Chapter 1 & 2
Receives the treatment or the experimental condition vs does not receive the treatment or experimental condition
experimental group vs control group
Increases transmission of the neuroinhibitor GABA, decreases transmission of the excitatory neurotransmitter acetylcholine and increases production of beta endorphins - Name this drug
Alcohol
The process of learning one's culture and how to live within it; how people adapt ideas about social roles from other members of their society
Socialization
Define teratogens, give two examples
Anything that increases the risk of prenatal abnormalities; drugs, malnutrition, stress, pollutants, viruses
Stimulus and response are naturally connected (+example of this)
Unconditioned
Subject-relevant vs Situation-relevant confounding variables
Subject relevant: variables that exist within the individual.
Situation relevant: variables which are “in the situation”.
Occurs when we fail to notice large changes in our visual field
Change blindness
Genotype vs Phenotype
Genotype: genetic makeup or trait
Phenotype: expression of those genes
Assimilate vs Accomodate
Assimilate: reinterpret new experiences and information to fit into old ideas
Accomodate: restructure old ideas and schema to include new experiences
One elicits, another is elicited
Stimulus; response
Positive correlation vs Negative correlation (+examples)
Positive correlation – as one variable increases or decreases so does the other (potential example: as temperature increases, so does peoples anger)
Negative correlation – as one variable increases, the other decreases (potential example: as temperature increases, hot cocoa sales decreases)
Identify the 4 categories of drugs
Narcotics, Depressants, Stimulants, Psychedelics
A framework of basic ideas and preconceptions about people, objects, and events based on past experience
Schema
Name the 3 styles of parenting
Authoritarian, Submissive, Authoritative
What is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? Give one example of each.
Intrinsic: the desire to perform a behavior for its own sake and to be effective; the rewards are intern (ie self-expression, interest, challenge)
Extrinsic: seeking external rewards and avoiding punishments (ie grades, money)
Is the following study a experiment, correlational study, or ex post facto experiment? Additionally, identify what the independent and dependent variables are.
"A researcher is interested in the relationship between caffeine consumption and levels of stress. She randomly selects subjects from her population and has them keep a diary for one week during which they count the number of cups of coffee, tea, and cola-based soft drinks they consume, as well as recording consumption of chocolate and medications that have caffeine as an ingredient. In addition, participants complete a numerical measure of “daily hassles” experienced during the week."
Correlational study;
Independent variable: caffeine consumption
Dependent variable: levels of stress
Name one theory for why we dream and one theory for why we sleep.
Sleep theories:
1. Helps the body repair and restore brain and body tissues
2. Helps to integrate, restore and rebuild memories, also eliminates unnecessary information from the brain.
3. Adaptive function -- prepares the body for survival
Dreaming theories:
1. Dreams are a safety valve for unconscious desires, they consist of manifest content and latent content.
2. Activation-synthesis theory - during REM sleep the brainstem stimulates the forebrain with random neural activity, which we interpret as a dream.
3. Information processing theory - dreams help us sort out and consolidate the day's events
4. Cognitive development - dreams reflect cognitive development, knowledge, and understanding
5. Evolutionary theory - we rehearse our fight or flight responses
Define evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain behaviors by looking at their adaptive value and then tries to look at how universal these behavioral changes are.
Identify one stage of Kholberg's stages of moral development and describe.
Level 1. Preconventional Morality:
The earliest stages of moral development; concepts: obedience and punishment; rules are fixed and absolute. Obeying the rules is important because it is a means to avoid punishment.
Level 2. Conventional Morality:
This stage is focused on maintaining social order. At this stage of moral development, people begin to consider society as a whole when making judgments. The focus is on maintaining law and order by following the rules, doing one’s duty, and respecting authority.
Level 3. Postconventional Morality:
Rules of law are important for maintaining a society, but members of the society should agree upon these standards. At this stage, people follow these internalized principles of justice, even if they conflict with laws and rules.
Reward vs Punishment
Reward: anything that increases behavior
Punishment: anything that decrease behavior
There are 8 lobes that make up the cerebral cortex, 4 on each side. Name all four lobe types and explain their functions.
Occipital lobes – processes visual information
Parietal lobes – the front part of this lobe is the somatosensory cortex that processes sensory information including touch, temperature, and pain from body parts.
Frontal lobes – interpret and control emotional behaviors, make decisions, carry out plans. This part of the brain also includes the motor cortex area which is just in front of the somatosensory area. This area initiates movements, and integrates activities of skeletal muscles.
Temporal lobes – primarily for hearing , understanding language (Wernicke’s area), understanding music/tonality, and processing smell
There are two types of sleep, REM and NREM. Describe both and the 4 stages of NREM sleep.
REM: Rapid eye movement; Brain is active, with short brain waves that resemble "waking waves". Pulse and breathing fluctuate, movement in limbs is controlled by neurons in the brainstem.
NREM:
"normal sleep"
Stage 1: Light sleep, slower alpha waves, then movement to slower theta waves
Stage 2: Sleep spindles and K-complexes
Stage 3 & 4: Delta waves, the most restful and restorative stage for the body; individual is difficult to awaken
Stage 4:
Social learning theory vs Gender schema theory
Social learning theory: focuses more on learning theories in developing gender. It is assumed that a child observes male and female behavior from the environment, and then is rewarded or punished for preforming the correct behavior for their particular gender.
Gender schema theory: focuses on how children learn or create schemas by observing their family and the culture and then by beginning to view everything through the lens of what is male or female and adjust their behavior accordingly.
Identify all 4 of Piaget's stages of development and the characteristics in each stage.
Sensorimotor: lack of concept of object permanence (objects continue to exist even when we cannot see them)
Preoperational: too young to perform mental operations, lack of concept of conservation (quantity or number of something remains the same despite a change in shape), contraption, irreversibility, egocentrism, parallel play, animism
Concrete operational: beginning of logical/operational thought; able to understand concept of reversibility, decenter (ability to take multiple things into account, ie color and size, rather than just one)
Formal operational: reasoning expands past concrete thought to abstract thinking
Create your own classical conditioning experiment. Make sure to identify the following:
An unconditioned stimulus
An unconditioned response
The unconditioned relationship
A conditioned stimulus
The conditioned relationship
US: a thing that can already elicit a response
UR: a thing that is already elicited by a stimulus
URelationship: an existing stimulus-response connection
CS: a new stimulus we deliver at the same time we give the old stimulus
CR: a new stimulus-response relationship we created by associating a new stimulus with an old response