Psychology 1101 Exam 1 EXTREMELY GENERAL EDITION

Why do psychologists rely on naturalistic observation?

• Unlike controlled experiments, nonexperimental methods usually cannot demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships. • Naturalistic observation is a starting place in many investigations. Two problems with naturalistic observation are the effects of the observer on the observed and observer bias.

How do the chemical senses operate?

• Olfaction (smell) and gustation (taste) are chemical senses that respond to airborne or liquefied molecules. • The lock-and-key theory of olfaction partially explains smell. In addition, the location of the olfactory receptors in the nose helps identify various scents. • Sweet and bitter tastes are based on a lock-and-key coding of molecule shapes. Salty and sour tastes are triggered by a direct flow of ions into taste receptors.

What do the different parts of the brain do?

• A major brain research strategy involves localization of function to link specific structures in the brain with specific psychological or behavioral functions. • Brain function is investigated through clinical case studies, electrical stimulation, ablation, deep lesioning, electrical recording, and microelectrode recording as well as less intrusive EEG recording, PET scans, and fMRI scans.

How are different parts of the brain identified?

• Brain structure is investigated though dissection and less intrusive CT scans and MRI scans.

What benefits arise from case studies?

• Case studies provide insights into human behavior that can't be gained by other methods.

What is critical thinking?

• Critical thinking is central to the scientific method, to psychology, and to the everyday understanding of behavior. • Critical thinking in psychology is a type of open-minded reflection involving the support of beliefs with scientific explanation and observation. • The validity of beliefs can be judged through logical analysis, evaluating evidence for and against the claim, and evaluating the quality of the evidence. • Critical thinkers seek to falsify claims by making up their own minds rather than automatically taking the word of experts.

How is it possible to see depth and judge distance?

• Depth perception depends on binocular cues of retinal disparity and convergence. • Depth perception also depends on the monocular cue of accommodation. • Monocular "pictorial" depth cues also underlie depth perception. They are linear perspective, relative size, height in the picture plane, light and shadow, overlap, texture gradients, aerial haze, and motion parallax.

In what order do the emotions develop during infancy?

• Emotions develop in a consistent order, starting with generalized excitement in newborn babies. Three of the basic emotions—fear, anger, and joy—may be unlearned.

How does the glandular system affect behavior?

• Endocrine glands serve as a chemical communication system within the body. The ebb and flow of hormones from the endocrine glands entering the bloodstream affect behavior, moods, and personality. • Many of the endocrine glands are influenced by the pituitary (the master gland), which is in turn influenced by the hypothalamus. Thus, the brain controls the body through both the fast nervous system and the slower endocrine system.

What are the typical tasks and dilemmas through the lifespan?

• Erik Erikson identified a series of specific psychosocial dilemmas that occur as we age. These range from a need to gain trust in infancy to the need to live with integrity in old age. • Successful resolution of the dilemmas produces healthy development, whereas unsuccessful outcomes make it harder to deal with later crises.

How is an experiment performed?

• Experiments involve two or more groups of subjects that differ only regarding the independent variable. Effects on the dependent variable are then measured. All other conditions (extraneous variables) are held constant. • Because the independent variable is the only difference between the experimental group and the control group, it is the only possible cause of a change in the dependent variable. • The design of experiments allows cause-and-effect connections to be clearly identified.

How can I perceive events more accurately?

• Eyewitness testimony is surprisingly unreliable. Eyewitness accuracy is further damaged by weapon focus and several similar factors. • When a stimulus is repeated without change, our response to it undergoes habituation. • Perceptual accuracy is enhanced by reality testing, dishabituation, and conscious efforts to pay attention. • It also is valuable to break perceptual habits, to broaden frames of reference, to beware of perceptual sets, and to be aware of the ways motives and emotions influence perceptions.

Is extrasensory perception possible?

• Parapsychology is the study of purported psi phenomena, including telepathy (including mediumship), clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis. • Research in parapsychology remains controversial because of a variety of problems and shortcomings. The bulk of the evidence to date is against the existence of ESP. • The more carefully controlled an ESP experiment is, the less likely it is to produce evidence that ESP occurs.

What are the contemporary perspectives in psychology?

• Three complementary streams of thought in modern psychology are the biological perspective, including biopsychology and evolutionary psychology; the psychological perspective, including behaviorism, cognitive psychology, the psychodynamic approach, and humanism; and the sociocultural perspective. • Psychologists have recently begun to formally study positive aspects of human behavior, or positive psychology. • Most of what we think, feel, and do is influenced by the social and cultural worlds in which we live. • Today, many viewpoints within psychology have contributed to what is now an eclectic blend.

How do heredity and environment affect development?

• Heredity (nature) and environment (nurture) are interacting forces that are both necessary for human development. However, caregivers can only influence environment. • The chromosomes and genes in each cell of the body carry hereditary instructions. Most characteristics are polygenic and reflect the combined effects of dominant and recessive genes. • Maturation of the body and nervous system underlies the orderly development of motor and perceptual skills, cognitive abilities, emotions, and language. The rate of maturation varies from person to person. • The human neonate has several adaptive reflexes, including the grasping, rooting, sucking, and Moro reflexes. • Testing with a looking chamber reveals that neonates prefer complex patterns to simple ones; they also prefer human face patterns, especially familiar faces. • Many early skills are subject to the principle of readiness. • Prenatal development is influenced by environmental factors, such as various teratogens, including diseases, drugs, and radiation, as well as the mother's diet, health, and emotions. • During sensitive periods in development, infants are more sensitive to specific environmental influences. • Early perceptual, intellectual, or emotional deprivation seriously slows development, whereas deliberate enrichment of the environment has a beneficial effect on infants. • Temperament is hereditary. Most infants fall into one of three temperament categories: easy children, difficult children, and slow-to-warm-up children. • A child's developmental level reflects heredity, environment, and the effects of the child's own behavior.

What is a correlational study?

• In the correlational method, relationships between two traits, responses, or events are measured and a correlation coefficient is computed to gauge the strength of the relationship. Relationships in psychology may be positive or negative. Correlations allow prediction but do not demonstrate cause-and-effect.

How is the scientific method applied in psychological research?

• In the scientific method, systematic observation is used to test hypotheses about behavior and mental events. A powerful way to observe the natural world and draw valid conclusions, scientific research provides the highest-quality information about behavior and mental events. • Psychological research begins by defining problems and proposing hypotheses. Concepts must be defined operationally before they can be studied empirically. • Next, researchers gather evidence to test hypotheses. The results of scientific studies are made public so that others can evaluate them, learn from them, and use them to suggest new hypotheses, which lead to further research. • Psychological research must be done ethically to protect the rights, dignity, and welfare of participants.

What is a survey?

• In the survey method, people in a representative sample are asked a series of carefully worded questions. Obtaining a representative sample of people is crucial when the survey method is used to study large populations.

Why are we more aware of some sensations than others?

• Incoming sensations are affected by selective attention, a brain-based process that allows some sensory inputs to be selected for further processing while others are ignored. • Don't use your cell phone while driving!

How reliable is the psychological information found in the popular media?

• Information in the mass media varies greatly in quality and accuracy and should be approached with skepticism and caution. • It is essential to critically evaluate information from popular sources (or from any source, for that matter) to separate facts from fallacies. • Problems in media reports are often related to biased or unreliable sources of information, uncontrolled observation, misleading correlations, false inferences, oversimplification, use of single examples, and unrepeatable results.

How do children acquire language?

• Language development proceeds from crying to cooing, then babbling, to the use of single words, and then to telegraphic speech. • The underlying patterns of telegraphic speech suggest a biological predisposition to acquire language. This innate tendency is augmented by learning. • Prelanguage communication between parent and child involves shared rhythms, nonverbal signals, and turn-taking. • Motherese or parentese is a simplified, musical style of speaking that parents use to help their children learn language.

How do we develop morals and values?

• Lawrence Kohlberg identified preconventional, conventional, and postconventional levels of moral reasoning. Developing mature moral standards also is an important task of adolescence. • Most people function at the conventional level of morality, but some never get beyond the selfish, preconventional level. Only a minority of people attain the highest, or postconventional level, of moral reasoning. • Carol Gilligan distinguished between Kohlberg's justice perspective and a caring perspective. Mature adult morality likely involves both.

What is the significance of a child's emotional bond with adults?

• Meeting a baby's affectional needs is as important as meeting needs for physical care. Emotional attachment of human infants is a critical early event. • Infant attachment is reflected by separation anxiety. The quality of attachment can be classified as secure, insecure-avoidant, or insecure-ambivalent. • High-quality day care does not appear to harm children. Low-quality day care can be risky.

How do children learn to think?

• Neonates begin to learn immediately and appear to be aware of the effects of their actions. • A child's intellect is less abstract than that of an adult. Jean Piaget theorized that intellectual growth occurs through a combination of assimilation and accommodation. • Piaget also held that children go through a fixed series of cognitive stages. The stages and their approximate age ranges are sensorimotor , preoperational , concrete operational , and formal operations . • Caregivers should offer learning opportunities that are appropriate for a child's level of cognitive development. • Learning principles provide an alternate explanation that assumes that cognitive development is continuous; it does not occur in stages. • Studies of infants under the age of 1 year suggest that they are capable of thought well beyond that observed by Piaget. Similarly, children begin to outgrow egocentrism as early as age 4. • Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasizes that a child's mental abilities are advanced by interactions with more-competent partners. Mental growth takes place in a child's zone of proximal development, where a more skillful person may scaffold the child's progress.

How do people typically react to death?

• Typical emotional reactions to impending death include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, but not necessarily in that order or in every case. • Death is a natural part of life. There is value in understanding it and accepting it.

In general, how do we construct our perceptions?

• Perception is an active process of constructing sensations into a meaningful mental representation of the world. • Perceptions are based on simultaneous bottom-up and top-down processing. Complete perceptions are assembled out of small sensory features in "bottom-up" fashion, guided by preexisting knowledge applied "top-down" to help organize features into a meaningful whole. • Separating figure and ground is the most basic perceptual organization. • The following Gestalt principles also help organize sensations: nearness, similarity, continuity, closure, contiguity, and common region. • A perceptual organization may be thought of as a hypothesis held until evidence contradicts it. • In vision, the image projected on the retina is constantly changing, but the external world appears stable and undistorted because of size, shape, and brightness constancy.

What is involved in well-being during middle and later adulthood?

• Physical aging starts early in adulthood. Every adult must find ways to successfully cope with aging. Only a minority of people have a midlife crisis, but midlife course corrections are more common. • Well-being during adulthood consists of six elements: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, having a purpose in life, and continued personal growth. • Intellectual declines associated with aging are limited, at least through one's 70s. This is especially true of individuals who remain mentally active. • Ageism refers to prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping on the basis of age. It affects people of all ages but is especially damaging to older people. Most ageism is based on stereotypes, myths, and misinformation.

How does psychology differ from false explanations of behavior?

• Pseudopsychologies are unfounded systems that are frequently confused with valid psychology. • Unlike psychology, pseudopsychologies change little over time because followers seek evidence that appears to confirm their beliefs and avoid evidence that contradicts their beliefs. • Belief in pseudopsychologies is based in part on uncritical acceptance, confirmation bias, and the Barnum effect.

What is psychology and what are its goals?

• Psychology is the science of (overt) behavior and (covert) mental processes. • Psychologists are professionals who create and apply psychological knowledge. • Psychologists engage in critical thinking as they systematically gather and analyze empirical evidence to answer questions about behavior. • Psychologists gather scientific data in order to describe, understand, predict, and control behavior.

What is a double-blind experiment?

• Research participant bias is a problem in some studies; the placebo effect is a source of research participant bias in experiments involving drugs. • Researcher bias is a related problem. Researcher expectations can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which a participant changes in the direction of the expectation. • In a double-blind experiment, neither the research participants nor the researchers collecting data know who was in the experimental group or the control group, allowing valid conclusions to be drawn.

What are the major divisions of the nervous system?

• Sensations, thoughts, feelings, motives, actions, memories, and all other human capacities are associated with nervous system activities and structures. • The nervous system can be divided into the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). • The CNS is made up of the brain, which carries out most of the "computing" in the nervous system, and the spinal cord, which connects the brain to the PNS. • The PNS includes the somatic nervous system (SNS), which carries sensory information to the brain and motor commands to the body, and the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls vegetative and automatic bodily processes. The ANS has a sympathetic branch and a parasympathetic branch.

What are the mechanisms of hearing?

• Sound waves are the stimulus for hearing. They are transduced by the eardrum, auditory ossicles, oval window, cochlea, and ultimately, the hair cells. • Frequency theory explains how we hear tones up to 4000 hertz; place theory explains tones above 4000 hertz. • Two basic types of hearing loss are conductive hearing loss and sensorineural hearing loss. Noise-induced hearing loss is a common form of sensorineural hearing loss caused by exposure to loud noise.

How important are parenting styles?

• Studies suggest that parental styles have a substantial impact on emotional and intellectual development. • Three major parental styles are authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative (effective). Authoritative parenting, relying more on management techniques rather than power assertion or withdrawal of love, appears to benefit children the most. • Whereas mothers typically emphasize caregiving, fathers tend to function as playmates for infants. • Parental styles vary across cultures.

What factors contribute most to a happy life?

• Subjective well-being (happiness) is a combination of general life satisfaction, plus more positive emotions than negative emotions. • Life events and various demographic factors have relatively little influence on happiness. • People with extraverted (outgoing), optimistic, and worry-free personalities tend to be happier. • Making progress toward one's goals is associated with happiness. • Overall well-being is a combination of happiness and meaning in life, which comes from pursuing goals that express one's deeper interests and values.

How do expectations, motives, emotions, and learning alter perceptions?

• Suggestion, motives, emotions, attention, and prior experience combine in various ways to create perceptual sets, or expectancies. • Personal motives and values often alter perceptions by changing the evaluation of what is seen or by altering attention to specific details. • Perceptual learning influences the top-down organization and interpretation of sensations. • One of the most familiar of all illusions, the Müller-Lyer illusion, seems to be related to perceptual learning, linear perspective, and size-distance invariance relationships.

In what ways do right- and left-handed individuals differ?

• The vast majority of people are right-handed and, therefore, left-brain dominant for motor skills. More than percent of right-handed persons and about percent of the left-handed also produce speech from the left hemisphere. • Brain dominance and brain activity determine whether you are right-handed, left-handed, or ambidextrous. • Most people are strongly right-handed. A minority are strongly left-handed. A few have moderate or mixed hand preferences or they are ambidextrous. Thus, handedness is not a simple either/or trait. • Left-handed people tend to be less strongly lateralized than right-handed people (their brain hemispheres are not as specialized).

What are the major parts of the subcortex?

• The brain can be subdivided into the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. The subcortex includes hindbrain and midbrain brain structures as well as the lower parts of the forebrain, below the cortex. • The medulla contains centers essential for reflex control of heart rate, breathing, and other vegetative functions. • The pons links the medulla with other brain areas. • The cerebellum maintains coordination, posture, and muscle tone. • The reticular formation directs sensory and motor messages, and part of it, known as the RAS, acts as an activating system for the cerebral cortex. • The thalamus carries sensory information to the cortex. • The hypothalamus exerts powerful control over eating, drinking, sleep cycles, body temperature, and other basic motives and behaviors. • The limbic system is strongly related to emotion. It also contains distinct reward and punishment areas and an area known as the hippocampus that is important for forming memories.

How do neurons operate and communicate with each other?

• The dendrite and soma of a neuron combine neural input and send it down the axon to the axon terminals for output across the synapse to other neurons. • The firing of an action potential (nerve impulse) is basically an electrical event. • Communication between neurons is chemical: Neurotransmitters cross the synapse, attach to receptor sites, and excite or inhibit the receiving cell.

How does the visual system function?

• The eye is a visual system, not a photographic one. The entire visual system is structured to analyze visual information. • Four common visual defects are myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia, and astigmatism. • The rods and cones are photoreceptors in the retina of the eye. • The rods specialize in peripheral vision, night vision, seeing black and white, and detecting movement. The cones specialize in color vision, acuity, and daylight vision. • Color vision is explained by the trichromatic theory in the retina and by the opponent-process theory in the visual system beyond the eyes. • Total color blindness is rare, but 8 percent of males and 1 percent of females are red-green color blind or color weak. • Dark adaptation is caused mainly by an increase in the amount of rhodopsin in the rods.

How did the field of psychology emerge?

• The field of psychology emerged over 130 years ago when researchers began to directly study and observe psychological events. • The first psychological laboratory was established in Germany in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt, who studied conscious experience. • The first school of thought in psychology was structuralism, a kind of mental chemistry based on introspection. • Structuralism was followed by functionalism, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology. • Psychodynamic approaches, such as Freud's psychoanalytic theory, emphasize the unconscious origins of behavior. • Humanistic psychology accentuates subjective experience, human potentials, and personal growth. • Because most early psychologists were Caucasian men, bias was inadvertently introduced into psychological research. Today, more women and minorities are becoming psychologists and being studied as research participants.

What are the major specialties in psychology?

• The field of psychology now has dozens of specialties. • Psychological research can be basic or applied. • Psychologists may be directly interested in animal behavior, or they may study animals as models of human behavior. • Although psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, counselors, and psychiatric social workers all work in the field of mental health, their training and methods differ considerably.

What are the different functions of the lobes of the cerebral cortex?

• The frontal lobes contain the primary motor area (which includes many mirror neurons) and many association areas, which combine and process information. Damage to Broca's area results in motor aphasia, a difficulty in speaking or writing. The prefrontal cortex is related to abstract thought and one's sense of self. • The parietal lobes contain the primary sensory area, which processes bodily sensations. • The temporal lobes contain the primary auditory area and are responsible for hearing and language. Damage to Wernicke's area results in fluent aphasia, a difficulty understanding the meanings of words. • The occipital lobes contain the primary visual area that is responsible for vision. • Men's and women's brains are specialized in different ways.

How do the left and right hemispheres differ?

• The human brain is marked not by overall size but by advanced corticalization, or enlargement of the cerebral cortex. • Split brains can be created by cutting the corpus callosum. The split-brain individual shows a remarkable degree of independence between the right and left hemispheres. • The left hemisphere is good at analysis, and it processes small details sequentially. It contains speech or language centers in most people. It also specializes in writing, calculating, judging time and rhythm, and ordering complex movements. • The right hemisphere detects overall patterns; it processes information simultaneously and holistically. It is largely nonverbal and excels at spatial and perceptual skills, visualization, and recognition of patterns, faces, and melodies.

In general, how do sensory systems function?

• The senses act as selective data-reduction systems to prevent the brain from being overwhelmed by sensory input. • Sensation begins with transduction in a receptor organ; other data-reduction processes are sensory adaptation, analysis, and coding. • Sensation can be partially understood in terms of sensory localization in the brain.

What are the somesthetic senses?

• The somesthetic senses include the skin senses, vestibular senses, and kinesthetic senses (receptors that detect muscle and joint positioning). • The skin senses are touch, pressure, pain, cold, and warmth. Sensitivity to each is related to the number of receptors found in an area of skin. • Distinctions can be made between warning pain and reminding pain. • Selective gating of pain messages takes place in the spinal cord, as explained by gate control theory. • Pain can be reduced through counterirritation and by controlling anxiety and attention. • According to sensory conflict theory, motion sickness is caused by a mismatch of visual, kinesthetic, and vestibular sensations. Motion sickness can be avoided by minimizing sensory conflict.

Why is the transition from adolescence to adulthood especially challenging?

• The timing of puberty can complicate the task of identity formation, a major task of adolescence. Identity formation is even more challenging for adolescents of ethnic descent. • In Western industrialized societies, the transition into adulthood is further complicated because it is increasingly delayed well into the 20s (emerging adulthood).