Download The Person

Persons: True Nature
 Human beings are biological creatures.
 Every person is different, yet all people are much the
same.
 People can be understood fully only in the context of
their cultures and other social influences.
 Human lives are a continuous process of change.
 Behavior is motivated.
 Humans are social animals.
 People play an active part in creating their experiences.
 Behavior can be adaptive and maladaptive.
Behavior: In the context of Psychology
 Emotional Responses: feelings such as anger,
happiness and depression.
 Overt actions: observable like walking and some other
gestures.
 Physiological reactions: heart rate, excitement, and
biochemical reactions.
 Social Relationship: interacting with people
Variables Influencing
Individual Behavior
The P
Person
• Skills & abilities
• Personality
• Perceptions
• Attitudes
•Values
• Ethics
TheEEnvironment
• Organization
• Work group
• Job
• Personal life
B
Behavior
B = f(P,E)
Propositions of Interactional Psychology
 Behavior—function of a continuous, multi-directional
interaction between person and situation
 Person—active in process
 Changed by situations
 Changes situations
 People vary in many characteristics
 Two situational interpretations
 The objective situation
 Person’s subjective view of the situation
Consciousness
 William James (1890):
 Consciousness is a constantly moving
stream of thoughts, feelings, and emotions
 Consciousness can be viewed as our
subjective awareness of mental events
 Functions of consciousness:
 Monitoring mental events
 Control: consciousness allows us to
formulate and reach goals
 Consciousness may have evolved to
direct or control behavior in adaptive
ways
The Problem of Consciousness
 How can it be studied? Can it be?
 What is its function/purpose?
 Is it unitary?
 What do we know? What do we not know?
Levels of Consciousness
 Active, analytic consciousness on a continuum of
degrees of consciousness
 Focal awareness (the focus of attention)
 Reflective
 Primary
 Peripheral awareness
 accessible by a shift of attention
 Unconsciousness
 Subconscious (accessible to conscious awareness)
 Nonconscious (not accessible)
Unconsciousness
 Subconscious
 Not in awareness
 Not necessarily retrievable into awareness by will
 Influences current processing
 Nonconscious
 Not in awareness
 Not retrievable by will
 Not necessarily influencing current processing
 Perhaps better(?) distinction: C and Not-C
Conscious vs. Unconscious
Functions of Consciousness
 Adaptation to novel events
 More novelty  more conscious effort needed to process
 Retrieval from long term memory
 C not necessary for retrieval but can be used to retrieve
information necessary to the situation
 Construction of storable representations of current activities
and events
 Information stored and retrieved for future comparisons of
present and past
 Reflective, Self-monitoring
 Through inner speech and imagery we can control C and
UnC functioning
 Troubleshooting/error detection
 Conscious resources may be activated when other processes
(often UnC) are interrupted or breakdown
Distinctions in cognitive psychology
 Conscious
 UnConscious
 Mediated
 Immediate
 Strategic control
 Automatic
 Limited capacity
 No capacity demands
 Voluntary
 Involuntary
 Declarative memory
 Procedural
 Supraliminal
 Subliminal
 Novel stimuli
 Routine, predictable
 Wakefulness, dreaming
 Deep sleep, coma
 Episodic
 Semantic
 Explicit cognition
 Implicit cognition
 Attended stimuli
 Unattended input
States of Consciousness
 Normal Waking State
 The “stream of consciousness”
 Daydreaming
 Altered States of Consciousness
 Near Death & Out of Body Experiences
 Meditation & Sensory Deprivation
 Hypnosis
 Sleep
 Other Induced States

Drugs
 Anesthesia
 At what point is Consciousness ‘turned off’?
Dreaming
 Psychoanalytic view: Dreams represent a window
into the unconscious
 The latent content (meaning) can be inferred from the
manifest content (the actual dream)
 Cognitive view: Dreams are constructed from the
daily issues of the dreamer
 Biological view: Dreams represent the attempt of
the cortex to interpret the random neural firing of
the brain during sleep
Sleep and dreams
 Dreams
 Dreams as a form of thinking
 Mnemonic activation
 Lucid (LaBerge et al., 1981)
 Characteristics
 Sleep mentation

Thoughts while sleeping
 Dream qualities



Imagery
Temporal progression
Narrative coherence
When Dreams Occur
 Hypnagogic State
 Onset of sleep
 May be characterized by vivid imagery
 NREM Sleep
 10-40% yield dream reports
 Often static images or isolated thoughts
 REM Sleep
 80-90% yield dream reports
 Usually images in a narrative
Dreams as a Form of Thinking
 Dreams are symbolic acts
 Dreams are based on what we know
 Children have simpler dreams than adults (or lack the
language to describe the complexity)
 Dreams use dissociated pieces of memory and
knowledge
 Dreams are organized
 Dreams have realistic features
 People are people; objects are real
Sleep Disorders
 Insomnia is the inability to achieve or maintain sleep
 Many causes for insomnia:
 Stress
 Depression
 Sleeping pills (iatrogenic means physician-caused)
 Some suggestions for treating insomnia
 Only use your bed for sleeping
 Avoid physical activity prior to sleep
 Avoid consumption of caffeine and alcohol before bed
 Keep a regular sleep schedule
 Go to bed when you are ready(do not force sleep)
 Do not sleep during the day if you have insomnia
Other Sleep Disorders
 Nightmares are vivid fear-evoking dreams
 Occur during REM sleep
 Night Terrors: are episodes of intense panic
 Occur during delta sleep (early in night)
 Sleep apnea: refers to awakening brought on by
cessation of breathing during sleep
 Narcolepsy: falling asleep during the day
Altered States of Consciousness
 Changes in consciousness can be brought on by
 Meditation
 Hypnosis
 Drug ingestion
 Religious experiences
Meditation
 Concentrative meditation
 Emphasis on limited attentional focus
 Mindfulness meditation
 Emphasis on heightened attentiveness
 Common Goal
 Break down habitual modes of thinking
Hypnosis
 Hypnosis is a state of consciousness characterized
by
 Deep relaxation
 Suggestibility
 Effects observed during hypnotic state:
 Age regression
 Change in pain perception
 Ability to recall memories into consciousness
Drug-Induced States of Consciousness
 Drug effects on consciousness depend on:
 Biological actions of the drug
 Usually involve drug action at brain synapses
 Expectations of drug effect (what effect are you
expecting from the drug?)
 Drug classes
 Depressants (including alcohol)
 Stimulants (amphetamine, cocaine)
 Hallucinogens (LSD)
 Marijuana
© 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Experience
The experience of meaning in life can be understood
as "being able to perceive opportunities for rewarding
emotional experience,"
Types of Experiences
 Physical Experience: it occurs whenever an object or
environment changes
 Mental Experience: it involves the aspect of intellect and
consciousness experienced as combinations of thought,
perception, memory, emotion, will, and imagination,
including all cognitive processes.
 Emotional Experience: Humans can rationalize falling in
(and out) of love as "emotional experience’.
 Subjective Experience: it can involve a state of individual
subjectivity, perception on which one builds one's own state
of reality; a reality based on one’s interaction with one's
environment. The subjective experience depends on
one’s individual ability to process data, to store and
internalize it.
PERCEPTION
Meaning
 Perception
 The process by which sensory information is actively
organized and interpreted by the brain.
Perception
Gestalt principles of perceptual organization
 Figure-ground
 Organization depends on what we see as figure (object) and
what we perceive a ground (context).
 Similarity
 Objects that have similar characteristics are perceived as unit.
 Proximity
 Objects close together in space or time perceived as belonging
together.
 Continuity
 We tend to perceive figures or objects as belonging together if
they appear to form a continuous pattern.
 Closure
 We perceive figures with gaps in them to be complete.
Perception
 You can see a white vase as figure against a black
background, or two black faces in profile on a
white background
Perception
Depth Perception
 Definition: Ability to see three-dimensional space and to




accurately judge distances
Visual Cliff: Apparatus that looks like the edge of an
elevated platform or cliff
Depth Cues: Features of environment, and messages, that
supply information about distance and space
Monocular Depth Cue: Depth cue that can be sensed with
one eye
Binocular Depth Cue: Depth cue that can be sensed with
two eyes
Figure 4.34
FIGURE.Human infants and newborn animals refuse to go over the edge of the visual cliff.
Illusions: Is What You See What You Get?
 Illusion: Misleading or distorted perceptions of stimuli that
actually exists
 Hallucination: When people perceive objects or events that
have no external basis in reality
 Muller-Lyer Illusion: Two equal-length lines topped with
inward or outward pointing V’s appear to be of different
length; based on experience with edges and corners
FIGURE . It is difficult to look at this simple drawing without perceiving depth. Yet, the drawing is
nothing more than a collection of flat shapes. Turn this page counterclockwise 90 degrees, and
you will see three C’s, one within another. When the drawing is turned sideways, it seems nearly
flat. However, if you turn the page upright again, a sense of depth will reappear. Clearly, you
have used your knowledge and expectations to construct an illusion of depth. The drawing itself
would only be a flat design if you didn’t invest it with meaning.
FIGURE. Some interesting perceptual illusions. Such illusions are a normal part of visual
perception.
FIGURE. Why does line (b) in the Müller-Lyer illusion look longer than line (a)? Probably because
it looks more like a distant corner than a nearer one. Because the vertical lines form images of
the same length, the more “distant” line must be perceived as larger. As you can see in the
drawing on the right, additional depth cues accentuate the Müller-Lyer illusion.
Influences on Perception
 Bottom-up processing
 Information processing in which individual
components or bits of data are combined until a
complete perception is formed
 Top-down processing
 Application of previous experience and conceptual
knowledge to recognize the whole of a perception and
thus easily identify the simpler elements of that whole
Influences on Perception
 Perceptual set
 An expectation of what will be perceived, which can
affect what actually is perceived
 Inattentional blindness
 The phenomenon in which we miss an object in our field
of vision because we are attending to another
 Social perception
 Facial expressions, the visual cues for emotional
perception, often take priority over the auditory cues
associated with a person’s speech and volume, as well as
the actual words spoken
Perceptual Learning
 Change in the brain that alters how we process sensory
information
 Perceptual Reconstructions: Mental models of external
events
 Perceptual Habits: Ingrained patterns of organization and
attention
FIGURE . The limits of pure perception. Even simple designs are easily misperceived.
Fraser’s spiral is actually a series of concentric circles. The illusion is so powerful that
people who try to trace one of the circles sometimes follow the illusory spiral and jump
from one circle to the next.
Learning
Learning: Definition
 A relatively permanent change
in behavior brought about by
experience
 Distinguishes between
changes due to maturation
and changes brought about by
experience
 Distinguishes between shortterm changes in performance
and actual learning
3 Types of Learning
 Learning through association - Classical Conditioning
 Learning through consequences – Operant
Conditioning
 Learning through observation – Modeling/
Observational Learning
Classical Conditioning
 Type of learning discovered by
Ivan Pavlov in which a neutral
stimulus comes to bring about a
response after it is paired with a
stimulus that naturally brings
about that response
Classical Conditioning
A stimulus that, before
conditioning,does not naturally bring
about the response of interest
A stimulus that brings about a
response without having been
learned
Classical Conditioning
A natural, innate response that is
not associated with previous
learning
Classical Conditioning
A NS that has been paired with a
UCS to bring about a response
formerly caused only by the UCS
A response that, after
conditioning, follows a
previously neutral stimulus
Before Conditioning
During Conditioning
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Companies, Inc. Permission
required for reproduction or
display.
After Conditioning
Classical Conditioning
 Extinction
 Occurs when a previously
conditioned response
decreases in frequency and
eventually disappears
 Spontaneous recovery
 The re-emergence of an
extinguished conditioned
response after a period of rest
Classical Conditioning
 Stimulus generalization
 Occurs when a conditioned
Conditioned Stimulus
response follows a stimulus that
is similar to the original
conditioned stimulus
New Stimulus
 Stimulus discrimination
 Ability to differentiate
between stimuli
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Companies, Inc. Permission
required for reproduction or
display.
Operant Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning
 Learning in which a voluntary
response is strengthened or
weakened, depending on its
favorable or unfavorable
consequences
 Law of effect
 Responses that lead to satisfying
consequences are more likely to
be repeated, and responses
followed by negative outcomes
are less likely to be repeated
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Companies, Inc. Permission
required for reproduction or
display.
Operant Conditioning
 Reinforcement
 The process by which a
stimulus increases the
probability that a preceding
behavior will be repeated
 Reinforcer
 Any stimulus that increases
the probability that a
preceding behavior will occur
again
Operant Conditioning
 Primary reinforcer
 Satisfies some biological need
and works naturally,
regardless of a person’s prior
experience
 Secondary reinforcer
 A stimulus that becomes
reinforcing because of its
association with a primary
reinforcement
Positive Reinforcers, Negative
Reinforcers, and Punishment
 Positive Reinforcement
 A stimulus added to the
environment that brings about an
increase in a preceding response
 Negative
reinforcement
 Unpleasant stimulus
whose removal from
the environment
leads to an increase in
the probability that a
preceding response
will occur again in the
future
 Escape conditioning
 Avoidance
conditioning
Punishment
 Stimulus that decreases the
probability that a prior
behavior will occur again
 Positive punishment weakens
a response through the
application of an unpleasant
stimulus
 Negative punishment consists
of the removal of something
pleasant
Schedules of Reinforcement
 Continuous reinforcement
 Behavior that is reinforced
every time it occurs
 Partial reinforcement
 Behavior that is reinforced
some but not all of the time
Schedules of Reinforcement
 Fixed-ratio schedule
 Reinforcement is given only
after a certain number of
responses
 Variable-ratio schedule
 Reinforcement occurs after a
varying number of responses
rather than after a fixed
number
Schedules of Reinforcement
 Fixed-interval schedule
 Provides reinforcement for a
response only if a fixed time
period has elapsed, overall rates
of response are relatively low
 Variable-interval schedule
 Time between reinforcements
varies around some average
rather than being fixed
Copyright © The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc. Permission
required for reproduction or
display.
Operant Conditioning
 Stimulus Control Training
 Behavior is reinforced in the
presence of a specific
stimulus, but not in its
absence
 Discriminative stimulus
 Signals the likelihood that
reinforcement will follow the
response

Stimulus generalization
Operant Conditioning
 Superstitious behavior
 Shaping
 Process of teaching a complex
behavior by rewarding closer
and closer approximations of
the desired behavior
 Biological constraints
 Built-in limitations in the
ability of animals to learn
particular behaviors
Cognitive-Social Approaches to
Learning
 Latent learning
 A new behavior is learned but
not demonstrated until
reinforcement is provided for
displaying it
 Observational learning
 Learning through observing the
behavior of another person
called a model
Learning and Memory Linked
• Learning relies on memory.
 Learning requires the storage and retrieval of information.
• Memory relies on learning.
 An individual’s established
knowledge base provides a
structure of past learning.
 Incoming data attaches to that
structure though association.
Explain how you have learned something by
associating it with what you already knew.
Memory
 Objective’s
‐ Encoding memories
‐ Storing memories
‐ Retrieving memories
Meaning of Memory
 Memory is a constructive process through
which we actively organize and shape
information.
 Thinking and memory are flexible and
capable of constant change…this can lead to
errors.
Information processing model
It focuses on how information is cognitively
organized
 Encoding
 Storage
 Retrieval
The Study of Memory
 How does information get into memory?
 ENCODING
 How is information maintained in memory?
 STORAGE
 How is information pulled back out of memory?
 RETRIEVAL
Encoding
 Encoding is the organizing of sensory
information so the brain can process it.
 This is the first step in the flow of memory
 Learners must encode information to store it.
 If encoding is successful we are able to retrieve
the information from storage.
What did you say?
 Encoding requires attention
 Divided attention during encoding hurts
performance on memory tasks, especially
during retrieval.
Limitations of the information processing
model
 Memories are described as literal, “hard” data stored on a
computer disk or hard drive.
 But human memories are often fuzzy and fragile.
 Also, computers process one piece of data at a time ,while
human memory can process a lot of information at the
same time.
Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP)
The brain performs multiple, parallel
operations all at once, allowing memory is
spread (distributed) throughout a network of
processing units
PDP Model
 It suggests that memory relies on how deeply we
process information
 By adding meaning, developing organizations and
associations, or relating it to things we already know, it
can be stored for a lifetime.
Storage
 Storage involves maintaining the
information available in memory
 Whenever people have access to information they no longer
sense, memory is involved
It’s a memory when…
 Example- if you look up a phone number, go to the
telephone, and dial the number then memory is
involved- even if for only seconds.
Stores
 Sensory Memory performs the initial
encoding of sensory information for a brief
time, usually only a fraction of a second.
 The sensory memory recodes a complete
memory of the image, but it fades too
rapidly for people to “read”
This capacity is called the Sensory
Memory
Sensory Memory
 Preserves information in its original sensory form for a
brief time – usually only a fraction of second
 Iconic Memory is a visual icon of the original visual
stimulus
 Capacity: 4  2 bits of info
 Echoic Memory is the auditory sensory memory
 Capacity: about 6 bits of info
Test Your
Sensory
Memory!
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-Computing solutions to math problems
-Allows you to comprehend what you are reading
- Figure out the meaning of what has just been said to your in
a conversation.
The working memory has many
limitations
 Short-term (working) memory is a limited-capacity store
that can maintain unrehearsed information up to 30
seconds
 Capacity:
 “The magic number” (George Miller)
 Humans have the ability to retain 7  2 items of information
(in adults).
Why is it that…?
 Phone numbers are 7 digits?
 Social security numbers are 9 digits?
 Commercials use words in the phone
numbers?
 People can group information in ways to
expand their short-term memory capacity
called “Chunking.”
 “Chunking” allows for easier encoding
How could you chunk these examples?
18002255288
1 -8 0 0- 2 2 5- 5 2 8 8
1-800-CALL-ATT
CBSIRSMTVPBSDMV
CBS IRS MTV PBS DMV
1-4-9-2-1-7-7-6-1-9-9-9-2-0-0-5
1492-1776-1999-2005
How long can this information stay in STM?
 Memories disappear unless:
 You continually rehearse them
 They are really meaningful so they get stored
quickly into long-term memory
 Rehearsal:
 The process of repetitively verbalizing or
thinking about information
Long Term Memory
 An unlimited capacity store that can hold information over
length periods of time
 Capacity: Unlimited
 Duration: Relatively permanent
 Information can be stored in separate units and some
information can be retrieved without retrieving others
 Tip of the tongue phenomenon (temporarily inaccessible)
Motivation
Emotion
Intelligence