and trying to make sense of new material in your own words.

o Interleaved practice: Switching between topics during studying.

Chapter 2

· Learning Goals

o Identify the three primary goals of science.

o Describe the scientific method.

o Differentiate between theories, hypotheses, and research.

Chapter 2.1

· There are three primary goals of science:

o Description

§ Ask yourself questions about the topic in order to formulate clear and objective answers to your questions.

o Prediction

§ Are there circumstances, experiences, conditions that can allow us to predict an outcome better than chance?

o Explanation

§ Accurate predictions give you grounds to begin looking for explanations to your answers.

· Scientific Method

o Research

§ The method of gathering data through experiment and observing.

o Data

§ Measurements and observations that are gathered during the research process. Output, outcome.

o Scientific Method

§ Have a theory. Defined as a model of interconnected ideas or concepts that explain what is observed to subsequently predict outcomes. Theories are ideas that are formed based on synthesis of evidence in observation.

§ Hypothesis. A specific testable prediction about cause and effect that is narrower than the theory itself.

· Ex. Social learning theory. Developmental trajectories of kids who are the youngest sibling seem to be qualitatively different than learning patterns of children who are the oldest child or the only child.

· The seven steps of the scientific method:

o Step 1: Pose a specific, testable research question.

o Step 2: Educate yourself about what is already known about your theory.

o Step 3: Form a hypothesis that will guide your studies.

o Step 4: Design a study.

o Step 5: Conduct the study.

o Step 6: Analyze the data.

o Step 7: Report the results.

Chapter 2.1

The role of theory.

· How can we decide whether a theory is good?

o A theory should not just give rise to one prediction, it should ultimately predict multiple things about behavior.

o Good theories tend toward simplicity.

Chapter 2.2

· Variable

o Something that is either measured or manipulated, or both.

· Operational definition

o A definition that qualifies and quantifies a variable so that it can be understood objectively.

o Describes and reports the measurements of your variables.

o Set rules and guidelines that help define variables.

Class Activity

Living in a more densely populated area contributes to elevated stress levels.

Data:

· Research has found that urbanites are 21% more likely to have anxiety disorders and 39% more likely to have mood disorders.

Hypothesis:

· Does living in a city cause higher perceived stress levels, or do people with higher stress levels typical move to the city?

Chapter 2.3

· Repetition of a research study to confirm the results.

· Replication is an important part of the scientific method.

· Theories get stronger based on evidence. Evidence becomes more concrete the more it is proven.

· Replication allows for the elimination of many circumstantial inconsistencies that have the potential to skew results.

· Questionable research practices that have made it harder to replicate studies:

o Small samples

§ Expensive, difficult to run larger samples.

§ Less representative the smaller the sample.

o Harking

§ Hypothesizing After the Results are Known (Hark)

o P-hacking

§ Pertains to statistical analysis.

§ P-value is essentially the major output of our statistical tools. A P-value is produced and depending on the value, it either passes or fails to pass the threshold that says the theory was true.

o Underreporting null effects

§ You run a study and find no difference in your results.

§ Vastly underrepresented in literature.

· Best Practices for Psychological Science

o Preregistration of studies

§ Open science

§ Explicitly laying out your plan before your start your experiment

o Open Science

o Meta-analysis

§ Synthesize multiple outcomes to find an aggregate.

Chapter 2.5

· Descriptive research: Research methods that involve observing behavior to describe that behavior objectively and systematically.

o Case Study

§ Descriptive research method that involves the intensive examination of an unusual person or organization.

o Observational Studies

§ Participant observation

· Immersed in circumstance.

· Certain information that you can only obtain if you’re involved in the group.

§ Naturalistic observation

· “Fly on the wall technique”.

o Self-report methods: Methods of data collection in which people are asked to provide information about themselves, such as in surveys or questionnaires.

Chapter 2.6

· Correlational Studies: A research method that describes and predicts how variables are naturally related in the real world, without any attempt by the researcher to alter them or assign causation between them.

o We use scatterplots as a graphical depiction of the relationship between two variables.

§ Positive correlation

§ Negative correlation

§ Zero correlation

· Directionality Problem

o Example: Wealth (A) and Happiness (B) are correlated

o Does wealth lead to happiness?

o Does happiness lead to wealth?

· Third Variable Problem

o Example: Peer influence (A) is correlated with vaping (B).

o Reward sensitivity (C) is strongly associated with peer influence.

o Reward sensitivity (C) is associated with the use of e-cigarettes.

· Ethical Reasons for Using Correlation Designs

o Some research questions require correlational research designs for ethical reasons.

o You can’t experimentally induce things that violate participants (ex. Inducing stress or anxiety)

Chapter 2.7

· The Experimental Method Controls and Explains

· Experiment: Research method that tests causal hypotheses by manipulating and measuring variables.

· Types of Variables

o Independent variable (IV): The variable that gets manipulated in a research study.

o Dependent variable (DV): The variable that gets measured in a research study.

· Manipulating Variables

o Experimental group: Participants in an experiment who receive the treatment.

o Control group: Participants in an experiment who receive no intervention or who receive an intervention that is unrelated to the independent variable being investigated.

· Confound: Anything that affects a dependent variable and that may unintentionally vary between the experimental conditions of a study.

Chapter 2.8

· Participants Need to Be Randomly Assigned to Conditions and Carefully Selected.

· Random assignment: Placing research participants into the conditions of an experiment in such a way that each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any level of the independent variable.

· Population: Everyone in the group the experimenter is interested in.

o Ex. Undergraduate students

· Sample: A subset of a population

o Ex. Undergraduate students at St. Francis Xavier.

· Sampling: The process in which you select people from the population to be in the sample.

o Door to door, email, phone.

· Random sampling: Every person in the population has an equal chance of being selected.

o Avoid bias.

· Convenience Sample: This sample consists of people who are conveniently available for the study.

o The most utilized approach of sampling.

Chapter 2.12

· Good Research Requires Valid, Reliable, and Accurate Data.

· Construct validity: Extent to which variables measure what they are supposed to measure.

· External validity: Degree to which the findings of a study can be generalized to other people, settings, or situations.

· Internal validity: Degree to which the effects observed in an experiment are due to the independent variable and not confounds.

· Reliability: Degree to which a measure is stable and consistent over time.

· Accuracy: Degree to which an experimental measure is free from error.

· Random Error: The amount of error that is expected.

o No measuring device is completely accurate.

o Ex. Measuring tape can only measure so accurately.

o Will come out in the wash.

· Systematic Error: A fixed, constant amount, direction, or change that is added or subtracted from your measurement.

o Ex. A measuring tape is designed with a 1-inch tab, so that must be added or subtracted each time you measure.

o Will not come out in the wash.

Chapter 2.13

· Descriptive statistics: Statistics that summarize the data collected in a study.

· Central tendency: A measure that represents the typical response or the behavior of a group.

o Mean: A measure of central tendency that is the mathematical average of a set of numbers.

o Median: A measure of central tendency that is the value in a set of numbers that falls exactly halfway between the lowest and highest values.

o Mode: A measure of central tendency that is the most frequent score or value in a set of numbers.

· Descriptive Statistics Provide a Summary of the Data

· Variability: In a set of numbers, how widely dispersed the values are from each other and from the mean.

· Standard deviation: A statistical measure of how far away each value is, on average, from the mean.

Chapter 2.14

· Inferential Statistics Permit Generalizations

· Inferential statistics: A set of procedures that enable researchers to decide whether differences between two or more groups are probably just chance variations or whether they reflect true differences in the populations being compared.

o Results deemed very unlikely to be due to chance are statistically significant.

Chapter 3 – Biology & Behavior

· How Does the Nervous System Operate?

· Learning Objectives

o Distinguish between the two basic divisions of the nervous system.

o Describe the structure of the neuron.

o Describe the electrical and chemical changes that occur when neurons communicate.

o Describe how agonists and antagonists can influence the action of neurotransmitters.

3.1 – Functions of Neurons

· Nerve cells are powered by electrical impulses and communicate with other nerve cells through chemical signals.

· Three basic phases

o Reception

§ Where information is received by the neuron

o Integration

§ The stage where the neuron process information, neuron does or does not send a signal.

o Transmission

§ Transmit a signal.

· Sensory neurons: These neurons detect information from the physical world and pass that information to the brain.

· Motor neurons: These neurons direct muscles to contract or relax, thereby producing movement.

· Interneurons: act as relay stations between sensory and motor neurons.

3.2 Action Potentials Produce Neural Communication

· Action potential: Electrical signal that passes along the axon and subsequently causes the release of chemicals from the terminal buttons.

· Resting membrane potential: Electrical charge of a neuron when it is not active.

· Neuronal firing is determined by the number and frequency of signals the neuron receives.

· All-or-none principle: The principle that when a neuron fires, it fires with the same potency each time.

3.3 - Neurotransmitters Influence Mental Activity and Behavior

· Neurotransmitters: Chemical substances that transmit signals from one neuron to another.

· Presynaptic neuron: Sends the chemical signal.

· Postsynaptic neuron: Receives the chemical signal.

3.6 – Splitting the Brain Splits the Mind

· Split brain: A condition that occurs when the corpus callosum is surgically cut and the two hemispheres of the brain do not receive information directly from each other.

· What is the Genetic Basis of Psychological Science?

o The term genetics is typically used to describe how characteristics are passed along to offspring and the processes involved in turning genes “on” and “off”.

3.16 - Heredity Involves Passing Along Genes Through Reproduction

· Dominant gene: Gene that is expressed in the offspring whenever it is present.

· Recessive gene: Gene that is expressed only when it is matched with a similar gene from the other parent.

· Genotype: Genetic constitution of an organism, determined at the moment of conception.

o Blueprint

· Phenotype: Observable physical characteristics, which result from both genetic and environmental influences.

3.17 – Understanding Heritability

· Heredity: Transmission of characteristics from parents to offspring through genes

· Heritability: Statistical estimate of the extent which variation in a trait within a population is due to genetics

Chapter 4 – Consciousness

· Consciousness: One’s moment-to-moment subjective experience of the world.

· Qualia: Individual and subjective experiences (i.e., units) of consciousness.

4.1 - Change Blindness

· Change blindness: A failure to notice large changes in one’s environment.

4.2 - Attention is the Gateway to Conscious Awareness

· At any one time, each person can be conscious of only a limited number of things.

· Endogenous Versus Exogenous Attention

o Endogenous attention: Attention that is directed voluntarily.

o Exogenous attention: Attention that is directed involuntarily by a stimulus.

· Priming: A facilitation in the response to a stimulus due to recent experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus.

· What Is Altered Consciousness?

· A person’s subjective sense of consciousness varies naturally over the course of the day.

· Numerous ways that waking consciousness can be naturally altered:

o Meditation

o Immersion in an action (i.e., flow)

o Hypnosis

4.6 Meditation Produces Relaxation by Guiding Attention

· Meditation: A mental procedure that focuses attention on an external object or on a sense of awareness.

· Meditation can be used in a plethora of ways.

· People who meditate tend to have lower blood pressure and higher cholesterol.

o Does having lower blood pressure and higher cholesterol motivate someone to meditate?

· Flow is the idea that a conscious experience of being so engrossed in an experience causes our attention to be immersed completely in that activity, not picking up any distractions around us.

o The idea of flow stems from sporting activities, and peak athletes.

o Can be applied to anyone peaking in performance.

o Musicians, athletes, gamers.

o Lose track of time, eliminate distractions, completely engaged.

4.8 Escaping the Self

· Examples of escapist behaviors:

o Sports.

o Music.

o Screen activities (e.g. texting, video games).

· Purposes of escapist behavior:

o Distracts people from their problems.

o Helps them avoid feeling bad about themselves.

4.9 Hypnosis is Induced Through Suggestion

· Hypnosis: A social interaction during which a person, responding to suggestions, experiences changes in memory, perception, and/or voluntary action

4.9 Theories of Hypnosis

· Socio-cognitive Theory: Hypnotized subjects are role-playing (i.e., acting how they believe hypnotized subjects are supposed to act).

· Neo-dissociation Theory: Hypnosis is a trancelike state where conscious awareness is separated from other aspects of consciousness.

4.9 Hypnosis for Pain

· Hypnotic analgesia: Clinical evidence shows hypnosis can be used to treat immediate pain (e.g., surgery, burns) and chronic pain (e.g., arthritis, cancer).

· What is Sleep?

o Circadian rhythms: Biological patterns that occur at regular intervals as a function of time of day.

4.12 Sleep is an Adaptive Behavior

· Humans might have advanced themselves in countless ways if they had used all their time productively rather than wasting it by sleeping.

· Restoration and Sleep Deprivation

o Restorative Theory: Sleep allows the body to rest and repair itself.

· Circadian Rhythm and Sleep

o Circadian Rhythm Theory: Vulnerable during periods of darkness.

· Facilitation of Learning

o Sleep strengthens neural connections needed for learning to occur.

4.16 Drugs Alter Consciousness by Changing Brain Neurochemistry

· Stimulants: Drugs that increase behavioral and mental activity, and activate the sympathetic nervous system

· Depressants: Drugs that reduce behavioral and mental activity by depressing the central nervous system

· Opioids: Relieve pain by binding with endorphin receptors.

· Hallucinogens: Sometimes called psychedelics, produce alterations in cognition, mood, and perception.

5.1 Sensory Information Is Translated into Meaningful Signals

· Sensation: The detection of external stimuli and the transmission of this information to the brain.

· Perception: The processing, organization, and interpretation of sensory signals.

5.1 Sensory Information Is Translated into Meaningful Signals

· Bottom-up processing: Perception based on the physical features of the stimulus.

· Top-down processing: How knowledge, expectations, or past experiences shape the interpretation of sensory information.

5.1 Transduction

· Transduction: The process by which sensory stimuli are converted to signals the brain can interpret.

· 5.1 Quality Versus Quantity

5.2 Sensory Adaption & Thresholds

· Sensory adaptation: A decrease in sensitivity to a constant level of stimulation.

· Absolute threshold: The minimum intensity of stimulation that must occur before you experience a sensation Difference threshold: The minimum amount of change required for a person to detect a difference between two stimuli - Weber’s Law.

5.2 Signal Detection Theory

· Signal detection theory (SDT): A theory of perception based on the idea that the detection of a stimulus requires a judgment—it is not an all-or-nothing process.

5.5 The Color of Light Is Determined by Its Wavelength

· An object appears to be a particular color because of the wavelengths of light it reflects.

· Trichromatic Theory

5.6 Perceiving Objects Requires Organization of Visual Information

· The retina projects a two-dimensional representation of visual information to the brain.

· The brain transforms basic representations of edges and colors into a three-dimensional experience of the world.

· Organizing principles help determine the meaning of visual input.

5.6 Gestalt Principles of Perceptual Organization

· Gestalt (German): Means “shape” or “form.” As used in psychology, Gestalt means “organized whole.”

5.6 Object Constancy

· Object constancy: Correctly perceiving objects as constant in their shape, size, color, and lightness, despite raw sensory data that could mislead perception.

5.6 Face Perception

· The visual system is sensitive to faces.

· As social animals, humans can use face information to:

o Differentiate between unique individuals.

o Judge people’s moods.

o Judge people’s attentiveness.

o Discern someone’s age, race, sex.

· Prosopagnosia: A deficit in the ability to recognize faces, despite the ability to recognize other objects.

· Fusiform gyrus: A region of the temporal lobe critical for perceiving faces.

5.9 Audition Results from Changes in Air Pressure

· Audition: Hearing; the sense of sound perception.

· Sound wave: A pattern of changes in air pressure during a period of time; it produces the percept of a sound.

5.10 Pitch Is Encoded by Frequency and Location

· Temporal coding: Mechanism for encoding low-frequency auditory stimuli in which the firing rates of cochlear hair cells match the frequency of the sound wave.

· Place coding: Mechanism for encoding high-frequency auditory stimuli in which the frequency of the sound wave is encoded by the location of the hair cells along the basilar membrane.

How Do We Taste and Smell?

· Gustation: The sense of taste

· Olfaction: The sense of smell

5.12 There Are Five Basic Taste Sensations

· Every taste experience is composed of a mixture of five basic qualities:

o Sweet

o Sour

o Salty

o Bitter

o Umami (Japanese for “savory” or “yummy”)

§ Monosodium glutamate (MSG)

· Supertasters

o Underlying genetics, rather than the number of taste buds, is the major determinant of whether a person is a supertaster.

§ Women are more likely than men to be supertasters.

How Do We Feel Touch and Pain?

· Haptic Sense: The sense of touch.

5.15 Gate Control Theory

· Pain is a perceptual experience.

· Pain thresholds are different between individuals.

· We can train ourselves to adapt to pain.

· Gates in the spinal cord that can open and close in order to control pain.

Chapter 6 – Learning

6.2 Non-associative Learning Involves Habituation and Sensitization

· Habituation: Decrease in behavioral response after repeated exposure to a stimulus.

· Dishabituation: Increase in a response because of a change in something familiar.

· Sensitization: Increase in behavioral response after exposure to a stimulus.

6.3 Classical Conditioning Is Learning What Goes Together

· Classical (Pavlovian) conditioning: A neutral object comes to elicit a response when it is associated with a stimulus that already produces that response.

· Unconditioned response (UR): A response that does not have to be learned, such as a reflex.

· Unconditioned stimulus (US): A stimulus that elicits a response, such as a reflex, without any prior learning.

· Conditioned stimulus (CS): A stimulus that elicits a response only after learning has taken place.

· Conditioned response (CR): A response to a conditioned stimulus; a response that has been learned.

· Conditioning trials: A neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus are paired to produce a reflex (e.g., salivation).

· Test trials: The neutral stimulus alone is tested, and the effect on the reflex is measured.

6.4 Learning Is Acquired and Persists Until Extinction

· Acquisition: The gradual formation of an association between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.

· Extinction: A process in which the conditioned response is weakened when the conditioned stimulus is repeated without the unconditioned stimulus.

· Spontaneous Recovery: A process in which a previously extinguished conditioned response reemerges after the presentation of the conditioned stimulus.

6.5 Learning Involves Expectancies and Prediction

· Classical conditioning is a way that animals come to predict the occurrence of events.

o Robert Rescorla argued that for learning to take place, the conditioned stimulus must accurately predict the unconditioned stimulus.

· Rescorla-Wagner model: A cognitive model of classical conditioning; it holds that the strength of the CS-US association is determined by the extent to which the unconditioned stimulus is unexpected.

· Prediction error: The difference between the expected and actual outcomes

6.6 Learning Shapes Both Conditioned and Unconditioned Stimuli

· Stimulus Generalization: Learning that occurs when stimuli that are similar, but not identical, to the conditioned stimulus produce the conditioned response.

· Stimulus Discrimination: A differentiation between two similar stimuli when only one of them is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus.

· Second-order conditioning: CS becomes associated with other stimuli associated with the US; this phenomenon helps account for the complexity of learned associations.

· Operant conditioning: a learning process in which the consequences of an action determine the likelihood that it will be performed in the future.

6.7 Law of Effect

· Law of Effect: Any behavior that leads to a “satisfying state of affairs” is likely to occur again, and any behavior that leads to an “annoying state of affairs” is less likely to occur again.

6.8 Reinforcement Increases Behavior, Punishment Decreases Behavior

· Reinforcement (positive or negative) increases the likelihood of a behavior.

· Positive reinforcement: The administration of a stimulus to increase the probability of a behavior being repeated.

· Negative reinforcement: The removal of a stimulus to increase the probability of a behavior being repeated.

· Punishment reduces the probability that a behavior will recur.

· Positive punishment: The administration of a stimulus to decrease the probability of a behavior recurring.

· Negative punishment: The removal of a stimulus to decrease the probability of a behavior recurring.