Psychology Gleitman Resiberg Gross

Psychology Gleitman Resiberg Gross
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction 9
The breadth of psychology’s content 9
The diversity of psychology’s perspective 9
Biological basis: 9
Cultural influences 9
Eating and the social world 9
Eating disorder 9
Cognitive control over eating 9
Development of food preferences 9
What unites psychology? 10
The scientific method 10
Experimental design 10
Formulating a testable hypothesis 10
Observational studies 11
Correlation studies and causal ambiguity 11
Third variable problem 11
Studies of single participants 11
Methodological eclecticism 11
Generalising from research 11
Chapter 2 Evolution and the biological roots of behaviour 11
Evolutionary roots of motivated behaviour 11
Basic principles of natural selection 11
Genes 12
Personal and genetic survival 12
Evolution of behaviour 12
The achievement of Homeostasis 12
The autonomic nervous system 12
Eating 13
The role of the liver 13
Threat and aggression 13
Aggression and predation 13
Territoriality 13
Patterns of human aggression 14
Learning to be aggressive 14
Sex 14
Hormones and sexuality 14
Summary 14
The evolutionary roots of behaviour 14
The achievement of homeostatic 14
Eating 14
Threat and aggression 14
Sex 15
Chapter 3 The brain and the nervous system 15
The organisms as machine 15
Descartes and the reflex concept 15
How the nervous system is studied 15
Clinical observation 15
Neuropsychology 15
Experimental techniques 15
Neuroimaging techniques 15
The architecture of the nervous system 15
Central and peripheral nervous system 15
Hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain 16
The cortex 16
Projection area 16
Origins of the brain 16
Phylogeny and ontogeny 16
Glia 17
The synapse 17
Neurotransmitters 17
Drugs and neurotransmitters 17
Interactions through the bloodstream 17
Plasticity 17
Summary 17
The organism as a machine 17
Chapter 4 Sensation 17
The origins of knowledge 18
The passive perceiver 18
Distal and proximal 18
The role of association 18
The active perceiver 18
Psychophysics 18
Measuring sensory intensity 18
Detection and Decision 18
The functioning of the senses 18
Sensory coding 19
Sensory quality 19
Hearing 19
The stimulus: Sound 19
Complex waves 20
Gathering sound waves 20
Further processing of information 20
Vision 20
The stimulus: light 20
The importance of change: adaption 20
Interaction in Space: Contrast 20
Colour 20
Opponent process theory 21
Perceiving shapes 21
Chapter 5 Perception 21
Distance perception 21
Motion perception 21
Form Perception 21
Classical approach to perception 22
Perceiving constancy 22
The process model 22
From geons to meanings 22
The neuroscience approach 22
The binding problem 22
Perceptual Selection: Attention 22
Chapter 6 Learning 23
Habituation 23
Classical conditioning. 23
Instrumental conditioning 23
Schedules of reinforcement 23
Changing behaviour or acquiring knowledge 23
Chapter 7 Memory 24
Acquisition 24
The stages of memory 24
Memory connections 24
Mnemonics 24
Storage 25
Retrieval 25
When memory fails 25
Forgetting 25
Retrieval failure 25
Misinformation 25
Intrusions from general knowledge 26
Misplace familiarity 26
Ways to improve memory 26
Varieties of memory 26
Episodic memory/generic memory 26
Remembering without awareness 26
Distinguishing implicit from explicit memory 26
Anterograde amnesia 26
Emotional remembering 26
Flashbulb memories 27
Memory and trauma 27
Chapter 8 Thinking 27
Analogical Representation 27
Mental images 27
Symbolic representations 27
Propositions 27
Knowledge and memory 27
The process of thinking 27
Obstacles to problem solving 28
Problem solving strategies 28
Reasoning and decision making 28
Confirmation bias 29
Dual process theory 29
Decision making 29
Executive Control 29
Consciousness 30
Chapter 9 Language 30
The meaning of words 31
The definitional theory of meaning 31
The prototype theory of meaning 31
Word meanings in folk theories of the world 31
The meaning of sentences 31
How we understand 31
Conversational inference 31
Comprehension 31
The growth of language in children 31
Perceptual and conceptual properties of a child 32
Language learning with changed endowments 32
Chapter 10 Cognitive Development 32
Gene environment interaction 32
The sensitive period 32
Cognitive development 32
Sensorimotor 33
Preoperational period 33
Concrete and formal operations 33
Social cognition in infancy 33
Infant response to faces 33
Cognitive development in pre-schoolers 34
Social cognition in pre schoolers 34
The causes of cognitive growth: 34
Biological inheritance 34
Cultural context 34
Development of memory 34
Metacognition 35
Dynamic systems theory 35
Chapter 11 Social Development 35
The path to attachment 35
Parenting 36
Parenting styles 36
Peer relationships 36
Effects of friendship 37
Emotional development 37
Emotion regulation 37
Moral development 37
Learning to be moral 37
Sexual development 37
Gender roles 37
Sources of gender role differences 38
Gender differences 38
Gender Identity 38
Sexual orientation 38
Development after childhood 38
Adolescence 38
Adults 38
Chapter 12 Social Cognition and emotion 39
Perceiving and understanding ourselves 39
Social identity and group enhancement 40
Attitudes 40
Emotion 41
James Lange theory of emotion: 41
Cannon bard theory 41
Scahcter-singer 41
Behavioural aspects of emotion 41
Experiential aspects of emotion 41
Physiological aspects of emotions 42
Function of emotion 42
Chapter 13 Social influence and relationships 42
Conformity 42
Obedience 42
Compliance 42
Leadership 42
Group dynamics 43
Mere presence effects 43
Social loafing 43
Deinviduation 43
Thinking in Groups 43
Group think 43
Relationships 43
Types of relationship 43
Attraction 44
Chapter 14 Intelligence 44
Mental tests 44
Information processing approach 44
Chapter 15 Personality 45
Trait approach 45
The consistency controversy 45
Resolving the situationists challenge 45
Cultural differences in trait taxonomies 45
Genes and Personality 46
Physiology and personality 46
Cultural effects 46
Family effects 46
The psychodynamic approach: probing the depths 46
The developing mind 47
Windows into the unconscious 48
Criticisms and critiques 48
Psychodynamics after Freud 49
Humanistic approach 49
Positive psychology 49
Contributions of humanistic approach 50
The social-cognitive approach 50
Chapter 16 Psychopathology 50
Mental disorder 50
The modern conception of mental disorder 51
Classifying Mental disorder 51
Schizophrenia 51
Mood disorders 52
Bipolar and unipolar syndromes 52
Developmental disorder 53
Personality disorders 53
Chapter 17 Treatment of mental disorders 53
Biomedical therapies 53
Pharmacotherapy 54
Psychosurgery 54
Psychotherapies 55
Classical psychoanalysis 55
Psychodynamic therapy 55
Interpersonal therapy 55
Humanistic experiential therapist 55
Client centred: client accepts himself as he is, therapist creates an environment where they feel valued and understood. Existential looks at alienation and depersonalisation and challenges clients about what it means to exist. Gestalt is is unity of mind and body and the main aim is to increase self-awareness. 55
Behavioural therapy 55
Cognitive therapy 55

 

Chapter 1 Introduction

Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes.

Psychology looks at individuals, why they think, feel and behave as they do and it looks at groups.

The breadth of psychology’s content

1.       Watching the living brain

a.       What is the relation between brain and mental activity

2.       Examining memory

a.       What helps and hinders memories.

3.       Innate capacities

a.       What are they

4.       Displays and communication

a.       Much of the subject matter of psychology is inherently social, messages that enable sex, and status, and appeasement and pacifying.

5.       Social behaviour in humans

a.       Why do we act the way we do in groups

The diversity of psychology’s perspective

There is a range both in terms of what is studied in psychology and how, take for example eating

Biological basis:

Driven by evolutionary mechanisms there is a homeostatic mechanism that regulates food consumption as seen in rat studies. Liver manages signals, when to draw glucose from store, when to issue food satiated signals to the hypothalamus. Hypothalamus deals with initiating and stopping feeding. Live and the brain are involved with eating patterns

Cultural influences

People in different cultures feel hungry at different times of the day which reflect their standard meal time. Ideal body shapes have varied over time, e.g. Ruben’s and now. Eating patterns influenced by culture.

Eating and the social world

We are more likely to eat when surrounded by other people who are eating.  Satiated hen will carry on eating when hungry hands come and start eating. People associate negative traits with being fat, e.g. lazy, and ugly, these help shape our body values. Other people affect our eating patterns

Eating disorder

Anorexia explained as a fear of sexuality, defiance of parents, desire for control. To understand a behaviour you need to understand its typical and atypical behaviours. Eating patterns need to be understood across the ranger of behaviours they are exhibited in.

Cognitive control over eating

What we eat is influenced by our memory, if we have a better memory of eating then we eat less. Eating patterns need to be understood in relation to other human systems.

Development of food preferences

What desires for food do people have. These can be influenced by cultural or personal beliefs or social factors. Biology is an influence young children don’t like strong tastes but do like sweet things.

What unites psychology?

1.       Answer the question, why do humans do what they do, feel what they feel and think what they think.

2.       Broad claims about how the mind and behaviour works, for instance nature or nurture

3.       A commitment to science

The scientific method

We formulate testable hypothesis. We make predictions against that hypothesis which confirms or changes or hypothesis. If we can replicate the study with other data it adds even more weight. All you ever get is a hypothesis that hasn’t been disconfirmed. . Thing is evidence is taken as factual but it’s rather based in theory. One part of your system tests the other part.

Experimental design

Formulating a testable hypothesis

You need to know what facts would confirm and what disconfirm your hypothesis

The need for systematic data collection

You need a large sample size, to ensure you are not influenced by atypical cases. You need systematic collection to ensure there is no report bias. You need to ensure no file drawer problem, where only the data that supports the theory are used. You have to avoid confirmation bias, where people’s memories are selective towards something, e.g. a memory bias to the positive.

Specifying the dependent variable

The dependent variable is the factor that other parts of the experiment are proved to depend on. For instance does attractiveness depend on how much money you earn? Alternatively independent variables are show to not depend on anything, so intelligence is class independent. Or to disprove a theory would be to show that using personal attractiveness is independent of using a self-help tape.

Using a control group

This is used to compare what would happen without the intervention, so to show the intervention did something. You get the experimental group to do the experiment on and the control group to make the comparison with.  The only difference between the two groups should be the experiment!!

Demand characteristics: cues in the experimenting environment that favour one response rather than another.

The double blind design is where neither the participants not the experimenters know who is in the control group and who is in the experimenter group. Double blind aims to take out any influence the participants have in getting the right answer, so takes out demand characteristics.

Removing confounds

You can produce ambiguous results that could be open to more than one interpretation. Any difference between control and experiment group is a potential confound as it could be used to explain the outcome not the dependent variable.  If there are confounds then the experiment lacks internal validity as it isn’t measuring what it is supposed to.

Random assignment

People need to be randomly assigned to either the control or experiment group.  This would be a confound If there were any reason why certain people were in certain groups.

Within subject comparison

Use the same people in different groups

Observational studies

Sometimes you can manipulate variables e.g. height, sometimes you wouldn’t want to e.g. abuse, so you use observational studies.

Correlation studies and causal ambiguity

Here you use the same principles for an experimental design, then look to see if you can predict certain outcomes on the basis of the presence or absence of the independent variable and if you can predict the dependent variable.  Causation is difficult to prove does a cause b or does b cause a, they are both correlated.

Third variable problem

With correlation you are trying to establish cause and effect, between dependent\independent variables. But there could be a third factor to explain him relationship.  It is for this reason that correlation does not imply causation. This is a problem for observational studies and not experimental studies, as the latter uses an identical control group to rule out the third variable.

Studies of single participants

These are   the case studies of Freud and Piaget.

Methodological eclecticism

3 types of study: experiment, observation and case studies.

Case studies good for data that is about uniqueness and can provide depth and discovery.

Experiments are methodologically tight but artificial and therefore questionable in terms of generalisability.

Observational studies are more generalizable but less rigorous.

Generalising from research

External validity is your ability to apply research findings to a wider range of people rather than just your test group. To do this your cohort needs to be representative of where you want to apply your findings. Radmon sampling helps to choose participants as there is then no bias on selection, its principle is anyone in the population could be selected

Chapter 2 Evolution and the biological roots of behaviour

Evolutionary roots of motivated behaviour

Play and curiosity found in other species!

Basic principles of natural selection

Darwin in Galapagos, found many variety of slightly different finch, then he read the economist Malthus seeing how populations thrived or didn’t according to resources. Thus there are competition for resources to thrive, and therefore certain creatures with certain attributes would do well, hence evolution.

Genes

Darwin saw that whilst not all traits are passed on between generations many are and he thought there must be a mechanism to enable this.

Genes and DNA are the answer to this. Genes are stored within chromosomes in a cell’s nucleus, with each cell storing more than a 1000 genetic commands. There are 23 chromosomes and up to 80,000 genes

Dominant and recessive genes

Each gene comes in a pair, coming from each parent. If both genes agree then that’s what you get, otherwise some genes are dominant e.g. brown eye colour which will trump whatever is within the other genre. Some attributes e.g. eye colour depend only on one gene e.g. eye colour.

Genotype and phenotype

Genes don’t control attributes, rather they control the product of a protein or enzyme, and it is these biochemical mechanisms that influence the trait. The sequence from genes, to proteins to complex structures, to observable traits is complex. Genotype is the gene moving to phenotype which is the trait is indirect.

Genes influence the direction of development but other factors e.g. certain forms of stimulation, toxins etc. will alter it.

Personal and genetic survival

Evolution puts the importance on genetic survival.  This helps us understand why some features e.g. peacocks tail feathers makes it less likely they survive as it slows them down but more likely they will breed.

Evolution of behaviour

Darwin believe both personal traits and behaviour affect natural selection.  Twins exhibit similar characteristics and behaviours even if brought up in radically different environments.  Twin studies don’t prove behaviour is genetic rather as a behaviour could be the result of a trait applied to an environment, e.g. introversion results in TV watching but TV watching isn’t a genetic outcome.

The achievement of Homeostasis

Bernard 1800 argued organisms have an external and internal environment.  The internal systems are ph. level, quantities of oxygen, glucose etc. The internal systems only vary by small amounts irrespective to what’s going on outside. These are controlled by homeostatic, which operates on a negative feedback when things aren’t right something is done, when things are right no signal is given. Homeostasis is one influence in the regulation of temperature, it is the biological influence but that is one amongst many influences.

The autonomic nervous system

Mammals are endotherms, they have a stable internal temperature.

Fish and reptiles are ectotherms and have a variable internal temperature.

Endotherms use behaviour and body size to affect stable temperature as well as the ANS, the ANS sends control to the glands and smooth muscles of major organisms. This amongst other things regulates heat.

The ANS has two parts the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic is fight\flight the parasympathetic is rest and digest.  To rise temperature use the sympathetic nervous system to cool down the parasympathetic.

The ANS is governed by the hypothalamus which is the size of a pea. The ANS can cause blood to move to and from the skin, to affect sweating and digestion rates.

Eating

This is under homeostatic influence as well as other include. Animals act as if they have a set point for weight, fi under or over fed they return to it. There seems some evidence form diets that the same is true for humans.

The role of the liver

The maintainers of the set point of weight in humans are, the metabolic system, how much it uses. The liver is a major player in this as it maintains how much glucose is in the blood stream. The liver moves glucose to a d from glycogen and fatty acid. If the liver sees there’s too much glucose then signals to stop eating are sent and contrary wise. The liver sends these signals with enough lead time to be able to do something about it, so it says glucose low some time before it actually is.

Other control signals for feeding

There are also glucose receptors in the hypothalamus. There are also signals in the stomach that sends message to the brain to say nutrient is on its way and you can stop eating. Notice its nutrient that’s important not bulk.

Glycogen is the short term store of glucose, when this runs out there is also a long term store in adipose cells.  Adipose cells secrete leptin when full. This governs long term food intake.

Threat and aggression

Factors that affect this are external stimulus, then the parasympathetic NS producing adrenaline and the fight or flight system coming on board. Although fight or flight is a limited understanding some freeze, some change colour

When the parasympathetic system is activated it has a an effect on our digestive and sexual system’s

Aggression and predation

Predators hunt and kill for food without emotion, they don’t get angry.

Aggression is a response to threat and involves emotions.

Aggression

Physical

Verbal: insults

Social: gossip

Territoriality

One reason animals fight is to maintain scare recourse e.g. food. In humans society determines rules of territory, of personal space.

Patterns of human aggression

Humans do become aggressive to maintain or get what they want\think they own. Again complex beliefs about past injuries or future opportunities can provoke aggression. Social provocation to violence is more likely with people of high self-esteem. High levels of sensation seeking realties to high levels of aggression.  High levels of impulsivity correlate with aggression.

Learning to be aggressive

Our society teaches if aggression is acceptable, we get messages about aggression in the media.

Sex

Hormones and sexuality

In rats sexuality is heavily dependent on hormones and the best time to fertilise the egg. Hormones affect sex drive and depletion will lower it.

Matching hypothesis: people are attracted to similarly attractive people as themselves. Although people can be attracted to things they lack and the partnership completes.

Evolutionary psychology says young attractive women are more likely to be healthy and have many child breeding years and older richer men have the resources to support them.  Females value commitment as the children need looking after. There is argument that men care about sexual infidelity and women about emotional as the woman needs the man to care for her children,.

So what have we got here then, well there is evolution that is transmitted through DNA but not in a determined way. There are some basic systems in humans, heat, eating, sex and aggression that are influenced by some biological systems.

Summary

The evolutionary roots of behaviour

Some difference between individuals makes it more likely they will reproduce. Genotypes is the transmission mechanism between generations, phenotype is the result of the gene.

Behaviour is transmitted through genes, take duck swimming. It is debatable whether specific behaviours are transmitted or rather they are by products of other traits

The achievement of homeostatic

Homeostasis is the internal mechanism that regulates internal systems within a limit. Thermoregulation is enabled through use of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems which turn up and down the heat via heart rate, vasodilation and digestion

Eating

Homeostasis influence eating. There is conceivably a set point that is a person’s natural weight. The liver, adipose cells, i.e. long term fat cells, the intestines and hypothalamus help regulate this. There are a variety of signals to eat or stop eating, they serve different roles, short term, long term and they also provide back up.

Threat and aggression

Response to threat is the parasympathetic system which is the emergency response of providing fuel for a response. Human aggression is influenced by personal and social factors

Sex

Human’s sex is influenced to a small part during the oestrus cycle.

Human’s choice of a mate is influence to apart by genetic factors, this argument is one of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists see biology as having a large part in psychology whereas others see culture and experience determining why we act as we do

Chapter 3 The brain and the nervous system

The organisms as machine

Descartes plus Newton=the mind derives from the complicated machine that is the brain.

Descartes and the reflex concept

Descartes argued that every human action is a response to something outside in the world.,

Energy from outside then stimulates a nerve which excites the brain which sends a signal back to a muscle in response, hence the term reflex as the external energy is reflected back out from the body. Are we machines, are we machines with soul’s, this is not something that science can determine but treating ourselves as machines has produced a lot of benefit.

How the nervous system is studied

The brain has 100 billion neurons, i.e. individual cells, each one has 50000 connections, the brain also contains glia which in some parts of the brain outnumber neurones 10:1

Clinical observation

Notice how brain damage changes function, then associate that function with the damaged area.

Neuropsychology

They use brain damage plus neuroimaging to understand how the brain works. If you damage a part of the brain and lose a function does that part of the brain enable that function? It is certainly related but if they way we meaningfully behave in the world makes that brain part light up isn’t our behaviour what control it. The test would then be can we meaningfully behave in the world without that piece of the brain and the answer is no

Experimental techniques

Here the brain is stimulated in certain ways then imaged to see the effects. Originally they would cut out pieces of the brain, or use ECT, now they have TMS that can temporarily turn off a brain mechanism.

Neuroimaging techniques

CT and MRI show brain structure. EEG shows functionality. PET scans show functionality with radioactive sugar, fMri also shows functionality. Each mechanism has its strength, some say activity has happened, some say where some say when. Put them all together to build your argument. Scientists use double disassociation rules, if x and y, can be affected independently, then they don’t depend on each other

The architecture of the nervous system

Central and peripheral nervous system

Central nervous system CNS

Peripheral nervous system PNS

CNS=nerves in brain and spinal cord

PNS is nerves in the body, ANS

Efferent nerves carry signals from the CNS

Afferent nerves carry signals to the CNS

The PNS has two parts the somatic that controls skeletal muscles and gives info from the sense organs, and the ANS

Hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain

Hindbrain sits on the spinal cord and controls many key life functions

Midbrain sits on top of the hind brain and deals with movement and relaying information from the senses

Forebrain is the largest part of the brain and contains ability to use language, our beliefs, memories emotional reactions are establish and controlled here.

The midbrain seems a relay station to the forebrain

For psychologists the forebrain is the most important area. There is a cortex, a covering of the brain about 3mm deep and a sub cortex.

Integration between two sides of the brain by commissures.

The left hemisphere= language skills and cognitive skills

The brain works as an integrated whole, and there is no notion of left brain right brain orientation that you see in popular culture.

The cortex

Many areas are used in many tasks, so locating one brain area for one function seems difficult.

Projection area

You get on the cortex a projection area for senses and motor. If you stimulate the left side, the right handed limbs move, this is contralateral control. There is more cortical area allocated for parts of the body that need better control e.g. hands and mouth. So the projection areas are related to the senses, to movement and to language.

Origins of the brain

Phylogeny and ontogeny

Phylogeny how did the system evolve over generations, Ontogeny is how the system came to exist in the individual

Glia

This is the Greek word for glue or slime. During brain development glia guides the neurones into the correct connections. Glia can increase\decrease the speed of neurone connections. Glia also form their own network

The synapse

Neurones are brain cells and they communicate with each other over gaps called synapses

Neurotransmitters

Transmission between neurones is a case of excitation and inhibition with one neurone will receive the excited chemicals and block the inhibited, thus creating a neural pathway.  The chemicals that are used to take messages do different things:

Serotonin, need for sleep, mood and arousal

GABA is an inhibitory transmission mechanism.

Then there is norepinephrine and dopamine.

There is a lock and key model for transmissions

High speed transmission that is used for sight, doesn’t use chemical transmission but rather via electrical synapses.

Drugs and neurotransmitters

Drugs enhance or inhibit neurotransmitters.

Interactions through the bloodstream

Blood also enables signals to be sent around the body and its call the endocrine system. There are various glands that enable this pituary, adrenal and pancreas. These secrete chemicals into the blood system that can affect metabolic rate, sexual behaviour through testosterone or oestrogen

Plasticity

Our neural pathways need to be able to react to life conditions. Neurones can change how sensitive they are. Neurones can create new pathways. The overall brain architecture can also change, but damage to the cortex doesn’t repair, it could be that the glia in inhibit this function.

Summary

The organism as a machine

Many try to explain human behaviour in mechanistic terms, in terms of the reflex, stimuli and response.

Chapter 4 Sensation

In evolutionary terms we need sensation to distinguish food, mates and enemies.

The origins of knowledge

The passive perceiver

Empiricism argues the senses are passive and merely receive sensation from the objective world. Locke is an empiricist who argued the mind is a tabular rasa on which experience leaves its mark.

Distal and proximal

We see at a person at a distance we are interested in them. This is the distal stimulus. Light rays bounce from them onto our retina (proximal stimulus).  But how can we tell that the proximal stimulus matches the distal one?

Berkeley shows that different sized objects at different distances can create the same size on our retinas. So retinal image can’t tell us the size of objects.

Also retinas are 2 dimensional but we see in 3 dimensions.

The role of association

Empiricists argue with three dimensions that we get visual perspective cues and we learn that these point to the three dimensions of an object. Likewise for distance we learn the cues, test them and then have beliefs from the cues.

The active perceiver

Kant, the transcendental idealist argues we have to categorise and organise sensory information via pre-existing categories. He argues we have an innate grasp of spatial relationships, but this does not mean that this innate grasp exists in the world.

Psychophysics

Is the world how the senses tell us it is, if it is sensation must directly correlate to the world? What is the sensory information for red, green, loud, quiet, A flat, B Sharp etc.?

Measuring sensory intensity

Measures both quality and quantity of sensory experience e.g. yellow and intense. However easy to measure quantity for physical stimulus, but not long or hot, or strong which is subjective. Difference here is between physical properties and mental ones=Fechner.

You can measure mental properties using difference threshold, i.e. what’s the smallest amount of change a person can detect.  JND=just noticeable difference.

Weber’s law=we are sensitive to percentage changes not absolute ones, which is agreed by testing

Detection and Decision

Psychophysics is a prerequisite to understand the underlying biology of the sense system.  It seems that sensation is not the only input to get a end. Rather people have rules when being tested for instance, if in doubt say yes.

Signal detection theory then does tests where there are signals and where there are not. It then gives 4 variables of answer.

The functioning of the senses

Detection threshold=minimum sensory input that can be detected

Difference threshold=smallest difference between two sensory inputs that can be detected. Fechner’s law is how does the magnitude of sensory experience grow as the stimulus intensity increase.

Sensation relates level of sensory input on one side and conscious experiences on the other. The aim is to build a bridge between physics and conscious experience.

Sensory coding

We have more than the five senses of

1.       Sight

2.       Sound

3.       Touch

4.       Taste

5.       Smell

We also have kinesthesis, which provides information from muscles, tendons and joints

We also have vestibular sense, which gives a sense of movement of the head.

We also have skin sense there are pressure sensors, warmth sensors, and pain sensors.

The sensory input is transduced into neurones, neurones can’t fire more or less strongly but it needs to represent different levels of intensity, so it needs to code things in some way. Neurones can fire more or less often and this seems to represent intense.

Sensory quality

Neurones cause difference sense qualities, sight, sound etc., dependent on what nerve is stimulated. So the difference is sense perception, is not cause by different inputs but rather how the input stimulates us. This is the doctrine of specific nerve energies. By Muller

Different qualities within a modality, by the specificity theory say that different types of neurones account for different qualities e.g. red\blue etc. This is true for pain, but for other senses it is a pattern, i.e. speed, and type of neurone that identifies modal qualities.

Hearing

We rely most and discriminate most about hearing and vision. This importance of these modalities is also reflected in the brain with more space allocated to them.

The stimulus: Sound

Movement in world, creates air pressure, travel in waves to our ears, which is interpreted as sound.

Amplitude is how much pressure is exerted i.e. how high the wave is, and then wavelength is how frequent the wave is. Amplitude affects loudness, and frequency affects pitch.

We can hear over 0 decibels and pain happens at 140. Frequency is measured in hertz. This is a simple wave

Complex waves

We get many simple waves combining. We can pick out different waves out of a complex mix, but too much and we just hear noise.

Gathering sound waves

The ear drum resonates and transfers to 3 other oscillators before it reaches the cochlea. This amplifies the sound.  The cochlea is filled with fluid. Neurones are sent from the cochlea to the mid brain

Further processing of information

We need to analyse the sound via memory, so we can hear melody, and recognise different voices, and differentiate between an oboe or a clarinet. The overall tone is understood via a complex pattern of neurones.

Vision

We trust vision more than we trust any other sense.  Tests show with senses giving contradictory information we would always believe our vision.  Transduction converts a physical signal to a neurone signal

The stimulus: light

Light from a source bounces from an object in a wave. It has amplitude i.e. level of pressure and wavelength or hertz. Amplitude is brightness, colour is wavelength, we can only see as small range of wavelengths. We then focus the light rays using the cornea first and then the lens.  Light hits the retina and the physical energy is transduced into neural impulse. Rods and cones connect the neurones to the optic nerve via the thalamus to the cortex. Rods are for night vision and cones for day vision. We turn our heads to see as we are positioning are eyes so that an image falls over the fovea the area of the retina that has most cones on.  At night looking as something faint slightly off centre means its falls away from the fovea and therefore nearer to the rods.

The importance of change: adaption

Photoreceptors are more responsive to change. Novel stimulus are brighter than constant.

Interaction in Space: Contrast

Colour looks different depending on the background: gestalt! Objects boundaries are therefore accentuated. In the visual system excitation in one area, tends to inhibit activity in lateral areas, joining areas.

Boundaries of objects and change of objects are accentuated by the visual system, so we can respond to things and to change.

Colour

Hue is the colour, the wavelength that distinguishes green from red

Brightness is what distinguishes white from black from grey, these are achromatic colours that have no hue.

Saturation is the purity of a colour the extent to which it is chromatic no achromatic

Colour vision depends on three different kinds of cones, we have trichromatic vision and RGB can make any colour.

Trichromatic theory doesn’t explain why there is colour pairing, e.g. grey look blue if surrounded by yellow, this is known as simultaneous colour contrast which shows a complementary colour.  You also get negative after images, i.e. stare at yellow you will get blue.

Opponent process theory

3 colour based cones do first processing, then colours are processed in pairs after r that, black and white, blue yellow, red green. This would help explain colour blindness, where reds get confused for greens.

Perceiving shapes

There are visual agnostics who can’t perceive shape.

Chapter 5 Perception

We actively minimise the level of input from uniformity and maximise areas of contrast.

Distance perception

Binocular disparity can give the sensation of depth. We can perceive depth with one eye closed, modular disparity and his we do by clues to depth. Depth cues can be linear, one object in front of the other, in terms of size, or in terms of focus, closer is sharp more distance is blurry.

When we move our head the image on our retina moves and objects that are closer moves more than objects that are further away. Optical flow is the cues we get through motion with things getting bigger or smaller.

Motion perception

You can fake the sensation of motion by turning a light on and off, e.g. the wait cursor. Our eyes move and so images on the retina are moving. One idea is its relative movement, but you can shut one eye jiggle the other and the world will move. One idea is that the brain transmits signals to say how much does the eye move and then subtracts that from the movement of the world.  This was shown by paralysing the eyes, when scientists tried to move their eyes the world jumped around. There are specialised cells on the retina that detect motion

When you see a ball moving on a table, why do we see the ball as moving and the table as static? This is because we use the table as the frame to understand the balls movement. This explains the train moving effect, when the train next door moves.

Form Perception

We recognise partial features of objects to recognise the object, i.e. there is nothing absolute that enables us to recognise an object. In other words it is a gestalt, a pattern that we recognise, it is not any essential feature, but rather the pattern. The patterns, the figures and the grounds are properties of the perceiver and not of the sensation.

Classical approach to perception

Perceiving constancy

This attempts to characterise the broad characteristics in perception.

We have proximal stimulus from the distal objects we perceive. We need to have constancy though in changes to proximal stimulus that are brought about by us or to us rather than the object, so if we change our head position then we want the world to stay still.

This can be as we perceive relative sizes, the dog is half the size of the table etc. The argument then is we take the retinal image and modify it by whatever we are doing, or is happening to us, to get the resultant image.

Visual illusions show how we use cues as to what is going on and how these can be wrong.

The process model

This attempts to understand the steps in perception

The argument is you have specialised detectors for different shapes, and you refine from line, to angle detector to square detector. This organisation is known as a feature net.

Other process are data or knowledge driven. Knowledge driven is when you know what to expect, are primed for it, and therefore

From geons to meanings

Biederman proposes that we have some geometric basic shapes in memory that we match sensations to

The neuroscience approach

How does the nervous system enable us to see?

Neurones operate in parallel and all have specialist areas.  There are what and where neural pathways.

The binding problem

Given there are specialist areas for all the parts of perception, what binds it together? There is evidence that the brain operates to a special rhythm to sequence all of the inputs.

Perceptual Selection: Attention

Attention seems to be involved in the binding problem, as you can perceive shapes and colours, but without putting attention on them you can misbind them.

Priming readies the appropriate detectors and seems a key part in attention,

To pay attention is to orient yourself to something, to conceivably expect something.

Attention is impaired when we try to do too many attention demanding tasks at the same time.

Hearing music requires sound to be bound otherwise we wouldn’t have melody, harmony, chords.

If you have recently had a stimulus, you are more primed for it, the receptors are already warmed up.

Chapter 6 Learning

Locke and Berkeley=learning is forming associations formed from experience. See the stove feel the heat, stove is hot, hear the word flower associate with smell etc. that is a flower. Thijs is learning theory. However whilst learning theory applies to many aspects of learning it doesn’t apply to all.

Habituation

A repeated stimulus creates a lessened response. This reduces the amount of things that reduce alarm. When we perceive therefore we must compare to previous instances.

Classical conditioning.

Conditioned responses are the result of learning, unconditioned responses are the result of biology.

Extinction breaks the relation between conditioned stimulus and conditioned response.

Stimulus generalisation, you get a conditioned response with the exact conditioned stimulus, but you will also get a response with a weaker stimulus, thus you get generalisation. With generalisation you also need to discriminate with incorrect pairings.

Contingency is the relationship to get conditioning, the CR is contingent on the CS, when CS then CR

Instrumental conditioning

Operant conditioning, give pleasure or take away pain will get behaviour repeated.

Classical conditioning is about responding, with operant conditioning you can create dynamic activity, where there is no response, rather there is an action.

Discriminative stimuli, indicates a relationship between action and reward. If you respond now the stimuli says you will get reward

Shaping: approximations of the desire behaviour until you get the desired behaviour. Reinforcers can help shaping.

Schedules of reinforcement

Fixed ratio and random variable ratio can get higher rates of responding, e.g. fruit machines.

Changing behaviour or acquiring knowledge

Does Operant conditioning change behaviour or acquire knowledge. Latent learning, i.e. learn no action would support the latter. You can show this by a cognitive map only activated under certain conditions.

Animals prefer having a sense of control over their outcome.

Learned helplessness is a sense that one has lost control over ones environment and one has given up trying. So if you suffer but don’t believe you can do anything about it, when a new suffering comes along you accept it. This is learned helplessness. This can help understand depression where you believe your action is futile so you stop trying.

Chapter 7 Memory

Different types of memory:

1.       Facts

2.       Episodes

3.       Skills

Three stages of memory

1.       Learning

2.       Storage

3.       Retrieval

Acquisition

You can either acquire memory intentionally or unintentionally. You need some attention to the to be remembered to remember it.

The stages of memory

Theory developed 50 years ago, we move from a working impermanent memory, i.e. short term memory, to long term memory. Long term memory has millions if not billions of entries, short term memory we can hold about 7 things concurrently in our mind.

We have a stimulus it goes into working memory, we rehearse it, it goes into long term memory. Rehearsal for a fact would be to say the fact over to yourself, to integrate it by looking at it from a number of different angles. By this argument the more attention you give something the more you will remember it.

In free recall you get a primary and recency effect, first and last are remembered.

You can expand working memory by increasing the size of the seven packages, join numbers for instance. Putting small items into larger in this fashion is called chunking. So chunking is put things into meaningful packages so you it becomes a meaningful unit, helps with memory.

Some rehearsal doesn’t work for more than a minute or so, e.g. try to remember a telephone number by baldly repeating the numbers. If you add meaning to it, e.g. 24-25 678 etc. then this will last longer. You do not remember things that you mindlessly and mechanically repeat to yourself.

Memory therefore depends on how well you encode, how much attention you put on something in the first place.

The level of brain activity on the stimulus correlates to how well remember the item will be.

Memory connections

One argument to what makes for good encoding is that you remember all he connections within a memory so when you remember an event you remember what caused what, or if you remember a scene you remember the connections within in it, the tree to the left of the picture, the bird in the bough of the branch

Mnemonics

This uses the principle of connections making memories, by using external connections to an arbitrary scene, i.e. make up a story\picture that fits what you war trying to remember.

Method of loci is one memory technique, where you remember things you want to remember by imagining them in different spatial locations.

Imagery is another technique. Images interacting are better remembered. Mnemonics are good for lists of words. Mnemonics lead people on a narrow memory recall chain, its one item relates to another. This is of limited use in more complex arguments. More complex things to remember require an understanding so that many different connections are made so that the information can then be remembered from a variety of ways.

Storage

A memory trace is known as an engram. Engrams are not stored instantly but they start in a fragile state and then are consolidated over the next few hours.

Retrograde amnesia is a loss of memory prior to the trauma that caused the amnesia. Retrograde amnesia only affects recent memories prior to the trauma, older memories are not affected the argument being is that they have become more consolidated. However retrograde amnesia can affect memories for years prior to the trauma.

Retrieval

We need some level of retrieval cue, and some items need stronger retrieval cues.

A good retrieval cue recreates the context where the original encoding took place, or how the original encoding took place, i.e. by images, or meaning. So recreating the mental perspective you had when you encoded is key, you don’t need to be in the same environment, but you need to bring it to mind.

When memory fails

Inadequate encoding

Forgetting

Recall decreases as the retention interval increases. Memories decline sharpest just after the event then reduce evenly. Decay seems to be explainable if a memory is kept alive by a chemical process, which over time doesn’t maintain the engram and then it fades. However some memories exist over many years. Interference also disrupts memory when you lean incompatible facts, the original fact is forgotten, you can learn compatible or unrelated facts just fine, learning yoga doesn’t affect your memory of French verbs. But it’s possible that learning French irregular verbs would or German verbs?

Retrieval failure

One theory is that we don’t lose memory rather we misplace them. This can be shown by the tip of the tongue phenomena, where you know you remembered it but can’t recall it, and often you do, with the right retrieval process.

Misinformation

Sometimes you can have memory corrupted, you saw an accident with a blue car, you read a newspaper article that it was a green car. What do you now remember? Misinformation can be an intrusion error, where there was an event, but an extra piece of information is inserted or subtracted. You can also have memories over written whereby a new memory replaces an old memory. There is also source error, so you remember an event because two people told you about it, you just can’t remember who said what.

Intrusions from general knowledge

As much as you can get source error, from who said what, you also can get error from what you think should happen, what generally does happen. This is because people understand new things on the basis of old things, so when you remember then if there’s a weak memory part or connection, it can quite naturally go to a stronger connection, i.e. what generally happens. Memory tests show you fill in information with general knowledge. This seems to trade on schemas. Generally certain things live together, so we don’t need to remember everything but certain things are always the case, then when they’re not then we don’t see the absence as its what’s expected.

Misplace familiarity

There is a distinction between familiarity and recollection, show when you know someone but you can’t think where from. When you have a sense of familiarity it can easily lead to false attribution of source.

Ways to improve memory

Hypnotism appears to be successful but generates many believed but false memories. People hypnotised appear more susceptible to suggestions of the hypnotist. Or a desire to please them, so they will create memories to answer the question, what do you remember.

Getting the mind back into the same context as when the encoding happened, helps.

Memory is an active process. We encode information on the basis of what we already know. We remember information by relating it to other known memories and by filling in the gaps.

Varieties of memory

Episodic memory/generic memory

Episodic memory is of events, generic memory is about knowledge, and e.g. London is the capital. These function separately such that you can get disruption to one but not the other

Remembering without awareness

This is where we are affected by something but we don’t remember it, e.g. shown list of words very quickly then can remember them better. So the influence is, that previously heard things are more likely to be remembered and be believed. This is probably due to the familiarity effect

Distinguishing implicit from explicit memory

You improve explicit memory with more meaning in encoding, you improve priming effects with exact stimulus repletion for implicit memory, and e.g. capital letters affects word recall

Anterograde amnesia

Some brain damage affects only explicit and not implicit memory. This can be caused by stroke, physical trauma, and malnutrition caused by alcoholism. However people with anterograde amnesia can learn new skills, although they don’t remember having practiced. Maybe anterograde amnesia disrupts declarative memory and not procedural or maybe it disrupts explicit not implicit memory.

Emotional remembering

Events with more emotions are remembered more vividly.

Flashbulb memories

Memories as if they were yesterday, focus on immediate, and personal circumstances, e.g. what you were doing when. World trade, lady d etc. Rehearsal helps storage, memories that are remembered for 3 years, will last for 50 years.

Memory and trauma

Extreme stress can disrupt the biological mechanisms needed for memory encoding.

Chapter 8 Thinking

Analogical Representation

Our knowledge is a representation of the world=symbolic, Analogical is our knowledge is a part of the world

Analogic representation is seen within mental images

Mental images

These we use to think and have spatial properties and are like perception we have in the world. Thinking is either talking to yourself without sound, or seeing without light. However with ambitious pictures i.e. duck\rabbit you can see that ambiguity in a mental image, it is one thing or another. A mental image is already interpreted that a picture isn’t necessarily. It’s this sense of being a live that perception has but a mental image doesn’t.

Symbolic representations

Concepts are classes or categories, i.e. dog is a concept Alsatian isn’t. Concepts are properties or relationships.

Propositions

Propositions have a subject and a predicate and can be true or false.

Knowledge and memory

Given how much we know how we access it. One proposition is nodes and links, the links could be synonym, hierarchy, temporal etc. etc. When one node is accessed the other connected nodes are more accessible. Some theorists have different sizes of knowledge on the nodes, so some works are distributed, with fragments of knowledge on each node, some have larger chunks of knowledge on each node. So is a node individually understandable or only by relation to other nodes?

The process of thinking

Problem solving has an initial state and a goal state. You need a clear coal to get there, otherwise you can work out means, as you don’t know what it is specifically you want.  You also need a means end analysis so you need to know the difference between you current state and your goal state. This can provide a series of sub goals that in turn can have means end analysis. This provides a shaped approach, providing easier to achieve sub tasks that are clear. Shaping also takes advantages of habit, as each of these tasks is well practiced and therefore can be performed without thinking about tit.

Habit and automaticity can be said to be the knowledge of the body. It can cause problems as once started it is hard to turn off, e.g. the the Stroop effect when a word for colour e.g. orange is written in another colour e.g. red. It’s easier to say what the colour that the word is printed in, if there is a match between word and colour.

It is considered you need 10 years to become an expert. Experts know more and they have more association between the bits so can retrieve it quicker. Experts have higher order pattern awareness, so can chunk items into larger chunks and focus on higher order problems. Experts are more sensitive to higher order patterns, which reflect deeper aspects of association.

Obstacles to problem solving

We use patters to help us solve problems that are based on what has previously worked\ not worked, this can speed up problem solving but can also cause error!

Problem solving strategies

Break down problem into smaller problems

You can work back from the goal state to the initial state or vice versa.

 Solve by analogy

To overcome problem obstacles, then look to interpret the problem differently, see different sub goals, and different problem analogies.

The creative thinking can be seen by abrupt insights in unfamiliar places, e.g. Einstein and the bath. The process is work hard, then do something else. This enables incubation of the original work. Doing this can provide a different approach to the problem this enables the problem to be restructured.

If you’re stuck restructure.

Humour works on providing a surprise outcome that can still fit into a narrative but an unexpected one, a surprise outcome that doesn’t just provides puzzlement.

Reasoning and decision making

Move from one belief to general belief is inductive reasoning.

More from one belief to other, it’s deductive

Deductive reasoning is syllogistic reasoning, a syllogism has 2 premises and a conclusion and is bound by the rules of logic.

Inductive reasoning is probably true but not definitely, we move from the particular observation to the general. Science basis itself on inductive reasoning. The relationship between particular and general is formed by probability and history, its happened many times before therefore. So frequency estimates

Heuristic=enabling a person to find out by themselves/computer=trial and error but get the result in the end.

To get a frequency estimate, we might remember all times we have related this specific to this outcome. We might make these instances representative of various classes, to make general rules from. So we assume something to represent its class.

If a man can smoke until 82, therefore all men can smoke to 82

We quite often make this error moving from an atypical case and assuming it’s a typical case, then we make an inductive fallacy.

Confirmation bias

We make inductive errors, but then keep them via a confirmation bias, we look for evidence that confirms what we believe. For instance gamblers who think they have a winning strategy believe this as their wins confirm this and loses are discounted due to chance or bad luck or near wins..

We have to organise our information, we don’t like dissonance, that’s why it’s harder to change beliefs once you’ve formed them.

Dual process theory

We need thinking that relies on fast low effort heuristics and sometimes we need more care, which could account for the difference between intuition and reasoning. So this could also be associative driven vs rule based thinking.

System 1 thinking: fast, intuitive, doesn’t do dissonance

System 2 thinking: slow, more evidence required, does do dissonance, can change views

System 1 used if

1.       Tired

2.       Asked about probabilities

3.       Depends on not seeing samples but rather as representatives of key aspects.

System 2

1.       High stakes

2.       Asked about frequency

3.       Evidence presented as sample

Decision making

Decisions are affected both by size of outcome and likelihood. How you frame the decision to be made affects the decision taken. People try to minimize loss or risk. So you will endorse a 50% success rate but not a 50% failure rate. People will gamble to avoid a loss, but hold tight to preserve a gain.

Rationality as with memory processes has some in built error in the system. They are optimised and get it right most of the time, but if we tried to get it right all of the time, we would lose the efficiency of our systems

Executive Control

This is about taking a decision, changing attention, deciding to act it is about changing your natural inclination to a different one. It is about resisting certain situational cues and taking a new approach

There are two aspects that are controlled by areas of the brain, one is goal neglect where you rely on habitual responses even if this is against your purpose.

Part of the executive function is to keep our current goal in view, irrespective of the call of the environment, which you might see as relevant to another goal.

Operation span is used to measure the executive function where someone is asked to coordinate two unrelated activities.

Consciousness

We have consciousness of experience and reflective consciousness. I am aware of taking a decision is the reflective, having an experience of a red apple another. We can reflect on experience or not, although it is a degree, and I think relates to memory.

There is also the cognitive unconscious. Whilst Freud argued that drives come from the unconscious and that things get repressed into the consciousness to protect us from anxiety, there is also a cognitive unconscious.

Cognitive unconscious

1.       Helps us disambiguate, through interference

2.       Driving a familiar route

3.       Enable blind sight

4.       Perception\perceptual bias

Blind sight: people who are blind and have damaged their visual cortex, still can get right visual tests far higher than someone who puts a blindfold over their eyes.

Unconscious process is fast but blunt and in flexible

Conscious process is slow but detailed

So if we need to change our habitual response, or work more flexibly, or are in a unique situation then conscious engagement is the process we should choose, otherwise a bodily unconscious approach is the way

Consciousness then seems to be a workspace, like short term memory where perception can be held as a place to be aware of. This enables the binding that the empiricists need.

This is enabled by workspace neurones that connect one part of the brain to the other, they don’t have content, merely offer connection

Chapter 9 Language

Language has meaning that is build up hierarchically from

Phonemes: base unit of sound

Morphemes: base unit of meaning e.g. umpire and s where s is the plural

Phrases: you have noun and verb phrases

Sentences: combines noun and verb phrases

Language also contains stress on certain words, rhythm and tone (pitch)

The meaning of words

The definitional theory of meaning

Some words are atomic, e.g. yellow, some are molecular, e.g. banana. Thus there are relations between words of who shares and doesn’t atomic similarity.

The definitional theory is that the meaning of a word is the set of attributes that are sufficient for class membership

 

The prototype theory of meaning

The definitional theory is that the meaning of a word is the set of attributes that are sufficient for class membership, however some words such as bird don’t have a sufficient criteria. However some words are binary e.g. bachelor and some are on a continuum i.e. bird, some birds are more birdlike than others. Thus the prototype theory of meaning is more around family resemblance, so here is the prototype bird, all you need is 60% of features to be a bird, thus you can’t specify an exact criteria as it would be too long.

Word meanings in folk theories of the world

Words have meaning that have existed through history and are supported by a web of beliefs, e.g. lawnmower, started off being like a shaver, isn’t any more.

The meaning of sentences

In many languages word order gives semantic role, in Finnish suffixes identify semantic role

How we understand

Understanding what generally happens, and the order of explanation, is often used to disambiguate a sentence. So using subject first is usually helpful if that subject is standardly a subject, The detective interviewed, you would expect the robber etc., but if you then say by the reporter, and the reporter is subject then you are thrown off guard.

As meaning unfolds in a sentence the speaker orients themselves in a way, in front of four objects and the command is given I want you to eat. Then the subject turns to the eatable object.

Conversational inference

Often listener makes many inferences, and then answers a question on the basis of this.  As it would take too long to spell out all the inferences, e.g. do you own a Cadillac, I would never own an American car.

Comprehension

There are many parts that contribute to comprehension and it seems each give us a clue as we attempt to comprehend.

The growth of language in children

Children learn 3 words a day up to 10,000 by about 5 and 75,000 by adulthood. Neonates receive communication in terms of tone and rhythm, angry sounds a certain way across languages. Babies learn by testing, so they hear a new word, they usually seek confirmation that what they thought the new word referred to, actually di. Babies recognise their mother tongue virtually from birth. Babies can recognise sound contrasts in all languages, but as not using something means you lose it, at around a year when they start speaking they can only recognise contrast in their own language.

 ~A child needs to be able to learn the boundaries of morphemes and words. They learn this through learning what syllables generally go and do not go together.

Children’s first words are almost never the functional words the, a etc.

Perceptual and conceptual properties of a child

Early use of language is labelling things that are present, 10-10 months, from 12-16 months then they label things that are absent.

Superordinate animal

Basic level words dog

Sub ordinate= Labrador

Children first learn labels, e.g. rover, then misapply then learn basic level words, e.g. dog, children learn patterns that help with meaning and therefore the rules of language.

Children initially learn instances, e.g. want wanted, help helped, then they learn patterns, add ed, then they learn exceptions e.g. ran ate

There is a critical period for learning languages, after that passes it becomes much harder.

ASL is its own language it is not a translation from another languages and develops from ASL users.

A deaf baby will learn ASL as much as a sighted baby will learn to speak

Language learning with changed endowments

The critical period for learning stops just after puberty. A child exposed to a second language will initially be confused and may stop speak but within a year or two will speak like a native.

Chapter 10 Cognitive Development

Neonates have grip reflexes and rooting reflexes. The latter being touch the baby’s head and it turns and tries to suckle. The reflexes go quite quickly and a replaced by voluntary action

All cells have the same genes, what influence different development is what neighbours they have.

Gene environment interaction

The sensitive period

The idea of the critical period come from embryology that has a period where decisions are made what to create.

Cognitive development

Paget’s intelligence stages:

Sensorimotor 0-2

Preoperational 2-7

Concrete operations 7-11

Formal operations 11 on

Sensorimotor

No distinguishing of objects, or me\you distinction, or object permanence. Shown by how infants respond to hidden toys.

Assimilation and accommodation are key to cognitive development, assimilation is assimilating the world to your schemas, and accommodation is the modifying of the schema to the world.

Aim of this period: object permanence, use of schemas, and adjustment of schemas.

Preoperational period

You need to think symbolically to give an object permanence. You also need to interrelate a series of mental representations in a coherent way: narrative?

Failure of conservations= if a and b have equal liquid and a is poured into another funny shaped container c, do a=c. For a 4 year old no. The argument here is that the children don’t interrelate all the factors needed for this. They judge on Height, but they should judge on height * width.

Concrete and formal operations

They can inter relate concepts, they realise conservation principles, they are no longer egocentric and can see other people have different opinions. Children can think concretely here but not abstractly,.

Challenges to Piaget: children go through discrete phases, phases are characterised by lack in certain skills

Challenging object permanence: uses novelty as stimulating and show an obscured object, then show them it if were broken, and it if it were whole, they showed more novelty to the broken object, which “proves” they see objects? But rather they are showing one object, then two objects, two objects wins.

So the challenges to Lacan and to Piaget are object occlusion and supporting bricks study this is p370. Paget’s experiments are discredited by the priming effect for the instance of the child looking for the object that isn’t there.

Piaget argued children under 6 have little concept of number. They do this interest for novelty test with objects of 2 and three and they recognised a difference so they recognise number.

Social cognition in infancy

Infant response to faces

Infants are more interested in face shapes than other things, they imitate our facial expressions.

Infants in tests respond more to goals than to behaviour. Hmm so objects on left and right, and you do reaching for object, then the object is changed to the other side, baby’s show no surprise but it could be that they see the hand object as the thing that is perceived.

Cognitive development in pre-schoolers

Piaget argues that infants go through distinct mental successive phases. Paget’s sense of stage comes from embryology that has a distinct qualitative difference between stages.

Argument against the Piaget counting, is that to ask the same question again, indicates to the child they go the question wrong So they change their answer. Pre-schoolers however can see the difference between greater and less than, and have a partial use of number systems, knowing they have a particular order for instance.

Social cognition in pre schoolers

Pre-schoolers can follow the lead of the experimenter who says Yuk to certain food and smiles to the other food, as to which food to pick even against their natural inclination. Pre-schoolers have a limited concept of belief, thinking they have always believed something even if they only just found it out, they think they can find out the colour of something by touching it.  Age 3 kids don’t understand false belief, so put teddy puts candy in box, teddy out of room,  move candy where does teddy look? Age 4.5 they get it.

Whilst Paget’s tests can, may be discredited, his finding aren’t wrong. You can simply tests to ensure younger children pass, but their levels of competence in these areas is far lower than older children.

There do seem break thoughts at 2, 4-5 and 8 or 9.

The causes of cognitive growth:

Genetics

Neural structures

Environment

Biological inheritance

This would seem to help account for early cognitive ability that can’t be learnt, biology enabling learning mechanisms

Cultural context

Children in different cultures have the same development in early years, but radically different in abstract areas as do adults. But this could be that abstract thinking is not important in the aborigines.

Natural selection would seem to benefit those that can pass skills from one generation to the next.

Zygotsky=zone of proximal development, child is neither given too much nor too little.

Children’s memory depends on the engagement, the conversations with others. People talk differently about these memories, dependent on age, class, sex, culture..

Development of memory

9 month old Babies have deferred imitation, things they saw a month earlier. By age 2 the brain is relatively completed. As a child’s language develops so does their ability to remember.

The child as a novice: because everything is new, they have no way to tell what is common and what is novel, the latter being the thing worth remembering. It doesn’t then seem a case of cognitive development per se, but rather about interest development 10 year experts in chess, and harry potter have excellent memories in these areas.

Metacognition

Children have lesser metacognitive abilities, which affects their memory ability as they don’t have powerful ways to enhance their performance.

Dynamic systems theory

Many influences on the child’s response\development, environment, learning, biology etc. and one is resultant each time, but which system is unpredictable as the outcome is the interaction between all the tugs. The system is considered self-organising, and responds to different factors in the environment, the sense of Paget’s stages, seems to correspond to times in which there is an equilibrium between components, before that again changes.

Chapter 11 Social Development

Babies spend first 1.5 years being held, in face to face play, being carried. They prefer interacting with a moving face. They prefer interaction i.e. give and take within relation i.e. coo-coo. They don’t like when mums face doesn’t match her voice emotionally.  K

Locomotion: As a kid starts to crawl they can get into danger and uncertain situations. Therefore they can come into conflict with the parent. They also use the parents face to in=dictate if something is safe or not.

The path to attachment

~PCG gives comfort to the child, physical and psychological comfort.

6-8 months kids develop separation anxiety, mum leaves room they howl, mum comes back they are ok. This shows an attachment has been formed

PCG gives a secure base to the child and allows them to explore. Ducklings will follow any moving object when they’ve just been born, and if they follow them for 10 minutes, they have that object imprinted ad the PCG and will continue to follow them.

Imprinting with humans is different, people separated at birth can go on to form strong attachments.

Babies have different temperament to novelty, to change, easily upset etc. Babies can be categorised in 3 aspects, how active, how happy and how much control they have over themselves. Identical twins have virtually identical temperaments whereas fraternal babies less so.

Ainsworth developed the strange situation. Child in room with mother, then unfamiliar person walks in, mother interacts with stranger then the mother leaves, then mother returns and stranger leaves.

Secure attachment: plays with toys whilst mum and stranger present, mildly distressed when mum leaves, joy when she returns.

Anxious\resistant: do not explore in mother’s presence, upset when she leaves ambivalent when she returns, runs to her then kicks her.

Anxious\avoidant. Distant whilst mother is present sometimes search for her when she leaves, snub her when she returns

Disorganized: They seem dazed and confused and show inconsistent behaviour, crying when mothers gone, but moving away from her when she returns.

Strange situation shows: how kids handle stress, relate to others and how secure he feels.

Is attachment stable or does it vary day to day?

Attachment patterns are stable although do change depending on life experience.

Bowlby argues that the attachment relationship provides an internal working model of the social world

Secure attachment seems to relate to confidence, empathy, happiness, social desirability, ability as leadership, and reduction in anxiety. In short the securely attached are wunderkinds! However it could be that the securely attached had loving parents that led to better adjustment of which secure attachment is an outcome not a cause.

Both mothers and fathers can be used in the strange situation. Mothers tend to be more comforting than fathers, fathers more active and vigorous.

Most kids in US brought up in day care, which if high quality doesn’t affect upbringing, although main determinant is relation with PCG.

Divorce: kids with divorced parents are more likely to get depressed, lower self-esteem and less socially competent. However divorce increases risk but risk is relatively small.

Monkeys reared without social contact, can’t cope, they withdraw, huddle and bite themselves.

Parenting

Socialisation: learning how to be part of a group, what you can and can’t say to different types of people. How to interpret other people’s behaviour. Social and cultural factors determine the types of parenting that take place.

Parenting styles

Parents differ both in what they teach and how they teach their children.

Parenting style is a factor of how sensitive to the children’s needs they are and how controlling they are of the child’s behaviour

Authoritative=more sensitive and controlled

Authoritarian=less sensitive and more controlled

Permissive= More sensitive and less control

Uninvolved= less sensitive and control

The outcomes of parenting style are hard to work out, as did parents adopt their style according to the child they meet?

Peer relationships

From the age of 2 infants form friendships. They will imitate and cooperate with their friends age 2. Age 6/7 friendships can be based on gain,; what can I get out of the relationship, although this changes to a mutual liking and loyalty. Age 9 friendship moves into taking care of one another, helping each other and sharing feelings. 

Within friendships social skills can be learned. Children want to be accepted by their friends so this tends to them conforming with them.  Provide support, shared activity, learning through modelling.

Effects of friendship

Number of friends correlates with later social success, high esteem, lower mental health

Liked\disliked\neglected

Disliked children=>more lonely, more anti-social behaviour

Slow to warm up children are more likely to be rejected.

Aggressively rejected children tend to be more aggressive

People who are rejected by desire being withdrawn tend to be more anxious.

Friends will also influence aggressive behaviour, substance abuse if that’s what they’re into

Emotional development

Claims are that babies exhibit, distress, interest, disgust and content when pre 6 months. Post 6 months then fear can be exhibited. Learn from discussing and from parents

Emotion regulation

Children are taught social display rules that vary from culture to culture. They also learn how to regulate their emotions. Very young babies have no ability to regulate their emotions so it is up to the parent to soothe or distract.

Age 4 or 5 they learn that they can avoid the feared, seek comfort from mum or by reassuring themselves with self-talk.  Tactics: compensation get an ice cream after, reinterpretation, he didn’t really die its pretend, distraction: try and think of something happy.

Moral development

From tests the moral development in children shows in this way:

Preconventional morality=avoid punishment get rewards

Conventional morality=gains approval of others, adheres to the law

Post conventional morality=acts on public good, acts on ethical principles.

Learning to be moral

Conscience=Freud=threat of punishment =anxiety=guilt

However a sense of conscience is less likely to emerge with more harsh punishment.

Development of conscience correlates with children who are interested in their parent’s approval. Disapproval then becomes the growth of conscience. So when a parental relationship is very important and it hinges on approval then a conscience with grow quickly.

Conscience also develop in terms of learning what things should be e.g. bedtime, parties etc. Children’s capacity for empathy is critical for moral development

Sexual development

Gender roles

Roles given to the different sexes, enhanced by toys that are given to different sexes and how different sexes are talked to.

Sources of gender role differences

Comes from parents, peers and culture, this varies from culture to culture. Girls mature quicker than boys biologically. When higher levels of male hormones androgen are present within girls then you get higher levels of stereotypically male activity.

Gender differences

Boys on average do better at spatial\maths tests. Girls on verbal tasks. In maths it’s the spatial maths that boys do better at.  There’s the idea boys are better at spatial rotation tasks. But socially there are different math expectation based on gender role.

Gender Identity

Up until 5 there is no sense of gender constancy, i.e. that a boy could be a girl if he wore dresses.

Sexual orientation

First real sexual attraction begins at 10. In men levels of testosterone affect levels of sexual activity.

There is a genetic component to sexuality identical twins have a 52% sharing of sexuality but fraternal only 22% for women its 48% and 16%. The thought that the genetic component mechanism is prenatal levels of androgen. There is correlation for gay men with left handedness, and an acoustic property in the inner ear, which is indicative of prenatal hormones. There is a part of the hypothalamus that relates to sexuality and that this is shown similar between gay men and heterosexual women in tests.

Sexual orientation seems to emerge around age 3. There is no accepted reason what determines someone’s sexual orientation

Development after childhood

Erikson’s development stages

Age	Development task	Psychological crisis
0-1.5	Attachment to mother	Trust vs mistrust
1.5-3	Self-control and environmental control	Autonomy vs shame and doubt
3-6	Purposeful and directive	Initiative vs guilt
6-puberty	Social, physical and school skills	Competences inferiority
Adolescence	Sense of identity	Identity vs role confusion
Early adulthood	Intimate relationships	Intimacy vs isolation
Middle age	Life goals: career, family	Productivity vs stagnation
Later years	Looking back over life and accepting its meaning	Integrity vs despair

Adolescence

Risky behaviour seems to be chosen by some as: they think they are invulnerable, sensation seeking, brain development shows self-regulation is low and because the teenager is looking for an identity, maybe the opposite of their parents. Again teenagers need peer acceptance, so if their peers do it..Teenagers can seek to be different from previous generations.

Adults

Early adulthood, you have to transition into career, marriage, parenting. Mid-life you may re-evaluate this.

Chapter 12 Social Cognition and emotion

Social cognition is how we understand others

Actors

1.       Anonymous

2.       Supporting case

3.       Co-star

Causal attribution=what causal meaning do we have.

So you get situational attribution, or dispositional attribution.

They act because of situations or their own internal qualities.

Individualistic cultures tend to use more dispositional attribution. These people tend to want to stand out by achieving individual goals.

Collectivist cultures, which most of the world are, view people as interdependent. They use situational attribution more, i.e. the demands of the other.

People make fundamental attributional errors missing either situational or dispositional or other influences. E.g. quiz master as smart than contestant even though master can pick the questions.

There is a difference in how you attribute meaning depending on if you are a n actor or an observer.

When we attribute meaning, the schemas we have active have a strong influence on how we attribute meaning.  With social attribution then we have a lot of blanks to fill in, and our biases are very high.

People who believe the self is fixed, i.e. individual cultures, are likely to go beyond the information given, whereas if you don’t then less so.

Schematic knowledge helps us think quickly, we don’t need to know every detail as aggressive people are generally rude.

Over reliance on schema leads to stereotypes and prejudice. Over involvement with one type of person seeks to maintain stereotypes on the other. Confirmation bias also means we are more sensitive to information that confirms our bias.

Stereo types affect how we think and act. In turn how we act affects how the person we stereo type act, so it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stereotyping can be combatted by establishing collaborative goals and processes that challenge the stereotype

Perceiving and understanding ourselves

We have a self-schema as much as we have another schema.

Mead=looking glass self-= your childhood self-schema is how significant others see you

In collectivist cultures self-schemas relate to roles, in individualistic cultures they relate to traits.

People have both schemas for past, present and future. Future is ought, ideal, should be, there could also be feared self.

Self-esteem, this can be state or trait. Self-esteem therefore is the outcome of the content of the self-schema. Studies do correlate success and high self-esteem, but later studies show self-esteem is an effect of success. Likewise high self-esteem can correlate with aggression and some unpleasant behaviours.

In individualistic cultures, people with high self-esteem see themselves as superior to other people.  Most Americans judge themselves as above average on certain studies, e.g. academic, driving etc. . Reason people have selective memories and forget their failures. We seek to put ourselves in the best light, in deed above averages assumes there is an objective scale, but there isn’t so one is above averages as they value slow driving one because they value fast driving.

Collectivist cultures don’t value self-esteem as it encourages social disharmony. In the west we make situational attribution of our own behaviour and dispositional about others.  Again dispositional for success, situational for failure!!

Sometimes people self-handicap, so set up a situational obstacle, so if things go wrong you can blame the situation not yourself, e.g. watch tv before an exam, if I fail it was because I watched tv not because I’m stupid

Social identity and group enhancement

There is personal status and status derived from a group. In group and out group, you favour members of your group and give unfair treatment to the out group.

When self-esteem is threatened though, this can be built up by aggression towards the outgroup.

Beliefs tinged with emotion that can lead to action quickly are called attitudes.  IAT=Implicit association test, relating the speed of relating words to show how associations are between black and good

Attitudes

Attitudes don’t necessarily predict behaviour. Some attitudes are unconscious and some conscious attitudes are contradicted by behaviour, e.g. 1930s Chinese couple going to motels all successful but questionnaire to hoteliers contradicted this.  Again big difference between asking someone what their attitude, then whether they will act on it in a situation. The more specific an attitude the more it can predict behaviour.

People don’t always act on their beliefs and values, they just act.

Attitude formation=

1.       Classical conditioning

2.       Operant conditioning

3.       Observation learning, seeing people we respect doing something

Attitude changes via central route of persuasion, i.e. evidence. We take this route when we care about the issue and are not diverted by other concerns.

 Peripheral route to persuasion. We take this route when we don’t care much about the matter, then we will be influenced by who we are with, or where we are, or the attractiveness of the presenter when the argument takes place.

Attitude change: we change our attitudes by our own behaviour as we seek to be consistent with ourselves. We don’t like cognitive dissonance, so if there’s an inconsistency between beliefs, or beliefs and behaviours then we will try to resolve this.  We can handle dissonance when taking decisions for others but not when we take them for ourselves.  This can result in you getting people to take extreme actions by starting small, that then proves to them they are this sort of guy and that then when asked to do something more significant they say yes. This is the self-perception theory. So one action defines you, then this leads you to take future decisions.

Under justified and over justified. Experiment showed that if you pay someone for doing something then they will think the thing they did was for money and therefore wasn’t that fun. So over justifying something removes pleasure.

Dissonance theory helps us explain when there is a specific belief that is contracticted by behaviour.

Self-perception helps with weak beliefs are inconsistent with behaviour.

Attitudes can change through persuasion, group membership, dissonance, and self-perception, however they tend to remain the same as people tend to stay in the same situation.

Emotion

Hot cognitions have emotion and motivation, cold cognitions don’t.

Emotions are loosely linked to three domains, how we act, how we feel and our physiology.  Emotions have a target where moods don’t.  Emotions are brief, moods not.

James Lange theory of emotion:

Stimulus –response-emotion, bear, run, fear. He argues this as he says we have cognitive awareness of a situation, a bear, but it is only when you add in the bodily action of running away that you get the fear.  So cognition plus body =emotion

Cannon bard theory:

 Argued against James as bodily response are slow but emotions are quick. However injections of epiphrine produces symptoms of rage, but people said they felt as if they had rage but they didn’t, a cold emotion if you like.  He argued that physiology and emotion come at the same time.

Scahcter-singer

Cognition=>emotion, physiology

Behavioural aspects of emotion

Facial expression, facial action crying, laughing sighing. It would seem that this is part of the social aspect of emotion, communicating to the other what’s important to you.  There is cultural agreement in terms of interpreting signs of happiness, but less with signs of disgust. There are both the felt sense of emotion as the display rules for that emotion

Experiential aspects of emotion

There are 550 emotional words in English. These can be related to emotional clusters, love, joy, surprise, fear, sadness and anger. This is the categorical approach.

 Another approach takes emotional states as being describable as more this than that, this is the dimensional approach.  A dimensional approach would take the axis of pleasant \unpleasant and activated\deactivated and you can pilot the emotions within that

Physiological aspects of emotions

Various emotions produce similar physiological effects.

Function of emotion

Prepare the body for action, direct our attention and social interaction. Emotions can be felt too strongly and at the wrong time, so we need emotional regulation.

WE can regulation emotions through cognitive reappraisal and through suppression of the emotion, e.g. biting your lip.

Chapter 13 Social influence and relationships

Three broad types of relationship from individual to group: conformity, obedience and compliance. Conformity people change their behaviour due to social pressure, obedience people change their behaviour as they are told to, compliance when people ask them to change their behaviour.

Conformity: there are group norms that pull peoples decision making towards. The causes of conformity: informational influence, the desire to be right. Normative influence the desire to be liked and not to appear foolish.

Normal =conform, it’s better to fit in than to be correct

Obedience

Doing what you do because you are told to.

Post WW2 they proposed an authoritarian personality where people were seen to be highly obedient, they believe the world is split into the weak and the strong, and the former should be obedient to the latter.

There is situational influence, so the white coat influence in the electric shocks of teacher and learner experiment. Part of the reason that it worked was that the person who did the act thought someone else was responsible for it.

Obedience increases as responsibility decreases. Obedience increases as you dehumanize, or distance yourself from the affects.

Compliance

We comply with requests when someone has done the same for us in the past, i.e. the norm of reciprocity.

Door in the face technique, make a big request, person says no then offer a concession by making a smaller request, person then says yes

That’s not all technique: make a small offer then increase it.

Leadership

Where do leaders come from, the great person theory says people are born great and then demonstrate it. Others say it’s an outcome of circumstance.

3 leadership styles, laissez fair, autocratic, and democratic. Autocratic got most done with inferior quality. Democratic was most enjoyable with highest quality and laissez faire sucked.

Central leader traits, more outgoing, dominant and intelligent than normal. Favourable conditions for leadership is a clear task, team gets along and the leader has authority.

Group dynamics

Mere presence effects

The effect that is made just by people being there. People doing the same task can makes it easier to do that task, e.g. gym, so with simpler tasks. You get social inhibition in some areas, and it seems easier to solve complex problems by yourself. If somethings easier better to do it with people, or harder do it by yourself. Mere presence is about having an audience

Social loafing

This is where people are doing the same task, e.g. members of a committee. Social loafing is the effect when people don’t work as hard when they’re all doing the same thing as if they were doing it by themselves, e.g. pulling a rope.  The reason why? They’re less accountable, don’t get the feeling they need to put in so much.

Deinviduation

In a mob, people are violent in ways they couldn’t imagine by themselves. Deindividuation is where people are less aware of themselves as an individual which then releases impulsive actions that are normally under restraint. Being in a mob or wearing a mask can produce deinviduation. Wearing a uniform can produce deinvidiuation.

Thinking in Groups

You get group polarization, more extreme positions than people working on their own.  This happens via the risky shift, where the group takes more extreme views that would the individuals, although the opposite is true. So groups tend to magnify either extremes or conservative views. 

This may be accounted for by conforming and excelling, plus the confirmation bias, which indicates stronger support for you view than is, plus the repetition when many people take the same view.

Group think

Close group think in rigid ways.

Help: when there’s a group there’s a feeling of deferred responsibility, someone else will do it, will help, it doesn’t need to be me.

 Relationships

Types of relationship

Equality matching=each partner gives and expects something in return, its reciprocity almost contractual. Obligation is a key aspect in this.

Market pricing relationship= I put in what I get out according to what its objectively worth, e.g. landlord tenant, utility rather than fairness governs this relationship

Communal sharing relationship: this is observed in romantic and close family relationships where I becomes we, and if the other gains you gain. These are generally long term relationships.

Authority ranking relationships: power and hierarchy characterise this type of relationship

Relationships can be based in economics, fairness, and affection.

Attraction

Attraction is related to proximity which is related to a sense of familiarity. Proximity can be geography, ideography, etc. Similarities and opposites attract. This could be pointing at the fit of relationship where actually you need enough similarity to make a new thing out of, but also you need to attend to each’s deficiencies??

Love has three components of intimacy, passion and commitment. There is an interweaving of much of people’s lives to form a love relationship.

Romantic love as the passionate, mad out of control love.

Companiate love as the love of companion, mutual trust and care.

Chapter 14 Intelligence

Mental tests

Some measure aptitude some achievement

Evaluating mental tests

Reliability are they consistent

Valid do they measure what we hope they do, do they have predictive validity

Hierarchical model of intelligence, 3 core aspects linguistic ability, numerical ability, mechanical ability

Fluid g=intelligence to deal with new problems

Crystallised g=amount of repertoire of existing skills

Verbal intelligence

Spatial intelligence

Procedural intelligence

Declarative intelligence

Information processing approach

Mental speed: greater working memory

Different types of intelligence

Analytic intelligence: good at tests

Practical intelligence: can fix your car

Creative intelligence:

Emotional intelligence: understand yours and others, control yours

Chapter 15 Personality

Trait approach

This is how people behave, think and feel are relitavely stable over time.  Traits are stable, states are not.  So a trait would be generally angry, easy to anger. Defining traits enable us to predict action, and are testable by these predictions!

There are 18000 relevant personality terms in the OED.  Given that the ones we use most are the most relevant then this reduced to 4500 trait terms by Cattell. When de deduplicated this reduced to 171, this again by factor analysis was reduced to 16 primary persoanltiy dimensions. Again using factor analysis this reduce to 5:

1.       Extraversion

a.       Directing energy towards people and things

2.       Neuroticism

a.       Being prone to negative affect

3.       Agreeableness

a.       Trusting and easy going with others

4.       Conscientiousness

a.       Organised, efficient and disciplined

5.       Openness to experience

a.       Curious, likes new experience

This is a dimensional approach so there is a continuum from extraversion to introversion from neuroticism to emotional stability.

Whilst the big 5 do map to other cultures, certainly in China there is one personality type that is distinctly Chinese.

The consistency controversy

However are there enduring traits that people have or do people change dependent on situation?

Mischel showed the personality paradox where there is low correlation in different situations of a person’s traits. Situationists argue is the situation that determines action, not the personality.

Resolving the situationists challenge

There are strong situations that produce near uniformity of personality behaviour, e.g. traffic lights and formal parties and examinations.. Weak situations e.g.  Informal parties, and playgrounds.

It seems then that there is a reliable if then rule for personality\situation interaction.

Cultural differences in trait taxonomies

1.       Extraversion:

a.       Sociable

b.      Lively

c.       Active

d.      Assertive

e.      Sensation-seeking

Genes and Personality

Given there are some personality traits where do they come from, it seems they grow out of an individual’s temperament? These seem to influence the big 5.

Physiology and personality

Eynsyck argues that introverts have a higher level of central nervous system sensitivity. Introverts have a lower threshold for pain, prefer less noise and guard themselves against stimulation from the outside which leads to over stimulation.

Sensation seeking people have underactive neurotransmitters especially those relying on norepinephrine which means they are chronically under aroused.

Sensation seekers try to kick-start their less active nervous system and maybe at greater risk of abusing drugs.

Inhibited temperament is associated with introversion, they react stronger as babies when distressed, dislike new stimuli, seek reassurance. The theory is they have a low threshold for activity in the amygdala, so it is easily triggered in them. In some ways they have an overactive…

Whilst genes and biology play a part in moulding personality so does the environment.

Cultural effects

There are national characteristics, although of course not everyone in a country will have them! Economic lifestyle affects characteristic, so how people earn their money, farming, city, hi tech.

Family effects

Families don’t seem to affect personality, although probably that’s because individuals within a family are not all treated the same!!

Some argue birth order is significant to personality. Gender plays a factor and familial expectation

The psychodynamic approach: probing the depths

In the renaissance they saw that there were a stable set of personalities (komedia del arte?)

Explicit personality is seen here as the tip of the iceberg, and conceals an inner drama, a subtext. Again the explicit personality is seen as the outcome of conflicting dynamics.

Freud starts with studying hysteria (conversion disorder) which has many physical and mental complaints: a confusing array of symptoms. Freud sees symptoms as a way of keeping charged emotional memories repressed.

To articulate the repressed first hypnosis was used then free association. Within this process he notices resistance.  Resistance prevents the memories and the conflicts that gave rise to them coming up directly, so we need the indirect route of psychoanalysis and interpretation.

Models of mind

Freud saw all psychical events are causally governed. The causes for random or odd events are simply invisible, i.e. unconscious. Pre conscious are the thoughts that can be brought into consciousness, i.e. where you slept last night.

The unconscious is inferred by parapraxes, jokes, dreams and patterns of resistance. Freud sees conflict as shaping us between our drives.

Id contains all biological urges, which can be grouped into life and death instincts, eating drinking, sex and violence, aggression. The id abides by the pleasure principle, satisfaction now not later whatever the cost.

The ego is governed by the reality principle. It tries to satisfy the id, in ways that the environment allows. It is a broker between the world and the id.

Superego (the prohibitions that enable society), uses guilt and shame as punishment, just as the parents scolded or withdrew their love.

Repression is the mechanism to deal with the internal threat that is the outcome of conflict between the 3 systems.  When we repress a memory of a conflict we can also repress a desire that led to the memory and also the thoughts, emotions and behaviours that led to the desire.

So boy feels anxious as hitting his brother gets punishment. He then feels anxious when he thinks about it, he then represses his desire to hit his brother to protect from the anxiety.  As the desire emerges so does the anxiety.

Displacement: here conflictual desire find a new non conflictual outlet, so kick the cat.

Reaction formation: the original desire is warded off by its opposite, so he now bombards his brother with love and gifts, almost in an aggressive fashion, the equal and opposite of hitting him.

Rationalisation, this is where the conflict is lessened as it is reframed in more acceptable terms I hit my brother to make him stronger.

Projection: the desire is recognised by not owed, and I want to hit you becomes you want me to hit you

The developing mind

Freud saw drive conflicts as deriving from psychosexual development

Child starts life as a bundle of instincts designed to seek pleasure. Pleasure seeking moves through oral, anal, phallic stages and genital stages. Phallic being my pleasure with my genitals. Genital stage being your and societies pleasure with my genitals.

As pleasure moves and is moved through these stages there is frustration, how the child handles this frustration determines the character.

During oral phase, all is given nothing is asked. It is an idyllic existence which can lead to a passive dependency in adult life if fixated upon where people ask, please love me, which derived from please feed me. Oral character is passive dependency

Anal Character derives from severe conflict during toilet training. This can lead the child to inhibiting the bowels and the rules that inhibit this, I must not go in my pants, I must not make a mess. This leads to a very rule based, obsessional character, the anal character.  The child asserts himself by holding himself back, by defying, this can also lead to a meanness as resource is now withheld.

Freud thought the conflicts of the oral and anal phase paled into insignificance when compared to the phallic phase.

In the phallic phase the boy seeks external object for his sexual urges, the mother, then fears the wrath and castration from the father. This leads to anxiety which must be repressed, but then can’t be held so projected, I hate my father. After a while then he solves the conflict by stopping having his mother as an erotic object.

Once this resolution has been achieve then the boy goes into the latency period until he’s 12 and puberty starts.  Here boys only play with boys and don’t want anything to do with the other sex.  Then the hormones kick in and we get the genital period where other girls are attractive.

The same is true for girls but it’s called the Electra complex, but why does the girl who started off loving her mother then want the father, well Freud argued penis envy

Windows into the unconscious

Freud believed ideas, memories etc. are repressed but never completely and anxiety comes to the surface in disguised forms: slips of tongue, dreams, jokes, defence mechanisms.

All dreams are wish fulfilment: in consciousness a wish is considered put through the ego an super ego, in dreams gratification is immediate.

Dreams have latent and manifest content. Latent is the repressed, manifest is the symbolic.

Myths represent the collective unconscious as dreams represents the individuals.

Criticisms and critiques

Repression: We remember unpleasant memories, anxious memories consciously. Trauma memory is repeated

Psychosexual development: no correlation between feeding mechanisms and personality, no correlation between anality and personality

Oedipal: Troiband uncle acts as disciplinarian, and he is the person to whom the child directs their hatred

Freud’s methods

Case studies, plus theory to interpret the data, but his colleagues came up with different theories.

Just because Freud’s theories fitted the evidence so could other ones. Analysts could have different interpretations because their categories, reaction formation, repression, displacement are so broad and open to interpretation. Freud theories were not testable.

Projective tests, provide client with ambiguous something they project their structure on it, which will reflect their unconscious, For instance Thematic application test TAT, picture cards of relationships, they make up a story then add one of their own

Rorschach inkblot test.

Both these tests aim to delve into the deeper structures of the personality.

Psychodynamics after Freud

Adler and Jung broke away from Freud.

Ego psychology

Freud gap was on the skill of the ego

Erikson, Anna Freud. The ego is not just an arbiter between id and world and superego, but rather a clever strategist with intrinsic competencies.

Contemporary theorist agree with Freud that unconscious conflict is found in health and non-healthy people.

Object relations

Freud gap is real relations with others.

Klein, Winnicott., Bowlby and Kohut.

Bowlby, child’s personality massively influenced by primary attachment figure, this resulted in a set of beliefs about self and other, which were referred to as an internal working model. Whilst attachment patterns can predict future behaviour, they can change by other relationships.

Freudian contributions

1.       Everything is meaningful

2.       Humans are riddled by internal conflict

3.       Some psychological processes operate outside awareness

Humanistic approach

They argue trait theorists and psychoanalysis had lost sight of what it meant to be human. They seek more than sex and survival rather they seek to realise their potential!!

Maslow argued that life isn’t to resolve conflict within the personality but rather to get something positive, i.e. the hierarchy.

The top of his hierarchy is peak experience and underneath self-actualisation, what is that??

The self for Maslow, is the self that takes action, oneself as an object. To build a good self-relation requires UPR.

Self-actualising is realistically oriented, accepted themselves and others, were spontaneous, cared more about the problems they were working on that about themselves had intimate relationships with a few people.

How would you know what is your potential?

Positive psychology

Humans aren’t understood via a deficit model, rather by what they can achieve. Positive psychology aims at well-being, so how can we get where we want to.

Adaption appears critical to happiness. Lottery winners soon adapt to being lottery winners and then their emotional state returns.

Contributions of humanistic approach

Again vague terms hard to test, potential, UPR, actualise.. Does actualising result in good, e.g. Hitler. However modern approaches that work out how to achieve positive ends seem to be useful (WTF)

The social-cognitive approach

Behavioural roots in Watson: anyone can be trained to do anything. Leads to learning theory and bandura, where we see people act and get rewards, gives us outcome expectation, we learn, we become self-efficacious, we do, we get.

We start off with external models, we then internalize them. So on this move personality is learnt.

Kelly: previous personality theories are internal, or pulled or pushed by carrot or stick. He argues it’s how we interpret that determines how we act.

Mischel=Cognitive affective personality=

1.       Individuals encodings

2.       Individual expectances and beliefs about the world

3.       Individual affective response style

4.       Individual goals and values

5.       Individuals competences and self-regulatory plans

Three key aspects

1.       Control

2.       Self-control

3.       Attributional style

Control: having control over your life, taking decisions, doing things the way you want boosts your feel good. Belief you can do it, relates to success outcomes.

Attributional style:Dimensions:global, stable, internal. This can predict psychopathology, career success

Self-control: to do the good and not the bad, will power, delay of gratification. There is a correlation between childhood DoG and adolescent. There are techniques that can make DoG easier.

So social construal stress importance of situation in personality, trait theorist’s stress genetic

Chapter 16 Psychopathology

Mental disorder

Referred to since 1500 BC: depression, frenzy, thinking you’re a wolf

Earliest views people had evil spirits in them. People tried to placate them, cut them out, drive them out..

Middle ages, mental health was a disease like a physical illness, the mad putting them away

16^th centuries special hospitals were created to house all the undesirables. They caged the mad and like animals then put them on display, e.g. Bedlam.

1800s mental distress seen as an organic illness. Syphilis causes mental distress. Brain causes mental distress.

1900s mental distress as a psychological illness.

The modern conception of mental disorder

There are psychodynamic, social construal, biomedical explanations of mental disorder but each by itself is too narrow. The two part theory of each factor causing vulnerability when put together causes disorder is the diathesis-stress model where there is a predisposition then a set of factors which together cause the problem

Classifying Mental disorder

Assessment of symptoms (formal\informal) and signs of other symptoms to lead to diagnosis, of something that has been defined in ICD 10/DSM. A symptom is something that might be considered something a client doesn’t want, hearing voices, being upset a sign might be that they have low energy that might indicate the symptom of depression. So a symptom is part of a problem, a sign is a pointer to a symptom.

A collection of signs and symptoms is a syndrome e.g. schizophrenia.

MMPI test measures from introversion via schizophrenia to depression!!

DSM first published 1950. DSM says how many, how long and how severe do symptoms have to be to be a diagnosis. So symptom is a bad thing, a collection of bad things is a diagnosis of mental health disorder!!

DSM 4: 5 axes

Axis 1 clinical syndromes such as depression, schizophrenia

Axis 2 mental retardation and personality disorder

Axis 3 General medical conditions e.g. constant pain that contribute to mental health disorders

Axis 5 provides a global assessment of functioning

There are cultural specific disorders in the appendix, i.e. disorders only found in one culture.

Schizophrenia

This means split mind in Latin,. First coined 1900. 1-2% of the population. Diagnosed late adolescences early adulthood.

Signs and symptoms

Delusions, psychosis, hallucinations, disorganised speech can’t think straight, disorganised behaviour, i.e. hygiene, random giggling, jumping madness. Loss of personal contact

Schizophrenia runs in families, and has a genetic element. Correlation with birth complications that interfere with brain development. Flu in second trimester. So people born in winter are more likely to get it due to more viruses. So this is the argument for the neuro development aspect of schizophrenia.

Social and psychological environment: correlation with low socio economic status. Disrupted families seems to be the outcome from schizophrenia not its cause.

According to the dopamine hypothesis schizophrenia is caused by an abnormally high level of activity in the brain circuits sensitive to the neurotransmitter dopamine. Overdoses of amphetamine produces a temporary psychosis. Schizophrenic’s brains are smaller with enlarged ventricles and basal ganglia.

There are then 4 factors to cause schizophrenia, genes, neuro development, dopamine hyperactivity, cognitive dysfunction.  There are three main aspect of the disorder, hallucinations, disordered speech\behaviour and one that produces negative symptoms.

Treatment success rates are low 20%

Mood disorders

Bipolar and unipolar syndromes

Bipolar episodes can last for hours or months, you don’t need to flip to the other, some can be mainly manic with few depressions. They can also co-occur tearful grandiosity. Occurs 1% of the population.

Hypomania is the start, the elation, supreme confidence, ideas come thick and fast and are all electric. This can move into a full blown mania where the motor is racing but the brakes are off, stay up all night babbling and a full loss of a grip on reality. So from lucid stream of electric ideas, to a chaotic stream mess of enveloping ideas. This then takes you to angry, irritable and out of control.

Mania: the brain turns into an ecstasy registering machine

Depression: the brain turns into a suffering registering machine.

Roots of mood disorders claimed to be genetic, neurochemical and psychological

Learned helplessness is that there is nothing I can do to stop my suffering, which is quite similar to depression.

Beck argues depressive cognitive schema about self and future cause depression.

Internal negative attributional style correlates with depression, if something bad happens it’s because of my disposition.  Again a global internal negative attributional style correlates, this bad thing happened, because of my disposition and it always will happen. Depression less likely with social network, more common in lower socioeconomic groups.  Men can act out their distress in terms of exercise, work and alcohol.

With multiple disorders multiple factors create a risk, a diathesis, which then can be triggered by a stressor.

Affective disorders there is an altered mood. In depression there is, apart from symptom relief less attempt to get rid of it, or avoid the sensation, as there is with anxiety. With anxiety there is a strong desire to avoid the feeling of anxiety, with depression you feel it then try to suppress the symptoms for time but they come back. With anxiety you can try to live in a way that avoids them, they are situational where depression is dispositional.

Blood phobia is accompanied by a sensation of disgust rather than fear.

Phobias develop from a trauma then classical conditioning associating trauma with thing.  You can also get vicarious conditioning, mum is traumatised.

Panic attacks are the rapid onset of anxiety, panic disorders are where you fear panic attacks.

GAD is 3% of population has it. Panic disorder in 2%

OCD often being pre age 10

Stress disorder: acute stress disorder under a month, after 3 months it’s PTSD

Trauma=> disassociation, numbness, flashbacks, hypervigilant.

Only 5% of trauma victims get PTSD. Factors trauma severity, pre-existing schema, network of support.

Dissociative disorders: DID. Dissociative figure, you have episodic disassociation.. DID is rare and mainly found in women.

Dissociative fugues, are normally preceded by a trauma. People who can be hypnotised are people who have strong disassociation powers and are more likely to go into fugues.

Developmental disorder

Autism: language, motor and social problems.  More prevalent in boys.  Lack empathy can read emotions of other, and have little interest in others. Have languages development problems, ranging from not speaking, echoing others, making high pitches squeaks or having problems with pronouns!!

Particular movement patterns, rocking for hours. Desire for sameness throwing tantrum if it doesn’t happen. With autism there can be some island of exceptional skills and be a gifted musician.

ADHD: impulsive, constantly fidgety, can’t keep attention on a task. More frequent in boys. One claim is that their brains lack the inhibition circuits. ADHD people get distracted, can’t ignore cues from themselves or their environment.

Personality disorders

Axis 1 have more definite set of symptoms, Axis 2 i.e. personality disorders have a much broader set of patterns that characterises them. Difficult to diagnose because the definition is a prototype.

Chapter 17 Treatment of mental disorders

Biomedical therapies

There has been a history of surgical procedures for mental health, bloodletting, and cutting holes in the head to let bad spirits out.

Pharmacotherapy

Schizophrenia: antipsychotics

Antipsychotics block the transmission of dopamine in key brain pathways, for instance thorazine. However these had no effect on negative symptoms.

Then there were atypical anti psychotics, e.g. Seroquel, they improved hallucination and had an effect on negative symptoms.

The antipsychotics moved the schizophrenic from the asylum to the community. The antipsychotics remove symptoms at a cost of creating unpleasant side effects, sedation, muscle spasm, and a curious inexpressive mask like expression. A lot of people stop taking meds, or the meds aren’t right so you get a lot of asylum short readmissions.

Depression:  anti-depressants

First anti-depressants were tricyclics. These worked by increasing the amount of norepinephrine and serotonin available for transmission. 65% success rate.

Then came Prozac that only affected serotonin and had less side effects than the tri cyclics. Side effects can be insomnia, loss of libido

If tricyclics, or SSRIs aren’t effective then the is the atypical antidepressants e.g. Wellbutrin, which work on serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine

Norepinephrine underpins fight or flight response, so it has energising effects.

Bi Polar: anti manics

Lithium is an anti-manic with 60% success. It is also toxic at higher doses. New drugs come from anti consultants such as Topamax.

Anxiety: anxiolytics

Tranquilizers are anxiolytics. They work by increasing neuro transmission at the synapses of gamma aminobutyric acid. Alcohol is the most common anxiolytic.

Beta blockers are anxiolytics and benzodiazepines e.g. Valium. Valium is a short term drug as it is highly addictive. Can cause profound fetal damage. There can also be a rebound effect once you stop taking it, you end up more anxious than before you started taking it.

Drugs don’t cure, they contain. If the person stops taking the drugs they relapse. As people metabolize the drugs at different rates, then you need to tailor the dosage to the person.

Psychosurgery

Lobotomy: the connection between thalamus and frontal lobes are severed to disconnect thoughts from pathological emotions, however this had significant cognitive side effects and was stopped being used in 1940

Psychosurgery has re-emerged, but predominantly to remove brain tumours, build-up of fluids that are affecting the working of the brain. Sometimes as a last resort lesions are made at very specific places to help with OCD

ECT

ECT causes a seizure, started as a treatment for schizophrenia, then used for depression and mania. Success is 70%. However it can cause memory impairment as well as cognitive impairment.

Psychotherapies

Classical psychoanalysis

Symptoms come from unconscious conflicts dating back to childhood. To deal with this you have to recognize the original conflict and work through it using many techniques including transference. An emotional re-enactment, a still present of the prior relationship. Thus the therapists acts as a blank canvas on which the analysand can re-enact their part of the original drama, but the therapist then offers a different response from the original one.

Psychodynamic therapy

Past is the influence but noticing the patterns that are acted in the present and how different ones can be chosen.  They also see the therapeutic space as being a microcosm of the wider world, so major decisions can be made unlike Freud

Interpersonal therapy

Social relational style and social relations are key to depression. Also looks at role transactions and the interpersonal aspects of these, learning the new role and the new expectations.

Humanistic experiential therapist

Client centred: client accepts himself as he is, therapist creates an environment where they feel valued and understood. Existential looks at alienation and depersonalisation and challenges clients about what it means to exist. Gestalt is is unity of mind and body and the main aim is to increase self-awareness.

Behavioural therapy

Basis on learning theory, coming from Skinner, uses exposure. Systematic desensitization, which associates relaxation with the feared response.

Aversion therapy=Antabuse, be sick when you drink

Operant techniques=tokens to reward desired behaviour

Cognitive therapy

Stress inoculation therapy=positive self-talk, I can do this

How we interpret the world causes problems

Benefits from therapy

1.       Therapeutic alliance

2.       Interpersonal learning using the therapeutic relationship as an example

3.       Emotional defusing: acceptance

4.       Self-knowledge

5.       Overlapping techniques

a.       Each school borrows from the others