Exam 2 - Gregory Feist; General Psychology Notes PDF

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Gregory Feist; General Psychology Notes...

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Chapter 5 -Brain is the first major organ to form, the heart is next Stages of Prenatal Development There are 3 stages before birth: Germinal, Embryonic, and Fetal  Germinal Stage: is the first stage of the prenatal stage of development, which lasts 2 weeks o At conception, zygote (fertilized egg) starts to divide rapidly over 36 hours o Day 7, now called blastocyst (multi-celled organism) travels to fallopian tube and attaches to the uterine wall  Embryonic Stage: is marked by the formation of major organs: the nervous system, heart, eyes, ears, arms, legs, teeth, palate, and external genitalia o if implantation is successful o starts after 2 weeks after conception and continues for 8 weeks after conception  Fetal Stage: formation of bone cells at 8 weeks after conception and ends at birth Brain sensory Development before birth Neural migration: the movement of neurons from one part of the fetal brain to their more permanent destination; which occurs during 3-5 months of the fetal stage Male fetuses have generally more movement than female fetuses After conception  Neurons connecting ear to brain are complete around 18 weeks  Fetus begins to respond to sound around 26 weeks  Slowed heart rate= attention/interest; fastened heart rate= fear/distress

At birth, infants cannot see well unless face to face, but hearing is almost good as an adult at birth. Nature and Nurture Influences on Fetal Development

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Prenatal Programming: process by which events in the womb alter the development of physical and psychological health Teratogens: substances that can disrupt normal prenatal development and cause longlife deficits (molds/ aged cheese, coffee or more) o Pregnancy sickness is worse the first 3 months, when the fetus’s major organs develop and the embryo is most vulnerable to teratogens o Also includes viruses, alcohol, antidepressants, prescribed drugs, etc o Viruses have major effects during the beginning of pregnancy o Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder- most serious effect of prenatal alcohol exposure, which causes damage to the brain and central nervous system; mental retardation; low birth weight; physical abnormalities o Another teratogen is nicotine Maternal Nutrition: a key part of the developing baby’s environment, provides one of the most important examples of epigenetics o Certain kinds of diets can increase chances of obesity

Prenatal Personality Development Temperament: the biologically based tendency to behave in particular ways from very early in life Personality: the unique and relatively enduring sets of behaviors, feelings, thoughts and motives that characterize an individual The Development in Infancy and Childhood Many babies have their first steps of 12 months. Fine motor skills- involve the coordination of many smaller muscles, along with information from the eyes, in the service of some tasks  Training in fine motor skills aids kindergartner’s attention, showing how joined cognition and action can be Physical Development for Infancy

Early Sensory Development  5 major senses develop at different rates o Hearing is almost developed at birth o Newborn’s vision is only 20-600 (can only see 20 ft away, while an adult can see 600 ft away) o Visual Acuity or sharpness improves by 6 months of age o 3-4 a child’s vision is as good as an adults o Occipital cortex of the brain has to be stimulated by visual input so that it can develop the proper synaptic connections needed to process visual information o Visual cliff: test depth perception of babies who have learned to crawl (when they learned to crawl, they learned depth) Early Brain Development Pruning: degradation of synapses and dying off of neurons that are not strengthened by experience (nature’s way of making brain more efficient)  Required for normal brain development  Based on input from environment, quality of environment in which we are raised influences how our brains develop  Research shows children in harmful/secluded environments have a decrease in size of the brain  Children’s brains are more plastic and sensitive to stimulation than of older people  Young brains have less myelin which makes neural transmission more efficient but at cost to neuroplasticity  Myelin (allows nerve impulses to go faster) grows with age Early Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s Four Phases of Cognitive Development:

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Object Permanence: ability to realize that objects still exist when they are not being sensed Animistic thinking: the idea that inanimate objects are alive Egocentrism: tendency to think that the world revolves only by one’s own perspective Conservation: ability to recognize that, when some properties (such as shape) of an object change, other properties (such as volume) remain constant Zone of proximal development: distance between what a child can learn alone and what that child can learn assisted by someone else, usually an adult

Theory of Mind: refers to the ideas and knowledges about how other people’s minds work Development of Moral Reasoning  Lawrence Kohlberg, who studied the development of moral reasoning in children and adults by giving them a moral dilemma and recording the reasons

Personality Development during Infancy Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess developed the model of temperament:  Easy Child: predictable in daily functions, happy most of the time, adaptable (40%)  Difficult Child: unpredictable in daily functions, unhappy most of the time, slow to adapt to new situations (10%)  Slow-to-warm-up child: mildly intense to new situations, mildly irregular with daily patterns (15%)  35% not under categories

Early Socioemotional Development  Imprinting: rapid and innate learning of the characteristics of the caregiver soon after birth  Attachment: strong emotional connection that develops early between caregiver and infant  Separation anxiety: distress reaction when infant is away from caregiver for long There are three types of insecure attachment:  Insecure- avoidant: shows little distress from separation however physiological measures suggest that the infant is under stress  Insecure- Resistance: cannot be comforted by mothers reunion and shows difficulty in returning to play  Insecure-Disorganized/ Disoriented: infants show odd, conflicted behaviors in the strange situations Challenging assumptions in importance to Physical Contact

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Harlow shows that physical touch and contact is necessary for a healthy, normal development

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Infants build a connection and mimic simple adult expressions Social Referencing: ability to make use of social and emotional information from another person, especially a caregiver

Development of Emotions Emotional competence: ability to control emotions and know when it is appropriate to express them  learning to regulate one’s emotional behavior The Developing Adolescent Adolescence: transition period between childhood and early adulthood Physical Development in Adolescence Puberty: period when sexual interactions begins, marking beginning of adolescence  Sex glands, or gonads, then release sex hormones  Male gonads are called testes; females are called ovaries  Testes release sex hormone, testosterone  Release of female sex hormone, estradiol In girls:  Menarche: onset of menstruation  Menarche is highly variable (occurs usually at 12) In boys:  Spermarche: first ejaculation Cognitive Brain Development in Adolescence  Adolescence and Adults do not develop reasoning ability to the same degree, but to the extent to which they do is related to their ability to think and solve problems systematically  More abstract thinking  Frontal lobes (planning, attention, memory) are last areas of the brain to fully develop Multitude of changes in brain development in Adolescence  Brain develops more myelin around axons and more neural connections  Neural synchrony: ability of certain types of brain waves to work together to allow for coordinated activity in the brain  Synaptic pruning: reaches final stages, whereby rarely used synapses are allowed to die off to make the brain more efficient  Increased in GABAergic receptors which impairs learning (risky behavior/teens) Personality Development in Adolescence  Identity versus Identity confusion: conflict with personality development

Chapter 6 Consciousness: awareness of one’s surrounding and of what’s in one’s mind at a given moment; it includes aspects of being awake and aware  Acts as a stage for the “main event” of your brain at a given moment of time  Global workspace of consciousness: is when various elements are brought together

There are two dimensions of consciousness: wakefulness and awareness Wakefulness: degree of alertness reflecting whether a person is awake or asleep Awareness: the monitoring of information from the information from the environment and from one’s own thoughts Minimal Consciousness  Coma: is a state of consciousness in which the eyes are closed and the person is unresponsive and unarousable (generally from damage of the brain that controls wakefulness such as the reticular formation)  Vegetative state: a state of minimal consciousness, in which the eyes might be open but the person is otherwise unresponsive o May transition from vegetative state to a minimally conscious state , where a person is barely awake or aware but shows deliberate movements Moderate Consciousness  Between complete consciousness and lack of consciousness  Preconscious: describe material that is potentially accessible but not currently available to awareness o Tip of tongue consciousness: know person’s name but can’t come up with it  Sleeping and dreaming is in moderate consciousness Full Consciousness  When we are more alert and present than normal  Mindfulness: a heightened awareness of the present moment, whether of events in one’s environment or in one’s own mind Attention Attention: the limited capacity to process information that is under conscious control Three attentional processes: Selective attention, sustained attention, and shifting attention using multitasking  Selective Attention: ability to focus awareness on specific features in the environment while ignoring others o Cocktail party effect: particular ability to filter out auditory stimuli and refocus when you hear your name o Inattentional blindness: phenomenon when we fail to notice unexpected objects in our surroundings o Perceptual load model: states that we do not notice potential distractors when a primary task consumes all of our attentional capacity o Synchronization: a process in which the conscious attention occurs when neurons from many distinct brain regions work together  Sustained attention: ability to maintain focused awareness on a target or an idea o Sustained attention is compromised when multitasking Training Consciousness Meditation: practice that people use to calm the mind, stabilize concentration, focus attention, and enhance awareness of the present moment Sleeping and Dreaming Circadian Rhythms: variations in physiological processes that cycle within approximately a 24hour period, including the sleep-wake cycle

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Wake cycle, feeding, hormone production, cellular regeneration, vary on a circadian basis Suprachiasmatic nucleus- in hypothalamus regulates physiological activity on daily cycles When retina in eye finds light, pineal gland decreases the amount of melatonin (hormone that plays a role in relaxation and drowsiness)

Sleeping Brain  REM (rapid eye movements): quick movements of the eye that happen during sleep, thought to mark phases of dreaming  Beta waves: rapid, low energy brain waves that occur when one is awake  Alpha waves: brainwaves that occur when one is relaxed or drowsy; slower and high energy waves than beta waves  Non- REM: form of sleep with little eye movements; which are slow rather than fast o Theta waves: brainwaves that occur during Stage 1 of sleep; are slower, lower energy than of alpha waves o Delta Waves: brain waves that dominate stage 3 sleep; higher energy than theta waves o Dreams are more common in non-REM sleep 

Newborns and infants spend more time in REM sleep (declines over life span) in order to assist in brain growth and development

Function of sleeping  Supports restorative processes in the CNS: neural growth, metabolic cleanup, memory consolidation, protection against cellular damage  Helps us learn and remember better  Increase activation in hippocampal (formation and learning)  Fights cell damage Sleep Deprivation and sleep debt  Affects mental health  Contribute to psychological strain Disorders of Sleep  Insomnia: sleep order characterized by difficulty falling and staying asleep; not feeling rested  Sleepwalking: sleep order characterized by activities occurring during non-REM sleep that usually occurs when someone is awake (eating, sleeping)  Narcolepsy: sleep order characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness and weakness in facial and limb muscles  Hypersomnia: sleep order characterized by sleeping more than 10 hours a day for two weeks or more (urge to take naps during inappropriate times)  Night terrors: state occurs when a person walks around, speaks incoherently, and ultimately wakes up terrified and afraid from sleep (During REM sleep not a nightmare or dream)  Nightmares: distressing dreams Dreaming Dreams: images, thoughts, and feeling experienced during sleep

Dreams operate on two distinct levels of consciousness: manifest and latent level  Manifest level: freud’s surface level of dreams, recalled when waking  Latent level: freud’s deeper, unconscious level of dreams (meaning found in this level) Biological level AIM theory: argues dreams are devoid of meaning and are result of random brain activity AIM stands for 3 biologically based dimensions of consciousness: activation, input and mode  Activation: refers to the amount of neural activation and ranges to low to high activation  Input: refers to whether stimulation is internal or external  Mode: refers to the mental state- from logical (wakeful) to loose- illogical (dreaming Cognitive level  Lucid dreaming: can control the events and outcomes of the dream Combined theories  Dreams keep existing memories stable, even when new experiences interfere with old memories  Cortisol levels change during sleep stages Hypnosis Hypnosis: state characterized by focused attention, suggestibility, absorption, lack of voluntary control over behavior, and suspension of critical faculties

Chapter 7 Memory: ability and store information; store of what has been learned and remembered Three Stage model of memory: the classification of memories based on duration as sensory, short-term and long-term  Sensory memory: the part of the memory that holds information in its original sensory form for a brief period of time, usually about half a second or less  Short-term memory: part of the memory that temporarily stores a limited amount of information before it is either transferred to long-term storage or forgotten  Long-term memory: the part of memory that has the capacity of store a vast amount of information for as little as 30 seconds as long as a lifetime Sensory Memory  Is made up of brief traces of sensation left by the firing of neurons to the brain  There are two kinds of sensory memory that have received the most attention o Iconic memory: brief visual record left on the retina of the eye o Echoic memory: short term retention of sounds Working memory: part of memory required to attend to and solve a problem at hand; often used interchangeable as short term memory  Short term memory capacity of most people are around 5-9 digits  Best way to increase capacity of short term memory is to transform what you remember into smaller sets Chunking: process of breaking down a list to smaller sets Three distinct processes in the working memory:  Attending to stimulus  Storing information about a stimulus  Rehearsing the stored process to solve a problem

The attention system is supported by 3 temporary storage systems:  Phonological (sounds and language)  Visuospatial (image and spatial relations)  Buffer (temporary storage for specific events) Central effective: decides where to focus attention and selectively hones in on specific events Once information is taken and attended to, it is sent into a temporary store:  Visuospatial sketchpad (visual or spatial info)  Episodic buffer (specific event or experience)  Phonological loop (sound or linguistic info) Rehearsal: process of repeatedly practicing material, so that is enters into long-term memory Serial position effect: tendency to have better recall for items in a list because of the position  Primacy effect: recall items at the beginning of the list  Recency effect: items at the end of the list Long term memory There are two types of long term memory:  Implicit memory(nondeclarative memory): type of memory made up of knowledge based on previous experience, such as skills we perform automatically once we mastered them o Procedural memory: memory made up of implicit knowledge for almost any behavior or physical skill we learned o Priming: a implicit memory that occurs when recall is improved by previous exposure to similar or same stimuli  Explicit memory: the knowledge that consists of the conscious recall of facts and events (also called declarative memory) o Semantic memory: form of memory that recalls facts and general knowledge, such as what we learn in school o Episodic memory: our memory for the experiences we have had Encoding Encoding: process by which the brain attends to, takes in, and integrates new information (first stage of long term memory formation  Two kinds of encoding: automatic processing and effortful processing o Automatic processing: encoding of information that occurs with little effort or conscious attention to the task o Effortful processing: encoding of information that occurs with careful attention and conscious effort There are three levels of processing: structural, phonemic, semantic  Structural processing: shallowest level  Phonemic processing: mid level processing  Semantic processing: deepest level of processing Mnemonic devices: method devised to help people with memory  For example acronyms Consolidation Consolidation: the second process of long term formation; process of establishing, stabilizing, or modifying memory  Resistant to distraction, inference, and decay  Sleep is an important role

Storage Storage: the third process of long term formation; retention of memory over time Organize and store in 3 different ways: Hierarchies, Schemas, and networks  Hierarchies: way of organizing related pieces of information from the most specific feature they have in common to the most general  Schemas: mental frameworks that develop from our experiences with particular people, objects and events  Associative Networks: a chain of associations between related concepts o Association: psychological process that binds concepts together o Nodes: links between associations Unlike association networks, neural networks are computer models that imitate the way neurons talk to one another Parallel distributed process: models propose associations involve the simultaneous activity of many nodes Retrieval: recovery of information stored in memory; fourth stage of long term memory Biological basis of memory Prefrontal cortex: foremost region of the frontal lobes; important role in attention, appropriate social behavior, impulse control, and working memory Long term potentiation: strengthening of synaptic connection that results when a synapse of one neuron repeatedly fires and excites another neuron  Learning becomes easier and more efficient 

Chapter 7 Learning: enduring change in behavior that occurs with experience...