Psychology 100B Wash U
Terms
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- What is a neuron?
- The individual cell that acts as an information processor for the nervous system.
- What was significant about Phineas Gage?
- A three foot iron rod was shot through his cheek and into his frontal lobe --> a good example of a clinical case that let scientists learn about the workings of the frontal lobe.
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
- creates strong magnetic pulses on the scalp that temporarily disrupts brain function.
- CT scan
- A series of X rays that are used to construct a composite image of the brain.
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- Use a high frequency alternating magnetic fields throughout the brain. Magnetic sensors detect the reverbrations and identify which brain tissue the vibrations came from, constructing a picture.
- EEG
-
Reveals brain function
detects tiny electrical currents on the surface of the brain - Positron Emission Tomography (PET Scan)
- Patient is injected with a dose of radioactive substance that has a similar structure as glucose (the only sugar the brain uses), so when a certain area of brain is stimulated by senses, the radioactive isotope is detected.
- fMRI
- Detects changes in blood flow and oxygen in the brain to determine which parts are the most active at any moment.
- What are two ways that the nervous systems differ from each other?
- In centralization and in size
- Ganglia
- relay messages from the sense organs to the muscles
-
hind brain
midbrain
forebrain -
hindbrain- closest to the tail
forebrain-closest to the head
midbrain- in the middle - medulla
-
-regulates the cardiovascular and respiratory systems
-controls reflexes like swallowing
-helps us maintain balance - pons
- integrates movements of the face ears and tongue
- Cerebellum
-
hangs behind the pons and controlls overall bodily balance
- learning movement/motor skils - midbrain controls:
-
body temperature/pain perception
- targeting sound - The deep front to back clevage in the middle of the cortex is the...
- longitudinal fissure
- where is the thalamus located and what does it do?
-
-sits atop the midbrain
- acts as a relay station for sensory info going to the cortex - hypothalamus
-
-lays under the thalamus
- controls motivated behavior like feeding drinking and sexual activity - basal ganglia
-
-lie astride the thalamus
-regulate muscle contraction (parkinson's disease) - limbic system
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-surrounding the thalamus and basal ganglia lying below the cortex
- includes amygdala and hippocampus - affrent nerves
- transmit infromation from organs to brain
- effrent nerves
- transmit info from CNS to muscles and glands that are the organs of actions
- Primary Projection Areas
- Areas in the brain that roughly correspond to parts of the body that they represent or influence
- Wilder Penfield
- created a map that showed which parts of the primary motor cortex controlled which parts of the body.
- somatosensory area
- located in the parietal lobe behind the primary motor projection area, it receives sensory info from the skin
- nonprimary projection areas
- organize and relate the various messages that come from the sensory projection areas or go to the primary motor projection areas.
- apraxias
-
-(disorder of action)
disturbances in the initiation or organizaion of voluntary action
- ie being asked to light a cigarette and putting the lit match in his mouth; problems in initiating the sequence or getting the components to fit together - agnosia
-
(disorder or perception)
-sufferers cannot identify familiar objects using sight (the damage is in the occipital lobe). They can recognize a car key by holding it but not by looking at it. - prosopagnosia
-
a type of agnosia in which patients have trouble recognizing faces.
-rarely not just confined to faces, sometimes a person who could identify lots of -different types of cars cannot etc. - neglect syndrome
- 'forget' left side of tasks
- aphasia
- disorder of language
- nonfluent aphasia
-
-a disorder that involves the production of speech (understand words, but cannot speak)
-lesions in the posterior region of the frontal lobe in Broca's area - fluent aphasia
-
-patients can produce a 'word salad', but do not understand what is said to them.
-lesions are posterior part of temporal lobe in the Wernicke area - disorder of the prefrontal area
-
-such was the case with Phineas Gage, the front most part of the frontal lobe was severly damaged, leading to marked changes in personality.
-patients are unable to use rules - prefrontal lobotomy
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-Edgar Moniz Leukotomy
-in the 1940's and 50's an icepick would be inserted through the eye and sever the connection between the thalamus and the frontal lobe - left hemisphere controls
-
-language
(dominant) - right hemisphere
- -spatial cognition
- cortex
-
-the most massive portion of the brain
-it size gives us flexibility in behavior - Describe HM's case study
-
-clonic seizure disorder
-sugeons resected medial temporal lobe and distroyed his hippocampus - Retrograde Amnesia
- Cannot remeber past events
- Anterograde Amnesia
- Cannot lay down new memories
- Festiger
-
Social psychologist
-did studies on apocolyptic believers
-inflitrated the group led by Mrs. Keich.
-Aliens spoke through her
-Flood - Even after a belief is disproved, people believe it even more strongly
- cognitive dissonance
- Strengths and weaknesses of Observation
-
Strengths: people act normally
Weaknesses: 1. potential bias of observers
2. cannot determine cause and effect - Objective Test
- Try to be as impartial as possible. Performance based objective tests are the MCAT and SAT
- Projective Tests
-
- look for patterns
- measures a skill or ability outside of conscious awareness.
inkblot - Strengths and weaknesses of tests
-
-easy to administer
-measures beliefs, attitudes and feelings
weaknesses:
difficult to develop and subjective scoring - Correlational studies
-
Strengths-
show how two phenomenon are related
allows for preliminary predictions - weakness of correlational studies
- often times cannot untangle cause and effect. (latin in highschool-->better grades in college)
- Strengths of experiments
- identifies cause and effect
- weakensses of experiments
- situation is artifical and not always generalizable.
- Explain what a control group is in terms of the candy experiment
- The group that doesn't get the candy
- What is the independant variable in the candy experiment?
- The thing that we manipulate -Candy
- What is the dependant variable in the candy experiment?
- Memory- the thing that depends on the candy (independant variable)
- Randomness in terms of candy expt.
- People should be randomly selected, not all candy lovers should be in the same group.
- Representitiveness (in terms of candy expt)
- Group needs to reflect the general population
- Random sampling
- lottery, like with a jury
- Stratified sampling
- when the sample must accurately reflect the demographics of the larger population.
- population
- All members of a given group (all three year old boys, all autistic children)
- sample
- a subset of the population they are interested in.
- matching (candy expt)
- identifying one variable the might be linked to the dependant variable (memory). For example, gender. Therefore we put one woman and one man in both the control and experimental group.
- experimental manipulation
- The candy
- demand characteristics
- a cue in an experiment that signals that one outcome is more favorable than the other.
- placebo effects
-
someone gets a faux m and m and performs better.
someone gets a faux pain drug and reports a decrease in pain. - confound
- uncontrolled factors that could influence the results
- within subject comparison
- comparing a subjects behavior in one setting to the same subjects behavior in another setting.
- counterbalancing
- using one sequence for half of the subjects and the other sequence for the other half
- Axon
- electrical impulse travels down axon.
- dendrite
- Where the axon terminals connect to to transmit the electrical impulse from one nerve to the next.
- synapse
- The small gap between the axon terminals and the dendrite
-
Neurotransmitters
(SAGEN) -
Seratonin
Acetylcholine
GABA
endorphins
norapinephrine - Agonist/antagonist
-
Increases activity in the neuron (SAN)
Decreases cellular activity. (GABA) - amygdala
- regulates emotional reactions
- reuptake
- recycling of neurotransmitters
- lateralization
- The function of the two sides of our brain are different.
- Wernicke's area
- plays a central role in the comprehension of speech
- Broca's area
- Plays a role in the production of speech.
- Projective personality test
- subject projects his/her personality onto a story or image.
- TAT
- Subject is shown a picture and must tell a story about it
- Objective personality tests
- pen and paper surveys asking specific answers
- Psychodynamic approach
- Human thoughts and acts are derived from childhood experiences.
- Id
- primitive portion of personality concerned only with biological urges and following pleasure principles
- Ego
- mediates between the id and superego
- Superego
- mediator between id and superego, logical portion of the personality reconciling desire and reality.
- defense mechanisms
- keep anxious thoughts out of the conscious
- reaction formation
- (defense mechanism) when an urge is replaced by an exact opposite urge
- Projection
-
defense mechanism
putting ones own feelings onto someone else. - oedipus complex
- child falls in love with mother, becomes jealous of father. fears father, then begins to imitate him to gain mothers affections.
- Humanist Approach
- behavior is driven by the desire to achieve ones potential ie, individuals naturally strive to improve themselves.
- heirarchy of needs
-
Maslow
physiological, saftey, belonging, esteem, congnitve, asthetic, self actualization. - unconditional positive regard
- Humanist psychology approach in which the therapist continually reaffirms the patient. This is also necessary for children to develop healthy self concepts
- positive psychology
- strives to define happiness and well being, not fixing problems, but achieving optimal human functioning.
- bystander effect
- witnesses of an emergency do nothing or react slowly when in a group
- pluralistic ignorance
- witnesses of an emergency look to to other witnesses to decide if they should act. since the other witnesses are doing the same thing and thus not reacting to the emergency, the witnesses decide that there is no emergency.
- diffusion of responsibility
- people assume someone else has helped the person in trouble and there is no emergency.
- attribution of arousal theory
- an individual interprets circumstances he or shi is in and uses this information to interpret physiological arousal as a certain emotion. man on scary bridge interprets heightened attraction for a pretty woman.
- james lang theory
- simulus causes autonomic response which is interpreted as emotion.
- behavior therapy
- believe in replacing old habits using pavlovian or reinforcement techniques.
- cognitive therapy
- confront patients directly with questions and help them pinpoint irrationality in their reasoning.
- Perpetuating factors of MDD
- sleeping, not eating, not bathing
- M'Naughton case
- defendant might not be responsible for actions because of a psycholgical disorder that hinders his ability to apprecitate the wrongness of his actions.
- panic disorder
- intense anxiety attacks and fear of having more anxiety attacks
- negative symptoms of schizophrenia
- emotional blunting, apathy, lack of speech
- you can't afford john mayor tickets and an iphone, so you should work at taco bell to earn more money. which freudian conscious is this?
- ego
- dodo verdict
- difference in psychotherapy techniques success in treatment is virtually non existant; they are all equal.
- trait theory of personality
- people are grouped according to basic underlying personlity characteristics.
- Why did bystanders not intervene to help kitty genovese?
- they were not sure whether she needed help.
- Schatner and Singer theory
- Once a drug is injected (adrenaline) into a patient, the emotion they feel is dependant on the situation at the time of injection --> either positive negative or absent.
- Authortarian pattern of child rearing
- "Because I am the mother!"
- Kohlberg's stages of preconceived morality and moral behavior are governed by
- avoiding punishment
- syntax
- rules by which words are combined
- psychometric approach to intelligence
- a untiary phenomenon rather than consisting of multiple intelligences
- validity
- does it test what we think it tests?
- reliablity
- are the results consistant over time?
- rooting
- an infants cheek is touched and it's head turn as if seeking a nipple.
- Rem sleep vs. slow wave sleep
- in rem sleep, we have inactivated body muscles and are less sensitive to external stimuli
- left brain controls the right side of the body
- contraltaral control
- social cognitive theories of hypnosis say that it works b/C
- people think they know how a person who is hypnotized should behave.
- someone who has lung cancer and who thinks "at least i'll get to learn more about death"
- emotion focused coping
- signal detection theory says what, that classical psychosocial theory does not?
- sensitity and response criterion
- rodent can discriminate between water and 1% salt solution
- difference threshold
- short term memory
- short duration and a small capacity