Psychology Exam 2 PDF

EXAM 2 Culture, gender, and other environmental influences ○ Experience and brain development Rosenzweig et al., 1962 Two rats were put into different environments to measure how it impacted their brain anatomy...

EXAM 2 Culture, gender, and other environmental influences ○ Experience and brain development Rosenzweig et al., 1962 Two rats were put into different environments to measure how it impacted their brain anatomy ○ One isolated and impoverished environment No toys No friends ○ One enriched environment Had toys Had other people in the cage Found that those in the isolated environment had smaller neurons and smaller connections Proves that the brain is constantly changing depending on your environment Habituation When you make someone familiar with something for a long time until they get bored with it People are more likely to pay attention to new/unfamiliar things Development of face recognition Babies have recognition abilities that are lost throughout development (synopses) Babies have better facial recognition in animals; 6 month olds can tell the difference between two similar-looking animals but 9 month olds cant Synaptic pruning When synapses are eliminated if they aren’t activated for a while ○ Culture The patterns of ideas, attitudes, values, habits and traditions shared by a group of people that have been passed on to future generations Makes the accumulation of knowledge that is relevant to survival and reproduction possible Reoertiure if solutions to adaptive problems ○ Cultural variation Each culture has standards for acceptable, expected behavior For example, greeting people varies among groups. Where shaking hands in USA is the standard greeting, in chile it is giving a hug or kiss. ○ Culture and the Self  Individualist cultures: people define themselves as distinct from others, and they prioritize individual needs, independence and personal goals Collectivist cultures: people define themselves as part of a collection, where individual freedom is less important and they prioritize group needs, community interests and social harmony above individual desires Holistic vs analytic thinking: Holistic: focus on the object or person and the surrounding context and the relationships between them ○ Eastern cultures Analytic: focus on properties of objects or people and pay less attention to context or situation ○ Western cultures Topic: The Biology of Mind ○ The neuron and neural communication Synapse The connecting point of two neurons that allows a signal to pass between them Neurotransmitters Chemicals messengers that carry signals between neurons, muscles and glands Used by a neuron to influence the activity of another neuron Action potentials Electrical signal required for synaptic communication All or none response, intensity of an action potential is always the same Voltages wont change no matter how strong the stimulation is ○ Cerebral cortex Gray matter Outermost surface layer of the brain Divided into 3 areas: sensory, motor, and association Directs motor activity, controls memory, learning, problem solving, emotions, language, personality and intelligence ○ Grey matter Where all the interesting cognitive levels of the brain take place Surface of the brain ○ White matter Fills nearly ½ the brain Millions of cables that connect individual neurons in the brain regions ○ Lobes (frontal, occipital, temporal, parietal) and their function Frontal  Location: front of head Function: impulse control, executive function, planning, working memory, motor cortex Temporal Location: lower middle of head, near ears Function: sounds and speech processing, language understanding, memory systems Parietal Location: upper middle top of head Function: spacial recognition, distance perception, sensory information Occipital Location: back of head Function: visual perception ○ Motor cortex ○ Somatosensory cortex ○ Localization of function Specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain Cognitive functioning breaks down in specific ways when areas of the braun are damaged ○ Broca’s area Located in the left hemisphere of the frontal lobe Speech production and articulation and language comprehension and production ○ Broca’s aphasia Occurs when there is severe brain tissue damage to the left inferior frontal gyrus Language disorder after a stroke; comprehension is fine but responses are broken sentences and difficulty finding words ○ Wernicke’s area Located in the temporal lobe Controls word selection and understanding ○ Wernicke’s aphasia Language comprehension is impaired Speaking is grammatically correct and spoken fluently, but speech is meaningless or jumbled May have difficulty reading or writing ○ Double dissociation Speech production: positive frontal lobe, negative temporopariental leison  Speech comprehension: negative frontal lobe, positive temporopariental leison ○ Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Brain stimulation therapy that uses magnet in a specific part of skull and the electrical activities of neurons change (more stimulated) More activity = more communication Topic: Sensation and Perception Part 1: ○ Thatcher Illusion ○ Prosopagnosia ○ Sensation: the process our body goes through when taking in information from the world by using our senses ○ Perception: the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, allowing us to recognize meaningful objects and events Bottom-up processing: sensory analysis of stimuli where information travels from the bottom to the top, we allow stimulus to shape perceptions without any prior knowledge Begins with sensory receptors Top-down processing: sensory analysis of stimuli where information is guided by high-level mental processes, we use background information to interpret what we are seeing ○ Transduction: conversion of one form of energy into another (physical to neural). All of our senses receive sensory stimulation, often by using specialized receptor cells. ○ Absolute thresholds: minimal stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time Individual thresholds vary: depends on strength of signal, experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness ○ Subliminal: Input below the absolute threshold for conscious awareness ○ Priming: activating associations in our mind, setting us up to perceive, remember, and respond to objects/events in a certain way ○ Subliminal persuasion: ○ Weber’s Law: Ernst Weber describes ability to perceive the just noticeable difference (difference threshold) between two stimuli (weight, sound, etc.) The original intensity of a stimulus is constant and so the difference is a constant proportion of the original stimulus 2 stimulus must differ by a constant percentage ○ Ex. 10 to 11 = 10% difference AND 100 to 110 = a 10% difference  ○ Sensory adaptation: diminished sensitivity (desensitization) as a result of constant exposure/stimulation Tilt aftereffect: a visual illusion that occurs after long exposure to a tilted pattern. When you look away from a titled pattern, straight objects appear to be tilted in the opposite direction Gender categorization: biological sex is a basic categroy that influences how people perceive others Part 2: ○ Wavelength: distance from the peak of one light wave to the peak of the next ○ Hue: dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light Short = blue Medium = green Long = red/yellow ○ Amplitude: dimension of brightness that is determined by the intensity Short = dull Tall = strong ○ The Eye Retina: think layer of tissue in the back of the eye that is key for vision and brain function Innermost layer in the eye responsible for turning light energy from photons to 3D images Optic nerve: a bundle of nerve fibers that transfer visual information from the retina of the eye to the brain Blind spot: the spot in the retina where the optic nerve connects, there are no light-sensitive cells Cones and rods Cones are used for details and colors Rods are used for faint light and night vision Fovea A part of the retina thats responsible for high-acuity vision and consists of many cones ○ High acuity vision: the ability to see fine details with clarity and sharpness (reading, driving, facial recognition) ○ Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory Three types of cone receptor cells in the retina are responsible for color perception Change waves of light into blue, green or red ○ Opponent-Process Theory Edwald Hering  Color perception is controlled by the activity of 3 channels each with an opposite color pair Red vs green Blue vs yellow Black vs white ○ Light-from-above assumption Shadows are perceived as information for depth and distance ○ Depth Perception: the ability to see objects in 3 dimensions even though the images are 2 dimensional Binocular cues: information about the distance provided by using 2 eyes Binocular or retinal disparity: the difference in the views from two eyes Monocular cues: depth cues thar are available to 1 eye Occlusion: interposition, determining which object is closest/furthest from you Size cue: relative size, size constancy - smaller objects appear further away than large ones Linear perspective: parallel lines join if moving away in depth, appearance of object size is skewed Topic: Development ○ Genie: a young girl who was locked up in isolation for 13 years Proved early experiences impact psychological and brain development ○ Developmental Psychology: the study of how the mind and behavior progress changes as an individual grows up and old Nature and nurture: how out development is influenced by the interactions between our genetic inheritance and experiences Continuity and stages: determining which parts of development are gradual and continuous and which parts change abruptly Stability and change: determining which traits persist/stay the same through life and which ones change ○ Prenatal Brain Development Teratogen: chemical or viral agents that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS): phsyical and mental abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant womans heavy drinking. Corpus callosum: a broad band of nerve fibers joining the two hemispheres of the brain ○ Synaptogenesis: the process neurons go through when they form new connections with other neurons ○ Synaptic pruning: the elimination of synapses that are rarely activated ○ Synaptic density across the brain changes at different rates for different lobes ○ Myelination: the process by which axons are covered with myelin sheaths Frontal lobes are still myelinating - stop around age 25 Occipital lobes myelinate first ○ Environment and brain development (neglect) Neglect: the failure to provide for the basic needs of a person in ones care. Emotional, material, service oriented ○ Newborn reflexes The competent newborn is born with automatic reflex responses that support their survival including sucking, grasping, rooting, etc. ○ Newborn Auditory Perception (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980) Newborns were read stories by a mother and a stranger and it was observed that a mothers voice was preferred over a strangers voice Proved they can recognize and prefer familiar sounds they were exposed to in the womb ○ Visual preference paradigm Study hoe infants understand and orient visual attention and perception Infants who prefer to look at one stimulus over another are showing they can discriminate between the two ○ Robert Fantz Infants would be exposed to 2 displays at once and researchers observed if they were fixating on one of the displays ○ Newborn face perception ○ Newborn Imitation ○ Sensitive period: a time during development when exposure to a stimulus has the greatest effect on a particular behavior Critical period: a time when exposure to certain experiences is needed for proper development