Psychology Chapter on Vision and Social Cognition

Early Psychology

• Cartesian Dualism: Separation of mind and body
• Malevolent demon: A controlling influence on senses, suggesting a deception of reality
• Brain in a vat: A philosophical concept suggesting that our existence may be simulated
• Wilhelm Wundt: Founded first experimental psychology lab in 1879. Pioneer of structuralism and introspection.
• William James: Pioneer of functionalism. Author of the first psychology textbook "Principles of Psychology." His work was influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution.
• Psychodynamic perspective: Focuses on unconscious motivating forces influencing behavior. Key figures include Freud and Jung. Emphasizes psychosexual stages and structures like the Id, Ego, and Superego
• Humanistic perspective: Focuses on freedom, growth, self-actualization. Influenced by Rogers and Maslow. Emphasis on people's needs and free will. Rogers’ client-centered therapy focuses on the self and unconditional positive regard. Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
• Behavioral perspective: Scientific study of observable behavior. Influenced by Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner. Pavlov's dogs (classical conditioning) and Skinner's operant conditioning.
• Cognitive perspective: Focuses on mental processes like memory, learning, and problem-solving. Key figure Ebbinghaus.

Science of Psychology

• Evolutionary approach: Suggests behavior is determined by genes and survival, and is influenced by sexual selection, reproduction strategies based on sex
• Biological approach: Behavior is rooted in physical causes, including brain and nervous structures. Cognitive neuroscience explains how structures influence behavior. Broca's area and Wernicke's area are key brain regions.
• Psychometric: Measures of senses.
• Noise: random neuron excitations or inhibitions affecting perceived stimulus intensity. Absolute threshold: Lowest intensity for stimulus detection 50% of time. Weber's Law: change in intensity of stimulus is proportional to intensity of standard

Sensation and Perception

• Senses: Touch: 3 receptors (temperature, pressure, pain). Taste: main sensors are taste buds + other factors contributing to flavour. Olfaction: Olfactory bulb receives sensory signals. Hearing: place theory (different places vibrate differently) and frequency theory (hair cells vibrate at same speed).
• Measuring the Senses: Psychometrics is concerned with thresholds and the relationship between stimuli and sensations produced
• Temperature: Relative. At 32 degrees Celsius, there's no feeling of warmth or cold. Above, warmth below, cold.
• Pressure: Large adaptation rate, we don't constantly feel pressure from things like watches.
• Pain: Pain pathways with neurotransmitters like substance P and endorphins are involved. Some pain mechanisms are learned.

Visual System

• Two types of photoreceptors: Rods (dim light, no color) and cones (bright light, color). Retina contains photoreceptors. Photopigments are substances in photoreceptors that break down when light hits them. Photopigment breakdown initiates information transmission to the brain.
• Wavelengths and Colors: Different wavelengths produce different colors. Iodopsins are photopigments in cones, responsible for color vision (three types).
• Trichromatic Theory: Three types of cones sensitive to different wavelengths creating all the colors.
• Olfaction: closely linked to taste, but some aspects of taste can happen even if you’re unable to smell.

Early Perception and Vision

• Top-down processing: Use of memory, context, expectations to interpret stimulus. Influences judgements
• Perceptual constancy: Relatively constant perception of objects despite changes in sensory data (e.g., size, shape, color).
• Visual illusions: (Muller-Lyer illusion, Ponzo illusion) demonstrating how perceptual interpretation can deviate from reality based on cues like depth
• Depth cues: (binocular depth cues-convergence, retinal disparity; monocular depth cues- relative size, motion parallax, aerial perspective, linear perspective) enable judges of distance; binocular cues use both eyes
• Depth perception: Ability to judge distance. Absolute distance (observer and object) relative distance (objects relative to each other)
• Motion perception: Detection and perception of movement.
• Figure-Ground Distinction: Organising stimulus into figure (foreground/ object) and ground (background).
• Grouping principles: Proximity (close objects grouped), good continuation (continuous lines perceived as whole), closure (gaps filled to create complete image).

Memory

• Stages of memory: Acquisition, retention, and retrieval
• Sensory memory: Initial processing of stimuli, short duration, different type for vision (iconic memory) and hearing (echoic memory).
• Short-term memory (STM): Limited capacity and duration; can be increased with chunking.
• Long-term memory (LTM): Large capacity and relatively permanent storage of information. Passive and active memory retrieval, and schemas.
• Types of long-term memory: semantic, episodic, procedural.
• Multi-store model of memory: Sensory Memory → Short-term Memory → Long-term Memory

Social Psychology

• Social cognition: Focuses on how individuals perceive and interpret social stimuli
• Self-knowledge: Sources self-fulfilling prophecies, social comparison and self-perception
• Impression formation: Assigning characteristics to others, Asch configural model, centrality of traits, and biases (e.g., primacy effect, negativity bias).
• Schemas: Knowledge structures that organise and process social information
• Attributional biases: actor-observer effect, fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias), and the false-consensus effect
• Social influence: Compliance (responses to requests) , obedience (to authority figures), conformity (matching others' Behaviour)
• Cognitive biases and heuristics: availability heuristics, representativeness heuristic, anchoring heuristics.
• Group processes: Bystander effect, diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance
• Interpersonal conflict and group processes: How conflicts are observed /how groups influence individuals, and how these processes influence individual behaviour

Health Psychology

• Stressors: Real or perceived events or circumstances that challenge well being
• General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): A three-stage physiological response to stress: alarm, resistance, exhaustion
• Cognitive appraisal: Personal interpretations of stressors, influencing stress response
• Coping: Adaptive strategies to manage stress, including problem-focused and emotion-focused coping
• Health psychology: Studies the relationship between psychological factors and physical health
• Social support: Role of social interactions and relationships impacting stress reaction, mortality.

Clinical Psychology

• Mental disorders: Pattern of maladaptive behaviors causing distress to the individual.
• Classification of mental disorders Use of DSM, various categories to organise disorders.
• Anxiety disorders: Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, Phobias, generalised anxiety disorder, and specific phobias
• Somatoform disorders: physical symptoms with no apparent physical cause like somatization, Conversion disorder
• Dissociative disorders: Disruptions in consciousness eg-Amnesia, Fugue, Dissociative Identity Disorder
• Personality disorders: Unusually persistent and maladaptive patterns of behaviour that deviate from societal norms, cluster based on patterns observed
• Schizophrenic disorders: Positive symptoms (excesses, delusions, hallucinations), negative symptoms (deficits, apathy, withdrawal), and cognitive symptoms (attention, memory, etc).
• Mood disorders: Extreme mood states like depression or mania, usually associated with changes in thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. This includes classifying subtypes of bipolar and other mood related disorders

Developmental Psychology

• Cognitive development: Piaget's theory of stages like sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational.
• Sociocultural theory: Vygotsky's emphasis on social interaction and the zone of proximal development in cognitive development.