PSYC Final
Behavioral Priming
1. Unscramble sentences in neutral, polite, and rude condition. 2. Measure whether they subsequently interrupt. How long it takes to interrupt after unscrambling and seeing certain words.
Behaviorism
(BF Skinner) -mental states are unobservable - unscientific -what can we observe? stimulus, response, environment -human uniqueness is overblown. we too are S-R creatures - therefore understanding learning = understanding basic principles of association
idealism
(kant) instead of right to conscious awareness, detour to sensory apparatus/conception (calculation, filling in and enhance perception)
Evidentials
(linguistic/grammar misattribution example) To remember source through language. People with this language have less source attribution error.
realism
(locke) causal chain. image straight to conscious awareness. i.e. wrong: see great depth in a 2D photo. visual system constructing something not there i.e. wrong: helpful for visual system for object to stay same color but light vs. dark room change. light reflected off, brain knows object should be same color , so more bright in darker room than should be
materialism
(thomas hobbes) mind and brain have a causal relationship. states of physical mind impact "mind." a pattern corresponds to a thought and one pattern causes another pattern.
Delay of gratification
(video of kids not reaching for cookie before time over) Length of delay at 4y.o. correlates with 14y.o.'s - planning and thinking ahead - resistance to temptation - ability to cope with frustration - social competence - verbal fluency/expression
Emotion/Social areas
- Amygdala - Ventromedial PFC
Motor areas
- Basal ganglia - Motor cortex - Cerebellum
Why express emotions?
- Evolutionary Usage/Organizer of Behavioral Responses Example: Disgust. Maybe disgusted/cinched face evolved over time to keep pathogens out. Now, used in a wide variety of concepts. Emotions generalized beyond original use. I.e.) can be disgusted on moral domains too. - Communication: Best way to communicate is through language, but that is evolutionarily recent. Emotions are signaling functions. Rich sense of information. Harder to fake emotion than language, so honest and rapid signals.
Themes - Measuring Personality
- Freud: Forces in conflict (Id, Ego, Superego) bring about personality. - Rorschach ink blot: look at inkblot and freely interpret. Deviations can always be explained.
Sleep enhance insight
- Kekulé: Discovered benzene structure after seeing it in a dream. flash of insight - Experiment: See a sequence of numbers and have to predict the last number. Given complex math rules. There is also a shortcut that you are not told. Wanted to see if people can come up this insight. Wake-day and wake-night did worse than people who slept.
Why do some mammals sleep more?
- Predator/prey relationship: animal higher on food chain can sleep more and have no risk of predation to themselves - Dolphin: mammals in water, need to come up to surface for air. Sleep one hemisphere of brain at a time and do lazy circles up and down. Can flip switch and do circles in opposite direction. Only one of two mammals without REM sleep (spiny anteaters). Need both hemispheres for REM sleep and handing off each brain prevents this. - Dolphins in rivers: can't lose agility for long time because rocks. Microsleeps for about 2 minutes. Keep doing this until in total get about 10 hours of sleep.
Social cognition as "mind-melding"
- getting others to experience what I experience - getting myself to experience what others experience LET (me to others) 1. Language: 70-80% of conversation is about other people. minds of others. 2. Emotions: communicate what's in our head to others. signals 3. Teaching: infect you with my ideas. to do effectively, need to know what's already in students' heads (avoid curse of knowledge where you think people know what you know).
Sensorimotor failures of object permanence
- put can behind cloth, baby think it's gone. at later age, baby able to recognize object exists behind barrier - A not B error: hide object behind A, baby immediately get object behind A. Then hide object behind B but even seeing it, baby search behind A. Operant conditioning. Reinforced behavior at A is stronger than tracking object behind B.
Cardinal cognitive features of dreams
- visual hallucinations - motor behavior - highly emotional content - loss of directed thought and self-reflection - reduction in logical reasoning - poor memory (both for dreams and within dreams)
visual orientation-specific neurons
single neurons may be tuned to specific orientation
Wernicke's aphasia
word salad. intact grammar structure, makes no sense.
REM Experiments
-When subjects were woken during REM, they reported dreaming 80% of the time. When subjects were woken during slow-wave, they reported dreaming 7% of the time. - Hook up brain to EEG and eyes to eye electrodes. During REM, eye dart around and brain looks like it's awake. Babies go from awake to REM, unlike adults
Failures of Social Congnition
-false belief test: reasoning of false belief (to recognize that others can have beliefs about the world that are diverging) is hard - Autism: language still complex but not at same kind of detail. Don't see social content in Heider and Simmel video. Can use down syndrome to compare (lower IQ generally but we don't expect a social deficit). autistic kids have trouble attributing false belief to Sally. Do better for false photograph test - show photo of apple on tree. take photo away and tell kid that every since I took photo away, apple fell to the ground. will original photo change? Autistic kids do better reasoning of photo; can reason changes of states, not just mental states.
Differential Costs of Reproduction - Male
1. Cheap & unlimited sperm 2. A few minutes of missed opportunity 3. Low physical cost or risk
Six facets of conscientiousness
1. Competence (often feels unprepared -- feels capable and effective) 2. Order (unorganized; unmethodical -- well-organized; neat; tidy) 3. Dutifulness (casual about obligations -- driven to achieve success) 4. Achievement Striving (low need for achievement -- driven to achieve success) 5. Self-discipline (procrastinates; distracted -- focuses on completing tasks) 6. Deliberation (spontaneous; hasty decisions -- thinks carefully before acting)
3 Special Problems for Psychological Science
1. Complexity (trillions of connections) 2. Variability (all photons same, but humans different) 3. Reactivity (humans not passive objects and adjust accordingly to test, i.e. asking about racial prejudice)
Psychology of Groups: Light Side
1. Coordinated knowledge 2. Norms of behavior
causes of schizophrenia
1. Diathesis - heritability - prenatal trauma 2. stress - social isolation - family dynamics - drug abuse
6 basic emotions
1. Disgust 2. Fear 3. Happiness 4. Sadness 5. Anger 6. Surprise These exist universally, although can play out in different ways.
Coordinated Knowledge
1. Distribute know-how: knowledge in society > knowledge of any one person. (find experts, arrange bargains) 2. Ratchet of culture: can pick up at more advanced level, not start from beginning. progress, change.
Why do we sleep?
1. Energy conservation and safety during low-productivity times of day (downtime, rest) 2. Body restoration and growth (Human growth hormone released at sleep. Tricky processes go smoother) 3. Memory consolidation [procedural and episodic] and insight (If someone does something for many hours, may end up dreaming about it)
Two things we can get wrong in Expected Utility Theory
1. Errors of odds (OG): - risk (bet on coin flip. have no idea what result will be but not an uncertain event because you know the odds) vs. uncertainty (have a prize, can swap for whatever is behind door #2. have no idea of likelihood of being worth more or less. no idea of odds) - repeated events (can repeat experiment to get ratio of blue balls) vs. one-off events (can't run back many times to find out if odds are right) - 1/1000 incidence of disease, test is 99.9% accurate. If you test positive, probability of having disease is 50%, not in the 90s 2. Errors of valuation (VG)
Differential Costs of Reproduction - Female
1. Expensive & limited eggs 2. Weeks or months of missed opportunities 3. High costs and risks of pregnancy (so women more selective than men)
6 Ways to Study Mind Scientifically
1. Experimental-cognitive: algorithms of mind 2. Experimental-developmental: psychology of child development, etc. 3. Experimental-social: how brains interact 4. Experimental-abnormal: breakdowns/departure from normality 5. Experimental-personality: temperament, habit, how people are different 6. Clinical
Six facets of openness
1. Fantasy (focuses on here and now -- imaginative; daydreams) 2. Aesthetics (uninterested in art -- appreciates art and beauty) 3. Feelings (ignores and discounts feelings -- values all emotions) 4. Actions (prefers the familiar -- prefers variety; tries new things) 5. Ideas (narrower intellectual focus -- broad intellectual curiosity) 6. Values (dogmatic; conservative -- open to reexamining values) 7. Other (prefers simplicity; attentive to details -- seeks complexity; prefers a broad view
Why Freud interpretation of dreams is wrong
1. Forbidden content probably makes its way into dreams all the time without interrupting sleep (and makes it into conscious thought too) 2. Most mammals and birds experience REM (and probably dream) 3. Fetuses experience REM in utero
Why do we dream?
1. Freud: Dreams as the guardian of sleep. Goal of unconscious is to get into consciousness. When awake, bad thoughts blocked by consciousness. During sleep, barrier fades and unconscious smuggles in dark thoughts under guise. Hidden deep meaning that is forbidden or sexual (i.e. train through tunnel). Latent content = what unconscious was trying to convey Manifest content = what we consciously think about (trains, tunnels, mountains) Use psychoanalysis to uncover latent thought. 2. Hobson: Activation-synthesis model. Freud is fortune-cookie model. Brain gets really active and debilitated. Spontaneous, meaningless neural activity during REM. Conscious mind tries to stitch randomness together. Imagery and emotional sensations due to random firings.
3 Parts of Freud Psychoanalytic Unconscious
1. Id 2. Ego 3. Superego
2 Evolutionary Psychology Controversies
1. Infer from ancestral past (test prediction, get evidence, but speculative aspect) 2. Focus on evolved sex differences (sexual dimorphism ubiquitous, so if in bodies, can be in brain too)
Psychology of Groups: Dark Side
1. Intragroup competition 2. Conformity 3. Diffusion of responsibility 4. Intergroup prejudice
How human life different?
1. Language (allows teaching/transmission of information) 2. Tool use (rapid development and pass improvements on) 3. Symbols (beyond language, math, capture regularities in environment and take advantage of it for tech) 4. Cooperative nature (collaborative and distribute responsibilities) 5. Symbolic lives with non survival value (art)
4 Pitfalls of Natural Selection
1. Naturalistic fallacy: things are right because they are natural (describing world is =/= the way world should be) 2. Deterministic fallacy: things are inevitable because they are natural (humans can "disobey" their genes, i.e. fly through planes) 3. Nature vs. nurture (not opposition, intertwined interaction) 4. Teleology: things directed towards improvement (pointy rocks, organisms on planet in same form for as long as Earth with no need for improvement, human back)
Domains of Core Knowledge
1. Objects: infants know a lot about the physical world before they are capable of operating on it. - coherence = Babies have physical expectations of how objects exist in world. Look longer and surprised when ball passes through solid barrier. They track continued presence of object and have expectations about object coherence. - continuity = objects can't just appear or disappear - contact = Wrong when one ball knocks into another one and delays too long or there is movement without contact. - Also infants understand gravity = Blue cylinder isn't floating. Should be attached to the block, or else how is it up there? 2. Agents - imitation = observe visually then map back to motor cortex and produce matching gesture. circuitry in baby's brain tuned to social things in environment. treats humans differently from inanimate objects. - goal directed agent = human hand can vary what it does. Baby not surprised when hand reach for new object, even if that is a new action. But expectation flips for mechanical claw, which is an agent without a goal. Can flip back if move claw in hand-like way; can teach baby to think claw has goal. 3. Number: sees two objects then surprised when just sees one. tracking numbers - Baby engage in searching for objects = if 4 balls are put into box and some removed, baby goes back to search for more if more than one left - Forced-choice cracker task = Infants chose the larger quantity with comparisons of 1 versus 2 and 2 versus 3, but failed with comparisons of 3 versus 4, 2 versus 4, and 3 versus 6. 50% meant failure because there were two choices, random.
Problems of measuring themes
1. Observer bias: observers interpreting your responses but they already have some ideas on what you're like. subjectivity. room to see what you want to see in answers. no hard numbers or data points. embedded in subjectivity of interaction 2. Validity: people reach different conclusions about picture. maybe participant was just bad at drawing or had a stomach ache so drew an angry person. Can't know if the task maps onto things we think they map onto.
6 Basics of Natural Selection
1. Populations have the potential to increase exponentially 2. But environment can only sustain a limited number 3. Individuals in population vary randomly 4. Some of that variation is heritable (family resemblances) 5. Some of that variation will make survival and reproduction more or less likely in a particular environment (pepper moths: originally white, then black due to industrial revolution) 6. Heritable features that increase odds of reproduction will tend to accumulate in subsequent generations
Problems of measuring traits
1. Reactivity (subject bias): Having certain traits don't sound good. Censor your responses to how you would like to be. 2. Lack of insight: Cases where our intuition goes wrong (i.e. giving electric shocks). Daffodil experiment - Judgement of what we are likely to do is skewed and judgement of others is more realistic. Can solve by getting close friends to take the quiz for me, to check. Convergent validity.
Bias in Stanford Prison Experiment
1. Selection bias: people interested in prison life experiment may not be representative of undergraduate population 2. Experimenter bias: Zimbardo as warden. Authority figure encourage and put pressure of situation. 3. Generalizability: 24 sample size very small. Also only observations and not statistical tests. 4. Individual differences: Don't know if everyone really did act badly. Maybe there were some bad apples. 5. The stats: vague language. "most, many" people did things.
Stages of Development
1. Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), live in here-and-now, sense data and motion, sensation bound: - basic motor systems (reflexes) - sensory/perceptual systems - learning mechanisms of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium 2. Preoperational (2-6 years) - Toddlers begin to represent experiences in language, imagery, & symbolic thought - Cannot perform "operations" (reversible mental activities) - Focus on a single, perceptually-salient aspect of an event (centration) 3. Concrete Operational (6-12 years) - Children can reason logically about concrete objects and events - However, they have difficulty thinking in purely abstract terms in combining information systematically 4. Formal operational (12+) - Children (and adults) can think about abstractions and hypotheticals. - Can perform systematic "experiments" to draw conclusions about the world
Problems with Piaget
1. The rise of the smart babies 2. Problems with stages : "décalage"
Six facets of agreeableness
1. Trust (cynical; skeptical -- see others as honest & well-intentioned) 2. Straightforwardness (guarded; stretches truth -- straightforward, frank) 3. Altruism (reluctant to get involved -- willing to help others) 4. Compliance (aggressive; competitive -- yields under conflict; defers) 5. Modesty (feels superior to others -- self-effacing; humble) 6. Tender-mindedness (hardheaded; rational -- tender-minded; easily moved) 7. Other (expresses opinions; enjoys being out front -- keeps opinions to self; prefers background)
Six facets of extraversion
1. Warmth (reserved; formal -- affectionate; friendly, intimate) 2. Gregariousness (Seldom seeks company -- gregarious, prefers company) 3. Assertiveness (Stays in background -- assertive; speaks up; leads) 4. Activity (leisurely pace -- vigorous pace) 5. Excitement-Seeking (low need for thrills -- craves excitement) 6. Positive Emotions (less exuberant -- cheerful; optimistic) 7. Other (independent; skeptical; speaks without regard for consequences -- responsible for others; trusting; carefully select right words)
Six facets of negative emotionality
1. Worry (relaxed; calm -- worrying; uneasy) 2. Anger (composed; slow to anger -- quick to feel anger) 3. Discouragement (rarely discouraged -- easily discouraged) 4. Self-consciousness (hard to embarrass -- more easily embarrassed) 5. Impulsiveness (resists urges easily -- easily tempted) 6. Vulnerability (handles stress easily -- difficulty coping)
Ironic rebound
1. a conscious and intentional operating process that suppresses unwanted content 2. an unconscious and automatic monitoring process that searches for the thing to suppress Without suppression think about other stuff. Active suppression (i.e. when given time pressure) brings about thought (i.e. insomnia, stereotyping)
3 Methods of localization
1. accident: i.e. phineas gage - metal rod through head. personality changed. impulse control, irrational temper, emotions 2. manipulation i.e. neurosurgery - remove part of brain (tumor, epilepsy) but get "brain injuries" to study consequences i.e. lobotomy - disconnect frontal cortex from rest of brain. create docile, surgically induced childhood. deprive connections i.e. experimental brain injury on nonhuman subjects 3. non-invasive measurement i.e. electroencephalography (EEG) - measure electrical brain activity. good temporal, poor spatial resolution. only skull surface. i.e. functional neuroimaging (PET - decay of radioactive isotope injected in advanced/fMRI - measure blood flow to different parts of brain that are more active) - good spatial, poor temporal resolution
3 Unconscious module + consciousness relationships
1. bilateral relationship. Can adjust system so change behavior 2. unconscious module can dump into consciousness. Visual processing - it's a giraffe and never a gazelle, even if you want it to be 3. Both can't access each other - thyroid level, can't control/regulate
What is attractive?
1. bilateral symmetry (good genes) 2. typicality (good genes) 3. hourglasses (waist-to-hip ratio = 0.7) and triangles (secure resources/is fertile) 4. older men and younger women
Three features of emotion
1. change in brain state -> feeling (felt/feels a certain way) 2. interpretation of feelings (subject to appraisal) 3. emotional expression (linked to external manifestation/display)
4 problems of psychopathological classification
1. classification on basis of symptoms (many with symptoms but without disorder and many without symptoms but with disorder) 2. continual vs. discrete nature of psychopathology (arbitrary boundaries) 3. comorbidity (people with one disorder often meet symptoms of other disorders) 4. ethnic/cultural considerations
2 Mood disorders
1. depression (sad most of time, loss of interest in normal pleasures, sleep difficulty, shift in activity level up/down, shift in appetite and weight up/down, fatigue and lack of energy, negative self-concept, difficult concentrating or deciding, morbid or suicidal ideation) = down nACC function, abnormal reward circuitry 2. bipolar disorder (depression + mania: increase in activity, talkativeness, racing creativity, insomnia, inflated self-esteem, distractability, excessive hedonism)
Avoiding subject bias
1. ensure anonymity 2. measure involuntary or nonobvious behavior 3. keep subject blind to hypothesis
3 sensation errors
1. filling something in that isn't there 2. seeing things the same way despite different conditions 3. seeing things differently because of different conditions
People believe they have better chance of winning dice toss when:
1. they choose the winning number 2. toss dice themselves 3. dice have not yet been tossed 4. really want the prize
5 Anxiety disorders
1. generalized anxiety disorder [future] (excessive anxiety and worry, occurring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events of activities. difficult to control worry. associated with restlessness or feeling keyed up or on the edge, being easily fatigued, difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, sleep disturbance) 2. panic disorder [body] 3. phobia [specific object or event] (excessive or unreasonable fear, cued by presence or anticipation of specific object or situation, which is avoided or endured with intense anxiety or distress. hyper vigilance for phobic object, avoidance and distress interferes significantly with normal routine) 4. obsessive-compulsive disorder [thought] (obsessions - mental/constant thoughts + compulsions - strategies to manage mental obsessions. anterior cingulate cortex - brain regulation supposed to be outside of control, gets misapplied and need to check oven as much as need to breathe) 5. post-traumatic stress disorder [past experience] (persistent re-experiencing of traumatic event, avoidance of stimuli associated and numbing of general responsiveness, increased arousal like hyper vigilance/difficulty falling asleep/anger)
Men want someone who:
1. has good genes 2. is fertile (isn't already pregnant) 3. will have sex with them
Women want someone who:
1. has good genes (offspring survive, ultimate goal) 2. can secure resources (limited during pregnancy and after childbirth) 3. will stick around (to share those resources)
6 lessons of classical conditioning
1. learn associations: prediction i.e. Pavlov's dog - as soon as feeder walks in room, dog started salivating in advanced i.e. flashlight, the deliver cheese to rat - rat no natural response to light bulb (normal UCS and UCR) but repetition build association to get conditioned response to conditioned light stimulus. hijack innate reflex i.e. laughter of other people make us laugh, like laugh tracks. new association - sound of laughter become CS related to original UCS since was UCR. i.e. body work against heroin to counteract effects. use drug in same environment, CS for effects of drug and body knows that so begin counteracting effects. If take drug in different context, clues body not used to. overdose. 2. learn sloppily: generalizations i.e. rat knows all types of cat predator, not just specific cat i.e. John Watson: little albert show little fear. then shows baby rat with loud clanging noise. albert now fear all furry things, even without noise. prove fears learned. i.e. fine line between generalizing correctly and incorrectly (i.e. racial prejudice) 3. learn sparingly: blocking - i already have a good predictor so i don't need another one i.e. bell and light for cheese appearance i.e. know one kind of numerical mapping, hard to use second system (F vs C) 4. learn slowly: latent inhibition - maybe learned badly first time. i.e. show light periodically, rat doesn't respond. this never predicted before so why should it now? Already have relationship with light, so now just coincidence i.e. alcohol - have fun night, so when have one bad night, ignore it 5. unlearn slowly: extinction i.e. flashlight and no food - gradually decrease in salivation, takes a while for rat to learn light no longer predictive i.e. psychotherapy - look at spider photos until response diminish, escalate from toy spider then real spider. systematic desensitization 6. relearn quickly: spontaneous recovery, maybe things change, readiness to relearn prior relationships
Why localized function important?
1. multiple brain regions imply multiple cognitive processes 2. overlapping brain regions implies overlapping cognitive processes
4 weaknesses of behaviorism
1. one-shot learning: the garcia effect (in CC, need repetition. but radiate rats and notice that after, rats avoid food they had right before radiation. made them sick. only single learning trial) 2. learning without reward: let mice hang out in maze without reward, get better (learning by doing something inside head unobservable. own internal mental stimulation) 3. learning via mental simulation: rats more than trial and error learning. mental map, first try down a route never experienced before. 4. somethings never learned: infants like average looking faces and shapes that look like faces. prefer one stimulus even never conditioned to anything post birth. innate.
schizophrenia
1. positive symptions - delusions (grandeur, persecution, external agency) - hallucinations (narration and criticism, argument) - disorganized thought and speech - inappropriate affect 2. negative symptoms - motivation - social engagement - speech - concentration - affect -movement (catatonia)
distinguish exploratory from confirmatory
1. pre-register central tests prior to data collection. pre-commit self to a research question. protects from making extra decisions 2. replicate promising results from exploratory analysis with pre-registered follow-up. any interesting result from exploratory search have to repeat and make that the pre-planned hypothesis.
2 parts of operant conditioning
1. repeat what works: law of effect (thorndike) - if response in presence of stimulus followed by satisfying event, association between stimulus and response strengthened. if response followed by annoying event, association weakened i.e. puzzle box - different ways for cat to open box. first behaves randomly and does one act that presses lever. when back at same box, arrive at lever faster. condition self. i.e. skinner box - put in small animal. shaping, when does something you like, give reward through gradual small steps. i.e. Prof. pigeon - class OC professor. when prof on one side of room, act bored and slump. other side, perk up. 2. optimize responses: schedules of reinforcement. continuous (every time does act, gets reward) vs. partial (don't reinforce all of the time) - ratio vs. interval: number of times action been performed or length of time since last reward? - fixed vs. variable: ratio/interval always same or average rate of reward? i.e. fixed-ratio = buy 3 get 1 free i.e. variable-ratio = gambler i.e. fixed-interval = monthly check i.e. variable-interval = radio promo (ratio > interval, then fixed > variable)
Recipe for a good learner
1. respond (basic hardware) - change detection in environment 2. predict (pavolvian software) - respond in advanced 3. operate (skinnerian software) - act on world to get things you want to come about
3 components of responding (basic hardware/OS)
1. sensation: ability to discriminate stimuli 2. reflex: hardwired stimulus-response circuits, built-in responses 3. habituation: circuit breaker (i.e. not eat cheese to death)
Identifying a rigged coin
1. specify hypothesis 2. specify alternative 3. flip 4. calculate probability of results if coin were fair
Emotion circumplex
2-D space. Might have same valence (positive or negative evaluation) but are more energizing/activation. Emotions can be clustered.
How much sleep do we need?
Around 8 hours. Need to sleep is normally distributed. Subjective sense of sleep needed not accurate. Also, amount of hours needed decreases across lifespan - non-REM stays the same but REM sleep decreases.
Traits - Measuring Personality
A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and constant way. Hierarchy from general to specific (nested). All of us have a position (high vs. low) in each CANOE. Aggregation of all = personality. Extremity on any dimension is a problem. These dimensions also stable, predict things about people's lives.
Constructivist Theory Building
AAE Assimilation: process by which children translate information into a form they can understand (fit something to their current theories) [i.e. grab carrot and chew like you would to celery] Accommodation: process by which children revise current knowledge structures in response to new experiences (create new theories) [i.e. tricycle to bicycle] Equilibration: process by which children balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding (make the most of current theories while flexibly creating new ones when necessary)
Patient H.M.
Abnormal electrical source at both of hippocampus so removed both. Complete inability to form any new memories and can't recall anything after injury (What words did you see?). Recognition of words (Which words did you see?0 given two options only at 50%, which is same as random chance.
Blocking
Activation of a memory inhibits activation of partially overlapping memory representations. Unable to remember something you know that you know. Might recall later. Brain set up pattern of inhibition around memory so retrieval cue doesn't start cascades.
Attachment Styles
Adaptive styles - ways of coping with different parental input. Attachment styles have long term consequences. 1. Secure: parent will meet their needs. reliable 2. Avoidant: can't count on parent in same way. don't go back to parent to reconcile 3. Anxious/Ambivalent 4. Fearful/Disorganized
Mammals and REM Sleep
Almost all mammals show REM sleep (~25% of their total sleep) Birds have 3-5% of REM sleep, or a little more than a few minutes each night Reptiles and amphibians show theta wave activity characteristic of deep sleep in mammals but no REM Insects and fish show "behavioral sleep" with periods of quiescence, raised response threshold, and periods of rebound when deprived of rest. But no identifiable neural signals of sleep in these animals. Many plants and bacteria show circadian rhythms, even when kept in complete darkness.
Raven's progressive matrices
Alternative to WISC. No language or math involved. Instead, figure out what goes into the ? part, patterns. Can get really hard. Assesses something more general and less susceptible to socioeconomic explanations.
your fear = my fear
Amygdala - seeing fear of someone causes activation too.
Personality
An individual's characteristic style of thought, feeling, and action. Trying to find what's unique about you internally.
Prediction (pavlovian software)
At risk when rat see cat only once it appears. Bell around neck, learn that hear a bell right before cat appears. Build this relationship/association. Classical conditioning.
Loss of REM-related Atonia
Atonia = paralysis. Loss fue to Pons damage. - Cats: get active during REM sleep and give hints as to what they are dreaming about since they act them out. - Humans: Parkinson's. Thrashing around at night
Developmental Failures: Attachment Theory
Attachment theory states that a strong emotional and physical attachment to at least one primary caregiver is critical to personal development. Attachment to "motherly love" vs. behaviorist perspective of mom provides nourishment. baby instinctive need to cling to cloth doll and not nourishing metal feeder. Depend on for comfort and security.
EEG signals during sleep
Awake: background activity, irregular up and down Stage 1: brain waves begin to slow down and pattern looks stretched out/relaxed. At this stage, people immediately wake up when they are poked and they will insist they weren't asleep. Stage 2: Sudden excited activity and big oscillations (k complexes). People at this stage will think of themselves as being asleep. Stage 3: Bigger, larger scale neural oscillations Stage 4: Deepest sleep, hard to wake up. When woken up during this stage, foggy headed and groggy. REM Sleep: After stage 4, work back up through the stages until almost at stage 1. Here, get a new pattern of neural patterns. Paradoxical sleep because waves look like an awake brain. Rapid eye movement, muscle movement paralyzed After REM, sink back down. Every 90 minutes, burst of longer REM and don't sink back down to deep sleep.
Habituation - Testing what infants know (Challenges to Piaget)
Babies good at using eyes. When see something new, gets interested. Eventually gets bored. Same arousing stimulus over and over, less response.
Concrete operational failures: systematic testing
Balance test - try one thing, tips one way, then change everything and tips other way. Instead of changing one thing at a time.
Altricial
Being born at extremely immature state. Solve problem of big head by giving birth to immature babies and create social structure. (Also undergo psychological metamorphosis, unlike physical continuity)
Constructivism in classroom
Best way to learn = by doing, constructing knowledge. Give a goal, make students realize they need control/tools that they learned about. So learn about reaction and experimental control. Doing, not being told what to do. Non-constructivist activity = recipe, step by step instruction and doesn't tell you why you are doing what you are doing. No basic principles of science.
Patient SP
Bilateral amygdala damage. Cannot understand fear or anxiety. Can learn that electric shock will come after blue square but no response, even knowing that they are about to be shocked. Also tendency to be TMI and overshare personal information because no fear of embarrassment.
Preoperational failures of appearance vs. reality
Bound by appearances (i.e. something is sponge but looks like rock so baby think it's rock)
Transience
Breakdown after attending to information but not connecting it to other things (encoding) or reflecting on it by rehearsing it mentally. If don't use work, information leaves working memory within minutes.
Long term - explicit
Can report (semantic + episodic)
Retrieval Cue
Can serve as a "seed" for such reinstantiation. Create cascade of firing; neurons that are wired together fire together.
Long term - implicit
Can't report, can show (priming + procedural)
Misattribution of Lack of Arousal
Capgras Syndrome: Delusion that someone close to them has been replaced by imposter. Miss a low-level form of arousal when they encounter someone they know well. Interpret lack of arousal as something deep.
Unconscious learning - Pattern detection
Chicken sexing: no genital clue. trained in most brute force way and get good at it but have no conscious access to it. Statistical learning: long string of fractal sequences. Be surprisingly good at pairing order, guessed. Pattern detection, absorb information about environment.
Constructivism
Children "construct" knowledge on the basis of their experiences with the world. Children are active players in constructing ideas like mini-scientists. Try and repeat/change. Powerful drive to master.
Fast Mapping
Children can learn word from single incidental exposure
Preoperational failures of egocentricity - Décalage
Children do not always behave egocentrically. Can solve the communication game before false belief test. Kids also know when others can't see anything (i.e. barrier) but when can, assume they see the same as them.
Unconscious learning - amnesia
Claparéde jab patient with pin but patient doesn't remember. But after pin, patient reluctant to shake hands. Not conscious memory.
Unconscious filtering
Cocktail party phenomenon: don't hear conversations until hear your name across room. So was paying attention outside immediate consciousness. looking for things relevant to us, then thrust into consciousness
Word-Stem Cueing Task
Complete with the study word from the list -> H.M. fails. Only able to succeed if ask him what is the first word that comes to mind when you see these letters (completion task) = priming.
Intergroup Prejudice
Conflict because see members of different groups as different. - Subtle effects: After hurricane Katrina, people broke into stores for provisions. Articles used "finding" for white and "looting" for POC, even when they were doing the same thing. Two words mean different things. Race led journalist to attribute stereotype. - What's in a name: field study. send identical resumes out with white or POC names. Average call back rate lower for black names and quality of resume didn't affect rates. - POC people shot more by police. In experiment, decide to shoot if person holding gun and not if holding camera/phone/etc. Shoot more unarmed blacks. Race decreases threshold for shooting. Less effect if have black people in personal circle. Don't react with generalized form of threat. - Another subtle form of bias: Names of insects and flowers on screen. Name of flower, tap right hand, for insect tape left hand. Variations, like left for good/bad. Insect and good response harder than insect and bad response because we are used to insect is bad. In practice, do test with white + good vs. black + good. White subjects show bias and black subjects don't. implicit association test - Minimal groups: easier to associate own group as good. these sort of biases easy to create.
Preoperational failures of conservation - Décalage
Conservation of liquid quantity - 7 years old Conservation of solid quantity - 7 years old Conservation of number - 5 years old Lack conceptual resources to understand longer vs. more M&M's. But using M&M's gives motivation to pass test.
Preoperational failures of conservation
Conservation of liquid quantity: same volume in different container but baby doesn't realize that volume doesn't change. Failure to conserve the amount of stuff
Retrieval
Consists of reinstantiating the distributed representation created at encoding. Goal to get same memory trace to reactivate.
Primate innate number systems
Core Number System 1: An exact 'small number' system Core Number System 2: An approximate 'large number' system (i.e. Approx system use to track relative distance for zebra, object system to try to find/track the lion) We share this with other species.
Encoding
Create trace of that memory through neural patterns. If two memories have unique features but also share features, patterns overlap. Overlap more richly represented.
Norms of behavior
Customary standards for behavior that are widely shared by members of a culture; Shared understanding of how one behaves in a given situation (i.e. stop sign). Powerful ways of organizing behavior. Generative, fine-tuned
Dopamine
D4 dopamine receptor gene on Chromosome 11 has two alleles: long (l) and short (s). Individuals with the long allele are higher in novelty-seeking (more exploratory, thrill-seeking, and excitable). Novelty-seeking is correlated highly with Extraversion scores.
How do children learn syntax/the rules of their language?
DIR - direct instruction? unlikely. some cultures with little instruction of kids. transcripts that show kids not receptive to grammar lessons from parents at that age - imitation? kids have irregular errors. unlikely they hear inappropriate use of words in parents - reinforcement? unlikely because when we reward, done for semantic and not syntax correctness. (i.e. mama a girl -> that's right vs. Walt Disney comes on Tuesday -> no he doesn't) - sensitive period for syntax (genie)
Flashbulb Memories
Detailed recollections of when and where we heard about or witnessed shocking events. Amygdala + Hippocampus. Huge pattern of neurons get image burned in . Retrieval cue can cause cascade to full image.
Jean Piaget
Develop IQ tests; successes not informative about what people are thinking. Reasoning to wrong answer, systematic errors tell us patterns in mental system. Topple dogma that children are dumb adults.
Distributed Representation
Different in overlapping patterns in same space for long term memory. Very cost efficient. Related things activate each other. (i.e. calculator -> pixel distributed across space)
Types vs. Dimensions
Dimension: Same item (i.e. molecular speed) on different dimension. Emphasize qualitative shift. (i.e. saturation, hue, luminance). Better because you have different degrees/continuous expressions. Types: Commonality between things. (i.e. color)
Higher-order areas
Dorsolateral PFC
5 Foundations of Psychological Science
EMIME 1. Evolution: Genes make brains 2. Materialism: Brains make minds (emotional life, sensory experiences = firing of neurons) 3. Idealism: Minds make reality (light bounces off of retina and head to make color. Perception) 4. Modularity: Mind is a collection of parts (visual system experience has no pathway into conscious mind) 5. Empiricism: Believe only what you can count (experiments, normal distribution, statistical tests)
Conformity
Easy to think that people in horrific acts are bad people. But nonconformity/norm violation is hard. There are costs. 1. Going along with the crowd - Which line is same size to other line? When all other people chose wrong line, subjects sided with majority. Low cost to go along with the group but still followed. As situation becomes more costly, agreements increase. No one went with majority, however, when one person stood up to choose the right line before the subject. 2. Obedience to authority (coercion) - Stanley Milgram Shocks the World: Subject gives electric shock that could've been fatal to student when answers wrong from teacher. Subjects uncomfortable but orders from white coat authority figure, which were just verbal coercions. Commit acts against conscience. Remove responsibility to authority. But conformity can be dispelled easily when authority reduced. 3. Conformity to expected roles - Stanford Prison Experiment: random assignment of prisoner and prison ward. Distinguish two groups through symbols and rituals. Illusion became reality. Boundary between fake and real blurred. Lose all perspective. Follow stereotypes and individuality submerged in new identity. Forget old norms and take on new norms given by strong situation.
Types - Measuring Personality
Examples: Galen's humors (humans exist of four elements, earth/fire/air/water, in different concentrations), astrology, magazine quizzes Problems: How many types are there and why? Arbitrary or based on principle? Why should body size or birth date affect one's personality? Does DOB affect everyone in same way irrespective of situation one is born in? Overgeneralize.
Example of emotion better than ration
Experiment - given option of one out of two posters (high-brow vs. silly). Everyone chose high-brow. Half of people write down why they made that choice. People who wrote down reason for action are less likely to hand poster on own wall. Hard to come up with reasons for aesthetics, hard to explain affective reactions, can't articulate so people become uncertain about their own judgement.
Object impermanence - Challenges to Piaget
Infants have a hard time grabbing. What if cognitive ability is outstripping physical ability? I know it's there but I can't grab it so I won't.
Where is personality?
Emergent property. Less localized to certain brain region. Less likely to be completely disturbed from brain injury. Distributed brain pattern network.
Fear
Emotional state we know most about. In amygdala (bilateral subcortical structure). Can be classical conditioned to be afraid of blue square that was followed by electric shock. But if amygdala damaged, can't be "scared" of blue square. High road: Brain processing take too long to make decision, so need second system to process information -> goes to amygdala. Low road: produce lower fidelity image but can be used to make faster decision. That's why you jump before conscious of what's happening. We might get interpretation wrong and make either of two errors (stick is snake or snake is stick) -> different costs, so we are tuned to be more risk averse.
Preformationism
Entire organism is all wrapped up in male sperm and development is linear path from being tiny, immature/deficient humans to adult (sexist - women are incubators/hosts for development)
Bias (memory)
Events are "pre-processed" or "filtered" before reaching the hippocampus. Some of this filtering occurs in the prefrontal cortex, which contributes to understanding the meaning of information. The result of this filtering is that the hippocampus only stores the aspects of an experience that other regions determine are essential. (i.e. bias towards wanting coherent story. We can fill in information that wasn't there.) Bias may also occur at the time of retrieval because people want consistency and justification. (i.e. dieters overestimate previous weight because they want to succeed. College students asked about big issues then when asked again after 30 years, they believe they have same answers as a student. Broken up couples remember themselves as hating traits about their SO all along.)
Misattribution of Arousal - Bridges
Experiment: At national park with two bridges (one high and unstable, one stable). Put attractive female on other side of bridge. Once guy crossed bridge, girl chat with guy and ask for his number. Men who crossed high wobbly bridge more likely to call back. Misattribute arousal from bridge and think they must have liked her. Experiment flaws: We don't know if people who crossed each bridge were the same people. Maybe only brave people crossed the high bridges.
Sleep enhances procedural memory
Experiment: Trained to type a number sequence with nondominant hand. Improvements occurred after sleep for both conditions. Reconsolidation of procedural memory
Power of the situation
External components affecting humans (i.e. authority figures). Doesn't mean that situations are the only source of variation in behavior. But situation accounts for more variance than we naturally infer (Fundamental Attribution Error)
7 Sins of Memory
FAT-B Forgetting (omission, we don't do something we wish we could've done): 1. Absent-mindedness 2. Transience 3. Blocking D-BMS Distortion (commission, actively get memory wrong): 4. Bias 5. Misattribution 6. Suggestibility P 7. Persistence
Concrete operational failures: formal logic
Fail at deductive inference from abstract structure. (i.e. All bears in North Pole are white and Karen saw a bear in North Pole. What color was bear Karen saw? Child says they don't know because they didn't see the bear.)
Preoperational failures of egocentricity
Failures of knowledge vs. belief Communications game: taking own perspective most strongly. Trouble taking perspective of others. Extend what they know to other people false belief test - Sally puts ball in basket and goes away, Anne moves ball to box, baby think sally will look for ball in box
Adult errors of egocentricity
False consensus effect: Everyone think people will do the same as them. Assume own views are more widely shared when they are not. The Curse of Knowledge: expert professors vs. students
Ego
Fantasy =/= reality. Need strategy to get what you want. Mediator between id and reality ("you can't always get what you want") Some conscious
Sigmund Freud
First to argue that mind can be divided (con vs. sub/uncon) Grand theories - one view or a few grand postulates meant to account for everything 1. We are not aware of our own motivations 2. Unconscious conflict drives much behavior 3. Producing dreams, errors, jokes, even madness (Freudian slips)
phrenology
Franz Gall: figure out what someone is like by feeling mind bumps. if exert certain mental activity, that area becomes pumped. wrong about bumps and traits. right about localization
Social brain evolution
Frontal cortical regions: Strong linear relationship between region size to mean group size. maybe need to deal with large groups drives frontal cortical region
VMPFC Damage
Gage: impulse control problems. No high-order cognition. Experiment: Normal people will sample all decks then realize that big wins with even bigger losses is a bad bet compared to small wins with even smaller losses. People with damage can't repress big deals. Fail at risk attribution.
Arousal
General bodily sense. Background hum or radiation of moment to moment experience.
Typical Subject
Generality may be good assumption and can be investigated (i.e. visual systems). If problematic, can check and engage other subjects.
Affective Experiences
Generally automatic and uncontrollable. For example, can voluntarily do mental math but can't decide to become angry without using indirect methods/finding a reason.
Chunking
George Miller: What we can remember is 7 plus or minus 2 items. Memory groups, putting information into meaningful chunks. [i.e. 7 words vs. 7 letters. (This works even when each word has more than 7 letters)]
Misattribution of Arousal - Vitamin
Give some participants a vitamin to see if vitamin is beneficial. But claim also that vitamin has side effect of making the person nervous. Participants are taking a test and research assistants leave room with the answer key laying out on the desk. People who took the anxious pill more likely to cheat. Can attribute nerves to pills and not on their act of cheating. Normally, people would be nervous about cheating.
Core Number System 2: An approximate 'large number' system
Good at approximate reasoning about large numbers. Bad at precise discriminations between close numbers.
Core Number System 1: An exact "small number" system
Good at exact reasoning about small numbers. Bad for numbers larger than 4. Strict limitation on how many objects you can track at once. Up to four. When tracking 6, lose all of it and not even track just 2. When system for tracking fails, fails completely. For set sizes <5, perfect accuracy. For set sizes >5, guesses were more variable as the set size increased. When babies habituated to 8 dots, succeed at 8 vs. 16 and not 8 vs. 12. Weber's Law/Accumulator mechanism: 1&2 and 5&6 distance same in absolute terms but relative terms, 1/2>1/6. Bigger change. The relationship between a change in intensity and the original intensity is a constant. Babies unimpressed by probable sample (mostly pink sample in mostly pink ball box) and impressed by strange outcome (mostly yellows). Further inference for the use of the hand - Hand prefers yellow even if box mostly pink. Inferences about what people think or believe.
Birth order
Hard to explain cause. Bigger family make younger ones more extraverted or does the actual order matter? Genetic component looks larger in older than younger kids. First-born: High conscientiousness, low openness, high negative emotionality, medium agreeableness, medium extraversion Last-born: medium conscientiousness, high openness, medium negative emotionality, high agreeableness, high extraversion.
Internal conflict
Heart of human experience is resolving conflict. We don't feel conflict because conscious mind want constant peace but forces attack (barbarians at gate) and slip through in form of dream/freudian slip
Memory consolidation during sleep
Hippocampus = convergence zone. Copies memory over to other areas for long term storage. This happens during sleep.
Propanolol
Inhibits the action of norepinephrine, which has a major role in hippocampal memory consolidation. Has to be given soon after traumatic event to interfere with normal memory function
Misattribution
Hippocampus also has hard time remembering where memory came from. Deciding whether a representation has external vs. internal origins requires source attribution. Examples: - People asked to either eat, imagine in low detail, or imagine in high detail a fruit. People who ate and people with high detail condition say they ate it when asked later what they did. Lose source; experience came from imagination. - Old versus new word: think a new word was on the list. "sweet" = describes all words on list, which activates "sweet" in the mind and implants a sense you saw something you didn't. - Eye witness identification: DMT arrested for sexual assault. But woman watched 60 minutes before assaulted so remembers man as if DMT was attacker. - False fame effect: Circle any names of famous people then a week later do same test with new names. Will circle non-famous names from first name because familiarity, even though you can't remember seeing it before. - Ronald Reagan: Frequently told story of WWII bomber pilot that never happened but identical to a movie. Misattribute what he saw.
Where are distributed memory representations in brain?
Hippocampus: convergence/consolidation zone for formation of explicit memories (i.e. visual information that goes through eyes -> thalamus -> visual regions of brain -> frontal cortex.)
Display Rules
How one displays or expresses emotions. Differences lies in displays because you don't have to show differing deep underlying emotions. Great cultural variation.
Norms of fairness
How we should divide resources. ultimatum game = maximize own money while getting player 2 to accept. player 1 offers to split a pie however he wishes. player 2 can accept or reject the offer. if player 2 rejects the offer, both players get nothing. Majority of offers from player 1 are around 50/50. offers of 80/20 have 50% likelihood of being rejected by player 2. bizarre behavior because willing to pay money to enforce norm.
Phonology
How words are packaged into individual sounds 1) detection & discrimination: - A vs. a. - every time hear a word, hear it a little differently. get categorical perception. Categorical perception means that a change in some variable along a continuum is perceived, not as gradual but as instances of discrete categories. - p vs. b pronunciation is non-linear function. differ only in voice onset time. perception tuned to a tiny little difference at the right spot. - babies can detect all phonemes but later can't detect ones not available in their language. - physical depictions of l vs. r. boundary split space in half. for english speakers, pulls all r and l sounds close away from each other. the little distance is stretched out in perceptual space. for Japanese speakers, pulls everything together with irrelevant distinctions 2) production: - babies learn through practice cooing = learn vowel sounds babbling = put together consonant vowel pairs. syllable-like sounds - babies babble in sign-language too. equivalent of phonemes in sign-language. brain wired flexibly for language and root visual/audio in same area of brain. lots of abstraction.
The trouble with studying individuals' personalities
Humans are leaky systems. Outside world affects us and we affect outside world/environment. Hard to figure out what is just internal.
Why monogamy?
Humans born before fully developed (head would be too big if stay in longer). Monogamous relationships may be solution to challenge of having highly dependent infants.
Patient S
Hypermnesia (people with great memory). Mental health decline. Every time he saw something, start of cascade of thought and memories. Everything was a retrieval clue. Mental detritus. For us, memory that remain = priority list. We forget to get out things we don't care about.
Absent-mindedness
If don't use attention to sense data, information disappears out of sensory memory within seconds (i.e. even if you saw where you put your key down).
Core Knowledge - Challenges to Piaget
Innate, built-in minds from birth. Not built from experience out in the world.
Intragroup Competition
If want to change system, challenge your position within group. Cheater detection = check who isn't engaging in reciprocity. Job to spot violation of rule. Each card has something on other side. If P then Q - The logically correct answer is to choose the P card (to see if there is a not-Q on the back) and the not-Q card (to see if there is a P on the back). This is because the rule is violated by any situation in which P happens and Q does not. When this is put in social context, we do much better at detecting rule violations.
Consciousness = conductor
In charge and give instructions. Doesn't have to play or pay attention to everyone at same time.
Does therapy work?
In most cases, people oscillate back up even without therapy. But experiments suggest that therapy leads to better outcomes. people in treatment do better than those not. combination of meds and therapy frequently even more effective than one alone. some types of therapy work better for specific problems (cognitive-behavioral for major depression, phobias; medication for bipolar). some therapists are better than others (but "style" of psychotherapy frequently not related to quality of outcomes).
Anterograde Amnesia
Inability to form new memories for events you experience and facts you encounter
Preoperational failures of transitivity
Inability to perform mental operations Given A > B and B > C, can't figure out that A > C
Stroop effect
Instead, say the COLOR of each word in each column, in a loud voice as fast as you can. The Stroop Effect, named after John Ridley Stroop, is a demonstration of the reaction time of a task and is often used to illustrate the nature of automatic processing versus conscious visual control. (limbic system vs. prefrontal cortex)
Id
Instinctual drives/evolutionary needs. Fantasy = reality. Pleasure principle: "if it feels good, do it!" All unconscious
Where are feelings of disgust located?
Insula
Which trait not well captured by CANOE?
Intelligence
Superego
Internalized socio-moral standards. Responsible for guilt & shame: "don't want what you shouldn't want" Some conscious
Suggestibility
Invention of new memories Examples: - Child molester using children testimonies: Found out not to be true. Repeat questions, leading kids to give answer they want. - Loftus: Designed experiments to implant memories. Her questions override memory. (i.e. shown video about car going through stop sign but ask leading questions to create bias. How fast vs. how fast when car sped? You saw the stop sign right? Override memory of yield sign because stop sign and yield sign overlap) - Lost in mall story: Interviewed about a story that never happened but apparently was told by parents. At first, say no and don't remember but when come to talk about interview more times, participants remember the story and embellish it. Embrace memory and try to fill it out. Source error too because parents told you incident and you start to build memory. - False confessions: Ask about true event -> Ask about false event -> encourage recall efforts. Experiment had criminal and non-criminal conditions. Confess to crimes never committed.
Prenatal babies in REM
Most of the time they are in REM sleep. Own physical movements limited, not sufficient. Expand/contract chest like breathing, which is not needed now but needed right after birth. REM is like a training session.
Tip of the Tongue (TOT)
Know the word, but it is at the tip of the tongue. (i.e. secant has phonological overlap with sextant but mind actively blocks overlap to sextant. Mind gets wrong activation and suppresses. Best to relax firewall and stop trying to remember the right thing)
Consequences of distributed representations in memory
LEC 1. Levels of processing: Remember a list of words through associations rather then rhyme. Meaning-based encoding, which matches how our memory is organized: through semantic associations. 2. Encoding specificity: Use same study method to recall. (although on average, assocciation is better) 3. Context-dependence: Recall better when done so in context within which you learn. More retrieval cues available to you.
Multiple Intelligences
LL-MBS-II Lots of different ways to be smart. Problem solving in specific domains 1. Linguistic 2. Logical-mathematical 3. Musical 4. Bodily-kinesthetic 5. Spatial 6. Interpersonal (EQ) 7. Intrapersonal (self) Can use this system to pursue different structures for learning. Mental modularity - brain partitioned into different problem solving systems with different core skills. Can be relatively independent from one another.
Consolidation
Leads to memories being "stored" outside the hippocampus
General Utility/Common Currency
Like an exchange rate. (i.e. can't convert daughter to common currency. or maybe utility is so huge, no money can compete) Ventromedial PFC: responds to both own gains and other people's gains. Other's gains are discounted as if translated to a common currency. (i.e. if i gain $5, him losing $1 isn't that bad. tradeoff)
Semantic Memory
Long-term knowledge of basic meanings and facts. (i.e. When we see cat, have some pattern of neural activation in brain. Representation of cat and dog have some physical overlap in brain.)
Episodic Memory
Long-term memory: recall episodes. (Every semantic memory must have come from episode but can't recall memory of episodes and just retain memory of semantics.)
Divergence from Expected Utility Theory
Lottery: EV is bad deal but millions still play. We are not rational.
Endel Tulving
Main role of memory is as mental form of time travel. Use memory to go back into our history and use information there for today.
Mind
Mediates between brain and world (hardware/microchip -> mental algorithms/program/software -> image/output)
Misattribution of False Arousal
Men shown model pictures and told to rank attractiveness. While doing so, they can hear the sound of their "own" heartbeat, which is really just a recording. When recording increases heartbeat a tiny bit, men rate the women they see as more attractive.
Performance vs. Competence - Challenges to Piaget
Mistake to conclude competence failure is from performance error. (i.e. You don't lake competence to climb stairs, just tripped and had a performance mistake once)
Horizontal vs. vertical faculties
Modern view: vertical. Development occurs within faculties (i.e. each is module designed to work on certain problems and not others) Candidate horizontal faculties: inhibitory control (i.e. impacts almost everything we do. in video, color vs. shape game, kids get stuck and continue to sort by the first game they do), working memory, associative learning.
What Freud got wrong
Obsessed with few basic drives when unconscious much broader Unfalsifiable!
Transfer
Near transfer = taught how to tie shoes with white laces. Given neon laces, can still tie shoes Far transfer = good at chess. launch military campaign. Classroom problem - students can do WxL = area but can't transfer knowledge to new setting (i.e. surface area of room to buy carpet)
How to measure personality
Need situations where there is a lot of variability of behavior. How much of rectangle's shape is due to verticality (height) and how much due to horizontality (width)? -> dumb question How much of "variation" between shapes of these rectangles is due to variation in verticality and how much due to horizontality? -> in the example, all variation was due to width How much of a person's behavior due to external factors (situation) and how much is due to internal factors (personality)? -> dumb question How much of "variation" in behavior of these people due to variation in external factors and how much due to variation in internal factors? -> put four people in same situation to observe variability
Universal grammar
Noah Chomsky: All languages have identifiable subjects, verbs, and objects. Most languages are SVO (English) or SOV. Result of constraints and strong innate predispositions. People develop pidgin language, a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. Shared language that isn't regularized. Children can spontaneously "invent" grammatical structure and in one generation can invent a language. Evidence that this is predisposed and not invented. Rules (grammar) and words (meaning) are separable. aphasia = problems with language
Culture of Honor
Norms not universal Experiment: bumped into or bumped into and called "ass hole." No insult lead to small increase in testosterone for southerners but increase a lot for insult compared to northerners. Then individual put at end of hall. Northerners got out of way at reasonable distance when insulted but Southerners got super close if insulted prior or was super far away if not insulted.
Experience <-> Memory
Not this simple. Filtered/processed through mental algorithm. So what you experience may not be exactly what you store or recall.
Humans can't reason exactly about large numbers (>5)
Number words: "42" not just numerical. Also symbolic. This is how we go beyond, through cultural/linguistic constructs. Munduruku behave as we expect for the two number systems because no words for numbers >5
Violation of community norm or private standard
Others observed or could know? Then voluntary vs harmed others. Words for emotions under different conditions. In mandarine can fill out all boxes, in english only three (shame, guilt, embarrassment). Cultural variation in interpretation.
Problem with Empiricism
Our senses not that great (i.e. sun rotate around Earth), we can't sense that much of reality
General Intelligence
Overall G - existence of a broad mental capacity that influences performance on cognitive ability measures. As genetic distance increases, average familial IQ correlations stay positive but decrease. Some (but small) environment difference with reared-together vs. reared-apart.
impact bias - forecasting errors
Overestimating the intensity and duration of emotional reactions to events
CANOE
Personality as a 5-dimensional object 1. Conscientiousness: the extent to which a person is focused, organized, and persistent in the pursuit of his or her goals. (C-/Flexible -- C+/Focused) 2. Agreeableness: A person's orientation toward and style of interacting with others. (A-/challenger -- A+/adapter) 3. Neuroticism: A person's propensity to experience negative emotions (N-/resilient -- N+/reactive) 4. Openness: A person's orientation toward novelty, change, and uncertainty (O-/preserver -- O+/explorer) 5. Extraversion: A person's level of arousal and preference for stimulation (E-/introvert -- E+/extravert)
Your pain = my pain
Similar regions of brain active (i.e. ACC) for own pain and pain of others. Experiment: How much value own vs. other's pain. Most altruistic and taken pain. Other's pain more aversive than our own, especially when we feel like we are inflicting the pain on them.
errors of valuation
PCP-T 1. presentism: use present in ways that we shouldn't. - Being hungry now is different from being hungry later. Get different cravings. - getting one candy a week (choose favorite every time) versus choosing all in advanced (give self variety but get variety spread out over weeks). 2. comparing to the past: frontloaded versus downloaded. feels bad to go down year after year; causes us to neglect overall money earned 3. prospect theory: losses hurt more than gains feel good. Steeper in losses. Curves and flattens out/asymptotes so $1101 -> $1100 doesn't seem very big compared to $1 -> $2. We are relative change detectors. Endowment effect - people ascribe more value to things merely because they own them 4. temporal discounting: form of myopia undervalue some aspects of future and overvalue present. (usually more is better than less and sooner better than later). choose $12 in 53 weeks over $10 in 52 weeks since 1 week seems like nothing. However, choose $10 now over $12 in 1 week.
Social Isolation
Painful. Anterior cingulate cortex linked to physical pain. Experiment: playing virtual ball game with people in near by brain scanners. At some point, the other two just play alone and never pass ball to you. People don't like it. ACC become active
Narcolepsy
Passing suddenly from wide awake to REM. Can be due to emotional event (doesn't have to be intense, like laughing at a funny joke)
Illusion of control
People pay more for lottery ticket they choose than random. #'s that have meaning, think can exert control on random process. Fake stock simulation: press button, stock up or down. People who felt control more confident and did worse trading. Light goes on when press button: control in both conditions identical. But people feel more in control in 75%, ignore not pressing button that still 75%. How often did my actions seem to do something.
Forer Effect
People tend to accept generalized descriptions of their personalities without realizing the same evaluation could apply to nearly anyone else. Experiment: Made up horoscopes and gave everyone the same one. 85% of participants thought the horoscope was accurate. Subject to confirmation bias (tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories).
Color constancy
Perceived color of objects remains relatively constant under varying illumination conditions. (i.e. strawberry photo: no red pixels but we see red)
Alfred North Whitehead
Power of unconscious: critique idea that we should be conscious of everything. Free limited resource up to do other things (i.e. manual vs. auto, drive without remembering the drive, tying shoes)
7th basic emotion?
Pride Experiment: congenitally blind people were able to make these emotions, even if they never saw other people make the pride emotional expressions.
Word-Stem Completion Task
Priming. Complete with first word that comes to mind after given a set of study words. H.M. and control have same result: proves this is implicit memory with different neural substrate.
Unconscious processing
Priming: i.e. embedded slogan in movies Something in environment activates mental function
Physical + Psychological Adaptations - Challenges to Piaget
Psychological -> mental constructs evolved for survival (i.e. reflex)
Precocial
Quite developed at birth (i.e. bird hatch out of egg and able to do everything for survival on first day)
Defense Mechanisms
RPR-DS Repression: force what you don't like deep down so won't trouble you Projection: they uncomfortable with own anger so attribute to us so they off hook Displacement: displace anger felt in one context to another Sublimation: take real desire and channel into more acceptable realm Reaction formation: feel one thing and get yourself to feel opposite. only realize later. biggest mental gymnastics
Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA)
Refers to the environment in which a given adaption is said to have evolved. (creates mismatches. our world different from the EEA. old psychological mechanisms that have to figure out how to cope in new environment. i.e. adaptive taste/eating lead to obesity and is now maladaptive)
Building Blocks (Piaget's Theory)
Reflexes: impressive since newborn originally fed inside mother. Some reflexes may be holdover from ancestral past (i.e. safety reflex to reach out and hold onto hairy back). Reflexes not always motoric (i.e. bitter/sour food). Strong response bias - putting things into their mouth.
What do humans want?
Reproduction, pass genes to next generation.
Heuristics
Rule of thumb, mental shortcut gets you somewhere with relative accuracy (i.e. using 87 x 100 for 87 x 97) Making judgements when all information not known
Errors of odds
SG-CAP 1. sample size neglect: don't be confident in results if small sample. Law of Large Numbers = When the sample is large, the average property of the sample closely resembles the average property of the population from which it was drawn. 2. gambler's fallacy: The belief that the likelihood of a chance event is influenced by the nature of the events that preceded it. (i.e. each coin flip is independent. can't make decisions based on past flips). We tend to underestimate order, or amount of long runs, in randomness. 3. conjunction fallacy/representativeness heuristic: miss logical relatedness of the two. answer wrong question - which is better match to my stereotype of her? choose X+Y as more representative even though there is a less chance of it than just X alone. p(X) ≥ p(X+Y) p(teller) ≥ p(teller+feminist) 4. availability bias: how do we calculate odds? - first search memory and experiences (easy to remember common car crashes or publicized plane crashes) - people who write down 3 things for class rate class higher. writing down 10 things is hard so interpret this difficulty as the class not going so well after all. 5. planning fallacy: easy to imagine smooth process and hard to imagine the little things that throw us off - think it only takes 3 years to build bridge but takes 15 instead
How to solve reference problem
SNI-WC 1. social referencing: using a social partner as referent. child hears you say something, look at speaker, identify speaker's face, eyes, then follows gaze 2. novelty matching: that can't be the novel word because I already know it's a pig, so the novel object is the novel word. The more you know, the easier it is to use this strategy. Pairs with #4 and 5, overcome assumptions to learn parts and properties of objects. 3. intentionality and pedagogy: if actions performed intentionally, kids try to learn from them and not from accidental actions. 4. whole object assumption: assume one is referring to the whole/complete thing and not a part (i.e. wheel or tire versus car). heuristic. 5. category/taxonomic assumption: don't assume this object is the only ball in the world with these specific characteristics. realize the whole class of balls.
Working Memory
Scratchpad for whats going on in head at the moment. What we're currently aware of and doing in cognitive space. [i.e. 18+17 -> can follow through standard addition steps. But 18x17 -> too much to keep track of. Need to keep too much in mind without external memory storage like paper.]
How memory works
Sensory -> [attention] -> Working (rehearsal and elaboration) <- [retrieval] or [encoding] -> Long term Sins are different breakdowns along this process
Where are positive emotions located?
Separable systems for positive emotions. Diffused, not just in one region (i.e. dopamine vs. serotonin)
Serotonin
Serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) regulates serotonin reuptake. Promoter region of 5-HTTLPR has two alleles: long (l) and short (s). The short allele is associated with irregular reuptake. Individuals who have the short allele (either s/s or s/l) show increased prevalence of anxiety/depression. Higher sensitivity. Allele difference lead to personality difference.
Empiricism Method
Set of rules and techniques for observation that allows observers to avoid the illusions, mistakes, and erroneous conclusions that observation can produce
Heider & Simmel video
Shapes moving around the screen. To us, had social content. Feel emotions and give shapes with social agency/goals. Impart characteristics that literally cannot be there. We see faces in non-social objects. See personalities/ emotional content. (i.e. point-light walkers: coordinated moving dots that simulate biological motion in which each dot represents specific joints of a human performing an action)
Sleep deprivation
Sleep wheel experiment: Raft positioned over water and with barrier. When rat falls asleep, wheel rotates and rat falls into water if doesn't move. Put second rat on other side as control (but movement of raft never conditional on this rat's sleep). Sleep deprived rats: - disheveled, clumped, yellowing despite continued grooming - rapid decrease of weight, despite increased food consumption - hyperthermia - lesions on feet and tail - death. no rat survived more than 3 weeks of total sleep deprivation. Humans: Tripp, a radio broadcaster, went over 8 days without sleeping to stay on air. Hallucinations.
Diffusion of Responsibility
Someone else will do it. When large group of people, probability decrease that someone will help. Making personal connection engages norm of reciprocity. They have been specifically asked to help (i.e. can you keep an eye on my laptop?) - Kitty Genovese Case: 38 people witness but no one called police until later. Bystander non-intervention. Assumed someone else already called police.
Operational definition
Specifies the observable conditions that define the abstract concept (i.e. sensitivity -> pain/threshold/ticklishness -> measurements)
Semantics
Study of meaning (words - ideas) 1. iconic: visually resembles idea meant to depict without language. nothing arbitrary, yields information directly (i.e. facial expressions are direct manifestations of internal state) 2. symbolic: "toilet" - word looks nothing like its meaning. have to learn the arbitrary link that the word refers to the object.
Sleep enhances episodic memory
Studying/memory encoding after good night's sleep vs. all nighter. Then participants tested 2 days later. Normal sleep people remembered more than sleep deprived ones.
Sensory Memory
Super short lasting memory (seconds) in two forms: 1) iconic = visual form [i.e. get huge rush of visual information when put in dark room and someone flashes light on and off. If asked what you see, can recall with the afterimage. But can't recall after 10 seconds] 2) echoic = auditory form with same few second buffer [i.e. in some languages, some sentences have the verb at end so need to remember beginning of the sentence]
Violation of Expectation - Challenges to Piaget
Surprise. Expect to see cat photo after long string of cat photos. Look longer at dog photo and detect a change because expectation is violated.
Twin Studies - Individuality
Tells us what is genetic or not. Compare identical twins to fraternal twins. Both groups born on same day and into the same family/environment. Look for degree of similarity, how heritable some aspects of personality are. Experiment: show CANOE traits more genetically related in identical twins, some more than others.
Famous Faces Test
Test recognition of famous faces from past to present. People/control usually do better with recent faces but H.M. does well for old faces prior to surgery then plunges. Shows hippocampus vital for formation of new memories but not storage.
Lexical Decision Task
Test semantic network in brain. Choose real or nonsense word while being timed. Quicker to choose "scalpel" as real word if it follows "doctor" than "professor". "Scalpel" and "doctor" overlap in memory real estate and by bringing up "doctor," "scalpel" already partially active in memory = priming. (i.e. after penguin, less quick to choose canary. Both birds but from memory, robin better represent bird)
strange situation
Tests how babies or young children respond to the temporary absence of their mothers. When mom leaves room, baby can't be comforted with stranger. Baby and mom reunite. Stranger leaves then mom leaves too. Child distressed. Stranger comes back but can't comfort baby. Baby calms at once when mom comes back. (But if baby had uncertain relationship with parent, would stay distressed after reunion)
hedonic set point - forecasting errors
The notion of a "happiness set point" suggests that we are limited to an "inborn" level of happiness that's not likely to change. The hedonic treadmill is a theory that people return to a relatively stationary level of happiness, sometimes considered a happiness "set point. We make predictions about future emotions and think happiness fluctuate a lot on events but in reality, set points that depends on each person.
Affective Experiences - Categorized
They are valenced (i.e. good or bad, desired or undesired). There is no neutral feeling of sadness. Mental barometer. Different emotions linked to different evolutionarily produced drives. Signals to self - your drive is in jeopardy or fulfilled. Bad: Anger or fear -> aggression Sadness -> loss Jealousy -> reproductive jeopardy Good: Love -> mating, kinship Pleasure -> Food, sex, sleep
Third Variable
Three explanations for any correlation. rule out by holding constant but always another one. third variable problem means that correlation can never establish causation.
Persistence
Unwanted recollections that people can't forget. Adaptive because (i.e.) need to remember danger so brain doesn't forget the next time. Examples: - Donnie Moore: Brought in to win game but then team lost. His game got worse and had obsession with "the pitch." He can't stop thinking and berating himself. - PTSD: inability to stop recalling that event
Pons
Timekeeper while asleep. Every 90 minutes, sends signal to thalamus and leads thalamus to stimulate visual /motor /emotional /higher-order areas. Thalamus usually relays information but here, generates activity; also sends inhibitory signals to PFC. Pons also blocks spinal cord from receiving signals to cause sleep paralysis.
Reference problem
Tribe member points at dog and says "Gavagai!" so our intuition is to think it means dog. How do we know that? Could mean any other thing like nose of dog, animal, etc.
Measuring personality
Trying to exist between two extreme poles (too little information/generalize all humans vs. too much effort/information about every single individual). Three intervening levels of analysis: types, themes, traits.
Terror Management Theory
Unconscious processing. We respond to death fear by different reactions. Death is ultimate uncertainty, unstable world, want strongest allies and consistency, safety. Push fear into these other avenues: 1. More dislike of outgroup members 2. More health-promoting behaviors in young people 3. More conservative points of view
Prospecting
Uniquely human form of intelligence that enables us to think about "far"-future events. (i.e. simulate and image skydiving)
How human brain processes affect
Unlike reptilian brain (very old system) which was not involved in symbolic thought. Human brain processes information by two systems (1. cerebral cortex: rational, voluntary action, complex judgement, symbolic thought. 2. limbic system: emotional, motivation, simple judgement) and can reach different conclusions about something.
Thalamus during sleep
Usually relay station - get information and send out to stimulate other parts of brain. During deep sleep, still get information from senses but begins to shut down activity and amount of information that passes through.
Amygdala Damage Patients
Usually, people make thin slice decisions on who to trust, etc. Damage patients just think that everyone is trustworthy. They also seem normal to us because we don't usually experience full-blown fear often.
Example of ration better than emotion
Violence, junk food, presentism (over-influence by current emotional state)
Flynn Effect
WISC and Raven's matrices are very different tests and get different results over time. Effect is that you get large increase in both test results over time while Arithmetic and Vocabulary don't increase. Maybe it's because we are exposed to standardized tests now from early in development compared to the past. Amount our education is good at teaching problem solving/standardized tests is the variable.
Honeybee Communication
Waggle dance - use figure 8 to tell other bees where food is available. Tell angle to sun, distance. Only good at very small range of things (can't say something else, very rigid)
How human language works
We can communicate with infinite variety Get other's ideas and reconstruct them in our own head (package own ideas & concepts) -> then convert/map onto words (semantics) -> take words then encode in sound waves to reach ear of receiver (phonology) -> decompose sounds to words then ideas.
Norm of reciprocity
We should benefit those who benefit us. (i.e. tips to kind service, spare change to strangers because one day I will need help too) Door-in-the-face technique = ask for large initial request usually turned down. follow up with second smaller request. Feels bad to say no twice and second request doesn't seem as bad in comparison to first one. People say no to second request if there was no initial request. Relates to bargaining, feels good to lower price that started super high Foot-in-the-door technique = ask first for a small ask then follow up with second big request. Three conditions were tested (first contact, prior intro/convo, prior agreement) and agreement to second task increased with each one. Think of self as having social obligation, reciprocity. Already developed relationship with stranger through the first request.
How much of variation between intelligences of people in these neighborhoods due to variation in genes and how much due to variation in environment?
We would assume the contributions are the same in both neighborhoods, but not the case. Depending on setting, strong/weak relationships. Varying estimates assuming certain environments. For example, reach genetic maximum of intelligence in rich town. In poor town, lower chances or resources and exposure to stressors.
WISC
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Asks a lot of different kinds of questions (Information, arithmetic, vocabulary, comprehension, picture completion, block design, object assembly, coding, picture arrangement, similarities). Designed to test different different skills. Highly correlated with educational level, so maybe unfair to measure G.
WEIRD
Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic
Expected Utility Theory
What is ideal prospecting: expected value = odds of gain x value of gain
Natural circadian rhythms
What's our cycle without visual cues. Settled into 25 hour cycle.
Limits of consciousness
When rate organisms on agency (do things, decision) vs. experience (feel): can imagine consciousness along different places but humans seem to have it all Inattentional blindness: moon-walking bear vs. white people passing ball. Limits we aren't aware of (i.e. men w/ headlamp analogy, not aware of things outside of consciousness; zoning out, not aware of extent of time we might be outside of awareness)
Function of emotion in danger
When see something dangerous, gross stimuli, we can quickly avoid. Orient us to snap judgements that are generally accurate.
Fundamental Attribution Error
When we try to think about why someone did something, tend to attribute it to who they are as a person (dispositional). But could be situational. (i.e. see someone's paper with red, F. commit error and think that person is not a good student or smart. tend to think of others in mental state and overestimate how that predicts behavior. good at suppressing error when it is own paper. have all excuses, situational reasons)
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Where monitoring happens in brain. Integrates higher-order cognition with emotion/affect.
Parsing Problem
Word boundaries not marked by pauses. Only sometimes. If waiting for pauses in continuous streams of speech, get wrong word boundaries for foreign language. Babies map the statistics of the speech stream: what syllable sounds follow what other syllable sounds. we can detect phonemes that exist in English. Even babies have knowledge on what sounds transition to other sounds in the language. We can do this for fake language too. See repeated word/unit of sound "golatu" often, infer that you're in presence of a real word.
Patient N.A.
Worse cast of amnesia ever known. Less than 30 second memory. Experiences terror, constantly trying to find something to hang onto.
Procedural Memory
a part of the long-term memory that is responsible for knowing how to do things, also known as motor skills H.M.'s is intact. Will always feel like it's his first day learning the skill and wants someone to demonstrate. However, there is a consolidation of his skills (i.e. for mirror reverse drawing task). Followed normal learning curve.
Thin slices
ability to find patterns in events based only on "thin slices," or narrow windows, of experience. (i.e. have no trouble finding mood and can distinguish one point-walker from others with very limited information; people can tell sexual orientations through thin slices; can evaluate/predict end of class ratings of professor through short video clips)
cognitive control
ability to flexibly alter or suppress automatic or "prepotent" responses
Myotonia Congenita
aka. Fainting Goat Syndrome Can be mistaken for narcolepsy. Neuromuscular disorder where muscular system locks up. Can happen when startled/excited. Not sleep disorder.
radical behaviorism
all behavior is a result of its reinforcement history (skinner, operant)
bias
any factor that distorts your measurement of a group of subjects
demand characteristics
aspects of an observational setting that cause people to behave as they think an observer wants or expects them to behave
parietal
attention, objects in space, counting
temporal
audition, language, object recognition
Double-blind technique
avoid observer bias. doesn't always work because some things can't be blind to (i.e. ethnicity)
steve pinker
brain cells fire in patterns. subset/pattern of neurons firing represent subset of mental. a pattern corresponds to a thought. one pattern causes another pattern.
phonemic restoration
brain fill in audio gaps too
Dualism problems
brain injuries affect mind, constructed AI minds
nosology
branch of medicine that deals with classification of diseases
biological preparedness hypothesis
can teach baby fear to spider easier than to flower. built in for babies
weber's law
change is relative, not absolute. brain is percentage of change detector. relationship between a change in intensity and the original intensity is a constant. i.e. whisper in quiet room = shout in loud room
Circadian
circa + dia = about a day
population
complete collection of people whose properties we wish to know
A good mapping has
construct validity, convergent validity, reliability, discriminant validity
rené descartes
decided that pineal glands was where mental and physical came together, translated back and forth. Wrong but right idea that only small causal link.
medical student syndrome
develop strong belief that they have obscure mental disorder - find something in pattern of symptoms that matches, but usually wrong.
Décalage
discontinuity/gap Things that seem to be the same appear at such different times. Piaget had broad horizontal stages
random assignment
ensuring that each subject has an equal chance of being assigned to each group. with a sufficiently large sample, average composition of both groups will be equivalent along all third variables. tool for control. rules out confounding variable in subject.
holding constant
ensuring that the two groups are treated identically except for the manipulation. tool for control. rules out confounding variable in experimental situation.
R^2
estimate of proportion or percent of variance explained by the specific factor
Where do we get our theories about world?
evolution builds in mechanisms for dealing with invariant aspects of environment and lets learning figure out the stuff that changes.
neuropsychology
examines how overt brain injury affects cognition
Ames room
eye fooled thinking room is normal geometry. person to look as big as they do close up would have to be giant in normal room -> brain fix unneeded
saccades
eye move, jump around when looking at a scene. very active, keeping tabs, maybe things are changing
change blindness from very gradual change
eyes move too quickly to recognize subtle changes (i.e. why can't notice people getting old)
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
for depression and anxiety disorders. serotonin released at pre-synaptic then bind to post-synaptic. drug blocks reuptake transporter.
How dualism seems right
freaky friday, split personalities, demon possession, after-life
Brain regions for expected utility theory
frontal and pre-frontal cortex (most human-unique part of brain)
synaptic transmission
gap at synapse. reuptake extra neurotransmitters. (antidepressents don't reuptake, so concentration at gap of serotonin already high)
Implicature
go beyond literal meaning of word (i.e. pregnancy before marriage, able to vs. going to -> polite request for favor) - principle of charity: assume saying for goal, a reason. interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation. - tone of voice: chance sentence meaning (what we can naturally pick up)
damage to "where" pathway
hard time locating objects in space i.e. grasping deficits i.e. hemispatial neglect: neglect one hemisphere of visual field (i.e. eat food from half of plate but unaware)
Broca's aphasia
have individual words but can't string together gramatically
shrew
highest brain-to-body weight ratio of all known vertebrates
McGurk effect
how visual effect hearing. "bar" vs. "far" - also example of visual dominance
Theory
hypothetical account of how and why a phenomenon occurs
electrical stimulation
if expose brain and give electrical stimulus, patient have behavioral reactions. learn what is more okay to cut out. also stimulate other regions for surgical mapping.
change blindness from 0% change (color adaptation)
if eyes fixate, lose contrast boundaries around. downregulate color
multiple comparison problem
if there's a 5% chance of something occurring, don't be surprised if it happens 1 in 20 tries
blind spot
in small region, no photoreceptor cells/no visual information. hole in visual field. saccade, blind spot not in same place because moving around. also, brain filling in, something not actually present in input.
dendrites
incoming connections into cell body and makes decision to fire. if yes, travel to synapses.
diathesis-stress model of psychopathology
initial risk (genetic or biotic pre-disposition) + risk behavior (takes diathesis and makes more likely to develop disorder) Stress + diathesis = psychopathology stress = stress diathesis = vulnerability none = lucky
Affective Forecasting
is the process of predicting how future events will influence emotional well-being.
Linguistic determinism (sapir-whorf hypothesis)
language determines thought. 1. false in the strong form - eskimo have 100 words for snow. but hardly a surprise given their environment. Doesn't mean they think about it differently. We can describe kinds of snow with no specific word. - hopi have no words for time. their time not linear and never-ending cycle. but temporal cognitive experiments show they don't think of time in fundamentally different ways. - mandarin has no subjunctive. but Chinese no worse at counter-factual and hypothetical reasoning (they can do science research too). can just express in another way. 2. true in weaker form (thinking for speaking) - language forces decisions upon us - evidentials - when "bridge" is feminine in language, use feminized adjectives in english to describe it. gendered association blend into everyday use/conceptualization.
somatosensory cortex
main sensory receptive area for the sense of touch (map of sensory space in this location called the sensory homunculus)
experiment key ingredients
manipulation, control, measurement
dualism
mind and brain have no relationship
Deception is difficult
natural tendency to express emotion. experiment: child tells truth about what sticker they want. Doesn't try to deceive/fool monkey who ends up taking sticker child wants. deception is developmental accomplishment, that other people's mental states can be manipulated for your own ends.
split-brain patients
only one fiber road between left and right. left and right part of body disagree so create reasons to explain things that it can't see on other side of brain. two minds in one head and talking mind won't know about the other's and will come up with reasons to make up for it. right used to being companion so doesn't freak out. right is separate entity that can respond.
change as "contrast across space"
optical illusion: increase contrast to be able to make circle pop out, so we can see better. if seems same but in shadow, color must be different. aid in perception
expectancy effect
overestimate what others perceive just because you know it. can't see dog in picture until outlined, then can't not see. once you have expectation, easy to project to world = prejudice. brain use prior information to make sense of new information coming in. hard to un-know and simulate mind of others who don't know = lead to bad teaching. in people switch video, change detected but prior knowledge that people don't just switch so overpower change.
Mueller-Lyer Illusion
people in hunter-gather societies don't see the illusion. to us, cues something closer/further away so must be larger to occupy same amount of space. our experience gives real-world cue.
Chameleon effect
people spontaneously mimick the behaviors/bodily postures of others. mimicry facilitates smooth interactions and increases liking between people. people with high empathy scores spontaneously mimic more than low-empathy folks.
sample
people whose properties we actually measure
change blindness from 100% change
person swap video. visual system stressed/disrupted to see how works
psychopathology
physical illness that drastically impairs normal cognitive processing. examines how covert brain injury affects cognition
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
physiological -> safety -> belonging and love -> esteem -> self-actualization
thalamus
relay station, pass info to other brain parts then sent to consciousness. (i.e. light comes through eye, hits retina, info go to thalamus)
perception
process by which changes in state of brain give rise to our conscious experience of world. going beyond what we sense.
sensation
process by which important changes in state of world create changes in state of brain. importing what's important and sensing as change detection.
Trepanation
process of boring holes in skulls
variables
properties that can vary or change
frontal
reasoning, language, executive control
bony-eared assfish
record for smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of all vertebrates
Syntax
rules that govern how sentences are formed, and is responsible for our ability to use a finite number of words to make an infinite number of sentences. (very human) mere rearrangement of words can change meaning. infinite array of ideas lead to infinite use of finite media.
Role of parents for psychological well-being
secure base. kids need to balance two needs (go out into world and security). children cling into parent then foray out into room then circle back and cling. Easy to be brave explorer when secure base to come back to.
vision modularity
segregating figure from background, color, motion, consciousness
right brain
sensory processing and motor control of left side. paralinguistic analysis (complex intonation, sarcasm). generalities
left brain
sensory processing and motor control of right side. linguistic analysis. specifics
myelin sheath
serves as insulator, fatty tissue
Emotional imitation in infancy
some form of mirroring even in newborn's head
retinotopic maps
special layout of light hitting retina preserved in brain
change as "contrast over time"
stitch individual movie frames together = motion.
Why humans smarter?
structural advantages in brain. bigger. overall amount of brain devoted to different processes. more wrinkles for more surface area to fit in skull. reallocation of resources and more brain space allocated to these.
Observer bias: rosenthal and fode
studying mice maze running. genetic fast vs. dumb rats but no one really genetically engineered. rats all twins so no difference but somehow genetic fast had faster time. (maybe researchers nicer to smarter rats or different finish line standards)
blank slate hypothesis
tabula rasa was the theory that at birth the (human) mind is a "blank slate" without rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences
proximal senses
taste, touch
experiment
technique for establishing the causal relationships between variables
Construct/Face validity
tendency for a clear conceptual relation to exist between abstract property and the operational definition (on its face, seems to make sense. don't need to convince why operational definition makes sense)
Discriminant validity
tendency for measure to produce different results when it is used to measure different things (i.e. pain on arm vs. hand)
Reliability
tendency for measure to produce the same result when used to measure the same thing
Convergent validity
tendency for operational definitions to be related to other operational definitions (i.e. pain + threshold). if both good and same concept, result in same conclusion and link up/related to each other.
Hypothesis
testable prediction made by a theory
Empiricism
the belief that accurate knowledge of the world requires observation of it (dogmatikos = belief, empirikos = experience)
p-value
the difference would occur this percent of the time (probability your result come about by chance) too low = too many false negatives too high = too many false positives
Pragmatics
the ways in which we use language in real- life contexts and the assumptions that we make about speakers' intentions that help us interpret what they mean. study of real, everyday use of language (i.e. everything in LOR is positive but is a terrible LOR that implies the person is bad. talks about all the wrong things)
Brain Measurement + manipulation
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) - virtual lesions. electrical spikes in neurons. magnet zap region of brain and temporarily disrupts activity in part of brain.
psychotherapy
treats behavior (i.e. psychodynamic therapy, behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, humanistic therapy)
psychopharmacology
treats brain directly
cultural ratcheting
turn in one direct, tighten vs. loosens bolt. Make your power/effort cumulative. Human advancement has same structure. Offer own advancement and those who come after don't reduplicate work. Can build on it and allow for large-scale collaboration
jack gallant
use fmri to decode what brain is seeing
occipital
vision
distal senses
vision, audition, olfaction
blindsight
visual cortex damage. sensation, no perception. think blind with no conscious vision but most guess stripes correctly. brain register changes and communicate to body all outside conscious awareness. but patient has no good answer why they do things. interrupted connection.
damage to "what" pathway
visual form agnosia: deficit in recognizing objects, visual form. can describe an object in great detail but can't say what it is. can use other ways (i.e. action)
brain organization
voluntary action, complex judgement, symbolic thought [cerebral cortex] <- emotion, motivation, simple judgement [limbic system] <- sensory information [thalamus] <- basic motor programs [cerebellum] <- basic life functions (breathing, heartbeat) [brain stem] luxury <- necessity. evolutionary older stuff at bottom. need simpler structures and essentials before more complex luxury stuff.
correlated
when variation in value of one is synchronized with variation in the value of the other. if x causes y, x and y always correlated (not vice versa). can get opposite relationships (not A -> B, but B -> A) but manipulation rule this out. If A cause B & C, B & C correlated but not causatively related.
Dunbar's Number
~150. Good estimate for true social network. Once hunter-gather groups >150, tend to split. Exponential: number of social relationships as a function of group size. need to also remember everyone's relationships with each other.