Psychology IB Test Summary—by Daniel Smarda 2014 graduate
 Biological Level
 Eric Kandel: Aplysia
 Classically conditioned Aplysia snail to retract tail in response to a squirt of water
 Looks at neurons b/c Aplysia only has a few number of large neurons
 Number of neurotransmitters increases, as does number of synapses (long-term
potentiation)
 Shows localization of function, structural plasticity, long term-potentiation
 Ecological Validity/generalizability, experiment, causational
 Gottesman (Schizophrenia)
 Schizophrenia runs in families, family and twins show that more likely to be
diagnosed if more closely related to someone, adopted children more likely to
develop if either of biological parents have it, by studying families with high rate of
schizo, find families with certain genetic factors,
 Unethical, might induce schizophrenia and stress, Correlational, deterministic
 Richard F. Thompson: Rats/maze/air puff/classical conditioning
 Clasically conditioned rabbits to blink in response to a tone by puffing air at same
time, cut out cerebellum and blinking in response to tone disappeared, but still
blinked in response to puff so reflex hadn’t disappeared
 Localization of function for simple behaviors
 Ecological validity, ethicality, empirical evidence, causational
 Karl Lashley: rats running through maze, cut different parts, inconclusive
 Had rats run a maze, over 30 yrs, cut out different parts of cerebral cortex, rats could
all rerun maze
 Memories not localized but distributed (false)
 Together with Thompson, shows complex memories are distributed, simple are
localized
 Ethicality, generalizability, reductionist, experiment
 Berthold
 Castrated 6 roosters, 3 groups (castrated left castrated no male aggression)
(castrated and then other rooster testicles added, not resestablish nerve
connections, but still showed male aggression) (reimplanted testes, same as 2 nd
group)
 Proves testosterone is a thing
 Ethicality, small group, only roosters, empirical,
 Milner and Corkin: H.M.
 H.M. had anterograde amnesia (can’t form new memories), ’53 was 27 yrs had
epileptic seizures, removed medial temporal lobe and hippocampus.
Severity/frequency reduced. Can remember from before 16yrs (when seizures
started). Can’t do episodic or semantic but can form procedural (implicit memory)
 Hippocampus important for forming new memories, especially semantic and
episodic
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Advantage of catastrophe, only one patient (but other similar studies have
happened), can’t be ethically replicated, lacks generalizability, LOTS of qualitative
data, little quantitative data
Roger Sperry: Split-Brain
 Picked subjects that had had split-brain operations done
 Task 1: flashed image to right eye, patient could verbally say what it is. Task 2:
flashed image to left eye, patient verbally says he didn’t see anything. Task 3: image
flashed to left eye, patient could pick up with hand
 Showed left was more language, right was visual-spatial, needed connection
between different halves of the brain
 Only 11 split brain patients, no control group, taking control of tragedy, has practical
application, can’t be easily replicated because animals use different parts (ex.
Anterior commissure in monkeys can send visual info, similar results as
Wernicke/Broca
McClintock: pheromones
 Made woman fill out 2 hours worth of questionnaire. Then exposed women to male
and female steroid, women were more able to get through questionnaire. PET scans
also showed that when women were exposed to steroids, more brain activity in
emotion and attention (cerebellum, amygdala, prefontal cortex)
 Human steroids excite females, not good for males
 Only college students, qualitative and quantitative data between PET scans and
surveys
Loewi: Heart and frog
 Removed beating heart of freshly killed frog w/ vagus nerve attached to it, put in
solution of salt water, stimulated vagus nerve, dropped another heart into the water,
other heart beat slower
 Stimulation of vagus nerve released acetylcholine, neurotransmitters
 Ethicality, generalizability, ecological validity, reductionist, objective, no control
groups, can’t be replicated on humans
Peter Eriksson and Fred Gage: Cancer patients
 Five adult cancer patients, 50s-70s, given drug that colors newly dividing cells,
perform autopsy hours after patients die, hundreds of neurons being generated
 Showed that adults continue to develop new neurons, contrary to common belief
 Taking advantage of tragedy, small sample size, objective data, generalizability
Draganski
 24 young adults (21 women, 3 men) taken basic MRI scans. Assigned to either
“jugglers” or “non-jugglers”, three months later more MRIs, showed 3-4% increase
in gray matter in areas of brain with perceiving, remembering, jugglers stop juggling,
three months later remeasured with MRI, gray matter decreased 1-2%
 Brains are dynamic, adapting
 Objective evidence, no ethical breaches, small sample size, all young adults,
replicable
Phineas Gage, Harlow, Damasios
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Rod goes through head, previously sociable, now angry, movement and speech and
memory not impaired
 Frontal lobe has to do with decision-making and personality
 Qualitative Evidence, taking advantage of tragedy, not replicable, lots of data, lines
up with other research on similar topics, lack of generalizability
Hans Selye: rats/stressors
 Exposed rats to prolonged stressors such as shock, heat/cold, exercise. Adrenal
glands enlarged, weight loss, stomach ulcers, shrinkage of thymus and lymph glands
 Alarm stage produced by adrenal medulla, resistance stage (body tries to resist or
adjust to situation), exhaustion stage, all known as general adaptation syndrome
 Ethicality, reductionist, experiments, objective data
Bouchard and McGue: Raised twins apart or together
 Compared twins that were raised together to twins that were raised separately
 Twins completed 50 hours of interviewing and IQ testing,
 found that intelligence based 70% on genetics, 30% on other factors
 cross-cultural, deterministic, IQ tests can be considered flawed, generalizable
because lots of participants, Ethical concerns with ways twins were reunited
Schachter and Singer
 All injected with epinephrine, caused sympathetic nervous system, one group was
told it was caused by epinephrine, one group wasn’t, exposed to irritating or
humorous situation, less emotional reaction for people that were told
Martinez and Kesner
 Had rats run maze, on group gets scoplamin (blocks acetylcholine), some get
physostimine (neuron can’t return to resting state), some get no injection,
physostimine rats have best record/memory
 Neurotransmitters (esp acetylcholine) plays function in memory
 Generalizability, ethicality, causational relationship, objective data
 Cognitive Level
 Atkinson and Schriffin – Stage Model of Memory
 Sensory, Working/Short-term, and long-term
 Logical, deterministic, other studies show maintenance is worse than elaborative,
that working disappears, theories, they didn’t run an experiment, but others did
 Tolman – latent learning
 Three groups of rats put in same maze once a day for several days, when food
awaited, performance increased, no food = more errors, group 3 get food after 11
days
 Reward not necessary for learning; latent learning
 Empirical, Only rats,
 Ebbinghaus – forgetting curve
 Memorized a list of 13 nonsense syllables, recorded how much he could remember
over time, created forgetting curve
 We forget a lot really quickly and stability of remaining information
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 He was his only test subject, applicable to real world, ecological validity
George Sperling
 Letters displayed on screen for 1/20 of second, tone sounds
 If tone w/in 1/3, can remember, if greater than 1/3, decreased dramatically
 Sensory memory lasts about 1/3 to ½ second
 Experiment, objective data, little ethical concerns, ecological validity, only visual
Bartlett and “War of the Ghosts”
 20 English participants read 330-word traditional Native American tale, serial
reproduction, by 6th person, reduced to 180 words (leveling), made story more
consistent with own culture (assimilation), changed some terms like “boat” to
“canoe” to make it line up with own cultural backround (sharpening)
 Memory recall is influenced by our own preexisting schema, which is influenced by
our culture
 Qualitative, small sample size, cross-cultural validity, call reliability of memory into
question
Loftus and Car Crash
 45 American students (opportunity sample), independent measures, asked if they
how fast cars were going when smashed/contacted and if there was glass. Smashed
= 41mph, contacted = 32 mph. Most students that heard “smashed” said there was
broken glass
 Misinformation effect – question can influence memory
 Shows how inaccurate eyewitness testimonies are, lacks cross-cultural validity, 3241mph isn’t a significant difference.
Eich – State-dependent retrieval
 Two groups of people, some were high, some sober, had to memorize 2 words from
24 categories, high people remember more when high
 State-dependent retrieval
 Objective, experiment, unethical, ecological validity
Simon and Chabris: selective attention
 Harvard University students, watch video where white and black tshirt people pass
basketball, asked to count # of passes made by one team or # of aerial vs bounce
passes, 50% see gorilla
 People selectively attend to what they expect
 Little participant variability, ethical, reliable, can be replicated, objective, ecologically
valid
Roediger and McDermott: sleep schema
 20 students in intro psychology class in exchange for credit, read words with
nonrepresented associates (e.g. bed, rest, pillow, awake tired), 40-50% say they
remember unstated word
 People have schemas, memories are unreliable
 Ecologically Valid, Bad participants, not generalizable, not really voluntary
Brewer and Treyens: office schema
 Participants stay in room for 35-60s, asked to recall what they remembered, average
29/30 “office items”, 8/30 “non-office items”, 30% recall falsely seeing books
 We have schemas
 Emperical, numerical data, ethical
 Neisser and Harsch: challenger explosion
 Asked participants questionnaire day after Challenger explosion about how they
heard news (where they were, what they were doing, who told them, etc.), then
asked again 3yrs later, 106 opportunity people found just after explosion,
 Of 220 potential “facts”, completely or partially wrong on 150, were more confident
in their new answer and denied old answer
 Flashbulb memories are consistent about event but blurry about details surrounding
it
 Objective data, ecologically valid, taking advantage of tragedy, not replicable,
ethicality for forcing to recall accident
 Talarico and Reuben
 Duke Unversity students do questionnaire about 9/11 the day after like “where were
you” “what were you doing” “who was present”, also asked about some other
ordinary, everyday event
 Randomly assigned to follow-up 1, 6, or 36 weeks later, asked to recall details and
evaluate accuracy and vividness, also a year later
 Accuracy and consistency of flashbulb no different from regular event, but differed
in confidence and emotional involvement
 Both vividness and confidence more accurate than regular memories
 Godden and Baddely – context effect
 18 participants in university diving club asked to learn list of 38 unrelated 2 or 3
syllable words, randomly assigned to one of four conditions (learn on land/in water
and recall on land/in water), repeated measures b/c everyone experienced all
conditions, @least 24hrs between conditions
 Environment is contextual clue for recall
 Ecological validity, small sample population, all university students, confounding
variables from day to day, empirical data, not ethically harmful
 Socio-cultural
 Lee: Game show
 Randomly assigned college students as audience, participant, host (asked to write
own questions), everybody evaluates others’ intelligences
 Everybody knew that everyone was assigned roles, but everyone ranked host as
most intelligence, audience as least intelligent
 Fundamental attribution error – attribute behavior of others to internal
characteristics while ignoring/underestimating effects of external, situational factor
 Ecological validity, limited participant population, students knowing each other
could be a confounding variable, ethical, objective data, random assignment
 Peng and Morris: newspapers
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Compare Chinese-language and English-language newspapers for mass-murders,
one is Chinese grad student @ American university, one is US postal worker (real
murderers),
 US newspapers attribute internal, personal attributions, Chinese papers blame
external factors/problems w/ US society
 How we account for successes and failures and for behavior of others depends on
cultural context
 Cross-cultural validity, replicable, ecological validity, qualitative/not empirical,
confounding variables, correlational not causational
Milgram – obedience/shock
 40 males age 20-50, recruited through ads in mail and newspaper, subject feels 45
volts to know it’s not fake
 26/40 went full 450 V, nobody stopped before 300
 Obedience to authority
 Replicated with 40 women, same results (cross-gender validity), empirical data,
unethical, lacks cross-cultural validity, numbers are deceiving because qualitative
results showed obvious discomfort, undue stress
Darley and Latane – diffusion of responsibility
 Opportunity sample of college students, students have over-the-phone conversation
with up to 4 other people, listen to recording of someone having epileptic seizure,
85% leave if they are only one in room, 31% leave if with others. When questioned,
claim that others have no effect on own behavior
 In another study, smoke starts to fill room. When by themselves, subjects report
smoke. When with others, take interferes w/ breathing after 4 minutes, stay at least
6 minutes before telling someone
 Bystander effect/diffusion of responsibility
 Ethicality (deception, health risk w/ smoke), replicable, ecological validity
Asch: conformity
 5 confederates and 1 subject in a room, subject had to disagree on 12/18 trials.
 76% conformed on at least one of the critical trials, overall conformity 37% (control
group alone 99%
 We like to conform to the group
 Deception, Not terribly unethical, control group, experiment, all university students
Sheriff: Robbers’ Cave
 11 boys taken to camp, either “rattlers” or “eagles,” fierce rivalry developed, only
came to be friends when had to work together
 All white, young, Christian males
 Ecological validity, poor sample population, informed consent on part of boys?
Zimbardo and Grasshoppers
 Cognitive Dissonance
 Ecological validity (eating grasshoppers), only students, could have caused stress,
experiment/empirical
Aronson and Steele: stereotype threat
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African American and European Americans given difficult 30-minute verbal test,
African Americans did much worse when told it was about verbal abilities than if it
was about problem solving
 Mathematically-gifted women did worse on a math test when told that the test
showed gender differences
 Stereotypes influence performance
 Empirical, cross-cultural, reliable, ecologically valid
Zimbardo: Stanford Prison
 24 mostly white males randomly assigned to guard or prisoner groups, originally
supposed to be 2 weeks but ended after 6 days, emotional prisoner within 36 hours
 Obedience to authority
 Unethical, Ecologically valid, limited population, qualitative data
Kempe: ventral striatum
 Subjects look at 40 photos of faces w/ direct eye contact or not, hooked up to fMRI,
activity in ventral striatum increases w/ eye contact,
 People like social interaction
 Empirical, lacks cross-cultural validity
Bandura and Bobo Doll
 One group shown adult beating up Bobo doll, one shown adult assembling toys, one
not shown video, boys more physically aggressive, girls more verbally aggressive,
 Social learning theory
 Empirical, only children, ecological validity, unethical, demand characteristics?,
qualitative
Festinger and Carlsmith – PEGS
 71 male students do tedious task, paid $1 or $20 to tell someone else it was fun,
attitudes of $1 actually changed when later interviewed
 Cognitive dissonance
 objective, large population, all male students, slightly unethical w/ deception
Rizzolatti, Peng and Kitayama, Ekman, Bond and Smith, gotsman
Ekman – Faces
 Found expressions are universal by going to different countries (Japan, South
America, Europe) and also went to New Guinea and made them make up a story
 Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Fear, Surprise are unviversal
 Cross-Cultural, subjective, no empirical evidence, universal
Peng and Kitayam
 Collectivistic and individualistic culture, showed video of fish leaving group and
asked person to explain why left group, individuals said wanted to be separate from
group, collectivistic was ostracized
 Collectivistic place emphasis on individual
 Cross-cultural, empirical evidence, ethical
Bond and Smith
 Meta-analysis of 133 Aschesque studies, 17 different countries, more conformity in
collectivistic cultures
 Collectivistic cultures like conformity to reduce conflict
 Ethical, cross-cultural, same problems as Asch
 Rizzolatti: electrodes on cortex
 Electrodes on ventral premotor cortex of macaque monkey,
 Mirror neurons: if I see you do something, similar neurons fire as when I’m actually
doing ot
 Only monkeys, empirical
 Aronson: Jigsaw classroom
 Developmental
 Ainsworth: Strange Situation
 Baby and mom enter room, stranger enters, mom leaves and comes back
 Infants 1-2yrs old, securely attached and insecurely attached and ambivalent, put
 Securely: periodically returns, use them as “secure base”, insecure: doesn’t explore
env, ignore or avoid mothers. When returned to mom, hard to soothe, resist mom
attempts to comfort them
 Insecure, Secure, ambivalent
 Reliable, ecological validity, undue stress, qualitative, reductionist
 Piaget, state theory of development
 Sensorimotor (0-2yrs; explain world via senses), preoperational (2-7yrs; symbolic
thought, egocentrism, irreversibility, lack of conservation, centration), concrete
operational (7-12yrs; reversibility, logic limited to tangible materials), formal
operational (12+yrs; abstract/hypotheticals)
 Used his own kids, correlational,
 Baillargeon, DeVos
 Piaget thought couldn’t have object permanence until 9 months
 Expected event (short carrot), then unexpected (tall carrot disappears), watch for
surprise, look longer, infants as young as 2.5 months show object permanence,
shows event-specific expectations
 Infants have object permanence as early as 2.5 months
 Could just be staring, bad population, quantitative, looking doesn’t necessarily mean
object permanence
 Vygotsky
 Piaget underestimated social and cultural factors, from longitudinal study with
children from the USSR
 Zone of proximal development: difference between what children can accomplish on
own and what can accomplish w/ help of others
 Just a theory, less determinism, more environment
 Chomsky
 Children have innate predisposition to learn language, children use bad grammar but
we don’t use bad grammar so it’s not like we’ve taught them it
 Erikson: Social Stages
 Teens: identity vs role confusion, certain sex role identity, active interest in opposite
sex, plans for future, challenging authority, tends to be self accepting, bad if overly
obedient
 All subjective, “overly obedient?”
 Bem: gender schema theory
 Gender schemas influence how people think, rated people based on his own test
into masculine men and feminine females, in free recall test, gender-schematic
people more likely to group words like bull, etc. reaction time indicated that genderschematic people respond more quickly to schema-consistent attributes
 Gender schema theory
 Rated people based on her own test (subjective?), also had objective evidence from
the times, ethical, cross-gender validity, cross-cultural validity
 Harlow: monkeys
 New-born monkey put in cage with two wire monkeys, spent up to 22 hours a day
on terry cloth and not much on one with food
 We attach to things that are comforting
 We’re not monkeys, nor do we live in cages. Ethicality, if put back at early age can
adapt to be normal
 Vandell and Corasiniti
 236 middle-class 8-year old white male kids, 72% double-parent, 28% single-parent,
ask parents how often kids go to day care,
 More extensive day care = worse report cards and behavior grades
 Bad generalizability, large sample size, only school performance, ways to judge
cognitive development, deterministic, correlation
 Curtiss’ Genie (feral child)
 Grew up in isolation for 10 years, lots of difficulty in language
 Language has a critical period of development (before puberty)
 Assuming genie would have been fine, case study, lack of generalizability,
 Beal: boys and girls seem to create own “social worlds”
 boys make more boy friends, girls make more girl friends, girls maintain
relationships through compromise, conciliation, verbal conflict resolution
 Social Worlds
 Theory, naturalistic obvservation, reductionist, ecological validity
 Fagot and Hagan
 Naturally observed mothers and fathers interacting with children in homes, for 18-moold, found males more rewarded for associating with other boys and being aggressive,
females more rewarded for trying to communicate
 Men and women rewarded for different things
 Observational, cross-cultural, ecologically valid
 Mead: New Guinea tribes
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 Arapesh: men and women share food preparation and child-raising; Mundugumor men
and women both arrogant, uninterested in children, Tchambuli: women responsible for
food production and men gossip about appearances
 Gender roles can very culture to culture
 Cultural validity, observational,
Adler: inferiority/superiority complex
Kagan: low and high reactive
 4 month old kids for Ainsworth strange situation, argued that changes were due to
different innate temperaments,
 Stress, informed consent, empirical, randomly selected, generalizable
Chugani: PET scans on babies
 PET scans on glucose metabolism in babies,
 Little activity in cerebral cortex (associated with higher-level thinking), high activity in
brainstem and thalamus and amygdala,
 Led to exploring newborn brains like Bachevalier lesioning monkey brains for effect on
social activity
Bowlby: 44 thieves
 44 Thieves study, 44 adolescents in child protection program in London, 44 other
control kids who have emotional problems but not commit crimes
 More than half of juvenile thieves separated for at least 6 months from mom in first five
years, control group only has two, 32% experimental group “emotionless psychopaths”,
none in control group
 Mother is positive for development
 Experimenter bias from diagnosing psychopathy, undue stress from recalling memories
Giedd: different parts of brain maturing
 Longitudinal, normal students, MRIs every 2nd year, 95% of brain formed by 5 or 6,
growth spurt in prefrontal cortex and synapses, different parts mature @ different times
(frontal not done until 20)
 Ecological validity, anonymity, much data, confidentiality, correlation, no relationship
between behavior and brain
Money: Circumcision
 David Reimer burnt off penis, so doctor suggest give him hormones and name him
Brenda, identified himself as male and once found out, removed breasts and readded
penis, but killed himself
 Nature triumphs when it comes to gender
 Unethical, human, ecologically valid
Martin and Halvorson: pictures of boy and girl activities
 Age 5-6, showed boys and girls general-role schematic and aschematic pictures,
changed memories to ones that would adhere to gender roles
 People have activities associated with gender roles
 Only 5/6 year olds, can’t explain how and why gender roles form the way they do,
social/cultural factors not taken into account
Werner: Longitudinal
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 698 infants studied until four years old, 2/3 that experience risk factors have
learning/behavior problems by age 10 and mental/crime problems by 18
 Early learning has influence on later life
 Cross-cultural, large sample size, some died and were thrown out of data, deterministic
Caetano: meeting/video
 77 students, 36 psychatrists, either told were volunteers or patients, more clinical
experience was more likely to be persuaded by info
 Labeling theory: behavior is not most important aspect of diagnosing
 Could have had underlying problem
Rosenhan: mental hospitals
 5 men, three women, varying occupations, all labeled with schizophrenia, stayed for
average of 19 days, longest was 52 days, all released with “schizo in remission”
 Inability to tell difference between normal/abnormal behavior
 Mostly subjective, some objective
Nicholls: Great Ormond Street Hospital
 Population of 81 children w/ eating disorders, two practicioners asked to diagnose w/
DSM-IV (.36), ICD-10 (.636), GOS(.879)
 Certain books are better than others
 Too few children
Jenkins-Hall and Senko: More Depressed black women
 European American theorists watch video of depressed or healthy European women or
African American woman, diagnose black woman as more depressed and less socially
competent
 Stereotyping in diagnosing
 Confounding variables