MCAT Behavioral Science

1. Biological Basis of Behavior 

1.1. History

• Gall: brain as basis for psychology
  • Phrenology: traits correspond to skull shape (disproven)
• Flourens: diff. brain regions have diff. functions
  • Extirpation/ablation: remove parts of brain, and observe changes in behavior
• James: “father of American psychology”
  • Functionalism: mind and adapting to environment
• Dewey: observed organism as a whole in adapting to environment
• Broca: specific impairments can be linked to specific brain lesions
• Von Helmholtz: speed of nerve impulse
• Sherrington: synapses

1.2. Nervous System Organization

• Neuron types
  • Sensory/afferent: receptors to CNS
  • Interneurons: connect other neurons (most abundant)
  • Motor/efferent: CNS to muscles/glands
  • Reflex arc: sensory–interneuron–motor, rapid response to stimulus w/o higher cognitive input
    • By the time signal reaches brain, response has already occurred
• Nervous systems
  • Central nervous system (CNS): brain, spinal cord
  • Peripheral nervous system (PNS): nerve tissues/fibers
    • 31 spinal nerve pairs, 12 cranial nerve pairs
      • Cranial nerves I (olfactory), II (optic) are technically CNS but considered PNS
    • Somatic nervous system: sensory, motor neurons
    • Autonomic nervous system (ANS): involuntary muscles
      • Internal organs/glands, heartbeat, respiration, digestion, temp control (sweating/piloerection)
      • Sympathetic nervous system (SNS): “flight or flight,” stress
        • Heart rate ↑, relaxes bronchi, sweating/piloerection ↑
        • Redirect blood to locomotive muscles, blood sugar ↑

Vasodilate skeletal muscles, vasoconstrict smooth muscles

• • • • • Less secretion (digestion ↓, peristalsis ↓, saliva ↓, glands ↓)
        • Pupils dilate (more light), Epi (adrenaline) release ↑
        • Usually governed by ACh in preganglionic, Epi/NE in postganglionic

Except in sweat glands/arrectores pilorum (ACh), adrenal medulla (catecholamines)

• • • • Parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS): “rest and digest,” resting/sleeping
        • Heart rate ↓, bronchi constrict
        • More secretion (digestion ↑, peristalsis ↑, saliva ↑, bile ↑, secretions ↑, bladder contracts)
        • Pupils constrict (less light)
        • Governed by ACh
• Motor neurons
  • Lower motor neurons (LMNs): efferent from PNS, control limb/trunk muscles
    • Synapse at neuromuscular junctions (NMJs)
    • LMN signs: atrophy, hypotonia, hyporeflexia, fasciculations (twitching)
  • Upper motor neurons (UMNs): from cortex, control head/neck muscles and LMNs
    • Synapse on LMNs at brainstem (corticobulbar tract)/spinal cord (corticospinal tract)
    • UMN signs: hypertonia, hyperreflexia, clonus (rhythm contractions of antagonist muscles, from hyperreflexia), extensor plantar response (Babinski’s reflex)

1.3. Brain Organization

• Meninges: connective tissue covering brain
  • Protects, anchors brain, resorbs cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)
  • Outer to inner: dura mater, arachnoid mater, pia mater
• Brain
  • Hindbrain/rhombencephalon: vital functions
    • Balance, motor coordination, breathing, digestion, sleeping/waking
    • Myelencephalon → medulla oblongata
      • Medulla oblongata: breathing, heart rate, BP
    • Metencephalon → pons, cerebellum
      • Pons: sensory/motor pathways between cortex and medulla
        • Locus coeruleus: makes NE
      • Cerebellum: posture, balance, coordination
        • Receives motor plan, position sense
        • Impaired by alcohol
      • Reticular formation: arousal, attention, sleep, makes Glu
        • Raphe nuclei: makes serotonin
  • Midbrain/mesencephalon: involuntary reflex from visual/auditory stimuli
    • Receives sensory/motor info from PNS
    • Superior (visual), inferior (auditory) colliculi
  • Forebrain/prosencephalon: complex perception, cognition, behavior
    • Not essential for survival
    • Diencephalon → hypothalamus/post. pituitary, thalamus, pineal gland
    • Telencephalon → cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, limbic system
• Neuropsychology: study functions/behaviors associated w/ specific brain regions
  • Observe existing brain lesions’ effects in humans
    • Damage typically includes many structures
  • Induce brain lesions in animals
    • Extirpate, apply intense heat/cold/electricity w/ electrodes, etc.
    • Neurochemical lesions: excitotoxicity kills neurons
      • Kainic acid: destroys cell bodies
      • Oxidopamine: destroys dopaminergic/noradrenergic neurons
    • Cryogenic blockade: cold reversibly disables neurons
  • Cortical maps: electrically stimulate cortex, record behavior
    • Noninvasive, reversible, painless (brain has no pain receptors)
    • Need patient cooperation
  • Measure brain electrical activity
    • Ultrasensitive microelectrodes to measure individual neurons
    • Electroencephalography (EEG): electrodes placed on head, broad patterns (noninvasive)
    • Magnetoencephalography (MEG): more accurate, but more expensive (noninvasive)
      • Built using superconducting quantum-unit interference devices (SQUIDs)
    • Electrocorticography (ECoG): electrodes placed directly on exposed brain, “gold standard” (very invasive)
  • Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF): infer broad patterns of neural activity from increased localized blood flow
    • Cognition in region → blood flow ↑ in that region
    • Inhale radioactive gas, detect radioactivity in bloodstream
  • Computed tomography (CT): X-rays at diff. angles, compile into cross-sectional slices of tissue
  • e⁺ emission tomography (PET): inject radioactive sugar, measure dispersion/uptake throughout tissue
  • Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): induce magnetic field (NMR), measure H-dense regions
    • Functional MRI (fMRI): MRI, but measure changes associated w/ blood flow/O₂ use

1.4. Forebrain

• Most evolutionarily recent, largest in humans by weight/volume
• Diencephalon → hypo/thalamus, post. pituitary, pineal gland
  • Thalamus: relay station for all sensory info (except smell)
    • Receives, sorts, transmits incoming sensory info to cortex
    • Lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN): visual (“LGN for light”)
    • Medial geniculate nucleus (MGN): auditory (“MGN for music”)
  • Hypothalamus: “4 F’s: feed, fight, flight, fuck”
    • Main regulator of ANS: drives hunger, thirst, sex
    • Endocrine: regulates metabolism, temperature, water balance
    • Emotional experiences in high arousal, aggression, sex
    • Lateral (LH): “hunger center,” triggers eating/drinking
      • “Lack hunger when destroyed”: LH damage → no eating/drinking
    • Ventromedial (VMH): “satiety center,” signals to stop eating
      • “Very much hungry when destroyed”: VMH damage → obesity
    • Anterior (AH): sex, sleep, body temp
      • “Asexual when destroyed”: AH damage → permanently inhibited sexual activity
      • Rats w/ stimulated AH are hypersexual
  • Post. pituitary: releases ADH, oxytocin
    • Axonal projections from hypothalamus
  • Pineal gland: releases melatonin
    • Receives retinal signals (sunlight)
• Telencephalon → cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, limbic system
  • Cerebral cortex/neocortex: outer surface of brain
    • Gyri (bumps), sulci (folds) → SA ↑
    • 4 lobes: “F-POT”
      • Frontal lobe
        • Prefrontal cortex: executive function

Supervises perception, memory, impulse control, long-term planning

Regulates attention, alertness w/ reticular formation of brainstem

Association area: integrates input from diverse regions

Damage → impulsive ↑

• • • • • 1° motor cortex: initiates voluntary movements, sends motor signals down spinal cord

Projection area: performs simpler perceptual/motor tasks

Located on precentral gyrus (in front of central sulcus)

Motor homunculus: maps regions to body parts

• • • • • Broca’s area: speech production

Located in left hemisphere in most humans

Broca’s/nonfluent aphasia: difficult yet meaningful speaking

• • • • Parietal lobe
        • 1° somatosensory cortex: receives all tactile signals

Central region: spatial processing, manipulation

Located on postcentral gyrus (behind central sulcus)

Somatosensory homunculus: maps regions to body parts

• • • • Occipital lobe
        • Visual/striate cortex: visual processing

Also learning, motor control

• • • • Temporal lobe
        • Auditory cortex: sound processing
        • Wernicke’s area: language reception, comprehension

Wernicke’s/fluent aphasia: unintelligible yet fluent speaking

• • • • • Also memory processing, emotion
    • 2 hemispheres
      • Laterality of communication
        • Ipsilateral: hemisphere is linked to same side of body
        • Contralateral: hemisphere linked to opposite side of body
      • Dominance
        • Dominant hemisphere (left brain)

Analyzes stimuli (language, logic, math)

Complex voluntary movement, letters/words in vision, linguistic sounds in hearing, speech/reading/writing in language

• • • • • Nondominant hemisphere (right brain)

Processes, interprets stimuli (intuition, creativity, music, spatial processing)

Geometry/sense of direction, faces in vision, music in hearing, emotions in language

• • • • • Left hemisphere is dominant in most people, regardless of handedness
      • Corpus callosum: connects 2 hemispheres
  • Basal ganglia: coordinates muscle movement, relays motor info
    • Extrapyramidal motor system: gathers body position info, sends it to CNS
    • Smooth movements, steady posture
      • Parkinson’s: dopaminergic cell death in pars compacta of substantia nigra of basal ganglia
  • Limbic system: emotion, memory
    • Septal nuclei: one of primary pleasure centers, addiction
      • Mild stimulation → intense pleasure
    • Amygdala: defensive, aggressive behavior
      • Damage → docile, fear ↓, hypersexual
    • Hippocampus: consolidates info into long-term memories, redistributes remote memories to cortex
      • Fornix: communicates w/ rest of limbic system
      • Anterograde amnesia: can’t form new long-term memories
      • Retrograde amnesia: lose memories before injury

1.5. Influences on Behavior

• Neurotransmitters: rapid signaling
  • Acetylcholine (ACh)
    • PNS: transmits nerve impulses to muscle
      • All PSNS, preganglionic SNS, sweat glands (postganglionic SNS)
      • Excitatory/inhibitory, depending on receptor
    • CNS: attention, arousal
      • Excitatory
      • Cholinergic hypothesis: Alzheimer’s is caused by cholinergic cell death in hippocampus
  • Epinephrine (Epi)/adrenaline, norepinephrine (NE)/noradrenaline: alertness, wakeness, “fight or flight”
    • Catecholamines/monoamines/biogenic amines
    • Postganglionic SNS (except sweat glands, kidneys)
    • Epi: hormone secreted from adr. medulla
    • NE: local neurotransmitter
      • High NE → mania, low NE → depression
  • Dopamine: movement, posture
    • Also a monoamine
    • Made in VTA → substantia nigra (basal ganglia)
      • Parkinson’s: dopaminergic cell death in basal ganglia → resting tremors, jerky movements, postural instability
        • Treat w/ ʟ-DOPA → [dopamine] ↑ in brain
      • Schizophrenia: excess dopamine or dopamine hypersensitivity (dopamine hypothesis)
    • Made in VTA ⤚(mesocortical pathway)→ NAcc, amygdala, hippocampus
      • Mesolimbic reward pathway
    • Made in hypothalamus (arcuate nucleus → tuberoinfundibular pathway)
      • “Prolactin-inhibiting hormone”
  • Serotonin: mood, eating, sleeping, dreaming
    • Also a monoamine
    • High serotonin → mania, low serotonin → depression
  • γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA): inhibitory in brain
    • Inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (IPSPs), stabilizes neural activity
    • GABA binds → Cl^– influx → hyperpolarizes postsynaptic membrane
  • Glycine (Gly): inhibitory in spinal cord, same mechanism as GABA
  • Glutamate (Glu): excitatory in CNS
• Neuromodulators/neuropeptides: slower, longer effects than neurotransmitters
  • Endorphins, enkephalins: opioid painkillers
• Endocrine system: slower, more systemic than nervous system
  • Hypophyseal portal system
    • Anterior pituitary: regulates other glands, controlled by hypothalamic hormones
      • “FLAT PEG”: follicle-stimulating (FSH), luteinizing (LH), adrenocorticotropic (ACTH), thyroid-stimulating (TSH), prolactin, endorphins, growth hormone (GH)
    • Pars intermedia: melanocyte-stimulating (MSH) in fetuses
    • Posterior pituitary: controlled by hypothalamic neurons
      • Antidiuretic hormone (ADH)/vasopressin, oxytocin
  • Adrenal glands
    • Adr. medulla: SNS (Epi, NE)
    • Adr. cortex: corticosteroids (e.g., cortisol), some sex hormones (testosterone, estrogens)
  • Gonads: sex hormones
    • Libido, mating, sexual function
• Genetics
  • Many behaviors are species-specific
  • “Nature vs. nurture”
    • Innate behavior: genetically inherited (“nature”)
      • Adaptive value: how much a trait/behavior increases evolutionary fitness
      • Types
        • Reflexes
        • Orientation behaviors (e.g., taxis, kinesis)
        • Fixed action patterns
    • Learned behavior: from experience, environment (“nurture”)
    • Complex behavior: innate + learned
  • Measuring genetic influence
    • Family studies: compare family members vs. unrelated individuals
      • Can’t distinguish between genetics and shared environment: families share both
    • Twin studies: compare identical/monozygotic (MZ) vs. fraternal/dizygotic (DZ) twins
      • Concordance rate: chance that both twins exhibit same trait
        • MZ twins are genetically identical, DZ twins are ~50% identical
      • Twins share same environment regardless of zygosity, so diffs. in concordance should be due to genetics
        • Even better: compare twins in same family vs. twins in separate families
    • Adoption studies: compare adoptee to adoptive relatives vs. to biological relatives

1.6. Development

• Prenatal
  • Neurulation
    • Notochord: induces formation of nervous system
    • Ectoderm above notochord furrows, forms neural groove between 2 neural folds
      • Neural crest: leading edges of neural folds
        • → dorsal root ganglia, melanocytes, calcitonin-producing thyroid cells
  • Furrow closes, forms neural tube → CNS
    • Alar plate → sensory neurons
    • Basal plate → motor neurons
  • Neural tube invaginates, forms embryonic brain
    • → pros-, mes-, rhombencephalon
    • → tel/di-, mes-, met/myelencephalon
  • External influences
    • Uterus controls temp, chemical balance, gravity, pressure
    • Placenta supplies food/oxygen/water, removes water/waste thru umbilical cord
    • Viral/bacterial infection → fetal damage
    • Thalidomide → malformed limbs, organs
    • Antiepileptics → neural tube defects
    • Malnutrition, protein deficiency, drug use, X-rays → birth defects
• Motor development
  • Primitive reflexes: disappear w/ age
    • Rooting: cheek stimulus → head turns in that direction
      • Breastfeeding
    • Suck/swallow: place object in mouth → sucks, swallows object
      • Breastfeeding
    • Moro: sudden head movement → arms fling out then slowly retract, while crying
      • Instinctive clutching for falling out of trees?
      • Presence at > 1 y/o: developmental problems
      • Asymmetry: neuromuscular problems
    • Babinski: foot sole stimulus → toes spread apart
      • Presence at > 2 y/o: corticospinal tract damage (e.g., demyelination)
    • Grasping: place object in hand → grasps object
      • Same diagnosis as Babinski reflex
    • etc.
  • Gross motor skills: large muscle groups, whole-body motions
  • Fine motor skills: small muscles, specific/delicate movement
• Social development
  • Stranger anxiety, separation anxiety
  • Solitary → onlooker → parallel play (independent play alongside each other)
  • Gender awareness, sex-typed play, own full name
  • Peer conformity, romantic feelings
  • Same-sex friendships
  • Mixed-sex friendships, independence, sexual-orientation awareness, sexual relationships
• Developmental milestones: years 0, 1, 2, 3 (± 2 months)
  • Gross motor skills develop head to toe
  • Motor skills develop proximal to distal
  • Social skills: parent- → self- → other-oriented
  • Language skills develop, become more complex/structured

2. Sensation, Perception 

2.1. Sensation vs. Perception

• Sensation: transduce stimuli into signals
• Perception: process signals into information
• Sensory receptors: neurons that respond to stimuli, trigger electrical signals
  • Stimuli
    • Distal: “outside world,” interact indirectly w/ body (e.g., an object)
    • Proximal: interact directly w/ receptors (e.g., light on retina)
  • Ganglia: collections of neuron cell bodies outside CNS
    • Receptors → sensory/afferent neurons → dorsal root ganglia → spinal cord → projection areas (brain)
  • Receptor types
    • Photoreceptors: visible EM waves → sight
    • Hair cells: fluid movement in inner ear → hearing, linear/rotational acceleration
    • Nociceptors: painful/noxious stimuli → somatosensation
    • Thermoreceptors: temp changes → thermosensation
    • Olfactory receptors: volatile compounds → smell
    • Taste receptors: dissolved compounds → taste
    • Osmoreceptors: blood osmolarity → water homeostasis
• Threshold: min. stimulus that causes difference in perception
  • Absolute threshold: min. intensity at which a stimulus is transduced
    • Threshold of sensation
      • e.g., abs. threshold of hearing: I₀ = 0 dB = 10^–12 W/m²
  • Conscious-perception threshold: min. perceivable stimulus that is detected 50% of the time (signal detection theory)
    • Subliminal perception: stimulus reaches CNS but not higher-order regions
    • Discrimination testing: present subject w/ 2 stimuli, then increase the diff. until noticeable
  • Difference threshold/just noticeable difference (jnd): min. perceivable diff. in magnitude between 2 stimuli
    • e.g., jnd for sound f = (discriminable diff. in f)/(original f) = 3 Hz / 440 Hz = 0.68%
    • Weber’s law: (magnitude of jnd):(original magnitude) is a fixed ratio
      • e.g., for 1,000 Hz, discriminal diff. is 1,000 Hz × 0.68% = 6.8 Hz
      • Holds for all sensory modalities, except extremes
• Signal detection theory: perception depends on not just stimuli, but also nonsensory factors
  • Experiences/memory, motives, expectations, social factors, personality, etc.
  • Response bias: subject’s response to stimuli is affected by nonsensory factors
  • Signal detection experiment
    • Catch trials (stimulus)
      • Hits (perceived), misses (not perceived)
    • Noise trials (no stimulus)
      • False alarms (perceived), correct negatives (not perceived)
    • Misses, false alarms indicate response bias
• Adaptation
  • Physiological (sensory), psychological (perceptual) change in detection of stimuli
    • Hearing: loud noise (e.g., thunder, chewing, shouting) → contract inner ear muscle, dampen vibrations
      • Tensor tympani: attached to malleus, tension ↑ on eardrum → protects inner ear
      • Stapedius: attached stapes, pulls stapes → protects oval window
      • Takes some time to work, so can’t protect against sudden loud sounds (e.g., gunshot)
  • Allows body to focus only on relevant (new) stimuli

2.2. Vision

• Eye
  • Layers
    • Sclera (white): thick outermost layer covers eye, except cornea
    • Choroid: continuous w/ iris, ciliary body
    • Retina: innermost layer, contains photoreceptors
  • Path of light
    • Cornea: clear “window,” gathers/focuses light
    • Anterior chamber: filled w/ aqueous humor
      • Schlemm’s canal: drains aqueous humor
    • Iris: colored, controls light input
      • Dilator (opens pupil in SNS), constrictor (closes pupil in PSNS) pupillae
    • Posterior chamber
      • Ciliary body: produces aqueous humor
    • Lens: refracts light
      • Accommodation: ciliary muscle contracts (PSNS) → suspensory ligaments relax → lens curvature ↑ → focusing power ↑
    • Vitreous: fills space behind lens
    • Retina: transduces light
      • Duplexity: retina has both rods and cones
      • Macula: central region of retina, high [cones]
        • Fovea: center of macula, only cones, best visual acuity
      • Optic disc: where optic nerve exits eye
        • Blind spot: center of optic disc, no photoreceptors
• Transduction
  • Rods/cones: photoreceptors
    • Rods: night vision, low details, # rods ≫ # cones
      • Rhodopsin
    • Cones: color vision, fine details
      • Short (blue), medium (green), long (red) cones
  • Bipolar cells: gradients between adjacent receptors
  • Horizontal, amacrine cells: input from many retinal cells, slight diffs. in visual info, edge detection
    • Horizontal: photoreceptors → bipolar cells
    • Amacrine: bipolar → ganglion cells
  • Ganglion cells: group stimuli from receptors
    • Fewer cones than rods converge on each ganglion cell → cones have higher resolution
• Pathways
  • Temporal (outer), nasal (inner) visual fields
  • Each eye’s temporal visual field → nasal retina, vice versa
  • Each eye’s left retina → left optic tract, vice versa
    • Optic chiasm: nasal fibers (temporal visual field) cross
  • Optic tract → lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) in thalamus → visual cortex
    • “LGN is for light”
  • Also input to superior colliculus in midbrain (response to visual stimuli, reflexes)
• Feature detection
  • Parallel processing: simultaneously analyze/combine info about color/shape/motion, compare info to memory
  • Color: cones
  • Shape: parvocellular cells
    • High spatial, low temporal resolution: fine details, but only for stationary/slow objects
  • Motion: magnocellular cells
    • Low spatial, high temporal resolution: moving objects, but blurry

2.3. Hearing, Vestibular Sense

• Ear
  • Outer
    • Pinna/auricle: channels sound
    • External auditory canal
    • Tympanic membrane/eardrum: vibrates at same frequency/amplitude as sound, entrance to middle ear
  • Middle
    • Ossicles: transmit, amplify vibrations
      • Malleus/hammer, incus/anvil, stapes/stirrup
    • Oval window: entrance to inner ear
    • Eustachian/auditory/pharyngotympanic tube: equalizes middle ear–environment pressure
  • Inner
    • Bony labyrinth: filled w/ perilymph (transmits vibrations, cushions structures)
    • Membranous labyrinth: filled w/ endolymph (high [K⁺])
    • Cochlea: hearing
      • 3 scalae
      • Organ of Corti: contains hair cells
        • Located in middle scala (filled w/ endolymph)
        • Basilar membrane on bottom: thin, flexible
        • Tectorial membrane on top: immobile
      • Path of sound: oval window → perilymph → round window
    • Vestibule: linear acceleration
      • Utricle, saccule: contains hair cells covered w/ otoliths
        • Otoliths resist body’s acceleration, bend hair cells/stereocilia
    • Semicircular canals: rotational acceleration
      • 3 canals are normal to each other
      • Each canal ends in an ampulla containing hair cells
      • Endolymph resists body’s rotation, bends hair cells
• Pathways
  • Hair cells → auditory/vestibulocochlear nerve → brainstem → medial geniculate nucleus (MGN) → auditory cortex
    • “MGN is for music”
  • Also input to superior olive (localizes sound), inferior colliculus (startle reflex, vestibulo-ocular reflex)
• Hair cells
  • Stereocilia bend → mechanically gated K⁺ channels open → receptor depolarizes
    • Kinocilium: tallest hair cell
      • Hairs bent toward kinocilium → depolarization, faster impulses
      • Hairs not bent → steady impulses
      • Hairs bent away from kinocilium → hyperpolarization, slower impulses
  • Place theory: tonotopic organization (hair cell’s location = pitch perception)
    • Closer to oval window → stiffer membrane, shorter fibers → higher frequency
• Hearing loss
  • Conduction: sound can’t reach transducer
    • Outer/middle ear damage, treat w/ hearing aids (artificial conductor)
  • Sensorineural: sound can’t be transduced
    • Inner ear damage, treat w/ cochlear implants (artificial transducer)

2.4. Other Senses

• Smell
  • Olfactory chemoreceptors/nerves: bind chemical stimuli (volatile/aerosolized compounds)
    • Pheromones: communication thru smell
  • Pathway: olf. receptors/nerves on olf. epithelium → olf. bulb → olf. tract → limbic system, etc.
    • Smell is only sense that does not filter thru thalamus
• Taste
  • Chemoreceptors: sweet (sugars), sour (H⁺), salty (Na⁺), bitter, savory (Glu)
    • Grouped in taste buds on papillae
  • Pathway: receptors → brainstem → taste center in thalamus
• Somatosensation: pressure, vibration, pain, temp
  • Tactile receptors: “MRMPF”
    • Merkel discs: deep pressure, touch (narrow, tonic)
    • Ruffini endings: stretch (broad, tonic)
    • Meissner’s corpuscles: light touch (narrow, phasic)
    • Parcinian corpuscles: deep pressure, vibration (broad, phasic)
    • Free nerve endings: pain, temperature (tonic)
  • Tonic (continuous APs, duration), phasic (APs at edges, changes)
  • Pathway: receptors → somatosensory cortex in parietal lobe
  • 2-point threshold: min. perceivable distance between two points of stimuli
    • Nerve density ↑ → 2-pt. threshold ↓
  • Physiological zero: normal skin temp
    • Lower than physiological zero → cold, etc.
  • Gate theory of pain: excitatory/inhibitory synapses to interneurons (“gates”) that turn pain signals on/off
• Proprioception/kinesthetic sense: orientation in space
  • Receptors in muscles/joints
  • Hand–eye coordination, balance, mobility

2.5. Object Recognition

• Bottom-up/data-driven processing: many stimuli → recognize components → recognize object
  • Parallel processing, feature detection
  • Slower, more detailed recognition
  • e.g., seeing objects for the first time
• Top-down/conceptually driven processing: memories, expectations → recognize object → recognize components
  • Quick recognition, less distinction
  • e.g., recall, deja vu
• Perceptual organization: uses bottom-up, top-down processing together
  • Form, motion, constancy, depth
    • Monocular cues
      • Form
        • Relative size: smaller = farther
        • Relative height: higher = farther
        • Interposition (overlap): behind = farther
        • Shading/contour
      • Motion
        • Motion parallax (relative motion): slower = farther
      • Constancy: perceive object’s characteristics to stay same in diff. environments
        • Size, shape, color
        • Also applies outside of vision: phonemes in phonological context, etc.
    • Binocular cues
      • Depth
        • Retinal disparity: eyes are slightly spaced apart
        • Vergence: how much eyes turn inward/outward

Convergence: near objects → eyes turn inward, ciliary muscles contract (f ↓), pupil size ↓

Divergence: far objects → eyes turn outward, ciliary muscles relax (f ↑), pupil size ↑

• • Fill in the gaps using Gestalt principles (inferring missing parts of a picture): “can’t stop peeing, pooping and crying”
    • Law of continuity: group shapes that follow same continuous path
      • Subjective contours: perceive contours not actually present
    • Law of similarity: group similar shapes
    • Law of proximity: group nearby shapes
    • Law of prägnanz: perceive the most regular, simple, symmetric shape
    • Law of closure: perceive space enclosed by contour as a shape

3. Learning, Memory 

3.1. Learning

• Learning: acquiring new behavior
  • Stimulus: anything to which an organism can respond
  • Habituation: repeated exposure to stimulus → response ↓
  • Dishabituation: recover response to original stimulus after a new stimulus
  • De/sensitization is physiological, dis/habituation is psychological
• Associative learning: create pairing between 2 stimuli, or between behavior and response
  • Classical conditioning: associate 2 unrelated stims., using innate/reflexive physiological response
    • Process
      • Before: unconditioned stim. (UCS) → unconditioned response (UCR), neutral stim. has no response
      • After: conditioned stim. (CS) → conditioned response (CR)
        • Signaling stim. (SS): neutral stim. that can become a CS
        • Acquisition: turn neutral stim. into CS
      • Extinction: habituation to CS
        • Extinctive burst: CR ↑↑ right before extinction (just to make sure)
      • Spontaneous recovery: recover weak CR after extinction
    • Generalization: stimulus similar to CS also produces CR
    • Discrimination: learn to distinguish between 2 similar stimuli (opposite of generalization)
    • Aversive conditioning: link undesired behavior (SS) w/ unpleasant stimulus (UCS)
      • e.g., bitter nail polish for nail-biting
    • Systematic desensitization: slowly link phobia (SS) w/ pleasant stimulus (CS)
      • e.g., slowly associating dog w/ relaxation techniques
    • Implosive therapy: quickly link the two (can be traumatic)
      • e.g., throwing child in pool
    • Counterconditioning/stim. substitution: recondition from undesired CR to desired CR
  • Operant conditioning: associate voluntary behavior w/ consequence to change frequency of that behavior
    • Reinforcement: makes behavior more likely
      • Positive reinforcer: adds (+) consequence
      • Negative reinforcer: removes (–) consequence
        • Escape learning: reduces pre-existing unpleasantness
        • Avoidance learning: prevents unpleasantness
      • 1°/unconditioned, 2°/conditioned reinforcers
      • Discriminative stimulus: signals a reward is potentially available
    • Punishment: makes behavior less likely
      • Positive punishment: adds (–) consequence
        • Sociology: formal (rules/laws), informal (ostracization/shunning) sanctions
      • Negative punishment: removes (+) consequence
    • Reinforcement schedules: how often behavior is reinforced
      • Fixed-ratio (FR): reinforce after specific # of behavior
        • Continuous reinforcement: reinforce every time
      • Variable-ratio (VR): reinforce after avg. # of behavior (e.g., gambling)
        • Fastest for learning new behavior, most resistant to extinction
        • “VR: very rapid, very resistant to extinction”
      • Fixed-interval (FI): reinforce 1st behavior after specific time
      • Variable-interval (VI): reinforce 1st behavior after avg. time
      • Effectiveness: VR > FR > VI > FI
        • VR: keep performing behavior in hopes of reward (“VR is very rapid”)
        • Fixed: occasional lulls of no behavior

Subject has learned correct behavior, waits until they want another reward

• • • Shaping: reward increasingly complicated behavior
    • Operant extinction: conditioning weakens if no reinforcer is present
  • Latent learning: learn w/o reward, demonstrate when reward is present
  • Problem-solving: analyze situation and respond, avoid trial and error
  • Preparedness: easier to train behavior similar to existing instinct
    • Instinctive drift: hard to overcome instinctive behaviors
• Observational learning: learn behavior (or non-behavior) by watching others
  • Mirror neurons: fire when performing actions and watching others perform actions
    • Located in frontal, parietal lobes
  • Modeling: people learn acceptable behavior by watching others
    • e.g., Bobo doll experiment (Bandura): children watching adults hit a clown toy did the same
      • Learning–performance distinction: when children saw adults being punished after hitting the toy, they didn’t do the same
        • Learning doesn’t always lead to performance

3.2. Memory

• Encoding: put new info into memory
  • Controlled/effortful processing: active memorization
  • Automatic processing: passively gain info from stimuli w/o effort
  • Semantic > acoustic > visual encoding
  • Techniques
    • Maintenance/rote rehearsal: repeat info to keep it in working → short-term → long-term memory
      • Not very effective
    • Elaborative rehearsal: associate info to knowledge already in long-term memory
    • Self-reference effect: better recall when info can be contextualized to self
    • Dual-coding theory: better recall of words associated with images, than either alone
    • Relearning: easier to relearn info, and to recall relearned info
      • Spacing effect: time between relearnings ↑ → info retention ↑
    • Chunking/clustering: group items into categories
    • Mnemonics
      • Acronyms, rhymes, etc.
      • Imagery: associate list w/ scene
      • Method of loci: associate list w/ locations along route (dual-coding theory)
      • Peg words: associate list w/ rhyming numbers
• Storage
  • Sensory memory/register: very short (< 1 s), very detailed
    • Bad whole report, very good partial report
    • Iconic (visual), echoic (auditory), haptic (tactile) memory
      • Eidetic memory: “photographic memory”
      • Duration: iconic < haptic < echoic
    • Housed in major projection areas
  • Short-term memory: short (< 1 min), limited capacity
    • 7 ± 2 rule: holds ~7 items
    • Extend duration w/ maintenance rehearsal
    • Housed in hippocampus
  • Working memory: keep a few infos simultaneously for manipulation
    • Short-term memory + attention + executive
      • Visuospatial sketchpad: processes visual, spatial info
      • Phonological loop: processes verbal info
        • Phonological store (stores heard words), articulatory process (repeat words in head)
      • Central executive: coordinates visuospatial sketchpad w/ phonological loop
        • Stores processed info in episodic buffer
    • Housed in hippocampus, frontal, parietal lobes
  • Long-term memory: very long (years), almost limitless capacity
    • Explicit/declarative: conscious formation, recall
      • Semantic (facts), episodic (experiences)
      • Autobiographical: experiences from your own life (semantic + episodic)
        • Flashbulb memories: very emotional, vivid

(+) or (–) valence

e.g., “Where were you on 9/11?”

• • • Implicit/nondeclarative: unconscious formation, recall
      • Procedural (skills, habits)
      • Conditioning
      • Priming: exposure to stimulus influences response to another stimulus
        • Positive: faster response, spreading activation
        • Negative: slower response, habituation
    • Housed in hippocampus → cortex
• Retrieval: fetch info from long-term memory to working memory
  • Retrieval cues
    • Free recall: retrieve, state learned info (hardest)
    • Cued recall: extra cues to retrieve info
    • Recognition: identify learned info (easiest)
  • Semantic network: brain organizes ideas by similar meaning
    • Spreading activation: activating 1 node unconsciously activates linked nodes
      • Priming: recall ↑ when presenting nearby info in semantic memory
  • Context effects: recall ↑ when being in physical location of encoding (external)
  • State-dependent memory/effect: recall ↑ when in same mental state as that while encoding (internal)
  • Serial position effect: easiest to recall first (primacy), last (recency) elements in list
    • Primacy lasts longer than recency
• Forgetting
  • Decay
    • Forgetting curve (Ebbinghaus): retention rate falls sharply then levels off
    • Interference: retrieval error due to other similar info
      • Proactive: old info interferes w/ new info
      • Retroactive: new info replaces old info
    • Aging: not correlated w/ memory loss
      • Except time-based prospective memory (remembering to do something at certain time)
  • Disorders
    • Alzheimer’s
      • Progressive dementia (loss of cognitive), memory loss, brain atrophy (cortex/hippocampus shrink, ventricles enlarge)
        • Retrograde amnesia: recent memories lost first
        • Sundowning: dysfunction ↑ in late afternoon, evening
      • Cholinergic hypothesis: cholinergic cell death in hippocampus
      • Amyloid hypothesis: neurofibrillary tangles, β-amyloid plaques
    • Korsakoff’s: thiamine (vit. B₁) deficiency
      • Retrograde, anterograde amnesia, confabulation (fill gaps w/ vivid fake memories)
      • Beginning stages: Wernicke’s encephalopathy
      • Alcohol abuse → stomach lining inflammation → poor vitamin absorption → Korsakoff’s
    • Agnosia: cannot recognize objects, people, sounds
• Reconstruction
  • False memories (e.g., confabulation)
  • Misinformation effect: false info changes memory
  • Source monitoring: remembering source (episodic) of info (semantic)
    • Source amnesia

3.3. Neurobiology

• Neuroplasticity: stimuli → neural connections rapidly form
  • Plasticity in children ≫ adults
• Synaptic pruning: break weak connections, bolster strong ones
• Long-term potentiation: repeated stimulus → neurotransmitter release ↑, receptor density ↑
  • Postsynaptic cell receives Glu, stimulus at same time
  • Postsynaptic NMDA receptors (Glu-gated Ca²⁺ channels) unblocked from Mg²⁺ → Ca²⁺ enters
  • More AMPA receptors (Glu-gated Ca²⁺ channels) placed in postsynaptic membrane
• Projection area (sensory) → hippocampus (short-term, working) → cortex (long-term)

4. Cognition, Consciousness, Language 

4.1. Cognition

• Cognition: process, react to info
• Dual-coding theory: info is processed, stored w/ both verbal and visual parts
  • Redundancy → recall ↑
• Info-processing model: encode → store → retrieve
  • Need to sense, encode, store stimuli to think
  • Need to analyze stimuli to make decisions
  • Situational modification: extrapolate, adjust decisions made in 1 situation to solve another
  • Problem-solving depends on person’s cognitive level and problem’s context/complexity
• Cognitive development
  • Schema: concept, behavior, sequence of events, etc.
  • Adaptation: assimilation (classify new info into existing schemata), accommodation (modify existing schemata to fit new info)
  • Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: “two 7-Elevens”
    • Sensorimotor (< 2 y/o): manipulate environment to meet physical needs
      • 1° circular rxns.: repeat body movements that happened by chance
      • 2° circular rxns.: repeat manipulating an external object (to get a response)
      • Object permanence: objects continue to exist when out of view
        • Representational thought: mental representations of external objects/events
        • Marks end of sensorimotor
    • Preoperational (2–7 y/o): symbolic thinking, egocentrism, centration
      • Symbolic thinking: pretending, make-believe, imagination
      • Egocentrism: can’t imagine other people’s perspectives
      • Centration: focus on only 1 aspect of something, no conservation
        • Conservation: quantity remains same, even if apparent size/shape changes
    • Concrete operational (7–11 y/o): conservation, others’ perspectives, logical thought w/ concrete objects
    • Formal operational (> 11 y/o): logical thought about abstract ideas
      • Pendulum experiment: determine what controls a pendulum’s frequency
        • Concrete-operational children change vars. at random
        • Formal-operational children change 1 var. at a time (problem-solving)
• Fluid intelligence: problem-solving
  • Peaks in early adulthood, ↓ w/ age
• Crystallized intelligence: learned skills, knowledge
  • Peaks in middle adulthood, ↓ w/ age
• Activities of daily living: eating, walking, dressing, etc.
• Environmental factors: internalization of culture (Vygotsky), parenting styles, genetics (e.g., intellectual disabilities, ASPD), fetal/infant trauma, etc.
• Intellectual decline
  • Delirium: rapid, reversible fluctuation
    • Delirium tremens: alcohol withdrawal
  • Dementia: progressive decline w/ age
    • Alzheimer’s: neurofibrillary tangles, β-amyloid plaques
    • Vascular/multi-infarct dementia: strokes, impaired blood flow

4.2. Problem-Solving, Decision-Making

• Frame problem → generate potential solns. from mental set → test solns. → evaluate
  • Well-defined (clear start/endpoints), ill-defined (unclear start/endpoints) problems
  • Mental set: approach similar problems in same way
  • Functional fixedness: can’t think to use an object unconventionally
• Problem-solving methods
  • Trial and error: randomly try solns. until 1 works (inefficient)
  • Algorithm: rigid formula/procedure for solving a type of problem (inefficient but guarantees soln.)
  • Reasoning
    • Top-down/deductive: start w/ set of general rules, draw conclusions from given info
    • Bottom-up/inductive: generalize, create a theory
  • Heuristics/rules of thumb: simplified principles for quick problem-solving/decision-making (fast but inaccurate)
    • Means–end analysis: break down the problem, solve biggest problems first
      • e.g., planning a trip: buy plane ticket first
    • Working backwards: start at goal, make connections back to current state
      • e.g., math proofs
    • Availability: how easily similar examples come to mind
    • Representativeness: how much it fits the category’s stereotypical image
      • Base-rate fallacy: focus on specific info, reject generic info (base rate)
        • e.g., common in Bayes’ rule
      • Conjunction fallacy: think multiple specific conditions are more likely than 1 general condition
    • Anchoring-and-adjustment: pick an anchor, slightly adjust anchor to get answer
    • etc.
  • Intuition: act on perceptions unsupported by evidence (fast and inaccurate)
    • Recognition-primed decision model: process lots of info to match a pattern, gained by experience
• Fixation: stuck on wrong approach
  • Needs insight to recover
    • Let problem incubate → insight comes w/ time
• Type I (false positives), Type II (false negatives) errors
• Bias
  • Disconfirmation principle: potential soln. fails → discard the soln. (unbiased)
  • Confirmation bias: focus only on info that fits previous beliefs, rejecting other info
  • Hindsight bias: “knew it all along”
  • Overconfidence: interpret own decisions/knowledge/beliefs as infallible
  • Belief perseverance: can’t reject a belief despite contradicting evidence
• Framing effects: how you frame the question affects decision-making
• Emotion: subjective experience in a situation
• Intellectual functioning
  • Intelligence quotient (IQ): measures linguistic, logical/mathematical intelligences
    • Stanford–Binet test: IQ = 100 × (mental age)/(actual age)
  • General intelligence/g factor (Spearman): 1 intelligence, performances on diff. cognitive tasks are correlated
    • Most supported
  • 3 intelligences/triarchic theory (Sternberg): analytical, creative, practical
  • Multiple intelligences (Gardner): linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, visuospatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal
  • Emotional intelligence: perceive, express, understand, manage emotions
    • More EI → more empathy, more affect, more self-control (delay immediate gratification)
  • Fluid (fast, abstract reasoning), crystallized (accumulated knowledge) intelligences
    • Aging → fluid ↓, crystallized ↑
  • Fixed (nature), growth (nurture) mindsets
  • Hereditary genius (Galton)
  • Genetics, parental expectations, socioeconomic status, nutrition, educational environment → intelligence

4.3. Consciousness

• Awareness of world and one’s existence in it
• EEG: β → α → θ → δ (“BAT D”)
• Alertness: awake, able to think, perceive, process, access, express info, [cortisol] ↑
  • Reticular formation keeps prefrontal cortex awake
  • Alert/concentrated: β waves (fast, randomly firing neurons)
  • Relaxing w/ eyes closed: α waves (slower, more synchronized than β)
• Sleep
  • N1: dozing off
    • θ waves (slow, irregular, high voltage)
  • N2: light sleep
    • θ waves
    • Sleep spindles: short bursts, suppress perceptions
    • K complexes: high- → low-voltage spikes, suppress cortical arousal, consolidate memories
  • N3, N4: deep sleep/slow-wave sleep (SWS)
    • δ waves (slower, higher voltage than θ)
    • Cognitive recovery, explicit-memory consolidation, GH release ↑
    • Sleepwalking, sleep-talking
  • Rapid eye movement (REM)/paradoxical sleep: awake-level arousal (β waves) but asleep, no muscle movement
    • Interspersed between non-REM (NREM) cycles
    • Most dreams, implicit-memory consolidation
  • Sleep cycles
    • N1 → N2 → N3/N4 → N2 → REM, ~90 mins
    • During sleep, more deep sleep → more REM
    • Over lifetime, shorter sleep cycles, less deep sleep
  • Circadian rhythm
    • Sleepiness: light ↓ on retina → hypothalamus → melatonin ↑ (pineal gland)
    • Wakefulness: light ↑ on retina → CRH (hypothalamus) → ACTH (ant. pituitary) → cortisol ↑ (adr. cortex)
  • Dreaming: mostly during REM, some during NREM
    • Psychoanalytic: dreams are unconscious desires (not supported)
    • Activation synthesis theory: widespread, random firing mimics incoming sensory info, stored memories, etc.
      • Random signals from brainstem
      • Cortex tries to stitch this info together
    • Problem-solving theory: interpret problem differently
    • Cognitive-process theory: stream of consciousness
    • Neurocognitive models of dreaming: biological + psychological perspectives
  • Sleep–wake disorders: during deep sleep
    • Dyssomnias: falling/staying asleep
      • Insomnia: hard to fall/stay asleep
      • Narcolepsy: no voluntary control in falling asleep
        • Cataplexy: sudden REM, loss of muscle control while awake
        • Sleep paralysis: unable to move while awake
        • Hypnagogic (falling asleep)/hypnopompic (waking up) hallucinations
      • Sleep apnea: can’t breathe while asleep
        • Obstructive: airway is physically blocked
        • Central: no signal to diaphragm
    • Parasomnias: abnormal movements/behaviors while asleep
      • Night terrors: intense anxiety, SNS overdrive during deep sleep
      • Sleepwalking/somnambulism: activity during deep sleep
  • Sleep deprivation: missed sleep, or consistent reduced sleep
    • Irritability, mood, performance ↓, slower rxn. time, psychosis
    • REM rebound when catching up sleep
• Hypnosis: very suggestible state
  • Induction: relax patient, concentration ↑
  • Dissociation theory: divided consciousness
  • Social influence theory: people perform expected roles
• Meditation: quiet mind
  • Resembles N1 sleep, slow α (light meditation)/θ (deep meditation) waves

4.4. Consciousness-Altering Drugs

• Depressants: nervous-system activity ↓ → relaxed, anxiety ↓
  • Vasodilators, but become vasoconstrictors at overdose levels
  • Alcohol
    • GABA activity ↑ → hyperpolarization ↑ → inhibition → arousal ↓
    • Dopamine ↑ → euphoria
    • Alcohol myopia: less conscious of consequences of actions
    • Long-term abuse: cirrhosis, pancreatic damage, gastric/duodenal ulcers/cancer, Korsakoff’s syndrome (thiamine/vit. B₁ deficiency)
  • Barbiturates/benzodiazepines: anxiolytic, sleep
    • GABA activity ↑
• Stimulants: arousal, AP frequency ↑
  • Amphetamines
    • Dopamine, NE, serotonin release ↑, reuptake ↓
  • Cocaine: anesthetic, vasoconstrictor
    • Dopamine, NE, serotonin reuptake ↓
    • Crack cocaine: base form
  • Ecstasy/MDMA: amphetamine + hallucinogen
• Opiates/opioids: bind opioid receptors in CNS/PNS → pain ↓, euphoria
  • Heroin, etc.
• Hallucinogens: serotonin (?) → hallucinations, sensory experiences ↑, introspection
  • Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, etc.
• Marijuana: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) binds cannabinoid, glycine, opioid receptors → ???
  • GABA activity ↓, dopamine activity ↑ → pleasure
• Mesolimbic reward pathway: dopamine (pleasure) ↑, serotonin (satiation) ↓
  • Ventral tegmental area (VTA) ⤚(medial forebrain bundle (MFB))→ nucleus accumbens (NAcc), amygdala, hippocampus
    • Amygdala: emotions, enjoyment
    • Hippocampus: episodic/emotional memory
    • NAcc: motor function
    • Prefrontal cortex: attention
• Drug addiction
  • Tolerance
    • Cross-tolerance
  • Addiction
    • Withdrawal: opposite symptoms as drug (opponent process theory)
      • Acute: physiological symptoms (few days to weeks)
      • Post-acute: psychological symptoms, comes in episodes (up to 2 years)

4.5. Attention

• Concentrate on 1 part of sensorium
• Directed attention: focus on 1 thing
  • Attentional capture: moving object captures attention
• Selective attention: focus on 1 thing, ignore other stimuli
  • External/exogenous cues: instinctive (?), bottom-up
  • Internal/endogenous cues: need knowledge of cue and intention to follow it, top-down
    • Cocktail party effect: focus on 1 stimulus, process others in background (e.g., recognize your name being said)
  • Shadowing task: diff. sounds in diff. ears, subject told to repeat words in 1 ear and ignore other ear
  • Theories
    • Early selection theory (Broadbent)
      • Sensory register (stores ALL info) → selective filter (removes unattended info) → perceptual process (assigns meaning) → awareness
      • Can’t explain cocktail party effect
    • Late selection theory (Deutsch–Deutsch)
      • Sensory register → perceptual process → selective filter → awareness
        • Similar to early selection, but process everything before filtering
        • “The Dutch pay attention to everything”
      • Too much processing, too slow
    • Attenuation theory (Treisman)
      • Sensory register → attenuator → perceptual process → awareness
        • Similar to early selection, but weaken unattended info instead of removing it
    • Multimode model (Johnston–Heinz)
      • Similar to attenuation theory, but location of attenuator (bottleneck) changes based on required attention demand
• Divided attention: multitasking
  • Controlled/effortful processing: for new/complex tasks
  • Automatic processing: for familiar/routine tasks
  • Theories
    • Resource model: attention has limited resources, not enough for multitasking
    • Spotlight model: multitasking is switching “spotlights” of selective attention
      • Task similarity: harder to multitask w/ similar tasks
      • Task difficulty: harder tasks need more focus
      • Practice: harder to multitask w/ controlled tasks than w/ automatic tasks
• Vigilance: focus on situation for a long time, trying to eventually detect a signal
  • e.g., waiting for luggage at airport
• Executive attention: goal-oriented
  • Involves dopamine from VTA
• Orienting: direct attention to something else
  • Covert (w/o body/eye movement), overt (turn body/eyes toward object)
  • Involves ACh from basal forebrain
• Lapses/disorders
  • Inattentional/perceptive blindness: “missing something in plain sight,” from lapse in attention
  • Change blindness: missing a change in environment
  • Neglect syndrome/hemispatial neglect: can’t spatially divide attention
    • Less attention on one side of vision, due to damage in other side of brain

4.6. Language

• Components
  • Phonology: sound
    • Phonemes: speech sounds
    • Categorical perception: discern which aspects are important (constancy)
  • Morphology: structure
    • Morphemes: building blocks of meaning
  • Semantics: associate meaning w/ word
  • Syntax: how words are put together
  • Pragmatics: context, pre-existing knowledge
    • Prosody: rhythm, cadence, inflection
• Development
  • Stages
    • Babbling (9–12 mo.)
    • 1 word/month (1–1.5 y/o)
    • “Explosion of language,” combining words (1.5–2 y/o)
    • Sentences (2–3 y/o)
      • Errors of growth: incorrect morphemes
    • Rules mastered (> 5 y/o)
  • Nativist/biological theory (Chomsky): language is innate
    • Language acquisition device (LAD): brain pathway for processing, absorbing language rules
      • Universal grammar in all languages
      • Transformational grammar: changed syntax, same meaning
    • Critical period (2 y/o to puberty): language exposure must occur in this time
    • Sensitive period: when environmental input has most effect
  • Learning/behaviorist theory (Skinner): language-learning is operant conditioning
    • Caregivers reinforce language’s phonemes
    • Can’t account for vocabulary ↑↑
  • Social interactionist theory (Vygotsky): language is from desire to communicate, be social
    • Reinforcement from social interactions
• Sapir–Whorf/linguistic relativity hypothesis: perception of reality depends on language
  • Weak/strong: language influences/determines perception
• Brain areas
  • Broca’s area: produce speech
    • Located in inferior frontal gyrus
    • Broca’s/expressive/nonfluent aphasia: difficult yet meaningful speaking (“tip of the tongue”)
      • “Broca’s: boca is affected”
  • Wernicke’s area: understand language
    • Located in superior temporal gyrus
    • Wernicke’s/receptive/fluent aphasia: fluent yet unintelligible speaking
      • “Wernicke’s: qué is affected
  • Arcuate fasciculus: connects 2 areas, associates 2 functions
    • Conduction/associative aphasia: can’t repeat something said
  • Global aphasia: Broca’s + Wernicke’s aphasia
  • Agraphia: can’t write
  • Anomia: can’t name things

5. Motivation, Emotion, Stress 

5.1. Motivation

• Types
  • Extrinsic: getting rewards for desired behavior, avoiding punishment for undesired behavior, etc.
  • Intrinsic: interest, enjoyment, etc.
• Main theories
  • Instinct/evolutionary theory: instincts drive behavior, overridden by experience
  • Arousal theory: want optimal level of arousal
    • Yerkes–Dodson Law: performance vs. arousal curve is normal (for new/unfamiliar tasks)
      • Worst performance at low (too uninterested), high (too anxious) arousal
      • Cognitive tasks are optimal at lower arousal
      • Physical/stamina tasks are optimal at higher arousal
      • For simple tasks, curve is exponential (social facilitation)
  • Drive-reduction theory: want to resolve tension created by drives
    • Needs (lack of something) → drives (arousal)
    • 1° drives: homeostasis (food, water, shelter → 1st level of Maslow’s hierarchy)
    • 2° drives: nonbiological
  • Need-based theories
    • Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: physiological > safety > love/belonging > esteem > self-actualization
    • Self-determination theory (SDT): need autonomy, competence, relatedness (feeling accepted/wanted)
• Other theories
  • Incentive theory: people seek to pursue rewards, avoid punishments
  • Expectancy–value theory: motivation toward goal = (expectation of success) + (perceived value of success)
  • Sexual motivation
    • Sex hormones, smell, pleasure, cognition, cultural norms, conditioning influence → sexual desire
    • Sexual response cycle: excitement → plateau → orgasm → resolution/refractory period
• Opponent-process theory: chronic drug use → body counteracts drug by changing physiology
  • Tolerance: perceived drug effect ↓ over time
  • Withdrawal: physiological changes last after drug effects end → user experiences opposite effects of drug

5.2. Emotion

• Elements
  • Physiological: ANS arousal
    • e.g., HR/BP, breathing rate, skin temp ↑
  • Behavioral: facial expressions, body language
  • Cognitive: subjective interpretation
• Universal emotions (Ekman): innate, across all cultures
  • Happy, sad, anger, surprise, fear, contempt, disgust
    • Sad: subcallosal cingulate
    • Anger: left superior temporal sulcus
    • Disgust: insula, basal ganglia
  • Newborns, blind from birth have same emotional displays
• Theories
  • James–Lange (disproven)
    • Arousal → conscious emotion
    • Requires SNS–brain connection, but spinal cord-injury patients (SNS ↓) still have same emotions
  • Cannon–Bard (disproven)
    • Arousal, conscious emotion simultaneously → behavioral
      • Stim. → thalamus → cortex/SNS
    • Requires parallel physiological/cognitive emotions, but vagus nerve sends peripheral info to CNS
  • Schachter–Singer/2-factor theory
    • Arousal → cognitive appraisal → conscious emotion
  • Lazarus/cognitive-appraisal theory
    • Cognitive appraisal → arousal, conscious emotion simultaneously
  • Conceptual act model of emotion/theory of constructed emotion
    • Complex emotion = core affect (e.g., pleasure, tension) + construct at the moment
    • Prototypical emotional episodes: many components (e.g., love)
• Limbic system: motivation, emotion (“HAT Hippo”)
  • Hypothalamus: neurotransmitters, including mood/arousal
  • Amygdala: signals cortex about attention/emotions
    • Fear, aggression
    • Emotional memory: stored emotions (unconscious/implicit)
    • Damage → hyperoral, hypersexual, disinhibition, no classical conditioning
      • Seen in Klüver–Bucy syndrome, benzodiazepine patients
  • Thalamus: sensory processing, routing (except smell)
  • Hippocampus: short- → long-term memories
    • Stores/retrieves memories about emotion (conscious/explicit), contextualizes stimuli
    • Damage → anterograde amnesia
• Prefrontal cortex: planning, expressing personality, decision-making
  • Left (positive emotions), right (negative emotions)
    • Phineas Gage: left prefrontal cortex damage → negative personality, inappropriate behavior
  • Dorsal (attention, cognition), ventral (experience emotion)
  • Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC): decision-making, control emotional responses from amygdala
• ANS: physiological emotion

5.3. Stress

• Cognitive appraisal: subjectively evaluate stressful situation
  • 1° appraisal: triage environment
    • Irrelevant, benign–positive, stressful
  • 2° appraisal: can we cope w/ the stress?
    • Evaluate harm, threat, challenge
    • Perceive as able to cope → stress ↓
  • Reappraisal: monitor environment
• Stressors
  • Eustress (positive), neustress (neutral), distress (negative)
  • Social readjustment rating scale: measures stress level
  • Psychological: pressure, control, predictability, frustration, conflict
    • Conflict: choice between 2 good/bad options
      • Approach–approach (both +), approach–avoidance (+ and –), avoidance–avoidance (both –)
  • Types
    • Microstressors: small daily stressors (e.g., traffic)
    • Major life events (e.g., marriage)
    • Ambient stressors: chronic environmental stressors that we can’t control (e.g., economy)
    • Crises: sudden, intense stressors that threaten everyone (e.g., natural disaster)
• Physiological response: general adaptation syndrome (Selye, “ARE”)
  • Alarm: ready for stress, activate SNS → cortisol ↑, Epi/NE ↑
  • Resistance: middle of stress, keep releasing hormones
  • Exhaustion: too long stress, SNS is unsustainable, tissue/immune damage (→ panic zone → burnout)
• Coping
  • Adaptive: stress ↓
    • Problem-focused (action), emotionally focused (feelings) strategies
  • Maladaptive: stress ↑ or constant
    • e.g., avoidance, escape (drugs, etc.)

6. Identity, Personality 

6.1. Self-Concept, Identity

• Self-concept: self-schemata + appraisal of past, future selves
  • Self-schema: self-given label w/ qualities
  • Existential self: realizing you’re your own person
  • Categorical self: recognizing you belong in societal categories
• Identity: self-concept components related to groups of belonging (who we are)
  • Personal (unique to person), social (groups of belonging) identities
  • Components
    • Gender: masculinity/femininity, develops by 3 y/o
      • Androgynous: high masc., high fem.
      • Undifferentiated: low masc., low fem.
      • Gender schema theory: gender identity components are transmitted thru culture/society
    • Ethnicity: shared ancestry, heritage, language
    • Nationality: shared history, media, cuisine, symbols
    • Hierarchy of salience: which identity is most important depends on situation
• Self-evaluation
  • Self-discrepancy theory: each person has actual (self-concept), ideal, ought (expectation of others) selves
    • Self-esteem: respect/regard for self
      • Self-esteem = self-worth + self-respect (how close 3 selves are to each other)
  • Self-efficacy: belief in own ability to succeed
    • Strong: recovers quickly, strong interests, strong commitments, enjoys challenging tasks
    • Weak: focuses on failures, no self-confidence, avoids challenging tasks
    • Factors
      • Mastery of experience
      • Social modeling: witness people similar to you achieving same tasks
      • Social persuasion: you’re told nice things
      • Psychological responses: low neuroticism, good coping techniques
    • Extremes: overconfidence, learned helplessness
  • Locus of control: way of perceiving influences in life
    • Internal (in control), external (out of control)
• Self-perception: observe own behavior, reason that they must hold attitude that would have led to that behavior

6.2. Identity Formation

• Freud: psychosexual development (disproven)
  • Consistent w/ drive-reduction theory
  • Libido is present from birth, need to resolve libidinal tension
    • Fixation (overindulgence/frustration) as child → permanent neurosis as adult
  • Stages
    • Oral (< 1 y/o): put objects in mouth, etc.
      • Fixation → dependent
    • Anal (1–3 y/o): potty training
      • Fixation → anal, sloppy
    • Phallic/Oedipal (3–5 y/o): resolve Oedipal (boys)/Electra (girls) conflict
      • Guilt over envying father, desiring mother → resolve by internalizing father’s self (or vice versa)
      • Penis envy in girls
    • Latency (until puberty): sublimate libidinal energy by redirecting attention
    • Genital (puberty to adulthood): normal heterosexual relationships
      • Unresolved sexual trauma → homosexuality, fetishes, etc.
• Erikson: psychosocial development
  • Need to resolve conflict between need and social demand
    • Passing a stage answers an existential question, confers a basic virtue
  • Stages: “Trust the auto insurance industry, ID the intergenerational integrity,” “Hope will perchance find love, care and wisdom.”
    • Trust vs. mistrust (< 1.5 y/o): “can I trust?”
      • Pass → trust environment and self (hope)
      • Fail → suspicious
    • Autonomy vs. shame/doubt (1.5–3 y/o): “can I be?”
      • Pass → internal locus of control (will)
      • Fail → doubt, external locus of control
    • Initiative vs. guilt (3–6 y/o): “can I do stuff?”
      • Pass → initiative, enjoy accomplishment (purpose)
      • Fail → restrict self, or show off to overcompensate
    • Industry vs. inferiority (6–12 y/o): “can I make it?”
      • Pass → exercise abilities/intelligence (competence)
      • Fail → inadequate, incompetent, low self-esteem
    • Identity vs. role confusion (12–20 y/o): physiological revolution, “who am I?”
      • Pass → see self as unique (fidelity)
      • Fail → confused, unstable personality
    • Intimacy vs. isolation (20–40 y/o): “can I love?”
      • Pass → intimacy, commitment (love)
      • Fail → avoid commitment, isolate self
    • Generativity vs. stagnation (40–65 y/o): “does my life count?”
      • Pass → productivity, contribute to society (care)
      • Fail → self-indulgent, bored, selfish
    • Integrity vs. despair (> 65 y/o): “was my life good?”
      • Pass → meaning of life, ready for death (wisdom)
      • Fail → bitter, worthless, fear of death
• Kohlberg: moral development
  • Reasonings behind moral appraisals change w/ age
  • Stages: “PRC LSU"
    • Preconventional (preadolescent): consequences
      • Avoid punishment
      • Self-interest/instrumental relativist: seek rewards
    • Conventional (adolescent to adult): relationship w/ society
      • Conform: seek approval
      • Law and order: follow rules
    • Postconventional (only some adults): abstract principles
      • Social contract: do the right thing
      • Universal human ethics: follow a code
  • Biased toward men in individualistic societies
• Vygotsky: sociocultural cognitive development
  • Internalize interpersonal/cultural rules → cognitive ability ↑
  • Elementary mental functions: attention, sensation, perception, memory
  • Higher mental functions: independent learning, thinking
    • Needs help from a “more knowledgeable other”
    • Zone of proximal development: where you need most guidance to learn skill/ability
    • Language to acquire info
• Mead: social behaviorism (symbolic interactionist)
  • “Me” vs. “I”
    • “Me”/social self: society’s view of self
      • Interactions w/ others, socializing, conforming
    • “I”/actual self: individual identity, response to “me”
      • Nonsocializing, nonconforming
  • Social self development
    • Preparatory stage: imitation, egocentrism, “I” develops
    • Play stage: pretend play, role-taking, “me” develops
    • Game stage: “generalized other” (society), multiple roles, significant others
• Cooley: looking-glass self
  • Others reflect our selves back to ourselves
  • People are influenced not by others’ opinions of them, but by how they imagine others’ opinions of them are
• Influence of others
  • Observational learning/modeling: children imitate parents → same-sex siblings → peers → etc.
  • Role-taking: pretend-play, try out identities, understand others’ perspectives
  • Theory of mind: sense how others’ minds work
  • Reference group: group to compare our self-concept with

6.3. Personality

• Personality: thoughts, feelings, traits, behaviors characteristic of a person (how we think, act)
  • Temperament: broader than personality
  • Both personality and temperament are persistent (hard-wired, unchanging w/ age)
• Psychoanalytic/dynamic: personality is from unconscious urges/desires (disproven)
  • Freudian theory: need to relieve tension
    • Structural model
      • Id: basic, primal
        • Pleasure principle: immediate gratification
        • 1° process: free flow of psychic energy, serves pleasure principle

Wish fulfillment: relieve tension w/ mental imagery (temporary)

• • • • • Only part of personality present at birth
      • Ego: postpones 1° process
        • Reality principle: consider objective reality w.r.t. id, weigh risks/rewards
        • 2° process: control/regulation, serves reality principle
      • Superego: judges actions, pride/guilt at successes/failures
        • Conscience: punished (–) actions
        • Ego ideal: reinforced (+) actions
    • Conscious, preconscious (currently unaware), unconscious (repressed)
    • Instincts: innate psychological representations of biological needs
      • Life instincts/Eros: wish for survival
      • Death instincts/Thanatos: wish for death, destruction
    • Defense mechanisms: relieve tension from id–superego conflict by denying/distorting reality
      • Pathological (I): distort reality
        • Denial: pretend it didn’t happen (most important)
      • Immature (II)
        • Projection: project undesired feelings onto others (form of paranoia)

Rorschach test: patient projects unconscious onto inkblot

Thematic apperception test: patient projects unconscious onto stories about pictures

• • • • • Passive aggression
      • Neurotic (III): “4RID”
        • Repression: unconscious forgetting (ego forces undesired thoughts/urges into unconscious)
        • Regression: to earlier development
        • Reaction formation: urges → opposites
        • Rationalization: justify behavior to be acceptable to self/society
        • Intellectualization: detach emotion from ideas
        • Displacement: take it out on others
      • Mature (IV): “HASS”
        • Humor: express feelings in acceptable way
        • Altruism
        • Sublimation: unacceptable urges → acceptable behaviors
        • Suppression: conscious forgetting
  • Jungian theory: psychic energy
    • Unconscious: personal (Freudian), collective (universally shared, common experiences)
    • Self = conscious + personal unconscious + collective conscious
      • Similar to self-discrepancy theory: actual + ideal + ought selves
    • Archetypes
      • Persona: personality presented to the world
      • Animus (inner man in women, power-seeking), anima (inner woman in men, emotional)
      • Shadow: unpleasant, socially unacceptable thoughts/feelings/actions
  • Adlerian theory
    • Inferiority complex: sense of imperfection
    • Creative self: shape own uniqueness, establish personality
      • Style of life: own unique way of achieving superiority
    • Fictional finalism: people are driven by future > past
  • Horneyan theory
    • Basic anxiety (from inadequate parenting), basic hostility (from neglect/rejection)
      • Overcome by moving toward (get help), against (fight), away from (withdraw) people
        • Unhealthy if you use only 1 of these strategies
    • Neurotic needs: want to make life, interactions more bearable
      • Unhealthy if disproportionate, indiscriminate, in denial or anxious
  • Object relations theory: driven by “objects” (subjective representations of caregivers during infancy)
• Humanistic/phenomenological: personality is from conscious thinking toward self-actualization
  • Gestalt therapy: holistic view of self, not just behaviors/drives
  • Force field theory (Lewin): people have “fields” (current states of mind) made of “forces” (current influences)
    • Forces help or block attaining goals
  • Peak experiences (Maslow): profound/moving life experiences → important/lasting effects, self-actualization
  • Personal-construct psychology (Kelly): people devise, test predictions about others’ behavior
    • Can’t construct/understand environment → anxiety
  • Client-/person-centered/nondirective therapy (Rogers): people are free to control own behavior
    • Actual, ideal, ought selves (from self-discrepancy theory) must be reconciled
    • Unconditional positive regard: therapist accepts client completely, empathy
• Type theory: taxonomy of personalities
  • Humorism: 4 humors (disproven)
    • Blood (sanguine), yellow bile (choleric), black bile (melancholic), phlegm (phlegmatic)
  • Somatotypes (Sheldon): personality ↔ body type
  • Type A (competitive, compulsive), B (laid-back)
  • Myers–Briggs type inventory (MBTI)
    • Extravert (E, outer world) vs. introvert (I, inner world)
    • Sensing (S, objective) vs. intuition (N, abstract)
    • Thinking (T, logic) vs. feeling (F, values)
    • Judging (J, ordered) vs. perceiving (P, spontaneous)
• Trait theory: personality = diff. degrees of qualities/behaviors
  • PEN model (Eysenck): psychotic (nonconforming), extraverted, neurotic (emotionally stable)
    • Not everyone has psychoticism
    • Big Five: “OCEAN” (open, conscientious, extravert, agreeable, neurotic)
  • Cardinal (defining), central (major, easy to infer), secondary (limited to specific groups/situations) traits (Allport)
    • Functional autonomy: continue behavior even after fulfilling drive
  • Need for achievement (N-Ach, McClelland): avoid high (avoid failing), low (no sense of achievement) risks
• Behaviorist: personality = operant-conditioned behaviors
  • Treat patients w/ operant conditioning
    • Token economies: reward (+) behavior w/ tokens, exchanged for reinforcers
• Social cognitive theory (Bandura): personality is from interactions w/ environment
  • Reciprocal determinism: people change environment, environment changes people
  • Internal vs. external locus of control
• Biological theory: personality = genetics, brain anatomy
• Dispositional (personality drives behavior) vs. situational (environment/context drives behavior) approach

7. Psychological Disorders 

7.1. Psychological Disorders

• Biomedical approach: direct therapy (symptoms ↓)
  • Assumes cause is biological only
• Biopsychosocial approach: direct + indirect therapy (symptoms ↓, social support ↑)
  • Biological: genetics, etc.
  • Psychological: thoughts, emotions, behaviors
  • Social: environment, SES, etc.
• Classification
  • DSM-5: 20 diagnostic classes, from American Psychiatric Association (APA)
  • ICD-10: 11 diagnostic classes, from World Health Organization (WHO)

7.2. Types

• Psychotic disorders
  • Schizophrenia
    • (+) symptoms: add to normal behavior (psychotic, disorganized)
      • Delusions: false beliefs, not shared by others in same culture
        • Of reference (common things are directed toward you), persecution, grandeur
        • Thought broadcasting (others can read your mind), insertion (your thoughts are planted)
      • Hallucinations: realistic perceptions not from external stimuli
      • Disorganized thought: loosening of associations (e.g., word salad, neologisms)
      • Disorganized behavior: can’t perform activities of daily living
      • Catatonia: slow/unmoving, bizarre movements, echolalia (repeating others), echopraxia (imitating others)
    • (–) symptoms: missing normal behavior
      • Disturbed affect (experience/display of emotion)
        • Blunting: affect intensity ↓↓
        • Flat affect/emotional flattening: no emotional expression
        • Inappropriate affect: affect doesn’t match content of speech
      • Avolition: purposeful/goal-directed actions ↓↓
    • Prodromal phase: poor adjustment, “pre-schizophrenia”
      • “Pre-” + “syndrome”
      • Intense, sudden onset of symptoms → better prognosis
    • Downward-drift hypothesis: schizophrenia → SES ↓ → worse symptoms, feedback loop
      • More schizophrenia in low SES
    • Treat w/ antipsychotics (dopamine ↓): dopamine D2 receptor antagonists
• Mood disorders
  • Depressive disorders
    • Major depressive
      • Major depressive episode: > 2 weeks of “SIG SPACES” (sadness, interest, guilt, sleep, psychomotor, appetite, concentration, energy, suicidal thoughts)
    • Persistent depressive/dysthymia
      • > 2 years of sadness (not episode)
    • Seasonal affective (SAD): depression only in winter
      • Abnormal melatonin metabolism, treat w/ bright-light therapy
  • Bipolar disorders
    • Bipolar I: manic, depressive episodes
      • Manic episode: “DIG FAST” (distracted, insomnia, grandeur, flight of ideas, agitated, speaking fast, thoughtless/risky)
    • Bipolar II: hypomanic (energetic/optimistic, but no impaired function/psychosis), depressive episodes
    • Cyclothymia: dysthymia w/ hypomanic episodes
  • Monoamine/catecholamine theory of depression: NE/serotonin ↑↑ → mania, NE/serotonin ↓↓ → depression
• Anxiety disorders
  • First, rule out hyperthyroidism → BMR ↑ → anxiety symptoms
  • Generalized anxiety: > 6 months of disproportionate, persistent worry
  • Social anxiety: fear of social/performance situations, potential embarrassment
  • Specific phobias: irrational fear of specific object/situation, w/ compelling desire to avoid it
  • Agoraphobia: fear of hard-to-escape places/situations, most patients stay home
    • Usually w/ panic disorder
    • Not a specific phobia
  • Panic disorder: repeated panic attacks
    • Panic attack: “sense of impending doom” (fear, trembling, sweating, hyperventilation, sense of unreality)
• Obsessive–compulsive disorders
  • Obsessive–compulsive (OCD)
    • Obsessions (persistent, intrusive thoughts/impulses) cause stress
    • Compulsions (repetitive tasks) relieve stress
  • Body dysmorphic disorder: unrealistic, negative view of own appearance
    • Gender dysphoria: distress/disability from identifying as diff. gender
• Trauma/stressor-related disorders
  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): after experiencing/witnessing trauma
    • Intrusion: recurring reliving event, flashbacks, nightmares
    • Avoidance: consciously avoid associated memories, people, places, etc.
    • Negative cognitive: can’t recall key events of trauma, (–) emotions/mood, feeling distanced
    • Arousal: startle, irritable, anxious, self-destructive/reckless, disturbed sleep
  • Acute stress disorder: < 1 month of PTSD symptoms
• Dissociative disorders: avoid stress by escaping from identity
  • Dissociative amnesia: can’t remember past (first, rule out neurological causes)
    • Dissociative fugue: sudden, unexpected wandering w/ confused identity
    • Usually after trauma
  • Dissociative identity (DID)/multiple-personality: 2+ personalities
    • Identity components fail to integrate
    • Usually after severe physical/sexual abuse as child
  • Depersonalization/derealization: detached from mind/body, from surroundings (w/o psychosis)
• Somatic symptom disorders
  • Somatic-symptom disorder: overly concerned about a bodily symptom (real)
  • Illness-anxiety/hypochondria: obsessed w/ having/developing a medical condition (imagined)
  • Conversion disorder/hysteria: unexplainable voluntary motor/sensory symptoms
    • La belle indifférence: unconcerned w/ symptoms
    • Usually after high stress/trauma
  • Factitious/Munchausen: fake illness for sick role, attention
    • Factitious imposed on another/Munchausen by proxy: fake illness in a person under your care (e.g., own child)
• Personality disorders: patterns of inflexible/maladaptive behaviors, usually egosyntonic
  • Egosyntonic (perceived as normal), egodystonic (unwanted by self)
  • Cluster A: odd, eccentric
    • Paranoid: pervasive distrust, suspicion
      • First, rule out prodromal for schizophrenia
    • Schizotypal: ideas of reference (less severe than delusions of reference), magical thinking
    • Schizoid: detached from relationships, restricted range of affect
      • “Schizoid patients are distant”
  • Cluster B: dramatic, emotional, erratic
    • Antisocial (ASPD): disregard for rights
      • Only in adults, more common in men
      • Conduct disorder: precursor, only in children
    • Borderline (BPD): unstable interactions/mood/self-image, intense/unstable relationships, fear of abandonment
      • Splitting: view others as good/evil
      • More common in women
    • Histrionic: constant attention-seeking
    • Narcissistic: grandiose, fragile self-esteem
  • Cluster C: anxious, fearful
    • Avoidant: shy, fears rejection
    • Dependent: constant need for reassurance
    • Obsessive–compulsive (OCPD): perfectionist, inflexible
      • OCD is egodystonic, OCPD is egosyntonic
• Eating disorders
  • Anorexia nervosa: eat very little
  • Bulimia nervosa: purge after eating
• Paraphilia: sexual arousal to inappropriate things (e.g., objects, children)
• Elimination disorder: uncontrollable peeing/pooping
• Sleep–wake disorders: dyssomnias, parasomnias
  • Sleep apnea: breathing problems while asleep
    • Central: CNS origin
      • Cheyne–Stokes breathing: cycles of faster → slower → no breathing
    • Obstructive: blocked airway
    • Hypoventilation disorder: shallow breathing
• Neurodevelopmental disorders: issues during development (e.g., autism spectrum, ADHD)
• Neurocognitive disorders: issues after development (e.g., Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc.)

7.3. Biological Basis

• Monoamine theory
  • Bipolar disorders: monoamines ↑↑
    • Risk factors: genetic, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Depressive disorders: monoamines ↓↓
    • Cortisol ↑↑, Glc metabolism ↑↑ in amygdala, hippocampal atrophy
    • Production is affected: both neurotransmitters and metabolites are low
    • Treat w/ antidepressants: monoamines ↑ (e.g., selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs))
• Dopamine hypothesis
  • Schizophrenia: dopamine ↑↑ in mesocorticolimbic pathway
    • Risk factors: mostly genetic, birth trauma (e.g., hypoxemia), excess marijuana in adolescence, etc.
      • Biological + environmental etiology
    • Treat w/ neuroleptics/antipsychotics: block dopamine receptors (sedation, parkinsonism as side effect)
  • Parkinson’s: dopamine ↓↓ from substantia nigra (dopaminergic) of basal ganglia
    • Bradykinesia, resting tremor, pill-rolling tremor, mask-like facies, cogwheel rigidity, shuffling gait
    • Treat w/ ʟ-DOPA: dopamine precursor (psychosis as side effect)
• Alzheimer’s: gradual memory loss, disorientation, abstract thought ↓, forgetful, mood/personality changes, etc.
  • Diffuse brain atrophy, flattened sulci in cortex, enlarged ventricles
  • Blood flow ↓ in parietal lobes, metabolism ↓ in temporal/parietal lobes
  • ACh ↓, choline acetyltransferase (ChAT, synthesizes ACh) ↓
  • Senile plaques (β-amyloid), neurofibrillary tangles (hyperphosphorylated τ protein)
  • Risk factors: genetic (mutated presenilin, apoE, gene for β-amyloid precursor protein (APP)), low education, Down syndrome

8. Social Processes, Attitudes, Behavior 

8.1. Group Psychology

• Social action: group’s effect on individual behavior
  • Social facilitation: perform simple tasks better when others are around
    • Perceived evaluation
    • Yerkes–Dodson Law (arousal theory of motivation)
      • Presence of others → arousal ↑↑ → simple tasks ↑, complex tasks ↓
    • Hawthorne effect: consciously change behavior when others are around
  • Deindividuation: very different individual behavior in social environments
    • Large groups → perceived anonymity → individual identity ↓
    • Antinormative behavior: behavior against the norm when in a group
  • Bystander effect: less inclined to intervene/help when others are around
    • Inversely proportional: more people around → less likely to help
    • Causes: social etiquette in groups, taking cues from others not intervening, diffused responsibility, incohesiveness of group
  • Social loafing: put in less effort when in a group
  • Conforming
    • Conformity/peer pressure: social influence from peers (equals)
      • Either beneficial or harmful
      • Informative (consult group for guidance when unsure), normative (follow group even when sure) influence
      • Public (only outwardly agree), private (actually agree) conformity
      • Identity shift effect: threat of rejection → conform → internal conflict → identity shift (internalize group’s norms)
        • Cognitive dissonance: 2 opposing thoughts simultaneously → internal discomfort

Relieve by changing, trivializing or denying the thought, or adding new thoughts

Changing behavior can’t relieve dissonance

Minimum justification principle: less justification for having done something → more dissonance

• • • • What increases conformity?
        • Group size (3–5 people), unanimity, group status, group cohesion, public responses
        • Prior commitments to group, insecurity
    • Obedience: social influence from authority
      • What increases obedience?
        • Legitimacy of authority, physical/social closeness to authority
        • Victim distance, depersonalization of victims
    • Types
      • Compliance: follow requests to get rewards/avoid punishment
        • No longer comply once incentive disappears
      • Identification: mimic someone you respect
        • No longer identify once they lose respect
      • Internalization: integrated into own values, private conformity
    • Studies
      • Asch line experiment: urge to conform > desire to give right answer
        • When pressured by confederate peers, subjects gave wrong answers to obvious questions
        • Causes

Normative influence: went along with wrong answer

Informative influence: doubted own answer

Perceptual error: incorrectly perceived question, actually believed wrong answer

• • • • Milgram shock experiment: people follow authority
        • When pressured by authority figure, subjects (“teachers”) electrocuted confederates (“students”)
        • Causes

Just-world phenomenon: victim-blaming the students

Shifted responsibility

Actor–observer asymmetry

• • • • • Inspired by Nuremberg defense (“just following orders”)
      • Stanford prison experiment
        • Subjects internalized roles of prisoners, guards
        • Causes

Deindividuation, internalization

Situational attribution

Cognitive dissonance → identity shift

• Group processes/social interactions: group’s effect on each other’s behavior
  • Group polarization: groups make decisions that are more extreme than individuals’ ideas (due to confirmation bias?)
    • Risky shift: individuals’ moderate ideas become more extreme thru discussion
    • Choice shift: group shifts toward caution thru discussion
  • Groupthink: groups make incorrect/poor decisions to ensure harmony/conformity
    • Factors
      • Illusion of invulnerability, of morality, of unanimity
      • Collective rationalization (ignore outside warnings), excessive stereotyping (against outside opinions)
      • Pressure for conformity, self-censorship, mindguards (appoint members to protect against dissent)
• Culture: beliefs, behaviors, actions, characteristics of group (learned or inherited)
  • Culture shock
  • Assimilation: unequal mixing of cultures (“melting pot”)
    • Immigrant assimilation: SES, geographic distribution, language attainment, intermarriage
    • Ethnic enclaves slow assimilation
  • Multiculturalism: celebrates coexisting cultures (“cultural mosaic”)
  • Subcultures: groups that distinguish themselves from primary culture
    • Counterculture: opposes social mores

8.2. Socialization

• Socialization: developing/inheriting/spreading norms, cultures, beliefs
  • Cultural transmission/learning: society socializes members
  • Cultural diffusion: socialization spreads throughout culture
  • 1° socialization: children learn by observing parents, other adults
  • 2° socialization: adolescents/adults learn behavior of smaller sections of society (e.g., school)
  • Anticipatory socialization: prepare for future changes in environment/relationships (e.g., live-in SO)
  • Resocialization: discard old behaviors, learn new ones (e.g., military, cult)
  • Agents of socialization
    • Family, peers, groups, school, work, ethnicity, religion, media, gov’t, etc.
• Norms: societal rules that define acceptable behavior, serve as social control
  • Folkways: common manners in specific interactions (e.g., opening door for someone)
  • Mores: widely observed, based on morals (e.g., lying)
  • Sanctions: rewards for obeying, punishment for breaking norms (e.g., stealing)
    • Formal (enforced by institutions), informal (enforced by behaviors)
  • Taboos: socially unacceptable, immoral, reprehensible (e.g., bestiality)
• Deviance: violate norms
  • Labeling theory: society judges, labels behaviors as deviant
    • 1° deviance: less serious, person continues deviant behavior w/o guilt
    • 2° deviance: more serious, person is stigmatized into being even more deviant ((+) feedback)
  • Differential association theory: deviance is learned
    • Become deviant if you associate w/ deviants > associations w/ normative
  • Strain theory: deviance is reaction to disconnect between social goals and social structure
• Stigma: extreme disapproval/dislike of person/group w/ perceived differences
• Conformity/majority influence: match own beliefs/behaviors to social norms
  • Informative (accept evidence from group), normative (want to fit in/fear social rejection) influence
  • Internalization: conform to fit group, and privately agree w/ group’s ideas
    • Stanford prison experiment
  • Identification: conform to fit group, but pretend to agree w/ group’s ideas
• Compliance: change own behavior based on direct request (no authority)
  • Foot-in-the-door: start small, then make progressively bigger requests
  • Door-in-the-face: start big (expectedly refused), then make smaller request
  • Lowball: get initial commitment, then raise cost of commitment
  • That’s-not-all: make an offer, then improve offer before getting a decision
• Obedience: change own behavior based on direct request from authority
  • More likely to comply, b/c of real/perceived social power
  • Milgram shock experiment
• Collective behavior
  • Short social interactions, open membership, loose norms (unlike group behavior)
  • Fad: fleeting popular behavior
  • Mass hysteria: shared intense anxiety/delusions
    • Mass psychogenic illness/epidemic hysteria: mass hysteria about illness (e.g., anthrax false alarms)
  • Riots: mass violence due to perceived injustice

8.3. Attitudes, Behavior

• Social cognition: how people think about others, influence on behavior
• Attitude: express (+)/(–) feelings toward someone/thing
  • Components: “ABC”
    • Affective: how you feel
    • Behavioral: how you act
    • Cognitive: how you think (justification for affective, behavioral)
  • Functional attitudes theory: purpose of attitudes
    • Knowledge: organize thoughts/experiences, predict behavior
    • Adaptation: want to be socially accepted
    • Ego expression: communicate self-identity
    • Ego defense: protect self-esteem, justify wrong actions
  • Social learning theory: attitudes stem from learning
    • From experiences, others, classical/operant conditioning, observational learning
  • Social cognitive theory/reciprocal determinism: learn attitudes by observing, replicating others’ behavior
    • Triadic reciprocal causation (Bandura): behavioral, personal, environmental factors influence each other
• How do attitudes influence behavior?
  • Theory of planned behavior: consider intentions + implications of actions
    • Intentions: based on attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control
  • Attitude-to-behavior process model: attitude (from an event) + knowledge → behavior
  • Prototype willingness model: intentions, attitudes, subjective norms, willingness, models/prototypes, past behavior → behavior
  • Elaboration likelihood model: cognitive approach to persuasion
    • Central-route processing: “high elaboration,” think deeply about quality of argument
    • Peripheral-route processing: “low elaboration,” focus on superficial details
    • Factors
      • Target characteristics: how you receive the message
      • Source characteristics: background of message/speaker, venue itself
      • Message characteristics: quality of message/speaker
    • Stages
      • Preprocessing (target characteristics): central if interested, peripheral if uninterested
      • Processing: deep (central), shallow (peripheral)
      • Change in attitude: lasting (central), temporary (peripheral)
  • Effort justification: the more effort we put into something, the more valuable we perceive its outcome to be
    • Sunk cost fallacy?
• Perceived behavior control: ability to carry out intentions to perform a behavior
  • Internal (in control), external (out of control) locus of control
  • Learned helplessness: perceived lack of control → defeated, helpless
  • Tyranny of choice: too much control → information overload, decision paralysis
• Self-control: control own impulses, delay own gratifications
  • Desires: motivations from dis/pleasures
  • Temptations: desires that conflict w/ values/goals
    • Marshmallow test: children who resist temptation have more self-control, better outcomes in life
  • Ego depletion: self-control is a limited resource
• Implicit association test: faster response = faster activation of memory schemata = stronger association

9. Social Interaction 

9.1. Elements

• Statuses: positions in society, used to classify individuals
  • Ascribed: involuntary (e.g., race, gender)
  • Achieved: gained from own efforts/choices
  • Master: most identified status (usually most important/pervasive)
• Roles: set of beliefs/values/norms that define expectations for status
  • Role performance: perform behaviors associated w/ role
  • Role partner: behavior changes depending on interacting person
  • Role set: roles associated w/ status
  • Role conflict: difficulty satisfying expectations of multiple roles
  • Role strain: difficulty satisfying multiple expectations of 1 role
  • Role exit: replace 1 role w/ another
• Groups: people w/ shared similar characteristics, interactions, unity
  • Dyad (2), triad (3), etc.
    • Group size ↑ → more social ties → stability ↑, intimacy ↓
      • Dyads are unstable: any 1 party can break the group
  • Provide belonging/acceptance, protection/support, learning, income, etc.
  • Inter/intra-group conflicts: discrimination, oppression, war
  • Peer group: self-selected equals, similar age/status
    • Provides friendship, belonging
  • Family group: determined by birth/adoption/marriage, disparate ages/sexes
    • In adolescence, peer group–family group conflict
  • In-group (belonging), out-group (competes/opposes), reference group (establishes reference to evaluate by)
  • 1° groups (direct interactions, close bonds, long-lasting), 2° groups (superficial interactions, few bonds, transient)
  • Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Tönnies)
    • Community: groups of togetherness, shared characteristics (e.g., family)
    • Society: groups of mutual self-interest (e.g., country)
  • Interaction process analysis: observes interactions in small groups
    • System for multiple-level observation of groups (SYMLOG): 3 dimensions of interaction
      • Dominant vs. submissive
      • Un- vs. friendly
      • Instrumentally controlled vs. emotionally expressive
  • Group conformity: group holds power over members, shapes behaviors
  • Groupthink: focuses only on group’s ideas, ignore outside ideas
• Networks: observable patterns of relationships
  • Network redundancy: overlapping connections w/ same individual
  • Immediate: dense, strong ties (e.g., friends)
  • Distant: loose, weak ties (e.g., acquaintances)
• Organizations: achieve specific goals, have structure/culture
  • Formal organizations: diff. from groups
    • Persist after members’ departure, have expressed goals (usually written), control members’ activities w/ enforcement, delegate hierarchically
  • Types
    • Utilitarian: members are rewarded for efforts (e.g., college)
    • Normative: members share unity, purpose (e.g., church)
    • Coercive: no choice in membership, usually very structured/strict (e.g., prison)
    • Characteristic: basic organization of society (e.g., gov’t)
  • Bureaucracy: rational system of politics/admin/control, slow to change, inefficient
    • Characteristics of ideal bureaucracy (Weber)
      • Division of labor: more efficient, but more silos
        • Trained incapacity: too specialized that you lose bigger picture
      • Hierarchy: more organized, but more deindividuation/diffused responsibility
      • Written rules/regulations: clear expectations/unity/continuity, but more stifling
        • Goal displacement: following rules becomes the goal
      • Impersonality: equal treatment, but more conformity
      • Employment based on technical qualifications: less discrimination, but less ambition
        • Peter principle: every employee keeps getting promoted until they reach own level of incompetence
    • Bureaucratization: organizations become more governed by more rules
    • Iron law of oligarchy: democracies/bureaucracies naturally shift to oligarchies
    • McDonaldization: society’s shift toward efficiency, predictability, control

9.2. Self-Presentation, Interactions

• Self-presentation: present self to society thru culturally accepted behaviors
• Expressed emotions
  • James–Lange, Cannon–Bard, Schachter–Singer, Lazarus theories
  • Basic model of emotional expression (Darwin): face, behavior, posture, vocal, physiological
    • Certain expressions are preserved across cultures (and species)
    • Appraisal model: cognitive emotion → biologically predetermined expressions
  • Social-construction model: emotions are based on experiences/situations, not biological
    • Some emotions can exist only in interactions
    • Emotions have diff. expressions, roles across cultures
      • Display rules: cultural expectations of emotions
  • Cultural syndrome: culture’s shared beliefs/norms/values/behaviors organized around central theme
    • Individualistic/collectivist, gender, etc.
• Impression management: influence how others perceive us
  • Authentic, ideal, tactical (presented when following others’ expectations) selves
    • Tactical self ≈ ought self
  • Strategies
    • Self-disclosure: tell others about yourself
    • Managing appearances: (+) image using props/appearance/associations/etc.
    • Ingratiation: flatter/conform
    • Aligning actions: make excuses
    • Alter-casting: impose an identity on another person
  • Dramaturgical approach (Goffman): status = role in a play
    • Front stage: in front of others, conform to desired public image
    • Back stage: unobserved by others, free to act against image
  • “I” (creative expression), “me” (response to environment) (Mead)
• Communication
  • Verbal: thru words (spoken, written, signed, etc.)
  • Nonverbal: facial expressions, gestures, posture (body language), prosody (tone), eye contact, etc.
• Animal communication: behavior that affects that of another animal
  • Facial expressions (most conserved across species), body language, visual, vocal, pheromones

10. Social Thinking 

10.1. Social Behavior

• Interpersonal attraction: people like each other
  • Physical appearance: symmetric face, golden-ratio body proportions, averageness
  • Similarity: convenient to spend time together, validate each other’s values/choices
    • “Opposites attract”: differences complement each other, and there are still fundamental similarities
  • Self-disclosure: share thoughts/goals w/ non-judgmental empathy
  • Reciprocal liking: like another person more if you believe the other person likes you
  • Proximity: convenient, mere exposure/familiarity effect (prefer stimuli you’re more exposed to)
• Aggression: cause harm, social dominance ↑
  • Fight predators, gain resources, evolutionary fitness
  • Threat displays → violence
  • Factors
    • Amygdala (associates stimuli w/ rewards/punishments): identifies threats
      • Prefrontal cortex, etc.: opposes amygdala (emotional reactivity ↓, impulse ↓)
        • Prefrontal cortex ↓ → aggressive ↑
    • Testosterone ↑ → aggressive ↑
    • Cognitive neoassociation model: (–) emotions → aggressive reaction ↑
    • Exposure to violent behavior → aggressive ↑
• Attachment: emotional bond between child and secure base (consistent, available, comforting, responsive caregiver)
  • Harlow monkey experiment
    • Separated baby monkeys preferred cloth mothers (comfort) over wire mothers (food)
      • Secure base > nourishment
  • Ainsworth strange situation experiment: patterns of attachment
    • Secure: comfort distressed child
      • Child is able to explore then return to secure base
      • Distress when separated, relief when reunited
      • Caregiver > stranger
    • Avoidant: little/no response to distressed child
      • No reaction to caregiver leaving/returning
      • No preference between caregiver, stranger
    • Ambivalent/anxious–ambivalent: inconsistent response to distressed child
      • Child has no secure base
      • Distress when separated, mixed response when reunited
    • Disorganized: caregiver is erratic/withdrawn/abusive
      • Mixed/strange reaction to caregiver leaving/returning
  • Parenting styles
    • Permissive/indulgent: lenient, few behavioral expectations
    • Authoritative: strict, pragmatic, discipline
    • Authoritarian: very strict, punishments
• Social support: perceive that you’re cared for by a social network
  • Emotional: listen, affirm, empathize w/ your feelings
  • Esteem: affirm your qualities/skills
  • Material/tangible/instrumental: financial/material help
  • Informational: provide helpful info
  • Companionship/network: provide sense of belonging
• Social behaviors
  • Foraging
    • Lateral (hunger), ventromedial (satiety) hypothalamus
    • Genetics: foraging behavior, divide tasks
    • Cognitive: spatial awareness, memory, decision-making
    • Observational learning
  • Mating
    • Mating system: group’s sexual behavior
      • By exclusivity
        • Monogamy: exclusive
        • Polygamy: polyandry (many males), polygyny (many females)
        • Promiscuity: inexclusive
      • By similarity
        • Assortative (similar phenotypes), disassortative (diff. phenotypes) mating

Koinophilia: attracted to typical, “normal” individuals

• • • • • Homogamy (culturally similar), heterogamy (culturally diff.)

Homo/heterophily for relationships in general

• • • • • Endogamy (w/in group), exogamy (across diff. groups)

More restrictive than homo/heterogamy

• • • Mate choice/intersexual selection: select mate based on attraction
      • Mate bias: 1 sex is more responsible for choosing
      • Direct (benefit mate), indirect (benefit offspring) benefits
      • Mechanisms
        • Phenotypic benefits: outward traits signal more production, better offspring survival
        • Indicator traits: traits signal better health/well-being
        • Sensory bias: trait matches pre-existing preferences
        • Fisherian/runaway selection: sexually desirable trait is exaggerated, (+) feedback
        • Genetic compatibility: complementary genotypes attract each other → homozygosity ↓
    • Strategies
      • Random
        • Genetic diversity ↑
      • Assortative/homogamy: similar individuals mate w/ each other
        • Inbreeding ↑, but inclusive fitness ↑
        • Inclusive fitness: individual’s success in population

# offspring, how good at supporting offspring, how well offspring support others

Altruism → inclusive fitness ↑

• • • • Disassortative/heterogamy: diff. individuals mate w/ each other
  • Altruism: help others at cost to self
    • Types (all have ulterior motives)
      • Kin selection: more altruistic toward more close people
      • Reciprocal altruism: more altruistic if you’ll interact again in the future (expected reciprocity)
      • Costly signaling: gain trust, signal you’re open to cooperation
    • Empathy–altruism hypothesis: empathy ↑ → altruism ↑
      • Empathy: vicariously experience others’ emotions
      • Development: empathy → play helping behaviors → actual helping behaviors
    • Help other person if benefits > costs to self
  • Evolutionary game theory: evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS)
    • Predicts resource availability, social behavior
    • Hawk–dove game: players compete for resources as hawks (fight), doves (avoid fights, share resources)
      • If value of reward ≫ cost of fighting, then hawks win
      • If cost of fighting ≫ value of reward, then doves win
    • Outcomes
      • Altruism: donor benefits recipient at cost to self
      • Cooperation: both donor, recipient benefit
      • Spite: both donor, recipient are harmed
      • Selfishness: donor benefits at cost to recipient
    • Unlike game theory, decisions in evolutionary game theory have no conscious intention

10.2. Social Perception, Behavior

• Social perception/cognition: perceiver judges target in a situation
  • Impression bias: select cues to fit consistent impression
    • Primacy bias: first impressions matter most
    • Recency bias: most recent info matters most
    • Reliance on central traits: impressions are based on traits most relevant to perceiver
    • Implicit personality theory: perceivers place targets in categories, based on assumptions about how different types of people, their traits, their behavior are related
      • Stereotyping: make assumptions about target based on category
  • Halo effect: overall (+) impression colors judgments about target’s traits
    • e.g., physical attractiveness stereotype
  • Devil/reverse halo effect: overall (–) impression colors judgments about target’s traits
  • Just-world hypothesis: karmic impressions (e.g., Puritan view of money, victim-blaming)
    • When just-world hypothesis is challenged…
      • Rational techniques: accept reality, correct/prevent injustice
      • Irrational techniques: denial, reinterpret events
  • Self-serving/attributional bias: attribute own successes to internal factors, failures to external factors
    • Protects self-esteem
      • Higher self-esteem → more self-serving bias
      • Depression → reversed self-serving bias
    • Self-enhancement (need to maintain self-worth), locus of control, emotion
  • Optimism bias: bad things happen only to other people
• Attribution theory: how people infer causes of others’ behavior
  • Causes
    • Dispositional/internal: about person
    • Situational/external: about environment
  • Covariation model: cues for attribution
    • Consistency: consistent behavior over time → dispositional
    • Consensus: behavior deviates from others’ → dispositional
    • Distinctiveness: similar behavior across diff. situations → dispositional
    • Correspondent inference theory: unexpected behavior → dispositional
  • Fundamental attribution error: biased toward dispositional attribution for others, esp. in (–) situations
    • Actor–observer asymmetry: also biased toward situational attribution for self, esp. in (–) situations
      • Due to self-serving bias by actor, fundamental attribution error by observer
  • Attribute substitution: use simpler solutions/heuristics for complex judgments
  • Cultural attribution: individualistic cultures make more fundamental attribution errors than collectivist cultures do

10.3. Stereotypes, Prejudice, Discrimination

• Stereotypes (cognitive): attitudes/impressions based on limited/superficial info about group
  • Stereotype content model: warmth (not in direct competition w/ in-group) vs. competence (high status in society)
    • Paternalism: not competitive, low status (e.g., elderly)
    • Admiration: not competitive, high status (e.g., in-group)
    • Contempt: competitive, low status (e.g., immigrants)
    • Envy: competitive, high status (e.g., rich)
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy: stereotyped expectations → conditions that fulfill those expectations
  • Stereotype threat: concerned/anxious about confirming own group’s (–) stereotype
    • Stereotype threat may hinder performance → self-fulfilling prophecy
• Prejudice (affective): irrational (+)/(–) attitude toward group, w/o actual experience w/ group
  • Formed in response to dissimilarities between groups
    • Power: ability to control/influence others
      • Authority: legitimacy of power
    • Prestige: level of respect from others
    • Class: SES
  • Causes
    • Frustration–aggression hypothesis: frustrated from attaining a goal → aggression
      • Aggression is typically toward a scapegoat
      • Scapegoats are usually minorities (envied in stereotype content model)
    • Relative deprivation: deprived of some entitlement, real or imagined → prejudice
  • Propaganda: large groups try to create prejudices in others
  • Ethnocentrism: judge other cultures based on values/beliefs of own culture
    • In-group vs. out-group
      • In-group favoritism → out-group derogation
    • Cultural imperialism: deliberately impose own cultural values on another culture
    • Xenocentrism: view another culture as superior to own culture
    • Cultural relativism: perceive other cultures as just different, w/o judging superiority/inferiority
• Discrimination (behavioral): prejudicial attitudes → treat group differently
  • Individual: 1 person discriminates
    • Conscious/obvious, eliminate by removing person
  • Institutional: entire institution (status quo) discriminates
    • Covert, hard to eliminate
    • Unintentional discrimination
      • Side-effect: institutions are interrelated, discrimination in 1 institution facilitates that in another
      • Past-in-present: legacy still discriminates, even after policy is changed

11. Social Structure, Demographics 

11.1. Sociology

• Macrosociology: large groups, social structure
• Microsociology: small groups, individual
• Theories
  • Functionalism/functional analysis: structure, function of each part of society (macrosociology)
    • Functions (beneficial consequences of actions), dysfunctions (harmful consequences of actions)
      • Manifest functions: intended to help system
      • Latent functions: unintended (+) consequences on system
    • Illness → deviant (“sick” social role), disrupts society
  • Conflict theory (Marx): power differentials maintain social order (macrosociology)
    • Economic/political structures create social divisions, inequalities, conflicts
    • Thesis (status quo) + antithesis (backlash, class consciousness) → synthesis (compromise)
      • Process keeps repeating
      • Historically, feudalism → capitalism → socialism
    • Gumplowicz: war/conquest/conflicts shape society
  • Symbolic interactionism: how we use symbols to interact w/ one another (microsociology)
    • Symbols: things w/ attached meaning, vary between cultures
  • Social constructionism: knowledge is social construct
    • Social concepts change w/ social norms
      • e.g., justice, currency, work ethic, gender roles, etc.
    • Weak: social constructs depend on brute (basic, fundamental knowledge), institutional (created by social conventions) facts
    • Strong: no brute facts exist, all knowledge is social construct
  • Rational-choice theory: consider all possible rewards/punishments of each social action, choose that w/ best cost–benefit
    • Every outcome of every social interaction carries specific rewards/punishments
      • Can’t explain altruism
    • Exchange theory: perform behaviors w/ anticipated rewards, avoid behaviors w/ anticipated punishments
      • Rational-choice theory + operant conditioning
  • Feminist theory: subordination of women thru social structures, institutional discrimination
    • Gender roles: expected behaviors for each sex (e.g., male breadwinners, female caretakers)
    • Objectification: view person as sexual object
    • Glass ceiling: harder for women to get top positions
• Social institutions: fundamental parts of culture, regulate behavior of individuals in core parts of society
  • Family
    • Patterns of kinship: varied across time, w/in cultures
    • Parenting, adoption, extended families, divorce, etc.
    • Domestic violence: usually against women in families w/ alcoholism (learned helplessness)
    • Elder abuse, child abuse: usually neglect by caretaker
      • Physicians are mandated reporters
  • Education
    • Hidden curriculum: social norms, attitudes, beliefs
    • Teacher expectancy: teachers get from students what they expect from them (self-fulfilling prophecy)
    • SES inequalities (segregation), health disparities, etc.
  • Religion
    • Religiosity: how religious you consider yourself
    • Ecclesiae: dominant religious bodies, members comprise most of society (e.g., Mormonism in Utah)
    • Churches: established religious bodies in society (e.g., Roman Catholic Church)
    • Sects: smaller religious bodies, breakaways from churches (e.g., Amish)
    • Cults: sects w/ extreme/deviant philosophies
    • Modernization w/in religions, secularization of societies, fundamentalism
  • Government
    • Influence, influenced by all other institutions
    • Democracy: every citizen has political voice
    • Communism: classless, moneyless, all property is shared
    • Monarchy: royal ruler
    • Dictatorship: 1 person holds power, quashes threats
    • Theocracy: religious leaders hold power
  • Economy
    • Capitalism: free-market trade, laissez-faire policies, division of labor
    • Socialism: large industries are collective/shared, compensation based on work contribution, equally shared profits
  • Health care, medicine
    • Access ↑, costs ↓, preventative medicine, primary-care physicians, public-health education, paternalism ↓, economic conflicts of interest ↓
    • Life-course approach to health
      • Consider, maintain patient’s entire history, not just immediate symptoms
    • Sick role: functionalist view
      • Sick people are exempt from normal social roles, not responsible for own illness, entitled to care
      • Sick people should try to get well, seek legitimate help, cooperate w/ medical professionals
    • Illness experience: symbolic interactionist view
      • How people incorporate, understand own illness as part of self-identity/daily routines
    • Medicalization: define/treat something as medical condition
    • Medical ethics
      • Beneficence: act in patient’s best interest
      • Nonmaleficence: do no (net) harm
      • Respect for patient autonomy: respect patient’s decisions about own health care
      • Justice: treat similar patients w/ similar care, fairly distribute resources
  • Views of institutions
    • Conservative: institutions are natural byproducts of society
    • Progressive: institutions are artificial constructs and must be redesigned if unhelpful

11.2. Culture

• Material culture: focuses on artifacts (material items people make, possess, value)
  • Emblems, clothing, foods, symbols, etc.
• Symbolic/nonmaterial culture: focuses on ideas
  • Mottos, songs, themes, etc.
  • Culture lag: symbolic culture is slower to change than material culture
• Language
• Values: what you consider important in life, dictate your ethical principles
• Beliefs: what you accept as truth
• Norms: societal rules that define boundaries of acceptable behavior
• Rituals: formalized ceremonies involving specific artifacts, symbolism, acceptable behaviors
• Evolution
  • Culture passes down info across generations
  • Loyalty, allegiance → altruism
  • “Us vs. them” → global diaspora
  • Some cultural values/beliefs favor certain genotypes

11.3. Demographics

• Categories
  • Age
    • Age cohorts
      • Lost Generation (born before 1900): grew up during WWI
      • Greatest Generation (born before 1928): grew up during Great Depression, WWII
      • Silent Generation (born before 1945): grew up during post-WWII
      • Boomers (born before 1965): born after WWII
        • Most old people today, due to post-WWII baby boom
      • Gen X (born before 1980)
      • Millennials/Gen Y (born before 1996): grew up in 2000s
      • Zoomers (born before 2012):
    • Ageism
  • Gender: behavioral/cultural/psychological traits, not biological
    • Gender inequality, gender segregation
  • Race: phenotypic diffs.
    • Racialization: define group as a race
    • Racial formation theory: racial identity is fluid, depends on political/economic/social factors
  • Ethnicity: cultural diffs.
    • Symbolic ethnicity: specific connection to own ethnicity w/ important symbols/identity, though ethnicity’s role in daily life is insignificant
  • Sexual orientation
    • Hetero-, bi-, homosexual
    • Kinsey scale: exclusive heterosexuality (0) to exclusive homosexuality (6)
  • Immigration status
  • Intersectionality: interplay between multiple demographic factors
• Demographic shifts
  • Statistics
    • Population pyramids
    • Fertility rate = avg. # children per woman per lifetime
    • Birth/death rate = # births/deaths per 1,000 people per year
    • Migration rate = (immigration rate) – (emigration rate)
      • Pull ((+) about new location), push ((–) about old location) factors
    • Dependency ratio = (economically dependent)/(economically productive)
  • Demographic transition
    • Stage 1 (preindustrial): high birth, death rates
    • Stage 2: better health care/nutrition/sanitation/wages → death rate ↓
    • Stage 3: better contraception/women’s rights, industrialization, supported longer by parents → birth rate ↓
    • Stage 4 (industrialized): low birth, death rates
  • Malthusian theory: exponential pop. growth outpaces growth of food supply → social disorder
    • Malthusian catastrophe: similar to death phase of bacterial growth
• Social movements: driven by perceived relative deprivation
  • Proactive (promote social change), reactive (resist social change)
• Globalization: integrate global economy w/ free trade, open foreign markets
  • → social/cultural exchange ↑ → food availability ↑, but also unemployment ↑, pollution ↑, etc.
• Urbanization: densely populated areas draw migration
  • Ghettos: concentration of specific racial/ethnic/religious minorities
  • Slums: extremely densely populated, low-quality/informal housing

12. Social Stratification 

12.1. Social Class

• Social stratification
  • Slavery, caste, feudal, class
  • Socioeconomic status (SES): ascribed and achieved
    • Class: upper, middle (upper-/middle-/lower-middle), lower
    • Prestige: (+) regard from society
    • Power: ability to control/influence others (thru rewards/punishments)
    • Authority: legitimacy of power
      • Traditional: from long-standing patterns in society
      • Charismatic: from personal appeal/extraordinary claims
      • Rational–legal: from professional position
    • Privilege: inequality in opportunity
    • Marxist theory: proletariat w/ class consciousness can overthrow bourgeoisie
      • Class consciousness: working class organizes politically
      • False consciousness: misconception of own place in society
    • Strain theory: anomie → deviance
      • Anomie: breakdown of social bonds between individuals and society
        • Resolve by strengthening social norms, redeveloping shared norms
    • Social trust: social norms of reciprocity + social networks
  • Social capital: benefits from group association
    • Capital ↑ → social integration ↑, inclusion ↑
    • Social networks: situational (SES), positional (in network) advantages
    • Strong ties: peers, family (small)
    • Weak ties: professional (large)
  • Cultural capital: benefits from knowledge/skills
• Social mobility
  • Intragenerational (w/in own lifetime), intergenerational (parents to children)
  • Vertical: upward (+), downward (–)
  • Horizontal: work/lifestyle change w/in same social class
  • Meritocracy: advance based on intellectual talent, achievement
• Poverty: low SES, few resources
  • Types
    • Absolute: can’t afford basic quality of living
      • Poverty line
    • Relative: poor compared to a population
      • e.g., grad students compared to other academics, poor Americans compared to global poor
    • Marginal: unstable income
    • Transitional: temporary job loss
    • Structural: “holes” in society, structural failings (job market, social safety nets, etc.)
  • Perspectives
    • Individual: people are responsible for own poverty
      • Religious: poor people are being punished by God
    • Structural: socioeconomic structural failings
    • Situational: people have attitudes/values that perpetuate own poverty
  • Social reproduction: pass down social inequality to children
    • Lifestyle, power-/helplessness, isolation, apathy
  • Social exclusion: poor people feel segregated/isolated
• Spatial inequality
  • Residential segregation
    • Rural: less cultural diversity/anonymity → fewer opportunities
    • Low-income: more poverty, worse schools, crime
    • Suburbanization → urban decay
    • Gentrification → urban renewal
  • Environmental justice
    • Poor/minority: worse living conditions, environmental pollution
  • Global inequalities
    • World-system theory: unequal division of labor globally
      • Core (high-skilled), semi-peripheral (developing), peripheral (low-skilled, exploited)

12.2. Epidemiology, Disparities

• Incidence = # new cases per at-risk population per time
• Prevalence = # total cases per total population per time
• Morbidity (burden/degree of illness), mortality (deaths)
• Health inequalities
  • Second sickness (Waitzkin): social injustice worsens health outcomes
  • Sex
    • Female < male mortality
      • Men are more risk-taking, hold more dangerous jobs, more likely to get life-threatening diseases
    • Male < female morbidity
• Health-care inequalities: “care for the old, aid the poor”
  • Medicare: > 65 y/o, end-stage renal disease, ALS
  • Medicaid: poor

11. Research Design, Execution 

11.1. Scientific Method

• Scientific method
  • Ask testable question → gather data/resources → form hypothesis → collect data → analyze → interpret
• FINER method: evaluates research question
  • Is the research feasible?
  • Is the question interesting?
  • Is the question novel?
  • Is the study ethical?
  • Is the question relevant outside of science?

11.2. Basic Science Research

• Controls/standards: way to verify results
  • (+), (–) controls
• Causality: if-then relationship
  • Manipulate independent var (IV), observe dependent vars (DVs)
  • Mediating var: IV ⤚(mediating var)→ DV
    • Explains mechanism, weakens IV–DV relationship
  • Moderating var: changes strength/direction of IV–DV relationship
  • Confounding var: changes both IV, DV
• Instrument error
  • Accuracy/validity: instrument’s ability to measure true value
    • Systematic error
  • Precision/reliability: instrument’s ability to measure consistently
    • Random error

11.3. Human Subjects

• Experimental: investigators manipulate IV in subjects, assessors collect DV data, can show causality
  • Randomization: randomly assign subjects to groups
  • Blinding: limit knowledge about subjects
    • Single-blind: blind only subjects, assessors
    • Double-blind: blind everyone (subjects, assessors, investigators)
  • Data analysis
    • Confounding variables: outside IVs, DVs
    • Binary, categorical, continuous variables
    • Regression analysis
• Observational: observe exposures (risk factors)/outcomes, can show correlation only
  • Cohort: group subjects by exposures, then periodically observe how many have a certain outcome
  • Cross-sectional: group subjects at a single point in time
  • Case–control: group subjects by outcome, then trace their exposures
  • Hill’s criteria: finds likelihood of causality (“ACCESS PTD”)
    • Alternative explanations: can be ruled out
    • Consistency: similar relationship in diff. settings
    • Coherence: consistent w/ current knowledge
    • Experiment: perform experiment → can show causality
    • Strength: DV variability is explained by IV variability
    • Specificity: DV changes only from IV change
    • Plausibility: reasonable mechanism
    • Temporality: DV occurs before outcome (required)
    • Dose–response relationship: IV ↑ → DV ↑ proportionally
• Sources of error
  • Selection bias: subjects aren’t representative of population
  • Detection bias: prior knowledge skews how outcomes are observed
  • Observation bias/Hawthorne effect: subjects, aware they’re being observed, alter behavior
  • Confounding: incorrect relationship, another variable is to blame

11.4. Ethics

• Respect for persons
  • Be honest to subjects
    • Informed consent: tell subjects about procedures, risks/benefits, goals of study
  • Don’t coerce subjects
  • Let subjects withdraw at any time
• Justice
  • Morally relevant diffs.: valid diffs. to treat people differently by (e.g., age, population size, likelihood of benefit)
  • Fairly distribute risks
• Beneficence
  • Do good, minimize harm
  • Equipoise: medical community is unsure about benefits of treatment
    • If a treatment clearly has benefits, then stop trial of inferior treatment

11.5. Research

• Statistics
  • Assumes independent (IV), dependent (DV) vars
    • Regression: 1-way influence between continuous vars
    • t-test: compares means of 2 groups
      • Paired t-test: compares 2 means of 1 group
      • 2-tailed (relationships in both directions are possible), 1-tailed (relationship in only 1 direction is possible)
        • e.g., 2-tailed to infer if drug is more or less effective than existing drug
        • 1-tailed gives more power
    • Analysis of variance (ANOVA): compares means of many groups
  • Doesn’t assume dependence
    • Correlation: continuous vars
      • Correlation coefficient (r): +1 (positively correlated), 0 (random), –1 (negatively correlated)
    • Chi-square: categorical vars
• Study types
  • Experimental: manipulate independent var (IV), observe dependent var (DV)
    • Pros: shows causation, most reliable, most power
    • Cons: may not be generalizable (less external validity), may be infeasible/unethical
    • Types
      • Randomized controlled trials (RCTs): randomly assigns subjects to groups
        • Experimental, placebo/control groups
      • Clinical trials: observe outcomes from treatments, highly controlled
        • Pragmatic clinical trials: find correlation in real-world practice
  • Correlational: see if multiple vars are related
    • Pros: predictive ability, useful when experimental is infeasible/unethical
    • Cons: no causation, confounding vars
    • Types
      • Cross-sectional: observes group of diff. people at 1 moment in time
      • Longitudinal: observes group over time
        • Correlational insight into how vars change over time, but expensive, subjects drop out
        • Panel: follows sampled cross-section
        • Cohort: follows subset of population

Prospective cohort design: track cohort in real time

Retrospective cohort design: track cohort’s historical data

• • • • Case-control: compares 2 groups w/ diff. outcomes to find causal factor
      • Self-report/survey: gets subjective responses to questions
        • Closed (quantitative), open (qualitative) questions
      • Ethnography: observes social interactions in real social settings
  • Descriptive: see (no hypothesis)
    • Pros: no artificial setting, useful when studying rare phenomena
    • Cons: no relationship
    • Types
      • Case study: observes a specific person/group in depth
• Validity: accuracy
  • Internal: how real is the causation?
    • Decreased by confounds
  • External: is the conclusion generalizable?
    • Population validity: sample is representative
    • Ecological validity: research settings are representative
  • Test validity: how much meaning can be inferred from a test
    • Content: does the test do what it’s supposed to do?
    • Criterion: how predictive is the test?
      • Concurrent: against benchmark
      • Predictive: against future results
    • Construct: does the test give expected results?
      • Convergent: constructs expected to be related are related
      • Divergent: constructs expected to be unrelated are unrelated
  • Face validity: does the test look reasonable?
• Reliability: precision
  • Internal: consistent w/ itself
    • Split-half: (+) correlation between 2 halves of test
  • External:
    • Retest: (+) correlation between multiple tests
    • Inter-rater: (+) correlation between multiple administrators