Basic psychology Flashcards
What is extinction?
Reduction in a conditioned response
Which 3 things are in Eysenck’s model of personality?
Psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticisim
What is incubation?
Increase in strength of a response following brief but repeated exposures to a stimulusq
What is habituation?
The successive presentation of a stimulus, which elicits a response eventually, leads to a decrease in the intensity of that response
What is stimulus generalisation?
Concept in classical conditioning
Conditioned response gets generalised to other stimuli that are similar to conditioned stimulus
An example is child with spider phobia also being scared of insects
What is stimulus preparedness?
Humans biologically predisposed to react with fear to certain stimuli - conditioning occurs quicker and more resistant to extinction
Which strategies can improve encoding?
Order and sorting info Chunking Using mnemonics Imageries Adding importance and salience to the info Using primacy-recency effects
How can retrieval be improved?
Cueing
Reinstatement of learning context
What is encoding specificity principle?
The more similar the retrieval situation is to the coding situation, the better the retrieval
What does Ray Osterrieth test test?
Visual memory
Constructional ability
What are esteem needs?
The need to develop a sense of personal worth and competence and the need for recognition by others
What are aesthetic and cognitive needs?
Growth needs involving knowledge, understanding, beauty and symmetry
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which 4 levels are D needs and what are D needs?
D needs are deficiency needs
First 4 levels of pyramid
Level 1 Maslow
Physiological needs - biological requirements for human survival - food, water, warmth
Level 2 Maslow
Safety needs - financial security, roof over head
Level 3 Maslow
Social - feelings of love and belonging
Level 4 Maslow
Esteem needs - social recognition, personal worth
Level 5 Maslow
Self actualisation - achieving ones full potential
Which further levels did Maslow add when he expanded the pyramid?
Growth needs included Level 5 - cognitive needs Level 6 - aesthetic needs Level 7 - self actualisation Level 8 - transcendence
What is transcendence?
Where a person is motivated by values which transcend beyond the personal self (e.g. religion, mystical experiences, sexual experiences)
Which attention theory states that people can only listen to one physical channel of information at a time?
Broadbent’s filter theory of attention - proposed that there is an audio filter in the brain that selects which channel we should pay attention to
Where did Broadbent propose that the audio filter lies?
Between the sensory buffer and short-term store (working memory) that prevents overloading memory
What is modelling?
Observational learning explained by social learning theory
Which name is associated with modelling?
Bandura
What is the commonest cause of long term forgetting?
Retrieval failure
What approach are Needs theory and Goal theory based on?
Socio-psychological approach which address the cognitive motives behind people’s complex behaviour in the context of their social situations such as work, family and society
What are some extrinsic motivation theories?
Homeostatic drive theory
Drive reduction theory
Arousal reduction theory
based on biopsychological perspective which examines physiological motives such as hunger and thirst in animals
What is reciprocal inhibition?
The principle states that 2 opposing emotions cannot stay together for a long time - one will reciprocally inhibit the other
What part of memory does semantic memory fall under?
Declarative
What is semantic memory?
Facts, ideas, concepts
What is retrospective falsification?
Unconscious distortion of memory
What is episodic memory?
Autobiographical
What is primary appraisal with respect to a life stressor?
Individual evaluates the stressor
What is secondary appraisal with respect to life stressors?
Individual evaluates resources and options available to manage stressor
Amnesic syndrome is characterised by marked impairment in what type of memory?
Episodic
Which is a test of nonverbal intelligence?
Raven’s progressive matrices
Which learning principle is operating in compulsions?
Negative reinforcement
What is the homeostatic drive theory?
Changes in homeostatic system triggers processes aimed at restoring system
What is the drive reduction theory?
Motivation of behaviour is to decrease the arousal associated with basic drives
What is paired associates a test of ?
Verbal memory
What is habit reversal training useful for?
Tics
OCD spectrum disorders e.g. trichotillomania, nail biting, skin picking etc.
Which learning principle is systematic desensitisation based on?
Classical conditioning
What is systematic desensitisation?
Deep muscle relaxation paired with series of imagined scenes that depict situations that cause anxiety and thus produce anxiety
What is state-dependent memory?
Phenomenon in which the retrieval cue at the time of encoding information is one’s internal state rather than the external context e.g. dysthymic patient only remembers memories when depressed not when happy
What is a projective test of personality?
Thematic apperception test
Primary emotions
Anger Disgust Joy Anticipation Fear Acceptance Surprise Sadness
What are secondary emotions
Love
Contempt
Submission
Disappointment
Is any processing involved in sensory memory?
No
Memory loss in Korsakoff’s
Severe anterograde and extensive retrograde amnesia inc. autobiographical with relative sparing of most distant memories
Working memory and procedural memory are unimpaired
Where are pathological features of Korsakoff’s mainly found?
Paraventricular and periaqueductal grey
Thalamus
Mammillary bodies
Visual acuity in newborn
20/300
What is primacy effect?
Remember first few things said better than subsequent information
2 components of declarative memory
Episodic - personal experiences
Semantic - factual knowledge
What can test abstract reasoning?
Goldstein-Scheerer Colour Form Sorting Test
Wisconsin card sorting test is a descendant of this
What is a schema?
Basic building block of intelligent behaviour
What do schemas consist of?
Organised past experiences to understand future experiences
By what process is information held in long term memory?
Elaborative rehearsal
What is maintenance rehearsal?
Repetition of items in one’s mind
What is elaborative rehearsal?
Involves more extensive understanding of the meaning of material
3 levels of rehearsal
- Shallow processing - surface features only rehearsed
- Phonemic processing - sound features are rehearsed
- Semantic processing - deeper encoding
Brain region responsible for working memory
Frontal lobe
What is the cardinal feature of delirium?
Impaired attention
Which test for personality tests dimensions of introversion-extraversion and neuroticism-stability?
Eysenck personality inventory
What is a common cause of absent mindedness?
Failure of prospective memory
Which part of brain is projective memory involved with?
Prefrontal lobe
Difference between implosion and flooding
Implosion - immediate exposure to top of hierarchy without any gradual introduction of anxiety-inducing stimuli IN IMAGINATION
Flooding - same but in real life
What is the perceptual set?
Perceptual bias that predisposes the perceiver to only notice certain aspects of a stimulus and to ignore the other aspects
What is forward conditioning?
Conditioned stimulus presented before the unconditioned stimulus
Which type of memory cannot be consciously inspected?
Non-declarative
WHat is non-declarative memory made up of?
Procedural memory
Priming
Classical conditioning
Non-associative learning
Features of amnesic syndrome
- Unimpaired immediate memory
- Anterograde amnesia
- Retrograde amnesia
- Unimpaired global intellect
- Unimpaired implicit memory
What is Premack’s principle?
High-frequency or high-probability behaviours can be used for low-probability behaviours
Reinforcement schedule in gambling
Variable ratio
What is reintegration?
The process of recalling an entire memory from a partial cue
Who proposed the theory of 6 basic emotions?
Ekman
What is Brown Paterson task?
Introducing a distraction immediately after digit span test to prevent rehearsal
Memory loss in alcoholic blackout
Anterograde amnesia due to failure to consolidate
According to Ebbinghaus curve, there is a sharp drop in forgetting over how long?
9 hours
What is trace conditioning?
Conditioned stimulus ends prior to application of unconditioned stimulus
What is backward conditioning?
CS presented after UCS (used in advertising)
What is stanford-binet theory?
Intelligent behaviours arise from a balance between analytical, creative and physical abilities
Gestalt principles of perception
Proximity Closure Similarity Continuity Symmetry
What is sensitisation?
An increase in response to a stimulus as a function of repeated presentations of that stimulus
What does social learning theory combine?
Classical and operant conditioning
What is higher-order conditioning?
Use of an already conditioned stimulus as unconditioned stimulus for the next level and conditioning and eliciting a conditioned response for another stimulus
What is counter conditioning?
A form of classical conditioning where previously conditioned response is replaced by new response
What is covert reinforcement?
THe reinforcer is an imagined pleasant event rather than material pleasure
Covert sensitisation
Reinforcer is an imagined unpleasant consequence to reduce the frequency of undesired behaviour
What is shaping?
AKA successive approximation
Form of operant conditioning where a desirable behaviour pattern is learnt by the successive reinforcement of behaviours closer to the desired one
What is autokinesis?
Phenomenon that if life is shown from a small dim and fixed light source for an extended period of time it will appear as though it is moving
What is the phi phenomenon?
False perception of motion is produced by a succession of still images shown with fixed time interval rapidly
When is depth perception apparent?
2-4 months
when is 6:6 acuity achieved?
6 months
What is dichotic listening?
Feeding one message into the left ear and a different message into the right
What is Triesman’s attenuation theory?
Physical characteristics and semantic relevance are used to select one message for full processing while other messages are given partial processing
What can test selective attention?
Stroop test
Letter cancellation
What is priming?
A form of learning that occurs without conscious recall of the episode of learning
What is a test for anterograde memory?
Three words learning task
Algorithmic method of problem solving
Step-by-step search which guarantees solution but is time consuming
Heuristic method of problem solving
Uses rules of thumb - more likely solutions tried before others
Which of the big five personality traits decrease with age?
Neuroticism
Extraversion
Openness
Who introduced type A and type B personalities?
Friedman and Rosenman
Objective personality tests
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Questionnaire
Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)
NEO Personality Inventory
Esyneck personality test (EPQ)
Projective personality tests
Rorschach inkblot
Thematic apperception test
Draw-a-person test
Sentence completion test
What level of process thinking does the conscious system operate on?
Secondary
What is the conscious system?
Part of the mind that is aware
What is the preconscious system?
Information that is known and can potentially be brought into consciousness
What is the unconscious system?
Primary process thinking
Governed by the pleasure principle
No concept of time and denies the existence of negatives
