Psych 1200, A01
Define: Psychology, Scientific method and behaviour
Describe: goals of psychology
Explain: emergence of structuralism and functionalism
List: The seven contemporary theoretical approaches to psychology and their basic premise
Identify: what do psychologists do
Chapter 1
What is psychology?
- The real goal of psychology is to understand human behaviour.
- Why bother?
o It is the root of the most good and the most problems in the world
o Curiosity
Is Psychology unique?
- Psychology: The scientific study of the behaviour of individuals and their mental processes
Scientific Method:
Set of procedures for gathering and interpreting objective information in a way that minimizes error and
yields dependable generalizations
Behaviour
What is behaviour?
- The observable actions by which an organism adjusts to its environment
The Goals of Psychology
- Describing what happens
- Explaining what happens
- Predicting what will happen
- Controlling what will happen
Describing what happens:
Behavioural data – reports of observations about behaviour and conditions under which they occur
- Researchers choose an appropriate level of analysis
- Measures of behavioural data must be objective
Explaining what will happen:
- Descriptions describe what happened
- Explanations look to explain “how” behaviour works
o Internal factor
 Genetic makeup, motivation, intelligence
o External factors
 Situational factors
Predicting what will happen:
- A closer look at scientific prediction
o Understand how events relate to one another
o What mechanisms link those events to certain predictors
- A closer look at causal prediction
o Specifies conditions under which behaviours will change
Controlling what happens:
- Control means making behaviour happen or not happen
- Ways of helping improve the quality of life
o Prevention
o Intervention
Evolution of Modern Psychology
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Historical foundations
“Psychology has a long history but a short past” (H. Ebbinghaus, 1908)
School of Structuralism
School of Functionalism
School of Structuralism
- Contents of the mind and concept of “reductionism”
Wundt is considered the father of scientific psychology
- His Q: how can the mind be studied?
- The use of scientific method
- Opened the 1st university based psychology lab
- Studied reaction times
- Discovery: mental processes take time
- Field today: cognitive psychology
Titchener’s goal of structuralism and the problem of introspection
- Introspection – to look inward
- All the elements of the mind can be tied to sensory experience
o Quality
o Intensity
o Duration
o Clarity
- Discovery – nearly all believe the method failed
o Private technique, unique to individuals
September 13, 2013
The phi phenomenon promoted Gestalt psychology
- Gestalt – the whole
- In conscious experience whole objects and scenes precedence over component parts
Main players…
- Wilhelm Wundt
o First psychological experimental laboratory
- Edward Titchener
o Brought structuralism to America introspection
- Max Wetheimer
o Concept of Gestalt psychology as an alternative to structuralism
School of Functionalism
- Minds with a PURPOSE
o William James
- The function of mind and behaviour in an organism’s interactions with the environment
- John Dewey
o American functionalism and progressive education
“We should learn by doing” –Dewey
William James’ functionalism founded modern psychology
- The main objective of psychology should be to understand the mind’s functions, not its
structures
- Influenced by Darwin
- True pioneer in psychology
- His students included Edward Thorndike and Mary Calkins
o Edward Thorndike – learning theory
o Mary Calkins –
Legacy of structuralism and functionalism
- Psychologists examine both the structure and function of behaviour
- How you do something may be as important as why you do it
- Set up context for modern psychology to flourish
September 18 2013
Psychodynamic perspective
- Key figure: Sigmund Freud
- Behaviour is explained in terms of inherited instincts, biological drive, and attempts to resolve
internal conflicts
- Focus is on the unconscious
Behavioral perspective
- Key figures: John Watson, B.F. Skinner
- Environment controls behavior
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Primarily concerned with observable behavior that can objectively recorded
Principles from animals generalizable to humans
Legacy – rigour and defined variables
Human perspective
- Key figure: Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow
- Emphasizes an individual’s inherent capacity for making rational choices and developing to their
maximum potential
- Self-actualization
- Unconditional Positive Regard
Cognitive perspective
- Human thought and the process of knowing and thinking
- Behavior occurs because people think
Piaget and Chomsky’s ideas influenced the emergence of cognitive psychology
- The study of people’s ability to acquire, organize, remember and use information they acquire
- Piaget: reasoning in children
- Chomsky: language is a set of mental rules
Biological perspective
- Behavior is explained in terms of underlying physical structures and biochemical processes
- At the micro level
Much of psychology has moved into the realm of neuroscience in the past decade
- Behavioural neuroscience
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Social neuroscience
- Greatest influence: Donald Hebb (Canadian)
The evolutionary perspective
- Biology and experience
o The biggest and most persistent issue in psychology revolves around the relative
contributions of biology and experience
o The nature vs. nurture debate
- Natural selection
Sociocultural perspective
- Cross-cultural differences in the causes and consequences of behavior
Table 1.1 for all perspectives
What psychologists do (fig. 1.2)
- Engage in psychological inquiry
- Formulate questions to be researched
- Conduct various forms of research
- Apply psychological principles
Other info:
- G. Stanley Hall
o Founded the APA in 189
- Women in psychology:
o Margaret Washburn
 First female to earn a doctorate degree (Ph. D) in psychology in 1894
- Mary Calkins
o First female to be president of APA
Chapter 2 – Research Methods in Psychology
September 20, 2013
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The research process
Psychological measurement
Ethical issues in human and animal research
Becoming a wiser research consumer
Objectives
- Explain the principal steps of the scientific method
- Explain hypotheses and theories
- Identify the major types of scientific research methods in psychology
- Discuss the principles of good experimental design
- Discuss the importance of operational definitions, explain the meaning of validity
- Discuss the control of independent variables
- Explain the meaning of reliability, describe the selection of subjects for an experiment
- Discuss the problem of subject/experimenter expectations and control for this
- Discuss correlation research studies, and how this relates to the issue of generality
- Discuss ethical issues involved in psychological research and the guidelines to promote the
humane and ethical treatment of living subjects
- Discuss the value of cross-cultural research
- Explain the use of descriptive statistics, measures of central tendency, measures of variability,
and the measurement of relations/associations
- Explain the concept of statistical significance and its use in determining the difference between
two group means
The Process of Research
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Step 1
o Initial phase of research, in which observations, beliefs, information, and general
knowledge to a new idea or a different way of thinking about some phenomenon
o Theory
 An organized set of concepts that explains a phenomenon or set of phenomena
o Psychologists use theories to formulate research questions
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Concept of determination
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The doctrine that all events – physical behavioural, and mental – are “determined by
specific causal factors that are potentially knowable
Step 2
o Develop a hypothesis
 Hypothesis o hypotheses
 A tentative and testable explanation(s) of the relationship between two
(or more) events or variables
Step 3
o Use the scientific method to design the study
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Scientific Method
o Set of procedures used for gathering and interpreting objective information in a way
that minimizes error and yields dependable generalizations
o Its goal is objectivity
o Want objective data, error free data
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A challenge to objectivity
o Observer bias
 Distortion of evidence because of the personal motives and expectations of the
viewer
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Observer bias: the remedy
o Standardization
 A set of uniform procedures for treating each participant
o Operational definition
 Defined in terms of the specific operation or procedure used to determine its
presence
 All variables in a research study must be given operational definitions
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Research variables
o Variables are factors in an experimental setting that change in amount and kind
 Independent variable
 Dependent variable
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Independent variable
o A factor that is manipulated by the researcher
o The causal part of the relationship
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Dependent variable
o A variable that the experimenter measures to assess the impact of a variation in an
independent variable
o The dependent outcome that is observed from the manipulation of the independent
variable
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Experimental method
o Researcher manipulates an independent variable to look at its effect on a dependent
variable
o Observes changes that occur in second variable
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The challenge to objectivity
o Alternative explanations to research
 These can result from
 Confounding variables
 Expectancy effects
 Placebo effect
o The more alternative explanations for a given result, the less confidence there is for an
initial hypothesis
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Confounding variable
o A variable other than what the experimenter purposely introduced that affects a
participants behaviour
o Confounding variables add confusion and place the interpretation of the data at risk
Expectancy effects
o Results that occur when a researcher or observer subtly communicates to the
participants the kind of behaviour he or she expects, therefore, creating the expected
reaction and/or outcome
Placebo effect
o Occurs when the experimental participants change their behaviour in the absence of
any kind of experimental/manipulation
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September 23, 2013
Levels of Analysis:
1) Micro (in your brain, look at your neurons)
2) Molecular (external individual)
3) Molar (big group; class)
Placebo Effect:
The feeling that something different is going to happen to you. Like a study where they gave out pills but
some of them were real and some of them were just sugar, fake. The people that took the sugar pill, act
out and have symptoms when nothing has happened, they act differently.
Dopamine (KNOW FOR TEST) – neurotransmitter
Control Procedures
- Consistent procedures for giving instructions, responses, and holding all other variables constant
except those being systematically varied
- Double blind control
- Placebo control
- Between subjects designs
- Within subjects designs
Double blind control
- Experimental procedure in what both the experimenter and the subject are unaware as to who
received the treatment
Placebo Control
- The inclusion of an experimental condition in which the treatment is not administered
Design
- Between subjects design
o Different groups of participants are randomly assigned to experimental conditions or to
control conditions
- Within subjects design
o Each participant is his or her own control
Good Sampling
- Sample:
o Subject of a population selected as participants in an experiment
- Representative sample:
o A subject of the population being studied
- Population:
o Entire set of individuals to which generalizations will be made based on an experimental
sample
Correlational methods
- Correlational methods
o Determine to what extent two variables, traits, or attributes are related
o Do not imply causation
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Correlational coefficient (r)
o Indicates the degree of relationship between two variables
R = -1  0  +1 (strong relationships)
Tight relationship: one increasing, one decreasing
Psychological measurement
- Reliability
o Degree to which a test produces similar scores each time it is used
- Validity
o Extent to which a test measure what it was intended
Self-report measures
- Behaviour identified through a participant’s own observations and reports
- Why might this be a problem? (social desirability)
Behavioural measures
- Overt actions and reactions that are observed and recorded
- Direct observations
o The behaviour is clearly visible and is easily recorded
o Can be aided by technology
- Naturalistic observations
o Naturally occurring behaviour is viewed without attempting to change or interfere
September 25, 2013
Archival Data
- Information taken from existing records
o Examples include birth and death records, weather reports, voting patterns, and
attendance figures
Case Study
- Intensive observation of a particular individual
- A case study can also involve an intensive observation of a small group of individuals
(research methods – pg. 35 table 2.1)
Ethical issues in Research
- Respect for the basic rights of humans and animals is a fundamental obligation of all researchers
- All research proposals are reviewed by special committees
- Factors the review board consider include:
o Informed consent
o Risk/in assessment
o Intentional deception
o Debriefing
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Informed consent
o Research participants are asked to sign statements indicating they have been informed
as to the potential risks and benefits of the study and consent to participate
Risk/Gain assessment
o Risks to the participants must be minimized
Intentional deception
o For some research it is not possible to tell participants the intention of the study
without biasing the results
o American/Canadian psychological association has strict rules on the use of deception
Debriefing
o At the end of all studies each participant must be provided with as much information
about the study as possible
Issues in animal research
o Should animals be used in psychological and medical research?
Milgram’s experiments – obedience
Zimbardo’s prison experiments – situation
Asch’s experiments – conformity ***
A Wiser Research Consumer
- Becoming a wiser research consumer
o Becoming a wiser consumer of research involves critical thinking
o Knowing how to evaluate claims
Outline
- Why statistics
- Data analyses
- Descriptive statistics
- Inferential statistics
- Consuming statistics
Why statistics?
- Statistics are used to make sense of data collected
- Provide a quantitative basis for conclusions drawn
- Help us make decisions when people use data to sway our opinions and actions
Data analyses
- Two types of statistics to interpret raw data
Descriptive statistics
o Used to describe different aspects of numerical data
o Mathematical procedures used in objective way
Inferential statistics
o Use probability to make decisions about which results might have occurred through
chance variation
Descriptive Statistics
- Frequency distributions
o A summary of how frequently each of the various scores occurs
o How?
 Rank order scores
 Create intervals
 Note frequencies
- Graphs can help us visually understand data ad see patterns
o Bar graphs
o Histograms
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Measures of central tendency
o Mode
o Median
o Mean
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Measures of central tendency
Mode
o The score that occurs more often than any other
Median
o The middle score that separates the upper and lower half of the distribution
Mean
o Average score (sum of scores divided by the total number of scores)
September 27, 2013
- Measures of variability
Range
o Difference between highest and lowest scores in the distribution
Standard Deviation (SD)
o Measure of variability that indicate the average difference between the scores and their
mean
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Correlation coefficient (r)
o A measure of the nature and strength of the relationship between two variables
o Range from -1 to +1
Inferential Statistics
- Which inferences can be made from our samples and what conclusions we can draw from our
data
o Are group differences large enough to be meaningful
o Based on the idea that data represents a normal curve or distribution
- Statistical significance
o Whether a difference is real or due to chance
- Significant difference
o Differences having a probability of occurring by chance less than 5 out of 100 times (p <
.05)
o Stricter probability levels may be used
Consuming Statistics
- Be wise to the use and misuse of statistics
- Misleading impressions can occur
o Generalizations from sample populations may not be representative of population
o Check use of appropriate statistics based on normal assumptions and sample size
Cross-cultural Psychology
- Important to consider, otherwise our theories are not generalizable
- All cultures have implicit or explicit psychology theories, theories of how the mind works, that
have been developing for thousands of years
- Overlap with western psychological traditions have been found
- Some cultures, completely lost, other were written down
September 30, 2013
Chapter 3 – Evolutionary Psychology
Main points of video:
- Foundations of evolutionary psychology
- Evolution and behaviour
- Sociobiology
- Decline of behaviourism
- The unshakeable foundations of Darwinian theory
- Variation in the human genotype
- Evolution of language and emotion
- Applied evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
- What is evolutionary psychology?
o The study of behaviour and the mind using the principle of evolutionary theory
- Causal explanations in psychology
o Nature vs. nurture
Foundations of evolutionary psychology
- Lamarck (1809) believed there were 2 causes of change:
o Natural tendency for organisms to become more complex
o And inheritance of acquired characteristics
The influence of Charles Darwin
- Early ideas from observation of changes in species occurring as a result of selective pressures
from environment
- Wrote the book “The Origin of Species” (1859)
- One of the most influential scholars to bring evolutionary theories to the attention of scientists
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Continuity between animals and humans
Individual differences – even though species share common characteristics, there are also
differences – can determine our fitness to survive
Importance of adaptability
Importance of the environment – surrounding environment changes overtime and because it is
changing our ability to fit in that environment requires us to change in appropriate ways in order
to survive
Emphasis on change
Natural selection
- Favourable adaptations to features of the environment allow some members of a species to
reproduce more successfully than others (C. Darwin, Origins of Species, 1859)
Sexual selection
- Darwin also proposed the theory of sexual selection… (eg. Peacock tail)
October 2, 2013
Young, Critelli, & Keith
- University students were asked about ages of the mate they would choose
- Males aged 18-19 preferred females age 16.87 for marriage, but 17.76 for a sexual encounter
Darwin and the bumblebee
- What is interesting about the shape of combs in hives?
- The hexagonal cells of the honeybee’s hives are the optimal shape for storing large amounts of
honey and lavae using the least amount of wax
Evolution & Behaviour
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Darwin and the smile
o Two kinds of smile
 Happy smile
 False smile
o Homologies with other animals
 Chimpanzees & other primates
 Innate…
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Herbert Spencer – survival of the fittest
o The physical world, organisms, the mind, culture, and human society changed according
to evolution
o That evolution could shape human society came to be known as Social Darwinism
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Sir Francis Galton applied evolutionary theory to the study of human abilities
o Eg. Interlligence
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Eugenics
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Genetic Determinism = all human qualities are hardwired in genetic material
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Environmental determinism = humans are shaped by the environment (the extreme form is the
idea of…..tabula rasa/blank slate)
Ethology
- Ethology incorporates evolutionary theory in the study of animal behaviour
- concepts of proximate and ultimate behavioural causes
Key player in the ethology movement
- Konrad Lorenz and imprinting…
o Form of learning where animals form associations with the first object they see
o Evidence for critical periods in development
Altruism
- Altruism involves the study of unselfish and potentially risky behaviour that animals perform for
the benefit of another animal
Reciprocal Altruism
- Altruism occurs even without genetic relatedness
- Reciprocal altruism – I do something nice, you do something nice back
- Inclusive fitness
Conflict in the womb
- Scott Forbes U of Winnipeg
- Theory that there is conflict in the womb between a mother and a child
Sociobiology
- Edward Wilson (1975)
o Sociobiology: The new Synthesis
o Complex behaviours could be explained by synthesizing many fields (broader than solely
biology)
- David Buss
o Advocates understanding the human mind from an evolutionary perspective
The Cinderella Effect
- Daly & Wilson (2001)
- Initial questions involved whether step children are disproportionately mistreated compared to
biological children
- The answer was “yes”
Decline of behaviourism
- Research suggested that human behaviour could not be fully explained by only observing
behaviour
- Harlow’s monkeys
- Cognitive revolution
- Donald Hebb
Foundations of Darwinian Theory
- Darwin’s theories were not really embraced until scientific basis for inheritance was proposed
- Gregor Mendel’s studies on heritability
o Genotype = the genetic structure
 Genotypes interact with environment to produce variations in expression
o Phenotype = observable characteristics
October 4, 2013
Human Evolution
- Humans have common physical behavioural features
- Two adaptations in humans favoured by natural selection:
o Bipedalism – ability to walk upright
o Encephalization – increase in brain size
o Responsible for most advances in human evolution
Variation in the Human Genotype
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Genetics is the study of heritability
o Heritability – the inheritance of physical psychological traits from ancestors
We all have unique biological blueprints and timelines for development based on our
generational histories
Basic Genetics
- DNA – deoxyribonucleic acid (contained in nucleus of cells)
- Genes are contained within DNA
The Genes
- Gene’s provide instructions for production of body’s proteins, which are the molecular basis for
behaviour
- Genes are contained in chromosomes..
o Sex chromosomes = contain genes coding for development of male (XY) or female (XX)
characteristics
- Much government and research attention about the genome
Genes & Behaviour
- Human behaviour genetics
o Explores causal relationships between inheritance and behaviour by combining
psychology and genetics
- Estimation of the heritability of human behaviours
o Ranges from 0 (environment) to 1 (genetic)
o Use of adoption and twin studies
Evolution of Language
- Advent of language an evolutionary milestone
- Language is the basis for cultural evolution
o Tendency of cultures to respond adaptively, through learning, to environmental change
o Allows for rapid adjustments to changes
- Is language an adaptation or a by-product of evolution?
Adaptation
Proponents: Stephen pinker
Language developed as direct consequence of natural selection
Too complex to be side effect
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By-product
Proponents: Noam Chomsky, Stephen Jay Gould
Development of language accidental side effect of brain growth
Regardless of how language evolved, what about WHY?
o Social gossip hypothesis (dunbar, 1996)
 Language functions as a form of social grooming (maintenance of social bonds)
o Social contract hypothesis (deacon, 1997)
 Language developed to facilitate marriage contracts between mates
(communicate relationships to others)
o Also ideas on how language relates to attracting mates?
Evolution of Emotion
- Can emotions be related to evolutionary history?
- Phobias
o Strong fear of a stimulus that disrupts their life
o Rooted in predispositions to develop certain fears that were once adaptive in dangerous
ancestral environments (accounts for most phobias)
o Some phobias related to features of modern world resulting from conditioning
- Not all emotions can be explained by evolution…
- Depression
o Reduced serotonin in brain linked to subordination (and behaviour change)
o Evolutionary theory would suggest that actions would reflect attempts to re-establish
dominance
Applied Evolutionary Psychology
- Disciplines have turned attention to evolutionary psychology to explain certain medical and
mental health issues
o Eg. Fever = body’s response to fighting infection
o Eg. Substance abuse = body has brain receptors that correspond to certain drugs
 Note: some drugs may have adaptive function of reducing physical or mental
discomfort
October 7, 2013
Chapter 4
Notes from Emily
October 9, 2013
Neurotransmitters
- Acetylcholine - cholinergic
- GABA (gamma-amino butyric acid)
- Dopamine – dopaminergic
- Norepinephrine – Nora generic
- Serotonin
- Endorphins
Dopamine and addiction
- Plays a role in the placebo
o Involved in expectation of a reward (altruism)
Dopamine related to pleasure and reward
- Dopamine – reward and pleasure
- Thinking about performing an altruistic act is pleasurable
- Bees dance to tell others where food is
- Cocaine influences on the dopamine in the brain
- Cocaine causes bees to dance more – giving more information on where food is
- Bees experience withdrawal symptoms
Action potentials
- Neurons are said to “fire” or produce a response
o They make this decision by combining the inputs arriving at each dendrite
o Excitatory input
 Information entering a neuron that signals it to respond and fire
o Inhibitory input
 Information entering a neuron that signals it not to respond and fire
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Action potential:
o The nerve impulse – brief shift in a neuron’s electrical charge that travels along an axon
Resting potential
o Polarization of cellular fluid within a neuron, which provides the capacity to produce an
action potential (stable, negative charge when the cell is inactive)
October 11, 2013
(Dopamine)
Absolute refractory period – is a period when another action potential would not be activated. Prevents
the action potential to move backwards
All or none law – like a gun firing a bullet; it will not stop halfway, once it’s fired it’s fired
October 11, 2013
Chapter 4b
Objectives
- How we study the brain
- The major parts of the nervous system and brain and some of their major functions
- Why it is a good thing that the outer covering of the human is so wrinkled
Francis Crick – the astonishing hypothesis
- “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal
identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells
and their associated molecules.
Biology and Behaviour
- Eavesdropping on the Brain
o Interventions in the brain
 Lesions: injuries to or the destruction of brain tissue
o Repetitive trans cranial magnet stimulation (rTMS)
o Recording and imaging brain activity
Localization of function theories – assumes different parts of the brain have different functions
Study of brain
- Research methods of physiological psychology
o Lesion
o Stimulation
- Assessment of damage to the human (and animal) brain
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Broca’s Area of the Brain
o Named after brain researcher Paul Broca
o Language research and brain damage
o Area of the brain that translates thoughts into speech or sign
o Located in the left hemisphere – left frontal lobe in 95% of humans
Repetitive trans cranial magnet stimulation (rTMS)
o Pulses of magnetic stimulation create temporary reversible lesions without damage to
briefly inactivate the brain for study
Recording and Imaging Brain Activity
- Electroencephalogram (EEG)
o Electrical activity of the brain
- PET scans
o Records radioactivity emitted by cells during cognitive and behavioural activities
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
o Scans the brain using magnetic fields and radio waves
- Functional MRI (fMRI)
o Detects magnetic changes in blood flow to cells in the brain
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
Brain activity – purely electrical in nature
1. Electrodes are attached to the skull, corresponding to specific areas of the brain
2. Polygraph electrodes are connected to magnets which are connected to pens…
3. …That produces a paper record of electrical activity in the brain. This record indicates a relaxed
person
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
- A method for analyzing biochemical activity in the brain, using injections of a glucose-like
substance containing a radioactive element
- Active areas have increased blood flow
- Sensors detect radioactivity
- Different tasks show distinct activity patterns
MRI
- Based on the idea that atoms behave like spinning bar magnets in the presence of a magnetic
field
- Requires 3 magnets – 2 coils + radio frequency coil
Functional MRI
- See how the brain image below changes from light to dark in some areas. This shows an fmri
signal over time
Nervous System
- Central nervous system (CNS)
o Brain and spinal cord
o Integrates and coordinates all body functions processes all incoming neural messages,
and sends out commands to different parts of the body
- Peripheral nervous system (PNS)
o Spinal and cranial nerves
o Connects the body’s sensory receptors to the CNS and the CNS to muscles and glands
o Contains sets of nerve fibers
 Somatic nervous system
 Autonomic nervous system
October 18, 2013
- Somatic nervous system (SNS)
o A subdivision of the peripheral nervous system that connects the CNS to the skeletal
muscles and skin
o Controls the body’s involuntary motor responses by connecting the sensory receptors to
smooth muscles, cardiac muscle and glands
 Sympathetic nervous system
 Parasympathetic nervous system
- Divisions of the Autonomic Nervous System
o Sympathetic nervous system
 Governs responses to emergency situations
o Parasympathetic nervous system
 Monitors the routine operation of the body’s internal functions
A Tour through the Brain
- Brain stem
- Cerebellum
- Thalamus
- Hypothalamus and the pituitary gland
- Amygdala
- Hippocampus
- Cerebrum and lobes of the cerebral cortex
The Brain
- 4 major parts
o Brain stem (older part of the brain)
o Cerebellum – regulates coordinate movements; posture, rapid movements
o Limbic system – (middle of brain) regulates motivation, emotion and memory processes
o Cerebral hemisphere – responsible for higher order processing
Brain Structures and Their Functions
- Brain stem
o Medulla
 Center for breathing, blood pressure, and heartbeat
o Pons
 Provides input to other brain stem structures and cerebellum, sleeping and
dreaming
o Reticular formation
 Dense network of nerve cells that arouses the brain’s cortex and screens all new
stimulation
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Thalamus
o Relays incoming sensory information to the cerebral cortex
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Cerebellum
o Coordinates bodily movements, controls posture and maintains equilibrium
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Limbic System
o Hippocampus
 Acquisition of implicit memory
o Amygdala
 Controls emotion, aggression, and formation of emotional memory
o Hypothalamus
 Regulates motivated behaviour
 4 f’s – flight, food, fear and reproduction
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The cerebrum
o Occupies two-thirds of the total mass of the brain
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Cerebral cortex
o Outer layer of cerebrum
o Made up of billions of cells
o Is about 2 mm thick
Cerebral Hemispheres
o the two halves of the brain are connected by the corpus callosum
o lateralization
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Corpus callosum
o The pathway that sends messages back and forth between the hemispheres
Two key landmarks, the central sulcus and lateral fissure, divide each hemisphere into four areas
- Parietal lobe – touch, pain, attention
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Occipital lobe – final spot for visual info
Temporal lobe – hearing and sounds, memory, perception, emotions
Frontal lobe – motor control, cognitive activity, planning, creative thinking, goal making
Motor Cortex
- Controls the action of the body’s voluntary muscles
Somatosensory cortex
- Processes sensory input from various body areas
Auditory cortex
- Receives and processes auditory information
Visual cortex
- Processes visual information
Association cortex
- High level brain processes
Hemispheric Lateralization
- Some functions are localized to one hemisphere of the brain
o Speech is localized in the left
- The two hemispheres embody different types of processing
o Left hemisphere tends to be more analytic
o Right hemisphere tends to be more holistic
- Sex differences in the brain
Plasticity and neurogenesis
- Plasticity
o Changes in the performance of the brain
o Occurs in childhood, adolescents – lots of change going on
- Physical explanations for plasticity
o The formation of new synapses
o Changes in communication across synapses
- Plasticity also depends on life experiences
o Environmental enrichment has an impact
October 21, 2013
Notes from Emily
October 23, 2013
Controversies in perception
- Subliminal perception should be allowed in advertising
- Colour blindness should be categorized as a disability
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ESP exists: perception without sensation
Some people have a sixth sense
Children with auditory or visual impairment should be mainstreamed in our educational system
The Lens
- Accommodation
o Process by which ciliary muscles change the thickness of the lens of the eye
- Thin lens bring far objects into focus
- Thick = close objects into focus
Retina and Photoreceptors
- Retina
o Photoreceptors
 Rods
 Dim illumination
 Cones
 Colour vision
- Fovea
o A small region of densely packed cones at the centre of the retina
Near and Far sightedness:
- Near and far sighted people both have issues with the curvature of their cornea and/or lens and
how the image is focused on the retina
- Near sighted – too much curvature of the cornea and/or lens so nearby objects are seen more
clearly than distant objects
- Far sighted – too little curvature of the cornea and/or lens so distant objects are seen more
clearly than nearby ones
- Astigmatism – an irregularity in the shape of the cornea and/or lens which distorts and blurs the
image at the retina
Dark Adaptation:
- Try and recall the last time you went from a very bright area to a dim one
- Remember how difficult it was to see for several minutes just after you went indoors
- This is an example of dark adaptation
- As we enter a dark room, our photo pigments are basically regenerating
- This effect is most sensitive after 30 minutes of dark exposure
- Also, all the rod pigments have been bleached out due to the bright light and the rods are
initially non-functional
How does the retina send signals to the brain – figure 6.13
More about the eye:
-
Many types of neurons help to transmit the images that you “see”
Ganglion cells converge to form the optic nerve of each eye
Where the optic nerve exits the retina, there are no rods or cones – this is your blind spot
You also have special neurons called feature detectors that help you to distinguish contours,
orientation, and basic shape
Feature detectors are what are fooled by optical illusions
Seeing colour
- Electromagnetic spectrum
o Your visual system can only sense a small range of wavelengths
o Wavelength of the light determines what colour we see
o Longer wavelengths – reds oranges
o Shorter – violets and blues
- Wavelength
- Experience of colour depends on 3 dimensions
o Hue
o Saturation
o Brightness
Defects in colour vision
- Hereditary anomalous colour vision
o Protanopia – defective red cones
o Deuteranopia – defective green cones
o Tritanopia – defective blue cones
Theories of colour vision
- Young-helmholtz trichromatic theory
o Suggests there are three types of colour receptors: red, green, and blue
o All other colours are additive or subtractive combinations of these three
- Opponent-process theory
o Proposes all colour experiences arise from 3 systems, each of which includes 2
opponent elements
 Red vs green
 Blue vs yellow
 Black (no colour) vs white (all colours)
o Perception is controlled by the activity of 2 opponent systems (Edwards hering)
o Certain neurons can either be excited or inhibited depending on the wavelength of light
o Complimentary wavelengths have opposite effects
o So – we can see a negative after image
Your other senses
- Cutaneous senses: touch and skin
-
Vestibular sense
Kinesthetic sense
Touch – the sensitivity to pressure on the skin
Somotosensation – general term used for the four classifications of tactile sensations:
o Touch/pressure
o Warmth
o Cold
o Pain
How does your sense of touch work?
- Transduction
o Transduction of mechanical energy of pressure/touch and heat energy of warmth/cold
occurs at sensory receptors located all over the body just below the skin’s surface
October 28, 2013
Pain:
Why is pain important?
- it alerts you to injury and often prevents further damage
- Relief from pain results in secretion of endorphins
- The experience of pain is extremely variable (pain threshold)
Gate-control theory
- Suggests that cells in the spinal cord act as neurological gates, interrupting and blocking some
pain signals and allowing others to get through to the brain
Neuromatrix theory
- Incorporates the reality that people experience pain without physical cause
Body senses: Kinesthetic
- The body senses of kinesthetic and the vestibular system help us to make sense of the
positioning of our bodies in our environments
- Kinesthetic – the system that enables you to sense the position and movement of individual
parts of your body
- Sensory receptors for kinesthetic are nerve endings in your muscles, tendons, and joints
Vestibular system (sense):
- Vestibular system (sense) – your sense of equilibrium or body orientation
- How it works:
o Your inner ear has semicircular canals at right angles to each other, also the saccule and
utricle
o Hair like receptor cells are stimulated by acceleration caused when you turn your head
and the ear structures respond
o The these calculations are sent to the eye and then the brain for processing
Attentional processes
- Attention
o Determines which information is available in your perceptual process
- Selective attention
o Your decision to focus your awareness on only limited aspects of what you’re capable of
 Goal-directed selection
 Stimulus-driven capture
Fate of unattended information
- Broadbent’s study of selective attention
- Dichotic listening
o Procedure in which a subject hears two different taped messages at the same time
- Shadowing
o The subject is instructed to repeat only one of two messages while ignoring the other
message
- Cocktail party effect
Principles of perceptual grouping
- Gestalt psychology
o A school of psychology that maintains that psychological phenomena can be understood
only when viewed as organized, structured wholes, not when taken down into primitive
perceptual elements
Figure and ground terms
- Proximity
- Similarity
- Continuity
o Seeing lines that connect 1 to 2 and 3 to 4 in C
- Closure
o Seeing a horse in D
Common Fate
- Visual elements which appear to be moving in the same direction will be grouped together
Motion perception
- The phi phenomenon
o A movement illusion in which one or more stationary lights going on and off in
succession are perceived as a single light
October 30, 2013
-
Perceptual inference
o Largely optimatic and unconscious
o In large parts its due to pass encounters with certain objects – we know what to expect
in the future
o Largely depends on experience
o Humans are born with some ability to make some perceptual inference but most is
learned
Depth perception:
- Depth perception – the ability to judge the distance of objects (babies are not good at this)
- We use cues to tell us how far or near objects are from us
o 2 types:
 Monocular – cues from single eye
 Binocular – cues from both eyes
-
-
Binocular cues:
o Each eye has a slightly different view of what you are seeing (retinal disparity) – thumbs
up!
o Retinal disparity decreases with distance
 With both eyes open your brain fuses the images (depth perception)
o Convergence – look at the tip of your nose with both eyes
 the close the object the more convergence
Monocular cues:
o Motion parallax – closer objects seem to be moving faster than those far away; distant
objects seem stationary
o Pictorial cues
 Interposition
 Relative size
 Linear perspective
 Texture gradients
The ponzo illusion
- Linear perspective provides context
- Side lines seem to converge
- Top line seems farther away
o But the retinal images of the red lines are equal
Shape constancy
- Even though these images cast shadows of different shapes, we still see the quarter as round
o Experience plays a roll – when we are familiar with the object
Influence of contexts and expectancies
- A set is a temporary readiness to perceive a stimulus in a given way
o Motor set – prepared response
o Mental set – learned rules
o Perceptual set – detect a particular stimulus
Perceptual constancies
- Size and shape constancy
- Lightness constancy – our tendency to perceive the whiteness, greyness or blackness of objects
as constant across levels of illumination
How does our brain decide what we “see?”
- Our expectations
- Previous experiences
- Interests
- Biases - what is wanted give rise to different perception
Physics of sound
- Sound is vibrational energy
- Frequency (wavelength)
o The number of cycles the wave completes in a given time (pitch)
o Hertz – 1 cycle per second
- Amplitude
o The physical property of the strength of the sound wave (loudness)
o Higher its peak, the loud it is
- Timber – complexity
What does the ear lobe?
- Pinna – modifies sound
- Ear canal – helps the sound flow through
- Eardrum – vibration sensor – voice/sound is causing eardrum to vibrate – causes occicles to
vibrate
- Occicles – hammer, anvil, stirrup – connected to choclea through oval window
- Oval window – connects occicles to the choclea
- Chochlea – in the chochlea there is a basilar membrane (receptive organ for sound), along
basilar membrane there are cells called cilium GOOGLE
Theories of pitch perception
- Place theory
o Herman von Helmholtz
o
-
Difference frequency tones produce activation at different locations along the basilar
membrane
Frequency theory
o A tone produces a rate of vibration in the basilar membrane equal to its frequency
o Notes from em
Chapter 6
November 4 2013
Preview:
- The contents of consciousness
- The function of consciousness
- Sleep and dreams
-
Altered states of consciousness
Mind-altering drugs
-
What is ordinary conscious awareness?
-
What determines the contents of our consciousness?
-
Why do we need consciousness?
-
Can unconscious mental events really influence our thoughts, emotions and behaviours?
-
How does consciousness change over a day or night period?
-
Can we intentionally alter our state of consciousness?
-
How can we study this scientifically?
-
How can we externalize the internal, make the private public and precisely measure subjective
experiences?
History of consciousness
- Psychology began as a science of consciousness
- The behaviourists argue about alienating consciousness from psychology
- However, after the 1960’s with the cognitive revolution, mental concepts (consciousness) reentered psychology
What is ordinary consciousness?
- Psychologists believe that consciousness is an awareness of internal events (ourselves) and of
the external environment
- Self-awareness
o Top level of consciousness
o Helps us focus on what we are doing and why we are doing it
Neuroscience and consciousness
- Neuroscientists believe that consciousness emerges from the interaction between individual
brain events much like a chord created from different notes
Tell me about the nature of though
- Human thought Is characterized by the ability to use language
o Organizing of time and categorizing information
o Syntax
- Neural unit of though
o A results of the activity of complex neural circuits
- Non-conscious processes
o Preconscious memories
o
o
 Can be called into consciousness when necessary
Unattended information
Unconsciousness
Consciousness
- Some are spontaneous:
o Daydreaming, dreaming, drowsiness
- Some are physiologically induced
o Orgasms, hallucinations, food or oxygen deprivation
- Some are psychologically induced:
o Sensory deprivation, hypnosis, meditation
Consciousness and information processing
- The consciousness mind processes information sequentially
- The unconsciousness mind processes information simultaneously on different tracks
Studying consciousness
- Think-aloud protocols
o Reports of mental processes and strategies
- Experience-sampling method
o Participants record thoughts and feelings when signaled to do so
Functions of consciousness
- Aiding survival
o Help us make sense of our environment
- Personal construction of reality
o Your unique interpretation of a current situation
- Cultural construction of reality
o Ways of thinking about the world that are shared by most members of a particular
group
Sleep and Dreams
- Sleep: “the irresistible tempter to whom we eventually succumb”
- Biological rhythms
o Internal biological clock
 Annual cycles; SAD, menstrual cycles
- Circadian rhythm – 24 hour cycle
- Jet lag – internal de-synchronization (suprachiasmatic nucleus – SCN)
Sleep cycle
- Studying sleep: about every 90 minutes, we pass through a cycle of 5 distinct sleep stages
o Left and right eye movement, muscle tension, brain waves
- Rapid eye movement (REM)
o Dreamlike mental activity
- Non-REM sleep
o Less activity, the remainder of the sleep cycle
REM sleep – brain activity is rapid and irregular, features of high body arousal occur (breathing
rates, high blood pressure, twitching). Most but not all of our dreams occur in REM sleep
Non-REM sleep – basically remaining of the cycle
EEG patterns (non-rem)
1. Active wakefulness – beta waves (awake and alert, engaging in strong activity, brain exhibits
low amplitude and fast irregular beta waves
2. Just before sleep (awake/relaxed) – brain activity slows down into alpha waves. Large
amplitude slow regular waves (meditating)
3. Stage 1 sleep – during early/light sleep. Really small and irregular brain waves (theta waves)
4. Stage 2 sleep – deeper sleep. Associated with short bursts of activity called sleep spindles
and sharp wave forms called cave complexes (theta waves)
5. Stage 3 sleep – deeper deeper sleep. Brain activity starting to slow down (delta waves)
6. Stage 4 sleep – deep deep sleep. Delta waves dominating
-
Sleep patterns change as we age
Important to get rem sleep – it shows greater improvement on tasks (allows brain to consolidate
information?)
Law of specific nerve energies states those different sensory modalities are perceived differently
because information from each enters different sensory organs
November 6, 2013
Why do we sleep?
We spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping
- Conservation/protects
o Sleep evolved because it allowed animals to conserve energy/asleep when predators
are looming and keep ancestors safe
- Restoration
o Sleep (specifically NREM) occurs to provide an opportunity to repair and restore brain
cells
- Memory functions?
o There is some evidence that sleep strengthens the learning that takes place during
waking hours
- Sleep and growth
o During sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormones. Older people produces less
and sleep less
Sleep disorders
- Insomnia
o Chronic inability to sleep
- Narcolepsy
o Irresistible compulsion to sleep
- Sleep apnea
o Stop breathing while asleep
- Somnambulism
o Sleepwalking in which people leave their beds and wander while still remaining asleep
Dreams
- Nightmares: frightening dreams that wake a dreamer during REM sleep
o Children
- Night terrors
o Sudden arousal from sleep with intense fear accompanied by physiological reactions,
rapid heart rate that occur during NREM sleep
Dream theories
- Wish fulfillment (Freud)
Content of dream is symbolic and signifies/represent our unacceptable feelings
- Information processing
Dreams help us to sift, sort, and fix our days experience in our memories
- Physiological functioning
Dreams provide the brain with periodic stimulation to develop and preserve neuro
pathways
- Activation-synthesis theory
Brain engages in a lot of random neuro activity; dream pulls together activity
- Cognitive development
Researchers argue that we dream as a part of brain maturation and cognitive development
- All dream researchers believe we need REM sleep. When deprived of REM sleep, and then
allowed to sleep, we show increased REM sleep called REM rebound
-
-
Freudian dream analysis
o Manifest content
o Latent content
o Dream work
Lucid dreaming
o Conscious awareness of dreaming is a learnable skill
Non-western approaches
o Shamans – spiritual leaders; considered to possess human interpretation
o Meaning of dreaming to many non-western cultures is the dreams provide critical
information about community
Altered states of consciousness
- Hypnosis
o Altered state of awareness
o A social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist), suggests to another (the
subject), that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts or behaviours, will spontaneously
occur
o Brain EEG recordings are similar to those of a relaxed person
The origins of hypnosis
- Franz Mesmer, 1734 – 1815
- Credited for the popularity of hypnosis
- Some of his patients experienced a trancelike state, and felt better upon waking up
Hypnotic controversies
- Who is most likely to be hypnotized?
o People who have vivid imagination
- Those who practice hypnosis agree that its power resides in the subject’s openness to
suggestion
- Hypnotic analgesia
Altered state of consciousness
- Meditation refers to a family of practices that train attention to heighten awareness and bring
mental processes under greater voluntary control
- Designed to enhance self-knowledge and well-being through reduced self-aware
- Religious ecstasy
o Religious experiences
Mind altering drugs
- Psychoactive drugs
o Chemical substances that alter perception and mood (conscious awareness of reality)
- Drug dependence and addiction
- Tolerance
o Continued use requires greater dosage
- Physiological dependence
o Body becomes adjusted to and dependent on a drug, craving for a drug
- Psychological dependence
o Negative emotions
- Addiction
o Outcome of tolerance and dependence
- Withdrawal
o Painful withdrawal symptoms
Psychoactive drugs
- 3 groups:
o Hallucinogens
o Depressants
o Stimulants
November 8, 2013
- Hallucinogens (psychedelics)
o Mescaline
o Ketamine
o Psilocybin
o LSD
o PCP
- Cannabis
o THC
o Hashish
o Marijuana
Types of psychoactive drugs
- Depressants
o Barbiturates – valium
o Alcohol
o Opiates – opium
 Heroin
 Morphine
Stimulants – increase your heart and breathing rate
- Cocaine
- Caffeine
- Nicotine
- Amphetamine
Influences on drug use
- Biological
o Genetic tendencies
o Dopamine reward circuits
- Psychological influences
o Lacking sense of purpose
o Significant stress
o Psychological disorders, such as depression
- Social-cultural influences
o Features of the urban environment
o Belonging to a drug using cultural group
o Peer influences
November 8, 2013
Chapter 7 – learning and behaviour analysis
Main topics:
- The study of learning
- Classical conditioning: learning predictable signals
- Operant conditioning: learning about consequences
- Biology and learning
- Cognitive influences on learning
What is behaviourism?
- Recall:
o Understand behaviour in terms of relationship to observable stimuli
 Classical conditioning
 Operant conditioning
o Stimulus response learning
What is a reflex?
- Reflex
o Simple behaviour
o Automatic
o Stimulus response
o Mediated by the nervous system
o Modified through experience (conditioned reflexes)
What is habituation?
- Is the simplest form of learning
- Is learning not to respond to an unimportant event that occurs repeatedly
What is learning?
- Learning defined
o Experience that results in a relatively permanent change in behaviour or behavioural
patterns
o Eg. Habituation
Who was involved?
- Ivan P. Pavlov
o Classical conditioning model
- John Watson
o Introspection
o Father of American behaviourism
- B.K. Skinner
o Operant conditioning model
- The behaviourism movement
- Behaviour analysis
- Cannot explain ALL behaviour…
Classical conditioning
- Classical conditioning
o A basic form of learning in which one stimulus predicts the occurrence of another
- Ivan P. Pavlov
o Nobel peace prize
o Conditioning occurs through association
 Strengthening or wakening the association between the stimuli in the
environment and some response
Pavlov’s experiments:
Study of reflexes – new reflexes from old reflexed
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
- Any stimulus that naturally elicits a behaviour
Unconditioned response (UCR)
- The behaviour elicited by the UCS
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
- A neutral stimulus that is able to elicit behaviour only after association with the UCS
Conditioned response (CR)
- The behaviour elicited to the CS
-
-
Acquisition
o The process by which the CR is first elicited
o Timing is critical
 CS and UCS must be presented closely enough in time to be perceived as being
related
Extinction
Spontaneous recovery
Processes of conditioning
- Stimulus generalization
o Same responses are made to similar stimuli
- Stimuli discrimination
o Different responses are made to similar stimuli
Focus on acquisition
- Robert Rescorla
o A neutral stimulus will become and effective CS only if it is informative and reliably
predicts the UCS
What is biological significance of classical conditioning?
- The ability to learn to recognize stimuli that predict the occurrence of an important event
- Stimuli that were previously unimportant acquire some of the properties of the important
stimuli
What is learned in classical conditioning?
- If the CS reliably predicts the presentation of the UCS, the CR is strong
- The ability to classically condition a response is probably due to the organism’s ability to
determine relations among events
November 18, 2013
Observational learning
- Observational learning
o Social learning
o Attend, retain, reproduce
- Bandura’s research
o BoBo doll study (with children)
 Imitation
 Observational learning
- Social cognitive theory
o Water Mischel and Albert Bandura
o Learning depends on whether the outcomes of the behaviour were interpreted
(punished of rewarded)
November 22, 2013
Working memory
- A memory process that provides a foundation fo moment by moment fluidity of thought and
action
- A valuable resource for:
1. Reasoning
2. Language comprehension
- Provides ability to multi-task
Long-term memory
- Long term memory (LTM)
o Storehouse of all experiences, events, information, emotions, skills words, categories,
rules, and judgements that have been acquired from sensory and short term memories
(sense of self, too)
o Preservation of information for retrieval at any later time
- Retrieval cues
o The stimuli available as you search for particular memory
- Recall
o Reproduction of the information to which you were previously exposed
- Recognition
o The realization that a certain stimulus is one you have seen or heard before
Declarative memory
o Episodic memory
 Memories for things you have personally experienced (autobiographical self)
o Semantic memory
 Generic, categorical memories
Retrieval cues and episodic memory
Endel Tulving (U of Toronto)
- Encoding specificity
o Subsequent retrieval of information is enhanced if cues retrieved at the time of recall
are consistent with those present at the time of encoding
Context and encoding
- Serial position effect
o Recall of beginning and end items in a list
 Primacy effect
 Improved memory for items at start of list
 Recency effect
 Improved memory for items at end of list
- Contextual distinctiveness
o Retrieval can be altered by the context and distinctiveness of the experience being
recalled
Process of encoding and retrieval
- Levels of processing
o Information processed at a deeper level is more likely to be retained
- Transfer appropriate processing
o Memory is best when the type of processing carried out at encoding matches the
processes carried out at retrieval
Why we forget
- Interference
o Retrieval cues do not point effectively to one specific memory
- Proactive interference
o Information you have acquired in the past makes it more difficult to acquire new
information
- Retroactive interference
o Acquisition of new information makes it difficult to remember old information
Improving memory for unstructured information
- Elaborative rehearsal
- Mnemonics
o Method of loci
o Peg-word method
- Metamemory – why do we get feelings of knowing
o Cue familiarity hypothesis
 Cue is familiar
o Accessibility hypothesis
 Access partial information
The consolidation hypothesis
- Consolidation is the process by which information in short term memory is transferred to long
term memory
1. STM and LTM appear to be physiologically different
2. The transfer of information from STM to LTM seems to take time
Structures in long term memory
- Memory structures
o Categorization
o Concepts
o Conceptual hierarchies
o Basic levels
o Schemas
- Using memory structures
o Prototype
o Exemplars
Remembering: reconstructive process
- Reconstructive memory
o Leveling
o Sharpening
o Assimilating
- Information that cannot be remembered directly may be reconstructed, and this leads to
distortions in reconstructive memory
Remembering and recollecting – reconstruction
- Much of what we recall from long term memory is not accurate
- Loftus – questions used to elicit the information can have a major effect on what people
remember
o Expert witness, eyewitness testimony in counts
o Misinformation effect
January 8, 2014
Chapter 9
Cognitive psychology draws on a broader disciplinary known as cognitive science
Concept of cognition
- Cognition
o Processes of knowing – attending, remembering, and reasoning
o Content of the thought processes (eg concepts and memories)
- Researchers use reaction time to test cognition processes – how long it takes to complete the
task
Cognitive psychology deals with – theories of mind, language, problem solving and decision making
Discovering the process of mind
- F.C. Donders
o Reaction time
 The amount of time it takes experimental participants to perform particular
tasks
Mental processes
- Serial processes
o Carried out in order, one after the other
- Parallel processes (take less time)
o Carried out simultaneously
Mental resources
- attentional processes
o Are responsible for distributing the limited processing resources over different tasks
- Controlled processes
o Require attention
- Automatic processes
o Do not require attention
Language use
- Language production
o What people say, sign, and write and the processes they go through to produce the
message
- Speakers versus listeners
o Audience design – falls within cooperative principle
o The cooperative principle – guides and design
 4 rules to follow
 Quantity
 Quality
 Relation
 Manner
Producing speech (down)
Meaning (thought, idea)
Sentences (phrases)
Morphemes (words, prefixes, suffixes) – smallest understandable piece of language; has
meaning
Phonemes (basic sounds) – bits of sounds; perceptual unit of speech
Comprehending speech (up)
Speech execution and speech errors
- Spoonerism (reverend William Spooner)
o “You have tasted the whole worm!”
o “Tips of the slung”
- Planning processes
- Representations of the words taking place
Surface refers to the order of words spoken or in written language
Deep structure – underlying meaning of those words,
January 10, 2014
Language understanding
- Resolving ambiguity
o Lexical ambiguity
o Structural ambiguity
- Products of understanding
o Meaning representations
o Propositions
o Inferences
Language and evolution
- Cross-species comparisons
o Language structure
 Washoe and ASL
 Savage-Rumbaugh
 Bonobos
o Audience design (what does your audience know)
 Cheny and seyfarth
 Vervet monkeys
Language, thought, and culture
- Does language affect thought?
o Linguistic relativity
 Sapir and Whorf
 Proposes that the structure of language has an impact on the way in which an
individual thinks about the world
Combining verbal and visual representations
- Spatial mental model
Problem solving and reasoning
- Problem solving
o Thinking that is directed toward solving specific problems
o Moves from initial state to a goal
- Problem space
o Initial state
o Goal state
o Set of operations
- Well defined problem
- Ill-defined problem
January 15, 2014
Problem solving
- Algorithm
o Step by step procedure
o Always provides the right answer
- Heuristic
o Cognitive strategies (’rules of thumb’)
o Shortcuts to solving complex inferential tasks (convenient way of thinking)
Mental set
- A mental set is our concept of a specific idea, object, or category. It is how we think of
something, the stereotypes we have assigned to that something and our prototypical example
of that something.
Cognitive biases
- The availability heuristic is the tendency to judge the frequency of some event as a function of
how available specific instances of that event are in memory
- The confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information that confirms one’s belief
- The hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate one’s ability to have predicted an event once
the outcome is known
Heuristics and judgement
- Availability heuristic
o Judgement based on information readily available in memory
- Representative heuristic
o Assigns an object to a category based on a few characteristics
- Anchoring heuristic
o People show insufficient adjustment up or down from an original starting value when
judging the probable value of an outcome
(kahneman + tversky)
Problem solving
- Think-aloud protocols
o Verbalizing ongoing thoughts while working on a task
- Functional fixedness
o
The inability to perceive a new use for an object previously associated with some other
purpose
Problem solving and reasoning
- Reasoning
o Process of thinking in which conclusions are drawn from a set of facts
o Directed toward a given goal
Deductive reasoning
- Deductive reasoning
o Drawing conclusions by logically following two or more statements
- Belief-bias effect
o Prior knowledge, attitudes, or values distort reasoning
 Engage in confirmatory testing
Inductive reasoning
- Conclusion is made about the probability based on available evidence and past experience
- Conclusions are probable but they are not always right
Judging and deciding
- Judgement
o Forming opinions, reaching conclusions, and making critical evaluations
- Decision making
o Choosing between alternatives
Psychology of decision making
- Framing decisions
- Consequences of decision making
o Decision aversion
 Avoid decision
 Avoid regret
 Know costs in advance
 more regret
January 17, 2014
Chapter 10
What is assessment?
- Psychological assessment
o Use of specified procedures to evaluate abilities, behaviours, and person qualities
o Measurement of individual difference
History of assessment
- Galton’s ideas of intelligence
o Differences are quantifiable
o Differences form a bell shaped curve
o Objective tests
o
o
Correlations
Galton’s controversial thoughts
 Genius was inherited
 Eugenics
Features of formal assessment
- Reliability
o instrument must provide consistent scores
o repeated instrument should yield consistent results
o consistent scores are essential to accurate measurement
- Validity
o the nature of the test must be in line with the purpose of the test
- Standardization
o Everyone gets the same instructions, time limits, etc.
Concept of reliability
- Reliability
o Stability/consistency of scores produced by an instrument
- Test-retest reliability
o Test given two separate occasions
o Measured by a correlation
- Parallel forms
o Different versions of a test
- Internal consistency
o Yields similar scores across its different parts
o Off versus even numbers on test
- Split-half reliability
Concept of validity
- Validity
o Extent to which a test measures what it was intended to measure
January 20, 2014
Assessment standards
- Validity
o The degree to which test items appear to be directly related to the attribute being
measured
- Criterion (predictive) validity
o The degree to which test scores indicate a result on a specific measure that is consistent
with some other criterion of the characteristic being assessed
- Construct validity
o The degree to which a test adequately measures an underlying construct
Norms and standardization
- Norms
o Standards based on measurements of a large group of people
- Standardization
o Uniform procedures for treating each participant in research
Intelligence assessment
- Intelligence defined
o The global capacity to profit from experience and to go beyond given information about
the environment
The origins of intelligence testing
- Binet and Simon
o French minister of public instruction
o Mental age
o Chronological age
- Terman
o Stanford-binet intelligence scale
o Provided a basis for the intelligence quotient (IQ)
The IQ tests
- Stanford-binet intelligence test
o IQ = MA/CA x 100
- Wechsler intelligence scales
o Verbal subtests
o Performance subtests
o WAIS-III
Extremes of intelligence
- The normal curve
o IQ less than 70, other deficits before age 18
- Mental retardation
o Age of onset is before 18 years of age
o IQ score of 70-75 or below
o Demonstrated limitations in two or more adaptive life skills
- Learning disorders
o A large discrepancy between an individual’s measured IQ and his or her achievement
- Giftedness
o IQ score above 130
o Three ring conception:
 Ability, creativity, task commitment
o Concerns about support
 They do well, but could they do better
o Savants
 Individuals who typically have below average IQ, but have remarkable ability in
particular areas
Theories of intelligence
- Psychometric thepries
o Statistical relationships
o Factor analysis
 Goal of FA is to identify the basic psychological dimensions of the concept being
investigated
o Charles spearman
 Spearman’s “g”
o Raymond Cattel
 Crystallized intelligence
 Fluid intelligence (novel problems solving)
o J.P Guilford
 Structure of intellect
 Content
 Product
 Operation
o Sternberg’s Triarchic theory
 Analytical intelligence
 Basic information processing skills
 Creative intelligence
 Ability to deal with novel versus routine problems
 Practical intelligence
 Ability to adapt to new and different context, and to select and shape
context
o Gardner’s theory of ultiple intelligences
 Howard Gardner
 Logical-mathematical, linguistic, naturalist, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic,
interpersonal, intrapersonal
o Emotional intelligence
 EQ versus IQ
 Related to interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences
 Reflected in 4 abilities
 Perceive, appraise, and express emotions appropriately
 To use emotions to facilitate thinking
 To be able to analyze emotion, and use knowledge effectively
 Being able to regular emotions to promote emotional and intellectual
growth
Politics of intelligence
- History of group comparisons
o Race and intelligence
o Goddard
o Rushton
o The bell curve
The interaction of heredity and environment
- Environment and IQ
- Heredity and IQ
o Heritability estimate
 What runs in families
 Reaction range model
 Heredity does set limits on your intelligence
 Environment will determine where you fall within those limits
- Evidence of influence of envision
o Adoption studies find that adoptive children show some IQ resemblance to their
adoptive parents and siblings
o Studies of environmental deprivation – show that children’s IQ will decrease
substantially
o Environmental enrichment – children who are moved to improve environment they will
exhibit increases in IQ
o Generational increases in measured IQ
- 50% of variability in IQ are from genes
- Twins study
o Identical twins are more similar in intelligence than fraternal twins
o Identical twins are reared apart are more similar in intelligence than fraternal twins are
reared together
o Adoptive children resemble their biological parents in intelligence
- Culture and the validity of IQ tests
o Stereotype threat (vulnerability)
 Created by anxiety; worsens your performance
o Hard work versus innate ability
 Effort versus ability
January 22, 2014
Creativity
- Creativity defined
o Ability to generate ideas or products that are novel and appropriate
o Correlation between creativity and IQ are weak
Assessing creativity and the link to intelligence
- Divergent thinking defined
o Ability to produce unusual but appropriate responses to problems
o Fluid and flexible thinking
- Convergent thinking defined
o Ability to gather information to solve problems
Extremes of creativity
- Exemplary creator
- Creativity
o Risk taking
o Preparation
o Intrinsic motivation
Assessment and society
- Goal of psychological assessment
o To make as accurate assessments as possible
- Three ethical concerns
o Fairness of test based decisions
o Utility of tests for evaluating education
o Implications of using test scores to categorize people
January 27, 2014
Developmental psychology
- Interaction between physical and psychological processes
- Stages of growth from conception throughout the entire life span
Studying development
- Normative investigations
o Chronological age
o Developmental age
- Longitudinal design
- Cross-sectional design
Physical development
- Prenatal and childhood development
o Zygote – first 2 weeks – the germinal stage
o Embryo – 2-8 weeks
o Fetus – after 8th week to birth
Prenatal development
- Threats to normal prenatal development
o Mother’s nutrition
o Teratogens – distort development
 Cigarettes – increase the rate of miscarriages; low birth weight
 Alcohol
 Drugs
 Chemical
 Diseases
Physical development
- Babies prewired for survival
o Robert Fantz
o Eleanor Gibson
o Richard Walk
- Growth and maturation in childhood
o Maturation
 Age-related physical and behavioral changes characteristic of a species
 Continuing influence of heredity throughout development
What is the “critical period”?
- Critical period – a specific time in development in which certain experiences are necessary for
normal development
o Vision
o Brain mechanisms
o Sometime between 1 and 3
Physical development in adolescence
- Second time of fast change
- Puberty
o Attainment of sexual maturity
- Menarche
o The onset of menstruation
Physical changes in adulthood
- Vision – loss of flexibility of your lens; discoloured (yellowing)
- Hearing
- Reproductive and sexual functioning – menopause, reduction in quantity of sperm
January 29, 2014
Cognitive development
- Cognitive development
o Development of the process of knowing
o Imagining, perceiving, reasoning, and problem solving
o Linked to your age
 Will change as you age
- Nature versus nurture
o John lock – nurture
o Russeau – propose nativist view
Jean Piaget’s Insights
- Building blocks of cognitive developmental change – mental schemes
o Concept of assimilation
 New cognitive elements are fitted in with old elements or modified to fit more
easily
o Concept of accommodation
 Restructuring cognitive structures so that new information can fit into them
more easily
Stages in cognitive development
- Sensorimotor stage
o 0-2 years old
o Object permanence
- Preoperational stage
o 2-7 years old
o Egocentrism
o Centration
-
-
Concrete operations stage
o 7-11 years old
o Conservation
 Reversibility
Formal operations stage
o 11 years to adulthood
o Abstract and hypothetical thinking
Why are Piaget’s theories so influential?
- Children of similar age, make similar mistakes
- Similarities must be a result of developmental stage
- Completion of one stage is necessary to enter the next stage
Contemporary perspectives on early cognitive development
- Infant cognition
o Renee Baillargeon
- Children’s Foundational Theories
- Social and cultural influences
Vygotsky’s Theory
- Culture in which one lives also plays a significant role in cognitive development
- Use of speech effects cognitive development
- Interactions with experts influences cognitive development
Cognitive development in adulthood
- Intelligence
o “crystallized” intelligence
o “fluid” intelligence
o Wisdom
o Warner Schaie
- Selective optimization with compensation
o Paul and Margaret Baltes
o Memory
 Research on Alzheimer’s disease
Optimizing – Exercising or training oneself in areas of highest priorities
Acquiring Language
- Grammar
o Rules of language
- Phonology
o Phoneme
- Syntax
o Morpheme
- Semantics
o Lexical meaning
- Pragmatics
-
The ability to learn language is biologically based
Expression of language dependent on culture and environment
-
Perceiving speech and words
o Phonemes
o Child directed speech
Learning new words
-
January 31, 2014
Acquiring language
- Acquiring grammar
o Noam Chomsky
 Children are born with mental structures that facilitate comprehension and
production of language
o Dan Slobin
 Children bring innate constraints to the task of learning a particular language
 Language making capacity
o Over regularization
Social development
- Social development
o The ways in which individuals’ social interactions and expectations change across the life
span
o Stranger anxiety
Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages
- Trust vs. Mistrust – safety or insecurity
o During Infancy
o Growing security attachment to care givers
- Autonomy vs, Self-doubt – capable
o toddler
- Initiative vs. Guilt – creator / confident
o Pre-school c
- Competence vs. Inferiority
o School age kids
o Will become a successful adult
- Identity vs. Role confusion
o Adolescents
o Discovering who you want to be/finding yourself
- Intimacy vs. Isolation
o Young adult
o
- Generativity vs. stagnation
- Ego integrity vs. despair
Social development in childhood
- Socialization
o Lifelong process through which an individual’s behaviour patterns, values, standards,
skill, attitudes and motives are shaped to conform to those seen as socially desirable
- Temperament
o Jerome Kagan
o Biologically based response to environmental interaction
o Inhibited – shy and reserved
o Uninhibited – socially, responsive
-
-
-
Attachment
o An intense, enduring, social-emotional relationship
o Once infant becomes attached, separation becomes wrenching
o 6-8 months, infants are wary to strangers
Konrad Lorenz
o Imprinting
John Bowlby
o Internal working model
Attachment and Mary Ainsworth
o Strange situation test
 Securely attached – 70%
 Insecurely attached – avoidant – 20%
 Insecurely attached – ambivalent/resistant – 10%
o Parenting styles
 Demandingness
 Responsiveness
 Authoritative
o Parenting practices
 Do with goals
Contact comfort and social experience
o A
o B
o C
 Harry Harlow’s monkeys
 Contact comfort
 Stephen Suomi
 Cross fostering
 Human deprivation
February 3, 2014
Social development in adolescence
- Experience of adolescence
o G. Stanley Hall
 Storm and stress
o Erik Erikson
 Independence from parents
o Peer relationships
- Intimacy
o Capacity to make a full commitment
o Selective social interaction theory
 Laura Carstensen
- Generativity
o Commitment beyond one’s self and one’s parter
 George Vaillant
Sex and gender differences
- Sex differences
o Biologically based characteristics that distinguish males and females
- Gender
o Psychological phenomenon referring to learned sex-related behaviours and attitudes
Gender identity
How you think about yourself the chemistry that composes you (eg. Hormone levels) and how you
interpret what that means
Gender expression
How you demonstrate your gender (based on traditional gender roles) through the way you act, dress,
behave and interact
Biological sex
Biological sex refers to the objectively measurable organs, hormones, and chromosomes
Female – vagina, ovaries, xx chromosomes
Male – penis, testes, xy chromosomes
Intersex – a combination of the two
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation is who you are physically spiritually and emotionally attracted to base on their
sex/gender in relation to your own
-
-
-
Gender identity
o An individual’s sense of maleness or femaleness
o Includes awareness and acceptance of one’s sex
Gender roles
o Patterns of behaviour regarded as appropriate for males and females in a particular
society
Acquisition of gender roles
o Eleanor Maccoby
Moral development
- Morality
o A system of beliefs, values, and underlying judgements about the rightness or
wrongness of human acts
- Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of moral development and reasoning
o Preconventional
 Birth to 11 years
 Obey rules because fear of punishment
o Conventional
 11 to 12
 Empathy developed
 Can judge for themselves
 Loyalty develop
 Sense of social obligation
o Post-conventional morality
 Principled
 Adulthood
 Not everyone develop it
 Social conscience develops
Everyone goes through these stages; same stages occur in every culture and each stage is more
complex than the first
Gender and cultural perspectives on moral reasoning
- Carol Gilligan
o Women’s morality is based on a standard of caring for others
o Men’s morality is based on a standard of justice
Learning to age successfully
- Successful aging
o Selective optimization with compensation
 Optimization
 Compensation
February 5, 2014
Chapter 12: Motivation
Here are some controversies involving motivation:
- Humans are motivated by their instincts
- Weight control is all about willpower
- Being intrinsically motivated by something is better than extrinsic
Understanding motivation
- Motivation
o Starting, directing, and maintaining physical and psychological activities
- Have you done something you feel motivated to do at the expense of other things? What type
of behaviour?
- Functions of motivational concepts
o Relate biology to behaviour
o To account for behavioural variability
o To infer private states from public acts
o To assign responsibility for actions
o To explain perseverance despite adversity
Sources of motivation
- Drives – Clark Hull’s drive theory
o Internal states that arise in response to a disequilibrium
- Homeostasis
o Constancy or equilibrium and balance
- Incentives
o External stimuli or rewards that motivate behaviour
STUDY NAME: Leisure Time Persuasion Study
STUDY NICKNAME: KINGSTON
INVITATION CODE*: 09876
February 24, 2014
Chapter 13
Functions of Emotion
- Motivation and attention
- Social functions of emotion
- Emotional effects on cognitive functioning
Stress of living
- Stress
o Pattern of specific and non-specific responses that disturb equilibrium
- Stressors
o Stimulus event that places a demand on an organism for some kind of adaptive
response
Physiological stress reactions
- Acute stress
o Clear onset and offset patterns
- Chronic stress
o Continuous state of arousal
o Demands are greater than are available resources
Emergency reactions to acute threats
- Fight or flight response
o Prepares the body for combat and struggle or for running away to safety
Emergency reactions to chronic threats
- General adaptation syndrome (GAS)
o Han Selye
o Three stage response
 Alarm reaction
 Resistance
 Thymus shrinks  immune system compromised
 Exhaustion
o Used to explain psychosomatic disorders
Psychological stress reactions
- Major life events
o Life change units (LCUs)
- Catastrophic and traumatic events
o Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Chronic stressors
- Daily hassles
Coping with stress
- Coping
o Process of dealing with internal or external demands that are perceived as straining
- Appraisal of stress
o Cognitive appraisal
o
o
-
Primary and secondary appraisal
Stress moderator variables
 They filter the usual effects of stressors
Types of coping responses
o Anticipatory coping
 What can I do?
o Problem directed coping
 Controllable stressors
o Emotion focused coping
 Uncontrollable stressors
Modifying cognitive strategies
o Reappraising
o Restructuring
o Stress inoculation
 Meichenbaum
o Perceived control
Social support as a coping resource
o Socioemotional support
o Tangible support
o Informational support
Health Psychology
- Health
o General condition of the body and mind in terms of soundness and vigor
- The field of health psychology
o Ways people stay healthy
o Reasons they become ill
o Ways they respond when they become ill
- Health behaviours
March 7, 2014
Classifying psychological disorders
- Historical perspectives on classification
o Philippe pinel
o Emil krapelin
o Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM)
 DSM-IV
A useful classification/diagnostic system provides:
- A common shorthand language
- An understanding of causality
- A treatment plan
The main tool for diagnosing mental disorder is:
- The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition diagnosing types of
mental disorder (or DSM-IV)
- 1. List of symptoms of disorder
- 2. Typical age of onset of this disorder
- 3. Any predisposing factors
- Also some information in prognosis/how it progress over time
- Information on how common the disorder is
- Information on gender differences
5 axes to evaluate each client:
1. Clinical diagnosis corresponding to syndrome
2. Personality disorder
3. General medical conditions
4. Presence psychosocial stressors
5. Global assessment functioning
Evolution of diagnostic categories
- Neurotic disorders
- Psychotic disorders
- Homosexuality
- Culture-bound syndromes
Prevalence
- Substance use disorder – 20.6%
- Anxiety disorders – 11.2%
- Mood disorders – 10.2
- Antisocial personality – 3.7%
- Schizophrenia & other psychotic disorders – 0.7%
Etiology of psychopathology
- Etiology
o The factors that cause of contribute to the development of psychological and medical
problems
o Biological approaches
 Assume any disturbance is due to biological problem (ie. Genetics, tumour in
brain)
o Psychological approaches
Causes of mental disorders
1. Diathesis-stress model: a person may possess a predisposition for a disorder and is afflicted
when faced with stressors that exceed abilities to cope with them
2. Sociocultural model: the cultures in which people live play a role in the development of
disorders
3. Humanistic model: disorders develop when people do not obtain positive regard
4. Cognitive - behavioural model: holds that mental disorders are learned maladaptive thought and
behaviour patterns
5. Psychodynamic model: mental disorders originate in intrapsychic conflict produced by the id,
ego and superego
6. Medical model: mental disorders are caused by specific abnormalities of the brain and nervous
system and should be approached like a physical illness is approached
Anxiety disorders
- Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
o Individual feels anxious and worried most of the time without specific threat or danger
o Chronic high-level of anxiety
- Panic disorder
o Unexpected, severe panic attacks
- Agoraphobia
o Extreme fear of being in public places from which escape may be difficult
o Afraid of going out into large open spaces
- Phobias
o Persistent and irrational fear of an object, activity or situation
- Social phobia
o Arises in anticipation of a public situation
- Specific phobia
o Occurs in response to specific types of objects or situations
- Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
o The persistent re-experiencing of traumatic events, ie, war, combat, crime, disaster
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Obsessions – recurrent thoughts, images, or impulses
- Compulsions – repetitive, purposeful acts performed according to certain rules or rituals
Mood disorders
- Major depressive disorder
o Intense feeling of depression over an extended time
- Bipolar disorder
o Alternating periods of depressive and mania
- Manic episode
o Extreme elation, euphoria, grandiose thoughts or feelings
Seasonal affective disorder
- Characterized by severe depression in the fall and winter, followed by normal or elevated mood
in the spring and fall
- In the DSM
- More common in climates where days are short
March 12, 2014
Goals of major therapies
- Reaching a diagnosis
o Applying a label to the symptoms
- Proposing a probable etiology (cause)
o What do the symptoms tell us about the cause of the disorder
- Making a prognosis
o What course will this problem take
- Treatment planning
Major Therapies
- Biomedical therapies
o Alter brain functioning with chemical or physical interventions
- Psychotherapy
o Focus on changing faculty behaviours, thoughts, perceptions, and emotions
o Psychodynamic, behaviour, cognitive, existential humanistic
- Integrative approach
o Controlling symptoms with medication
Therapeutic context
- Types of therapists
o Clinical psychologist
 Assessment and research psychological problems
 PhD
o Clinical social worker
 Mental health professionals
 Masters, PhD
 Social context of person’s problem
o Counselling psychologist
 PhD or PsyD
 Provide guidance
o Pastoral counsellor
 Members of a religious orders
 Receive training in treatment of psychological disorders
o Psychiatrist
 Completed medical school
 MD  additional training on mental / emotional disorders
 Biomedical basis of psychological problems
o Psychoanalyst
 Psychiatrist, clinical psychologist
Therapeutic context
- Patients (typically biomedical approach)
- Client (typically bio psychosocial approach)
- Therapeutic alliance
o Mutual relationship that a client or patient establishes with a therapist (collaboration to
bring about relief)
Early treatment of mental disorders
- Mental disorders have likely been with us since human existence began
- The earliest treatments that we have records for includes: trephining, a procedure in which a
hole is made in the skull of a living (un-anesthetized) human
- Devils work….witches…
- Now there are many approaches
Johann Weir
Therapeutic context
- Western historical contexts
o Institutionalization of poor, criminals, mentally ill
 London hospitals – concept of bedlam
 Philippe Pinel – removed chains from mental patients
 Dorothea Dix – towards treatment in US and Canada
 Creation of rural asylums (overcrowding problems)
o Rehabilitation
o Deinstitutionalization
 Homelessness and the ‘revolving door’
Does therapy work?
- Evaluating therapeutic effectiveness
o Spontaneous-remission effect
o Self-selection
o Regression towards the mean
o Placebo effect
o Meta-analysis
Can prevention strategies be incorporated into therapy to improve therapeutic effectiveness?
- Prevention strategies
o Primary prevention
o Secondary prevention
o Tertiary prevention
Psychodynamic therapies
- Freudian psychoanalysis
o Intensive and prolonged technique for exploring unconscious motivations and conflicts
- Insight therapy
o Therapist guides patient toward discovering insights between present symptoms and
past origins
- Free association
o Thoughts, wishes, physical sensations, and mental images as they occur
- Catharsis
o Expressing strongly felt but usually repressed emotions
- Resistance
- Dream analysis and interpretation
- Transference
- Countertransference
Later psychodynamic therapies
- Place more emphasis on:
o Patients current social environment
o Continuing influence of life experiences
o Role of social motivation and interpersonal relations of love
o Significance of ego functioning and assist in the development of the self-concept
Harry Stack Sullivan
Behaviour therapies
- Behaviour therapy (behaviour modification)
o Systematic use of principles of learning to increase or decrease the frequency of
behaviours
 Counter conditioning,
 Substitute a new response for a maladaptive one
 Exposure therapies
 Systematic desensitization
o Client is taught to prevent arousal of anxiety by confronting
feared stimulus while relaxed
 Flooding
o Clients are put directly into a phobic situation
 Aversion therapy
 Attractive stimulus is paired with noxious stimulus
 Contingency management
 Changing behaviour by modifying its consequences
 Positive reinforcement strategies
o Token economies
 Extinction strategies
 Social learning therapy
 Clients observe models’ desirable behaviours being reinforced
 Imitation of models
 Participant modeling
 Social-skills training
 Behavioural rehearsal
Cognitive therapies
- Cognitive therapy
o Attempts to change feelings and behaviours by changing the way a client thinks about
or perceives significant life experiences
- Changing false beliefs
o Cognitive therapy for depression
o Rational-emotive therapy (RET)
 Albert Ellis
- Cognitive behaviour therapy
o Combines cognitive emphasis on thoughts and attitudes, and behavioural emphasis on
changing performance
 Aaron Beck
Existential-humanistic therapies
- Human-potential movement
o Release the potential of the average human being for greater levels of performance and
greater richness of experience
- Client-centered therapy
o Carl Rogers
o Emphasizes the healthy psychological growth of the individual
- Gestalt therapy
o Focuses on the ways to unite mind and body to make a person whole
Group Therapies
- Couple and family therapy
o Couples therapy
o Family therapy
- Community support groups
o Self-help groups
o AA, OA, others
Biomedical Therapies
- Drug therapy
- Psychopharmacology
o Branch of psychology that investigates the effects of drugs on behaviour
- Antipsychotic drug medication
o Chlorpromazine
o Haloperidol (Haldol)
o Clozapine
Drug Therapy
- Antidepressant Drug medication
o Tricyclics (TCA)
o Bicyclic
o Monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibiters
o Lithium (lithium salts) – bipolar disorder
- Antianxiety drug medication
o Benzodiazepine
- Prescriptions for psychoactive drugs
- When is drug therapy necessary?
o Biologically based
Biomedical therapies
- Psychosurgery (neurosurgical approach)
- Prefrontal lobotomy (sever connections between frontal lobes and the thalamic and
hypothalamic areas)
o Egas Moniz
- Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
o Bilateral and unilateral ECT
March 19, 2014
Chapter 17 – social psychology
Objectives
- Person/social perception – how do we formulate our ideas about what others are like
- Attribution processed – how do people use attributions to explain social behaviour?
- Attitudes – how are attitudes formed? What leads to attitude change? How do attitudes affect
people’s behaviour?
o Prejudice
- Interpersonal attraction – what factors influence blah blah blah
Social psychologist
- Studies the effect of social variables on individual behaviour attitudes, perceptions and motives
- Also studies group and intergroup phenomena
- May study difference with culture
What is social reality?
- Social cognition
o Process by which people select, interpret, and remember social information
- Social perception
o Process by which people come to understand and categorize the behaviours of others
Person perception
- Judgement based on appearance
- Inferences based on movement, gestures, speaking style
- Social schemas and stereotypes
- Evolutionary psychologists – speak of in-groups and out-groups as adaptive
- Spotlight effect – people overestimate the degree to which others pay attention to them
Origins of attribution theory “explaining behaviour”
- Attribution theory
o Describes the ways the social perceiver uses information to generate causal
explanations about the causes of events, other’s behaviour, and their own behaviour
- Fritz Heider
o Dispositional or situational
- Harold Kelly
o Covariation principle
 People should attribute behaviours to a causal factor if the factor is present
whenever the behaviour occurred but was absent when it did not occur
o Distinctiveness – is there uniqueness
o Consistency – what about other past events
o Consensus – is it true in all cases
Fundamental attribution error
- Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
o Tendency to underestimate impact of situational factors and overestimate influence of
disposition factors
Defensive attribution
- Tendency to blame others for their misfortune, so as to feel less likely to be victimized in a
similar manner
- Just world hypothesis
o To believe that justive usually prevails that good people are rewarded and bad guys
punished
- Blaming the victim
o Maybe the person wasn’t so good after all; he or she must have done something to
deserve what happened or to provoke it