Exam Notes

Heritability and Genetics

Graph Interpretation

• X-axis: Age of a child.
• Y-axis: Heritability (parent-child correlation of a trait).
• The graph illustrates the relationship between age and heritability for both adopted and control groups.

Correlation

• High Correlation: Near the top of the graph, indicating a strong similarity between a child's and parent's traits.
• Zero Correlation: Indicates no predictability of a child's traits based on the parent's traits.
• Correlation Never Reaches One: Children never turn fully into their parents due to other influences.

Control Group

• Heritability starts low, increasing over time.
• Genetic component explaining a kid's trait increases as they age.
• Over time, people have more control; genes remain constant while the environment changes, leading to divergence.

Adopted Group

• More similar early on due to environmental factors.
• Diverge over time because they don't share genetic material with parents.

Intuitions for Remembering

• Relate various facts to help in remembering how they work.
• Relying on intuition about how genes interact with the world.

Equal vs. Unequal Societies

• Equal Society: Genetic variance explains more because the environment is similar for everyone (genes \rightarrow more_variance).
• Unequal Society: Environmental differences overshadow genetic similarities (environment \rightarrow more_variance).

Unifying Concepts

• Age over time relates to dependency society.
• Seem different but show the same kind of relationship.

Scientific Papers

• Separate what authors think and what they actually found.
• Authors' conclusions may differ from overall scientific consensus.

Remembering Information

• Think of the ways to remember disparate bits of information.
• Verbalizing and explaining concepts.

Correlations and Statistics

Correlations

• Perfect Correlation: Points on a single line going up.
• No Correlation: Random scatter of points.

Residuals

• Definition: The distance from each data point to the predicted line.
• Represent the error in prediction.
• Smaller residuals indicate a better model fit.
• The best predictors explain the most variance, meaning residuals are the smallest.

Outliers

• Subjective decisions based on criteria.
• Usually determined by the data itself.

Taxes

Graduated Tax Rate

• Only applies to the marginal increase in income.
• Initial income taxed at the same rate, additional income taxed at a higher rate.

Conditioning

Classical vs. Operant Conditioning

• Classical Conditioning (Pavlov's Dogs): Passive; dogs don't do anything for conditioning to work.
• Operant Conditioning: Requires an action (operate); the organism being conditioned is actively doing something.

Example

• Sheldon giving Penny chocolate for doing something reinforces that action (operant conditioning).

Papers and Studies

Remembering Papers

• Remember overall findings from the field, not just what's in the papers.
• Authors' conclusions are not necessarily facts; critical analysis is key.

Midterm 2 Review

Morality

• Freud's Theory:
  • Id: Selfish desires.
  • Superego: Morality and goodness.
  • Ego: Moderates between id and superego, develops through childhood.

Theory of Mind

• Ability to understand that others have different thoughts and perspectives.
• Develops around three years old.
• Sally-Anne Test: Assesses theory of mind; children must understand Sally’s perspective of where a ball is hidden.

Self Control

• Childhood self-control predicts adult life elements (wealth, health, criminal acts).

Wakefield Study

• Connected measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism.
  • Flaws: Small sample size, lack of evidence, compromised funding.

Breastfeeding

• Benefits include higher IQs and longer education.

Achievement Gaps and Learning Styles

• Methods for assessing student achievement:
  • TIMSS
  • PISA
  • National Report Card

International Studies

• TIMSS: U.S. rates in the top five in math and science.
• PISA: U.S. ranked below average.
• Wealthy countries with high academic success are included in the TISA.

Inequality

• Adopted students see performance improvements while peers don't.
• COVID has exposed inequalities in education, affecting minorities and women more.

Adoption

• Adoption is a successful natural intervention.

Recognition vs. Recall

• Recognition: Identifying something in front of you.
• Recall: Remembering without cues.

Homeschooling

• Difficult to study due to self-selected groups.
• No negative social effects.
• Smaller but higher quality social networks.