Exam 2 - Psych 101

CHAPTER 4

  • Consciousness
    • Consciousness - Awareness of external events and internal sensations under a condition of arousal
    • represents private inner mind.
  • Different Levels of awareness
    • Higher Levels of awareness
    • Controlled Processes - most alert states of human consciousness during which individuals actively focus on a goal; managed by prefrontal cortex.
    • Executive Function - higher order, complex cognitive processes, including thinking, planning, and problem solving.
    • Lower Levels of awareness
    • Automatic Processes - states of consciousness that require little attention and don’t interfere with other ongoing activities.
    • Daydreaming - between active consciousness and dreaming while asleep (wandering thought, fantasy, imagination, and rumination)
    • No awareness
    • Unconscious thought - according to Freud, a reservoir of unacceptable wishes, feelings, and thoughts that are beyond conscious awareness.
  • Theory of mind
    • individuals understanding that they and others think, feel, perceive and have private experiences (explained with false belief theory)
    • essential to valuable social capacities like sympathy and empathy
  • Circadian rhythm
    • Circadian rhythm - daily behavioral or psychological cycles that involve sleep/wake cycles, body temperature, BP and blood sugar levels.
    • Monitored by the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN)
  • Different theories/explanations of the need for sleep
    • animals need to protect themselves at night.
    • conserve energy
    • restorative (cells increase production and reduce breakdown during sleep)
    • vital to memory consolidation
    • Chronic sleep deprivation leads to
    • trouble paying attention to tasks/solve problems.
    • decreased brain activity in thalamus, prefrontal cortex, and reward centers.
    • reduced complexity of brain activity
  • Different stages of sleep
    • W (wakefulness)
    • desynchronus beta waves = concentration and alertness, Synchronous alpha waves = relaxation
    • N1 (non REM1) sleep
    • just falling asleep, theta waves
    • N2 (non REM2) sleep
    • theta waves and sleep spindles
    • N3 (non REM3) sleep
    • delta waves, deepest sleep
    • R (REM) sleep
    • rapid eye movement, most vivid dreams occur here, fast waves like W, theta waves in hippocampus, end of sleep.
    • each stage last 90-100 minutes and occur multiple times.
  • Different theories of dreams
    • Cognitive theory - we can understand dreaming by applying some cognitive concepts used in studying waking mind.
    • Activation Synthesis Theory - dreaming occurs when cerebral cortex synthesizes neural signals from activity in lower part of brain, brain tries to find logic in random brain activity during sleep.
  • Drug addiction
    • Physiological or psychological dependence, or both, on a drug
    • Physiological - need for drug that causes unpleasant withdrawal.
    • Psychological - strong desire to repeat for emotional reasons.
    • Substance abuse disorder - psychological disorder affects ability to work, health, and relationships.
  • Hypnosis
    • Hypnosis - altered state of consciousness or a psychological state of altered attention and expectation in which the individual is usually receptive to suggestions.
    • some easily influenced, some strongly hypnotized, hypnotizability = extent to which a person’s responses are changes
    • Divided consciousness view - Hilgard’s view involving splitting consciousness into two separate components.

CHAPTER 5

  • Associative Learning
    • when an organism makes a connection, or an association, between two events (conditioning)
  • Classical Conditioning
    • learned process in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an innately meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response.
  • Four components of classical conditioning
    • US - produced a response without prior learning.
    • UR - unlearned reaction elicited by US.
    • CS - previously neutral, elicits CR after being paired with US.
    • CR - learned response to CS.
  • Stimulus generalization in classical conditioning
    • tendency of a new stimulus that is similar to original CS to elicit response that is similar to CR.
  • Extinction in classical conditioning
    • weaking of CR when US is absent (dogs stopped salivating when bell rang repeatedly, and no food was presented)
  • Placebo effect and drug tolerance explained with the classical conditioning process.
    • Placebo effect- effect of a substance or procedure used as a control to identify the actual effects of treatment.
    • Drug habituation - decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations, as a result user needs to take more of drug to get same effect. (May play a role in overdose)
  • Differences between classical conditioning and operant conditioning
    • Operant - voluntary response
    • Classical - involuntary responses are associated with neutral stimulus.
  • Reinforcement in operant conditioning
    • process by which a stimulus or an event following a particular behavior increases probability that behavior will happen again.
    • Ratio - relies on number of behaviors that must happen to earn reward.
    • Interval - based on amount of time that passes before a behavior is rewarded.
    • Fixed - number of behavior or amount of time is always same
    • Variable - requires number of behaviors or amount of time that must pass changes unpredictable from perspective of learner.
  • Positive reinforcement vs. Negative reinforcement
    • Positive reinforcement - presentation of a stimulus following a given behavior in order to increase frequency of behavior.
    • Negative reinforcement - removal of a stimulus following a given behavior in order to increase frequency of behavior.
  • Primary vs. Secondary Reinforcer
    • Primary reinforcer - innately satisfying; one that does not take any learning an organism’s part to be pleasurable.
    • Secondary reinforcer - acquires its positive value through an organism’s experience, a learned or conditioned reinforcer.
  • Punishment in operant conditioning
    • consequence that decreases likelihood behavior will occur.
  • Positive punishment vs. Negative punishment
    • Positive punishment - presentation of stimulus following a given behavior in order to decrease frequency of that behavior.
    • Negative punishment - removal of a stimulus following a given behavior in order to decrease frequency of behavior.
  • Albert Bandura’s social learning theory
    • incorporates associative learning and observational learning (learning that occurs when a person observes and imitates behavior- modeling)
  • Four processes of observational learning
    • Attention, Retention, Imitation (motor reproduction), Reinforcement (incentive conditions)
  • Biological constraints/factors in learning
    • preparedness - species specific biological predisposition to learn in certain ways than others]
    • Instinctive drift - tendency of animals to revert to instinctive behavior that interferes with learning.
  • Research findings
    • Idea that people in terms of method of instruction that will be effective.
    • no evidence that tailoring instruction actually matters to learning, however, people do feel they learn better when taught with their learning style.
  • Carol Dweck’s fixed mindset and growth mindset
    • fixed mindset - belief that our qualities are carved in stone and can’t change.
    • growth mindset - belief that our qualities can change and improve through effort.

CHAPTER 6

  • Three phases of memory process
    • \     
    1. Encoding - information gets into storage.
    • \     
    1. Storage - retention of information over time and how information is represented in memory.
    • \     
    1. Retrieval - occurs when information retained comes out of storage.
  • Different levels of processing at encoding
    • Shallow - physical and perceptual features are analyzed.
    • Intermediate - stimulus is recognized and labeled.
    • Deep - semantic, meaningful, symbolic characteristics are used.
  • Different kinds of attention
    • Selective attention - focusing on a specific aspect of experience.
    • Divided attention - concentrating on more than one activity at a time.
    • Sustained attention - ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time.
    • Executive attention - directing attention to engage in higher level, cognitive functioning.
  • Elaboration as memory strategy
    • Elaboration - formation of a number of different connections around a stimulus at a given level of memory encoding.
  • Capacity and duration of each memory system
    • Sensory memory - holds information from world in sensory form for only an instant (echoic - auditory, ionic - visual); fraction of a second to several seconds.
    • Short-term memory - limited capacity; up to 30 seconds
    • Long-term memory - huge amounts of information; time frame up to a lifetime
  • Working memory
    • working memory - combination of components, includes short term and attention, allow individuals to hold information temporarily as they perform cognitive tasks.
  • Three components of working memory
    • Phonological loop - briefly stores speech-based information, acoustic code and rehearsal.
    • Visual spatial sketchpad - functions independently of phonological loop
    • Central executive - integrates information from phonological loop and visual spatial sketchpad.
  • Organization of long-term memory
    • Explicit Memory (declarative) - conscious recollection of information that can be verbally communicated, TOP.
    • Implicit Memory (non-declarative) - behavior is affected by prior experience without conscious recollection of that experience. BOTTOM.
  • Explicit and Implicit Memories
    • Explicit/Declarative memories
    • Episodic - where, when, and what of life’s happenings
    • Semantic - Knowledge about world
    • Implicit/Nondeclarative memories
    • Procedural - memory for skills
    • Priming - activation of information already in storage to help remember new information better and faster (process of classical conditioning)
  • Serial Position effect
    • Tendency to recall items at beginning and end of list more readily than those in middle.
    • Primary effect - beginning of list, more rehearsed.
    • Recency effect - end of list, in working memory and just encountered.
  • Encoding specificity principle
    • information present at the time of encoding or learning tends to be effective at a retrieval cue.
  • Autobiographical memory
    • special form of episodic memory, consisting of a person’s recollection of their life experiences
    • Reminiscence Bump - phenomena when adults remember decades 2 and 3.
  • Different explanations/theories of forgetting
    • Encoding Failure - occurs when information was never entered into long term memory.
    • Retrieval memory
    • interference theory - people forget not just because memories are lost from storage but because other information gets in the way.
      • Proactive - material that was learned earlier disrupts the recall of material that was learned later.
      • Retroactive - material that was learned later disrupts recall of material that was learned earlier.
    • Tip of the Tongue - effortful retrieval associated with feeling that we know something but can’t pull out of memory (like Deja vu)
    • Retrospective memory - remembering information from the past.
    • Prospective memory - remembering information about doing something in future; includes memory for intentions.
    • Decay Theory - when an individual learns something new, a neurochemical memory trade forms, but overtime this trade disintegrates.
    • Amnesia - loss of memory
      • Retrograde - loss of segment of past but not new events
      • Anterograde - affects retention of new information.