Psychology Final Exam Notes PDF

Sensation and Perception Sensation → awareness resulting from the stimulation of a sense organ Perception → the organization and interpretation of sensations. Sensation and perception work so we can: sense our environment combine what we are currently learning from the environmen...

Sensation and Perception Sensation → awareness resulting from the stimulation of a sense organ Perception → the organization and interpretation of sensations. Sensation and perception work so we can: sense our environment combine what we are currently learning from the environment with what we already know so we can make judgments and to choose appropriate behaviours. Six senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, monitoring body’s positions 2  Transduction → the conversion of stimuli detected by receptor cells to electrical impulses that are then transported to the brain How do we measure sensation? Psychophysics → the branch of psychology that studies the effects of physical stimuli on sensory perceptions and mental states Fechner was the first to study this T heir techniques were to determine the limits of human sensation Absolute threshold of a sensation → the intensity of a stimulus that allows an organism to just barely detect it The basics: Say yes if the sounds is there, say no if the sound is not there Easy? → not exactly 3  When it’s so faint, your senses can trick you into thinking something is there when it isn’t, and that something isn’t there when it is Signal detection analysis a technique used to determine the ability of the perceiver to separate true signals from background noise 4 outcomes Hit (says yes when there is a sound) False alarm (say yes but no sound) 4  Miss (say no but there is a sound) Correct rejection (say no when there is no sound) How do we see Electromagnetic energy → pulses of energy waves that can carry information from place to place. Electromagnetic waves vary in their: wavelength → the distance between one wave peak and the next wave peak shortest are gamma → a fraction of a millimeter in length longest are radio → hundreds of kilometers long. 5  amplitude → distance between the resting position and the maximum displacement of the wave (height of the wave) frequency → number of waves passing by a specific point per second Our eyes detect only the range from about 400 to 700 billionths of a meter = visible spectrum. 6 7  Hearing - Waves similar to the eye Similar to the eye, ear picks up sound waves Vibrating objects cause air molecules to bump into each other But sound waves are carried within media (air, water, metal) → the pressure changes in the media that the ear detects Wavelength → (frequency) the number of waves that arrive per second and determines our perception of pitch Pitch → the perceived frequency of a sound Longer waves → lower frequency/lower pitch Shorter waves → higher frequency/higher pitch Amplitude → height of the sound wave = how much energy it has 8 (how loud) Larger waves → louder (measured in decibels) 9 How we detect pitch Again, Pitch → the perceived frequency of a sound Longer waves → lower frequency/lower pitch Shorter waves → higher frequency/higher pitch Loudness is determined by the number of vibrating hairs Two different theories on how we detect pitch Frequency theory of hearing → whatever the pitch of a sound wave, nerve impulses of a corresponding frequency will be sent to the auditory nerve A tone measuring 600 hertz will be transduced into 600 nerve impulses a second. This theory has a problem with high-pitched sounds because the neurons cannot fire fast enough. 10  To reach the necessary speed, the neurons work together in a sort of volley system in which different neurons fire in sequence, allowing us to detect sounds up to about 4,000 hertz Hearing loss Conductive hearing loss → caused by physical damage to the ear (such as to the eardrums or ossicles) reduces the ability of the ear to transfer vibrations from the outer ear to the inner ear. Sensorineural hearing loss → caused by damage to the cilia or to the auditory nerve, is less common overall but frequently occurs with age 11  Prolonged exposure to loud sounds will eventually create sensorineural hearing loss as the cilia are damaged by the noise More younger people have ear damage and hearing loss Headphones and earbuds can emit 85-110 decibels Ear buds that rest in your ear canal can boost sound by about 9 decibels (so 119 db → louder than a car horn or concert…in your ear!) Touch Touch is crucial for development Infants need tough to thrive (Rhesus monkeys) 12  Touch communicates warmth, caring, support, and part of social interactions with close others Skin is the largest organ in the body Thousands of nerve endings in the skin respond to four basic sensations: Pressure (only one with specialized receptors) Hot Cold Pain 13 How do we feel pain When we have a pain, a message gets sent from the sore area to our brain Gets sent SO FAST, to keep us safe and prevent damage or injury For example, if you ever touched a hot kettle, what happened? You probably pulled your hand away really quickly!! Did you have to think about it? NO! Your neurons did it fast to stop you from burning your skin 14 1. The pain (whichever type) will affect the injured area of your body (head, finger, foot, etc.) 15 2. The pain receptors in that area will wake up (“activate”) and send a signal from the area towards the brain 16 3. The brain will then receive that message and send a reply, telling the receptors what to do (“action”) 17 4. The receptors carry the message back to the injured area 18 5. Your body will carry out the action, e.g., pull your hand away from the hot kettle 19  Selective attention The "cocktail party" effect has been demonstrated many times under controlled experimental conditions. brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention (an effect of selective attention in the brain) on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room. → Shows we 20 can limit what we process but…still do unconscious monitoring around us 22 Fundamental Attribution Error the tendency for people to over- emphasise dispositional, or personalitybased explanations for behaviours observed in others while underemphasising situational explanations 23  Actor-observer Bias a tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes 24  Just-world Hypothesis The just-world phenomenon is the tendency to believe that the world is just and that people get what they deserve. Because people want to believe that the world is fair, they will look for ways to explain or rationalize away injustice. Then why the shortcuts? 25  We need to conserve energy.  From evolutionary perspective, it is in our benefit to make quick decisions.  However, we should avoid such intuition when we care about our decisions.  Decision Fatigue When do you go food shopping? 26 27 29 30 31 32 34 Construction, nail gun, concrete, insulation, screws Short-term memory (STM) Limited in both time and how much info can be held in it is the place where small amounts of information can be temporarily kept for more than a few seconds but usually for less than one minute (30 seconds usually) Can hold 5-9 average 7 items max  Working memory → the processes that we use to make sense of, modify, interpret, and store information in STM Not really a memory but procedures 43 36  Memory blends Believed all post event information 44 Reconstructive Nature of Memory Information encountered after an event (called post-event information or PEI) influences memory reconstruction Many sources of post-event information (e.g., interview questions, talking to other witnesses)  Misinformation effect: corruption of memory by post-event information Decades of laboratory research and “real world” cases demonstrate the reconstructive nature of memory 45 Post- Event Misinformation Effect – Word Suggestibility 1. Response-bias factors: The verb influenced the answer but didn't actually lead to a false memory of the event. For example, the  critical verb (e.g. “smash” or “bumped”) influenced or biased the response. 2.The memory representation is altered: The verb changed a person's perception of the accident - smash would make someone think the accident was more serious and then the cars must have been going faster. This altered perception is then stored in a person's memory of the event. 46 Lab vs real-life eyewitness testimony  Loftus vs Yuille  Criticisms of Loftus Fails to mention when memories can be good Do small details like what colour the car is matter when overall memory is good? Perception of colour??? You can’t know who will be a good eyewitness and who won’t 30% still get it right in the lab depending on the study She only ever testified for the defence; research should 47 be equal in that way if it’s proper Types of intelligence factors  General intelligence factor → relates to abstract thinking and that includes the abilities to acquire knowledge, to reason abstractly, to adapt to novel situations, and to benefit from instruction and experience  People with higher general intelligence have been shown to learn faster  Specific intelligence factor → a measure of specific skills in narrow domains (Gardner has 8 specific intelligences categories)  Fluid intelligence → capacity to learn new ways of solving problems and performing activities (decreases with age)  Crystallized intelligence → accumulated knowledge of the world we have acquired throughout our lives (increases with age) Sex differences in intelligence  The research that has been done is for the most part binary, and more research needs to be done to assess those who are nonbinary  There are sex differences in intelligence 42  BUT what is most important to remember is the sex differences are very tiny compared to differences within the same sex What does that look like?? 49 Language and perception  Linguistic relativity → idea that language and its structures influence and limit human thought  Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis → hypothesis that language determines people’s thoughts  E.g., Inuit have numerous words for snow, but English only has one, so the Inuit perceive snow in a different way from English speaking people  There is not a lot of support for this despite it being intuitive  Could be that thinking about snow influences language  One study did find that bilingual people (English and Spanish) stood at different distances.  When they spoke English, they stood further away.  When they spoke in Spanish, they stood closer.  So, norms of the language you are speaking can influence behaviour 44 45 Complex behaviours through operant conditioning  Teaching an animal a trick or new behaviour goes beyond simple stimulus-response relationships  Continuous reinforcement → desired response is reinforced every time it happens  Results in very fast learning  Results in very fast extinction too (give up quickly if the reward/reinforcer doesn’t appear)  Partial or intermittent reinforcement schedule → a schedule in which the responses are sometimes reinforced and sometimes not  Slower initial learning, but slower extinction 46  Strongest reinforcement is intermittent positive reinforcement (e.g., IPV research → psych processes) Which is which? 1. Sometimes it takes15 tries or 25 tries but averages 20 tries to start my car when it is below -30C. Variable ratio 2. My puppy gets a reward every 10th time she shakes a paw Fixed ratio 3. It takes my computer between 15 minutes and 45 minutes, but it averages 30 minutes, after an update to start. Variable interval 47 4. A child gets a gold sticker at the end of class for spelling a word correctly. Fixed interval Draw this symbol without raising your pen/pencil off the page and without retracing a line. 48 Social Learning Theory (SLT) – Bandura  Pavlov, Thorndike, Watson, and Skinner → learning is through associations and the associations and only the associations influence learning  BUT classical and operant conditioning don’t explain everything  Observation and modeling determine how and why people learn (social learning theory – Bandura) 49  People learn through direct and indirect (observation) this is a change from the learning theories that say only direct experience leads to learning Social Learning Theory -Bandura 50 Social dilemmas  Social dilemma → a situation in which the behaviour that creates the most positive outcomes for the individual may in the long-term lead to negative consequences for the group as a whole  Arranged in such a way that it is easy to be selfish because the personally beneficial choice  using water during a water shortage  tend to work on a type of time delay (the long-term negative outcome is far away in the future and the individual benefits are occurring right now  Difficult for an individual to see how many costs there really are  The paradox is that if everyone takes the personally selfish choice to try to maximize their own outcomes, the long-term result is poorer 51 outcomes for every individual in the group (e.g., commons dilemma from the textbook) 52 Review from last week  Values vs. Facts  Values – personal statements  Fact – objective statements determined to be accurate through empirical studies  Which are which?  CO2 emissions are still increasing. FACT  People with tattoos have no more criminal FACT activity than those without.  VALUE  Pineapple is a good pizza topping.  FACT  There are more genocides now since WWII. Challenges studying psychology?  Individual differences - the variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions  Water with the same conditions will boil at the same temp every time  People? Well, every day could be different. Near impossible to create the exact same situation/condition and even if we could….  Multiply determined - produced by many factors  We are multifaceted. There is no one single cause.  The levels of explanations can all play a role in how someone thinks/behaves  Unconscious processes - factors that are outside our conscious awareness  We don’t always know our own motivations  If we don’t know our own motivations, how can we study them? Nature vs nurture Summary of the debate: Nature  behaviour is caused by innate characteristics and all behaviour is inherited  Use objective methods that can show cause and effect  Means we have no control over our own behaviour Nurture  Behaviour is determined by our environment  Wide range of research methods used  Harder to establish cause and effect but not impossible! Where the debate is today  Genes can’t influence development independently of environmental factors,  so genetic and nongenetic factors always cooperate to build traits. nature and culture interact  Most psychological researchers are now interested in investigating how nature and nurture interact (not how much of each)  In people with psychopathy, used to be that they were born and people with sociopathy (this is not a term, it’s antisocial personality disorder) were made  But both have been found to have genetic predisposition AND environmental triggers  Early psychologists Plato Aristotle  Tabularasa (blank slate)  Some knowledge is innate  Knowledge is through learning and experience  What does this sound like?  What does this sound like?  Nature!  Nurture! Descartes Wunt  The mind controls the body  People had Innate natural (free will) abilities  Dualism - the mind is structures of psychological fundamentally different from experience the mechanical body  Used introspection to map  Structuralism - was to elements of consciousness identify the basic elements or  Found difference between sensation and perception Titchener  Structuralist Ran experimental studies to identify sensations  Moved psychology into a science  Discovered the limitations of introspection/unconscious processes Darwin James  Theory of natural selection - physical  Evolutionary psychology came from characteristics of animals and humans his ideas - many human evolved because they were useful, or psychological functional  School of functionalism (influenced  Why animals and people have by Darwin but in psychological developed specific psychological aspects) aspects that they currently Freud Psychoanalysts  Patients can be helped through talk therapy and dream analysis systems, including memory, emotion, and possess personality, serve key adaptive Thinking was relevant functions.(fitness) to behaviour  Mostly practitioners who help people confront and understand their symptoms  Psychodynamic psychology - impact on psychology an Substantial approach to understanding human even though many of their behaviour  that focuses on the role of theories were shown to be unconscious thoughts, feelings, and incorrect and not testable memories  Developed theories through extensive analysis of his private clinical patients  Many difficulties from adverse childhood experiences they can’t remember Jung Expanded on Freud’s theories Brought in concepts of: Archetypes (there are many)  Collectiveunconscious (common to humankind through universal themes) Individuation(process of self realization, the discovery and experience of meaning and purpose in life, becoming whole) Activeimagination (imagining to tap into the unconscious meanings) Pavlov Watson  Behaviourist stimulus (e.g., food) that naturally  Dogs salivate with the sound of produces a behaviour. (salivating) the tone (Classical conditioning)  Behaviourism (to try to address the issues with introspection) - it  Learning occurs when a neutral is not possible to objectively study stimulus (e.g., a tone) becomes the mind, and therefore that associated with an unconditioned psychologists should limit their  Classical conditioning on people attention to the study of behaviour (Little Albert) itself  Skinner  Behaviourist  Operant Conditioning – behaviour is a function of consequences through stimulus – response and rewards/punishments/reinforcement  So no free will, but behaviour determined by past experiences  Focused on how people can learn Operant conditioning – Skinner Radical Behaviourism 1. Positive → Add something 2. Negative → remove something 3. Reinforcement → to increase that behaviour 4. Punishment → to decrease that behaviour 5. Escape → remove something noxious after correct behaviour (shut alarm off) 6. Active avoidance → avoid something noxious (study to avoid bad grades) 7. Extinction → reducing or eliminating a learned behavior by withholding the reinforcing consequences that previously was linked to (stop ringing the bell with food, eventually bell will not be linked to food)  So which is which? Positive = adding Positive reinforcement/punishment Negative reinforcement/punishment 1. take away a toy for not eating 5. getting a raise for meeting vegetables your targets 2. get dessert for eating all your 6. not allowed to drive for failing vegetables a test 3. take away chores for eating all your Negative = taking away vegetables 4. blasting with white noise for not eating vegetables 1. Negative punishment 2. Positive reinforcement 3. Negative reinforcement 4. Positive punishment 5. Positive reinforcement 6. Negative punishment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YohStpqB1Gc& ab_channel=HelpfulProfessorExplains%21  Natural selection Fitness of a species’ characteristics to its environment Ability for a species to adapt to its environment, find food and water, and mate to reproduce and pass on genetic traits favorable to that setting Evolution through natural selection requires a trait to be heritable, and there must be a reproductive advantage for having the trait  Evolutionary useful behaviors have had a beneficial function in the species. Overview of evolutionary theory Evolution → change over time physical survival is only important if it contributes to successful reproduction. if you fail to mate and produce children, your genes will die with your body Natural selection → reproductive success, not survival success  Every mating success of one human, means a loss of opportunity for another To survive over time, we have inherited adaptive, psychological processes Personality and genetics Instincts → complex inborn patterns of behaviours that help ensure survival and reproduction Birds build nests But the strength of different traits and behaviours also varies within species. Rabbits are naturally fearful, but some are more fearful than others  These differences are determined in part by the small amount (in humans, the 0.1%) of the differences in genes Personality is not determined by one gene but a bunch working together Genes cannot create or control our personality Twin studies Heritability (i.e., genetic influence) → when the correlation coefficient for identical twins exceeds that for fraternal twins, indicating that shared DNA is an important determinant of personality. Shared environment determinants →when the correlation coefficients for identical and fraternal twins are greater than zero and also very similar. These correlations indicate that both twins are having experiences in the family that make them alike.  Nonshared environment → when identical twins do not have similar traits. These influences refer to experiences that are not accounted for either by heritability or by shared environmental factors. Nonshared environmental factors are the experiences that make individuals within the same family less alike. If a parent treats one child more affectionately so that child has higher self-esteem Parenting in this case = nonshared environmental factor. What do neurons do? Our brain is divided down the middle, and neurons pass messages from the left side to the right side BUT our brain hemispheres control the opposite side Right brain controls left hand Left brain controls the right hand Neurotransmitters Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers, and they deliver messages around the body They use the neurons as a road, and travel around the body inside the neurons Different neurotransmitters have different jobs (and all of them are important) Excitatory → make the cell more likely to fire Inhibitory → make the cell less likely to fire  Terminology continued Thalamus → is the egg-shaped structure above the brain stem more filtering to the sensory information that is coming up from the spinal cord and through the reticular formation relays some of these remaining signals to the higher brain levels Amygdala → two “almond-shaped” clusters  primarily responsible for regulating our perceptions of, and reactions to, aggression and fear Connected to sympathetic nervous system Terminology Limbic system → located between the brain stem and the two cerebral hemispheres Hypothalamus → contains several small areas Regulates hunger, body temp, thirst, sex  links the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland Hippocampus consists of two “horns” that curve back from the amygdala. Stores information in long-term memory. If damaged, a person cannot build new memories Different methods to study the brain Lesions (damage) People who’ve had strokes, we can see where they are having difficulty and linked that to lesions (first in cadavers)  If can’t see after a stroke, which brain region would be affected? Can’t hear out of right ear? Injury → Phineas Gage Saw where the damage was done and then how much his temperament, personality, abilities changed from before the accident Studies Asked people without lesions and people with lesions in different areas of their brain to perform tasks, then compare