Psychology Comps notecards 1

Neurons

As a collective whole makes the nervous system that analyzes data, makes us move and helps us create mental representations of the world, building blocks of the nervous system

Science

An attempt to answer questions through a systematic collection and analysis of objective public ally apparent data, wants to explain behaviors

Learning

An experience (an environmental event that influenced a person through their senses) that affects people's behavior at a future moment in time

Specialized learning: place learning abilities

Animals aren't intelligent since they don't have the ability to reason but they have evolved specialized learning ability to prolong species by burying seeds to eat later

Natural selection: Functionalism and 2 explanations on how it happens with bird singing

Animals evolve some kind of behavior to accomplish a goal (natural selection explanation) 1. Distal explanation: behavior is inherited genetically to help an organism (mating call to attract other bird with inheritance of singing gene, basic human nature behaviors such as memory or perception) 2. Proximate explanation: Environment brings out trait (seeing a pretty bird leads to testosterone production that can lead to bird singing)

Language areas of the left brain: what is aphasia, what happens when there is damage to Broca and wernickes area, how can we identify language regions

Aphasia is language deficit, damage to bro as area leads to not fluent speech production and transforms complex sentences (buy bread store) and damage in wernickes area leads to a difficulties understanding the meaning of words or what words to place in sentences to convey a meaning (nothing the keeserrz the, these are davereez..), using pet and fMRI to look at blood flow within the brain to see which areas are getting more blood while understanding (wernickes) and forming (Broca) speech although the neuroimaging findings don't completely support Broca and wernickes

Operant conditioning: shaping

Reward organism each time they get closer to doing a behavior, use it when teaching a new skill with animal training

Cerebral cortex: what connects lobes together, what areas of the brain does it have work together, what do right and left brain specialize in

Right and left hemispheres are connected by bundle of axons called the corpus callosum, motor and sensory areas of the brain work together in both sides of the body, left brain deals with language and comparable areas and right brain deals with nonverbal, visuospatial analysis of information

Research designs: Descriptive studies

Seek to describe a behavior through observation Ex: Jane Goodall observed behavior between apes

Data collection methods: self report (introspection) vs observational methods (tests and naturalistic observation (Hawthorne effect and habituation))

Self report: where people are either reporting their own thoughts and feelings (introspection) in some communication outlet (another person, phone, etc), good at grasping subjective information especially ones feelings Observational method: watch over people's behavior and collect data Tests: measure people's scores on certain questions to measure behavior (people may not answer truthfully or be anxious while taking it) Naturalistic observation: observe people's behaviors without interfering with environment, can get realistic data if they don't know they are being watched (Hawthorne effect), can measure habituation when someone's behavior doesn't change from stimulus being present

Hierarchy of motor control: what is it and what are the negatives

Limbic system and association cortex are used to code sensory data saying that someone is hungry and wants a cherry, basal ganglia, cerebellum and prefrontal motor cortex work out timing on how to get there, brain stem and spinal cord move the body there, and lower brain stem and spinal cord move hand to pick up cherry Doesn't look at how the brain makes higher order decisions we just know the location

Specialized learning: learning to identify ones mother through imprinting and critical periods

Lorenz, found that ducks learned their mother via imprinting which is a very sudden and irreversible learning pattern that has to occur at a critical period (an environmental event that has to occur for normal development), with an organism that resembles a duck and a behavior has to follow (following the mother duck) Ex: ducks learned to follow Lorenz since they saw him immediately after they hatched

When was psychology recognized as a scientific discipline and who was the first prominent figure What three ideas within psychology were concieved before the study became a science

William Wundt 1879 Behaviors and mental experienced have physical causes that can be studied, the way people think and behave is influenced by the environment, the body's machinery which produces behaviors and thoughts is a product of evolution through natural selection

Zygote: what is it and how does it differ with twins

Zygote is a fertilized egg, for Mz twins the zygote splits into two and fraternal twins two different eggs are fertilized simultaneously, sexual reproduction allows for different genetic material which increases reproductive success

What are the three important factors with theories, facts and hypotheses

1. Be skeptical: the point of scientific research is to question theories posited by researchers and test new hypotheses, when explaining a behavior use Parsimony (simplest explanation) 2. Controlled experiments: allows scientists to test hypothesis through an empirical controlled way to make replication easier (pfungst tested different conditions to see when the horse answered questions correctly) 3. Make sure when testing certain hypotheses to not influence participants to answer a certain way (observer expectancy effects) so you can find correct explanation

What three things help categorize research strategies

1. Design (how scientists test the hypotheses to control all confounding variables) (experiments, correlation studies, and descriptive studies) 2. Setting (where data is collected): field and laboratory 3.data collection method: self report or observation

Things to take into account for ethical issues (3)

1. Privacy: keep all your subjects anonymous, need informed consent before letting them do the study 2. Harm and discomfort: benefits for harming a subject need to outweigh the costs, minimizes this as possible 3. Deception: can use it although be wary with extent, need to get consent, need to consider certain groups (children, criminals, etc.)

What are the four limitations to Functionalism

1. Some traits we used to need are no longer necessary therefore they are vestigial characteristics 2. Some traits we keep throughout the lifetime even though we only need them temporarily (umbilical cord) 3. Genetic drift where traits were passed down by random chance alone (people of different races have different sized noses) 4 Certain traits in excess Don't benefit reproduction (too much guilt)

Conditioned compensatory reaction to drugs and conditioned responses as cause to drug tolerance and drug relapse after withdrawl

After drugs cause direct effects, compensatory effect happens (pain returns) so people learn to associate drugs with pain free feelings People develop drug tolerances (person has to take more of a particular drug to get same effect) due to compensatory feelings coming back in a particular place, this is why people OD on drugs in new places since compensatory effects do not kick in When drug addicts go to a facility to get treatment they get over withdraw symptoms but going back to old environment where you did drugs may bring back withdrawal symptoms since compensatory feelings come back

Evolutionary analysis of hurting others: what is aggression, why males are more aggressive than females, and human male violencd

Aggression is behavior intended to hurt/harm another member of the same species, used to protect young and resources, males are more likely to do physical aggression to get status and mates, women don't need this since they are always pursued, males are usually violent human wise due to sexual jealousy to control women

Mating: parental investment with polygyny, polyandry, monogamy and promiscuity based on Trivers theory

Amount of resources needed to care for kids, when the caregiving is done unequally the one in charge of doing it will be picky with mate selection and will be pursued more heavily Ex: polygyny females provide more caregiving and can have limited number of offspring so they are picky with male selection, they choose the mate that can provide the most resources Polyandry: females compete for the males and they lay more eggs so male can watch them Monogamy: mated select each other to have equal help although they aren't always sexually faithful to one another Promiscuity: multiple partners and do this to keep peace in competitive tribe of animals, all of them help with caregiving

Watsons behaviorism

Behavior can only be studied through observable stimuli and response not through mental processes (Pavlov was inspired by this), behavior is determined exclusively to the environment around them

Genetic Approach

Behavioral genetics, differences in nonhuman and human behaviors can be attributed to genes Mz and dz twin studies where if Mz twins act differently it may be due to the environment as well

Neural approach to psychology

Behavioral neuroscience: people look at neurons, or parts of brain that contribute to behavior EEG measures brain activation in areas responsible to make people feel jealous

Natural selection: Species Typical behaviors and how do we see it through human emotions, learning, biological preparedness

Behaviors that have been determined by genes and don't have to learn them from environment Emotions: 6 universal emotions and eyebrows raise indicating you know some one (see that they are genetically inherited since blind and deaf people do it Learning: humans have biological propensity to do things, learn a language, but requires environment to teach them it Biological preparedness: biological ability to do something and given the right environment they can do behavior ( they can speak since they have larynx but can't speak specific language without env.)

Pavlovs Stimulus Stimulus theory that was inspired by Watsons SR theory, what was Rescorlas response

Bell (CS) overtime became associated with mental representation of food (UCS) to produce salivation (CR), Rescorlas supported this finding saying that the animal was conditioned to respond to this through several trials Watsons SR theory stated that the dog learned to salivate through the bell alone, not supported by literature

Sub cortical structures of the brain (below cerebral cortex and more primitive part of brain): brain stem, medulla, pons, midbrain, thalamus, cerebellum, basal ganglia, limbic system, hypothalmus

Brain stem: entry for cranial nerves, works with spinal cord to communicate somatosensory information to higher reasoning kart of brain, we see that when we severe an animal just above this that animal continued to do complex behaviors but has no decision over it (see cat climbing pole for no reason) Medulla and pons: control complex reflexes such as balance and heart rate Midbrain: controls basic movement patterns (all below brain stem) Thalamus: on top of brain stem, relies information from sensory nerves to inter neurons and from inter neurons to body, deals with arousing the whole body Cerebellum and basal ganglia deal with producing and imagining learned behaviors but C. Deals with rapid well timed movements in a feed forward model (uses sensory information to determine actions) (throwing s ball) and by deals with slow deliberate movements in s feedback model (picking up something) Limbic system: has amygdala that regulates basic drives and emotions and hippocampus that stores memories and spatial locations, deals a lot with smells Hypothalmus: regulate internal environment in body by releasing certain hormones, controls autonomic nervous system and affects drives

Brain changes over time: effects of deprived and enriched environments on the brain

Brain synapses grow when you use them more, when you are not using your brain you lose neurons, areas in cerebral cortex, you have not very thick synapses, neural growth happens in the hippocampus with the formation of new memories and other areas of the brain during brain injury will grow more neurons

Nerve

Bundle of neurons

What makes up a neuron (4)

Cell body: main part, contains nucleus, must be negatively charged to send an action potentials down axon (all or nothing impulse) Dendrites: thin spine like entities that receive messages from other neurons through neurosnsmitters Axon: tube where impulse is sent down through the myelin sheaths (help send message faster) Axon terminal: release neurotransmitters to send impulse to other neuron

Action potentials: Cell membrane around axon at resting potential, depolarization phase, depolarization phase, general information

Cell membrane has porous skin that lets in certain chemical compounds into the intercellular fluid and keeps certain chemicals in extra cellular fluid, a cell at resting potential has more potassium inside the cell membrane and has a charge of about -70 milivolts, sodium chloride is on the outside Depolarization happens when the cell membrane becomes permeable and let's in lots of sodium chloride making the cell membrane more positive (30 milivolts) Re polarization happens when the potassium moves out of the axon to make it more negative inside to return the axon back to -70 milivolts Cells threshold is 65 milivolts inside the axon and moves from node to node, wider and more myelinated axons help move messages more quickly down axon, mylenation does not stop till early adulthood with the frontal lobe

Central nervous system vs peripheral nervous system

Central nervous system: spinal cord and brain, made up of inner neurons that communicate messages in the brain Peripheral nervous system: nerves that are connected to the central nervous system that send signals from the brain to sensory neurons and muscles through motor neurons

Descriptive statistics: central tendency (3) and variability (1)

Central tendency: Measure that describes the middle of a distribution of scores, mean is the sum of all the scores divided by the number of scores, median is the middle number in the distribution Variability: how much scores vary from one another, standard deviation calculates the average distance between scores and central point

Brain changes: restructuring of the cortex during skill development and spatial learning and growth in hippocampus

Cerebral cortex can get larger by repetitive practice to develop a skill, found that visual areas in blind people were still large if they read Braille since it stimulated the same areas in the brain They found that the hippocampus increased I cab drivers as they had to learn the maps of London and reuse those neurons to find their way around the city

Natural selection

Certain members in society have more favorable environmental traits that allow them to survive longer and reproduce since there is an abundance of people, these genes vary between people, there is individual inheritance of genes through generations, environment favors genes that help an organism live longer and reproduce more

Spinal cord: ascending and descending tract, what happens when you severe the spine close to the head or decapitate

Connects spinal nerves to brain, ascending tract carries somatosensory information to the brain and descending carries motor controls from brain to muscles Bad to severe spine close to head since you severe the most spinal nerves that help your body and brain communicate, leads to body insensitivity but through spinal animals we can see they have reflexes where they pull back from pin prick but they can't feel pain Decapitate: shows the spine can generate random sustained motions by activating motor neurons and it's why the body moves even when head isn't attached

Sensory neurons and motor neurons role within the peripheral nervous system

Convey somatosensation (body) info to the brain via spinal nerves, used this information to interpret what the best course of action would be, dedritic spines are activated by sensory stimuli Motor neurons are connected to muscle and glands, all behavioral decisions are translated into action potential patterns in axons of motor neurons, only way nervous center can control behavior

Peripheral nerves: what are the two types of nerves and role

Cranial nerves project from the brain and spinal nerves project from the spine, crucial nerves since get information from body to brain and brain to body

Descriptive statistics: correlation

Describes scores with correlation coefficient which looks at the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables, use a scatter plot graph to look at this

Descriptive vs inferential statistics

Descriptive statistics: used to describe data sets Inferential statistics: used to see how confident experimenters are that their data was not observed by chance

Three assumptions of evolution debunked

Evolution has no end goal, has no top evolved species and does not always lead to progress

Purpose of psychology and 9 different fields that look to answer these questions

Explain behaviors and thoughts by identifying their causes Biological: neural, genetic, physiological, and evolutionary Environment change influences: Learning, cognitive, social, cultural and developmental

Statistics: bias and how to avoid it through sampling

Extraneous factors that cannot be calculated during statistical analysis but they effect the conclusion that experimenters draw about the data Biased samples are those that are not randomly assigned so they affect the conclusion therefore try not to use convenience sampling and or volunteer sampling

What is a fact, theory and hypothesis in psychology and how do they relate with the clever Hans story

Facts are observable reliable behaviors (Hans could answer questions with his hoofs) and theories are posited as the best guess to explain the fact (pfungst theorized that the horse answered the questions through visual clues not intelligence), to test a theory a psychologists posits a hypothesis to discover new facts within the theory (ex: if I blindfold the horse and ask it same questions it won't get it right since it relies on visual clues)

Describe how fear, liking (evaluative conditioning), hunger (appetizer effect) and sexual arousal can be conditioned?

Fear can be conditioned by pairing a loud noise with another stimulus ex: little Albert learned to fear (CR) rabbits (CS) since it expected a loud band (UCS) We are conditioned to like things when something we like is paired with a neutral stimulus (ex: We will like Budweiser more when a cute girl is drinking a beer in an advertisement) We can condition hunger by using the appetizer effect where we feel hungrier for a certain type of food, cheeseburgers, by seeing s particular logo, McDonald's Golden Arches We can condition sexual arousal by pairing an unconditioned stimulus before sexual arousal a few times to get them more aroused

Specialized learning: food aversion, food preference

Food aversion happens when an organism immediately gets sick after eating s food since it is in our genes to do this through natural selection, it is only classical conditioning when the animal originally did not get sick but through repeated trials learned to associate it with illness Food preference comes about when you eat an item and you see how it helps with our health, we base this off whether others are eating it but it can take a while since we are always doubting if the food is safe (natural selections), we use smells and taste to indicate if food is safe to eat

Razrans discovery with subjective similarity

Found that prior meaning to variables that they were trying to classically condition influenced the way they respond to stimulu Ex: bad words can influence people to not do a behavior compared to good words

Epigentics

Gene regulating activity, certain segments of the DNA can be methyl instead so they don't produce proteins through genes, certain environmental factors can turn genes on by unmethylinating genes

How do genes affect behavior?

Genes and environment create certain behaviors, they interact together

Process of natural sleeping by looking at current behavior

Genes and experiences combine to produce an animals behavior and structure and the behavior is the target for natural selection to continue the cycle

What are genes and what do the two types do?

Genes are molecules that make up DNA that were contributed by parents coding genes: found in nucleus of cells, help with the production of proteins that show traits Regulatory genes: monitor how coding genes work, thought to be junk DNA first

Genetic diversity provided material for natural selection: what differed between Lamarck and darwin

Genes are passed down from generations to provide variability or they mutate (error in DNA strand) Lamarck believed that an organism could inherit a characteristic in its lifetime if it saw it in a parent Although Darwin had no knowledge of genes, his theory helped lead to evolution being the change in genes from generations with epigenetics as being cause to different showing of traits

How do genes and the environment interact?

Genes can be turned on and off only from certain environmental stimuli therefore behaviors need both environment and genes to be seen

Genotype vs phenotype

Genotype: Genetic material we inherit from parents Phenotype: how we physically show the genes we inherit from parents (identical twins can look different due to this from environmental triggers)

Organization of the brain: gray matter and white matter, nucleus

Gray matter: bundle of necleuses and white matter is bundle of axons from nerves (white from myelin) Nucleus: cluster of cell bodies in central nervous system Similar nucleus, gray and white matter have similar functions

Neurogenesis: what is it, when are most neurons born and when do they form synapses,messy happens to neurons during development

Happens mostly during pregnancy in the prenatal period but it continued during the lifetime especially in the hippocampus since it vested new memories, at 20 weeks neurons begin to differentiate and grow dendrites, synapses and axon terminals Many neurons die (selective cell death) since the synapses do not serve a vital purpose, happens with development since the brain is getting bigger and trying to make stronger connections with other neurons through mylenation process

Evolutionary analysis of helping others: what are helping, cooperation and altruism, what is the kin selection theory of altruism and reciprocity theory of apparent altruism

Helping is any behavior that increases the survival chance of another species, cooperation is helping another species to get things in return where altruism is where you help someone with no expectation to get help back Kinship theory: animals are more likely to help another species if that member they help can spread their genes Reciprocity: we help monk in to gain something in the future and gain long term cooperation

Cross species comparisons of species typed behaviors: homology and analogy

Homology: similarity that exists between species because they share a common ancestor, most closely related to ancestor has the most homologous traits, beneficial to use certain species to do testing since they share homologous traits to humans (chimps and bonobo), be weary since certain traits do not remain homologous and further evolve (humans can show more smile variations than chimp) Analogy: evolved trait to do a function for only that species during a certain period, can help us discover certain distal traits that have helped it survive

Developmental psychology

How certain experiences in a point in time that influence a person's future behavior, look at age, maturity, behavior tendencies and cohort effects Uses influenced from other fields Ex: people who have a secure attachment style with their moms tend to have secure romantic attachments

Chromosomes

How genes appear in the cells nucleus, 23 pairs (22 autosomal, 1 sex), combination of mother and fathers genetic information, how they appear with sexual reproduction

Human mating patterns: what tendencies do they have, what role do emotions

Humans have monogamous and slightly polygamous patterns since males genes can help with making child have better immune system, monogamous to rear children, see that humans fall in love and then they become jealous if the person they fell for falls for someone else, polyandry may be beneficial to women so children have optimal genetic make up but it's not very common

Evolutionary Psychology

Identify the evolutionary (survival or reproductive) function of a behavior ex: Jealousy helps with long term mating

What was Pavlovs contribution to classical conditioning (CS, CR, UCS, UCR, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination training)

Inspired to conduct study after he saw dogs salivate After hearing certain noises that indicated food, discovered that the conditioned stimulus (bell) leads to conditioned response (salivation) after several trials of presenting the unconditioned stimulus (food in the mouth) and unconditional response (salivating) Extinction occurs when you show the conditioned stimulus but do not provide UCS but it is never unlearned so it can be recovered through classical conditioning again (spontaneous recovery) Generalization occurs when an animal responds to a stimuli that is similar to the CS, discrimination training helps the organism differentiate between the specific stimuli and others

Inter neurons, motor neurons and sensory neurons

Interneurons: carry messages between neurons in the central nervous system Motor neurons: carry messages out from central nervous system to muscles Sensory neurons: carry messages from central nervous system to sensory organs

Cerebral cortex: 2 hemispheres and 4 lobes, three areas it contains, promotors area, prefrontal cortex,

Largest part of the brain divided into right and left hemispheres, and four lobes are divided by fissures (parietal, temporal, frontal and occipital lobe), primary sensory areas receive signals from sensory neurons and thalamus (visual area in occipital lobe, auditory area in temporal lobe and somatosensory area in parietal), motor area sends signals from axons down to motor neurons in the brain stem and spinal cord (rear portion of frontal lobe), and association areas (input from sensory areas that deal with complex processes such as perception), each area fired at different rates depending on which part of the body is stimulated Promoter area help with producing organized movements and are active when rehearsing movement, stimulate areas of these brains in people who are in vegetable like state to light motor neurons Prefrontal cortex: executive functioning which regulates attention in what to do with information from LTM, plans actions that can be out into effect by promotors cortex, basal ganglia and cerebellum, damage to this area can effect planning skills

Operant conditioning: what is it and what are operant responses

Learning process where reactions from environment either increase or decrease the likelihood that a behavior will occur again, operant responses operate on the world in some way to hinder or encourage behaviors

Learning or behavioral approach

Learning psychology: study the effects of past experiences on an individual's behavior People may act jealous to receive certain rewards such as repelling competition

Polygenic characteristics and selective breeding with animals (prod and cons)

Many traits are continuous and are not categories since they are determined by multiple genes, they fall on a normal distribution with how they appear in the organism based on environmental conditions People use selective breeding where they mate 2 animals in order for animal to have more apparent trait through gene variation, takes polygenic traits into account, not always guaranteed this will work (Tyron found that rats with two full bright parents made less errors on the next maze but maze dull rat could still learn the maze just as well depending on who raised the kid so some traits can't be guaranteed with selective breeding), can test polygenic inheritance with nature nurture argument

Evolutionary patterns in mating: what is matin and what are the four types

Mating is reproductions most basic social function Types: polygyny (one male and more than one female), polyandry (vice versa), monogamy (one of each), promiscuity (more than one for each partner)

Research design: correlational studies

Measure relationship strength and direction between two variables, experimenter does not manipulate the variables, done with variables that cannot be ethically changed (baumrinds parenting style on children's behavior) none of the data is causal since a confounding variable may be influencing relationship, the other variable may be effecting the first or both variables constantly influence each other

Inferential statistics

Measured how confident an experimenter can be to make a conclusion that his data was not derived by chsnce

Inferential statistics: statistical significance and what influenced it (3)

Measures how likely it is that two populations deviate by chance alone given that they are equal in the population, if p is less than .o5 or another alpha level it means that there's little chance that these populations deviated by chance alone, it's not always accurate though so take these three into account 1. Effect size: the degree to which two samples vary, large effect size means that it is less likely that chance attributes to deviation 2. The number of participants/observations in thenstudy: large samples are less likely to deviate from chance 3. Variability of the data within groups: If a data set varies less its statistical significance can be attributed less to chance

Mendelian pattern of heredity: example with pea plants and dogs

Mendel found that dominant alleles will overrule recessive when breeding pea plants, this happens when a trait is controlled by a single gene Found that fearfulness is coded by one gene with cocker spaniel and other dog but environmental factors also contributed to when certain alleles were produced

Mitosis vs meiosis

Mitosis: cell production for body cells where identical genetic matter is copied Meiosis: makes egg and sperm cells that are not alike since they divide twice to have 1/2 genetic information

Are mirror neurons a basis for social learning

Monkey can help recognize that someone is doing identical behavior but for humans mirror neurons are stimulated when they learn how to do something to help them achieve a goal instead of just being stimulated to copy a behavior, these cells may help with social cognition that could have helped with rethinking about the world

Consequences of the fact genes come in pairs

More than one gene is on locus (alleles), homozygous is when the alleles are the same (multiple genes on same allele are same), heterozygous is when they are different, dominant allele is the one that always shows if present and recessive only shows when it is the only one present

Do most psychologists specialize in one field of multiple? Why?

Most specialize in multiple areas of psychology or a specialized branch, such as sensory psychology, uses every level to better understand how people perceive the world around them Labels are given to show some specificity but not to make the field too specialized

What other types of fields is psychology related to?

Natural sciences (bio for neural, genetics, and evolutionary), social sciences (anthro for social and cultural developmental and cognitive) and humanities since they want to better understand why people do certain behaviors

Derwin's contributions to psychology through natural selection, how do his ideas differ from physiologists and empiricists

Natural selection is where an organism with inherited characteristics that are favorable in the environment will live longer and Purdue more due to random genetic variability Physiologists believed that neural mechanisms led to behavior, empiricist so believed the environment gave us information on how to behave, Darwin believed behaviors helped us survive

Why do we want to avoid the naturalistic and deterministic fallacies in evolution?

Naturalistic fallacy says natural selection is a moral process which isn't true since there is no more evolved creature in society, Darwin hated this since the human brain did not show we were better than any other organism Deterministic fallacy: assumption that genes cause us to behave in ways we can't control, environment ALWAYS interacts with genes to produce behaviors

Animal research and IRB

Need to treat animals with respect and not inflict any harm if possible, debatable in some countries have banned it has helped with gains in psychological world To conduct research have to get IRB approval, studies may not be legitmate anymore due to unethical concerns

Strengthening synapses as a foundation of learning: hebbian theory, long term potentiation

Neurons that fire together wire together, this happens when the post synaptic neuron fired immediately after the predynaotic neuron fires, provided basis for classical conditioning (same neurons fire for food and bell), long term potentiation happens when an artificial burst of electricity is fired into an animals brain and can make it so a neuron that originally had a weak connection with post synaptic neuron has a stronger one with the inclusion of a presynaotic neuron that releases more neurotransmitters, saw that when a LtP inhibiting drug was given that a rat was never able to learn to associate fear with shock

Observer expectancy effects, how do you avoid subject expectancy effects

Observers influence participants results Ex: autistic children who have a hard time expressing emotions and communicating were able to write clear messages, skeptics tested experiment and found that facilitators giving the tests were unconsciously giving them cued to correctly answer questions, avoid this by making experimenters blind to the study's purpose

Thomas Hobbes and materialism: what did he deduce, what insight was inspired by his theory about the body

Only matter and energy exist not a soul, conscious thoughts are subject to the current environment around them, led to the development of physiology since the body was referred to as a machine The study of reflexes came into practice where body moved involuntarily based on environment factor not the brain Localization of function in the brain where each part has a distinct function

Schedules of partial Reinforcement and the four types

Partial reinforcement is when behavior is sometimes rewarded Fixed ratio: reward is given every number of hits, variable ratio: reward given every average number of hits, fixed interval: reward given Round a selected number of hits, Variable interval: reward given around the average number of hits Ratios have a high response rate since it's easy to predict their outcome, addictions comes about with variable ratio rewarding since people think they've had a lucky break (gamblers fallacy)

Research setting: laboratory vs field setting

Participants go to an artificially created area to do study, high levels of internal validity since can control setting but low external validity since participants may not act naturally, experiments are done this way Field: hypothesis is tested in natural surrounding, high external validity since you're watching people in a comfortable place but low internal validity since you can't control for outside variables, descriptive and correlational studies done there

Biopsychology

Physiological approach, studies hormones and drugs influence on human or nonhuman behaviors Ex: Higher levels of estradiol from birth control may contribute to jealousy

Karl Groos theory about learning through play, 5 pieces of evidence and why humans play

Play helps us explore and observe to learn which behaviors are right or wrong, have this from natural selection We see evidence of this with younger members of society playing more, animals with most adapted brains play more, play to learn skills, learn a skill through repetitive play and that it's a challenge Humans play to learn basic biological and cultural behaviors to help with their survival (allows for skeletal development and social dynamics)

Learning through exploration: how does it differ from play, where do mammals use it, evidence of it in latent learning Tolmans experiment

Play is where we learn how to do something whereas exploration helps us identify where things are such as food and shelter, came before play and is more vital, mammals use it to look at every aspect in society and have some fear patrol Animals learn while exploring since when you put a mouse in a maze they learn the path even without a reward but when the reward is present they show that they have learned the maze

Positive and negative in relation to reinforcement and punishment

Positive means giving something and negative means taking something away, reinforcement is when. Behavior is encouraged and punishment is when a behavior is discouraged

Hormones: what are they, what affect do they have on the body, how are they controlled in the brain

Produced by endocrine gland and it travels in the blood to perform a function, they can have long term effects on size of muscles and gender and short term effects with stress monitoring, hormones are made in the pituitary gland that stimulate the production of hormones in endocrine gland, hypothalmus controls the releasing of these hormones, anterior pituitary secretes them so they go down in capillaries into the blood stream

Thorndikes puzzle box experiment that preceded Skinner and law of effect compared to Pavlovs SS theory

Put cat into puzzle box when hungry and put food on the outside, cat accidentally hit lever and got out to get food, through trial and error quickly learned this behavior An organism is more likely to do a behavior with a favorable response whereas Pavlov predicted that an animal would learn to react to a stimulus based in the presence of another

Evolution of human brain: encephalization quotient

Ratio of brain weight to body weight, we have a huge head in comparison to our body since thenEQ is greater than one, homologous to chimp and bonobo brain since they are a common ancestor, natural selection seems to have played an influence in brain size

Reliability vs validity

Reliability: The measure of consistency of scores on various tests, low reliability means scores were more likely to happen due to chance (should be no statistical significance ), you can increase reliability by creating an operational definition of the variable where they code for a specific behavior Validity: whether a test measures the intended variable, look at face validity to see if test questions appear to measure the intended variable, look at criterion validity to see if the test material measures intended variable

Discrimination Training in operant conditioning and how it and generalizations lead to concept understanding

Repeated exposure to a stimulus to decrease or increase a behavior, use a discriminative stimulus, such a bell, so animal only responds when sees a bell Generalizations is when an organism learns to respond to stimulus based on being rewarded for a behavior with a stimulus, the organism learns a concept (basic idea of an image) Ex: bird learned to peck when it saw a tree or anything looking like a tree through repeated exposure of different types of trees

What is a research design and how does an experiment fit into the category and what two types of experiments can you conduct?

Research design is the way to conduct an experiment that minimizes bias the most when collecting data Experiment: controlled method of testing a hypothesis that eliminates as much bias with confounding variables, use subjects or participants to test Changes in an IV to see the effects in the DV Within groups: all subjects receive every treatment and compare results Between groups: subjects are randomly assigned to treatment group and you compare results from different groups Use inferential statistics to see how likely it was to get that data by chance

Functional organization of the nervous: sensory perceptual hierarchy vs motor control hierarchy

Sensory perceptual hierarchy: data processing that receives sensory data about the persons surrounding and it analyzes those sensory stimuli to determine next course of action (bottom up) Motor control: controls movements, it's top down functioning where the executive centers that make decisions about how to move and lower levels focus on making certain muscles move

One negative about skinner that led to discrimination training

Skinner only looked at behavior that was observable not mental memories about how past events shape how we behave in the future

Skinner box: how did it differ from thorndike and classical conditioning, what did skinner posit after doing the study

Skinner put rats into a cage where mice could be in there even after getting s reward, measured the operant response (rats pressing on the lever) to see the effect the operant condition had on the mice, found that the food was a reinforcer that encouraged a behavior, unlike classical conditioning where a stimulus elicits a response from organism, individual generates behavior that has an effect on the environment Skinner believed that we learned how to behave based on the way the environment responded but not through our awareness (ex: people learn to move hand a certain way to accomplish a goal but weren't aware of it)

Social learning: what is it and operational learning, what contribution did Bandura make with vicarious learning, how do we see it with watching skilled performers and chimps acquiring cultural transmission behaviors and gaze following with humans

Social learning is when one individual learns to behave similarly another, one way to do this is through observational learning where an organism watches another person, Bandura posited that people could learn to do certain behaviors based on the way they are rewarded or punished when others do the. (Vicarious learning), animals emulate behaviors they see, but not learn, if they like the stimulus or see parent doing it to create a culture, found that chimps can learn human like behaviors when raised by humans by stimulating mirror neurons that remember how to behave, humans appear to be the only ones that can teach offspring behaviors that they remember and this is apparent with gaze following (watch where people's gaze is directed, kept this due to natural selection)

Split brain surgery: what did they downs what effects did it have, how do they adjust

Split brain surgery requires the corpus csllosum to be severed, makes it seem like patients have two separate minds with different abilities (found that if you put an object in the left side that person could identify by touch but not by saying it and person can't comprehend words if they are only on the right side of vision), puzzles are better solved on the right while reading is better on left, they can function so well since only cerebral cortex and part of the limbic system are disconnected and they can learn by touching items with two hands, using more dominant side of brain to interpret and learn to interpret indirect signals (right brain may perceive unpleasantness from a frown while left perceived it from statement saying I'm not happy) They do not get confused or annoyed when they say contradictory phrases and they only found that they felt this way after showing unpleasant or annoying images on the right side, left brain may be interpreter of what we say or do (conscious understanding)

Methods used to study nonhuman animals brains (3)

Stereotactic instrument is inserted into rats brain to make a elision to study a behavior that comes about with change, damage brain to fourth study it Can stimulate neurons by injecting electrical or chemical impulses into the brain through a cannula to study their behavioral and emotional changes Microelectrodes Can record neural activity when an animal engages in a behavior

Cognitive psychology

Studies how our thoughts and previous experiences shape behavior ex: ask a person how they were thinking or feeling when taking certain actions

Three methods used to study the brain (think about TMS, EEG, PET, and fMRI)

Study a person's behavior who has a brain deficit (people can see which functions disappear when someone experienced brain damage, discover more about localization of function), observe behavioral changes when you artificially stimulate something (transcranial magnetic stimulation shoots an electrical impulse to a part of the brain to stop it from working and study which functions disappear or EEG can measure electrics, activity in the brain through different electrical changes (event related potential) to see they respond to stimuli) , and look at the brain while they do a task (can use positron emission topography machine to see brain activity by injecting radioactive into blood and fMRI to create magnetic field that gives of radio waves to measure blood flow FMRI is used the most since it measures blood flow through the brain and has good special resolution however can't make causal claims about localization of function

Empiricism: how does it differ from materialism, who was the most prominent figure and his theory

Study that humans learn things through the environment around them (brain is blank slate) while materialism implied that body is like a machine and each part has a distinct function that is innate that helps body John Locke

Synaptic transmission: role in influencing neurons, excitatory and inhibitory synapses

The axon terminal receives action potential and release neurosnsmitters into the synaptic cleft until they bind with the post synaptic neuron (if it's a muscle it twitches), if the neuron has an action potential and is sending s signal it can be either more excitatory (sends action potential more quickly to neighbor by allowing more nA into cell body to make it more negative to create a depolarization. ) or inhibitory (more Cl or K is let in which leads to a hyper polarization and decreases the action potential by letting more positive ions in)

What are the conditions in which the pairing of a new stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus does not result in conditioned response?

The conditioned stimulus does not precede the UCS There is no heightened probability that the UCS will follow the CS so the CR won't occur the learning of old information blocks the learning of new information unless when the new UCS is paired simultaneously with old CS and UCS Essentially a new stimulus won't lead to a conditioned response with the unconditioned stimulus unless the animal predicts that there will be a high expectation of getting the UCS

The double edged sword of sickle cell anemia

The dominant allele is not always the best, sickle cell which is the recessive cell persists in communities where malaria was present since it helped combat this

Evolutionary psychology: what is it and how is it related to adaptions?

The field is based on genetics and natural selection, it looks at adaptation (modifications that come out of an environmental change) to better understand behaviors we possess today

What were Descartes contributions to psychology and what isn't correct about it

The idea of the body and mind being conjoined in the body but were separate and did not influence each other, the body is a machine that is wired to do certain tasks without the soul (walk, sleep), the human soul acts on certain parts of the body to make certain sensory behaviors occur Bad: soul can influence physical body even though it has no physical matter, a non natural entity moved the body

Classical conditioning: what is it

The learning of new reflexes (involuntary behavior that is done in response to a stimuli ), happens through repeated exposure, if you expose someone too much they become habituated so the response doesn't occur as quickly

Motor portion in the peripheral nervous system: two types of them and ones subtype

The motor portion of peripheral nervous system has skeletal motor system (activity of skeletal muscles) and autonomic motor system (controls activities in visceral muscles and glands) Autonomic motor system has the sympathetic (deals with stress by elevating heart rate, no digestion, etc) and parasympathetic nervous system (regenerates and conserved energy through relaxing activities)

Psychology

The science behind the mind and behavior Mind refers to sny subjective experience, behavior is an observable action and science is an empirical and objective way to collect data about an phonemena in order to answer questions (We make infernces about the mind from peoples behaviors)

Cultural psychology

The study of language, attitudes and behaviors that are favored by a group of people Unlike social psychology they look at traditions that have persisted for a long time Ex: cultured promote harsher laws towards women due to male sexual jealousy

Social psychology

The study of other human influence a person's behavior (relies on cognitive explanations with how they make people think differently) Ex: Ask people about how they feel towards dating norms

Nativism: how did it differ from empiricism, what contribution did Darwin make with this

They believed that an individual is born with basic machinery in order to learn about sensory stimuli (empiricist don't believe people need prior information to learn new concepts), Kant said this, Darwin provided that evolution was the reason why these factors were passed down Ex: you need the ability to learn languages to learn certain grammar and sound skills

Association by contiguity: why is this concept so important with empiricist, memory and learning

Two stimuli that are simultaneously presented (contiguity) are bound together in the mind (association) and this is how we create complex thoughts Ex: when you see an apple you imagine what it tastes like

Operant conditioning: Behavioral analysis

Uses operant conditioning to predict a behavior out of an individual (autistic child will continue to act socially awkward unless given rewards when they start to engage in more prosocial behaviors (shaping)) Will use token economies as a reward system in this type of setup

Specialized learning: prepared for Fear Related Learning

We learn to fear certain things if our ancestors feared them and if we see a member of our species react with it, if our caregiver doesn't fear it then we won't either

Extinction of operant.y conditioned response

When a behavior is not rewarded it becomes extinct but not unlearned (similar to classical conditioning)

Environmental change leads to natural selection

When an environmental change occurs it isn't always a slow and steady process and may cause animals to evolve more quickly to survive longer Ex: when drought hit the Galapagos island, birds with small beaks were the only ones with food source so large bird reproduction declined steadily

Operant conditioning: the over justification effect

When you reward people for doing a task, reading, that they may view as work instead of pleasure, they won't be able to the behavior anymore if it isn't rewarded since it changes the way we have thought about it

Expectancy theory by Rescorla

cR is associated with expectancy of food therefore the organism is going to behave with expectations if the conditioned stimulus Ex: Cat comes into kitchen when it hears the can opener since its conditioned to expect food when it hears it