The scientific study of the changes of the mind and related systems throughout the lifespan

nature vs. nuture debate + changes: physical, cognitive, social

An estimate of the variance within a population that is due to heredity

High= genetics/ entirely nature

Low= environment/ entirely nurture

What are tiny strands of genetic material called?

How many chromosomes does each person have?

What information is on the chromosomes?

Chromosomes

Each person has 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 total)

Genes

What do genes tell us and determine?

What is the human genome?

Genes determine how your cells are going to multiply and grow and how you'll develop

The human genome is the complete set of genes contained within each of us

-not just one 1 causes something, they can relate to intelligence, sequence of genomes

How are sibling studies used?

Identical, fraternal

They're used to compare different types of sublings to each other

Identical- monozygotic

Fraternal- dizygotic

siblines are like fraternal twins with less shared events

Monozygotic twins raised together vs raised apart

Identical twins raised together= .85 score of similar intelligence

identical twins raised apart- lower correlation than raised together shows environmental effect

Fraternal raised together- lower correlation than identical twins shows genetic effects

Siblings reared together- medium

unrelated individuals reared together- little less similarity in intelligence than siblings raised together

Bouchard thought what car you choose, what name you're attracted to can be genetics

He found weird similarties because he asked a lot of weird questions

Similarities and rare occurrences are all around us, just not frequent enough to be interesting

• It's to track/predict development

• understand development causes and triggers

- what pushes you in a specific direction

• find non-traditional development causes and results

- what are the consequences of change?

Starts at conception, cell multplication and division, periods of development, stages of change.

Development continues throughout our lives

Little or no control over most muscles- flimsy, horrible visual abilities- lens not formed/ undeveloped rods/ cones, 60-100 billion neurons- this is a lot and synaptic pruning has yet to occur

Apgar scale- identifies ability to handle stress and high- risk infants

a few reflexes- rooting, sucking, grasping, babinski- moving big toe after touching bottom of foot, stepping

Massive amounts of physical change occur die to a rush of hormones- chemical substances secreted by the hypothalamus and pituitary gland

Women- earlier and slower; estradiol +testostorone 2x

Men- later; testostorone 8x and estradiol (small increase)

Linked to changes in reproductive abilities, and physical, cognitive, and socioemotional attributes

The very early onset and rapid progression of puberty

- occurs much more often in girls than boys

-earlt development affects girls negatively at the time -> riskier behaviors, more emotional and social problems

-> future- poorer school performance, life choices that are similar to older peers, more time with older peers, more emotional problems, more drug problems

-These same impacts don't occur for boys

They give us insights about development:

that is follows a pattern, the pattern can be altered, but there's usuallya cause, and it shows that the effects. cause of this alteration in development can have a long- lasting impact on the individual

He observed the development of his children; Laurtent, Lucienne, and Jacqueling

He also worked with Alfred Binet in his administration of intelligence tests, and as he studied intelligence, he becae interested in the cognitive development of children

Schema

equilibrium

disequilibrium

A concept of mental framework that organizes and interprets information in the world

A cognitive state of mind that comes from harmony between a child's environment and present schema

A cognitive state of mind caused when new information contradicts current schemas

Assimilation is interpreting one's new experience in terms of one's existing schema

Accommodation- adapting one's current schema to incorporate new information

-equilibration- shifting from one frame of mind to the next
-adjust schema to get back to equilibrium

According to Piaget, children develop in a consistent manner that causes them to start boticing different cognitive schema conflicts

When a child reaches a certain stage, he/she recognizes numerous conflicts with current schema

After multiple exposures, children begin to alter schema

Once that happens, the children reach a temporary state of equilibrium

Sensorimotor

Preoperational

Concrete Operational

Formal Operational

Sensorimotor

Age 0- 2

Figuring out your senses

Seeing a stimulus and coming up with a reule to figure out with the stimulus means

Object permanence- idea that hidden things seem to be gone/ out of existence

sense of self

Preoperational

Symbolic Function (2-4)

Intuitive Thought (4-7)

Struggle with the concept of reality

2-4=Symbolic function substage= don't understand that different people see different things, ppl perceive same thing I perceive

egocnetrism- child cannot take another person's perspective

Pretend play- recognizing reality from pretend play= girl doesn't understand why there's no tea coming out of cup

Animism- can't distinguist animate/ inatimate ex/snowman can touch them

Intuitive Thought= Symbolism- kids understanding that little things can correlate to large things. ex/ kids finding large snoopy form where little snoopy is placed in a toy room

Why?- kids asking why is their way of learning language

What is conservation?

The ability to better understand the properties of shapes and objects

ex/ a tall cup has the same amount of liquid as a short/ wide cup

Moving 5 pennies far apart looks like more to kids than 5 pennies placed closely together

Metacognition- thinking about your learning process

Able to do operations - mentally reverse actions that were first done physically, hearing your own voice echo in your head

ex= kids not knowing how many pennies remain after a person takes them away and puts them back

Analogies: run->walk & fast-> slow

Abstract reasoning- focus on ideal and hypothetical

easy reognition of logic problems, deductive reasoning-> if I do this, most likely outcome will be

Adoloscent Egocentrism- a heightened sens of self-consciousness

-Imaginary Audience- perception of being constant center of attention

-Personal fable- perception of being unique and invincible

Some say not all ppl reach this stage

Children goes through different, set stages of development as they progres toward adulthood

These stages are distinct, age specific, and cannot be sped up though adult help

Inaccurate age of stage related issues

He said that people need more time to developearly conservation and object permanence

Underestimated how long it takes for late abstract thinking + some never get to formal operational stage

some people still fear imaginary audiences

Culture impacts stages- training and exposure related

He researched ideas of cognitive development that were described by Piaget

Agreed with the ideas that developmental process in cognitive skills does take place

Argued against Piaget's idea that this cognitive development is set and cannot be accelerated

Cog development occurs though gradual +continual growth

Instead of being in different developmental stages, we progress inzones of proximal development

Scaffolding- process of teaching a child slightly above his/her current level of cognitive development in order to help that child learn cognitive concepts better

Ex= speaking slowly with simpler words to help children learn

Worked under tutelage of Piaget, examined moral- based development

Argues that, similar to cog development, children also go through stages of moral development throughout their lives

Contended that children progress throughout these stages in a set order, but ppl don't necessarily advance through all of these stages in their life

Tested moral development by telling stories and asking ppl what they'd do

Level 1= Preconventional- values in external events, s1 punishment avoidance, s2 getting what you want by trade off

Level 2= Conventional- performing right roles-s3 meeting expectations of others, s4 fulfilling duties and upholding laws

Level 3= Postconventional - shared standards, rights, and duties- s5 sense of democracy and relativity of rules, s6 self selection of univerasal rules

Cultural influence on progression

Moral shift might merely represent a shift of focus by the individual

Preconventional- self

conventional- others/ roles

post conventional-combination

Differences between responses and actual behavior

An approach to psychology that involves observable cause-and- effect relationships between conditions and behavior

All actions of the mind are said to result from a stimulus/response relationship that has been/is being encountered

Resarch should be done on visible factors (you simple respond to stimuli, we lie to ourselves about our thoughts to justify why we do things- limited to observable and quantifiable

Considered to be founding father of behaviorism, might not be true, but he was posterboy

Known for statement: give me dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and i'll gaurantee to take any one at random and train him to be any type of specialist I choose

could predict behavior based on evironent

1 year age. Convinced Reiner to sample children in an infant care unit. Watson looked for a calm baby and let baby Albert play with toys

He brought in a rat onw day and banged metal behind Albert-> Albert cried, second day= repeat, 3rd, 4th, 5th repeat. 6th=Albert cried until the rat left the room,

Anything that was white or fluffy scared baby Albert

Then Albert's mom removed him from the care unit

• loud sound (unconditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (unconditioned response), a natural response.
• Introduction of a rat (neutral stimulus) paired with the loud sound (unconditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (unconditioned response).
• Successive introductions of a rat (conditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (conditioned response). Here, learning is demonstrated

Most actions are based on our learning about how things are connected

this relates to that

this indicated to that

They are also based on learning the consequences of our behavior or situations

if I do this, then that will happen

Originally interested in digestive system of dogs &  ran into problem with dogs in his experiment

From his original problem, he discovered and began studying psychic salivations in dogs

realized that this form of learning was interesting and dedicated time to studying how dogs developed this behavior

Dogs would salivate when they ate food

Dogs would salivate when they saw research assistant before eating food

tried sliding food under door, but dogs noticed, psychosecretion

Uncondtioned Stimulus

Unconditioned response

A stimulus that elicits an unlearned or reflexive process

An automatic response to a stimulus

After detecting original paring of information ex unconditioned stimulus + response, a neutral stimulus is presented

A training or pairing procedure then begins until the neutral stimulus is recognized to be associated with the unconditioned stimulus

This paring of stimuli eventually leads to a conditioned response to the newly conditioned stimulus

Indicates how likely the neutral stimulus or conditional stimulus is to elicit the conditional response over time

If, after the conditioning, the conditonal stimulus is presented without unconditioned stimulus repeatedly, the association will deteriorate and the conditioned stimulus will return to being a neutral simulus= extinction

Note= extinguished associations can be reconditioned usually faster than intial conditoning, and sometimes organisms show spontaneous recovert of extinguished behaviors

Conditioning occurs more rapidly when the neutral stimulus is relatively unfamiliar

The less time that elapses between the presentation of the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus, the faster the conditoned response is acquired

Conditioned stimulus presented then unconditinal stimulus presented after a delay= fastest learning

pigeon presses a lever which results in food being released after a delay of (x)time. After several practice trials, the pigeon learns this association such that when the time draws closer, it moves towards the food hatch in anticipation of the food

Novel stimulus (you haven't been exposed to) before are best for learning curve increase

Species does matter, in other species, words don't work well

Rats poisoned with water, other group of rats had sugar water with poison. Each rat learned to avoid that type of water (sugar or reg) for rest of their lives, they know the flavor makes them sick (classical)

Backward conditoning is ineffective- ie research assistant after dog, get shocked then hear pineapple

Sometimes, organisms respons with a conditioned response to a new stimuli that closely resembles the conditioned stimulus= generalization

Organisms can also not respond to a new stimulus as if it were the same as the conditioned stimulus= discrimination

Examples of generalization and discrimination

generalization explain how one exposure can make us avoid all alike things

You don't like someone, you someone who is like the person you don't like, you act the same way as you did towards the person you dislike

Play a bell, shock a rat. Then play a differnt tone. Will rat get nervous? If it does, it's doing generalization. IF it doesn't get nervous, discrimination

Discovered operational conditioning/ idea os instrumental learning

Cats in puzzle box experiment where he studied learning by examining trial and error of cats in their attempts to escape from puzzle boxes

Each cat developed its own routine to try to get out- touch bar, pull a latch, if latch was removed cats got antry. if cats got free from touching something, cats would go through whole process even though they knew how to get out

Law of Readiness= a series of responses can be chained together if they belong to the same action sequence and will result in annoyance if blocked

ex= cat developed own routine, but cats got annoyed if part of box that they used before got removed

Conections become strengthened with practive and weakened when practive is discontinued

Ex= need to practice multiple times to produce routines

Harder to form a routine if you only meet once a week for a class

Behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely; behaviors followed by unfavorable consequqnces become less likely

Ex- cats formed routines based on what would let them out of the box. Things that produced pleasureable effects were part of routine and things that produced negative effects were not part of the routine

He attempted to expand on Throndike's original theiroes of instrumental learning, proposed that learning process has a very predictable response to rewards and punishments

Used Skinner boxes (elaborate boxes he designed-most of his work was done on rats and pigeons

Reinforcement

Punishment

Any event that increases the future probability of the most recent behavior

a cosequence that is good= water food

Any event that decreases the frequency of the preceding behavior

Behaviorists don't talk abt feelings/ internal occurrences

Biologically useful, intinsically satisfying, resotres equilibrium

You watch enough tv, get to sleep

if you're not getting enough of something, it becomes a reinforcer

Positive Reinforcement = adding something - introduction of pleasurable stimulus after a behavior, which increases likelihood of future occirance of behavior

Negative Reinforcement= a removal of an aversive stimulus after a behavior, which will increase the likelihood of future behavior

Positive Punishment= introduction of aversible stimulus after a behavior, which will decrease the likelihood of future ocurrence of the behavior

Negative Punishment= removal of pleasurable stimulus after a behavior, which will decrease the likelihood of the future occurrence of a behavior

negative reinforcement= seatbelt stops sound, negative b/c sound goes away, reinforcement b/c more likely to buckle up next time

Positive punishment= zapping a dog for barking, zap added so positive, punishment b/c intended to decrease barking

Negative Punishment- money, taking it away for cursing, stop cursing- decrease likelihood

Adding noise to make kid stop crying

Less likely to happen in future-> punishment

Added the noise-> positive, so positive punishment

Take away TV privileges to reduce bad behavior

Less likely to show bad behavior->punishment

Taking TV away-> negative, so negative punishment

Increasing or decreasing similar responses due to punishment or reinforcement

similar stimuli produce similar responses

Only increasing or decreasing the especific response that was reinforced or punishment

saying this is the one thing I want to do

Shaping= rewarding successive approximations of a behavior that's being reinforced

ex= reward a pigeon as it's working up to a behavior to get it to do a full turn after rewarding turns in the right durection

Chaining- reinforcing combinations of behaviors that are paried together

ex= get dog to learn each individual behavior + reward it for performing it in a specific sequence

Forward chaining= 1st, 2nd, 3rd, last= eat, eat and raise hand, eat, raise hand, + jump

Backward chaining- spin, ring then spin, stand, ring and spin

Continuous Rerinforcement- reinforcement for ecery correct response

Partial/ intermitent reinforcement- occasional reinforcement for a correct response

Fixed ratio- reward for behavior after x responses, causes faster responders to get more rewards. produces high rates of responding, but quick extinction when the reinforcement is removed

Variable ratio- reward for a behavior after a variable and unpredictable number of responses. Ex= gambling, hard to extinguish after connection is made

Fixed interval- reward for behavior after X amount of time has passes. The responses are rather sparse, but get more vigorous right before time x

Variable Interval- reward for a behavior after a vairable and unpredictable amount of time, causes slow, steady responding

Variable ratio fastest then fixed ratio

Then variable interval then fixed interval

most people learn fastest with immediate reinforcemnt or punishment

Punishment tends to be less effective than reinforcement, except when temporarily supressing undesirable behavior

vircarious conditioning can also be effective- seeing someone get reinforced/punished

They examine the human mind and behavior , study interaction of people with and within their environment

Group's effect on individual

Individual's effect on the group

Group's effect on the group

Expectations that change one's own behavior in such a way as to increase the probability of the predicted event

Phone conversation study- men more friendly to more attractive voice of woman

If teacher thinks you're smart, treat you like you're smart and impacts your behavior

Rosenthal studied extent to which teacher's expectations affect student performance

-told teachers certain children were very smart

-those kids who had been selected as very smart actually got smarter by their teachers

teachers create a warmer climate, things they say

input- they teach more material for favorable kids

response opportunity- call on children/ work w/children

Feedback-not willing to accept low quality response

A generalized belief or expectation about a group of people

can be both bad and good, often beneficial and necessary

What is prejudice?

discrimination?

An unfavorable attitude toward a group of people

can be based on almost anything imaginable and learned in a very short amount of time

Discrimination- unequal treatment of different groups

After MLK assassination, taught her class what it feels like to be discriminated against

Said blue-eyed ppl better than brown eyed, told blue-eyed not to play with brown-eyed

kids behaved differently

turned on friends

can find out people's prejudices that are not socially acceptable

designed to test the strength of a person's automatic association

categorizing pairs faster reveals your agreement

More exposure

Common goals

Attributions= the processes that we use in order to assign causes to behavior

judgements for why you're doing a certain thing

Internal- explaining behaviors based on the internal characteristics of the person in question

ex=you got an A b/c you're smart

External- explaining behaviors based on the situation and the surroinding environment

ex=coffee made you hyper

Covariation Model (Logical way to make determine whether a particular action should be internally attributed or extenally attributed)

You go down CDC to determine if something is internal or external.

Consensus- does everyone respond the same way to this situation?

If everyone does, external

Distinctiveness- does this person often respond the same way in other situations?

If the person does, probably individual

Consistency- does this response occur everytime in this situation?

yes= individual. no=external

Determing internal/external attribution example: Bob punched Suzie

Consesus= everyone does not respond in the same way

Distinctiveness- this person does not punch everyone in other situations

Consistency- Bob does not punch Suzie over and over again

Internal

Attribution Tendencies when describing the behavior of others

What is fundamental attribution error?

Our tendency to attribute behaviors to internal attributions when looking at the behaviors of others

Ex= half the ppl get $5 to write a pro- Castro essay, other half writes an anti- Castro essay for $5

We would think that the person must of hated/loved Castro b/c we don't know that the person was paid

Picture of one fish moving away from a colony of fish.

Kai Peng-> Social Interaction

Asians pay more attention to group and how fish leaves the group

Americans talk about the individual fish being a leader

The tendency to make internal attributions for others, while making external attributions for ourselves

Ex= friend late= he's lazy

you're late= you were busy with other stuff

People cam in and explained why things happened to : them, relative, Walter Conkite

Them- external events

Relative- 50/50 internal/external

Walter Cronkite- Internal

Speeding ticket b/c Cronkite is crazy

The tendency to attribute personal failures to the situation, while attributing personal successes to ourselves

ex/ you got an A b/c you're smart

western culture b/c western think they're good

Asians think they did well by luck

got a C b/c noisy roomates/bad teacher

Conformity

Maintaining or changing one's behavior due to the real or imagined influence of others

Norms= social standards of behavior and thought that are set by a group

Some social psychologists think conformity is result of there not being a true appropriate behavior in most situations

-conformity also found when ppl are exposed to ambigious stimuli

Musafer Sharif had ppl go in a dark room and look at a light. Due to eye movement due to head swaying, they thought the light moved. Were asked how much the light moved. By 5th trial patients all agreed on same distances. ambigious situation->look for ppl to follow

Wanted to create situation where answer is obvious

ppl conformed for different reasons: some don't want to be an outcast, some think they're actually wrong and the group is correct

Public Compliance

Normative Social Influence

Conforming ot other people's behavior publicly without necessarily believing what the other people are doing or saying

Normative Social Influence-the influence of other people that leads us to conform in order to be liked or accepted by others

Ex= going to party b/c your friends tell you to go

Conforming to other people's behaviors out of a genuine belief that what they are doing is right

you begin to feel that parties on Thursday night are ok

Presence of an ally

number of people in majority- magic #3

ambiguity of situation (sometimes)

importance of group to individual

presence of an expert- w/a professional/ psychologist

social situation's requirement to conform

-need for speed, need for unanimity

collectivist- dramatic increase in conformity when with their close members, non members, conformity decreases

individualistic

Magic number= 3. if majority gets to 3 ppl giving wrong answer, max level of conformity occurs

8-1 outnumbered is stronger than 7-2 outnumbered

She got attacked and screamed for help, nobody helped her, she got left on the ground, and the attacker came back and killed her

bystander effect= our decrease in likelihood of helping when with others

Assumption that everyone else has a better idea of how to act in a situation

Smoke in room example. When in a room with multiple people, less reporting of smoke in room + made excuses to justify that the smoke wasn't dangerous

We tend to feel less of a responsibility to act when other people are nearby

Speaking through phone w/prerecording of a person who pretends to have a seizure->individual responds + tries to get help

same situation but with 2 participants + recording, participants reported emergency less than when just 1 person

group of 4 people even more less likely to respond

Millgram placed participants in two categories: teacher and student.

He developed a shock generator the went up to 450 pounds

each participant took on the role of teacher, and the other paricipant who was the student was in on the experiment

Once 300 volt level was reached, learner demanded to be released. Then learner became silent. The experimenter told the teacher to continue and keep going. Some ppl kept going; others stopped.

Classical Conditioning Extinction

Classical Conditioning Spontantaneous Recovery

The weakening and eventual dissappearance of a learned response

can be weakened by repeated presentation of the conditioned response without the unconditioned stimulus

The recovery of an extinguished reponse (in a weaker form) when the organism is presented with the original conditional stimulus after a rest period

Operant Conditioning Extinction

Successive Approximations are chains