psych midterm spring 2025

Stages of Consciousness 2/6

• Consciousness: the awareness of the sensations, thoughts and feelings being experiences at a given moment

Stages of Sleep

• Stage 1

  • Transition between wakefulness and sleep; relatively rapid, low-amplitude brain waves

  • Wake up the fastest from this stage

• Stage 2

  • Slower, more regular wave patterns

  • Momentary interruptions of “sleep spindles”

• Stage 3

  • Deepest stage of sleep; least responsive to outside stimulation

• REM (rapid eye movement)

  • 20% of adults sleeping time

  • Characterized by increase HR, BP, and BR; erections, eye movement and dreams

• Electroencephalography (EEG)

  • Measurement of electrical activity in different parts of the brain and recording of activities as a visual trace

  • Used to access consciousness when pronounced dead

  • We get less sleep as we age

Theories to Explain Dreams

• Unconscious wish fulfillment theory (Freud)

  • Dreams represent unconscious wishes that dreamers desire to see fulfilled

• Dreams for survival theory (Antti Revonsuo)

  • Dreams permit information that is critical for our daily survival to be reconsidered and reprocessed during sleep 

  • Memories, emotions, desires and potential dangers

• Activation Synthesis Theory (John Allen Hobson)

  • Brain produces random electrical energy during REM sleep that stimulates memories stored in the brain

Circadian Rhythm

• Biological process - approx. 24 hours

Daydreams- fantasies people construct while awake

What do people dream about?

• Typically about events that occur in everyday life

• We dream in color

• Gender differences

  • Girls and women dream about people they know, personal appearance concerns, issues related to family and home

  • Boy and men dream about outdoors or unfamiliar settings; may involve weapons, tools cars or sexual dreams with unknown partners

Sleep disorders

• More prevalent in children than adults

Learning 2/24

midterm on chapters 4-5

• Learning: any relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience

• Father of Classical Conditioning: Ivan Pavlov

  • Wondered if he could control the dog drooling from treats on command

Classical Conditioning:

• Type of learning in which neutral stimulus comes to bring about a response after it is paired with a stimulus that naturally brings about that response

• Neutral stimulus (NS): a stimulus that, before conditioning, does not naturally bring about the response of interest 

  • Ex. a bell that the dog doesn’t react to

• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): stimulus that naturally brings about a particular response without having been learned 

  • Ex.dog salvates at food that is presented to them

**A stimulus is what is brought to an organism

• Unconditioned response (UCR): involuntary and unlearned response to a naturally occurring or unconditioned stimulus

  • Dog salivating to food brought to him

• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): a previously neutral stimulus that becomes able to produce a conditioned response, after pairing with an unconditioned stimulus

  • Ex. bell being paired with the food – the bell finally means something

• Conditioned Response (CR): learned response to a conditioned stimulus

  • Ex. dog salivating when the bell rings

Put them all together

• Bell (unconditioned): no response

• Bell and food (during conditioning): salivated (at the food tho because it is a natural response)

• Bell (conditioned): salivates as a conditioned response

Stimulus Generalization and Discrimination

• Generalization: tendency to respond to stimulus that is only similar to the original conditioned stimulus with the conditioned response

• Discrimination: tendency to stop making a generalized response to a stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus because the similar stimulus is never paired with the unconditioned stimulus

Higher-order:

• Higher order conditioning: occurs when a strong conditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus, causing the neutral stimulus to become a second conditioned stimulus

  • Bell and food= salvation

  • No bell or food= still salivating…why? – because the dog is being stimulated by seeing the person who runs the experiment

John Watson: Taught that you can be made afraid of anything

Operant Conditioning

• Father of operant conditioning: BF skinner

Edward Thorndike: law of effect states that if an action is followed by a pleasurable consequence, it will tend to be repeated, and if followed by an unpleasant consequence, it will tend not to be repeated

• Cat in a box experiment: if they are able to get out they get a reward, even if the box is changed they will figure it out – if there is a reward. 

• Reward increase likelihood of behavior and punishment decreases behavior

Skinner: his box more represents prison

• When light turns green it’s supposed to dispense food and eat it

• When light is red it’s not supposed to do anything

  • If it does the wrong thing when each light turns on it gets shocked

Operant Conditioning Definition: learning is which a voluntary response is strengthened or weakened, depending on its favorable or unfavorable consequences

Exam Prep 3/6

Chapter 5 Learning

John watson: little albert

• Reinforcement: any event of stimulus that, when following a response, increases the probability that the response will occur again

• Reinforcer: any events or objects that, when following a response, increases the likelihood of that response occurring again

All reinforcement is attempting to increase probability of happening again

• Primary: food- ability to eat (naturally reinforced)

• Secondary: ability to eat- how much money you have

• Positive reinforcement: addition of experience of pleasurable stimulus (add)

• Negative reinforcement: removes unpleasant stimulus (take away)

Punishment

• Stimulus that decreases probability that a previous behavior will occur again

• Shaping: teaching  complex behavior by rewarding closer approximations of desired behavior

• Instinctive Drift: tendency for animals behavior to revert to original behavior

Behavior Modification and Token Economy: 

• Behavior modification: Use of learning techniques to modify or change undesirable behavior and increase desirable behavior

• Token Economy: Use of objects called tokens to reinforce behavior in which the tokens can be accumulated and exchanged for desired items or privileges

Cognitive Learning THeory- not on test

Latent Learning: learning where it is not show that u have learned something until later “planting a seed”

• New behavior is acquired but not demonstrated until some incentive is provided for displaying it

Insight: lightbulb moment

Learned Helplessness: (eg. horse tied to a chair)

• Tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a history of repeated failures in the past

  • There are parallels between learned helplessness and depression

Observational Learning

• Children would act how adults treated bobo

  • Those who saw bobo disrespected by the adults - the children would one up the adults

  • Those who saw bobo respected - they were respectful as well