Download doc psyc 100 notes

Chapter 1: introduction
Psychological science is the study of the mind, brain and behaviour
Mind refers to mental activity, like the perceptions, feelings, thoughts and memories of
individuals. Mental activity results from biological processes, the actions of nerves and neurones
and their associated chemical reactions occurring within the brain.
Behaviour is used to describe a wide variety of actions from the subtle to the complex that occur
in every organism.
The seven themes of psychological science
1. Psychology is an empirical science
Psychological scientists use the scientific method to understand how people feel and act. The
scientific method is the use of objective, systematic procedures that lead to an accurate
understanding of what is being studied. It involves careful observations of our world.
Understanding that psychology is an empirical science can lead us to be better consumers of
scientific literature.
2. Nature and nurture are inextricably entwined
Nature: psychological characteristics that are biologically innate
Nurture: psychological characteristics that are acquired through education, experience and
culture
It is now know that both nature and nurture are important for human`s psychological
development and influence each other in shaping the brain, mind and behaviour.
3. The mind and brain are inseparable
The mind/body problem is perhaps one of the greatest psychological issue: are the mind and
body separate and distinct, or is the mind simply the physical brain’s subjective experience?
For theological reasons (humans possess a divine and immortal soul), many earlier scholars
believed that the mind is indeed separate and in control of the body.
Da Vinci’s dissection of the human body led him to think that all sensory messages arrived at
one location in the brain, in the region called the sensus communis (common sense!)
Descartes developed the dualism theory which states that mind and body are separate yet
intertwined. The body is an organic machine governed by reflexes and the rational mind
controlling voluntary acts is divine and separate from the body.
4. A new biological revolution is energizing research
In the last 20 years, there has been tremendous growth in the understanding of mental
activities, biological bases. There are 3 main developments that have set the stage for the
biological revolution.
Brain chemistry
The brain works through the actions of neurotransmitters, chemical that communicate
messages between nerve cells. The better understanding of the chemical processes occurring in
the brain lead the researchers to comprehend both mental activity and behaviour which
allowed them to develop treatments for various disorders.
Human genome
After mapping the human genome, scientists were able to connect a certain behaviour to genes.
By indentifying the genes new forms of therapies and treatments can be developed. They also
begin to understand that situational contexts can influence the expression of genes.
Watching the working brain
Being able to watch the working brain allowed scientists, using the methods of neuroscience, to
answer some of the most fundamental questions such as how different brain regions interact to
produce perceptual experience etc. Finding that consistent patterns of brain activation are
associated with specific mental tasks suggests that the 2 are connected to each other. We know
that there is some localization of functions but many brain regions participate to produce
behaviour and mental activity.
5. The mind is adaptive
The brain has evolved after years of problem solving, during that time; genetic mutations
occurring lead us to new adaptation, physical characteristics that increased our odds of survival
Darwin first presented the mechanism of evolution called natural selection: those who inherit
characteristics that help them adapt to their environment have a selective advantage over those
who do not.
Solving adaptive problems
Adaptive behaviours and specialized mechanism have been built into our body and brain
through evolution. Evolution theory is useful for considering whether they are adaptive, in other
words whether they affect survival and reproduction
Modern minds in Stone Age skulls
Some of our behaviours are still tainted of our ancestor’s survival instincts
Culture provides adaptive solutions
The complexity of living in groups gives rise to culture whose various aspects are passed on
through generations. Culture evolution occurs much faster that brain evolution and plays a
central role on how people view and reason about the world. For culture psychologists,
observing behavioural phenomena in their cultural context is important.
6. Psychological science crosses levels of analysis
Behaviour can be analysed on many levels from chemical processes occurring in the brain to
how culture influences one’s behaviour. There are 4 main levels
Biological: how the physical body contributes to mind and behaviour, as in the neurochemical
and genetic processes occurring in the body and brain.
Individual: differences on personality and in the mental processes that affect how people
perceive and know the world
Social: how group contexts affect people’s ways of interacting and influencing each other.
Cultural: the influence of culture on people’s behaviours.
7. We are often unaware of the multiple influences on how we think, feel and act
Some factors influence us at an unconscious level and leave us without knowledge of them. This
is often associated with Freud’s theory. Events can prime (activate) our minds so that we act in
response to the priming stimuli even though we don’t even know that we are being influenced.
How did the scientific foundations of psychology develop?
In the mid 1800s in Europe, psychology arose as a separate field of study using the experimental
method
John Stuart Mill declared in A System of Logic (1843) that psychology should leave the realm of
speculation and philosophy and become a science of observations and experiments. He defined
psychology as science of the elementary laws of the mind and declared that only through
science would the processes of the mind be understood.
Experimental psychology begins with Structuralism
Wundt (1879) established the 1st psychological laboratory and institute. He measured reaction
time to study psychological processes. In order to measure conscious experience he developed
introspection: a systematic examination of subjective mental experience that requires people to
inspect and report the content of their thoughts. The problem with this technique is that
experience is subjective and was abandoned later on.
Titchener used methods such as introspection to pioneer structuralism which is based on the
idea that conscious experience can be studied when it is broken down in its underlying
components. He believed that understanding the basic element of consciousness would provide
the scientific basis for understanding the mind.
Functionalism address the purpose of behaviour
James (1873) wrote Principles of Psychology (1890) that became the most influential book of his
time. He criticized structuralism and argued that the mind was more complex than its elements
and can not be broken down. He noted that the mind consisted of an ever changing, series of
thought that he called stream of consciousness and can’t be frozen in time. The mind’s elements
mattered less than the mind’s function as a whole. He stated that the functions must be
observed and developed functionalism which is concerned with the adaptive purpose (evolution
of mind for life preservation), or function of mind and behaviour.
Functionalists stated that if behaviour serves a purpose, that purpose is ought to be reflected in
daily human life. The broad ranging subjects touched by this approached lead to criticism for
lack of seriousness.
Gestalt psychology emphasises patterns and context in learning
The theory was founded by Wertheimer (1912) and expanded by Kohler, among others. This
theory is based on the idea that the whole of personal experience is different from simply the
sum of its constituent elements.
In experimentation they relied not on the reports of trained observers, but on ordinary people’s
observations. This unstructured approach was called the phenomenological approach that
refers to the totality of subjective conscious experience. This movements reflected that the
perception of objects is subjective and dependant on context. (Take an image, what do you see)
Women made pioneering contributions to psychology
Mary Calkins studied philosophy and classics at Smith College and was invited to become a
professor of philosophical psychology at Wellesley College. She studied with William James at
Harvard University as a guest at his seminary. In 1895 she completed all the requirements for
her PhD. with Munsterberg, but Harvard denied her degree, offering instead a PhD from
Radcliffe that she denied. She wrote in 1901 an introductory psychology book, published more
than 100 articles, and in 1905 was elected the 1st woman president of the American
Psychological Association. Her major interest was the self and she was disenchanted by the rise
of behaviourism and its dismissal of the concept of the self.
Margaret Washburn was the 1st woman to be officially granted a PhD in psychology, in 1921
from Cornell University, where she studied with Titchener. In 1921 she became the 2 nd woman
president of the APA and spent most of her life at Vassar College. She set up a scholarship fund
for women.
Freud Emphasized the Power of the Unconscious
Freud began working with a patient with neurological disorders and found out that his patient’s
paralysis was not always caused by medicinal reason and came to believe that they were caused
by psychological factors. He deduced that much of the human behaviour is determined by
mental processes operating below the level of conscious awareness, at the level of the
unconscious. He believed that these unconscious mental forces, often sexual and in conflict,
produced psychological discomfort and in some cases, disorders.
Freud pioneered the clinical case study approach and developed psychoanalysis that attempts
to bring the contents of the unconscious into the conscious awareness so that conflicts can be
revealed and dealt with. He analysed the content of dreams and used free association, a
technique in which patients would simply talk about what they wanted for the times that they
wanted, believing that patients would reveal the unconscious conflicts causing them problems.
He extended his theory for general psychological functioning.
The problems with his method are that they are extremely difficult to analyse using the scientific
method. Freud’s theories are no longer accepted, but the idea that mental processes occur
below the level of consciousness is widely accepted.
Most behaviour can be modified by reward and punishment
Watson (1913) disapproved of methods like free association and introspection and believed that
if psychology was to be a science, it had to stop trying to study mental events that could not be
observed directly. He developed behaviourism, an approach that emphasizes environmental
effects on behaviour. Influenced by Pavlov, the most important issue was the nature/nurture
question. For him, nurture was all and he believed that animals acquired all behaviours through
environmental factors: understanding the stimuli was all that was needed to predict the
behavioural response.
Skinner denied mental states’ existence, writing in his provocative book Beyond Freedom and
Dignity (1971) that concepts referring to mental processes were of no scientific value in
explaining behaviour. He wanted to understand how repeated behaviour were shaped or
influenced by the events or consequences that fallowed them
Behaviorism was popular well through the 1960’s. Although some of their theories help the
understanding of the mind, brain and behaviour, evidence shows that thought processes
influence outcomes.
Cognition affects behaviour
Human’s perceptions can influence behaviour and that learning was not as simple as the
behaviourists believed.
In 1921, Kohler (Gestalt theorist) found out that monkeys could solve the problem of how to get
a banana that was out of reach by figuring out how to connect 2 sticks together. After trying a
few methods, the animals succeeded and used this method thereafter.
Tolman, a learning theorist, showed that animals could learn by observation, which made little
sense according to behaviourism, because the animals were not rewarded, the connection was
all being made in their heads.
Other psychologists showed that the laws of behaviourism were not sufficient to explain why
cultural experiences alter a person’s way of remembering a story, how grammar develops
systematically, and why a child goes through stages of development during which they interpret
the world differently
Miller (1975) launched the cognitive revolution. Neisser (1967) integrated a wide range of
cognitive phenomena in his classis book Cognitive Psychology, which named and defined the
field. Cognitive psychology is the study of how people think, learn and remember. Research has
shown that the way people think about things influence their behaviour.
Newell and Simon applied the functioning process of a computer to how the mind works. The
information processing of the cognitive theories viewed the brain as the hardware that ran the
mind that was the software. A lot preferred to focus only on the software. In 1980, cognitive
psychologists joined forces with neuroscientists...and developed an integrated view of the mind
and brain. In 1990, cognitive science was created which is the study of the neural mechanisms
that underlie thought, learning and memory.
Social situations shape behaviour
In the 1900s social psychology emerged which is defined as the study of group dynamics in
relation to psychological processes. The Nazi cases were studied.
In the 1930 and 1940’s Lewin (Gestalt) emphasized a scientific, experimental approach to social
psychology. His field theory emphasizes the interplay between people and their environments,
such as social situations and group dynamics. This science recognizes the importance of fully
considering a situation to predict and understand the behaviour within it.
Psychological therapy is based on science
In the 1950s, a humanistic approach to the treatment of psychological disorders led by Carl
Rogers and Abraham Maslow, emphasized how people can come up to know and accept
themselves in order to reach their unique potential. The techniques involved questioning and
listening in a certain type of way. In the last 40 years, a scientific approach to treating the
disorders arose.
Today 2 key factors are important in the treatment: a clinically recognized treatment is required
and recognizing that each person is a unique individual with specific issues and needs.
Chapter 2 : research methodology
Critical thinking skill: identifying the need for control groups, recognizing that large samples are
more reliable than small samples
What is scientific inquiry?
It is a way of finding answers to empirical questions that can be answered by observations or
measure. It has 4 goals: describing what happened, predicting when it happened, controlling
what causes it to happen, and explaining why it happened. The scientific method is used.
The scientific method depends on theories hypotheses and research
A theory (model of interconnected ideas and concepts that explains what is observed and makes
predictions about future events) should generate a hypothesis (a specific prediction of what
should be observed in the world if the theory is correct). If the theory is accurate the hypothesis
should be supported. Once hypotheses have been developed research, which involves the
systematic and careful collection of data, or objective information that provides a test of the
hypothesis, and ultimately says if the theory is likely to be supported. Once the research findings
are in, you return to the original theory to evaluate the implications of the data that were
collected. The findings either support or require modifications of the theory. The study must be
replicated and the results must be the same. Theories must give rise to a wide variety of
hypotheses to allow evaluation.
Focus on a theory, formulate a hypothesis, conduct research, analyze whether the data supports
or refutes the theory, report results and embark on further inquiry.
Many scientific discoveries are the results of serendipity: when researchers unexpectedly
discover something important.
What are the types of studies in psychological research?
There are 3 main types of study design: descriptive, correlational and experimental which differ
in the extent to which the researcher has control over the variables in the study and therefore in
the extent to which the experimenter can make conclusions about causation. The variables must
be defined in a precise way that reflects the method used to assess them. This is done by using
operational definitions, which identify and quantify variables so they can be tested.
Descriptive studies involve observing and classifying behaviour
Descriptive studies (observational studies) involve observing and noting behaviour to analyse it
objectively. Advantages: valuable in early stages of research, when trying to determine whether
a phenomenon exists and takes place in a real world setting. Disadvantages: errors in
observations can occur because of an observer’s expectations (observer bias) (Hawthorn effect).
Observer’s presence can change the behaviour being witnessed. There are 2 main types:
Naturalistic observation: the observer remains separated and makes no attempt to change the
situation.
Participant observation: the observer in directly involved. They need to minimize their impact on
a situation in order to avoid problems.
Longitudinal studies are one type of developmental design that involve observing and
classifying developmental changes that occur in the same people over time, either with or
without intervention form the observer. Advantages: provide info on the effect of age on the
same people, allowing the researchers to see developmental changes. Disadvantage: expensive,
takes a long time, and may lose participants over time.
Cross-sectional studies involve observing and classifying developmental changes that occur in
different groups of people at the same time. Advantages: faster and less expensive than
longitudinal studies. Disadvantage: unidentified variables may be involved in differences
between the groups (different level of education between the old adults and young adults.)
Observer bias: systematic errors that occur in observation because of the observer’s
expectations (influenced by culture and stereotypes). It can even change the behaviour being
observed, a phenomenon called experimenter expectancy effect. To counter that effect it is
better that the person doing the experimentation is blind to, or unaware of the study’s
hypothesis. (Rosenthal study with the students training the rats: half were told that their rats
were trained to run a maze faster and the other half was told nothing. The 1st group of rats did
finish the maze faster because the students cave them cues which change their behaviour.)
Correlational designs examine how variables are related
Correlation study: a research method that examines how variables are naturally related in the
real world, without any attempt by the researcher to alter them. These methods are sometimes
required for ethical reasons. Certain problems are associated.
1. No known causality: they don’t tell what causes behaviour, but can enable the researcher to
make predictions that the same pattern in the association will be reproduced in further cases.
(We can say that the horrors of war are associated with learning difficulties, but can’t say they
cause them because the soldier’s wartime experiences were not controlled).
2. They don’t allow the knowledge of the direction of the cause-effect relation between
variables. This ambiguity is called the directionality problem. (Does less sleep cause more stress,
or more stress cause less sleep?)
3. The 3rd variable problem: when the experimenter cannot directly manipulate the independent
variable, and can’t be confident that another unmeasured variable is not the actual cause of
differences in the dependent variable. Instead of A causing B, C (3rd variable) caused A and B. (A
genetic predisposition to smoke or to develop cancer interfere is the causality of smoking and
cancer.) Randomizing the sample sometimes helps, but sometimes difficult for ethical
reasons.(picking up random children that will or will not go to preschool in order to see if going
the preschools betters children’s reading ability). By showing that a relationship between 2
variables still holds even if a 3rd variable can come into play is meaningful.
An experiment involves manipulating conditions
An experiment is a study in which the researcher manipulates one variable to examine the
variable’s effect on a second variable.
Control (or comparison) group: the participants in a study that receive no intervention or a
different intervention from the one being studied.
Experimental (or treatment) group: the participants in a study that receive the intervention.
Independent variable: the variable being manipulated by the experimenter to examine its
impact on the dependent variable: the measure that is affected by manipulation of the
independent variable.
The benefit of an experiment is that the researcher can establish that causal relationship
between the 2 variables. Although they can infer case the link is often criticised is being artificial.
Research design often involves a series of choices: it means balancing the problems of taking
people as they come with the problems of creating an artificial environment for the experiment.
Establishing causality
An experiment must be controlled; the possibility that anything other than the independent
variable may affect the experiments’ outcome must be minimized. A confound is anything that
affects a dependent variable and may unintentionally vary between the experimental conditions
of a study, making it impossible to discern what caused a change. Alternative explanations for
the observed data must be ruled out so that only the independent variable varies.
Random assignment is used to establish equivalent groups
Population: everyone in the group the experimenter is interested in
Sample: a subset of a population undergoing the experiment.
Sampling: process by which people from the population are selected for the sample. In order for
the sample to reflect the population the best method is to use random sampling. A likely
confound is pre-existing differences between groups that are assigned to different conditions.
Convenience sample: a sample of people conveniently available for the study
Selection bias: when participants in different groups in an experiment differ systematically.
Random assignment: the procedure for placing research participants into the conditions of an
experiment in which each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any level of the
independent variable. It balances out known and unknown factors.
Meta-analysis: a ‘’study of studies’’ that combines the findings of multiples studies (the same
type) to arrive at a conclusion.
What are the data collection methods of psychological science?
The question the researcher wants to answer dictates the appropriate method for collecting
data. The 1st step in selection is determining the level of analysis a particular question is
addressing.
Cross cultural studies: compares groups of people from different cultures. Advantages: examine
the effect of culture on some variable of interest, thereby making psychology more applicable
around the world. Disadvantages: some situations and some specific words do not convey the
same meaning when translated across cultures and can leave room for alternative explanations,
such as misunderstanding during the research process.
Culturally sensitive research: studies that take into account the ways culture affects thoughts,
feelings and actions. Culture is adaptive (modifies in function of survival) and has a shared
system of meaning.
Observing is an unobtrusive strategy
Observational techniques: involve the systematic assessment and coding of overt behaviour. 3
questions must be asked.
1. Should the study be conducted in the lab or in the environment?
2. How should the data be collected? As a written description of what was seen or as a
running tally of pre specified categories of behaviour?
3. Should the observer be visible? The concern here is that observations might alter the
behaviour being observed, an effect known as reactivity. The Hawthorn effect refers to
changes in the behaviour that occur we people know we are observing them.
Case studies examine individual lives and organizations.
A case study: special type of observation/descriptive study that involves the intensive
examination of a person or a few individuals (clinical case studies) or one or few organizations
(organizational case studies), typically people or organizations that are somehow unusual. They
reveal a lot on the person being observed but can’t generalize to all similar people (troubled
people). Advantages: can provide extensive data about one or a few individuals (brain injured)
or organizations (success/failure of a procedure). Disadvantages: can be very subjective: if a
researcher has a causal theory (for example, people who are loners are dangerous), this theory
can bias what is being observed and recorded (Can’t know why some people react differently to
a similar situation). It is not possible to generalise the results from an individual to the
population.
Asking takes a more active approach
Includes surveys, interviews, questionnaires, and other self-reports. A critical issue in asking
research-based questions is how to frame the questions, there are several options. Open-ended
questions: allow respondents to provide any answer they think of and to answer in as much
detail as they feel appropriate. Close-ended questions: the respondents must select among fixed
options.
Self report methods: method in which people are asked to provide information about
themselves, such as questionnaires or surveys.
Experience sampling: method used when the researcher wants to understand how thoughts,
feelings and behaviours vary through a period of time. Several samples are taken overtime.
Self-report bias: when people introduce bias in their answers, making it difficult to discern an
honest and true response. Specially present when the question produces socially desirable
responding, or faking good. There can also be the better than average effect in which people
describe themselves more positively than they should. (might not be conscious)
Interactive methods involve asking questions to participants, who then respond in any way they
feel is appropriate or select from a fixed number of options. Advantages: self-report methods
such as questionnaires can be used to gather data from a large number of people. They are easy
to administer, cost efficient and a relatively fast way to collect data. Interviewing people face to
face gives to researcher the opportunity to explore new lines of questioning. Experience
sampling allows researchers to examine how responses vary overtime. Disadvantages: people
can introduce biases into their answers (self-report bias) or may not recall information
accurately.
Scientifics can be more comfortable with their findings when they use different types of
methods, because we can get different results when we use different methods.
Response performance measures information processing
Response performance: a method in which researchers quantify perceptual or cognitive
processes in response to a specific stimulus. Researchers measure reaction time (based on the
fact that the brain takes time to process information; the more processing a stimulus requires,
the longer the reaction time), response accuracy can also be measured, response performance
by asking people to make stimulus judgments regarding different stimuli with which they are
presented. Advantages: relatively simple way to study cognition and perception, less affected by
observer bias or subject reactivity. Disadvantages: can be costly and time consuming, less likely
to be useful in real-world settings.
The Stroop effect: it takes longer to name the colors of words that are printed in conflicting
colors.
Body/brain activity can be measure directly (biological level of analysis)
Psychophysiological assessment: Researchers examine how bodily functions change in
associations with behaviours or mental states. (Polygraph: lie detector)
Electrophysiology: data collection method that measures electrical activity in the brain.
Electrodes are fixed in the person’s scalp. The device measuring brain activity is an
electroencephalogram (EEG). Different behavioural states will produce different and predictable
EEG patterns, but is limited because the recordings cover all brain activity and therefore are too
noisy or imprecise to isolate specific response to particular stimuli.
Brain imaging: a range of experimental techniques that make brain structures and brain activity
(blood flow) visible. ( brain’s electrical activity is associated with changes in the blood flow
carrying oxygen and nutrients to the active brain regions)
Positron emission tomography (PET): computer aided reconstruction of the brain’s metabolic
activity by using a radioactive substance injected into the bloodstream that enables to find the
brain areas that are using glucose. Correlation between two relatively similar tasks, because the
brain is extremely active.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) produces high quality image of the brain. Researchers
momentarily disrupt the magnetic forces and energy is released from the brain tissue.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): makes use of the brain’s blood flow indirectly by
assessing changes in the blood oxygen levels to map mental activity, scanning the brains of
participants as they perform tasks.
Advantages: map the brain in various ways to show brain regions involved in different tasks.
Disadvantages: show only the brain regions active while tasks are performed; we don’t know
whether, for example, a particular brain region is necessary for a particular task because these
data are correlational (third variable problem, directionality problem)
Transcranial magnetic stimulation: uses strong magnets to briefly interrupt normal brain activity
as a way to study brain regions. Good method to examine which brain regions are necessary for
specific functions. It can be used shortly to examine brain regions close to the scalp.
Research with animals can provide important data
Ivan Pavlov’s observation of a salivating dog inspired Jon B.Watson to launch the behaviourist
movement: humans are subjects to the same laws of nature as animals. For research purpose
transgenic mice are produce by manipulating the genes in developing mice embryos.
There are ethical issues to consider
Institutional review boards (IRBs): groups of people responsible for reviewing proposed research
to ensure that it meets the accepted standards of science and provides for the physical and
emotional well-being of research participants.
Participants must be ensured privacy. Is it okay that people are unaware? They must be ensured
confidentiality so that personal information is not linked publicly to the study’s findings. Or else
participants may bias their responses in order for them to be more socially acceptable. For
studies that are concerned with extremely sensitive topics, the participants’ response should be
anonymous, meaning that no personal information is collected, so that responses can never be
traced to the individuals (not the same as confidentiality).
Informed consent: people must be provided with all the relevant information that might affect
their willingness to become participants, and must make a knowledgeable decision to
participate. It is often obtained in written form. In the case of observational studies done
publicly, the individuals will remain anonymous. Minors, intellectually incapacitated and the
mentally ill can’t provide legal informed consent, therefore, a legal guardian must do it for them.
Deception: when participants are mislead of the studies’ goals to avoid that participants alter
their behaviour knowing the true goals. Used in last resort. After a deception is used a careful
debriefing (explanation of the study) must be done to explain why the deception was done.
Relative risk of participation (mental or physical health of participants): researchers can’t make
their participants endure pain.
How are data analysed and evaluated?
Good research requires valid, reliable and accurate data
Validity: the extent to which the data collected addresses the research hypothesis in the way
intended. The data’s validity depends on the question being studied. It is essentially the extent
to which the data is really measuring what you want to measure.
Reliability: the extent to which a measure is stable and consistent over time in similar
conditions.
Accuracy: the extent to which an experimental measure in free from error (random and
systematic)
Descriptive statistics provide a summary of the data
The 1st step in evaluating data is to inspect the raw values, looking for errors in data reporting.
The 2nd step is summarizing the basic patterns using descriptive statistics, which provide an
overall summary of the data.
Central tendency (simplest descriptive stat): a measure that represents the typical behaviour of
a group as a whole.
Mean: a measure of central tendency that is the arithmetic average of a set of numbers.
Median: a measure of central tendency that is the value in a set of numbers that falls exactly
halfway between the lowest and the highest values. Sometimes a better estimate than the
mean because doesn’t include extreme values.
Mode: most frequent score in a set of values.
Variability: in a set of numbers, how widely dispersed the values are from each other and from
the mean
Standard deviation: a statistical measure of how far away each value is, on average, from the
mean.
Range: the distance between the largest and the smallest value.
Correlation describes the relationship between variables.
The 1st step in examining the relationship between 2 variables is to create a graph known as a
scaterplot. In analysing the relationship, researchers can compute a correlation coefficient (-1:
perfect negative correlation, to +1: perfect positive correlation)
Inferential statistics permit generalizations
Inferential statistics: a set of procedures used to determine if differences (between means)
actually exist in the population from which the sample are drawn. When the results obtained by
a study would be very unlikely to occur if there were no differences between the groups of
subjects, the scientist conclude that the results are statistically significant: it would have to
occur less than 5% of the time.
Chapter 3: biological foundations
What is the genetic basis of psychological science?
Genetics refers not only to characteristics, but also to the process involved in turning genes on
and off. Nature/nurture is related and influences each other. (2001: Human genome project
whose 1st task was to map out the entire structure of DNA. We have fewer than 30 000 genes.)
The genome provides the option, and the environment determines which option is taken.
Chromosomes: (23 pairs) structure within the cell body made out of genes: the unit of heredity
made of DNA that code for a specific protein, which carries a specific task. The environment
decides which proteins are produced and when they are produced
Heredity involves passing along genes through reproduction
Mendel (1866) developed selective breeding that strictly controlled which plants bred with
other plants. He establish the basis of genetics: dominant and recessive genes
Genotype (organism’s genetic constitution) and phenotype (physical appearance resulting from
genetic and environmental influences)
Polygenic effects: influenced by many genes (intelligence, behaviour)
Genotypic variation is created by sexual reproduction
In each parents, reproductive cells separate and form gametes, each of which contain half the
chromosome pair. The resulting fertilized cell is a zygote, which has a unique genotype and
grows trough cell division. Sometimes mutations occur through mitosis, if it is an advantage, it
might spread. (Industrial melanism: flies went darker to hide from predators). If disadvantaging
they still stay in the gene pool (recessive genes tend to stay because don’t cause harm when not
expressed) unless causes infertility.
Genes affect behaviour
Behavioural genetics: the study of how genes and environment interact to influence
psychological activity.
Behavioural genetics methods:
Twin studies: compare similarities between different types of twins to determine the genetic
basis of specific traits. Monozygotic twins: result from one zygote splitting in 2, both having the
same genetic background, the DNA is not perfectly the same. Dizygotic twins: 2 separately
fertilized eggs.
Adoption studies: compare the similarities between biological relatives and adoptive relatives.
(Living in the same home has no effect or very little on behaviour however, identical twins
raised together or apart or very likely to be similar
Heritability: a statistical estimate of the variation, caused by differences in heredity, in a trait
within a population. (If within a population a trait such as height has a heritability of 0.6, that
means 60 percent of height variation among individuals within that population is hereditary.)
Social and environmental contexts influence genetic expression
Study with 1000 New-Zealanders. MAO is important in determining susceptibility to the effect of
maltreatment, because low levels of MAO have been implicated in aggressive behaviours. Good
example of how nature/nurture is entwined.
Genetic expression can be modified
Knockouts: research mice from which genes have been knockout or rendered inactive by being
removed from or disrupted within the genome
Critical thinking skill: seeking disconfirming evidence.
How does the nervous system operate?
Neurones are specialized for communication
Neurones are the basic units of the nervous system; they operate through electrical impulse and
communicate with other neurones through chemical signals. They have 3 functions: taking in
information from neighbouring neurons (receptions), integrating those signals (conduction), and
passing signals to other neurones (transmission).
Sensory (afferent): detect information from the physical world and pass that information to the
brain. The sensory nerves that provide information form muscles are called somatosensory.
Motor (efferent): neurones that transmit signals from the brain to the muscles, causing them to
move.
Interneurones: communicate within short-distance or local circuits and integrate neural activity
within a single area rather than transmitting information to other brain structure or to the body
organs.
Neurone structures
Dendrites: branchlike extensions of the neurone that detect information from other neurons.
Cell body: where the information of other neurones is collected and processed
Axon: a long narrow outgrowth of the neurone by which information is transmitted
Terminal buttons: small nodules, at the end of the axon that release chemical signals from the
neurone to the synapse
Synapse: the site for chemical communication between neurones which contain extracellular
fluid.
Myelin sheath: a fatty material made up of glial cells that insulate the axon and allows for rapid
electrical impulses along the axon.
Nodes of Ranvier: small gaps of exposed axon, between the segments of myelin sheath, where
action potential are transmitted.
The resting membrane potential is negatively charged
When a neurone is not active, the inside and outside differ electrically because the ratio of
negative to positive ions is greater inside the neurone than outside it. Changing this differential
electrical charge, polarization, creates the electrical energy necessary to power the firing of the
neuron.
The roles of sodium and potassium: contribute to the neurone’s resting membrane potential.
Ions pass through the cell through ion channels, specified pores located at the nodes of Ranvier
that control the flow of ions by a gating mechanism. When the gate is opened the ions flow in
and out of the membrane. Ion flow is also affected by membrane selective permeability: more
K+ is inside the neurone than Na+, an imbalance that contributes to polarization.
Action potential cause neural communication
Action potential (neurone firing): electrical signal that passes along the axon and causes the
release of chemicals from the terminal buttons.
Changes in electrical potential lead to action: the signals, which work by affecting polarization
arrive at the dendrites and are of 2 types: excitatory (depolarize the cell membrane, increasing
the likelihood of it firing) and inhibitory. If the total amount of excitatory input from the other
neurone reaches the neuron’s threshold, an action potential is generated. When a neurone
fires, the sodium gates in the cell open, allowing sodium ions to rush into the neuron that
becomes slightly more positively charged than the outside. A fraction of a second later, a
potassium channel opens, allowing K+ to rush out of the cell.
Action potential spread along the axon
When a cell fires, the membrane’s depolarization moves along the axon like a wave, an action
called propagation. Like dominoes, sodium ion channels open successfully, always moving down
the axon away from the cell body to the terminal buttons. (multiple sclerosis: deterioration of
the myelin sheath)
All or none principle: the principle whereby a neuron fires with the same potency each time,
although frequency may vary; it either fires if it receives enough signal to raise the voltage or
doesn’t fire at all. How often the neurons fire depends on the strength of the signal.
Neurotransmitters bind to receptors across the synapse
The neurone that sends the signal is call pre-synaptic, and the neurone that receives the signal is
call postsynaptic.
Neurotransmitter: a chemical substance that carries signal from one neurone to the other, and
are released once the vesicles of the terminal buttons once the potential reaches them.
Receptors: specialized protein molecule, on the postsynaptic membrane that neurotransmitters
bind to after passing across the synaptic cleft.
Neurotransmitters bind with specific receptors: more than 60 chemicals transmit information
Once neurotransmitters are released, they continue to fill and stimulate that receptor, and they
block now signals until their influence is terminated. The 3 major events that terminate the
transmitter’s influence in the synaptic cleft are reuptake, enzyme deactivation and autoreception.
Reuptake: occurs when the neurotransmitters are taken back into the pre-synaptic terminal
buttons.
Enzyme deactivation: occurs when an enzyme destroys the transmitter substance in the synaptic
cleft.
Auto-receptors: receptors to which the neurotransmitter can bind to on the pre-synaptic
neurone, they monitor how much neurotransmitter has been released into the synapse. When
in excess, the auto-receptors signal the pre-synaptic neurons to stop the release.
All neurotransmitters trigger or inhibit action potentials, their effect are a function of the
receptors to which they bind, which in return determine which neurons will fire or less likely to
fire.
Neurotransmitters influence mind and behaviour
Agonist: drugs and toxins that enhance neurotransmitters’ action
Antagonist: drugs and toxins that inhibit these actions.
Drugs and toxin can also bind to the receptors, mimicking neurotransmitters. (Heroin, cocaine)
Types of neurotransmitters
Acetylcholine (ACh): responsible for motor control at the junction between nerves and muscles;
also involved in mental processes such as learning, memory, sleeping and dreaming. Botulism
(inhibits the release of ACh, also used as Botox, paralyzing muscles that cause wrinkles)
Alzheimer’s disease is associated with diminished ACh. Drugs that are ACh antagonist may
enhance memory. Four of these are called monoamines (epinephrine, norepinephrine,
serotonine, and dopamine). Their major function is to control states of arousal and affect
feelings and to motivate behaviour.
Epinephrine: neurotransmitter responsible for adrenaline rushes, bursts of energy caused by its
release throughout the body
Noreinephrine: involved in states of arousal and awareness. It inhibits the response to weak
synaptic inputs and strengthens or maintains responsiveness to strong one.
Serotonin: important in a wide range of psychological activity, including emotional states,
impulse control, and dreaming. Low levels of serotonin are associated with sad and anxious
moods, food cravings, and aggressive behaviour. Used to treat OCD, depression, eating
disorders (Prozac hello)
Dopamine: involved in reward, motivation and motor control
Parkinson’s disease: a neurological disorder that seems to be caused by dopamine depletion
(the dopamine producing neurones slowly die off) marked by muscular rigidity, tremors and
difficulty initiation voluntary actions. Treated with L-DOPA. Implantation off foetus cells in the
brain can help.
GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid) is the primary inhibitory transmitter in the nervous system.
Without it, synaptic excitation might get out of control (epileptic seizures). By affecting GABA
receptors, alcohol produces a relaxed feeling and interferes with motor coordination.
Glutamate: the primary excitatory transmitter in the nervous system, opening sodium gates, and
is involved in fast-transmission throughout the brain. Glutamate receptors aid in learning and
memory by strengthening synaptic connections.
Endorphins: involved in natural pain reduction and reward.
Substance P: involved in pain perception as well as mood states and anxiety. (chilli peppers)
What are the brain structure and their functions?
Central nervous system (CNS): the brain and spinal cord
Peripheral nervous system (PNS): all the other nerve cells in the body that are not part of CNS.
The 2 systems are anatomically different but their functions are interdependent: the PNS
transmit a variety of information to the CNS, which organizes and evaluates that information
and then directs the PNS to perform specific behaviours or make bodily adjustments.
The brain: a brief history of understanding its functions
Phineas Gage: a huge road went through his head resulting in mood changes. His recovery help
argue that the entire brain works uniformly and that the healthy parts had taken over the
damaged parts. The medical community eventually recognized that Gage’s psychological
impairments had been severe and that some areas of the brain in fact have specific functions.
His injuries to the frontal region of the brain lead researchers to think that this regions is
particularly concerned with social phenomena, such as following social norms, understanding
what other people are thinking, and feeling emotionally connected to others
Egyptians thought that the heart was the mind’s home. Greeks and Romans recognized that it
was the brain. By the beginning of the 19th century, anatomists understood the brain’s basic
structures reasonably well. But debates about how mental activity is generated still occurred.
Equipotentiality: all areas of the brain are equally important in cognitive activities
Phrenology (Gall, Spurzheim): the brain operates though functional localization. It is the practice
of assessing personality traits and mental abilities by measuring bumps on the human skull.
Psychographs were used to tell about participants’ personalities based on the location and sizes
of bumps on their heads.
Lashley set out to identify the places in the brain where learning occurs. He believed that
specific regions were involved in motor control and sensory experiences, but that all other parts
contributed to mental activity.
The 1st strong evidence that the brain regions perform specialized functions came from the
physician and anatomist Paul Broca (performed an autopsy on Leborgne who could only say the
word tan, but could still understand language. When he observed, he found out that there was a
large lesion on the left side, which lead him to conclude that this region is important for speech
Broca’s regions: the left frontal region of the brain, crucial for the production of language.
The invention of brain imaging methods in the late 1980s has lead to great breakthrough.
The brainstem houses the basic programs of survival
Spinal cord: a rope of neural tissue that runs inside the hollows of the vertebrae from just above
the pelvis up to the base of the skull. It coordinates each reflex and carries out sensory
information up to the brain and carries signal form the brain to the body parts below. It is
composed of 2 different tissues:
The gray matter: dominated by neurones’ cell bodies
White matter: consists of mostly axons and the fatty sheaths that surround them
In the base of the skull, the spinal cord thickens and becomes more complex as it transforms
into the brainstem, consisting in the medulla oblonda, the pons and the midbrain, it houses the
nerves that control the most basic functions of survival, such as breathing, swallowing, vomiting,
urination and orgasm. It performs functions for the head similar to those that the spinal cord
performs for the body. Many reflexes emerge from here analogous to the spinal reflexes. The
brainstem also contains a network of neurones, known collectively as the reticular formation
that project up into the cerebral cortex and affect general alertness, and is also involved in
terminating the different stages of sleep.
The cerebellum is essential for movement
Cerebellum: large protuberance connected to the back of the brainstem. It is extremely
important for proper motor function, and lesion to its different parts produce very different
effects.
Damage to the little nodes at the bottom causes a head tilt, balance problems, and a loss of
smooth compensation of eye position for head movement. Damage to the ridge that runs up its
back: affects walking. Damage to the bulging lobes on either side: cause a loss of limb
coordination.
Its most important role is in motor learning: it seems to be trained by the rest of the nervous
system and operates independently and unconsciously. Recent studies indicate that it is
involved in various cognitive processes such as making plans, remembering events, using
language, and experiencing emotion (even empathy)
Subcortical structures control emotions and basic drives
Forebrain: consists of 2 cerebral hemispheres and includes the cerebral cortex, subcortical
regions which contain the hypothalamus, thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and the basal
ganglia. Some of these structures belong to the limbic system that separates brainstem and
cerebellum from the cerebral cortex. The structures in the limbic system are important for
controlling basic drives (eating, drinking, and emotions)
Hypothalamus: brain’s master regulatory structure that receives input from almost everywhere
in the body and brain and projects its influence throughout the body. It affects many internal
organs’ functions, regulating body temperature, rhythms, blood pressure and glucose. It is also
involved in many basic drives (thirst, hunger, aggression, and lust)
Thalamus: the gateway to the cortex: almost all sensory information goes through it before
reaching the cortex, except for the sense of smell that has a direct route to the cortex. During
sleep, it shuts the gate on incoming sensations while the brain rests
Hippocampus: plays an important role in the storage of new memories by creating new
interconnections within the cerebral cortex with each new experience. A new hypothesis
suggests that it may be involved in how we remember the arrangements of both places and
objects in space. (Maguire found that the hippocampus was more developed in taxi drivers than
other drivers, 2003). Thus, it changes with experience.
Amygdala: serves a vital role in our learning to associate things in the world with emotional
responses, enabling the organism to overrule instinctive responses by connecting memories of
things to the emotions engendered by those things. It also intensifies memory’s function during
times of emotional arousal. It plays a special role in responding to stimuli that elicit fear
(evolution: protection of animals from danger) and is involved in evaluating a facial expressions’
emotional significance (activates specially in response to a fearful face). Recent studies show
that it is involved in the processing of more positive emotions (sexual arousal).(Study Hamman,
amygdala activity increases when people view sexual things and its activity is greater in men,
because men are more responsive to visual sexual stimuli; this suggest that the amygdala may
play a role in greater responsiveness.
Basal ganglia: a system of subcortical structures crucial for planning and producing movement.
They receive input from the cortex and project to the motor centers of the brainstem and, via
the thalamus, back to the cortex’s major planning areas.
Nucleus accumbens: structure within the ganglia that provides a good example of how
environment interacts with the brain. It has been shown that it is important for experiencing
reward. (A study shows that viewing pictures of sports cars lead to greater activation in men)
The cerebral cortex underlies complex mental activity
Cerebral cortex: the outer layer of the brain tissue, which forms the convoluted surface of the
brain. It is the site of all thoughts, detailed perceptions and consciousness. It is also the source
of culture and communication that allow us to learn fine distinctions and intricate details of the
outside world. Each cerebral hemisphere has 4 lobes: occipital, parietal, temporal and frontal.
The corpus callosum: a massive bridge of millions of axons that connects the 2 hemispheres
together and allows information to flow between them.
Occipital lobe: back portion of the brain devoted mainly to vision. It consists of many visual
areas. The primary visual cortex is by far the largest and is the major destination for visual
information which is typically organized for the cerebral cortex in a way that preserves spatial
relationships. Surrounding the primary visual cortex is a patchwork of secondary visual areas
that process various attributes of the visual image (colors, forms and motions)
Parietal lobe: devoted partially to touch and includes the primary somatosensory cortex. The left
hemisphere receives touch information from the right side of the body and the right
hemisphere, from the left side of the body. This information is represented by the
somatosensory cortex in a way that groups nearby sensations. The result is a distorted (because
more cortical area is devoted to the body’s more sensitive areas (face and fingers))
representation of the body: the somatosensory homunculus. (hemineglet (damage to right side
of the parietal lobe) patients would only draw the right side of an object)
Temporal lobes: holds the primary auditory complex, specialized visual areas (for recognizing
detailed objects such as faces), the hippocampus and amygdala.
Fusiform face area: at the intersection of the temporal and occipital cortices, it is much more
active when people look at faces than anything else.
Frontal lobes: essential for planning and movement. The rearmost portions of the frontal lobes
are the motor areas including the premotor cortex and the primary motor complex. It includes
neurones that project directly to the spinal cord to move the body’s muscles. Its responsibilities
are divided down the middle of the body, like those of sensory areas, the left controls the right
and the right controls the left.
Prefrontal cortex: a region of the frontal lobes (30% of brain) responsible for directing and
maintaining attention, keeping ideas in mind and developing and acting on plans. Indispensable
for rational activity, it is especially important for many aspects of human social life, such as
understanding what other people are thinking, behaving according to norms, and even
contemplating our own existence. It provides both our sense of self and our capacity to
empathize with others or feel guilty about harming them.
How are neural messages integrated into communication systems?
This section describes the interaction of the nervous system and a different mode of
communication, the endocrine system, in the production of psychological activity.
The PNS includes the somatic and the autonomic systems
Somatic nervous system: transmits sensory signals to the CNS via nerves and the CNS sends
signals through the somatic nervous system to initiate, modulate, or inhibit movement,
Autonomic nervous system: regulates the body’s internal environment by stimulating glands and
by maintaining internal organs. Nerves in the ANS carry somatosensory signals to the CNS,
providing information about the body’s condition.
2 types of signals travel from the CNS to organs and glands in the PNS that control most of our
internal organs:
Sympathetic division of ANS: prepares the body for action
Parasympathetic division of ANS: returns the body to its normal resting state
The endocrine system communicates through hormones
Endocrine system: a communication system that uses hormones to influence thoughts,
behaviours and actions.
Hormones: chemical substances released into the bloodstream by the endocrine glands (thyroid,
testes, ovaries) and travel until they reach their target tissues, where they bind to receptor sites
and influence those tissues. They can take hours or minutes to affect tissues and once they are
active their affects can last for a long time and affect multiple targets.
Hormones’ effect on sexual behaviour
The main endocrine glands affecting sexual behaviour are the gonads. The 2 major gonadal
hormones are identical in males and females, but the quantity differs: androgens (testosterone)
are more predominant in males and estrogens (estradiol and progesterone) are more prevalent
in females. These hormones influence both the development of secondary sex characteristics
and adult sexual behaviour.
Estrus: period of the year when nonhuman females are sexually receptive and fertile. Removal
of the ovaries ends the estrus. In female humans, removal of the ovaries has no effect on their
sexual behaviours.
Actions of the nervous system and endocrine system are coordinated
Ultimately the endocrine system is controlled by the CNS. The brain interprets external stimuli,
and then sends signals to the endocrine system, which responds by initiating various effects on
the body and behaviour. Most of the central control of the endocrine system is done by the
hypothalamus.
Pituitary gland: located at the base of the hypothalamus, it governs the release of hormones
form the rest of the endocrine glands. Neural activation causes the hypothalamus to secrete a
particular releasing factor that causes the pituitary to release a hormone specific to that factor.
The hormone then travels through the bloodstream to endocrine sites throughout the body.
Once the hormone reaches the target area, it touches off the release of other hormones, which
affect bodily reaction of behaviour. By releasing hormones in the bloodstream, it controls other
glands and governs major processes (development, ovulation, and lactation)
How does the brain change?
Plasticity: a property of the brain that allows it to change as a result of experience, drugs or
injury. It reflects the interactive nature of our biological and psychological influence. The
connections in the brain can change with experience.
The brain fallows predictable developmental patterns, with different structures and abilities
progressing at different rates and maturing at different points in life.
The interplay of genes and environment wires the brain
Which cells express which genes, and to what extent is determined by environment. The
constant interaction of nature and nurture affects our DNA’s activity and the products of that
activity.
Cell identity becomes fixed over time
Stamp cells can take whatever functions depending on the nature of its surroundings and the
signals received. During the development of the embryo, each cell becomes more and more
specialized and its functions become crystallized. Cell transplantation is very promising.
Experience fine-tunes neural connections: connections form between brain structures when
growing axons are directed by certain chemicals that tell them where to go. The major
connections are given by chemical messengers, while the detailed connections are given by
experience.
Critical periods: time during which certain experiences must occur for development to proceed
normally. (Experience: 2 groups of rats, the ones with the luxury cage were the most developed)
Culture affects the brain
Cultural neuroscience: studies cultural variables’ effect on the brain, the mind, the genes and
the behaviour. It consists of bringing information about brain functions, analysing social and
emotional processes, examination of perceptual processes.
Evidence shows that cultural experiences influence perception and cognition to the extent that
cultural differences contribute to different patterns of brain activity. (westerners focus more on
objects than easterners) Within cultural contexts people learn which features in the
environment merit more attention because they are more important.
Evidence suggest that people are better at recognizing emotional expression from people of
their own culture, because they have more experience in interpreting emotional expressions
among those with whom they interact regularly.
The amygdala shows increased activity when they view fearful expressions of members of their
own social groups
The brain rewires itself throughout life
The rewiring of the brain through life represents learning’s biological basis
Changes in the strength of connections underlies learning. All our memories are reflected in the
brain’s physical changes in the strength of existing connections (not in its general arrangement).
One possibility is that when 2 neurones fire simultaneously, the synaptic connections between
them strengthens, making them more likely to fire together in the future. This theory accounts
for both the burning in of an experience and the ingraining of habits.
Until recently, scientist believed that the brain couldn’t grow new neurones, but it can and this
process is called neurogenesis (a lot in the hypocampus, perhaps neurones can be lost and
replaced without disrupting memory) which plays a major role in recovering from brain injury
Elizabeth Gould and her colleagues have shown that environmental conditions play a large role
in neurogenesis. In some animals, stress is a factor. Dominant animals show increase in new
neurone formation. Thus, social experiments can strongly affect brain plasticity, a dynamic
process we are only beginning to understand. Neurogenesis may underlie plasticity, through
that process, we could eliminate mental decline (due to aging).
Changes in the brain
The portions of the cerebral cortex shift in response to activity, wiring in the brain is affected by
amount of use.
Cortical reorganization can have bizarre results. For example, phantom limb (an amputee still
feels as if his limb was there. This phenomenon suggests that the brain has not reorganized in
response to the injury and that the missing limb’s cortical representation remains intact.
Ramachandran discovered that an amputee who has lost a hand may when his eyes are closed,
perceive a touch on the cheek as if it were the missing hand. The unused part of the amputee’s
cortex assumes to some degree the function of the closest group representing the face. The
brain hasn’t kept pace with the somatosensory area enough to figure out these neurones’ new
job, so the neurones are activated by a touch on the amputee’s face.
The puzzle of synesthesia
Ramachandran inferred that the genes involved were related to brain formation. He concluded
that people with color/number synesthesia have the region associated with seeing colors and
the one associated with understanding numbers connected or cross-wired. One portion of the
brain would have adopted the role of the other. He found evidence of neural activity in the brain
associated with color vision in synesthetes that were presented black and white numbers.
Synesthesia remained in the gene pool because it is advantageous, it allows creativity. More
creactive people are synesthetes.
Critical thinking skill: recognizing unstated assumptions
Females’ and males’ brain are similar and different
Sexual dimorphism: the study of the differences in anatomic structures of the brain.
Richard Haier found that females show greater use of language-related brain regions and that
males show greater use of spatial-related brain regions, even when participants are of matched
intelligence.
Males generally have larger brains than females (9% bigger), this is not better (one
developmental process in the brain involves disconnecting neurones so that only the most
useful connections remain)
Females’ brains are more bilaterally organized for language: the brain areas used for processing
language can be found in both hemispheres. The halves of women’s brains are connected by
more neural fibres than men’s are. There is a portion of the corpus callosum that is larger in
women.
The brain can recover from injury
The brain can reorganize in response to injury. Following an injury in the cortex, the surrounding
gray matter assumes the role of the damaged area. This remapping seems to begin immediately,
and it continues for years. Such plasticity involves all levels of the nervous system. It is much
more prevalent in children than adults.
Radical hemispherectomy: the surgical removal of an entire cerebral hemisphere. (In children)
Stem cells transplantations into the brain to repair damage.
Chapter 5: sensation and perception
How do we sense our world?
Sensation: our sense organs’ detection of and responses to external stimuli and the transmission
of these responses to the brain.
Perception: the process in the brain, organization and interpretation of sensory signals: it results
in an internal representation of the stimulus.
Stimulus: a green light emits physical properties in the form of photons
Sensation: sensory receptors in the driver’s eye detect this stimuli
Sensory coding: the stimulus is transducted (translated into chemical and electrical signals that
are transmitted to the brain.
Perception: the driver’s brain processes the neural signals and constructs a representation of a
green light ahead, which is interpreted as a sign to continue driving
Perception is often based on our prior experiences, which shape our expectations about new
sensory experiences. What we sense is the result of our brain processes that actively construct
perceptual experiences and, as a result, allow us to adapt to our environments’ details.
Stimuli must be coded to be understood by the brain
Sensory coding: our sensory organs’ translations of stimuli’s physical properties into neural
impulses. The different features of the physical environment are coded by different neural
impulse patterns
The brain cannot process raw stimuli, so the stimuli must be translated into chemical and
electrical signals the brain can interpret. Sensory coding begins with transduction, in which
receptors, specialized neurones in the sense organs, pass impulses to connecting neurones
when the receptors receive physical or chemical stimulation. Connecting neurones than
transmit information to the brain in the form of neural impulses.
Most sensory information goes to the thalamus. Neurones in the thalamus then send
information to the cortex, where incoming neural impulses are interpreted in smell, sight,
sound, touch or taste.
The brain needs quantitative (sensory neurones respond to qualitative differences by firing
different combinations) and qualitative (sensory receptors respond by firing at different rates)
information about a stimulus.
Coarse coding: sensory qualities are coded by only a few different types of receptors, each of
which respond to a broad range of stimuli. The combined responses by different receptors firing
at different rates allow us distinction.
Psychophysics relates stimulus to response
Developed in 19th century by Weber and Fechner examines our psychological experiences of
physical stimuli. It assess how much physical energy is required for our sense organs to detect a
stimulus and how much change is required before we notice that change.
Sensory thresholds
Absolute threshold: minimum intensity of stimulation that must occur before we experience a
sensation, or the stimulus intensity detected above chance. (the level of intensity at which
participants correctly detect a stimulus 50% of the time)
Difference threshold: the just noticeable difference between 2 stimuli- the minimum amount of
change required for a person to detect a difference. It increases as the stimulus becomes more
intense.
Weber’s law: the just noticeable difference between 2 stimuli is based on proportion of the
original stimulus rather than on fixed amount of difference. Delta I / I = a constant.
Critical thinking skill: recognizing the effects of context on judgments
Signal detection theory (SDT): based on the idea that the detection of a faint stimulus requires a
judgment, it is not an all or none process.
Research is based on a series of trials in which a stimulus is presented in only some trials. In
each trial, participants must state if they sensed the stimulus, it has 4 outcomes. If the signal is
presented and the participant detects it, the outcome is a hit. If the participant fails to detect
the signal, than the outcome is a miss. If the participant ‘’detects’’ a signal that was not
presented, the outcome is a false alarm. If the signal is not presented and the participant
doesn’t detect it, the outcome is a correct rejection. The participant’s sensitivity to the signal is
usually computed by comparing the hit rate with the false alarm rate, thus correcting for any
bias the participant may bring to the testing situation.
Response bias: a participant’s tendency to report detecting the signal in an ambiguous trial.
Sensory adaptation: sensory systems are tuned to detect environmental changes because they
might require response. It is a decrease in sensitivity to a constant level of stimulation. If a
stimulus is present constantly the response of the sensory system that detects it is diminished
over time.
What are the basic sensory processes?
Only the neurones in the sensory organs respond directly to events in the world. The other
neurones respond to inputs of other neurones.
In taste, taste buds detect chemicals
Gustation: the sense of taste
Taste buds: sensory receptors that transduce taste information. We have from 500 to 10000.
When food stimulates them they send signals to the brain, which then produces the experience
of taste.
In all the senses a near infinite variety of perceptual experiences arises from the activation of
unique combination of receptors.
Every taste experience is composed of a mixture of 5 basic qualities: sweet, sour, salty, bitter,
umami (yummy). The last category arises from the detection of glutamate, an excitatory
neurotransmitter that occur naturally in foods such as meat, some cheese and mushrooms.
Glutamate is the sodium salt of glutamic acid (MSG)
Taste alone does not affect how much we like or dislike a certain type of food; it also relies on
the sense of smell. Food’s texture matters as well. The entire taste experience occurs in the
brain, not in our mouth.
Supertasters: particularly sensitivity to bitter foods, they have 6 times the amount of taste buds.
Our individual taste preferences come partly from our different number of taste receptors.
Cultural factors influence as well, it can even begin in the womb; mothers pass their eating
preferences to their offspring.
In smell the nasal cavity gathers odorants
Olfaction: the sense of smell, which occurs when receptors in the nose respond to chemicals. It
has the most direct route to our brain. In the nose and nasal cavity the particles come in contact
with the olfactory epithelium.
Olfactory epithelium: a thin layer of tissue, within the nasal cavity in which thousands of
receptors are embedded, and each category respond to different chemical groups. Each odour
stimulates receptors and the activation pattern across several receptor types determines the
olfactory perception.
These receptors transmit information to the olfactory bulb: the brain center for smell, located
below the frontal lobes. From here smell information goes to other brain areas. Smell signals
bypass the thalamus.
Areas in the prefrontal cortex process information about whether a smell is pleasant or not,
whereas the smell intensity is processed in the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex is also involved
in emotion and memory, thus olfactory sensation can invoke feelings and memories.
Females are better at perceiving and identifying odours than men are. They also have better
memories for odours. This is related to their capacities to excel at certain verbal tasks: they are
more likely to label a smell giving them mnemonic devices for retrieving particular smells. It can
also be because women are more likely to feed infants and thus need to indentify spoiled foods.
As we age, our sensory perception becomes less acute. Recent studies have found that an
impaired sense of smell is associated with an increased risk of mental decline and of Alzheimer’s
disease.
In touch, sensors in the skin detect pressure, temperature and pain
Haptic sense: sensation of temperature, pressure, pain and a sense of where our limbs are in
space. We really have 8 senses because of the haptic sense’s 4 parts (hot, cold, pressure and
pain) that are encountered separately.
Anything that makes contact with our skin provides tactile stimulation which gives rise to an
integrated experience of touch.
The haptic receptors for temperature and pressure are sensory neurones that terminate in the
skin’s outer layer. Their long axons enter the CNS by way of spinal nerves. For sensing
temperature, there are separate receptors for sensing cold and hot, although both can be
triggered at the same time by intense stimuli which can produce strange sensory experiences
such as a false feeling of wetness. Some receptors for pressure are nerve fibbers at the bases of
hair follicles that respond to movement in the hair. Other pressure receptors are capsules in the
skin that respond to continued vibration, to sudden movements, and to steady pressure. Pain
receptors are found throughout the body, not just in the skin.
The integration of various signals and higher-level mental processes produce a tickling
sensation, which can be pleasant or unpleasant depending on the mental state of the person.
Some areas in the brain respond less to self produced tactile stimulation than to external
stimulations.
2 types of pain: pain signals that we should stop from continuing harmful activities. The actual
experience of pain is created by the brain.
Most experiences of pain result when damage to the skin activates haptic receptors. The nerve
fibbers that convey pain information are thinner than those for temperature or pressure and are
found in all body tissues that sense pain: skin, muscles, membranes around both bones and
joints, organs and so on.
2 kinds of nerve fibbers for pain have been identified: fast fibbers for sharp immediate pain and
slow fibbers for chronic, dull steady pain. An important distinction is the myelination (fast
fibbers) or nonmyelination (slow fibbers) of their axon, which travel from pain receptors to the
spinal cord.
Gate control theory: the brain regulates the experience of pain, sometimes producing it,
sometimes repressing it. Theory from Melzack and Wall (1982) that states: for us to experience
pain, pain receptors must be activated and a neural gate in the spinal cord must allow the
signals though the brain. Pain signals are transmitted by small diameter nerve fibbers, which can
be blocked at the level of the spinal cord by the firing of larger sensory nerve fibbers. Thus
sensory nerve fibbers can close a gate and prevent or reduce the sensation of pain. Distraction
can also close the gate whereas worrying or focusing on the pain seems to open the gate.
Because pain is processed in the same brain area as stress, fear and anxiety, it is a sensory
experience, and an emotional response.
Pain perception is complex and depends on biological, psychological and cultural factors. It has
been shown that women are more sensitive to pain than men are; the evidence comes from
autonomic –involuntary- responses. Thus there might be sex-related pain treatments.
One new method in treating pain takes advantages of advances in brain imaging that allow us to
see which parts of the brain are active when we feel pain . Pain perception is divided in 2 areas
in the brain. The 1st area: responds to sensory input from the part of the body that is in pain. The
2nd area registers the emotional aspect of pain. When we feel pain both areas are active.
Visualising pain positively helps to reduce it.
Pain medication blocks the signal transmission of pain to the brain. General anaesthesia slows
down the firing of neurones throughout the nervous system.
In hearing, the ears detect sound waves
Audition: is second to vision as a source of information about the world, it is the perception of
sound.
Hearing results from the movements and vibrations of objects caused by displacement of air
molecules. Displaced molecules produce a change in air pressure. And that change travels
through the air.
Sound wave: pattern of changes in air pressure throughout time. The amplitudes determines
loudness (higher is perceived is louder) and the frequency (Hz: vibration/sec) determines the
pitch (higher frequencies correspond to higher pitch). We can detect frequencies from 20 to
20000 Hz. Once again, it is perceived in the brain.
Hearing is based on interactions of various regions of the ear, which convert sound waves into
brain activity, producing the sensation of sound. Changes in air pressure produce sound waves
that arrive at the outer ear and travel down the auditory canal to the eardrum, a membrane
stretched tightly across the canal and marking the beginning of the middle ear. The sound waves
make the eardrum vibrate. These vibrations are transferred to ossicles (3 tinny bones: hammer,
anvil, stirrup). The ossicles transfer the eardrum vibrations to the oval window, a membrane of
the cochlea, or inner ear, a fluid-filled tube. Running through the center of the cochlea is the
thin basilar membrane. The oval window’s vibrations create pressure waves in the inner ear’s
fluid that prompt the hair cells to bend and cause neurones on the basilar membrane to fire.
These hair cells are the primary auditory receptors. Thus the mechanical signal of a sound wave
hitting the eardrum is converted into a neural signal that travels to the brain via the auditory
nerve.
Locating sounds: the sensory receptors don’t code where the events occur. The brain integrates
the different information coming from the ears. Understanding comes from the observation of
barn owl which locates an object using 2 cues: the time the sound arrives in each ear and the
sound’s intensity in each ear. We use a similar process.
In vision, the eyes detect light waves
Light 1st passes though the cornea (the clear outer covering of the eye). The cornea focuses
incoming light in a process called refraction. Lights rays then enter and are bent farther inward
by the lens, which focuses the light to form a single image on the retina, the inner surface of the
back of the eyeball. Although more refraction occurs at the cornea than at the lens, the lens is
adjustable whereas the cornea is not.
The pupil is a small opening in front of the lens that determines how much light can enter by
dilating or contracting. The iris is a coloured muscular circle on the surface of the eye that
changes shape to let in more or less light by controlling the pupil’s size.
Behind the iris, muscles change the shape of the lens, flattening it to see distant objects and
thickening it to see close objects, this process is called accommodation.
The lens and cornea work together to collect and focus light rays reflected from an object, to
form on the retina an upside-down image of the object. The eyes send information to the brain
not as a complete picture but as bits of information transmitted through neural signals. The
visual system uses patterns of neurones that fire at different rates and in different combinations
to represent the external world.
Rods and cones: the retina’s receptor cells
Rods: respond to low levels of illumination and result in black and white perception, good for
night vision and resolve details poorly. 120 M
Cones: respond to higher level of illumination and result in color and detail perception. 6M
Within the rods and cones, light sensitive chemicals called photopigments initiate the
transduction of light waves into electrical neural impulses.
Fovea: region in the center of the retina where cones are densely packed.
Cones are scarce near the outside edge, whereas rods are all located at the retina’s edge, none
are in the fovea
Transmission from the eye to the brain
Electrical signals are generated by the photoreceptors in the retina. Light is transduced into
neural impulses by the rods and cones. Other cells in the retina (bipolar, amacrine, horizontal)
perform on those impulses a series of sophisticated computations that help the visual system
process the incoming information. The outputs from these cells converge on about 1M ganglion
cells, the 1st cells in the visual pathway to generate action potentials.
The ganglion cells send their signals along their axon form inside the eye to the thalamus. The
axons bundle up to form the optic nerve, which exits the eye at the back of the retina. The point
at which the retina has no cones or rods and is called the black point. The brain can fill in so that
there are no discontinuations. At the optic chiasm half the axons in the optic nerves cross.
Information from the left side of the visual space is projected into the brain’s right hemisphere
and vice versa. The 1st synapse of the majority of the ganglion cells lies within the visual areas of
the thalamus, and visual information is transmitted from there to the primary visual cortex,
cortical areas in the occipital lobe. The pathway from the retina to this region carries all the
information that we consciously experience as seeing.
The detection of visual information
Each neurone has a particular tuning. A given visual neuron’s tuning specifies its receptive field,
the population of sensory receptors that influence activity in a sensory neurone.
One of the most popular receptive fields is a circle that consists of a center region and a
surrounding region. Light directed toward the center region causes the cell to become more
active, whereas light directed toward the surrounding region inhibits the cell’s firing.
Lateral inhibition
Our visual system is especially sensitive to edges because they tell us where objects end.
Lateral inhibition: process by which adjacent photoreceptors tend to inhibit one another,
emphasizing the changes in visual stimuli. (an object will look lighter against a black background)
The color of light is determined by its wavelength
We are seeing light waves ranging from 400 to 700 nm. The color of light is determined by the
wavelengths of the electromagnetic waves that reaches the eye. There are 3 kinds of cones;
each kind is most receptive to specific wavelengths.
Colors are categorized along 2 dimensions: hue (distinctive characteristics that place a particular
color in the spectrum), brightness (intensity or luminance) and saturation (color’s purity, the
vividness of the hue, and varies according to the mixture of wavelengths in a stimulus. Lightness
is determined by its brightness relative to its surroundings. Pure colors have only 1 wavelength.
Subtractive color mixing
A color is determined by the mixture of the wavelengths from a stimulus. Any given color may
be produced in either 2 ways, depending on the stimuli: subtractive and additive mixture of
wavelengths.
Subtractive: a way to produce a given spectral pattern in which the mixture occurs within the
stimulus itself and is actually a physical process
Paint is determined by pigments that absorb wavelengths and reflect the wavelength that
corresponds to the color we perceive. Red, yellow and blue are subtractive primary colors.
Additive: a way to produce a given spectral pattern in which different wavelengths of light are
mixed. The percept is determined by the interaction of these wavelengths with receptors in the
eye and is psychological. Primary additive colors are red, green and blue. When added, they
yield white light.
Explaining color vision
Color is a property of our visual system; it doesn’t exist in the physical world. One type of cone is
more sensitive to green light (medium wl), another to red light (long wl) and another to blue
light (short wl). The cones are named S,M,L. Yellow looks yellow because it stimulate the L and
M cones and barely the S. Our perception of different colors is determined by the ratio of
activity among the 3 types of receptors.
Some colors seem to be opposites: when we stare at a red image, we see a green afterimage
when we look away. We also have trouble imagining different color mixtures. This cannot be
explained by the responses of the different cones in the retina. We must turn to the second
stage of visual processing, which occurs at the ganglions cells. Different combinations of cones
converge on the ganglion cells. One type of ganglion cell may receive input from L cones, but
may be inhibited by M cones. These cells create the perception that red and green are
opposites. This process was discovered by McCollough, but is not fully understood yet.
Simultaneous contrast: an optical illusion in which identical stimuli appear different when
presented against different backgrounds. There is lateral inhibition in the retina that emphasises
the difference between an object and its background.
Humans and animals have other sensory systems
We have internal sensory systems that send information to the brain.
Kinesthetic sense: perception of our limbs in space which helps us coordinate movement.
Vestibular sense: perception of balance and uses data from the receptors in the semi circular
canals of the inner ear which contains a liquid that moves when the head moves, generating
nerve impulses that inform us of the head’s position.
Animals have sonar senses and electroreception. These animals produce calls and then respond
to the echoes of those calls; the system is bisonar because the sound waves emanate from the
animal. Electroreception operates in a similar way: some fish emit an electrical field and then
analyse disruption in the field to avoid predators or find pray.
The evidence form extrasensory perception (ESP) is weak or nonexistent
Howard Hughes in Sensory Exotica (2000) points out that humans and other animals have
several internal sensory systems in addition to the 5 primary senses. The evidence for a 6th sense
is purely anecdotal and isn’t scientific.
Honorton (1994) in his study, a ‘’sender’’ in a soundproof booth focused on randomly generated
images, and a receiver in another room tried to sense the sender’s imagery. The receiver was
asked to choose among 4 alternatives, one of them being correct. They were right about 33% of
the time.
What are the basic perceptual processes?
Perception occurs in the brain
Hearing: auditory neurones in the thalamus extend their axons to the primary auditory cortex
(A1), in the temporal lobe. Neurones in this region code the frequency of auditory stimuli.
Neurones toward the A1 respond best to lower frequencies, whereas those in the front of the
A1 respond to higher frequencies.
Touch: touch info from the thalamus is projected in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), in
the parietal lobe. Penfield discovered that electrical stimulation of the S1 could evoke sensation
of touch in different regions of the body and found that neighbouring body parts tented to be
represented next to one another in the S1, so that the body is effectively mapped out there
according to physical proximity. Most sensitive body parts have more cortical tissue dedicated
to them.
Vision: some estimates that up to half the cerebral cortex may participate in visual perception in
some way. The primary visual cortex (V1) is in the occipital lobe. The neural pathway from the
retina to the occipital lobe preserves spatial relationships, so that adjacent areas of the retina
correspond to adjacent areas in the V1. Hubel and Wiesel (1962) began exploring the properties
of neurons in V1 by recording activity from single cells. They discovered that some neurones in
the V1 respond more to lines in particular orientations. The firing of these cells, termed simple
cells decreased as the orientation of the line segment is rotated away from their preferred
orientation. It was also found that there are neurones that specialise in detecting colors, end of
lines, or more complex visual features.
What versus where
Neurones in different parts of the brain tend to have different types of receptor fields. These
areas appear to process specific aspects of visual stimulus (color and motion).
One theory proposes that visual areas beyond V1 form 2 parallel processing streams: the lower
ventral stream that is specialized for the perception and recognition of objects (color, shapes)
and the upper dorsal stream that is specialised for spatial perception. These 2 streams are
known as the what pathway and the where pathway. Studies have shown that brain regions in
the upper pathway are activated by tasks that require decisions about spatial relationship,
whereas regions in the lower pathway are activated by tasks that require identifying objects.
D.F. had object agnosia, the inability to recognize objects. Her conscious visual perception of
objects was impaired.
Object perception requires construction
Illusions reveal the operation of the mechanism that helps our visual systems determine the size
and distances of objects in the visual environment.
Gestalt (shape or form, organized whole) principles of perceptual organization
A series of laws explain how we perceive features of a visual scene are grouped in organized
wholes. Our brain uses innate principles to organize sensory information.
Proximity: the closer objects are, the more likely we are to group them and view them as the
same object.
Similarity: we group figures according to how closely they resemble each other
According to both of these principles, we tend to cluster elements of the visual scene, enabling
us to consider them as whole rather than individual parts.
The best forms: how we perceive a form’s feature
Good continuation: tendency to interpret intersecting lines as continuous rather than as
changing directions radically. Good contour continuation appears to play a role in completing an
object behind an occluder, anything that hides a portion of an object from the view.
Closure: tendency to complete figures that have gaps.
Illusionary contours: illustrates several gestalt principles and refers to the fact that we perceive
contours even though they do not exist. They appear when stimulus configurations suggest that
contours ought to be present.
Figure and ground
Reversible figure illusion (face vs. background). Nisbett (2001) found that easterners are more
likely to be influenced by the background of a figure, whereas westerners will more likely extract
the figure from its background. Memories of a particular shape can inform shape processing.
Bottom-up and top-down information processing
Bottom-up: a hierarchical model of pattern recognition in which data are relayed from one
processing level to the next, always moving to a higher level of processing.
Top-down: a hierarchical model of pattern recognition in which information at higher levels of
processing can also influence lower, earlier levels in the process, which is why context affects
perception.
Faulty expectations can lead to faulty perceptions
Face perception reveals more about the person than anything else. Certain brain regions are
dedicated only to perceiving them. A region of the fusiform gyrus, in the right hemisphere, may
be responsible for perceiving faces. This brain area responds strongly to upright faces. Other
brain areas are sensitive to changes in faces, such as facial expression and gaze direction. A
face’s emotional significance appears to be activated by the amygdala.
Studies show that people more quickly respond to angry faces that happy ones. Anger is
recognized faster in men whereas happy is recognized faster in women. Thus facial recognition
supports the idea that the mind is adaptive. Females of all age more accurately recognize faces,
and even more accurately female faces.
Both sexes have difficulty recognizing upside down faces because it interferes with the way we
perceive features. (Tatcher illusion)
People are better at recognizing faces of their own racial groups
Regaining vision by fixing the eyes
Most people who become blind have lost sensory input from the retina, yet they will remember
what objects look like. Operations on people who have been blind for a short time, will work
and they will see as before. For someone who has been blind for a long time, the sight might not
be perfect. (May couldn’t recognize faces, had problems with motion and depth). Thus, if a
cortical region has been inactive in perception, it ceases to develop normally.
Esref Armagan: born blind, but can paint realistic paintings
Depth perception is important for locating objects
How are we able to construct a 3 dimensional mental representation of a 2 dimensional retinal
input? A 3 dimensional array creates exactly the same image on the retina than does a
photograph of the same array. We are able to perceive depth in these 2 dimensional patterns
because the brain applies the same rules that it uses to work out the spatial relations between
objects in the 3D world. To do this the brain exploits certain prior assumptions it has about the
nature of the relationship between 2D image cues and 3D world structure. This depth cues can
be divided in 2 categories
Binocular depth cue: cues of depth perception that arise because people have 2 eyes
Monocular depth cues: cues of depth perception that are available to each eye alone.
Binocular depth perception
Binocular disparity: a cue of depth perception that is caused by the distance between a person’s
eyes, which provides each eye with a slightly different overlapping image that allows the brain
to compute distance to nearby objects.
Stereoscopic vision: the ability to determine an object’s depth based on that object’s projections
to each eye.
Stereoscope: create by Wheatstone (1838). Allows a viewer to perceive depth in a pair of 2D
pictures taken from a slightly different perspective. The resulting 3D image is due to the brain’s
reconciling the disparate image created by each eye.
Brewster (1849) invented the kaleidoscope, created the autostererogram- an optical illusion
that turns specially designed pairs of 2D images into 3D images by presenting them in an
unfocused manner.
Monocular depth perception
Pictoral depth cues: used by artists (Da Vinci), they include:
Occlusion: a near object blocks an object that is farther away
Relative size: far off objects project a smaller retinal image than close objects do.
Familiar size: we know how large familiar objects are, so we can tell how far away they are by
the size of their retinal images.
Linear perspective: parallel lines appear to converge in the distance
Texture gradient: as a uniformly textured surface recedes, its texture continuously becomes
denser.
Position relative to horizon: all else being equal, objects below the horizon that appear higher in
the visual field are perceived as being farther away. Objects above the horizon that appear
lower in the visual field are perceived as being farther away.
Culture influences perception
Mueller-Lyer illusion provides a way of answering the question of whether people automatically
use pictures’ depth cues or whether they learn how to use them. People who lived in more
urban areas can identify things in the picture better than those in rural areas. Those who were
more acculturated to larger cities identified things better than those who were less
acculturated. People who live in uncarpented worlds, who have little knowledge of modern
technologies and are unfamiliar with 2D representation of the world, will more likely perceive
the line in the Muelle-Lyer illusion as the same length.
Motion cues for depth perception
Motion parallax: the relative movements of objects that are at various distances from the
observer. (motion of objects passing by in a car) It helps the brain to calculate which objects are
farther away and which are closer.
Size perception depends on distance perception
The size of a retinal image is proportional to the distance of that object, the further it is, the
smaller it appears on the retina. Optical illusions arise when normal perceptual processes
incorrectly represents the distance between the viewer and the stimuli-depth cues fools us into
seeing depth when it is not there.
Ames boxes: Crafted by Adelbert Ames (1940): these boxes plays with linear perspective and
other distance cues. One such room makes a far corner appear the same distance as a near
corner. The child in the farthest corner doesn’t appear further, so he looks taller.
Ponzo illusion: described by Mario Ponzo (1913), it is another example of a size/distance illusion.
Monocular depth cues make the 2D image appear 3D. They make the 2 non-parallel lines seem
parallel, mimicking a railroad, so that the 2 parallel lines appear as if they were at different
distances, thus not the same length.
Horizontal/Vertical illusion: horizontal lines look shorter than vertical ones, either because our
visual field is wider than it is tall or because we unconsciously interpret the vertical dimension as
receding in the distance, thus being longer, or because our eyes rest in horizontal sockets, so
looking up and down is more effortful than looking side to side.
The moon illusion: the moon looks much bigger when it is close to the horizon than when it is
overhead, the distance remains the same and the image on the retina is of the same size. When
the moon is overhead, there are no depth cues that indicate that the moon is really far away.
The brain can reconciliate this discrepancy only by assuming that the moon is larger when
overhead. Another theory is that we unconsciously believe that the sky is an inverted soup
bowl; we judge the moon to be larger at the horizon because we unconsciously assume that it is
farther away.
Motion perception has internal and external cues
The brain can perceive motion because it has some neurones that fire when movement occurs.
(M.P. a German who would not see motion, rather just frozen images and snapshots)
Motion after effects: occur when we gaze at a moving image for a prolonged period of time and
then look at a stationary scene, and experience a momentary impression that it is moving in the
opposite direction from the moving image. This illusion is called the waterfall effect. After
effects are strong evidence that motion sensitive neurons exist. The theory behind this illusion
combines sensory adaptation with neural specificity. The visual cortex has neurons that respond
to movement in a given direction. When we stare at a moving stimulus for a long time, these
direction specific neurons begin to adapt and therefore become less sensitive. If the stimulus is
removed, the neurones responding to all the other directions are more active.
Compensatory effect: the brain calculates an object’s perceived movements by monitoring the
movement of the eyes, and perhaps also the head, as they track a moving object, In addition,
motion detectors track an image’s motion across the retina, as the receptors in the retina fire
one after the other.
Stroboscopic effect: perceptual illusion that occurs when 2 or more slightly different images are
presented in a rapid succession. Wertheimer (Gestalt) (1912): 2 images flashed less the 30 ms,
were thought to be flashed simultaneously, but at intervals over 200 ms, the 2 lines were seen
flashed at 2 different times. At an interval of about 60ms, the lines appeared to jump from one
place to another; at slightly longer intervals, the line appeared to move continuously-a
phenomenon called phi movement.
Perceptual constancies are based on ratio relationships
Perceptual constancy: the brain correctly perceives objects as constant despite sensory data
that could lead it to think otherwise (changing an object’s angle, distance, illumination doesn’t
change our perception of that object’s size, shape, color or lightness). For size constancy, we
need to know how far away the object is from us. For shape constancy, we need to know from
what angle we see the object. For color constancy, we need to compare the wavelengths of light
reflected from the object with those reflected from its background. In each case, the brain
computes a ratio based on the relative magnitude rather than relying on each sensation’s
absolute magnitude, which allows the brain to keep consistency. These constancies illustrate
that perceptual systems are tuned to detect changes from baseline conditions, not just respond
to sensory inputs. It is believed that the brain has built-in assumptions that influence
perceptions.
Chapter 6: learning
Pioneers: Skinner
How did the behavioural study of learning develop?
Learning: an enduring change in behaviour resulting from experience. It occurs when animals
benefit from experience so that their behaviour is better adapted to the environments. The
essence of learning is understanding how events are related.
Classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning: a type of learned response that occurs when a
neutral object comes to elicit a reflexive response when it is associated with a stimulus that
already produces response. When we learn that a certain event leads to a certain outcome.
Operant conditioning or instrumental conditioning: a learning process in which the
consequences of an action determine the likelihood that it will be performed in the future.
When we learn that a particular behaviour leads to a particular outcome. It was of great interest
to Skinner.
The rise of the learning theory in the earlier 19th century was partly due to the dissatisfaction
with the use of introspection.
Watson founded behaviourism based on Locke’s idea of blank state, which states that infants
are born knowing nothing and that knowledge is acquired through sensory information. His
theory was of great influence well through the 1960’s
Behavioural responses are conditioned
Watson was influenced by Pavlov who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the digestive system,
the salivary reflex. Salivation at the site of a person or a bowl is not an innate reflex, and must
have been acquired through experience.
In a typical Pavlovian experiment, a neutral stimulus, unrelated with the salivary reflex, such as
ringing a bell, is presented along with a stimulus that reliably produces the reflex, such as food.
This pairing, a conditional trial is repeated a number of times; on the critical trial, the bell sound
is presented alone and the salivation reflex is measured. It was found that the sound of the bell
alone can produce salivation. This type of learning is referred to as classical conditioning.
Unconditioned response (UR): a response that doesn’t have to be learned (reflex)
Unconditioned stimulus (US): a stimulus that elicits a response, such as reflex, without any prior
learning.
The US leads to the UR
Conditional stimulus: a stimulus that elicits a response only after learning has taken place
Conditioned response: a response that has been learned.
The CR is usually weaker that the UR
Acquisition, extinction and spontaneous recovery
Pavlov was greatly influenced by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and believed that
conditioning is the basis for how animals learn to adapt to their environments
Acquisition: gradual formation of an association between the conditioned and unconditioned
stimuli
Contiguity: critical element in the acquisition of a learned association is that the stimuli occur
together in time.
Further evidence showed that the strongest conditioning occurs when there is a brief delay
between the CS and the US.
Extinction: a process in which the conditioned response is weakened when the CS is repeated
without the US. The CR is extinguished when the CS no longer predicts the US
Spontaneous recovery: a process in which a previously extinguished response re-emerges
following presentation of the CS
Thus extinction inhibits the strength of the bond but doesn’t eliminate it
Generalization, discrimination and 2nd order conditioning
Stimulus generalization: adaptive process that occurs when stimuli similar, but not identical to
the CS produces the CR. Slight differences in the CS leads to slight different perception of the CS,
so the animal learns to respond to variants of the CS
Stimulus discrimination: a differentiation between 2 similar stimuli when only one of them is
consistently associated with the US and the other is not.
2nd order conditioning: when a CS becomes directly associated not with the US, but with other
stimuli associated with the US. Pavlov did studies on that as well. Most of its influence occurs
unconsciously.
Phobias and addictions have learned component (classical conditioning)
Phobias and their treatment
Phobia: an acquired fear that is out of proportion to the real threat of an object or a situation.
According to classical conditioning theory, they develop through the generalization of a fear
experience.
Fear conditioning: animals can be classically conditioned to fear neutral objects. Without the
amygdala, this process wouldn’t happen
Watson tested this on an infant Albert to account for his theory that phobias could be explained
by simple learning principles, such as classical conditioning. In his experience, the US (smashing
sound) lead to the UR (fear) and eventually the pairing of the CS(rat) and the US(smashing
sound) led to the rat producing fear on his own (CR). To revert this, Watson wanted to present
the feared object with more pleasant ones so that a similar association could take place
(counter conditioning)
Wolpe (1997) developed a formal treatment based on counter conditioning, systematic
desensitization. After patients are taught to relax their muscles, they are asked to imagine the
feared object or situation while continuing to use the relaxation exercise. CS – CR1 (fear) this
connection can be broken by developing a CS – CR2 (relaxation) connection. It has been shown
that repeated exposure to the feared stimulus has proven more useful than relaxation.
Drug addiction: classical conditioning plays a role
The sight or smell of a drug can become a conditioned stimulus that leads the addicts to feel
aroused as though they had consumed the drug.
Cravings can be caused by the sight of certain things that are associated with the drug. Not
satisfying this craving can lead to withdrawal, an unpleasant state of anxiety that occurs when
addicts stop using the drug.
Relapses can occur because, once the addicts re-integrate their environment, they experience
conditioned cravings.
Cues associated with the drugs, when presented to addicts, activates the prefrontal cortex and
different regions of the limbic system, areas of the brain involved in the experience of reward.
Learning theorist, Shepard Siegel, has conducted research that drug tolerance effects are
specific to certain situations. Tolerance effects are greatest when the drug is taken in the same
location as previous drug use, because the body has learned to compensate for the drug.
Classical conditioning involves more than events occurring at the same time
Some conditioned stimuli would more likely produce learning than others and that contiguity
was not sufficient to create CS-US associations
Evolutionary significance: according to Pavlov, any object or phenomenon could be converted
into a CS during conditioning trials. However, not all stimuli are equally effective in producing
learning.
John Garcia showed that certain parings of stimuli are more likely to become associated with
others.
Conditioned food aversion: the association with eating novel food and getting sick is very strong.
It can be produced with smell and taste, but not by light or sound, which makes sense from an
evolutionary viewpoint.
Seligman (1970) argued that animals are genetically programmed to fear specific objects:
biological preparedness, which explains why animals tend to fear potentially dangerous things.
In conditioning experiences, people are more likely to associate aversive stimuli with members
of a different racial group.
The adaptive value of a particular response varies according to the animal’s evolutionary history.
Different types of stimuli cause different reactions even within a specie.
Gender difference in learning: for most of human history, people live in hunter-gatherer
societies, in which women gathered edible vegetation, usually returning home each day, and
men traveled longer distances, hunting for animals. Since women spent most of their adult life
pregnant or nursing, they didn’t travel as much as men, and thus generally didn’t develop the
ability to learn their way though environment as well as men did.
Researchers have revealed some differences in how men and women navigate: women will
more likely use landmarks and memorize a series of terms; males will more likely keep track of
cardinal directions. When the participants could use either strategy, men learned the task more
quickly.
Critical thinking skill: recognizing and avoiding inappropriate association effects in reasoning. We
have a tendency to associate things that occur in time together. (Guilt by association or virtue by
association)
The cognitive perspective: until the 1970s, most learning theorists were concerned only with
observable stimuli and observable responses. Now we try to understand the mental processes
that underline conditioning. Classical conditioning is a means by which animals come to predict
the occurrence of events.
Cognitive perspective: increasing consideration of mental processes such as prediction and
expectancy
Robert Rescorla (1966) conducted one of the 1st studies highlighting cognition’s role in learning:
for learning to take place, the conditioned stimulus must accurately predict the unconditioned
stimulus. A stimulus that occurs before the US is more easily condition than one that comes
after it.
Rescorla-Wagner model: a cognitive model of classical conditioning: it states that the strength
on the CS-US association is determined by the extent to which the US is unexpected. The greater
the surprise of the US, the more effort an organism puts into trying to understand its
occurrences, thus there is greater classical conditioning of the event (CS) that predicted the US.
Novel stimuli are more easily associated with the US than are familiar stimuli. Once learned, a CS
can prevent the acquisition of a new CS a phenomena known as the blocking effect.
A stimulus associated with a CS can act as an occasion setter, or trigger, for the CS
How does operant conditioning differ from classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning is passive, the person just associates things. Many of our actions are
instrumental, done for a purpose. We learn that certain behaviours lead to certain outcomes,
and those outcomes will determine if we will do the behaviour again, this process is called
instrumental or operant conditioning.
William James and his graduate student Edward Thorndike, were influenced by Darwin and were
studying animals that showed signs of intelligence. A puzzle box was built and cats were put in it
and food was placed outside the box. After 10 min the cat would accidently pull the string and
the door opened. The cat pulled the string more quickly each consequent time.
The law of effect was determined, which states that any behaviour leading do a “satisfying state
of affairs’’ will more likely occur again, while any behaviour leading to an “annoying state of
affairs” will less likely occur again.
Reinforcement increases behaviour
Skinner developed a more formal learning theory based on the law of effect. He said that states
of satisfaction are not observable empirically. He used the word reinforce to describe an event
that produces response.
Reinforcer: a stimulus that fallows a response and increases the likelihood that the response will
be repeated.
He believed that behaviour occurs because it has been reinforced.
The Skinner box: a small chamber in which one lever is connected to a food supply, another to a
water supply. An animal is placed in it and learns to operate the lever. Used a maze before and
later developed a recording device that allowed the experimenter not to be present.
Shaping: a process of operant conditioning that involves reinforcing behaviours that are
increasingly similar to the desired behaviour. (we don’t have to wait for the animal to do the
wanted task) Reinforcing successive approximation eventually produces the desired behaviour
by teaching the animal to discriminate which behaviour is being reinforced. Used to teach
amazing skills and to teach mentally ill people appropriate social skills.
Reinforcers can be conditioned
Primary reinforcers: those that satisfy biological needs
Secondary reinforcers: those that do not satisfy biological needs and are established through
classical conditioning. We associate money (CS) with reward (US)
Reinforcer potency
Premack: a reinforcer’s value could be determined by the amount of time an organism engages
in a specific associated behaviour when free to do anything. It can account for differences in
individual’s values
Premack principle: a more valued activity can be used to reinforce the performance of a less
valued activity.
Both reinforcement and punishment can be positive or negative
Positive reinforcement: the increase in the probability of a behaviour being repeated following
administration of a stimulus (involves reward)
Negative reinforcement: the increase in the probability of a behaviour being repeated through
the removal of a stimulus. (close the door to shut off noise)
Positive punishment: punishment that occurs with the administration of a stimulus and thus
decreases the probability of a behaviour’s recurring.
Negative punishment: punishment that occurs with the removal of a stimulus and thus
decreases the probability of a behaviour’s recurring.
Effectiveness of parental punishment
It is often applied ineffectively and it may have unintended and unwanted consequences. For
punishment to be effective it must be reasonable, unpleasant, and applied immediately so that
the relationship between the unwanted behaviour and the punishment is clear.
Skinner pointed out that the one thing we learn from punishment is how to avoid it.
Can lead to negative emotions which may become associated through classical conditioning, and
often fails to offset the behaviour.
Better to reinforce good behaviours, compliment them, rather than punish
Spanking: ineffective, done by 75% of American parents, may lead to poor parent-child
relations, weaker moral values, mental health problems, increased delinquency and future child
abuse. It teaches the child that violent behaviour is appropriate for adults.
Operant conditioning is influenced by schedules of reinforcement
Continuous reinforcement: a type of fast learning in which the desired behaviour is reinforced it
time it occurs
Partial reinforcement: a type of learning in which behaviour is reinforced intermittently; it is
more common and depends on schedule. It can be administered according to either the number
of behavioural responses or the passage of time. It can be given on a fixed or variable schedule.
Ratio schedule: in which reinforcement is based on the number of times the behaviour occurs,
leads to a greater responding that interval.
Interval schedule: in which reinforcement is available after a specific unit of time.
Fixed schedule: in which reinforcement is consistently provided upon each occurrence.
Variable schedule: in which reinforcement is applied at different rates or at different times.
(commission)
Behavioural persistence: the schedule of reinforcement also affects the persistence of
behaviour. Continuous reinforcement is highly effective for teaching behaviour, but if the
reinforcement is stopped, the behaviour extinguishes quickly. Machines sometimes provide
monetary rewards, so people continue using them, which can be explained by the effect of a
variable-ratio schedule reinforcement.
Partial-reinforcement extinction effect: refers to a greater persistence of behaviour under
partial reinforcement than continuous reinforcement (we know when reinforcement stopped).
Thus the less frequent the reinforcement, the greater the resistance in extinction. Conditioning
a behaviour so that it persists involves conditioning it continuously in the early stages and then
slowly changing to partial reinforcement.
Behavioural modification: use of operant conditioning techniques to eliminate unwanted
behaviours and replace them with the desired ones. (good for depression and anxiety
disorders). Draws on the principles of secondary reinforcement. (token economy)
Biology and cognition influence operant conditioning
Biology constrains learning, and reinforcement doesn’t always have to be present for learning to
take place.
Biological constraints: we have a hard time learning things that run counter to our evolutionary
adaptation.
Marian and Keller Breland used operant conditioning techniques to train animals for
commercials. Many of their animals refused to perform the behaviours
Bolles: animal have built-in defence reactions to threatening stimuli. Conditioning is most
effective when the association between the behavioural response and the reinforcement is
similar to the animal’s built-in predispositions.
Gallistel: various learning mechanisms have evolved to solve specific problems, often adaptive
ones.
Acquisition/performance distinction
Tolman (cognitive theorist) argued that reinforcement has more impact on performance than
learning
Cognitive maps: a visual/special mental representation of an environment and begins to be used
when reinforcement occurs. (3 groups of mice)
Latent learning: learning that takes place in the absence of reinforcement
Insight learning: a form of problem-solving in which solution suddenly emerges after a period of
inaction or contemplation of the problem.
The presence of reinforcement doesn’t adequately explain insight learning, but it predicts
whether the behaviour is subsequently repeated.
The value of reinforcement follows economic principles (supply and demand)
Adults with lower incomes discount bigger future payments and accept lower ones right now
more than people with higher income.
People and animals often need to choose between reinforcers, and that a particular reinforcer’s
worth is affected by the likelihood of its payoff and how long the payoff might take.
Bickel found that smokers and heroin addicts discount future rewards more greatly than nonaddicts.
Animals are highly sensitive to the relative rates of reinforcement among different patches and
will sometimes take risk in finding food.
Optimal foraging theory: describes how animals in the wild choose their own reinforcement
schedules.
Even simple behaviours, such as eating, involve a series of calculations to detect the cost and
benefits associated with different behavioural options.
How does watching others affect learning?
We learn much behaviour by watching others
Learning can be passed on through cultural transmission
Meme: a unit of knowledge transferred among generations within a culture, they can spread
quickly, by watching other’s behaviours.
Imo-monkey washing his potatoes
Cultural believes about learning
Differences in learning between Asians (knowledge is a must, if we work hard we can get it) and
Americans (some have it, some don’t)
Learning occurs through observation
Observational learning: occurs when behaviours are acquired or modified following exposure to
others performing the behaviour. Powerful adaptive tool for humans. It is even possible to
acquire beliefs
Bandura’s observational studies: work on observational learning done in the 1960s. Preschool
children were showed a film of an adult playing a doll called bobo. Children who watched adults
play aggressively with the doll were 2x more likely to play aggressively with it. This means that
exposing children to violence may encourage them to act aggressively.
Social learning of fear
Mineka: monkeys trained in the lab aren’t afraid of snakes, but when they see the wild
monkeys’ reactions of fear; they begin to fear as well. It is the same thing for human, thus social
forces play an important role in the learning of fear.
Teaching through demonstrations: we can learn by other’s exaggerated gestures
Animals and Humans imitate others
Modeling: imitation of behaviour through observational learning.
We will more likely imitate models that are attractive, have a high status, or are similar to us.
The model’s influence will often occur implicitly.
Adolescents and smoking (those from non-smoking parents are more likely to be influence by
the media)
Vicarious reinforcement
Another factor that will determine if we fallow a certain model is if the model is reinforced for
performing the behaviour.
Bandura: here all the children learned the (aggressive) behaviour, but only those who saw the
model being rewarded performed the behaviour.
Vicarious learning: occurs when people learn about an action’s consequences by observing
others being rewarded or punished for the behaviour
Mirror neurons: neurons that are activated during observations of others performing an action.
They are activated in the observer, and the person doing the actual behaviour. They might be
the neural basis for empathy.
Humans have mirror neurons for mouth movement, so that when we see the mouth move in a
particular way, those neurons become activated which means that mirror neurones might also
be involved not only for imitation learning, but also for humans’ ability to communicate through
language
Rizzolatti and Arbib: the mirror neuron system has evolved to give rise to language, because
speech evolved mainly from gestures.
Evidence indicates that listening to sentences that describe actions activates the same brain
regions active when those actions are observed. Even reading words that represent actions lead
to the activation of brain regions relevant to motor, as the word like activate brain regions that
control tongue movement.
Media and violence:
Us: TV is on for 5-6 hours per day, 3h for children. Saturday morning cartoons watched by 60%
of us kids contain 20 aggressively violent acts per hour.
Media violence has been shown to increase the likelihood of long or short term violence. There
is a desensitisation to violence taking place, showing fewer helping behaviour and increased
aggressively.
Adolescents who played certain kinds of video games showed decreased activation in the
prefrontal region and more activation of the amygdala.
The influence can be compared to the linking of smoking and cancer, the influence is nearly as
large.
Freedman: a number of aggressive behaviours in children could be interpreted as playful. The
clips used in labs are very brief and extremely aggressive, which is not the same as normal TV
watching. Extra variables could also lead to the violent behaviour. Studies failed to prove that TV
is the cause of the violent behaviour.
Statement: a number of studies point overwhelmingly to a causal relation between media
violence and aggressive behaviour in some children. They are lead to think that violence in the
real world is common and inevitable.
Critical thinking skill: avoiding the association of events with others that occur at the same time
What is the biological basis of learning?
Dopamine activity underlies reinforcement
The neural basis of this reinforcement is the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which
plays an important role in the experience of reward and is crucial for positive reinforcement.
Pleasure centers
Milner and Olds (1950s) were testing whether electrical stimulation to a specific region would
stimulate learning: a rat pressed a lever connected to electrodes implanted in its brain, the
electrodes stimulates pleasure centers in the brain, the rat learns that pressing the lever will
lead to pleasure (intracranial self-stimulation)
The brain regions that support the ICSS were referred to as pleasure centers
It is believed that ICSS acts on the same brain regions as those activated by natural reinforcers,
in fact, the same neurotransmitter system, dopamine is used in both cases.
Depriving an animal of food and water leads to an activation of the ICSS
Nucleus accumbens activation: the experience of pleasure results for activation of dopamine
neurones in this region.
In operant conditioning, dopamine release sets a reinforcer’s value
Secondary reinforcers also rely on dopamine
Through a classical conditioning process, neural stimuli that at first fail to stimulate a dopamine
release do so readily after being paired with US
Habituation and sensitization are simple models of learning
Semon (1904) memories are stored through changes in the nervous system. He called the
storage of learned material an engram (term popularized by Lashley)
Hebb (1948) learning results from alterations in the synaptic connections. When one neurone
excites another, the synapse between the 2 strengthens. One neuron’s firing becomes
increasingly likely to cause the other’s firing. Cells that fire together, wire together.
Studied learning with the aplysia (contains few neurons, some large enough to be seen without
a microscope) Kandel used it to study the neural basis of habituation and sensitization.
Habituation: a decrease in behavioural response following exposure to nonthreatening stimuli
Orienting response: when an animal encounters a novel stimulus, it pays attention to it.
Sensitization: an increase in behavioural response following exposure to a threatening stimulus,
can lead to heightened responsiveness to increased stimuli.
For both types of learning, presynaptic neurones alter their neurotransmitter release: a
reduction lead to habituation and an increase leads to sensitization.
Long term potentiation is a candidate for the neural basis of learning
Long-term potentiation (LTP): the strengthening of a synaptic connection so that postsynaptic
neurones are more easily activated. It occurs when the intense electrical stimulation increases
the likelihood that stimulating one neuron leads to an action potential in the second neuron.
LTP effects are most easily observed in brain sites known to be involved in learning and memory
such as the hippocampus. The drugs that improve memory lead to increased LTP. Behavioural
conditioning produces neurochemical effects nearly identical to LTP
Neurons that signal the US are active at the same time than those that activate the CS
LTP and the NMDA receptor (a type of glutamate receptor)
The NMDA receptor is required for the LTP and has a special property: it opens only if a nearby
neurone fires at the same time, a phenomenon supporting Hebb’s rule. With this finding,
scientists examined genetic processes that might influence learning.
Tsien: modified genes in mice to make the genes NMDA receptors more efficient. When tested,
the mice learn new tasks more quickly and showed increased fear conditioning. Doogie mice.
Many pharmaceuticals are exploring drugs that enhance the learning processes by manipulating
gene expression or activating NMDA receptors. If successful, such treatment might help for
Alzheimer’s
Fear conditioning: it may induce LTP in the amygdala (crucial for fear conditioning) we freeze
when we are afraid
LeDoux: auditory fear conditioning and LTP induction lead to similar changes in the amygdala,
which suggests that fear conditioning, might produce long lasting learning through LTP
induction.
The social learning of fear also relies on the amygdala. Similar mechanisms are involved in
conditioned and observational fear learning.
Chapter 7 : Attention and memory
Memory: the nervous system’s capacity to acquire and retain usable skills and knowledge,
allowing organism to benefit from experience. They are often incomplete, biased, and distorted.
How does attention determine what is remembered?
Pay attention: the word ‘’pay’’ indicate that costs are associated with attending to some forms
of information and not to others. Attention is limited.
Visual attention is selective and serial
Treisman: advances in the study of attention: we automatically identify ‘’primitive features’’
(colors, shape, movement) within an environment. Separate systems analyze objects’ different
visual features. Through parallel processing, these systems all process information at the same
time, and we can attend selectively to one feature by blocking the further processing of others.
Visual search task: search for target among distracters.
Serial: searching for 2 features, we need to look at the stimuli one at a time.
Conjunctions task: the stimulus looked for is composed of 2 simple features
Auditory attention allows selective listening
Talking on a cell phone while driving is more hazardous than talking with a passenger because
the person on the phone isn’t aware of the route conditions.
Cherry (1953) cocktail party phenomenon: you can focus on a single conversation in the midst of
a chaotic party, yet a particularly pertinent stimulus mentioned in another conversation can
capture our attention. He developed selective listening studies to examine what people’s minds
do with the unattended information when people pay attention to one task.
Shadowing: a participant wears head phones that deliver one message to one ear, and another
message to the other. The person is asked to pay attention to one ear only and shadow it by
repeating it aloud. The subject will notice the unattended sound, but won’t be able to know its
content. Some important information might get through the filter of attention, but it needs to
be personally relevant information, or particularly loud or different in some manner.
Selective attention can operate at multiple stages of processing
Broadbent (1958) developed the filter theory to explain the selective nature of attention.
People have a limited capacity for sensory information and thus screen for incoming
information, letting in only the most important.
Some stimuli demand attention and virtually shut off the ability to attend anything else. High
pitch sounds are hard to ignore, because they signal pain or fear.
Some evidence says that decisions about what to attend to are made early in the perceptual
process, unattended information is processed to some extent.
Change blindness: the common failure to notice large changes in the environment, which shows
that we can attend to a limited amount of information and that large discrepancies exist
between what most people believe they see and what they actually see. It also shows how
attention affects memory.
What are the basic stages of memory?
Like a computer, memory’s multiple processes can be thought of as operating over time in 3
phases:
1. Encoding phase: the processing of information, that occurs at the time of learning, so
that it can be stored
2. Storage phase: the retention of encoded representations over time that corresponds to
some changes in the nervous system that registers the event.
3. Retrieval phase: the act of recalling or remembering stored information to use it.
Involves: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long term memory. This modal memory
model was proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), and although incomplete, still prevails.
Sensory memory is brief
Sensory memory: memory for sensory information that is stored briefly close to its original
sensory form, lasts only for a fraction of a second. Occurs when a sound or light leaves a
vanishing trace on the nervous system
Sperling (1960) initial empirical evidence for SM (series of letters flashing, we recall only 3 or 4):
when a sound was produced very shortly after the letters were shown, the participants would
recall the letters, but the longer the delay, the worst the participants did. The visual memory
persists for 1/3 of a second, after which the sensory memory trace faded progressively until it
was no longer accessible.
Our SM allows us to see the world as a continuous stream rather than in discrete sensation,
much like a movie
Working memory is active
Information attended to is passed from sensory stores to short term memory (STM), a limited
capacity system that holds information in awareness for a brief period of time, but longer than
the SM. It is called the working memory, to indicate that it is a memory system that combines
information from different sources and can work on the information we have in memory. It is
also called immediate memory (i.e. RAM) Information remains in WM for about 20 to 30 sec,
and then disappears if not rehearsed.
Memory span and chunking
WM can hold a limited amount of information. Miller noted that it is generally of 7 items, a
figure referred to as memory span, which varies among individual
Chunking: organizing, breaking down information in meaningful units to make it easier to
remember. The greater our expertise with the material, the more efficiently we will chunk.
Working memory’s four parts: it is an active processing unit that deals with multiple types of
information (sounds, images, ideas)
Baddeley: developed a model of an active memory system that they called working memory.
The 3 components of WM are:
phonological loop : encodes auditory information and is active when a person tries to remember
words. Words are processed by how they sound, not by how they look.
visuospatial sketchpad: processes visual information
episodic buffer: holds temporary information about oneself, drawing heavily on episodic
memory.
The central executive presides over the interactions among the 3 components. It encodes
information from the sensory systems and then filters the information that is sufficiently
important to be stored in the LTM. It relies on the other 3 subcomponents, which temporarily
hold auditory or visuospatial information or personally relevant information.
Long term memory is relatively permanent:
Human LTM is virtually limitless
Distinguishing LTM for WM: duration and capacity
Evidence of the LTM and WM can from research at the individual level of analysis, that required
people to recall a long list of words. Items presented early or late in the list were remembered
better than those in the middle.
Serial position effect: the ability to recall items from a list depends on order of presentation,
with items presented early (in LTM) or late (still in WM) in the list remembered better than
those in the middle. It involves two separate effects: primacy effect and the recency effect.
The recency effect might not be completely attributable to the WM.
Some case studies indicate that the LTM can be dissociated from WM; however, the 2 systems
are highly interdependent.
What gets in LTM
Information enters permanent storage by rehearsal; however, simply repeating things is a poor
way to store. Over learning is good, and distributed practice is better that massed practice
(cramming).
Only information that helps us adapt to the environment is transferred in the LTM. Evolutionary
theory helps explain how we decided in advance what information will be useful
What are the different long-term memory systems?
(1970-80) Tulving, Schacter, Squire argued that memory is not just one entity, but rather a
process that involves several interacting systems, that encode and store different information in
different ways
Explicit memory involves conscious effort
The major division between memory systems is the division of the memories that we are
consciously aware of from memories that we acquire without conscious effort or intention.
Implicit memories: the system underlying unconscious memories
Explicit memories: the processes involved when people remember specific information
Declarative memory: the cognitive information retrieved from explicit memory; knowledge that
can be declared
Tulving (1972): explicit memory can be divided in episodic and semantic memory
Episodic: memories from one’s personal life
Semantic: memory for knowledge about the world
Implicit memory occurs without deliberate effort
Classical conditioning involves implicit memory
Effortless, occur without us knowing they occur, but can influence our lives.
Advertisers rely on it
Jacoby: the false fame effect
Involved in repetition priming, the improvement in identifying a stimulus that has been
experienced previously (some words have been primed: activated in the memory).
Procedural or motor memory: a type of implicit memory that involved motor skills and
behavioural habits
Prospective memory is remembering to do something
Prospective memory: remembering to do something, sometime in the future. It involves both
automatic and controlled processes
How is information organized in LTM
Long term storage is based on meaning
Our perceptual images are transformed into representation or codes, which are then stored. All
this information is stored in networks of neurones in the brain. Retrieval often involves an
explicit effort; it is involved in explicit or implicit memory systems. They are stored by meaning.
Craik and Lochkart: theory of memory based on depth of elaboration. According to their level of
processing model, the more deeply an item is encoded, the more meaning it has and the better
it is remembered. Different types of rehearsal lead to differential encoding.
Maintenance rehearsal: repeating the item over and over again
Elaborative rehearsal: encodes the information in more meaningful ways, such as thinking of the
object conceptually: we elaborate on basic information by linking it to knowledge from LTM.
Encoding: participants are asked to consider a list of words according to how the words are
printed, how they sound and what they mean. It turns out that words processed at the semantic
level are remembered better, because it activates more brain region, and the more brain
regions are activated, the better the memory.
Schemas provide an organizational framework
Schema: a hypothetical cognitive structure that helps us perceive, organize, process and use
information. They are structure in the LTM. They can also lead to biased encoding, especially in
cultured-influenced schemas.
Bartlett: asked British people to listen and repeat an American folktale. They altered it so that it
made sense form their viewpoint and even left the parts that didn’t make sense to them.
When we retrieve information about a certain person or event, everything we know will be
retrieved along with the story we try to remember
Information is stored in association networks
From Aristotle: our knowledge of the world is organized so that things related in meaning are
linked in storage
Collins and Loftus: an item’s distinctive features are linked so as to identify the item. Each unit of
information in the network is a node and each node is connected to many other nodes.
Activating one node increases the likelihood that other close related nodes will be activated. The
closer the node, the stronger the association between them and the more likely that activating
one will activate the other. Stimuli in WM activate the specific nodes in LTM; and this activation
increases the ease of access to that material, facilitating retrieval.
Their organization is based on hierarchically structured categories, which provide a clear an
explicit blueprint for where to look for needed information.
Retrieval cues provide access to Long-term storage
Retrieval cue: anything that helps the person sort through the data of the LTM to access the
right information. They explain why it is easier to recognize than to recall information
Encoding specificity principle: any stimulus that is encoded along with an experience can trigger
memory from the experience (Tulving).
When participants studied and were tested in the same room, they remembered better than
those who studied in one room and were tested in another. This is known as context dependent
memory, which can be based on things like physical location, odour or background music.
Internal mood states or inebriation can facilitate the recovery of information from LTM.
Enhancement of memory when internal states match during encoding and recall is known as
state dependant memory.
Eich (1975) study of state-dependent memory on marijuana use
What brain processes are involved in memory?
Focus on the biological level of analysis
There has been intensive effort to identify memory’s physical location
Lashley (engram) spent much of his time trying to localize memory. He trained mice to run a
maze, and then removed different parts of their cortices. He found out that the size of the area
removed rather than its location was most important in predicting retention. He concluded that
memory was distributed throughout the brain rather than in one localised region
(equipotentiality). He didn’t examine subcortical regions.
Memories are stored in multiple regions of the brain and linked to memory circuits (Hebb).
Neural specialization occurs such that different brain regions are responsible for storing
different aspects of information. (declarative and procedural memories use different brain
regions). Regions in the temporal lobes are important for the ability to encode new memories,
and are important for declarative memory, but not so much for implicit memory. The
cerebellum plays a role in how motor actions are learned and remembered. The amygdala is
responsible for fear conditioning.
The medial temporal lobes are important for consolidation of declarative memories
The medial region of the temporal lobe includes the amygdala and the hippocampus (damage to
it causes anterograde amnesia: the inability to store new memories).
Consolidation: a hypothetical process involving the transfer of contents from immediate
memory into LTM.
All learning leaves a biological trail in the brain which results from changes in the strength of
neural connections that support memory and from the construction of new synapses.
Medial temporal lobes are important for coordination and strengthening the connections
among neurons when something is learned, but that the actual storage most likely occurs in the
particular brain regions engaged during the perception, processing and analysis of the material
being learned. Memories from sensory experiences involve retrieving the cortical circuits
involved in perceiving them. Medial temporal lobes form links between the different storage
sites and directs the gradual strengthening of those links.
Reconsolidation: once memories are activated they need to be consolidated again to be stored
back into memory.
Researchers found evidence for such a process by giving a drug that interferes with memory
storage after a memory has been activated: when memories for past events are retrieved, they
can be affected by new circumstances, so that the newly reconsolidated memories may differ
from their original version. This reconsolidation process occurs every time we retrieve a memory
and put it back in storage.
Spatial memory: function of the hippocampus that consists of memory for the physical
environment (location of objects, directions and cognitive maps). The role of the hippocampus is
supported by place cells: neurons that fire when a rat returns to a specific location, and fired
again during their REM sleep- rats were dreaming about the maze they had just learned. Sleep is
important to consolidate memories.
Morris water maze test p. 307
The frontal lobes are involved in many aspects of memory
Extensive neural networks connect the prefrontal cortex with other brain regions involved in
memory, such as medial temporal areas. The frontal lobes are crucial for encoding. Deep
encoding tasks will more likely lead to frontal activation than shallow ones. Frontal activation is
a good predictor for which events will be remembered and which will not. Further activity in
frontal brain regions involved in processing specific types of information is associated with
better memory for that type of information.
The medial prefrontal cortex is selectively active when people think about themselves, thus
activity in this region predicts memory for information encoded about the self, but not for
information encoding about others.
The frontal lobes might also play a role in WM, because patients with damage to this region
have difficulty following plans or goals, and monkeys with frontal lesions have impaired WM.
Frontal regions become active when info is retrieved from the LTM into WM or encoded from
WM into LTM. The frontal lobe and medial temporal lobes work together to consolidate storage
of the lecture in our LT declarative memory.
Neurochemistry underlies memory
As memories are consolidated, neurones link into distributed networks, and those networks
become linked. Various neurotransmitters, known as memory modulators, can weaken or
enhance memory.
Neurochemistry indicates the meaningfulness of stimuli
Important events lead to neurochemical changes that produce emotion, which make those
events likely to be stored in memory. Epinephrine jolts tells us to remember (excitement). This
hormone is secreted in the bloodstream from adrenal glands, located near the kidneys, thus it
doesn’t affect memory directly. Researchers initially believed that it affected memory because it
causes glucose release, which then enters the brain and influences memory storage.
When we learn something new, we drain glucose from key parts of the brain (hippocampus)
that are associated with memory and learning. (elderly people who drank lemonade)it is
complex carbohydrates that improve the brain’s glucose availability.
The amygdala and the neurochemistry of emotion
Any arousing event causes greater activity of norepinephrine receptors, which strengthens the
memory of that event. The amygdala contains such receptors. Emotional memories affect the
right amygdala in men and the left one in women, who have a better memory for emotional
events.
Canli: showed men and women picture: women remembered emotional pictures better and
their emotional amygdala response was also greater. Women are more prone then men to
depression.
Why sex matters in neuroscience lists many reason for studying sex differences in brain
structure and function to understand brain disorders and normal brain functioning. Men and
women perform equally well on the memory test that regarded tasks in which their brain
activity patterns differs.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a mental disorder that involves frequent nightmares,
intrusive thoughts, and flashbacks related to an earlier trauma. Sufferers often have chronic
tension, anxiety, and health problems, and may experience memory and attention problems in
that daily lives.
PTSD is associated with an attentional bias: people are hyper vigilant to stimuli associated with
their traumatic events, which leads to activation of the amygdala.
On ethics: altering memory for sufferers of PTSD, or even more people, what would it lead to
and is it acceptable to alter our memories, for they make who we are and our society advances.
If we didn’t remember traumatic events, we would be somewhat de-sensitised to such events.
When do people forget?
Forgetting: the inability to retrieve memory from LTM. We forget far more than we remember.
Not being able to forget is maladaptive (as well as not being able to remember). Normal
forgetting helps us better remember and use important information.
Ebbinghaus: forgetting occurs rapidly in the 1st few days but then leaves off. He used the
methods of savings to examine how long it took people to re-learn a list of non-sense syllables.
Relearning past learnt subjects would take us less time to learn than the 1st time
David Schacter: the 7 sins of memory (p.313)
Transience is caused by interference
Transience: the pattern of forgetting overtime. Unused memories are forgotten overtime. Most
forgetting occurs because of interference from other information. We can forget because of
proactive and retroactive interference. In both cases, competing information displaces the
information we are trying to retrieve.
Proactive: old information inhibits the ability to remember new information
Retroactive: when new information inhibits the ability to remember old information
Blocking is temporary
Blocking: the temporary inability to remember something that is known. Tip of the tongue
phenomenon (Brown and MacNeil) and can be produced in the laboratory (A.Brown). It often
occurs because of the interference of similar words
Absentmindedness results from shallow encoding
Absentmindedness: the inattentive or shallow encoding of events. (Groups in the change
blindness experiment)There are cultural differences in patterns of attention.
Amnesia is a deficit in LTM
Amnesia: a deficit in LTM, resulting from disease, brain injury or psychological trauma. There are
2 types: retrograde and anterograde. Often occurs from damage to the temporal lobes,
sometimes to the thalamus. Korsakoff’s syndrome: long-term alcohol abuse can lead to vitamin
deficiencies that result in thalamic changes and subsequently, amnesia.
Retrograde: past-memories are lost, such as memories for events, facts, people, or personal
information.
Anterograde: inability to form new memories
How are memories distorted?
Flashbulb memories can be wrong
Flashbulb memories (Brown, Kulik): vivid memories for the circumstances in which one 1st heard
a surprising, consequential and emotionally arousing event.
(Conway) better memory for the flashbulb experience occurs among those who found the news
surprising and felt the event was important.
Von Restorff effect: a distinctive event might simply be recalled more easily than trivial events,
however inaccurate the result.
People make source misattributions (identified by Schacter)
Source misattributions: the misremembering of the time, place, person, or circumstances
involved with a memory. (False fame effect, sleeper effect (arguments that come from a
questionable source become more persuasive overtime))
Cryptomnesia: when a person thinks she has come up with a new idea, but really has retrieved
an old one from memory and failed to attribute it to the proper source.
People are bad eye witnesses
Wells: 36 out of 40 cases in which DNA studies have shown that a person had been falsely
accuse came from eye witness testimony (William Jackson’s case)
Cross-ethnic identification: we have better memories for same race faces (fusiform face area),
we see categories, not individuals.
Suggestibility and misinformation: Loftus (1970) people can develop biased memories when
provided with misleading information, a phenomenon known as suggestibility. (When we hear a
car smashed into, we tend to think it went faster than if we had heard, the car collided) This
phenomenon is more prevalent in a laboratory than in real life situations, because, due to the
increased stress hormones, the memories may be more vivid.
Eyewitness confidence: those that are wrong are just as confident as those who are right,
perhaps even more so. Accurate witnesses tend to pay no attention to details.
Simon: the Innocents project: police officers and prosecutors influence memory through the
way in which they conduct the identification process.
People have false memories
Source amnesia: a type of amnesia that occurs when a person shows memory for an event but
cannot remember where he encountered the information.
Childhood amnesia: most people can’t recall anything before the age of 3. This may be due to a
lack of linguistic capacity as well as an immature front lobe
Creating false recognition
Confabulation: the false recollection of episodic memory. Moscovitch described it as an honest
lying (H.W.) Capgras syndrome: patients delusionaly believe their family members have been
replaced by impostors, even when presented with contradictory evidence. Such patients often
have damage to their frontal lobes and the limbic brain regions. The brain regions involved in
emotion is separated from the visual input.
Repressed memories are controversial
Long-repressed memories can resurface during therapy. Loftus points out that there is little
evidence that recovered memories are genuine or at least sufficiently accurate to be believable.
Schacter alludes to the frightening possibility that repressed memories might have been
introduced by misguided therapists. Hypnosis, age regression, and guided recall can create false
memories.
Halbrook: in a group therapy, she thought she had been abused in satanic rituals and killed a
baby.
It would be a mistake to dismiss all adult reports of early abuse. In the latter half of the 1990,
there have been much less recovered memories
People reconstruct events to be consistent
Memory bias: the changing of memories over time in ways consistent with prior beliefs.
Festinger: I prefer to rely on my memory. I have lived with that memory long enough, I am used
to it, and if a have rearranged or distorted it, surely that was done for my own benefit.
People tend to recall their past attitudes and past beliefs as being consistent with their current
ones, often revising their memories when they change attitudes and beliefs. They also tend to
remember events as casting them in the predominant roles or favourable lights, and other thing
the like.
Orwell: we can change the past, not the future
Neuroscience may make it possible to distinguish between true and false memories
When we remember something, the brain areas activated are the same ones that were
activated when we learned them. If the memory is true, the brain areas activated should be the
same as those activated when the event occurred. If the memory is false, unrelated brain areas
would be activated. False memories tend to be similar to true memories, especially when there
are true and false components in the same global memory.
Over the next scientists will debate if using fMRI is reliable.
How can we improve learning and memory?
Mnemonics are useful strategies for learning
Practice: the more time you repeat an action, the easier it gets. Memories are strengthened
with retrieval. Repeated testing is a good way to improve memory.
Elaborate the material: the deeper the level of processing, the more likely we will remember the
material later. Why critical thinking skill is important. Try to organize the material in a way that
makes sense to us, form concepts about it. Good when the material is made relevant to us.
Overlearn: recognition is easier than recall: rehearse the material, when we think we have
learned it. Distribute our study overtime
Sleep: it may help with the consolidation of memories and disturbing sleep interferes with
learning
Use verbal mnemonics: slogans, acronyms
Verbal imagery: engage both systems in WM, creating a more lasting one. Method of loci
visualizes ourselves placing objects. Pegs, visualize the new words hanging on pegs.
Chapter 8: thinking and intelligence
Gigerenzer: low probability events that are highly published have dire consequences: dread risk
can profoundly affect reasoning
How does the mind represent information?
Intelligence: some people seem to be better than others at using information
Gladwell: The Power of Thinking without Thinking: the ability to use information rapidly is a
critical human skill
Cognitive psychology: originally based on the notions that the brain represents information and
that the act of thinking: cognition- is directly associated with manipulating these
representations.
Understanding the nature of our everyday mental representation is difficult.
Analogical representations: Have some of the physical characteristics of an object; it is
analogous to the object. (images)
Symbolic representations: an abstract representation that doesn’t correspond to physical
characteristics of an object or idea. (words)
Mental images are analogical representations
The ‘’R’’ studies showed that the time it takes to say whether a stimulus is a mirror image will
increase as a function of how far the stimulus is rotated from its original position.
Are representations of objects analogical or could they be simple representations based on
factual knowledge about the world? – At least, some thoughts take the form of mental images.
Kosslyn: visual imagery is associated with activity in visual perception related areas of the brain:
the same brain areas activated when we view something are active when we think in images.
When we retrieve information from memory, the representation of that recalled picture in our
mind’s eye parallels the representation in our brain of the 1st time we saw it. (eye facing into the
brain)
Limits of analogical representations: if something can’t be perceived wholly by our perceptual
system, we can’t form a complete analogical representation of it (mental maps = analogical +
symbolic). We often regularize irregular shapes as shortcuts.
Concepts are symbolic representations
How we use knowledge about objects efficiently.
Categorization: grouping things based on shared properties, reduces the amount of knowledge
we must hold in memory and is therefore an efficient way of thinking
Concept: a category, or class, that includes subtypes and /or individual items. An abstract
representation that groups or categorizes objects, events or relations around common themes.
Defining attribute model: that idea that a concept is characterized by a list of features that are
necessary to determine if an object is a member of a category. It fails to capture many key
aspects of how we organize things in our minds. It implies an all-or-non categorization, and that
all the given category’s attributes are equally salient in terms of defining this category, and the
model posits that all the members of a category are all equal in the category
Prototype model: an approach to object categorization that is based on the premise that within
each category, some members are more representative than others. A particular prototype can
be chosen for different reasons
Exemplar model: information stored about the members of a category is used to determine
category membership- any concept has no single best representation, instead all the examples
of category members form that concept. Accounts for the observation that some category
members are more prototypical than others: the prototypes are simply members we have
encountered more often
Schemas organize useful information about environments
Enable us to interact with the complex reality. Knowledge regarding situations and social
contexts differ from the knowledge associated with object classification.
One theory is focused on schemas about the sequences of events in certain situations. Shank
and Abelson (1977) have referred to those schemas as scripts which operate at the unconscious
level. (gender role = schema)
We can employ schemas because common situations have consistent attributes, and people
have specific roles in specific contexts.
Scripts dictate our appropriate behaviours, and what we view as appropriate is shaped by
culture. Their adaptive value is that they minimize the amount of attention required to navigate
familiar environments, and to avoid unusual or dangerous information. They can lead into
thinking in stereotypical ways.
How do we make decisions and solve problems?
Reasoning: using information to determine if a conclusion is valid or reasonable
Decision making: attempting to select the best alternative amongst several options
Problem solving: finding a way around an obstacle to reach a goal
People use deductive and inductive reasoning
Deductive: reason from the general to the specific, using a belief or rule to see if a conclusion is
valid
Inductive: reason from the specific to the general, using examples or instances to determine if a
conclusion is likely to be true.
Deductive reasoning: we use logic to draw specific conclusions under certain assumptions, or
premises. Deductive reasoning tasks are often presented as syllogisms (logical arguments
containing premises and a conclusion).
Conditional: if A is true, then B is true. The conclusion may or may not be true
Categorical: the logical argument contains 2 premises and a conclusion, which can be
determined to be either valid or invalid. (All As are Bs, all Bs are Cs, therefore all As are Cs)
We are influenced by our experiences
Inductive reasoning: after a number of instances, we might induce a general conclusion. The use
of the scientific method is an example. In everyday life, it might not be as accurate; we are often
influenced by anecdotes)
Decision making often involves heuristic
Research on decision making has been influenced by normative (humans are optimal decision
makers) and descriptive (account for human’s misinterpretations, and irrational acts) models
Expect utility theory: normative model of how humans should make decisions. It views decision
making as a computation of utility, the overall value of each possible outcome in a decision
making scenario.
Tversky, Kahnemann: importance of both reasoning and decision making in economics. They
identified several common heuristics
Heuristics: in problem solving, mental shortcuts used to reduce the amount of thinking that is
needed to move from an initial state to a goal state. Not the same thing as algorithm (a
procedure that, if followed correctly, will always yield the correct answer). Heuristic thinking
often occurs unconsciously, it allows us to focus on other things, since the conscious mind’s
processing capacity is limited. They required minimal cognitive resources, but can also result in
bias
Critical thinking skill: understanding how the availability and representativeness heuristics can
affect thinking
Availability heuristics: making a decision based on the answer that most easily comes to mind
Representativeness heuristic: a rule for categorization based on how similar the person or
object is to our prototypes for that category. (Bias: not enough base rate)
Framing effects: the effect of presentation on how information is perceived
Tversky, Kehnemann: prospect theory: we need to take into account people’s wealth in
predicting their choice and we need to consider the fact that because losses feel much worse
than gains feel good, people try to avoid situations that involves losses. (loss aversion)
Affective forecasting (Gilbert, Wilson, 2007): people aren’t good at knowing how they will feel
about something in the future, and generally don’t realize how bad they are at predicting their
future feelings (overestimate the negative feelings, we are unaware that we can find positive
outcomes from tragic event) We have excellent strategies of coping in order to protect our
mental health.
Affective forecasting can also influence our perception of positive events. Winning a silver medal
might be more negative than winning a bronze.
Good decision makers: (Bruin, Parker, Fischoff) found that good decisions lead to a better life.
Applying critical thinking skills can positively affect multiple areas of a person’s life.
Problem solving achieves goals
Organization of subgoals: process from one step to the next (tower of Hanoi). A problem must
be broken down into subgoals. Sometimes it is difficult to find the order in which to do them)
Sudden insight: the sudden realization of a solution to a problem (Kohler: chimpanzee and
banana) (Maier: strings on the ceiling)
Changing representations to overcome obstacles: revise a mental representation
Restructuring: a new way of thinking about a problem that aids its solution (Scheerer: 4 lines, 9
dots)
Mental sets: a problem solving strategy that has worked in the past, we tend to follow them
(Luchins: bottles of water)
Functional fixedness: sticking with our mental representation about objects’ typical functions. It
must be overcomed. (Dunker: candle and matchbox)
Conscious strategies: working backward (water lily), finding an appropriate analogy: transferring
a problem solving strategy that works in one context to solve a similar problem. Analogous
problems enhance our ability to solve each one, provided that we see the structural similarities.
(Semmelhack, a software designer who played Lego with his son)
The paradox of choice: the more choices the better? – no too many choices can be frustrating.
When we remove our freedom of choice, we feel wronged; we want the sense of having control
over our life
Schwartz: having too many choices make some people miserable, it might even lead to the
increase of clinical depression, because if the choice we make always fails us, we are likely to
become depressed. He believes that if decisions aren’t crucial, we should settle for choices that
match our needs even if they aren’t the absolute best.
He divides the world into satisficers (from Nobel laureate Simon) and maximizers. Satisficing:
choosing an option that sufficiently satisfies our needs. Satisficers do not lack standards, they
choose whatever matches the most closely what they want and buy it regardless if there are
better or cheaper things. Maximizers always seek to make the best possible choices and devote
time. For them, making the wrong choice can have catastrophic consequences. They are
hesitant in their choice and keep on questioning it after it has been done; they feel more
disappointed with their decisions.
Paradox of choice might have an impact on the cultural shift in age of marriage and settlement.
They want to maximize their choices.
How do we understand intelligence?
Large debate as to what extent is our intelligence determined by our genes or our environment.
Intelligence: the human ability to use knowledge, understand complex ideas, learn quickly, and
adapt to environmental challenges.
On ethics: cognition enhancing drugs
Drugs to prevent normal slow loss of brain function- yes
Unaware of the side effects, might bring to a loss of values such as perseverance, people might
be cohered into taking them, because they present such an advantage. What will happen if
memories are intact?
Sir Francis Galton: (1800) earliest efforts to study intelligence. He believed that intelligence was
related to the speed of neural responses and to the sensitivity of the sensory/perceptual
systems
Psychometric approach: general approach to understanding intelligence at different levels of
analysis focuses on how people perform on standardized achievement tests, examining what
people know and their problem solving skills.
Cognitive approach: how information is processed, speed of reaction, amount of info held in
memory, focus on tasks.
Biological approach: how information is processed by the brain, and how genes and
environment affect brain activity.
Intelligence is assessed by psychometric tests
Achievement assess tests: current levels of skills and of knowledge
Aptitude tests: examine whether people will be good at various jobs in the future and may
predict what jobs people will be good at
Binet: intelligence is best understood as a collection of high level mental processes (verbal,
mathematical, and analytical abilities)
Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale: measuring children’s abilities. Over the entire test, good results
by luck aren’t a factor.
Stanford (Terman) revision: adapted version of American children (1919)
Wechsel (1939) test for adults WAIS: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. WAIS III: verbal part,
performance part
Intelligence quotient
Mental age: introduced by Binet, it is an assessment of a child’s intellectual standing relative to
that of his or her peers; determined by a comparison of the child’s test score for children of each
chronological age
IQ: the number computed by dividing a child’s estimated mental age by the child’s chronological
age and then multiplied by 100. The average IQ is 100. Not so good for adults.
Validity: do they really measure what they need to measure
Miller analogy test: results predicted academic performances, productivity, creativity.
Modest correlation between IQ and work, skill... They only predict 25% of the variation in school
or work. People from privileged backgrounds seem to have higher IQs.
Cultural bias: they may penalize people for belonging to certain cultural groups (we must speak
the language and know the culture). Some tests try to avoid this problem, but seem to be biased
as well. Sometimes they favour who wishes to do well.
What it means to be intelligent varies amongst cultures
Critical thinking skill: recognizing and avoiding reification:
the tendency to think about complex traits as though they have a single cause and objective
reality. We must recognize the complexity of concepts such as intelligence.
General intelligence involve multiple components
Does intelligence reflect one overall talent or multiple individual ones?
Factor analysis: statistical technique that clusters items similar to one another; the clusters are
referred to as factors.
Spearman (1904): most intelligence test items tended to cluster as one factor and that people
who scored highly one on type of item also tended to score highly on other types of items. He
viewed general intelligence or ‘’g’’ as a factor that contributes to performance on intellectual
task.
Most scientists agree that some form of intelligence of g exists, they also recognize that
intelligence comes in various forms.
Fluid versus crystallized intelligence: Cattell (1971) G consists of 2 types of intelligence
Fluid: information processing in novel or complex circumstances. Often assessed in nonverbal,
more culture-fair intelligence tests
Crystallized: knowledge acquired through experience and the ability to use that knowledge
Throughout the adult years, crystallized intelligence grows steadily, while fluid intelligence
declines steadily.
Multiple intelligences:
Gardner (1983) theory of multiple intelligences
Multiple intelligences: people can show different skills in a variety of different domains,
independent from one another. (Musical, bodily-kinesthetics, linguistic, mathematical/logical,
spatial, intrapersonal, interpersonal)
Greenberg: average boy, but outstanding musical prodigy.
Each person has a unique pattern of intelligence and no one should be viewed as smarter than
others, just differently talented. He feels that the current tests fail to capture the true essence
of intelligence.
Sternberg (1999) theory of 3 intelligences: analytical, creative, practical
Emotional intelligence (Salovey, Mayer, popularized by Goleman) EQ
EQ: a form of social intelligence that emphasises the ability to perceive, understand, manage,
and use emotions to guide thoughts and actions. Consists of 4 abilities: manage our own
emotions, use emotions to facilitate activities, recognize other’s emotions, and understand
emotional language. Regulating our mood, resisting impulses and temptation, and controlling
our behaviour are all important components of EQ. It is correlated with the quality of social
relationships.
Importance of G: it predicts not only performance in school, and at work, but also longevity.
Low G is related to early death (heart attacks, diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer’s, traffic accidents,
drowning). It may affect health, people with higher G better analyse.
G’s main value is in allowing people to adapt quickly to environmental challenges.
Kanazawa suggests that G is important only in novel situations. One’s level of intelligence
doesn’t matter for recurring adaptive challenges
Intelligence is associated with cognitive performance
Galton (1822-1911): intelligence is related to our brain’s efficiency as well as to keen perceptual
skills; intelligent people have larger, more efficient brains.
Other psychologists: believe that intelligence is supported by low level cognitive processes, such
as mental processing, WM, and attention
Speed of mental processing:
Test of simple reaction time: easy
Choice reaction time: more representative of intelligence scores
Inspection time test: if a stimulus is presented, and covered up, how much time is required to
identify if stimulus A is longer than stimulus B. The results are proportional to psychometric test
results.
The fact that highly intelligent people’s brains work faster was found by measuring brains’
electrical activity in response to stimuli presentation.
The relationship between reaction time and longevity is somewhat stronger than that between
scores on intelligence tests and longevity.
Working memory: G intelligence scores are closely related to WM. Memory tests that have dual
components, show a strong relation between WM and intelligence.
The link may be attention; the ability to stay focused is important.
Brain structure and function
Brain volume, as assessed by MRI, explained about 10% of the difference in people’s intelligence
scores. People with autism tend to have larger brains. A small but significant correlation has
been found between the size of selected brain structures and intelligence.
The volume of neuronal cell bodies in the frontal lobes and in other brain regions that support
attentional control is related to fluid intelligence, but not to crystallized intelligence.
Sandra Witelson: Canadian neuroscientist who has 125 brains including Einstein’s. His brain is
unremarkable in overall size or weight, but his parietal lobe is 15% larger than average.
Savants: Kim Peek, savant who inspired the character played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain man,
who can memorize impressive things, but can’t manage the daily chores of daily life. With a
score of 87 on an intelligence test, he was born in 1951 with several brain anomalies, especially
in his left hemisphere. (enarlged head, missing corpus callosum)
Wiltshire: autism, can reproduce paintings of images he only glanced at years ago.
Genes and environment influence intelligence
Nature and nurture both play a role in development of intelligence. (parent’s brain size,
nutrition influences brain size, intelligent people might seek out activities that will increase the
volume of their frontal lobe, heritability of vocabulary size, the amount of schooling...)
Behavioural genetics: genes do play a role, but the extent of their influence remains unknown.
No intelligence has been found. (study in mice, removed genes, knockout genes, or replacing
them with other, knockin genes, lead to increase intelligence for a few hours). IQ chart p.368.
Environmental factors: prenatal and post-natal factors influence intelligence.
Studies show that firstborns often have higher IQs, psychologist disagree with these findings.
Laterborns often have a lower IQ than firstborns. This could be because parents devote more
time and attention to older siblings, who grow up with fewer children.
Adopted children had higher IQs and better school performances than their biological sibling
who hasn’t been adopted. Their IQs were similar to non-adopted siblings, but school
performances lagged behind.
Enriched environment enhances learning and memory as well. Environment influences how
genes involved in brain development are expressed, including the formation of new synapses.
The intellectual opportunities that a child receives also influence their intelligence: starting
school early.
Flynn effect: rise of the IQ scores during the last century, since every generation needs more
education than the preceding, and work and leisure require more complex cognitive processing.
It could also be related to better nutrition, health care system, better educational methods,
longer school years, smaller families with more parental attention, exposure to technology.
Group differences in intelligence have multiple determinants
Gender: Jensen found that no evidence was found for sex differences in the mean level of g or in
the variation of g. Males excel on some factors, females on others. There are differences
between males and females: males tend to do better on math and visuospatial processing,
females get better grades and have advantages on measures of writing and languages.
Studies have shown that females tend to estimate their intelligence lower that males estimate
theirs, because females receive modesty training and underestimate their intelligence. Females
and males tend to attribute higher IQs to their fathers than mothers.
Race: Jensen said that African Americans are, on average, less intelligent than European
Americans; they score about 10 to 15 points higher. Why?
We must consider if race is a biologically significant concept, many believe it isn’t. It is wrong to
conclude that genes influence those groups when there are environmental factors at stake.
Lewontin (1976) provided a good analogy for this. African Americans tend to make less money
and are more likely to live in poverty, they have fewer years of education, and are targets of
discrimination, which may lead to lower-self esteem.
African American children who wrote about what mattered to them as a racial group had better
grades (40% reduction of the racial gap in grades.)
Stereotype treat: apprehension about confirming negative stereotypes related to one’s own
group. (it could interfere with the good performances of AA)
We tend to do as the stereotype predicts we will do. SAT scores can be affected by that, but it is
still debated. Because according to brain imaging techniques test takers resulting anxiety
reduced the capacity of their WM, more arousal in brain areas related in emotion.
Chapter 10: Health and well-being
Can psychological factors affect health?
Health psychology: concerned with the events that affect physical well-being. It arose 30 years
ago when psychologists realized the importance of lifestyle factors to physical health
Well-being: a positive state that includes striving for optimal health
Psychologists rely on experimental and statistical data to understand the correlation between
thoughts, actions, and physical and mental health. They also study the inverse of these
relationships.
The biopsychosocial model of health incorporates multiple perspectives for understanding
and improving health.
Biopsychological model: model of health that integrates the effects of biological, behavioural,
and social factors on health and illness. It is a circular model p.429. Not like the traditional
medical model in which patients are passive and the doctor knows best.
Behaviour contributes to the leading causes of death
Most people fear the wrong things
We are more likely to die from causes that stem from our own behaviours, which we can learn
to modify. Lifestyle behaviours that begin in childhood and teenage years have a great impact
on health. (in teens 49% of deaths are from accidents)
Behaviours influence environments, which in turn influence the biological bases of behaviours.
Critical thinking skill: indentifying regression to the mean
En extreme event will likely be followed by a less extreme event
Placebos can be a powerful medicine
Placebo effect: a drug or treatment, unrelated to the particular problem of the person who
receives it, may make the recipient feel better because the person believes that the drug or
treatment is effective. For a placebo to work, the patient must believe it will, i.e. they mustn’t
know it is a placebo. It can be attributable to decreased anxiety, partly. We can’t separate the
effects from our mind from those of our bodies. It is an experimental control
A drug that made the analgesics ineffective also made the placebo ineffective. MRI studies
showed that when patients have a positive expectation about a placebo, the neural processes
involved in responding to it are the same ones activated in response to a biologically active
treatment.
Critical thinking: recognizing placebo effects when evaluating treatment claims.
How do people cope with stress?
Stress: a pattern of behavioural and physiological responses to events that match or exceed an
organism’s abilities to respond in a healthy way. (A little stress may be beneficial). It is divided in
2 types: eustress (from positive events) and distress or duress (stress of negative events). They
equally put strain to our bodies. Extreme distress can lead to serious health problems.
Daily hassles can build up and cause serious problems because they wear down personal
resources. We may accommodate to certain types, but not to others, such as interpersonal
stress.
Stressor: an environmental event or stimulus that threatens an organism
Coping response: any response an organism makes to avoid, escape from, or minimize an
aversive stimulus.
When too much is expected of us, we perceive a discrepancy between the situation and what
we can do.
Stress has psychological components
Stress activates a chain of events known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. P.435
It was an efficient model for our ancestors because it results in increased energy. Because
hormones travel slowly in the bloodstream, stress affects the system much longer than stressors
do.
Excessive stress disrupts WM, especially when the demand of WM is high. Chronic stress has
been associated with memory impairments caused when cortisol damages neurons in brain
areas including the hippocampus.
There are sex differences in responses to stressors
Fight-or-flight response: (Cannon) the psychological preparedness of animals to deal with
danger.
Taylor says that this model has been studied using 80% males, which means that we have a
distorted vision of stress response. This is mostly because females’ menstrual cycle level of
hormones may interfere
Tend-to-befriend response (Taylor: female’s tendency to protect and care for their offspring and
form social alliances.) Excellent from an evolutionary point of view. This theory can’t be applied
universally to all females.
Geary and Fill: males often engage in tending behaviours
Oxycontin: a hormone important for mothers in bonding to newborns, it is produced by the
hypothalamus and released in the bloodstream by the pituitary gland.
Oxycontin levels tend to be high in stressful situations, it is especially important in women’s
stress response
Estrogens are also important in understanding the differences between male and female stress
response
Their different responses may explain why they tend to live 5 to 8 years longer than males on
average.
The general adaptation syndrome is a bodily response to stress
Selye: effects of sex hormones by injecting rats with hormones from other animals he found:
enlarged adrenal glands, decreased levels of lymphocytes (white T or B cells that make up the
immune system) and stomach ulcers. These 3 responses were part of the nonspecific stress
response
General adaptation syndrome: alarm, resistance and exhaustion (p.438)
Stress affects health
The prolonged action of stress hormones (cortisol) negatively affects health (high blood
pressure, cardiac disease, diabetes, decline sex drive, dwarfism)
Sapolsky: chronic stress, especially psychological stress, is associated with the initiation and
progression of a wide variety of diseases. Many coping strategies can be damaging
Immune system: stress alters its function. Psycho-neuro-immunology studies the response of
the body’s immune system to psychological variables. Short term stress boosts it, chronic stress
weakens it, because of decreased lymphocyte production
Cohen: people sniffed cold viruses; those with the highest levels of stress developed heavier
symptoms. The more desirable events, the greater the production of antigens.
Heart disease: the leading cause of deaths for adults. Factors: genetics, health behaviours,
response to stress (personality traits, 1950s)
Friedman (chair) his patients were impatient and driven, they were sitting on the front of their
chairs. He deduced that personality could influence heart disease. Today, it has been shown that
negative emotions influence the risk of heart diseases.
Western Collaborative Group (1960) 8 year study with 3500 men free of heart disease at the
start of the study and found that a set of personality traits were related to heart disease.
Type A behaviour: competitive, goal oriented, aggressive, hostile, restless, not able to relax,
impatient with others. They are much more prone to heart disease, such behaviour is as strong a
predicator of heart disease as is high blood pressure.
Type B behaviour: easygoing, relaxed, non competitive, accommodating.
Depression can also lead to heart disease. In contrast optimistic people tend to have lower risks.
Duke University found out that hostility was the worse, because such a state of arousal puts a
strain on the body (impact on pulmonary health also)
Allostatic load theory of illness: when people are continuously stressed, they are unable to
return to bodily states that characterize normal stress levels. Allostatic load is similar to
homeostasis. The body of more positive people should return more easily and often to their
allostatic load.
Coping is a process
Lazarus (1993) conceptualised a 2-part appraisal process: people use primary appraisals to
decide whether a stimulus is stressful, benign, or irrelevant. If they find the stimuli stressful,
they use secondary appraisals to evaluate response options and choose coping behaviours.
Anticipatory coping: coping that occurs before the onset of a future stressor.
Types of coping: Folkman and Lazarus outline 2 categories of coping
Emotion-focused coping: people try to prevent having an emotional response to a stressor,
adopting often passive strategies (avoidance, minimizing the problem, distanciation from
outcome, eating, drinking) that don’t solve the problem. Effective only in the short-run.
Depending on the situation, it might be the best option.
Problem-focused coping: people take direct steps to confront or minimize a stressor, generating
alternative solutions. Method when we perceive the stressors as controllable
Folkman and Moskowitz: in addition to problem focused coping, 2 strategies can be adopted to
help people use positive thoughts to deal with stress. They involve positive reappraisal, a
process in which a person focuses on possible good things in his situation, looking for the silver
lining.
Downward comparison: comparing oneself to those who are worse off
Creation of positive events: infusing ordinary events with positive meaning
Individual differences in coping: some people are stress-resistant; they are able to adapt to life
changes by viewing events constructively. Hardiness (Kobasa): commitment, challenge, control.
They experience a high blood pressure when faced with stress, a sign of coping, and they have
an increase in positive thoughts about themselves.
Family-focused interventions: including family members in a treatment plan for chronically ill
doesn’t help: the patient may feel as though family members are controlling their life rather
than providing help. Being in control of essential decisions reduces stress and promotes wellbeing.
Motivate that patient to make his health and life choices, carry the daily activities
Modelling healthy behaviours
Providing reward
Pointing out the positive consequence of caring for one’s illness
What behaviours affect mental and physical health?
Our daily habits contribute to nearly every major cause of death in developed nations. High
stress is associated with more problems than fat intake, less exercise, and heavier smoking.
Obesity results from a genetic predisposition and overeating
Why some people can control what they eat and some can’t remains unclear. Society has a
negative attitude towards overweight people and tends to think they are just lazy pigs.
Travis former president of NAAFA: provide support for discrimination. After a life time of failed
diets, they realize they will probably always be fat and they must learn to accept themselves and
to educate society about obesity.
Obese: when 20% over ideal body weight.
BMI: body mass index. According to it, 1/3 of Americans are clinically obese
Genetic influence: half the variability in body weight. 60 to 80% heritability in fraternal twins.
Environment has far less effect than genetics. It determines whether a person can become
obese, but environment determines if a person will become obese (Stundark). More than 300
genetic markers play a role
Study by Bouchard of twins being overfed: differed weight can amongst pairs, similarity within
the pairs.
The stigma of obesity: can give rise to psychological problems. In some cultures, obesity is
appreciated.
Low self-esteem might cause the weight gain. (girls rating themselves 4 or less can gain 2 BMI
points 2 years after rating themselves as such. )
In western cultures, being overweight is associated with lower status, especially for women.
Ideal 5’11’’ and 110. 6’ 145. At odds against men’s bodies whose sizes increased.
Restrictive dieting doesn’t work: because of the body’s self defence against weight loss. Weight
is regulated around a set-point determined primarily by genetic influence.
1966, study with inmate to increase body weight by 25%, few did it
1950, study to challenge men to reduce body weight by 25%, very hard, became obsessed with
food. Similar outcomes to those with eating disorders.
The body responds to weight loss be slowing down metabolism, after the body has been
deprived of food, it needs less food to maintain a given body weight; weight gain occurs much
faster when previously starved
Close friends tend to have similar body weights, because of the social transmission; the implicit
agreement on what body weight is acceptable or normal.
Restrained eating: chronic dieters (restrained eaters), are prone to excessive eating in some
situation (Polivy, Herman) If they think they have blown their diets, they will indulge in eating
more. Stress can also lead them to abandon their diets. Their binge eating depends on their
perception of when their diets are broken. They rely on cognitive control of food intake rather
than eating according to body states of hunger.
Disordered eating: chronic dieting may promote it, they feel it difficult to lose weight (cycles of
yoyo alters the metabolism and makes it more difficult to lose) and have low self-esteem. Tend
to run in families, are due partially to genetics. Bulimia seems more culture bound, but Anorexia
is prevalent in every country where there is abundant food.
Anorexia: excessive fear of becoming fat and refusal to eat. 1% of the population meet the
criteria: objective measures of thinness and psychological characteristics that indicate abnormal
obsession with food and body weight. Can lead to loss of bone density and 15-22% die.
Bulimia: alternate between binging and dieting. 1-2% of girls meet the criteria; they tend to be
average or overweight. Binge-eating disorder: no purging
On ethics: obesity and public policy p.451
Smoking is a leading cause of death
Data from World Health Organization, increasing numbers of people are smoking in low-income
countries. 5.4M deaths are caused by tobacco every year. 1G of people will die in this century. 1
in 4 American are smokers, 440K deaths in the US per year. Most smokers begin in childhood or
adolescence, every day 5000 Americans between 11-17 years old have their 1st cigarette; half
will continue smoking and a third will die from it. By the 12th grade 70% have had experiences
with tobacco products, 30% smoke regularly.
Starting smoking: coughing, watery eyes, bad taste, and nausea. Social influences: adolescents
will more likely smoke if their parents or friends are smoking. False consensus effect: they over
estimate the number of smokers. ‘’being a smoker’’ has an influence; they are viewed as tough,
sociable, good with members of the opposite sex. Children take it up to look cool.
Some people are particularly susceptible to nicotine addiction because of genetics. Nicotine may
lead to increased activation of dopamine neurones, which can have a rewarding effect.
Maintaining a healthy weight or quitting smoking: smokers may need to hit rock bottom before
they do something about it.
Exercise has physical, emotional and cognitive benefits
Reduced depression, enhanced memory and cognition: Miracle-Gro for our brains (aerobic
exercise promotes neurogenesis, the growth of new neurones and neural connections) The
additional neurons created through exercise result in larger brains, affecting especially the
hippocampus.
Study: adults between 60-79 in a 6 months aerobic plan showed increased white and gray
matter. Makes us heal faster. Adults with memory problems showed increased memory and
cognition. Exercise reduces memory decline in older adults with moderate problems.
Exercise increases the immune system and prevents certain cancers. It reduces stress and
improves mood. Good for the clinical treatment of depression, addiction and alcoholism.
There are ethnic differences in health behaviours
Genetics, affordable health care, culture. Acculturation (extent to which an individual
accommodate to the culture) is important.
AA and HA were less likely to smoke or drink than EA and AsianA. EA were better for diet and
exercise.
Can a positive attitude keep us healthy?
Being positive has health benefits
Rogers, Maslow, Erikson: early pioneers of positive psychology great success in the 1950-1970s.
Comeback in the 1990s. The new positive psychology emphasises the strengths and virtue that
people thrive, it tries to understand what makes people happy.
Happiness has 3 components: positive emotions and pleasure, engagement in life, meaningful
life. When one increases the others increase as well.
Are happier people healthier: yes
Study of 1000, 2 years after analysing for hypertension, diabetes, and respiratory tract infection.
People who are hopeful have reduced risk in all 3, and curious people have reduced risk of the
1st and 2nd. Thus having a positive attitude has multiple beneficial effects, including on the
immune system functioning and greater longevity.
Social support and social integration are associated with good health
Happy people tend to have strong social networks and are more socially integrated than less
happy people. Social interaction is beneficial for physical and mental health. People with large
social networks will less easily get colds. People who have more friends live longer. Men with
fewer friends were 2.3% and women 2.8% more likely to die during the 9 year study period.
Socially isolated ill people will likely die sooner, in part because isolation is associated with many
health problems.
Social integration: the quality of a person’s social relationships.
Social support is linked to fewer health problems, because of decreased stress. To be most
effective, people need to care about the recipient.
Buffering hypothesis: the idea that other people can provide direct support in helping
individuals cope with stress.
Emotional disclosure has positive effects on health: writing or talking about our emotions has
great health benefits. Studies by Pennebaker, found those positive effects
College students who were assigned to write about their emotions visited school counselling
less often than those assigned to write about other things.
Anderson: writing about emotional events helps understand the cause of the events, and
construct meaningful stories out of experiences so that they can better understand these
experiences and can move on. At first, people might experience negative feelings, but they will
go away. They must start with something that needs resolution, for 15 mins.
Marriage can be good for our health: positive relationships are good, stronger for husbands than
for wives. See chart p.459. Same benefits for homosexual relationships, it was found that lesbian
couple work more cooperatively on lab tests than other couples.
Couples who fight showed a decreased immune system in the 24 hours after conflict. Glaser
found that people going through a divorce had compromised immune systems.
Marital conflicts have more negative outcomes for wives than husbands: women’s greater
responsiveness to conflict and the higher premium they place on emotional closeness makes
them more likely than men to seek divorce when there is high conflict.
Trust and health are related across cultures
Oxytocin is involved in trust relationships: attachment hormone. Released when people feel
empathy for others, and is involved in feelings of love. It is released when participants are
engaged in trust relationships while playing the trust game. Players who had oxytocin sprayed in
their noses were more trustful. Thus having more of this hormone makes people more trusting.
Moberg: people who secrete more oxytocin have more trusting personalities and form
attachments more readily.
Zak: studies on secreting of testosterone and distrust. Men showed increased levels of
testosterone when they didn’t trust the player. Thus men and women respond differently when
they distrust someone.
Trust is associated with better health and longer lives. Less trusting people have poorer health.
It may not be causal; there might be a 3rd factor involved.
Spirituality contributes to well-being
People who are religious report greater feelings of well-being than those who aren’t.
Myers found that religious people are better at coping with crises in their lives. Their beliefs
serve as a buffer. They can also derive meaning to their lives. They feel they are more than just a
momentary blip in the universe. Beliefs can help people achieve and maintain well-being
through the support provided by faith communities. Religion supports healthy lifestyle.
Action plan for well being
Taking care of the body and mind
Eat natural foods, watch portion size, drink alcohol in moderation, if at all, keep active, don’t
smoke, practice safe sex, learn to relax, learn to cope, build a strong support network, write
about troubling events in your life, consider your spiritual life, try some of the happiness
exercises.
Chapter 11: human development
Developmental psychology: the study of changes in physiology, cognition, and social behaviour
over the life span
What shapes a child?
Our genes set the pace and order of development p.471. Environment also plays a role. If a baby
sleeps on his back, he will crawl later.
Development starts in the womb
Zygote: 1st cell
Embryo: from 2 weeks to 2 months, internal organs, nervous system
Foetus: physical growth
Physical development: most of the brain’s nerve cells develop in a specific sequence in the 1st 7
months of gestation. Basic brain areas form by week 4. Cells that form the cortex are visible
from week 7, those of the thalamus and hypothalamus by week 10, those of the left and right
hemispheres, by week 12. At birth the brain has cortical layers, connections among its neurones
ad myelination, yet the development continues throughout his life.
Hormones that circulate in the womb influence the developing foetus; if the mother doesn’t
produce enough thyroid hormones, the baby is at risk for low IQ. The mother’s emotional state
also matters; when the baby is exposed to high levels of stress hormones, it may have an
impaired development
Teratogens: environmental agents that harm the embryo or foetus. They can impair cognitive
and physical development. The extent to which a teratogen impairs the development depends
on when the exposure occurs and how long it occurs.
Brain development promotes learning
Newborns have are able to process a wide variety of sensory stimuli. Their auditory system is
much more developed than the visual system; they have a visual acuity of 8-12 inches. Grasping
reflex (survival mechanism). Rooting effect (sucking). These reflexes pave the way for a more
complicated behaviour pattern such as feeding oneself and walking. Thus at birth the brain is
sufficiently developed to support basic reflexes, but further development appears necessary.
Myelination and neuronal connections: brain circuit maturation; it begins in the spinal cord
during the 1st trimester and on the brain’s neurons during the second. It occurs in different brain
regions at different stages of development
Early brain growth has 2 important aspects: specific areas within the brain mature and become
functional, and regions of the brain learn to communicate with one another through synaptic
connections
The myelinated axons form synapses with other neurones.
Synaptic pruning: the frequently used connections are preserved; the unused ones decay or
disappear. (graph p.475)
Once the connections are established, the brain makes them more permanent, by increasing
myelination. Infants do not develop specific cognitive skills until certain brain connections are
made.
The brain grows as determined by genetic instruction, but the organ is also highly adaptable.
Most neurones are formed at birth, but the brain’s physical development continues through the
growth of neurones and the new connections they make.
By age 4, the brain grows from about 350 grams to 1,250 grams (80% of the adult brain). This
size increase is due to myelination and to new synaptic connections. Early childhood nutrition
affects myelination and other development.
Sensitive learning periods:
Critical periods (Lenneberg): biologically determined time periods for the development of
specific skills.
Sensitive periods: biologically determined periods when specific skills develop most easily.
Attachment promotes survival
Children are also shaped by their early relations, especially from their care givers; social
development begins in infancy. Humans are born immature, but their cries cause psychological,
physiological, and behavioural reactions that compel the caregiver to provide food.
Within 10 weeks infants are profoundly affected by their caregiver’s facial expressions and
emotional responses. Between 4 and 6 weeks of age, young children express their 1st social
smile, which enhances powerful feelings of attachment between caregiver and child, it is an
attachment bond that will persist throughout life
Bowlby: infant attachment leads to heightened feelings of safety and security and motivates
infant and caregiver to stay in close contact. Infants have an innate repertoire of attachment
behaviours that motivate adult attention, thus attachment is adaptive. Adults talk in high
pitched voices because infants react to such pitches.
Attachment in other species: some birds have a period where they become extremely attached
to adults
Lorenz: imprinting preferably on a female of their species
Harlow: monkeys in cages with mothers one made out of wires that provided food and one
made out of cloth that looked cuddly. The monkeys were clinging on to the cloth mother. The
mother-as-food-theory was no more good. His findings established the importance of contact
comfort.
Attachment style
Attachment behaviours begin in the 1st months of life and may vary somewhat on cultural
practices. At around 8-12 months, infants display separation anxiety, in which they become very
distressed when they can’t see or are separated from their attachment figures.
Ainsworth: the strange situation test p.479. A standard sequence of separation and reunions
between the child and each adult. Over the course of 8 episodes, the child experiences
increasing distress and a greater need for caregiver proximity. The extent to which the child
copes and the strategies used indicate the quality of the child’s attachment.
Secure attachment: a majority of infants (65%) are readily comforted when their attachment
figure returns after a brief separation. He is distressed when the attachment figure leaves.
Avoidant attachment: applies to 20-25% of children. He doesn’t appear distressed when the
attachment figure leaves. If upset, they may be comforted by the stranger. When the caregiver
returns, the child doesn’t want a reunion, but rather ignores or snubs the attachment figure. If
he approaches the attachment figure he does so tentatively
Anxious/ambivalent attachment: applies to 10-15% of children. They are anxious throughout the
test, clings to the attachment figure after she enters the room, and when she leaves, they
become extremely upset. When the attachment figure returns, he will seek and reject caring
attention.
Disorganized attachment: infants give mixed responses when their caregiver leaves and returns
from a short absence¸
Children with behavioural problems are more likely to be insecurely attached. The caregiver’s
personality also contributes to the child’s attachment style. Emotionally and behaviourally
inconsistent caregivers tend to have children with and anxious/ambivalent attachment style and
rejecting caregivers tend to have children with an avoidant attachment.
Critical thinking skill: understanding that some doesn’t mean all
Children who were securely attached to their caregivers are more likely to have a good romantic
relationship.
Chemistry of attachment: oxytocin is related to social behaviours including infant/caregiver
attachment. It plays a role in maternal tendencies, feelings of social acceptance and bonding,
and sexual gratification. Higher level of this hormone was predicting a better maternal
attachment.
How do children learn about their worlds?
Perception introduces the world
The infants use the information given by their senses to try to make sense of their world.
Infant research techniques:
Preferential looking technique: infants are shown 2 things; they look at the one that interests
them the longest.
Orienting reflex: pay more attention to new stimuli than to stimuli to which they have become
habituated. Based on this, a lot can be measured about the infant’s abilities.
Vision: with preferential looking techniques to determine the infant’s visual acuity. They
respond more to objects with high contrasts.
Fantz: showed black and white strands and patches of gray to an infant held by its caregiver
Visual acuity increases rapidly during the 1st 6 months, and adult level of acuity aren’t reached
until 1 year; due to the development of the visual cortex and of the cones in the retina.
Fox: stereogram for depth perception in which one view of an image is shown to one eye and
another view to the other; this information is then converted into depth perception. If infants
can’t see this disparity information to perceive depth, they will just see random dots. P.484.
Ability to perceive depth develops between 3 and a half and 6 months.
Auditory perception
When infants are presented with sounds in their right or left ear, they turn in the direction of
the sound. 6 months babies have nearly all the auditory capacities of an adult. Infants also have
some memory for sounds; they recognize sounds they have heard before. (measure the rate of
nipple sucking)
De Casper and Fifer: operant conditioning to determine what sounds 2 day old infants could
remember: newborns alter their sucking rates to hear their mother’s voices more often.
In adults, different brain regions respond to speech and non-speech. Adults and infant’s
distinction between speech and non-speech was measured using event related potentials (EGG).
The patterns were similar, thus from the 1st 3 months there is a continuity in how the brain
processes speech.
Memory improves over childhood
Collier: from a very young age, infants possess some type of rudimentary memory p.485. The
memory retention test: if the baby recognizes the mobile, they will kick faster. Older infants
remember better; by 18 months, they could remember for several weeks.
Infantile amnesia: the inability to remember events form early childhood (usually before 4 years
old). Some suggest that the ability to form memories arises with autobiographical memory
others with language acquisition.
Inaccurate memory: young children often have source amnesia. Early childhood memories
aren’t memories of the actual event, but that of movies, stories, picture albums... Children also
confabulate (they have undeveloped frontal lobes). It happens more when they are asked about
personal experience rather than general knowledge. There are more disputed memories
between identical twins than fraternal twins. Most of them occur during preschool, when source
memory is developing.
Piaget emphasized stages of development
He paid as much attention to how children made errors as to how they succeeded on tasks
which provided insight on how kids make sense of the world. He concluded that children go
through 4 stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal
operational (p.487). Their views about the world isn’t inaccurate, it is that they view it on
different assumptions than those held by adults.
During each stage of development, children develop new schemas. He believed that each stage
builds on the previous one in 2 learning process:
Assimilation: the process through which a new experience is incorporated in an existing schema
Accommodation: the process by which a schema is changed to incorporate a new experience
that doesn’t easily fit in an existing schema
Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years): acquisition of information through senses only. As they
begin to control their movements, they develop their 1st schema: conceptual model consisting
of mental representations of the kinds of actions that can performed on certain kinds of objects.
Piaget believed that eventually all the sensorimotor schemas merge into an explanatory
schema: they learn they can act on objects, manipulate them to understand them rather than
simply reacting to them.
Object permanency: the understanding that an object continues to exist even when it can’t be
seen (starting at 9 months, children search for hidden objects). Full accomplishment of object
permanency is a key accomplishment to the 1st stage of development
Preoperational stage (2-7 yrs): children can think about objects not in their immediate view and
have developed various conceptual models of how the world works, they begin to think
symbolically, but can’t think operationally (they can’t imagine the logical outcome of performing
a certain task on a certain object. They base their reasoning not on logic, but on immediate
appearance. They have no understanding of the law of conservation of quantity
Concrete operational stage (7-12 yrs): children begin to think about and understand operations
in ways that are reversible. We develop logic when we can understand operations. A classic
operation is an action that can be undone. Conservation of quantity can then be understood. It
is the beginning of logical thinking, but children reason about concrete things, they don’t yet
have the ability to reason abstractly, or hypothetically.
Formal operational stage (12+ yrs): involves the ability to think abstractly and to formulate and
test hypotheses through deductive logic. They can form a hypothesis and test it through
deductive logic
Challenges to Piaget’s theory: it is disputed that every person goes through the stages of
development in the same order. His framework leaves little room for different cognitive
strategies or skills among individuals. Many children seem to move back and forth between
stages. Theorists believe that different areas in the brain are responsible for different skills, and
that the development of different skills doesn’t have to follow strict stages.
Infants have early knowledge about the world
Children understand much more at much earlier stages about the world that was previously
believed. Using the preferential looking technique, it was found out that 3 months old infants
can remember not in sight objects. Infant’s reactions to novel stimuli indicate that they have
early cognitive skills. Infants respond differently to impossible events than possible ones, they
demonstrate an understanding that an object continues to exist even when not in sight.
(Baillargeon’s apple/carrot test)
Understanding the laws of nature: physics
Spelke: infants have a primitive understanding of the laws of physics, they are born with the
ability to perceive movement, and as they get older they use information to determine if an
object is continuous. (rod in a box, 4 month-olds looked longer at the separate rod).
Baillargeon: by the age of 3 months, young children begin to understand what is necessary to
support an object in space. They seem to have in intuitive understanding of the laws of physics.
Understanding the laws of nature: mathematics
Piaget: the concept of quantity wasn’t understood by the number of objects, but by length.
Mehler and Bever: 3- yrs old children can understand the concept of more than and less than:
more than 80% of the children picked the shortest row containing more M&Ms as the one
containing more candy.
Researchers found that some young children have amazing numerical capacities using a study
with 9 month-olds to which was shown computer animation of addition and subtraction.
Humans learn from interacting with others
Early social interactions between infants and caregivers are essential to understanding other
people and communicating with them through language
Theory of mind: describes the ability to explain and predict other people’s behaviour as a result
of recognizing their mental state.
Premack: young children aren’t very good at understanding how others feel, they are
egocentric. (less than Piaget believed). Young children come to understand that other people
perform actions for reasons, that the actions are intentional.
Study: infants older than 9 months showed greater signs of impatience when the adult was
unwilling than when the adult was unable to hand them a toy
13 months old, the age at which it is believed that children begin to understand intention,
expectations depended on what they believed the caterpillar knew
These studies provide strong evidence that in the 1st year of life, children begin to read
intentions and that by the end of the second year, by 13 to 15 months, they becomes very good
at reading them.
False belief test: measures children’s ability to predict actions, to complete the test, they must
understand that people can act on the basis of false information. They can solve it by the age of
4. Their success at this test and in the full development of the theory of the mind coincides with
the maturation of the frontal lobes. Those results are culturally universal.
In brain imaging studies, prefrontal regions become active when people are asked to think about
other’s mental states.
Like the abilities to understand math and physics, theory of the mind might develop
independently of other brain functions. (children with autism can’t solve the false-belief
problem, children with Down syndrome can) Thus theory of the mind isn’t governed by
reasoning and general intelligence.
Moral reasoning and moral emotions: moral development concerns the way people learn to
decide between behaviours with competing social outcomes. Morality develops during
childhood and into adulthood, and is divided between moral reasoning, dependent on cognitive
processes, and moral emotions. The 2 are intertwined: moral reasoning is enhanced by moral
emotions.
The study of cognitive processes of moral behaviour have focused on Lawrence Kohlberg’s
stage theory who tested moral reasoning skills by asking people to respond to moral dilemmas,
and look at the reason to their answers. He devised a theory of moral judgments that involves 3
levels of reasoning
Preconventional: self-interest determines what is moral
Conventional: rules and the approval of others determine what is moral
Postconventional: decisions about morality depend on abstract principles
Some say that moral reasoning fails to predict moral behaviour; instead moral actions are more
influenced by emotion than cognitive principles.
Research focused on empathy (understanding of one’s emotions, feeling with) and sympathy
(pity, sorrow, feeling for) which are considered self-conscious because they require
comprehension of oneself as a causal agent and an evaluation of one’s own response. They arise
later than primary emotions, thus are called secondary emotions.
Parents’ behaviour influence their children’s level of both moral emotions and presocial
behaviour, thus not all the same children progress at the same rate or in the same order.
Inductive reasoning promotes children’s sympathetic attitudes, feelings of guilt and awareness
of other’s feelings
Physiological basis of morality: moral emotions are based in physiological mechanisms that help
people make decisions.
Damasio: somatic-marker hypothesis: people have a visceral response to real or imagined
outcomes that help decision making. Patients with damaged prefrontal cortex fail to become
emotionally involved in decision making, because their somatic markers are not involved.
Patients with damaged prefrontal regions showed severe deficiencies in moral and social
reasoning, but scored at the preconventional level and neglected social and emotional factors in
their life decisions.
Language develops in an orderly fashion
As the brain develops, the ability to speak and form sentences also develops. As children’s social
skills develop, their language skills also improve.
Tomasello: early social interactions between infant and caregiver are essential to understanding
other people and being able to communicate with them through language. Infants and
caregivers attend to objects in their environment together, which facilitates learning to speak.
This ability can be disrupted by social isolation and lack of exposure to language.
From 0 to 60000
Language is a system of using sounds and symbols according to grammatical rules to
communicate, and can be viewed as a hierarchical structure, in which sentences can be broken
down into phrases which can be broken down into words that consist of phonemes. This
structure makes sense in syntax.
Newborns are already well on their way to language learning. Kuhl found that up to 6 months, a
baby can discriminate all the speech sounds that occur in all natural languages. Habituation
technique to study if babies can discriminates sounds in their own language: a sound was
emitted bababa, and a new sound was emitted lalala, if the baby turns its head, it means that he
discriminates between the sounds.
Japanese: r/l in the same phonetic category, but not in English. 65% of 6-8 months babies were
able to discriminate between such sounds. From 10-12 months English babies got better and
Japanese babies got worse.
Kuhl: experience of exposure to foreign languages p.497. A live interaction was needed, which
reinforces the importance of social interactions in language learning
1 month: crying, fussing, eating, breathing
3-5 months: cooing, laughing
5-7 months: babbling using consonants and vowels
7-8 months: babble in syllables
1 year: syllables are mixed, sounds and rhythms of native language
Language’s onset is marked by the 1st word a baby utters and appears to understand. Utter 2
types of words: performative (learned in a context, might not be used for meaning) and true
words (meant to represent concepts).
1st words are those that identify things in their immediate environment such as objects, simple
actions, quantifiers, qualities or adjectives, socially interactive words, internal states.
18 months: put words together, rapid increase of vocabulary, rudimentary sentences (usually 2
words) that have a logic or syntax. The words’ order indicates what has happened or should
happen.
Roger Brown: telegraphic speech: the tendency for children to speak using rudimentary
sentences that are missing words and grammatical markings but follow a logical syntax.
As children begin to use language in a more sophisticated method, they may overapply new
grammatical rules they learn. Might make mistakes at 3-5 years with words they used correctly
at 2-3 years. This is rare, and occurs because children are able to use language in a generative
way, thus making more errors with words used less frequently.
Acquiring language with the hands: if perception and production of words are key neurological
determinants of early language acquisition, than babies learning sign language should acquire
this language in a different manner. If language is learned through systematic patterns than
both languages should be acquired the same way.
Laura Ann Petitto: deaf babies exposed to sign language from birth acquire these languages on
an identical maturation timetable as hearing babies acquire spoken languages. Humans must
possess a biologically endowed sensitivity to aspects of language patterns.
Universal grammar
Noam Chomsky: language must be governed by universal grammar, or innate knowledge of a set
of universal and specifically linguistic elements and relations that form the heart of all human
languages.
The way people combine elements to form sentences and convey meaning is only a language’s
surface structure, the sound and order of words. He introduced the concept of deep structure:
the implicit meaning of sentences. He believed that we automatically and consciously transform
surface structure to deep structure. We remember the underlying meaning, not the surface
structure of a sentence. We are born with a language acquisition device, which contains
universal grammar, but exposure to a native language narrows down the grammatical rules a
person learns.
Vygotsky: developed the 1st major theory that emphasized the role of social and cultural context
in the development of both cognition and language. Humans are unique because they use
symbols and psychological tools through which they create culture, which in turn dictates what
we need to learn and develop. He distinguished between elementary mental functions (innate
sensory experiences) and higher mental functions (language, perception, abstraction and
memory). As children develop, their elementary capacities are gradually transformed, primarily
by culture.
Social and cultural contexts influence language development, which in turn influences cognitive
development. As children develop they begin to direct speech towards themselves.
Interactions across cultures also shape language. Creole describes a language that evolved
overtime from the mixing of existing languages. It develops out of rudimentary communications,
languages mix in a pidgin, informal creole that lacks consistent grammatical rules.
Bickerton: colonists’ children impose rules on their parents’ pidgin, developing it into a creole,
which is evidence for a built-in universal grammar: the brain changes a nonconforming language
by applying the same principles to it. Different creoles that form in different parts of the world
are more similar to each other than long-lived languages.
Learning to read: there are 2 major schools
Phonics method: teaches an association between letters and their phonemes. Children learn to
spell out words by how they sound. Popular for over 200 years. They learn to make the
appropriate sounds for the letters of the English alphabet. They learn a small number of simple
words that teach the sounds in English. General rules are learnt 1st and exceptions latter. It
emphasizes mapping between letters and their sounds
Whole language approach: emphasizes words’ meaning and how they are connected in
sentences. It has dominated American schools for the past 20 years, because it emphasizes
children’s interest in reading. Children should learn to read the same way they learnt to talk, we
understand speech as a series of connected words that have meaning in a sentence, thus
breaking down words into sounds is unnatural. Progressive philosophy that tries to foster a love
of learning.
It was found that a phonetics instruction is largely superior that whole-language approach in
creating proficient readers. This result applies mainly to children who are at risk of becoming
poor readers.
Animal communication: teaching language to chimpanzees requires the use of sign language to
see if they understand words or concepts such as causations, which they can, but it doesn’t
mean that they have innate language abilities.
Petitto tried to teach ASL to Nim Chimpsky, which failed to master key components of language
syntax. He could communicate with a small set of basic signs, but was never able to create
creative rule governed sentences. Used language to make requests.
How do children and adolescents develop their identities?
As children learn about the world, they develop a sense of identity, which is important for social
development: the maturation of skills or abilities that enables people to live in a world with
other people, and enables to interact with others.
When a child enters adolescence, he begins to question his place and future in life. Establishing
a personal identity means breaking away from childhood beliefs by questioning and challenging
parental and social ideas. Who am I, where am I going? Answers are greatly influenced by
environmental factor. 3 major changes that trigger this are:
1- Changing physical appearance: changes in self-image
2- More-sophisticated cognitive abilities: prompts increased introspection
3- Heightened pressure to prepare for the future (make career choice)
Social systems influence development
Bronfenbrenner: biocultural system theory: emphasizes the way biology and cultural systems
interact to affect development. We can understand development by considering the context in
which it occurs. 4 levels of systems affect the developing person.
Microsystem: at the center and has the most immediate effect on a child (family)
Exosystem: less direct influences (parents’ workplace)
Macrosystem: larger sociocultural context in which the child is reared
Chronosystem: norms and rules in effect at the historical time when the child is reared
His work lead to interdisciplinary work in child development because it hypothesized that social
and historical contexts are important in development.
He cofounded Head Start (a massive federal program in the US designed to help children in lowincome families develop skills and abilities). His emphasis on larger social systems translated
psychological research into public policy and created a role for government in fostering positive
development. His theory emphasises cultural effects on the way people develop their senses of
identity.
Friends influence identity and behaviour
Play is the work of childhood. Attention to peers begins at the end of the 1st year, when infants
begin to imitate other infants, smile and make vocalizations and other social signals to their
peers. Children from all ages learn to behave from their friends, because they receive social
reward/punishment depending on their attitudes. Early friends are both teachers and
playmates. How children and adolescents compare their strengths and weaknesses with those
of their peers also influences the development of identity. Teenagers form friendships with
others whose values and world views are the same. Adolescent groups are designated by a fairly
small set of stereotypic names.
Parents versus peers: Harris: parents contribute little to children’s social development; they
even have no long-term effect on the development of their child’s personality. A child’s peers
are the most important influence when it comes to socialization.
Group socialization theory: children learn 2 sets of behaviours: one for inside the home and one
for outside. The behaviours taught by parents aren’t useful in outside social contexts. Only the
behaviours learnt outside the home have long-term effects on personality and on adult
behavioural outcomes.
In contrast to Harris’s research, it has been shown that parents have a substantial influence
throughout the adult life. Neither the peer nor the parent group can be assigned to primary
influence on development, they play complementary roles.
Brown: parents’ influence can be direct or indirect. They don’t only contribute to specific
individual behaviours, but they affect social development indirectly by influencing the choices
the child makes about what kind of crowd to join. Parents and teachers play a major role in
realigning social groups, so they are consistent with family norms.
Parental style can affect children’s well being
Important support for the significance of the child/parent interaction comes from the New York
Longitudinal Study, begun in 1956 by Chess and Thomas. They focused on each child’s biological
based temperament, as a combination of typical mood, activity level, and emotional reactivity.
They found that the fit between the child’s temperament and the parents’ behaviour is most
important in determining social development. Parents who respond to a difficult child calmly,
patiently and consistently had the most positive outcomes. Overprotectiveness can encourage a
child’s anxiety in response to a new situation, escalading the child’s distress. The best style of
parenting takes into account the parents’ personalities, the child’s temperament, and the
particular situation.
Parents have multiple influences on their children’s attitudes, values, and religious beliefs.
Nurturing parents tend to raise children with more social emotions.
Divorce is difficult for children
Divorce is associated with numerous problems in children, although some especially intelligent,
mature and responsible children cope well with the divorce. Those from divorced parents tend
to do worse in school, have more conduct disorders and psychological problems, and have poor
social relations and low self-esteem. They are also more likely to get divorced as adults (gene
passing or continued negative influence)
Divorce may change a relationship with one or both parents; the child then loses a potentially
important source of emotional support and guidance. Children who stay in houses with conflicts
might have psychological problems whether the parents stay together or not.
People who get divorced differ in important ways from those that don’t, and these personal
factors might interfere with their ability to be effective parents.
1/3 of American children had unwed mothers. Those who lose a parent to death have fewer
problems that child of divorce, but those who were raised by single mothers share many of the
problems as those of divorce. The absence of a biological father is thus the source of many
negative outcomes. Girls raised without fathers are more likely to engage in sexual activity
younger and become pregnant at a young age. Having a step father doesn’t resolve this
problem, in fact it may be associated with an increase in psychological problems.
An alarming number of single mothers live in poverty, and rely on assistance to provide for their
children. Divorce is associated with a decline in financial resources, which predicts the negative
outcomes of divorce. When the father stays involved in parenting both economically and
emotionally , divorce’s negative effects are reduced considerably.
Living in a high conflict family is associated with even greater negative outcomes than is parental
divorce
Critical thinking skill: recognizing and avoiding either/or thinking p.507
Gender identity is determined by biology and cultural norms
Sex differences ought to reflect different adaptive problems men and women would have faced.
Since men and women have faced similar challenges, they are similar on many aspects.
Many of the differences have something to do with socialization and genetics. Sex: refers to
biological differences and gender to express socialization differences. This distinction is difficult
because the biological and psychosocial aspects of being female or male are so entwined that
they aren’t separable.
Gender identity: personal beliefs about whether one is male or female.
Gender roles: the characteristics associated with males or females because of cultural influence
or learning.
Gender schemas: cognitive structures that influence how people perceive the behaviours of
females and males.
The behaviours boys and girls display are determined in part by cultural rules about sexappropriate behaviours.
Situational factors also contribute to gender-specific behaviour. (Young women talk differently
to their male friends than their boyfriends, and do so consciously)
Biological bases of sexual identity
Brian and Bruce: a bad circumcision happened to Bruce, his penis shrivel up and disappeared.
Colapinto’s book: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. The parents
wondered if Bruce should undergo sexual reassignment. Money convinced them that it was the
right thing to do (it had never been done on a kid born with normal genitalia). Bruce was
castrated, renamed Brenda, and rose as a girl. Brenda wasn’t comfortable being a girl, when
Brenda learned what happened she was relieved. He changed back to a men, got the name
David married and had 3 children. His twin brother died, he divorced and committed suicide at
38.
Thus, gender identity isn’t solely shaped by weather a person is being treated as a boy or a girl;
biology has a strong effect on whether people identify themselves as female or male. In the
1960s environmental explanations were preferred.
People define themselves in terms of race and ethnicity
By 3 months, infants can discern racial differences in the faces of strangers. Infants generally
looked longer at faces of their own race, which indicates a preference for their own race. Infants
of African descent living in a predominantly Caucasian culture didn’t show that preference. This
is probably because of high levels of interracial contacts during the 1st months of life. P.510
In the US, where people of so many ethnicities live together, the process of identity formation is
more complicated. Children of ethnic minorities often face challenges with regard to the
development of their ethnic identities. Children entering middle childhood have an awareness
of their ethnic identities, and know the labels that the dominant culture applies to them. In
middle childhood and adolescence, children on minorities often engage in additional processes
aimed at ethnic identity formation.
Growing proportion of racially mixed individuals, and people increasingly identify themselves as
biracial and multiracial.
What brings meaning to adulthood?
Important changes in physiology, cognition, and social behaviour continue throughout
adulthood into old age. How mental activity and social relations are changing through life is
studied. We shouldn’t equate growing old with despairs; many positive things can happen as we
age.
Erikson: proposed a theory of development emphasising age-related psychological processes
and their effects on social functioning across the life span. Identity development is composed of
8 stages, each of which is associated with a crisis that can provide an opportunity for
psychological progress, if progress isn’t made, than further development is impaired. P.512
6th stage: intimacy vs isolation: challenge of forming and maintaining committed friendships and
romantic relationships. It involves finding someone with whom to share your life.
7th stage: generality vs stagnation: productivity or giving back to society, includes things like
parenthood that brings additional meaning to life.
8th stage: integrity vs despair: integrity refers to a sense of honesty about oneself. Older adults
reflect on their lives and respond either positively or with regret.
Erikson’s theory highlights the way people care about different things as they grow older.
Adults are affected by life transitions
The major challenges of adulthood reflect the need to find meaning in our lives.
Career: most people work 100 000 hours in their lives. A good job not only provides material
reward, but also brings a sense of accomplishment and purpose. Many people have mid-life
crisis in which they realise that their careers don’t fulfill them. We don’t need a specific plan, but
we must be honest with ourselves: assess strength and weaknesses and develop a general idea
of what career would be appropriate. From Erikson’s point of view, the desire for generatively
inspires us to want to give something to society. The right career allows us to pursue our
interests and gain a sense of accomplishment while balancing family and other life goals.
Marriage: the vast majority of people marry at some point or try to find someone with who they
can form a permanent bond. Marriage is declining and people marry later in most industrialized
countries. In Western culture, the search for the right partner is very important while in Eastern
cultures, marriage is often arranged. The later type of marriage is stable and people report being
relatively satisfied.
Marriage has many health advantages; marital partners can support each other, and encourage
healthy behaviours. Its positive effects are similar in all countries, and their benefits of marriage
were equal for both sexes. The benefits of being married versus being divorced was higher in
collectivist countries that individualist countries.
The vast majority of married people report satisfaction with their marriage. Those reporting the
most satisfaction have sufficient economic resources, share decision making, and hold the same
value that marriage should be a lifelong commitment. Half the marriages end up in divorce.
Having children: having children changes the life of the couple in almost all ways. Parents often
become immersed in their child’s life. Being a parent is central to many adult’s self-definitions.
Children can strain marriages, especially when money isn’t there. Couples with children,
especially adolescent children report less satisfaction from their marriage than those who are
childless. However those with children have more stable marriages. For many people having
children is about redefining their lives to reflect the value they place on family.
Aging can be successful
In Western societies, people are living much longer, and the number of people over 85 is
increasing dramatically. By 2030, 20% of Americans will be over 65, will be ethnically diverse,
well educated, and fit. Elderly contribute much to modern society (judges), and many can work
productively well past their 70s.
However the body and mind starts deteriorating slowly at about age 50. The frontal lobes shrink
proportionally more than other brain regions. More of older adults stay alert as they age, but do
things more slowly.
Dementia: dramatic loss in mental ability experienced by older adults. It is a brain condition in
which thinking, memory, and behaviour deteriorate progressively. It has many causes such as
alcohol intake and HIV, but for older adults, the main cause is Alzheimer’s disease and small
strokes that affect blood supply to the brain.
After age 70, the risk of dementia increases every year. 3-5% of people from 70-75 will develop
Alzheimer’s, and then the proportion of people with the disease will double every 5 years.
Genes contribute to its development. One gene involved in cholesterol functioning is predictive
of the disease, although how it is related is unknown.
Despite the physical, social and emotional challenges of aging, most older adults are healthy and
happy. Individual with adequate financial situation and good health especially thrive in old age.
Older adults have fewer health problems, including depression that younger adult and report
being happy than them as well.
Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory: as people grow older, they perceive time to be
limited and adjust their priorities to emphasise meaningful events and goals.
According to Erikson, older adults find meaning by looking back and evaluating what they have
done with their lives. When they consider their time well spent, they can savour their last years.
The crisis can be triggered by events that highlight the mortal nature of human life, or by
changing social and occupational roles. People come to terms with the reality of death, and
meaning of life becomes an increased preoccupation for the elderly.
Cognition changes during aging
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what causes the mental decline with age. There is a consistent
slower mental speed. The increase in time it takes to process a sensory input and react with a
motor response becomes more rapid as the individual ages. Some sensory-perceptual changes
occur with age and may account for some of the observed decline. Aging also affect memory
and intelligence.
Memory: they have difficulty with memory tasks that require the ability to juggle multiple pieces
of information at the same time. Tasks when attention is divided is also proven more difficult.
This reflects a decreased ability to store multiple pieces of information in WM simultaneously.
The frontal lobes shrink with aging, thus cognitive skills that rely on this region show impairment
with aging.
LTM memory is less affected than STM or WM, although certain aspects of LTM appear to suffer
in advanced age. Older people often need more time to learn new information, but once
learned, they use it as efficiently as younger adults. They are better at recognition than retrieval
tasks. Older people show better memory for positive than negative information.
Logan examined the memory processes of adults in their 20s and adults in their 70s and 80s.
Older adults showed less activation in the left hemisphere brain areas known to support
memory and greater activation in the right hemisphere areas that don’t aid memory.
It was found that if older adults are given a strategy to retain information such as classifying
words as concrete or abstract that leads to deeper encoding, that is better memory and greater
activation of the left frontal regions. Thus, one reason for the decline in memory is that older
adults don’t use strategies to facilitate memory, which means that cognitive training might be
useful to prevent age-related memory deficits.
Intelligence: IQ declines with aging. Fluid intelligence tends to peak in early adulthood and
decline as we age, crystallized intelligence seems to increase with age and breaks down.
Declines in other cognitive abilities prevent new information from being processed.
Intellectual decline doesn’t arise until people are in their 60s or 70s. People who were healthy
and remained mentally active have fewer declines. The speed of processing may decline, but the
continued ability to learn new information may mitigate those losses in terms of daily
functioning.
Active social engagement may help older adults maintain their cognitive abilities; they may be
less susceptible to Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Chapter 12: social psychology
During wartime, people are especially likely to view the world as consisting of others and them.
Members of the opposite group are viewed as all the same, often as evil or inferior, and are
treated in a dehumanized fashion.
Zimbardo and Haney: psychologically stable Stanford undergrads played the role of prisoners
and guards. Within 6 days, the guards became brutal and sadistic. Social context is powerful.
Social psychology is concerned with how people influence other people’s thoughts, feelings, and
actions.
How do attitudes guide behaviour?
Attitudes: the evaluation of objects, event or ideas. They are shaped by social context. Some we
are aware of, some we don’t know we hold.
We form attitudes through experience and socialization
In general, people develop negative attitudes about objects more quickly than they develop
positive ones.
Mere exposure effect: greater exposure to an item means greater familiarity which causes
people to have more positive attitudes about the item. (experiment by Zajonc)
Attitudes can be conditioned, and shaped through socialization.
Behaviours are consistent with strong attitudes
Attitudes are adaptive and should guide behaviour, the stronger and the more personally
relevant the attitude, the more likely it will predict behaviour, be consistent overtime, and be
resistant to change. The more specific the attitude, the more predictive it is. Attitudes formed
through direct experience tend to predict behaviour better.
Attitude accessibility: the ease with which memories related to an attitude are retrieved
predicts behaviour consistent with the attitude.
Fazio: easily activated attitudes are more likely to resist changing, being predictive of behaviour,
and stable.
Explicit attitudes: attitudes that people can report
Implicit attitudes: attitudes that influence our feelings and behaviour at an unconscious level. It
involves brain regions associated with implicit memory. They are assessed through behaviour
rather than self-report. (Greenwald, Banaji)
Implicit Association Test: a reaction time test to assess implicit attitudes. It measures how
quickly we associate a concept with a positive or negative word. It is a very good predictor.
Discrepancies lead to dissonance
Leon Festinger: influence theory of cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance: an uncomfortable mental state due to conflicts between attitudes or
between attitudes and behaviour. (smoking). Dissonance causes anxiety and therefore
motivates people to reduce the dissonance and relieve displeasure by changing their attitudes
and behaviours, rationalizing or trivializing discrepancies.
Postdecisional dissonance: holding positive attitudes about 2 options, but having to choose one
of them causes dissonance. Postdecisional dissonance causes us to emphasise the positive
aspects of the chosen option, and the negative ones of the non-chosen option. It occurs
automatically, without awareness. It is prevalent even in patient with impairment to their LTM.
Attitude change: experiment p.528. Those paid 1$ had an insufficient monetary reward to lie, a
dissonance was created that changes their attitude, but those who were paid 20$ had a
sufficient reward for lying, thus the dissonance wasn’t made. Changing attitude, behaviour must
be changed 1st, using as few incentive as possible,
Justifying effort: when people put themselves through pain, embarrassment, or discomfort to
join a group, they experience a great deal of dissonance which they resolve by inflating the
importance of the group and their commitment to it.
Attitudes can be changed through persuasion
Persuasion: the active conscious effort to change attitudes through the transmission of a
message.
Hovland: emphasised that persuasion is most likely to occur when people pay attention to a
message, understand it and find it convincing. The message must be memorable, so that its
impact lasts over time.
Petty and Cacioppo: elaboration likelihood model: persuasion works in 2 routes.
Elaboration likelihood model: persuasive messages lead to attitude changes. P.529
Central route: people pay attention to arguments, consider all the information, and use rational
cognitive process, which leads to strong attitudes that last overtime and resist to change.
Peripheral route: people minimally process the message, which leads to more impulsive actions.
The cues that influence a message’s persuasiveness include the source (the ones that are both
credible and attractive are the more persuasive), the content, and the receiver. The message is
effective because of peripheral processing. Credibility and persuasiveness can be increased
when the receiver perceives the source as similar to himself. Strong arguments that appeal to
our emotions are the best. Mere exposure effect can be used. One-sided arguments work best
when the audience is on the side of the speaker or is gullible. With a more sceptical crowd,
speakers who acknowledge both sides of the arguments but argue that one is superior works
better.
Critical thinking skill: making sound arguments p.531
How do we form our representation of others?
Nonverbal actions and expressions affect our impressions
There is a great importance of 1st impressions on long-term evaluation of people. How we feel
initially about that person will be determined mostly by non-verbal behaviours (facial
expressions, gestures, mannerism, and movements by which one communicates with others).
Facial expression: the 1st thing we notice is the face which communicates a great deal, such as
emotions, interest and distrust. Eye contact is important in social situation, and how we
perceive it depends on culture. Westerners make eye contact when they speak to someone.
Native Americans, making eye contact, especially with the elderly, is disrespectful.
Body language: Ambady and Rosenthal: people can make accurate judgments based on a few
seconds of observation, what they refer to as thin slice of behaviour.
Gait, how people talk is important, it provides information about affective state.
We make attribution about others
Attributions: people’s causal explanation for why events or action occurs. We are motivated to
draw inferences in part by basic need for both order and predictability. People tend to prefer
that things happen for a reason, so that they can anticipate future events. Just world hypothesis;
victims must have done something that justifies what happened to them, so that the world
seems safer and saner.
Attributional dimensions: Fritz Heider: attribution theory
Personal attributions: explanations that refer to internal characteristics, such as abilities, traits,
moods and effort. (internal, dispositional)
Situational attributions: explanations that refer to external events, weather, luck, accidents,
other people’s actions. (external)
Weiner: attributions can vary on other dimensions, such as if they are stable overtime, or
controllable. His theory is used to explain depression. Those who are depressed attribute their
failure to their own personal incompetence, and those who aren’t blame it on external factors.
Attributional bias: we tend to overemphasise the importance of personality traits and
underestimate the importance of the situation.
Fundamental attribution error: the previously stated tendency. (Jones, 1960, initially called the
correspondence bias) We expect others to behave as we do.
Heider, Kelley: people are intuitive scientists who try do draw inferences about others and make
attributions about events. We tend to be systematically biased in our social information
processing. We make self-serving attributions consistent with our personal beliefs, and fail to
take into account that other people are influence by social circumstances.
When people make attribution about themselves, they tend to focus on situations rather than
on their personal dispositions, an error that, with the fundamental attribution error, leads to the
actor/observer discrepancy, most commonly observed for negative events. We tend to attribute
positive events to our own disposition, and negative events to the outside world.
People of eastern cultures use much more information when making attributions than do
Westerners, and they are more likely to believe that human behaviour is the outcome of both
personal and situational factors. They are also more likely to take situational forces into
account, whereas people in the West place overriding importance on personal factors.
Critical thinking skill: indentifying and avoiding the actor/observer discrepancy
Stereotypes are based on automatic categorization
Stereotypes: cognitive schemas that allow for easy, fast processing of information about people
based on their membership in certain groups. They occur automatically and most of the time
without our awareness. In and of themselves, they are neural and simply reflect efficient
cognitive processes. Some are based in truth. They are made because of limited neural
resources; it is impossible to scrutinize every person encountered, thus the need for grouping. It
affects impression formation. They guide attention towards information that confirms the
stereotype, and away of disconfirming evidence. Our memories are also biased to match
stereotypes, which leads to illusory confirmations.
Subtyping: when a person that doesn’t match the category, she is put in a special one that alters
the stereotype and allows to maintain it.
Self-fulfilling effects
Self-fulfilling prophecy: people’s tendency to behave in ways that confirm their own or others’
expectation that can lead initially untrue stereotypes to become true.
Rosenthal: bloomer experiments: bloomers were chosen randomly, but were said to be most
likely children to show increase in IQ during their school year. Teacher, believing this is true
showed increase attention to them, and they indeed showed large increase in IQ because if this
extra attention and special treatment they received.
Study: when men thought they were talking to an attractive women they rated her as more
pleasant, than when they believed they were talking to an unattractive one. Women interacting
with men who believed they were attractive behaved more pleasantly than the ones who were
believed to be unattractive.
Stereotype threat: applies to any group for which there is a negative stereotype. May explain
the underlying disparity between the numbers of men and women in scientific careers.
Mechanisms responsible for producing decreased performances following threat:
1- physiological stress affective prefrontal functioning
2- a tendency for people to think about their performances, which can distract them during
the task.
3- Attempts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions, which require a great deal of
effort.
It was found that women exposed to a math stereotype threat showed reduced activations in
the brain regions associated with math performances and increased activation in brain regions
associated with social and emotional processing, supporting the idea that stereotypes threat
undermines cognitive processes by raising performance anxiety. We behave according to
stereotypes.
Stereotype can lead to prejudice
Prejudice: the usually negative affective or attitudinal responses associated with stereotypes.
Discrimination: the inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people based only on their group
membership.
Only certain types of people are prejudiced, people treat others as scapegoats to relieve
tension, or to protect their own self-esteem. Evolution leads us to favour our own groups over
other groups, and we tend to stigmatize those who pose threats.
Ingroup/outgroup bias: ingroup: group in which we belong; those to which we don’t are called
outgroups. People are wary of those who aren’t part of their group. People in low racial bias, on
both implicit and explicit measures, are less likely to acquire negative association to neural
stimuli in classical conditioning paradigm. The separation of people into ingroup or outgroup
appears early in development, and thereafter treat them accordingly.
3 months old recognize faces from their own group and that of Africans, Middle eastern, and
Chinese. At 6 months they recognize that of Chinese only and by 9 months, only that of their
own racial group. IAT findings suggest that 6 year olds show as much implicit bias as that of 10
year olds and adults.
Outgroup homogeneity effect: they view members of the same outgroup as all the same
Ingroup favouritism: the tendency for people to evaluate favourably and privilege members of
the ingroup more than members of the outgroup. Occurs even is the group is determined
randomly. (Tajfel, Turner: money experiment).
Our group memberships are an important part of our social identity and contribute to our
overall sense of self-esteem.
Women show an increase ingroup bias for women than men for other men. Rudman and
Goodwin: men and women depend on women for nurturing, both are threatened by male
violence, and men can’t express their feelings for other men because it challenges their sexual
identities.
Stereotype and perception: implicit social attitudes can influence basic perceptual processes.
Payne’s experiment p. 540 pictures of Blacks and Whites, guns and tools. Priming people with
pictures of weapons leads them to pay greater attention to black faces that to white faces.
There might have been an implicit bias in Diallo’s shooting. Computerised training, in which race
is unrelated to the presence of a weapon can eliminate this. Extensive training of police officers
can help the bias greatly.
On ethics: psychological testing for prejudice p.541
Inhibiting stereotypes: Patricia Devine: people can override the stereotypes they hold and act in
non-discriminatory ways. People low in prejudice override this automatic activation. We can
consciously alter our automatic stereotyping. Presenting flattering images of a stereotyped
group can produce more favourable attitudes. Training people to respond counterstereotypically led to reduced automatic stereotyping. Telling people that they hold such
believes can help them correct those mistaking judgments.
If the faces of Blacks that initially produced greater activation of the amygdala were presented
longer, there was an activation of the frontal lobes, and a decreased activity of the amygdala.
This reaction happened more for those who showed negative attitudes about blacks in the IAT.
When White participants had their frontal lobes activated, they showed poor performance on
subsequent task of mental function, which implies that controlling stereotype is mentally taxing.
Those with high levels of motivation to avoid appearing racist have an anxious arousal response
when interacting with African Americans, a response that subsequently can interfere with
cognition.
Cooperation can reduce prejudice
Social psychology may be able to suggest strategies for promoting intergroup harmony and
producing greater tolerance for outgroups.
When there is a greater collective purpose, in which collaboration is needed, then negative
attitude can alleviate.
Sherif (1950): 22, 10 year old boys were in a summer camp divided in 2 groups that competed
with each other. Great animosity arouse between the 2 groups. Then in the second phase of the
experiment, they had the children cooperate to achieve necessary goals. The boys than became
friends across the groups.
Later research showed that only a certain type of contact between hostile groups can lead to
reduced prejudice and discrimination. Shared super ordinate goals, that require people to
cooperate, reduce hostility between groups.
Jigsaw classroom: person-to-person interaction is the tactic that brings the most successfully
groups together. Aronson’s jigsaw classroom: students work together in mixed sex and mixed
ethnic groups, in which each member of the group is an expert at a particular field. Children in
such rooms tend to have more positive attitudes towards others, and perform better, grow to
like each other more and develop a higher self-esteem.
How do others influence us?
One way to fit in is by presenting ourselves positively, and trying not to offend others. There is a
great desire to fit in the group that leads us to engage in activities that we normally wouldn’t do.
The power of social situation is much greater than what people believe. The importance of
social behaviour was summed up by Philip Zimbardo, who said that it is difficult to remain a
cucumber when those around us become pickles!
Groups influence individual behaviour
Triplett (1897): 1st social psychology experiment: bicyclists pedal faster with other people.
Social facilitation: the presence of others enhances (simple tasks) or impairs (difficult task)
performance. Model by Zajonc (1965) p.545
Social loafing: the tendency for people to work less hard in a group than when working alone.
This phenomenon disappears if the individuals are told that their performance is rated
individually.
Deindividuation: when people are part of a group, they have low self-awareness, lose their
individuality and fail to attend personal standards. They do things they wouldn’t do. Occurs
most when people are aroused, anonymous, and when responsibility is diffused. People who
look similar are more likely to conform to orders.
Group decision making: Stoner found that groups often made riskier decisions, a phenomenon
known as risky-shift effect.
Group polarization: groups tend to enhance the initial attitudes of members who already agree,
thus, groups can be riskier or more cautious.
Janis (1972): groupthink: for the sake of cordiality, the group will make a bad decision. Occurs
especially when a group is under intense pressure, facing external threats, or biased in a certain
way. Leaders must refrain to express their opinions too strongly at the beginning of a discussion.
Alternative ideas should be considered.
We conform to social norms
Social norms: expected standards of conduct, which influence behaviour.
Conformity: the altering of one’s opinions or behaviours to match those of others or to match
social norms.
Sherif: (1930) one on the 1st researchers to demonstrate to power of norms and conformity in
social judgement based on the autokinetic effect (a stationary point of light appears to move
when viewed in a totally dark environment). In ambiguous situations, people often compare
their reactions with others’ to judge what is appropriate.
Asch: if there are objective perceptions, participants shouldn’t conform p.548. About one third
of the time, the participant went along with the confederates.
Asch tried to identify which factors decrease the chances of conformity: group size, (3 or more).
Conformity tends to level off after 7, and lack of unanimity.
Schachter: when it became clear that the confederate with the different opinion wouldn’t
conform to the group, he became ostracized.
The amygdala activates, perhaps a fear response, when the participant gives out answers that
don’t conform to the group’s incorrect answer.
Simply providing descriptive norms can cause change in behaviour.
We are compliant
Compliance: the tendency to agree to do things requested by others.
Forgas: people in good moods are especially likely to comply. Caldani: people comply because
they are following a mental shortcut to avoid conflict.
Foot-in-the-door effect: people will more likely comply with a large and undesirable request if
earlier they have agreed to a small request. Freedman and Fraser: once people commit to a
course of action, they behave in ways consistent to that course.
Door-in-the-face: people will more likely comply to a small request if they have refused a large
request, because of the comparison between the 2.
Low-balling strategy: a salesperson offers a very low price, the customer agrees, and then the
sales person says that his boss doesn’t approve. The person will often agree to pay the extra.
We are obedient to authority
Milgram (1960): wanted to understand why normal Germans would agree to kill innocents in
WWII. He was interested in the determinants of obedience. The experimenter says that you
have to give a learner increasing shocks, and that you have to choice, but to continue even if the
learner screams in pains and shout to stop the experiment. Nearly all the participants tried to
quit, but 2/3 of them completely obeyed the experimenter’s directives despite believing they
were administering 450 volts to an older man with a heart condition. Both situation and
personality influence behaviour. Ordinary people can be coerced into obedience by insistent
authorities, even if it goes against the way they usually behave. Many participants were glad to
have participated, because it allowed them to learn about themselves. P.551
Milgram then studied how to reduce obedience. If the participant had to see or touch the
learner, obedience was decreased. When the experimenter gave the orders by phone,
obedience was dramatically decreased.
When do we harm or help others?
This tension between our aggressive and altruistic sides is at the core of who we are as a
species.
Aggression can be adaptive
Aggression: any behaviour or action that involves the intention to harm someone else.
Physical aggression is more prevalent among children, as adults, aggressive acts often involve
words meant to threaten, intimidate, or emotionally hurt others.
Biological factors: stimulating certain brain regions or altering neurochemicals can lead to
substantial changes in behaviour. Stimulating or damaging the septum, amygdala, or
hypothalamus leads to corresponding changes in the level of aggression displayed.
Kluver, Bucy: removing the amygdala from aggressive monkeys lead them to be friendly, the
also began to put anything within reach into their mouths. (Kluver-Bucy syndrome)
Serotonin is very important in the control of aggressive behaviour; enhanced activity lowers the
levels of aggression. Low levels are associated with violence, but not necessarily criminal acts.
Suicide victims, that killed themselves in violent fashions, have extremely low levels of
serotonin, but not those who did so in passive ways. Low levels may also interfere with good
decision making in the face of danger or social threat.
Individual factors: Dollard: frustration-aggression hypothesis: the extent to which people feel
frustrated predicts the likelihood that they will be aggressive. (1930)
Berkowitz’s cognitive-neoassociationistic model: frustration leads to aggression by eliciting
negative emotions. Any situation that induces negative emotions can trigger aggression,
because it primes cognitive knowledge associated with aggression. Aggressive behaviour
depends on the situation.
Aggression has social and cultural aspects
Violence varies dramatically across cultures and even within cultures at different times. Violence
can be prevalent because it subscribes to a culture of honour, which supports Bandura’s social
learning theory.
University of Michigan: compared Southern Americans and Northern Americans. As the
participants walked by an aggressive male confederate blocking the way, Southerners were
more likely to be aggressive, and had an increased cortisone and testosterone level.
Many factors may influence helping behaviour
Prosocial: tending to benefit others promotes positive interpersonal relationships.
Batson argue that prosocial behaviours are motivated by empathy. Cialdini argues that most
prosocial behaviours have selfish motives. Others proposed that we have an inborn disposition
to help others. Children’s empathic responses to other’s sufferings indicate that prosocial
behaviour is hardwired.
Altruism: the providing of help when it is needed, without any apparent reward for doing so. It
appears contrary to evolution.
Hamilton proposed that natural selection occurs at the genetic level rather than at the individual
level. He created the inclusive fitness concept which describes the adaptive benefits of
transmitting genes rather than focusing on individual survival.
Kin selection: people are altruistic toward those with who they share genes. All altruistic
behaviour can’t be attributed to this phenomenon.
Trivers: reciprocal helping to explain altruism to non-relatives. Benefits must outweigh the costs,
all will most likely occur among animals that live in social groups.
Some situations lead to bystander apathy
Kitty Genovese murder in front of 38 silent witnesses.
Bystander intervention effect (bystander apathy): failure to offer help by those who observe
someone in need.
Latané, Darley: a person will less likely help if others are around. When participants were on
their own, they are much more likely to go get help than if they are in groups.
1. There is a diffusion of responsibility, we expect others to help. Thus, the greater the
number of people the less likely that any of them will report
2. People fear making social blunders in ambiguous situations
3. People will less likely provide help when they are anonymous and will remain so.
4. People weigh how much harm can be done to themselves before helping others
What determines the quality of relationships?
Many of the research findings on the subject consider the adaptiveness of forming lasting
affiliative bonds with others.
Situational and personal factors influence friendships
Friendships often form among people who belong to the same groups. Proximity might have its
effects, because people like familiar things more than unfamiliar ones. Humans generally fear
anything novel, a phenomenon known as neophobia. Yet, the more familiar we are with
someone, the more we become aware of how we are different.
Birds of a feather: similarity increases liking. The most successful romantic couples also tend to
be the most physically similar, a phenomenon known as the matching principle.
Personal characteristics: people tend to especially like those who have admirable personality
traits and who are physically attractive, both as friends and lovers. Table p.560. Generally
people like those who have personal characteristics valuable for the group. Too perfect people
make others uncomfortable.
Physical attractiveness: rating is generally consistent across cultures.
Langlois and Ruggman used a computer program to average out various faces, the more there
are averaged faces, the more people rate the computer image as attractive. Averaged attractive
faces are rated more attractive. Most people like symmetrical faces, because a lack of symmetry
could indicate poor health or genetic defect. Biracial people tend to have more symmetrical
faces and tend to be rated as more attractive.
Attractive people are seen to be happier, more intelligent, more sociable, more successful, and
less socially deviant. Dion: what is beautiful is good stereotype.
Children as young as 6 months old like to look at attractive faces. Even mothers treat attractive
children differently; they are much more affectionate and playful, and express slightly more
positive attitudes towards those infants.
The correlation between attractiveness and other characteristics appears small. They are even
similar to less attractive people in self-esteem. This could be because attractive people learn to
distrust attention from others, because they assume that people like them for their good looks.
They might also feel insecure because good looks fade overtime.
Love is an important component of romantic relationships
Hatfield, Berscheid: drew an important distinction between passionate and companionate love
Passionate: state of intense longing and sexual desire. It is associated with increased dopamine
levels, the same reward system involved in drug addiction.
Companionate: strong commitment to care for and support a partner that develops slowly over
time. It is based on friendship, trust, respect, and intimacy.
Lasting relationships can go from passionate to companionate love.
Attachment theory: the types of relationships that adults have relate on how their parents
treated them as children. Those with warm parents (60%) report having secure relationships,
those with cold parents (25%) find it hard to trust others, and are wary of those who try to
become too close to them. Those who were treated inconsistently have anxious/ambivalent
attachment (11%), and worry that people don’t really love them and are bound to leave them.
Making love last is difficult
In North America, 50% of marriages fail, often within the 1st few years. Miller: married people
are meaner to each other than they are to total strangers.
Passion fades away, frequency of sex declines by 50% in the 1st year of marriage, and continues
to decline more gradually. Unless people develop other aspects of their relationship, it is
doomed to failure.
Jealousy and possessiveness: infidelity is far less frequent than what people believe, 25% of men
have extramarital sex and 10% of women do.
Dealing with conflict: a way people deal with conflict is a determinant of whether the
relationship will last.
Gottman: 4 interpersonal styles that lead couples to discord. He called them the Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse: being overly critical, holding the partner in contempt, being defensive, and
mentally withdrawing from the relationship.
Most satisfied couples tend to express concern for each other even while arguing, try to see
each other’s point of view and try to stay calm. Optimistic people are more likely to use
cooperative problem solving.
Attributional styles and accommodation: attributional style: how one partner explains the
others’ behaviour. Happy couples attribute good outcomes to each other and bad ones to
external situations.
Accommodation: partner-enhancing attributions in which they overlook bad behaviour or
respond constructively.
Gottman: Why Marriages Succeed or Fail and How You Can Make Yours Last: outlines
differences between happy couples and unhappy ones.
Couples that have the most sex aren’t the happiest, but those who agree on the frequency are
the happiest.
Fighting allows grievances to be relieved and, if done properly, can be good for the relationship
Validating couple: each partner considers the other’s opinions and emotions valid. They try to
compromise and show mutual respect.
As long as there are 5 positive interactions for every negative one, there are good chances that
the relationship will be stable.
Show interest in your partner, be affectionate, show you care, spend quality time, maintain
loyalty and fidelity, learn to handle conflict.
Chapter 13: personality
Personality: the characteristic thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviours that are relatively
stable in an individual over time.
Personality trait: a characteristic, a disposal tendency to act in a certain way over time and
across circumstances.
How have psychologists studied personality?
Allport definition of personality (1937): the dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behaviour. Organization means that
personality is not just a series a traits, but a dynamic coherent whole, because it is goal seeking,
sensitive to context, and adaptive to environment. By emphasising psychophysical systems, he
highlights that psychological nature of personality while recognizing that it arises from basic
biological processes. Personality causes people to have characteristic behaviours and thoughts.
Psychodynamic theories emphasise unconscious and dynamic processes
Psychodynamic theory: Freudian theory that unconscious forces, such as wishes and motives
influence behaviour. He referred to those psychic forces as instincts, defining them as mental
representations arising out of biological or physical need. People satisfy the life instinct by
following the pleasure principle, which directs people to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. The
energy that drives the pleasure principle is the libido. The life instinct can be viewed as the
desire to satisfy libidinal urges for pleasure. When forces are in conflict, mental illness arises.
A topographical model of mind: Freud believed that most of the conflict between psychological
forces occurs below the level of consciousness. He proposed that the structures of the mind are
divided into 3 mental zones: conscious level, where people are aware of their thoughts, the
preconscious level, where content is not currently in awareness, but could be brought, and the
unconscious level that contains material that the mind can’t easily retrieve to protect a person
from distress. Sometimes this information leads into the conscious mind, during a Freudian slip,
where the person reveals a hidden motif.
Development of sexual instinct: early childhood experiences have a major impact on the
development of personality.
Psychosexual stage: Freud believed that children go through stages corresponding to their
pursuit of satisfaction of libidinal urges. At each of those stages, libido is focused on one of the
erogenous zones (mouth, anus, genitals).
Oral stage: from birth to 18 months: pleasure is sought through the mouth.
Anal phase: from 2 to 3 years old, toilet training leads the focus on the anus. Learning to control
the bowels is the focus of that phase.
Phallic stage: from 3 to 5, their libidinal energy is directed toward the genitals.
According to Freud, children desire an exclusive relationship with the parent of the opposite sex,
because the same-sex parent is considered a rival, hostility is developed towards him. In boys,
this is known as the Oedipus complex: children desire to kill one parent. They resolve that phase
through identification with the same-sex parent. Mostly applied for boys.
Latency stage: libidinal urges are suppressed or channelled into doing schoolwork or building
friendships.
Genital stage: adolescents and adults attain mature attitudes about sexuality and adulthood.
Libidinal urges are centered on the capacity to reproduce and contribute to society.
Children can become fixated at a stage in which they receive excessive parental restriction or
indulgence. Those fixated at the oral stage develop oral personalities: they continue to seek
pleasure through the mouth. Those fixated at the anal stage develop anal-retentive
personalities: they are stubborn and highly regulating.
Structural model of personality: integrated model of how the mind is organized.
Id: the component of personality that is completely submerged in the unconscious level and
operates according to the pleasure principle. The innate forces driving it are aggression and sex.
Superego: the internalization of societal and parental standards of conduct. Developed during
the phallic phase, it is a rigid structure of morality, or conscience.
Ego: the component of personality that tries to satisfy the wishes of the id while being
responsive to the dictates of the superego. It operates according to the reality principle, which
involves rational thoughts and problem solving.
Defence mechanisms: unconscious mental strategies that mind uses to protect itself from
conflict and distress. Mostly studied by Anna Freud. Today, most researchers believe that they
protect self-esteem.
Reaction formation: occurs when people ward off an uncomfortable thought about the self by
embracing the opposite thought. Homophobia might result from repression of homosexual
impulses, leading to reaction formation.
Psychodynamic theory since Freud: many embraced the notion of unconscious conflict; such
neo-Freudians include Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney. Adler and Horney strongly
criticized Freud’s view of women. Many neo-Freudians rejected Freud’s emphasis on sexual
forces, focusing instead on social interactions. This focus is embodied in object relations theory:
the object of attachment is another person. Horney and Erikson also emphasised the culture.
Psychodynamic theories have largely been abandoned, because they can’t be examined through
scientific methods.
Humanistic approaches emphasis integrated personal experience
Humanistic approach: approaches to studying personality that emphasis personal experience
and belief system; they propose that people seek personal growth to fulfill their human
potential, a process known as self-actualization. They focus on subjective human experience, or
phenomenology, and view each person as inherently good. It is not too concerned about the
scientific study of personality.
Maslow’s theory of motivation: he believed that the desire to become self-actualized is the
ultimate and most important human motive.
Carl Rogers: person-centered approach to personality emphasise people’s personal
understandings, or phenomenology. The therapist would create a supportive and accepting
environment and would deal with the client’s problems and concerns as clients understood
them. His theory highlights the importance of how parents show affection for their children. He
speculated that most parents provide conditional love; they love their children as long as the
children does what the parents want, this leads children to abandon their true feelings to keep
only those who pleases and accept only those part of themselves that elicit parental love.
Parents should raise their children with unconditional love which will lead their children to
become fully functioning person.
Seligman: the positive psychology movement that encourages the scientific study of qualities.
Diener: research on subject well-being, he found that the wealthiest countries have the highest
levels of satisfaction.
Tugade and Frederickson: people who are resilient experience positive emotions even when
under stress. According to the broad and build theory, positive emotions prompt people to
consider novel solutions to their problems, thus resilient people tend to draw on their positive
emotions in dealing with setbacks of negative emotions.
Type and trait approach describes behavioural dispositions
Personality types: discrete categories based on global personality characteristic.
Implicit personality theory: our tendency to assume that certain personality characteristics go
well together, and therefore to make predictions about people based on minimal evidence.
Trait approach: focuses on the extent to which individuals differ in personality dispositions.
Most people fall in the middle of a trait, few are at the extremes.
Allport and Odbert: 18 000 words can be counted as personality traits
Cattell: set out to ascertain the basic elements of personality, believing that statistical
procedures would enable him to take the scientific study or personality to uncover the basic
structures of personality.
Factor analysis: grouping items according to their similarities. In 1965, he identified 16 basic
dimensions of personality.
Eysenck’s hierarchical model: the basic structure begins at the specific response level, which
consists of observed behaviours. There is a habituation response level. If a person has the same
behaviour on many occasions, she is said to possess a trait, which can be grouped as
components of superordinate traits. P.578
Jung: introversion/extroversion. Eysenck believed that this dimension reflects differences in
biological functioning.
Emotional stability: the extent to which people’s moods and emotions change. Those low in
emotional stability are said to be neurotic. Highly neurotic people often report feeling anxious,
moody and depressed and have very low opinions of themselves. Psychoticism: a mix of
aggression, impulse control, and empathy. It is now called constraint.
The big five: five-factor theory: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion,
agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each factor is a higher-order trait. P. 579. Consistent across
cultures and ages. For Chinese: interpersonal trait is highly important, but not for Westerners.
The factors uniquely predict certain outcomes.
Personality reflects learning and cognition
Skinner who sees personality as the result of internal processes view personality mainly as
learned responses to patterns of reinforcement.
Kelly: emphasised the importance of people’s understanding, or personal constructs, of their
circumstances. He thought that people view the world as if they were scientists. Personal
constructs develop through people’s experiences and represent their interpretations and
explanations for events in their social worlds.
Rotter (1954) built further on the cognitive approach by introducing the idea that behaviour is a
function of people’s expectancies for reinforcement, as well as values they ascribe to particular
reinforcers. People differ in their beliefs that their effort will lead to positive outcomes. People
with an internal locus of control believe they bring about their own rewards, whereas those with
an external locus of reward believe that rewards result from forces beyond their control.
Cognitive social theories: incorporation of cognition into learning theories led to the
developments of cognitive-social theories of personality, which emphasise how personal beliefs,
expectancies and interpretations of social situations shape behaviour and personality.
Bandura: humans possess mental capacities that interact with environment to influence
behaviour. The extent to which people believe they can achieve certain outcomes, call selfefficacy, is an important determinant of behaviour. Expectancies develop in part through
observational learning.
Mischel: approach the study of personality at the social level. Personality traits often fail to
predict behaviour across different circumstances. Cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS),
people’s responses are influenced by how they perceive a given situation, their affective
response, their skill in dealing with challenges, and their anticipation of the outcomes of their
behaviour. P.580
Norem, Cantor: defensive pessimism: people expect to fail and enter test situation with dread.
Self-regulatory capacities: people set personal goals, evaluate their progress, and adjust their
behaviour accordingly.
Personality represents behaviour that emerges from people’s interpretations of their social
worlds and from their beliefs about how they will affect and be affected by their social
situations.
How is personality assessed, and what does it predict?
Personality refers to both unique and common characteristics
Allport divided the study of personality in 2 approaches:
Idiographic: person-centered, they focus on the individual lives and how various characteristics
are integrated into unique persons. Same metric. It assumes that all individuals are unique.
Murray did a case study with Hitler. Dan McAdams considers life as a narrative; each person has
a life-story that integrates self-knowledge into a coherent whole. It is reconstructive and
imaginative, in doing so, the person creates individual myths.
Nomothetic: focus on characteristics common to all people, but on which individuals vary.
Different metric.
Central traits: are especially important for how individuals define themselves. Secondary traits
are less important.
Researchers use objective and projective methods to assess personality.
Assessment procedures can be grouped into projective and objective measures.
Projective measures: personality tests that examine unconscious processes by having people
interpret ambiguous situations. People will project their mental content into these ambiguous
situations, revealing hidden aspects of their personality. They are used to assess
psychopathology.
Rorschach inkblot test finds many disturbances in apparently healthy individuals.
Murray and Morgan: Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) to study achievement motivation. This
method of looking at an ambiguous picture and telling a story about it reveals traits related to
achievement, power, and affiliation. It can determine how interpersonally dependent people
are.
Objective measures: relatively direct assessments of personality, based on information gathered
through self-report questionnaires or observer ratings. They require people to make subjective
judgments. Terms can also mean different things to different people.
NEO personality inventory: assess the Big Five personality factors according to 240 items.
California Q-Sort: people sort 100 statements printed on cards into 9 piles according to how
accurately the statements describes them. Only so many cards can be placed in piles, with fewer
cards piled at for the extreme ends of the scale.
Observers show accuracy in trait judgments
Funder: surprising degree of accuracy for trait judgments. Close people can even better describe
us than ourselves, because they observe us. Our subjective perceptions may diverge from our
objective behaviours.
People are sometimes inconsistent
Mischel (1968): situationism: behaviour is determined more by situations than by personality
traits.
In the person/situation debate, personality researchers argued that the extent to which a trait
predicts behaviour depends on the centrality of the trait, the aggregation of behaviour over
time, and the type of trait being evaluated. If personality traits are averaged in situations, traits
are more predictive of behaviour. E.G. the trait of self-monitoring allows people who possess it
to alter their behaviour to match the situations.
Behaviour is influenced by the interaction of personality and situations
Being neurotic is the best predictor of marital dissatisfaction and divorce. Personality
dispositions are meaningful constructs that predict behaviour overtime and across
circumstances. People are also highly sensitive to social context, and most conform to social
norms. The situation can dictate behaviour regardless of personality.
Situations differ in the extent to which they constrain the expression of personality. There is a
difference between strong situations and weak situations.
Interactionist: theorists who believe that behaviour is determined jointly by underlying principle
and situations.
A reciprocal interaction occurs between the person and the environment, so that they influence
each other. Personality reflects both underlying dispositions and the activation and emotional
responses in given situations.
There are cultural and gender differences in personality
People from different cultures can interpret questions differently. One must also be careful
about the chosen sample.
Investigation of personality across 56 nations p.587
Heine: national reputation may be correct and that people are biased when they rate
themselves, because of the average behaviour of the country.
Women are more empathetic and agreeable than men, and also more neurotic and concerned
about their feelings. Men are more assertive. Gender differences in personalities are greater in
NA and Europe, a smaller in Asia and African communities. This may be explained because
women are allowed a greater education and can express their individuality more. Certain sex
differences emerge early in childhood.
Guimond: people in individualistic cultures tend to compare themselves with other groups.
What are the biological bases of personality?
Biological factors play an important role in the development of personality and its
determination. Gene expression underlies all psychological activity. Genes have the effects only
when expressed, and environment controls such an expression.
Animals have personalities
Humans and other animals have evolved as they solved occasionally similar adaptive challenges;
which raises the possibility that animals might display consistent individual differences in
behaviour, which reflect the biological bases of personality.
Gosling: 36 hyenas, 44 traits, 4 raters. The traits clustered into 5 factors. Similarities:
agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience. No conscientiousness, extraversion in the
form of assertiveness.
John: similarity in extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness could be seen in most species.
Openness in animals can be compared to that of small children. Conscientiousness could only be
found in chimpanzees.
Gosling examined personality judgments for domestic dogs and compared those to judgments
made by humans, studied 4 personality factors that correspond to openness to experience,
extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism with 3 criteria of accuracy that were respected.
Another group of judges rated only pictures of the dogs. Dog’s personalities can be rated with
accuracy, and that animals show clear evidence of basic personality traits which suggest that
such traits are biologically based on passed along genes.
Personality is rooted in genetics
Nearly all personality traits have a genetic component.
Loehlin, Nichols, examined similarities in personality among over 800 pairs of twins. Identical
twins had much more similarities than fraternal twins. P.592.
Genetic influences about 50% of the variance in personality traits, and the genetic basis of these
traits are the same across culture.
Bouchard: twins raised apart are as similar as twins raised together, or even more so. Identical
twins become more alike as they age. This is because parents emphasis their individual
differences when children.
Adoption studies: siblings who are adopted are more similar than 2 strangers. Personality of
adopted children isn’t similar to that of adoptive parents, which means that parenting style has
little influence on personality. Sibling’s personalities slowly grow apart as their initial differences
become magnified through their interactions with the world.
Lykken: children raised by inadequate parenting are much more likely to become delinquent or
show antisocial behaviour.
Are there specific genes for personality?
Genes predispose certain personality traits associated with behavioural tendencies. Multiple
genes interact independently with the individual’s environment to produce general dispositions.
Genes can be linked with some specificity to personality traits. Some pairs of genes can work in
opposite ways.
Lykken: it may be the chance aggregation of genes that produces unique individuals
Temperaments are evident in infancy
Temperaments: biologically based tendencies to feel or act in certain ways. They are considered
broader than traits.
Work on infants, because personality differences early in life indicates the action of biological
mechanisms.
Buss and Plomin: 3 personality characteristics can be considered temperaments: activity level,
emotionality and sociability. These are the main factors influenced by genes.
Long-term implication of temperaments: early childhood temperaments significantly influence
behaviour and personality structure throughout a person’s development. Inhibited children are
far more likely to become depressed.
Gender and temperaments: great difference in early childhood. Girls have a stronger ability to
control their attention, and to resist their impulses. Boys are more physically active, and
experience more high-intensity pleasure. There are no differences in negative emotions.
Shyness and inhibition: the extent to which people are shy has been linked to early differences
in temperament. 6 week old children can be identified as shy.
Kagan: 15-20% of newborns react to new situations or strange objects by becoming distressed,
they are said to be inhibited, a characteristic that he views as being biologically determined.
Inhibited children show greater reactivity in brainstem measures, which are the same when they
are 12 as when they are 4 months. Shy people have a much greater activation when showed
unfamiliar faces. 25% of shy children aren’t shy later childhood. This development occurs when
parents create supportive and calm environment in which children can deal with stress and
novelty at their own paces. Shyness also varies across cultures. Thus social and cultural factors
highlight the interplay between nature and nurture.
Personality is linked to specific neurophysiological mechanisms
Personality differences may reflect differences may reflect differences in the relative activation
of different biological systems.
Arousal and extraversion
Eysenck: founder of modern biological approach to personality, he believed that differences in
cortical arousal produce the behavioural differences between extraverts and introverts. Cortical
arousal or alertness is regulated by the ascending reticular system (ARAS) which differs between
them. Extraverts seek continual arousal, and introverts seem to avoid arousal. Each person
prefers to operate at some optimal level of arousal. The resting levels of ARAS are higher for
introverts than extraverts. Extraverts perform better in noisy settings.
Introverts, being chronically more aroused, ought to be more sensitive to stimuli. Introverts do
appear more sensitive to pain, and to sourness. Evidence for baseline differences in arousal is
difficult to produce, thus what differentiates extraverts for introverts is their level of
arousability, or reactivity to stimuli.
Zuckerman: arousal-based trait of sensation seeking as similar to extraversion, but with an
impulsive element that more closely matches psychoticism. Sensation seekers have a
neurochemical deficiency that motivates them to seek arousal and tend to be easily bored and
try to escape boredom through the use of alcohol/drug.
Neurophysiology of extraversion and introversion
Gray: incorporated the differentiation between approach learning and avoidance learning in his
approach/inhibition model of the relation between learning and personality. Personality is
rooted in motivational functions that have evolved to help organisms respond efficiently to
reinforcement and punishment.
Behavioural approach system (BAS): the brain system involved in the pursuit of incentive
rewards. It is the go system
Behavioural inhibition system: (BIS): the brain system that is sensitive to punishment, and
therefore inhibits behaviour that might lead to danger or pain. It is the stop system. It is
associated with the activity in the frontal lobes
Extraverts have stronger BAS than BIS, so they are more influenced by rewards than by
punishment. Introverts have a more active BIS, their chronic anxiety often lead them to avoid
social situations in which they anticipate negative results.
Fearfulness, anxiousness and shyness are associated with excessive activation of the amygdala.
Personality is adaptive
Buss: the Big 5 personality traits are fundamental because each trait provides important
information regarding mate selection.
Individual differences reflect characteristics, perhaps resulting from random processes, that are
of trivial importance with regards to evolution.
Buss and Greiling: individual differences might reflect the inheritance of alternative strategies
that have become activated according to situational contexts.
Evolution has allowed for multiple strategies that are differently adaptive depending on
environmental demands.
Human groups whose members possess different skills have a selective advantage over other
human groups
Critical thinking skill: avoiding single-cause explanations
Personality traits are stable overtime
Michael Up series: follow the development of british children and found that they are stable
overtime
Clinical psychology: people can and do change important aspects of their lives.
Personality was the least stable for children under 2 and the most stable for adult over 50.
James (1890): for most of us, the character has set like plaster and will never soften again.
Age-related change: people when older become less neurotic, less extraverted, and less open to
new experiences; they are also more agreeable and more conscientious. Not large, but
consistent effects even across cultures which means that personality changes aren’t related to
the environment. Personality change has a genetic component.
Characteristic adaptations
McCrae and Costa: important distinction between basic tendencies of personality and
characteristic adaptation. Basic tendencies are dispositional traits determined by biological
processes, thus are very stable. Characteristic adaptations: adjustments to situational demands,
they are less consistent.
If personality is determined partly by biological processes, some of its changes will be associated
to changes in biological makeup. The fact that the brain develops well in adulthood explains why
personality can change before age 30. Upon adulthood situation are also less variable.
How do we know our personalities?
Self: each person’s mental representations of personal experiences that includes thought
processes, physical body, and conscious awareness of being separate from others and unique. It
is a unitary experience continuous over time and space.
Our self-concepts consist of self-knowledge
Self-concept: everything we know about ourselves, it is the cognitive knowledge structure that
guides attention and information important, and helps adapt to the environment.
Self-awareness: the sense of self as the object of attention. It is dependent of functional frontal
lobes. People without functioning frontal lobes are minimally self-reflecting, and show a lack of
interest in their disorders.
James and Mead: differentiate between the self as the knower (I) which is involved in executive
functions, and the self as the objects that is known (me), now called the objective self, which is
the knowledge the subject holds about himself.
Duval and Wicklund: theory of objective self-awareness that leads people to act in accordance
with the values they hold. Discrepancies between personal standards and goals can motivate a
behaviour that reduces the discrepancy.
Higgins: self-discrepancy theory: the awareness of differences between personal standards and
goals leads to strong emotions.
Struss: intelligent patient with frontal lobe damage became less productive at work even if his
knowledge about the world remained intact. He was asked to play the role of the boss and gave
an accurate suggestion, but when in his position again, he disagreed with it.
Self-schema:
Cocktail party phenomenon: information about the self is processed deeply, and automatically.
Markus (1977): the self-schema is the cognitive aspect of the self-concept, consisting of an
integrated set of memories, beliefs, and generalization about the self. May lead to enhanced
memory for information processed in a self-relevant manner.
Rogers: trait adjective processes with reference to the self were better recalled than
comparable items processed only for their general meaning.
There is an activation of the middle of the frontal lobes when people process information about
themselves. The greater the activation of this area during self-referencing, the more likely we
will remember the item later during a memory task.
Working of self-concept: the immediate experience of the self, limited to the amount of
information that can be possessed cognitively at any given time. Thus, the sense of self varies
over situation.
We emphasise aspects of our personalities that makes us separate from others, but at the same
time we don’t want to stand out to much.
Perceived social regard influences self-esteem
Self-esteem: evaluative aspects of the self-concept, indicating people’s emotional responses as
they contemplate various characteristics about themselves.
Reflected appraisal: self-esteem is based on how people view us, people internalize the values
and beliefs expressed by important people in their lives, adopting those attitudes as their own.
Consequently, people come to respond to themselves in manners consistent with how other
view them. Need for parents’ unconditional love, but in relatively strict parenting with well
defined limits.
Sociometer theory: Leary: self-esteem monitors the likelihood of social exclusion.
Sociometer: internal monitor of social acceptance or rejection.
Critical thinking skill: resisting appeals to snoberry: play on people to appear superior.
Self-esteem and death anxiety: according to the terror management theory: self-esteem
protects people from the horror associated with knowing they eventually will die. We counter a
sense of immortality when we have the feeling that we contribute to our society. Reminding
people of their mortality leads them to act in ways that enhance their self-esteem.
Self-esteem and life outcomes
Baumeister: people with high self-esteem report being happier, but it is weakly related to
objective life outcomes. There is a slight correlation, perhaps because success causes higher selfesteem. Violent criminal have high self-esteem. When people with high self-esteem believe their
abilities have been challenged, they may act in ways that cause people to dislike them.
Narcissim: self-centered people view themselves in grandiose ways, they are manipulative, and
unfaithful in their relationships. Programs design to improve children’s self-esteem could be
responsible, and the rise in self-promoting sites.
We use mental strategies to maintain our views of self
People show favouritism with everything associated with the self. 90% of drivers believe that
have better than average drive skills. P.607
Better-than average effect: people rate themselves as better than average in nearly every way.
People with high self-esteem are especially likely to do so.
Taylor and Brown: most people have positive illusions in at least 3 domains: they continuously
experience the better than average effect, they unrealistically perceive their personal control
over events, and most people are unrealistically optimistic about their futures.
The self-evaluative maintenance, social comparisons, and self-serving biases help us to cope
with the disappointments of life.
Self-evaluative maintenance: Tesser: self-esteem can be affected by how relevant people’s
performances are to their self-concepts, and how their performances compare to significant
people in their lives. People can feel threatened when someone close to them performs better.
To maintain self-esteem, we could distance ourselves from the relationship or find a different
aspiration. It causes people to exaggerate their connections to winners and to minimize their
connections to losers.
Social comparison: when we compare to others to see where we stand. People with high selfesteem seem to make downward comparisons whereas people with low self-esteem make
upward comparisons. There is a form of downward comparison when one recalls his own past,
viewing their current self as better than their former self. P.609
Self-serving biases: the tendencies for people, especially those with high self-esteem, to take
personal credit for success, but blame failures on external factors.
People with high self-esteem assume that criticism is motivated by envy or prejudice; indeed,
people in discrimination groups have high self-esteem.
Crocker and Major: members of these groups maintain positive self-esteem by taking credit for
success and blaming negative feedback on prejudice.
In thinking about our failures, we compare ourselves to those who did worse, and think about
the things we are good at.
They may even reflect healthy psychological functioning.
There are cultural differences in the self
Difference among people regarding self-concept: whether they view themselves as
fundamentally separate from or connected to other people.
Triandis: some cultures emphasise the collective self more than the personal self. Collectivist
cultures and more respective of social norms and of family values whereas individualistic
cultures emphasise rights of freedom of expression.
Markus and Kitayama: people in collectivist cultures have interdependent self-construals, in
which the self-concepts are determined largely by their social roles and personal relationships,
whereas people in individualistic cultures have independent slef-construals.
Culture and self-serving bias: most non-depressed individual make self-serving biases.
Heine: the self serving bias may be more common in individualistic cultures than in collectivist
ones
Endo, Meijer: Americans listed more successes than failures, and the Japanese’s list showed an
equal amount of successes and failures. Self criticism in more common than self promotion in
Asia, and such a tendency is preserved even when the Asians are anonymous.
People in Japan and China also share a positivity bias like that of the Americans (tendency to
view themselves as better than others.), which was perceivable using an implicit measure of
self-esteem that rely on how participants associated positive things with themselves. Thus
Easterners value themselves equally as westerners but are hesitant to admit it.
Asians self-enhance in domains particular to them: they enhance how good group members
they are. Thus self-enhancement is universal, but the traits emphasised are different.
Chapter 14: Disorders of the mind and body
Psychopathology: a disorder of the mind 7% severely affected
How are mental disorders conceptualized and classified?
Does the behaviour deviate from cultural norms?
Is the behaviour maladaptive?
Is the behaviour causing the individual distress?
The symptoms of the disorder must interfere with at least one aspects of the person’s life, such
as work, social relations, or self-care.
Mental disorders are classified into categories
Etiology: factors that contribute to the development of a disorder
Kraepelin: (1800) mental disorder identification based on the basis of groups of symptoms that
occur together.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1952) (DSM): standard
Today: multiaxial system: the system used in the DSM that provides assessment along 5 axes
describing important mental health factors.
1- Clinical disorders
2- Mental retardation or personality disorder
3- Medical conditions
4- Psychosocial problem
5- Global assessment of how well the person is functioning
Mental disorders must be assessed
Assessment: examination of a person’s mental state to diagnose possible psychological
disorders. 1. Make a diagnosis 2. Treatment 3. Ongoing assessment
Mental status exam: provide a snapshot of mental functioning: behavioural observation. Can
differentiate with physical disorders (stroke)
In a clinical interview, the 1st thing a psychologist asks is: current symptoms and recent
experiences that might cause distress.
Structured versus unstructured interviews:
Unstructured interviews are flexible, but are too highly dependent of the interviewer’s skill. In
structured interviews, standardized questions are asked in the same order. The patient’s
answers are coded according to a predetermined formula; the diagnosis is based on the
patterns of responding. The most commonly used is the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM
(SCID)
Types of testing
Behavioural assessment
Psychological testing: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) (1930) which
consists of 567 true/false questions and takes into account 10 clinical scales. It also includes
validity scales. The scores considered normal are not representative.
Neuropsychological testing: each task requires ability such as planning, coordinating or
remembering. It might indicate a problem with a certain brain region. It is followed by a MRI or
PET.
Evidence-based assessment: approach to clinical evaluation in which research guides the
evaluation of mental disorders, the selection of tests and neuropsychological methods, and the
use of critical thinking skill in making a diagnosis.
Comorbity: many mental disorders occur together.
Critical thinking skill: recognizing when categories represent continuous dimensions.
Dissociative identity disorder is a controversial diagnosis
Milligan’s 24 personalities were found innocent in the murder and rape.
Dissociative identity disorder (DID): the occurrence of 2 or more distinct identities in the same
individual. Most sufferers are women who report being severely abused as children. (Children
cope by pretending it has happened to someone else). The identities are all different. Many
researchers are sceptical of the disease; since many diagnoses occur often when patients have
committed crimes. The number of cases has skyrocketed in the 1990, and the number of
personalities went from 2 to 3 to 20. The therapists might even have suggested without
awareness that their patients may suffer from the disease.
Mental disorders have many causes
Diathesis-stress model: a diagnostic model that proposes that a disorder may develop when an
underlying vulnerability (diathesis) is coupled with a precipitating event.
Biological factors: influence the development and the course of a mental disorder (foetuses are
very sensitive, and disorders can arise from things such as malnutrition). They have an effect of
the nervous system, and can trigger mental disorders. There are structural differences in certain
parts of the brain that differ from healthy individuals. Neurotransmitter levels can trigger
disorders.
Psychological factors: thoughts and emotions are shaped by environment and can affect
behaviour.
Family system model: considers symptoms within an individual as indicating problems with the
family. Behaviour must be considered in a social context. It is very useful in determining if the
family will or will not help the patient.
Sociocultural model: views psychopathology as the result of the interaction between individuals
and their cultures.
Cognitive-behavioural factors: strict behaviourists argue that mental disorders result from
classical and operant conditioning. Thoughts can become distorted and produce maladaptive
behaviours. It is believed that thought processes are available to the conscious mind, and can be
analysed.
Cognitive-behavioural approach: views psychopathology as the result of learned maladaptive
cognitions.
Sex-differences in mental disorders: in general the disorders associated with internalizing are
more prevalent in females, and those associated with externalizing are more prevalent in males.
P.628
Culture and mental disorders: most mental disorders are the same across culture, especially
those with a strong biological component. Sometimes manifestations of the disorder can vary
across cultures. P.629
Can anxiety be the root of seemingly different disorders?
Anxiety disorders are characterised by excessive anxiety in the absence of a true danger.
There are different types of anxiety disorders
25% will suffer from anxiety disorders at some point of their lives. The sufferers feel tense, are
often depressed and irritable because they see no end to their anxiety. They have trouble falling
and staying asleep. Their arousal involves the autonomic nervous system, and can lead to bodily
symptoms such as sweating, high blood pressure... Chronic arousal can also lead to
hypertension, headaches, intestinal problems, can even cause illness or tissue damage. Sufferers
have pointless motor behaviours.
Chronic stress can damage the hippocampus that is involved in learning and memory.
Phobic disorder
In phobias, fear is out of proportion. Specific phobias affect 1/8 people are affected. P.631
Social phobia: also called social anxiety disorder, it is a fear of being negatively viewed by
others. 1/8 people will experience it. It is one of the earliest forms of mental disorder to
develop, often beginning around 13; and the more social fear, the more likely the person will
develop another disorder, particularly depression and substance abuse.
Generalized anxiety disorder: a diffused state of constant anxiety not associated with any
specific object or event. GAD affects 6% of the population. Sufferers experience distractibility,
fatigue, irritability, sleep problems, headaches, restlessness, light-headedness, and muscle pain.
Panic disorder: affecting 3% of the population, it is characterized by sudden, overwhelming
attacks of terror. They last for several minutes during which the patient begins to sweat and
tremble, his heart races...People developing it in adolescence are more likely to develop PTSD
and GAD in adulthood.
Agoraphobia: related disease marked by the fear of being in situations in which escape may feel
difficult or impossible.
OCD: affects 1-2%, and is characterized by frequent intrusive thoughts and compulsive actions.
The most common behaviours are cleaning, checking and counting. They anticipate catastrophe
and loss of control. They fear what they might do or have done, and checking is the only way to
calm the anxiety.
Anxiety disorders have cognitive, situational, and biological components
Cognitive factors: when presented with ambiguous situations, anxious people tend to see them
as threatening, and focus excessive attention on perceived threats.
Situational factors: looking at one’s fear might trigger the fear reaction.
Biological factors: children who have an inhibited temperament are more likely to experience
anxiety disorders, and are especially at risk of developing social phobia. The inhibited group
showed greater activation of the amygdale while viewing the novel faces.
OCD sufferers are aware that their obsessions and compulsions are irrational, but are unable to
stop them. Anxiety is paired to a specific event, through classical conditioning, and the person
engages in the behaviour that reduces anxiety, and therefore is reinforced through operant
conditioning.
OCD is in part genetic. The specific mechanism hasn’t been identified, but the neurotransmitter
glutamate, which is the major excitatory transmitter in the brain, causing increased neural firing.
The caudate, a brain structure involved in suppressing impulses, is smaller and has structural
abnormalities in people with OCD. PET studies show abnormal activity in the thalamus and the
caudate in those with OCD. Patients with diseases in those areas have similar symptoms to
those of OCD. Impulsions leek into consciousness and the prefrontal cortex becomes overactive
in an effort to compensate. Electrical stimulation of the caudate can help.
OCD can be triggered by environmental factors such as a streptococcal infection in children.
Discovered by Swedo, it strikes at night, triggering an autoimmune response that damages the
caudate.
Are mood disorders extreme manifestations of normal moods?
There are different types of mood disorders
Mood disorders reflect extreme emotions: depressive disorders feature persistent and pervasive
feelings of sadness and bipolar disorder involve radical fluctuations in mood.
Depressive disorders: can be major or less severe.
Major depression: severe negative moods or lack of interest in normally pleasurable activities.
1- Depressed mood or loss of interest in pleasurable activities.
2- Appetite and weight changes sleep disturbance, loss of energy, difficulty concentrating,
feelings of self-reproach or guilt, frequent thoughts of death and suicide.
Only long-lasting episodes that impair a person’s life are diagnosed as mood disorders. It affects
6-7% of the population in a given year, and 16% will experience it at some point of their life. It is
often lasting for many years.
Dysthymia: a form a depression that is of mild to moderate severity. Affects 2-3% of the
population. They have a depressed mood most of the day, more days than not, for at least 2
years. Periods last from 2-20 days, and are typically 5-10 days. It is often seen as a personality
disorder.
In its more severe form, depression is the major cause of disability in the US and worldwide. It is
the major factor for suicide. Suicide is the leading cause of death of young women in China and
India, and the highest rate of depression is found in women of developing countries, especially
in rural Pakistan.
Overwork and lack of support might explain why depression is so prevalent in women. Women
also respond to stressful events by internalizing their feelings which leads to depression and
anxiety.
Bipolar disorder: alternating periods of mania and depression. Affects 4% of the population. It is
more common in adolescence and in early adulthood.
Manic phases: elevated mood, increased activity, diminished need for sleep, grandiose ideas,
racing thoughts, and extreme distractibility.
Hypomanic phases: heightened creativity and productivity, and can be pleasurable and
rewarding.
Jamison: an Unquiet Mind. Suffered from bipolar disorder and took lithium to help. This drug
deprives people from good moods.
Mood disorders have cognitive, situational, and biological components
Depression has a genetic component. Concordance rates between identical twins are 4 times
higher than between fraternal twins. Genetic contribution to depression is weaker than for
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Concordance in identical twins is of 70%, and of 20% for fraternal twins. All of those affected
with the disease have the same defect. Its heredity is complex and not just related to one gene.
Successive generation of bipolar disorder suffers have more severe disorders at an early age of
unset.
Major depression involves a deficiency of one or more monoamines. Medication that increases
the availability of norepinephrine alleviates depression. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor
(SSRI) increases the levels of serotonin. Damage to the left prefrontal cortex can lead to
depression. The brain waves of depressed people show low activity in these same regions in the
left hemisphere. These patterns persist in people who are in remission.
Biological rhythms: implicated in depression: depressed patients enter REM sleep more quickly
and have more of it. Indeed, depressed people sleep a lot and always feel tired.
SAD: seasonal affective disorder
Life stressor can cause depression; the main ones are interpersonal losses, and the more there
are, the more likely it is that depression will occur. A person that has close friends is less likely to
have depression when faced with stress.
Cognitive processes also play a role in depression. Beck: depressed people think negatively
about themselves, their situation, their future (cognitive triad). Depressed people attribute their
failures on themselves, and successes to luck. They also make errors of logic, such as over
generalizing, magnifying the seriousness of bad events, and taking responsibility for bad events
that didn’t really have anything to do with them. Cognitive patterns are more a cause than a
consequence of depression.
Learned helplessness model: people feel unable to control events around them. It is made by
Seligman: animals that couldn’t escape situations became passive.
What is schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia: ‘splitting of the mind’ refers to a split between thought and emotion. It is a
psychotic disorder that is characterized by alterations in thoughts perceptions, or in
consciousness. It affects 0.5-1% of the population. The rates are slightly lower in developing
countries, and the prognosis is better in such countries. The disorder has different subtypes.
Schizophrenia has positive and negative symptoms
Positive symptoms: delusions, hallucinations that are excessive in behaviour.
Negative symptoms: deficits of functioning such as apathy, lack of emotion, and slowed speech
and movement.
Subtypes: paranoid, disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, residual
Delusions: persecution, reference, grandeur, identity, guilt, control
Positive symptoms:
Delusions: false personal beliefs based on incorrect inferences about reality (Noid). The types of
delusion can be influenced by culture. Germans: delusions of guilt and persecution. Japanese:
delusions of harassment. Both had the same delusions of grandeur.
Hallucinations: false sensory perceptions that are experienced without an external source. They
can be visual, olfactory or somatosensory, and most often auditory. Typical auditory
hallucinations involve voices telling the person that he or she is inept or evil, or that command
that person to do dangerous things. They are associated with the activation in cortical areas that
process external sensory stimuli. Such hallucination might be caused by an inability to
distinguish normal inner speech.
Loosening of associations: a speech pattern among schizophrenic patients in which their
thoughts are disorganized or meaningless.
Clang association: the stringing together of words that rhyme but have no apparent link
Disorganised behaviour: acting in a strange or unusual ways, including strange movements,
bizarre speech, and inappropriate self-care.
Echolalia: repeating words they hear, occurs in catatonic schizophrenia (associated with fear
response)
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia: more common in men
Patients are often isolated and withdrawn, often avoid eye-contact and seem apathetic. They
use slowed speech, reduced speech output, and a monotonous tone of voice. Patient’s
movements may also be slowed and their overall amount of movement reduced, with little
initiation of behaviour and no interest in social participation.
While positive symptoms can be reduced or eliminated, the negative ones often persist,
suggesting that the 2 types of symptoms have different causes. Positive ones are thought to
arise from neurotransmitter dysfunction, and negatives ones are associated with abnormal brain
regions.
Schizophrenia is primarily a brain disorder
Early theories attributed the disease to mothers with contradictory behaviour. Genetics play a
role: 50% of identical twins, 14% of fraternal twins, 13% one parent, 50% both parents. The
genetic component represents a predisposition not a destiny. P.645
Patients have rare mutations of their DNA about 3 to 4 times more often, especially in genes
related to brain development and neurological functions. These mutations might result in
abnormal brain development that might trigger the disease. Multiple genes contribute; each of
at least 24 genes might modestly influence. Mental disease can arise when the competition
between the mother and father’s DNA leads to an unbalanced outcome.
The ventricle are enlarged, meaning that the actual brain tissue is reduced, and the greater the
reduction, the worse the outcome. The reductions increase overtime. They occur in many
regions of the brain, especially in the frontal lobes and medial temporal lobes, and lead to a
decrease of their activity.
Many have speculated that it is more a problem of connection between brain regions that the
result of diminished or changed functions. It could also result from abnormalities in
neurotransmitters such as dopamine: drugs that block dopamine decrease symptoms, and drugs
that increase dopamine increase symptoms. It might also involve abnormality in the glial cells
that make up the myelin sheath which would impair neurotransmission through the brain.
It is most often diagnosed in the 20s or 30s, however, neurological signs of the disease can be
identified earlier. Walker: those who developed the disorder displayed unusual social
behaviours, more severe negative emotions, and increasing motor disturbances, such as strange
facial expression that all went undiagnosed. Those with schizophrenia were more likely to have
displayed behavioural problems as children, such as fighting or not getting along, than those
who developed other disorders. 5 factors predict the onset of the behaviour: a family history,
greater social impairment, higher level of suspicion/paranoia, a history of substance abuse, and
higher level of unusual thoughts. When youths had 2 to 3 of the 1st 3 factors, they are 80% likely
to develop full blown psychosis.
Environmental factors influence schizophrenia
Environmental stress seems to contribute. 13 % of adopted children placed in disturbed families
and whose biological mother had schizophrenia developed the disease while 41% developed
other severe psychological disorders. None of those placed in healthy families developed
disorders.
Being born or raised in an urban area doubles the risk of developing the disease, suggesting that
urban stress contributes.
Existence of a schizovirus: living in the close quarters of a bid city increases the risks of the virus
spreading.
Antibodies were found in the blood of schizophrenics that weren’t found in the blood of healthy
individuals.
Those diagnosed with schizophrenia were more likely to have been born during late winter or
early spring, because their mothers were in their second trimester during flu season. Evidence
suggests that mothers of schizophrenic children are more likely to have contracted influenza
during that critical period when a great deal of brain development occurs, so at that time
trauma or pathogens can interfere with the organization of brain regions.
Are personality disorders truly mental disorders?
Personality disorder: when people interact with the world in maladaptive and inflexible ways for
long lasting periods and causes trouble in work and social situations. They affect 10% of the
population.
Personality disorders are maladaptive ways or relating to the world
They are classified in axis 2 because they last throughout life without any change. Table p. 649
They appear to be extreme versions of personality traits, and there are overlaps among the
traits in different disorders. They often don’t affect daily life as much as type 1 disorders.
Borderline personality disorder is associated with poor self-control
BPD: identity, affective, and impulse disturbances. The term borderline is used because patients
are considered to be on the border of normal and psychotic behaviour. It affects 1-2% of adults,
and is more than twice more common in women than in men.
They seem to lack a strong sense of self, can’t tolerate being alone, have an intense fear of
abandonment, and thus can be very manipulative in their attempts to control relationships.
They also have emotional instability characterized by sudden episodes of depression, anxiety,
anger, and irritability that can last from a few hours to a few days. They are also impulsive
(sexual promiscuity, physical fighting, binge eating and purging, and self-mutilation) and are at a
high risk for suicide.
It has a genetic component. Patients also show sleep abnormalities characteristic of depression;
borderline disorder and affective disorder both involve low levels of serotonin linked with
impulsive behaviour. They have diminished capacities in their frontal lobes, which help control
behaviour.
It may also have an environmental component; there is a strong relationship between trauma
and abuse and borderline disorder. 70 to 80% of patients have reported being abused or noticed
violent events. Borderline patients may also have had caretakers that were not accepting of who
they were or were unreliable or unavailable. The constant rejection made it difficult for children
to regulate and understand emotional reactions to events. Caregivers could also have
encouraged dependence and therefore patient couldn’t have developed a proper sense of self.
Antisocial personality disorder is associated with a lack of empathy
1800, psychopath: someone who seems willing to take advantage of others and hurt them
without concern or remorse.
Checkly (1941): Mask of Sanity: psychopaths can be charming, rational on the outside and
insincere, unsocial, incapable of love, lack insight and be shameless.
1980: DSM: Antisocial personality disorder: marked by a lack of empathy or remorse, often
hedonistic.
Psychopaths are said to have an extreme form of this disorder. They intentionally kill to gain
something, whereas those without psychopathic tendencies kill out of impulse. (Jeffrey Dahmer,
Dennis Rader BTK strangler, Gary Gilmore)
Assessment and consequences: Affecting much more men than women, it occurs if 1-4% of the
population. It appears in late adolescence and early adulthood and often improves around 40
(at least for those without psychopathic traits)
It can’t be assessed under 18, but the person must have displayed antisocial conduct before 15.
They must have repeatedly performed illegal acts, lied, and showing reckless disregard for their
own or for other’s safety. Being often bright and talkative, they can talk their way through, and
punishment has very little effect; they often repeat the problem behaviour.
50% of the prison population meets the criteria for APD. A study was conducted out of prison,
and 1/3 of interviewed patients were diagnosed. Psychopaths can hide their traits well, and can
even be at an advantage in politics and business.
On ethics: psychopathy and crimes in youths p.653
The causes of antisocial personality disorder
Lykken (1957): psychopaths don’t become anxious when subjected to aversive stimuli. They
don’t seem to feel fear or anxiety.
Criminal who have the disorder have slower alpha-wave-activity, indicating a lower overall level
of arousal and may explain why they engage in sensation-seeking and why they don’t learn from
punishment. This pattern also occurs in adolescent at risk for psychopathy.
There amygdala is smaller and they are less responsive to negative stimuli. There are deficits in
frontal lobe functioning which account for the lack of forethought and the inability to consider
the implications of characteristic actions.
Genetic and environmental factors are important for APD, and genetic components are more
important for psychopathy. Identical twins have a higher concordance of criminality than
fraternal twins . Adopted male children have a higher rate of criminality is their biological father
was a criminal, and the greater his record, the greater the chances that the kid will engage in
criminal behaviour.
Low economic statues, dysfunctional families, and childhood abuse play an important role.
Malnutrition at age 3 predicts antisocial behaviour at 17.
Should childhood disorders be considered a unique category?
Kraepelin (1883) didn’t list childhood disorders. Now DSM has a category in Axis 1 called
disorders usually 1st diagnosed in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Table p.655. It should be
taken into account that some children behaviour that are typical of a disorder may be normal at
an earlier stage of development.
Autism is a lack of awareness of others
Autism: a developmental disorder involving deficits in social interaction, impaired
communication, and restricted interest. It varies in severity, from mild social impairments to
severe social and intellectual impairments.
Kanner (1943): 1st to describe children as having early infantile autism.
3 to 6 children have autism, and 3 times more boys have it than girls. From 1991 to 1997, there
was an increase of 556% of cases diagnosed because of greater awareness of the disease and
willingness to attribute more behaviour the disease. Gernsbacher found problems with the
studies saying that there are large increases in the number of autistic children.
Asperger’s syndrome: high-functioning autism, in which children of normal intelligence have
deficits in social interactions, reflecting an underdeveloped theory of the mind. (Grandin: sees
the world from an animal’s point of view)
Core symptoms of autism
Those with severe autism are seemingly unaware of others. As babies they don’t smile to their
caregivers, don’t respond to vocalization, and may actively reject contact with others. They
don’t establish eye contact and don’t use their gaze to direct attention. Early signs of autism
may be overlooked (77% of people identified autistic babies by looking at video footage of their
1st birthdays.
There are also deficits in communication that are evident by 14 months among autistic children
who show severe impairments in verbal and non verbal communication. They have echolalia,
which may cease, and do pronoun reversal, a behaviour that will persist. Those who develop
functional language often interpret words literally, use language inappropriately, and lack verbal
spontaneity.
They also have restricted activities and interests. They are acutely aware of their surroundings,
and may focus on unimportant details. Any changes in their daily routine or in the placement of
furniture and toys may lead them to throw a tantrum. They tend to be obsessive and repetitive,
with a focus on objects’ sensory aspects. Their own behaviour is repetitive with odd hand
movement, body rocking, and hand flapping. Self-injury is also common.
Critical thinking skill: recognizing and resisting hindsight bias (we saw it coming)
Autism is primarily a biological disorder
Kanner: it is an innate disorder exacerbated by cold and unresponsive mothers. Parents are
insensitive, meticulous, introverted, and highly intellectual
Genetic studies are difficult since autistic people rarely marry and almost never have children. If
one child is autistic in the family, there is a 2 to 9% probability that another child will be
diagnosed. If 2 siblings are autistic, the chance of a third sibling to be autistic is of 35%. There is
a concordance of 70% to 90% in identical twins, and of 10% in fraternal twins.
There are prenatal and or neonatal events that may result in brain dysfunction. The brain of
autistic children grows unusually large during the 1st 2 years of life, and more slowly until age 5.
Their brains don’t develop normally during adolescence.
Some mothers of autistic children have bled significantly during their second trimester suggest
trauma during the critical period for brain development. Autistic children also have a higher
level of neonatal complications such as apnea, seizures, and delay in breathing. They are also
more likely to have minor physical anomalies, to be the product of a 1st pregnancy, or to be born
to older mothers.
Oxytocin may be involved in some of the behaviours of autistic children. Autistic adults who
receive oxytocin shuts have improved behaviours. Such injections are particularly useful for
reducing repetitive behaviours, questioning, inappropriate touching, and self-injury. Levels of 4
proteins in the blood involved in brain development are elevated in 97% of autistic children and
in 92% of retarded children, but in none of the healthy controls. Abnormal antibodies were
found in the blood of the mothers of 11% of autistic children.
Amaral: injected these antibodies in monkeys who developed behaviours characteristic of
autism.
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder is a disruptive impulse control disorder
ADHD: restless, inattentive, and impulsive behaviour. 50% of 4 year old mothers believe that
their child has it.
The etiology of ADHD: 11% of boys and 4% of girls have it. The causes remain unknown and it is
most likely a heterogeneous disorder. Children might come from disturbed families, and factors
such as poor parenting and social disadvantages may contribute to the onset of the disease.
There is a genetic component: 55% concordance in identical twins and 32% in fraternal twins.
Zametkin: adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD had reduced metabolisms in brain
regions involved in self-regulations of motor functions and of attentional systems. The
connections between the frontal lobes and the limbic system are impaired in those with ADHD.
The symptoms of ADHD are similar to the behaviours of those with frontal lobe damage.
Prefrontal abnormalities were found when adolescents with ADHD perform tasks that require
inhibiting motor responses. Greater impairments in performance on the tasks are associated
with abnormal activation of these prefrontal regions. There are differences in the basal ganglia,
which is involved in regulating motor behaviour and impulse control, in the brains of some
ADHD patients.
ADHD across the life span: diagnoses are given when 5 or 6 year old kids enter socially
structured environments. Many preschoolers that have ADHD behaviour are normal. Children
later diagnosed often have difficulty establishing patterns for eating and sleeping.
Between 30 to 80% of those with ADHD continue to show symptoms throughout adulthood.
Adults with ADHD, 4%, may struggle academically and vocationally; they reach a generally
lower-than-expected socioeconomic levels and change jobs more frequently.