Psych

Consciousness
- Subjective awareness of ourselves and our environment
- Still lots to be discovered
- Roots in evolution
- Imagining tennis example
- Cognitive neuroscientists are mapping the conscious functions of the cortex
  - Mind reading ability
What happens when our unconscious mind takes over?
Dual Processing
- Information is often processed on separate conscious and unconscious tasks
- Conscious, deliberate, reflective “high road”
- Unconscious, automatic, intuitive, autopilot “low road”
Dumb demonstration 1
- Damage in occipital lobe
- Can you see that table in front of you → no
- Reach for the water bottle on the table in front of you and pick it up
Dumb Demonstration 2
- Damage in left occipital lobe → cannot see person
- Can tell if person is smiling or not → yes
- That’s crazy
Blindsight → condition where a person unconsciously responds to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it.
- VERY RARE
Parallel Processing
- Processing multiple parts of a problem simultaneously
- More likely to be unconscious/autopilot
- Well known info or simple problems
Sequential Processing
- Processing one aspect of a problem at a time
- More likely to be conscious/deliberate
- Used for new info and difficult problems
Behavior Genetics: the study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences in behavior
Genes: units of heredity that are biological
- Can be expressed or inactive
Environment: every non genetic influence, from parental nutrition to the people and things around you
Twin adoption studies
- Identical twins separated and raised apart
  - Tests the effect of environment controlling for genetics
- Adopted children raised with biological children
  - Tests the effect of genetics controlling for environment
  - Very hard to do, no one is treated exactly the same
- Findings:
  - Identical twins raised apart are very similar in many domains
  - Identical twins are much more similar than fraternal twins
  - Environment shared by a family’s children has no discernable impact on personality
Monozygotic Twins:
- Identical twins
- Develop from a single fertilized egg
- Genetically identical twins.
Dizygotic Twins
- Fraternal twins
- 2 separate eggs
- Similar to siblings in terms of genetics
- Can be same or different sex
Bouchard is the psychologist most associated with twin studies
Heritability:
- The proportion of variation in a trait that we can contribute to genes
- E.G.
  - For personality, heritability is around 40%
  - For intelligence, heritability is around 66%
  - For height, heritability is around 90%
- At the group-level no the individual level, so it does not mean the% if a traut us genetic fir a particular individual
Gene-Environment Interaction
- Interaction:
  - The interplay that occurs when the effects of one factor(like environment) depends on another factor(like heredity)
- Epigenetics:
  - The study of environmental factors on gene expression that occur without a DNA change
  - Contain event that switch genes on and off
  - DNA is written in pen
  - Epigenetics are written in pencil
  - Effects of childhood trauma, poverty or malnutrition can last a lifetime
MISSED A BUNCH OF NOTES DO READING
Male Female Differences in sexual preferences

3 Findings

Women tend to be more selective than men when choosing sexual partners
Men’s attraction to multiple healthy, fertile-appearing partners
Women incubate babies

Critiques of evolutionary psychology
- Don’t account for social and cultural influences
- Excuse people from taking responsibility for sexual behavior
Social Script
- Culturally molded guide for how to act in various situations
Everything psychological is inherently biological
Sensation: process where sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent information(stimulus energies) from environment
Perception: the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events
Sensory Receptors:
- Sensory nerve endings that respond to stimuli
- Can be specialized ends of sensory neurons or other specialized cells that work with sensory neurons
Bottom up processing
- Starts with sensory receptors and works up to the higher level of processing
- Sensory systems detect the basics, colors, lines, locations of objects
- Sports analogy
Selective attention
- Focusing on our conscious awareness on a particular stimulus
- Related to the conscious track and sequential processing
Change Blindness:
- Type of inattentional blindness
- Failing to notice changes in the environment
Transduction:
- Conversion from one form of energy to another
- In sensation; the transforming stimulus energies into neural impulses that our brain cells can interpret
Psychophysics
- Study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience of them
Absolute threshold:
- The minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus
Difference threshold:
- The minimum difference between 2 stimuli required for detection
- Just noticeable difference (jnd)
Signal Detection Theory:
- Theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation
- Assumes there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends on a person’s experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness
Sensory adaptation:
- Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation
- Not noticing body odor, wearing shoes or a hat
Change Blindness Type of inattentive blindness, where a person fails to notice changes to an environment
Transduction:
Psychophysics: Study of relationships between the physical environment of stimuli and our psychological experience with them
Signal Detection Theory: Theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of of a faint stimuli amid background stimulation
Sensory Adaptation: Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation
Subliminal:
- Below one’s absolute threshold for conscious awareness
Priming:
- The activation of certain associations, which predisposes one’s perception, memory or response
Can we influence people using subliminal messages?
- People can be primed
- No evidence that subliminal stimuli can persuade people to do things
  - Losing weight, quitting smoking, improve sleep
Perceptual Set:
- Mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another
- Set of mental tendencies and assumptions that affects what we hear, taste, and feel
Other factors that influence perception
- Context
- Motivation
- Emotion
What does ESP stand for
- Extrasensory Perception:
  - Controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input includes
    - Telepathy: Mind to mind
    - Clairvoyance: Perceiving mind-to-mind connection
    - Precognition: Perceiving future events
Parapsychology:
- Study of paranormal phenomena associated with psychology
No evidence* for these phenomena, and they fall outside of the realm of science
REM Sleep:
- Rapid Eye Movement
- Recurring sleep stage during which you get vivid dreams
- Muscles are relaxed
Stages of sleep
- Awake
  - Alpha Waves: slower waves of a relaxed awake state
- NREM
  - Non-rapid eye movement
  - NREM-1:
    - Starts right when you lose consciousness or fall asleep
    - Hallucinations
    - Hypnagogic Sensations: bizarre experiences while transitioning to sleep
  - NREM-2
    - Bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain-wave activity
  - NREM-3
    - Deep Sleep
    - Delta Brain Waves
- Order of sleep stages

Awake
NREM-1
NREM-2
NREM-3
NREM-2
REM

Circadian Rythm:
- Our biological clock
- Regular bodily rhythms that occur on a 24-hour cycle
- Pineal Gland releases melatonin
- Pineal Gland is near thalamus
- Suprachiasmatic Nucleus
  - Part of hypothalamus that regulates circadian rhythm
  - Causes the Pineal Gland to release melatonin, to cause sleepiness
Night Terrors
- Appearance of being terrified and high arousal in NREM-3
Sleepwalking/talking
- Usually harmless and happens a lot in children
Learning: the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors
- Associative Learning: Learning that certain events occur together
- Stimulus: any event or situation that evokes a response
  - Classical Conditioning: type of learning where we link two or more stimuli
    - Neutral stimulus (NS): a stimulus that incites no response before conditioning
    - Unconditioned Stimulus (US): a stimulus that naturally elicits a response unconditionally
    - Unconditioned Response (UR): an unlearned, naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus
    - Conditioned Stimulus (CS): an originally unlearned stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned response(US), comes to trigger a conditioned response(CR)
    - Conditioned Response(CR): a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.
    - Acquisition: initial stage of classical conditioning
    - Extinction: when the US no longer matched the CS
    - Spontaneous recovery: When the CS reappears after a pause following extinction
    - Higher-order Conditioning: when the CS gets paired to another NS, creating a second CS
    - Discrimination: Learned ability to differentiate between a CS and a similar stimulus that does not signal a US
  - Operant Conditioning: type of associative learning where we link together a behaviour and response to a behaviour
    - Law of effect
      - REINFORCEMENT INCREASES BEHAVIOUR
        Positive Reinforcement - giving something pleasant
        Negative Reinforcement - taking away something unpleasant
        Continuous Reinforcement - reinforcing every single time
        Partial Reinforcement - not every time
      - PUNISHMENT DECREASES BEHAVIOUR
        Positive Punishment - giving something unpleasant
        Negative Punishment - taking away something pleasant
    - Conditioned Reingforcer:
      - Something that could act as a proxy to get biological needs
    - Primary Reinforcer
      - Innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need
    - Shaping: we train one step at a time to eventually learn a complex behaviour
    - Operant Chamber (Skinner Box): a box with a thing to interact with to get a reward
    - Discriminative Stimulus: Stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement
    - TIMING
      - Learning happens best when the reinforcers are presented immediately after the behaviour
      - Humans can respond to delayed reinforcers
      - Reinforcement Schedules
- Cognitive Learning: The acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, watching others, or through language
Habituation: decreasing responsiveness with repeated exposure to a stimulus
- Similar to sensory adaptation, but applies to the response of a repeated stimulus
Preparedness
- Biological predisposition to learn associations that are naturally adaptive
- Examples with classical conditioning: taste aversion, phobias
Related to operant conditioning
- Not all behaviour is equally reinforceable
- EX: pigeons pecking for food and flapping wings in response to biologically predisposed patterns
- Instinctive Drift: tendency of a learned behaviour to gradually revert to biologically predisposed patterns
Motivation:
- Intrinsic: desire to perform a behaviour for its own sake
  - Example: doing stuff for fun
- Extrinsic: desire to perform well to receive rewards or avoid punishment
Prosocial behaviours
- Positive, constructive, helpful behaviour
Antisocial behaviours
- Abuse, lying, stealing, cheating
Hypocrisy
- Children model what they see more than what they hear
Vicarious learning
- Learning through seeing what happens to someone else
Memory:
- The persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage and retrieval of information
Memory Models:
- Information Processing Model: treats the brain like a computer
  - Encoding - getting information into the memory system
  - Storage - retaining encoded information over time
  - Retrieval - getting information out of storage
  - Dual processing - precessing many aspects of a problem simultaneously – the brain’s neutral mode for many functions
- 3-Stage Model:
  - Sensory Memory - immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system
  - Short-term memory - activated memory that holds a few items briefly before it is either stored or forgotten
    - Phone number digits while calling
  - Long-Term Memory - relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of information in the memory system
- Working Memory
  - newer understanding of short term memory
  - Adds conscious, active processing of information
Types of Memories
- Explicit memory
  - Facts and Events
  - Aka Declarative Memory
  - Encode through effortful processing
    - Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort
  - Hippocampus
  - Examples:
    - Trivia
    - Driving
    - Speaking a new language
    - Academic knowledge
    - Rules of a game
- Implicit memory
  - Learn skills, or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection
  - Aka Nondeclarative Memory
  - Encode through automatic processing: unconscious encoding of
    - Incidental information
      - Space
      - Time
      - Frequency
    - Well-learned information
      - Word meaning
  - Cerebellum
  - Examples
    - Muscle memory
    - Automatically reading in your native language
- RELATED TO DUAL PROCESSING: conscious and unconscious tasks
Chunking:
- Organising items into familiar manageable units
- Sometimes happens automatically
- Examples: words, phrases in our native language, chess board
Hierarchies:
- How concepts are nested within other concepts, and how concepts are related
- “Taxonomy of __” diagrams
Distributed Practice:
- We retain information better when our encoding is distributed over time
The hippocampus is involved in encoding explicit memories, which are facts and experiences that one can consciously know through parallel processing
Memories are not stored in a single precise location, but instead are spread out over networks across the brain
Explicit Memory System:
- Semantic Memory:
  - Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge
  - E.g.
    - Trivia
    - Fun facts
    - Book smarts
- Episodic Memory:
  - Explicit memory of personally experienced events
  - E.g.
    - Childhood memories
    - Experiences
    - Job training
- Frontal lobe(working memory) and Hippocampus
  - Right – visual
  - Left – verbal
- Memory Consolidation
  - “Filing it away in long term storage”
  - Hippocampus is the “loading dock”
    - Removing hippocampus experiment
  - Sleep
    - Spacing effect
Implicit Memory System:
- Automatic processing
- Amnesiac hand shake
- Cerebellum: memories from classical conditioning
- Basil Glangea: procedural memories for skills
  - Riding a bike, playing an instrument, typing, knitting, writing
Context -Dependent Memory:
- Retrieval is easier when you are in the same environment/context where the memory was encoded
- Encoding Specificity Principle:
  - Cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be the most effective in helping us recall it
  - Facial recognition is harder in unfamiliar contexts
State-Dependant Memory:
- Easier to retrieve memories encoded in a similar state
- Mood Congruent Memory:
  - Tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood
  - More likely to recall sad experiences when sad; happy experiences when happy
BRAIN PARTS:
- Hippocampus -
  - Explicit memories
    - Facts
    - Events
    - Episodic memories
- Frontal lobe -
  - Explicit memories
    - Facts
    - Events
    - Episodic memories
- Basal Ganglia -
  - Implicit memories
    - Procedural skills
    - Muscle memory
- Cerebellum -
  - Implicit memories
    - Classical conditioning
- Amygdala -
  - Emotion-based memories
    - Amplifying effect
Serial Position Effect:
- Order matters for memory
- Recency effect: recall the last item easier
- Primary effect: recall the first item easier
- Rehearsal, frequency
  - Better recall with lots of repetition
- Semantic distinctiveness
  - Better recall with distinct items
- Constructed memories:
  - We encode things based off of meaning, therefore we can remember something that did not happen
Anterograde Amnesia:
- Inability to form new memories
- Ofen due to damage to the hippocampus
- Patients can still form implicit memories and be classically conditioned, even cannot explicitly remember learning them
Retrograde Amnesia:
- Inability to retrieve memories or information(often from before a TBI or traumatic experience)
Why do we forget?
- Encoding Failure:
  - Information in our working memory doesn’t get encoded into long-term storage
  - Library “never ordered the book”
- Storage Decay:
  - Information was encoded into long-term storage, but the memory gradually faded
  - Neuroscientists don’t know exactly how memories decay
  - Library “discarded the book because it was damaged”
- Retrieval Failure:
- Information was encoded in long-term storage, but you were unable to retrieve it
- Tip of the tongue phenomenon
- “The book is in the library, but was failed to be retrieved”
- Interference:
  - When other information gets in the way of recalling the information that you want to recall
  - Cluttered attic analogy
  - Proactive interference: forward-acting disruptive effect of older learning on the recall of new information