Placebo Effect:

·      Help alleviate illness of pain, depression, anxiety, but also lessen symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and inflammatory disorders

·      Grow out of subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated. Subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes, including immune responses and the release of hormones

·      Demonstrating that they stem from active processes in the brain

Nocebo Effect:

·      Harmful, unpleasant, or undesirable effects a subject manifests after receiving a placebo

·      Not chemically generated but due only to the subject’s pessimistic belief and expectation that the inert drug will produce negative consequences

Neuroplasticity: 

·      Brains never ending ability to change (grow and rewire itself)

EGG Measurements demonstrate neuroplasticity in the brain of Buddhist monks: 

·      The more they meditate the more the brain functions. Gamma waves increase when concentrate on compassion.

Results of Richard Davidson’s research with Buddhist monks: 

·      The fMRI machine was essential because you can see the inside of the brain and see if there are physical changes. The brain mechanisms are the most plastic and influenced by training and meditation is contentment and happiness. People who had eight week training to get rid of negative feelings have increased results. 

Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson:

·      Expectancy effect creates certain expectancies about the students’ potential and the teach unknowingly behave in ways that subtly encourage or facilitate the performance of the students seen as more likely to succeed and in turn rete the self-fulfilling prophecy of actually causing those students to excel

·      The children for whom the teachers had expected greater intellectual growth averaged greater improvement than did the control group

·      Self-fulfilling prophecy was not demonstrated in the higher grade levels

o   Younger children thought of as more malleable, or teachers believe they are

o   In younger children teachers don’t have a change to form an opinion of a child’s abilities

o   Younger children more easily influenced by and more susceptible to the subtle and unintentional processes that teachers use to communicate performance exceptions to them

o   Teachers differ between lower and higher grades

Ebbinghaus:

·      Simplification-important because we all don’t have the same knowledge or experiences

·      He invented an entirely new memory device-nonsense syllable-combination of three letters, constants surrounding a randomly chosen vowel, which ahs no meaning—study pure memory

·      Next two years he learned and relearned more than 1000 lists with 12 to 16 nonsense syllables

·      The amount of material retained in memory is directly affected by the time pent in original learning—double the original learning time and double the recall

·      Forgetting does not follow a straight line—forgetting is very rapid at first and then slow down. About half the material in the list is lost in the first hour, between 5^th and 31^st days after learning only 5% of the syllables are forgotten. Then forgetting appears to stop—the memory has reached a certain point it becomes permanent and is not forgotten

·      No point that memory actually reaches zero

·      It takes less time to relearn things then learn them

Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts:

·      Argued that using nonsense syllables, Ebbinghaus failed to study how experience and knowledge are used to store and retrieve memories

·      He conducted experiments using meaningful materials recalled in naturalistic situations

·      As subjects to memorize and recall stories

·      Subjects read the story to themselves and then tried to recall it

·      Results-subjects produced more concise story, omitted details or added details to bring it closer in agreement with their prior knowledge and beliefs, alter their memories in order to make the story more coherent-constructed from each subject’s individual viewpoint

·      Memory is just one aspect of active, creative thought

·      Psychological functions cannot be divorced from one another and that all cognition involves making sense of information being received form the environment

Sandra Bem:

·      Schematic processing is highly selective and enables the individual to impose structure and meaning onto the vast array of incoming stimuli

·      Sex typing is derived from gender-based schematic processing

·      Generalized readiness to process information on the basis of sex-lined associations that constitute gender schema

·      Self-concepts gets assimilated into the gender schema

Ivan Pavlov:

·      Conditioned Stimulus (CS)-neutral stimulus, produces no response in the animal

·      Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)-it produces an innate, reflexive response (unconditioned-no training required to produce their connection)

·      Unconditioned Response (UCS)-reflexive response (unconditioned-no training required to produce their connection)

·      Inter-Stimulus Interval-the interval between the presentation of the CS and the UCS

·      Conditioned Response-the CS begins to produce a response on its own

·      Extinction-the CS continually presented alone, the CR gradually disappears

·      Spontaneous Recovery-the recovery of the CR occurring even thought the bell had not been paired with food again

·      Reconditioning-complete extinction of the R are given a series of conditioning trials fewer pairings of the CS and UCS, indicating some memory of the original learning is still present, CR temporarily inhibited rather than forgotten

Little Hans:

·      Freud

·      Little Hans-a boy who feared horses

·      Han’s fear of horses was intimately related to his attempt to deal with an unconscious conflict—he was sexually attracted to his mother and jealous of his father who he perceived as a rival for his mother’s affection

·      Hans had hostile feelings towards his father which he would not be comfortable with so he displaced those feelings on another object, horses

·      Phobias-serve a function to help the individual redirect unacceptable thoughts into safer channels

·      All phobias are the result of such unconscious conflict

·      PROBLEMS: Watson thought his interpretation was too subjective and ignored relevant data (he witnessed a horse carriage accident)

·      Theory was based on letters based upon one perspective-fathers-second hand information

Baby Albert:

·      Watson thought that children’s fears could be produced by conditioning

·      Watson and Rosalie Rayner chose 11-month-old infant, Albert B.

·      Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)-which would innately produce fear, loud unexpected noise created by striking a steel bar with a hammer

·      Conditioned Stimulus (CS)-white laboratory rat that before Albert had no fear of

·      Experiment-rat presented followed by loud noise. After trials the rat alone was enough to make him cry.

·      Produced a phobia to rate in Albert by conditioning

·      Child’s fear generalized to other furry objects

·      PROBLEMS: no control subjects, no careful monitoring of the CR, confusion introduced by paring he noise with the rabbit and dog as well as the rat, ethical concerns-didn’t try to fix Albert’s fear before he went home, procedure loose and measurements crude

·      RESULT-psychologists came to believe that neurotic symptoms like phobias can be understood in conditioning terms and perhaps even cured by conditioning

Thorndike:

·      Experiment-deprived cats food long enough and then placed them in the cage with food outside. The cat would pull the hoop that would open the door. The cats escaped quicker with each successive trial. Learning=trial-and error process

·      Thorndike’s Law of Effect-produced learning, alternating the consequences of some aspect of animal behavior: cat could gain access to the food through efforts

·      Law of Effect-responses that produce a satisfying effect in a situation becomes more likely to occur again and responses that produce a discomforting effect becomes less likely to occur

Skinner:

·      Skinner box-cage with a lever that an animal can operate to produce some effect

·      Operant response-pushing the lever increased rate of lever pressing that occurs when the response is followed by food

·      Exemplifies-operant conditioning

·      Reinforce-stimulus change that occurs after a response and that increases the subsequent frequency of that response-no assumption about anything happening in the mind

Operant Conditioning:

·      Learning process by which the effect or consequence or a response affects the future rate or production of that response

·      Different from conditioning-is a learning process and it is voluntary

·      Reinforcements:

o   Fixed-Ratio: reinforcement after a fixed number of responses

o   Variable-Ratio: reinforcement after a varying number of responses

o   Fixed-Interval: reinforcement where a fixed period of time must elapse between one reinforced response and the next

o   Variable-Interval: Reinforcement of response after varying amounts of time 

Negative Reinforcement: 

the taking away an aversive stimulus to increase certain behavior or response (Strengthen)

Punishment:

to extinguish a behavior

Problems with Punishment:

·      John Dewey found that punishment of punitive, hostile, disaffiliated, self-righteous and nonempathic disciplinary practices are associated with cognitive and emotional disturbance, hostile withdrawal/acting out, dependency, personality problems, nervousness, and reduced schoolroom efficiency

·      Timing is important

·      Parents should accompany punishment with explanation

Edward Deci:

·      Extrinsic reward-money and verbal reinforcement which are mediated outside of the person

·      Intrinsic reward-mediated within the person, no apparent reward accept the activity itself or the feeling which result form the activity

·      Contingent-dependent for existence; conditional

·      Person’s intrinsic motivation to perform an activity decreases when they received contingent monetary payments, threats of punishment for poor performance, or negative feedback about his performance

·      Noncontingent monetary payments left intrinsic motivation unchanged, and verbal reinforcement appeared to enhance intrinsic motivation

·      Deci, 1971: three one-hour sessions of puzzle-solving, experimental group paid dollar per puzzle solved, control group unpaid, results: experimental subjects lost intrinsic motivation to work on puzzles

Lepper:

·      If reinforcement is contingent upon some action, then the person is obliged to perform that action if they want the reward

·      Experiment-

o   Sets of felt-tip markers placed in school classrooms with preschoolers

o   3 groups: children receive a reward for drawing, not given rewards or any external incentive, not told in advance but afterwards they received a reward

o   2 weeks later the markers and other activities were available

o   Measured-time spend on drawing and how good the drawings were

o   Observed by people who didn’t know what group the kids were in

·      Results-

o   Children who were awarded seemed less interested in drawing only spend 8% of their time

o   Group 2 and 3 spend twice that time and drawings were rated better

o   Rewarding children decreased their interest later

o   Became work

o   Weakened intrinsic reward

Tolman:

·      Cognitive map-mental representation

·      True nature and complexity of learning could not be fully understood without an examination of the internal mental processes that accompany the observable stimuli and responses

·      Even though internal cognitive processes could not be directly observed, they could be objectively and scientifically inferred from observable behavior

·      Latent Learning Experiment-

o   Group C, control group, exposed to the complex maze with food reward at the end

o   Group N, no reward

o   Group D, like group N for the first 10 days but then found food and continued to find food for the rest of the trial

o   Group N and D did not learn anything about the maze when the were not receiving rewards

o   Control group learned the maze in two weeks

o   Group D learned it in three days after finding the reward-during the ten days with no reward they were actually learning more about the maze than they were showing

·      Spatial Orientation Experiment-

o   Designed to show that rats trained in a maze actually know the location in space of the food reward relative to their starting position even if the elements of the maze are radically changed or even removed

o   Rats learned the simple maze, then the maze was changed

o   The rats had a wider, comprehensive map to the effect that food was located in such and such a direction in the room

·      Results influenced environmental psychology, relationship between human behavior and the environment 

Just-World Phenomenon:

·      Tendency of people to believe that the world is just/fair and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get

·      Characteristics:

o   More religious

o   More conservative

o   More authoritarian

o   More likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions

o   More negative attitudes towards underprivileged groups

Parenting Styles: Diana Baumrind

·      Permissive-

o   Behave in a nonpunitive acceptant and affirmative manner toward the child’s impulses, desires, and actions

o   Consults with him about policy decisions and gives explanations for family rules

o   Makes few demands for household responsibility and orderly behavior

o   Presents herself as a resource fort he child to use if they wish

o   Lets the child regulate their own activities

o   Avoids the exercise of control and does not encourage the child to obey externally defined standards

o   Attempts to use reason and manipulation to accomplish her ends

·      Authoritarian

o   Attempts to shape, control, and evaluate the behavior and attitudes of the child in accordance with a set standard of conduct

o   Values obedience and favors punitive, forceful measures to curb self-will

o   Restricting autonomy

o   Assigning household responsibly in order to inculcate respect for work

o   Preservation of order and traditional structure

o   Child accept her word for what is right

·      Authoritative

o   Direct the child’s activities in a rational, issue-oriented manner

o   Encourages verbal give and take

o   Shares with the child the reasoning behind her policy and solicits his objections when he refuses to conform

o   Both autonomous self-will and disciplined conformity

o   Exerts firm control but doesn’t hem the child in restrictions

o   Enforces her own perspective but recognizes the child’s individual interests and special ways

o   Uses reason, power, and shaping by regime and reinforcement to achieve her objectives

Principles of the Cognitive Level of Analysis:

·      Human beings are informational processors and mental processes guide behavior

·      The mind can be studied scientifically by developing theories and using a number of research theories

·      Cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural factors

Principles Demonstrated in Research:

·      Dweek-a person’s mindset is important in predicting their behavior. From social psychology we know that people who have fixed ideas about other people—sterotyping—may be more prone to discriminate-perception

·      Demonstrated in theories and using number of scientific research methods. Neisser said that cognitive psychology had become too artificial and that researchers should not forget that cognition cannot be isolated from our everyday experiences—now studied in labs along with daily context

·      Bartlett-coined the term “schema”-mental representation of knowledge. Found that people had problems remembering a story from another culture and that they reconstructed story to fit in with their cultural schema, memory is not a tape recorder, people remember in terms of meaning and what makes sense to them-distortions

Research Methods for Cognitive Researchers:

·      Traditionally they favored controlled experiment in a laboratory because all the variables can be controlled but it suffers from artificiality

·      Today researchers are using case studies—person with extraordinary memory or people with brain damage

·      Modern neuroimaging technologies offer possibilities to look into brain processes—now study which brain areas are active when people make decisions and how cognitive processes can be disrupted by brain damage

Schema Theory: 

·      Anderson and Pichert

·      Aim: to see if schema processing influences both encoding and retrieval

·      Participants heard a story about two boys who decided to stay away from school one day

·      Half asked to read as a house buyer or burglar

·      12 min distracting task

·      5 min delay

·      ½ swished from buyer to burglar and vice versa

·      ½ recall tested the

·      Researchers found that the participants in the changed schema remembered 7% more points on the second recall test compared to first trial

·      Schema processing must have an affect at retrieval as well as encoding cause the new schema could only have influenced recall at retrieval stage

·      People encoded information that was not important to their prevailing schema since info could be remembered from first reading when story was flipped