Behavioral Sciences Flashcards
Parasympathetic (rest and digest)
Constricts pupils, stimulates flow of saliva, constricts bronchi, slows the heartbeat, stimulates peristalsis and secretion, stimulates bile release, contracts bladder
Sympathetic (fight or flight)
Dilates pupils, inhibits salvation, relaxes bronchi, accelerates the heartbeat, piloerection or sweating, inhibits peristalsis and secretion, stimulates glucose production and release, secretion of adrenaline and noradrenaline, inhibits bladder contraction, stimulates orgasm
NS neurons
Motor (efferent), interneurons, and sensory (afferent)
Hindbrain
Contains the cerebellum, medulla, oblongata, and reticular formation
Midbrain
Contains the inferior and superior colliculi
Forebrain
Contains the thalamus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, limbic system, and cerebral cortex
Thalamus
Relay station for sensory information
Hypothalamus
Maintains homeostasis and integrates with the endocrine system through the hypophyseal portal system that connects it to the anterior pituitary
Basal ganglia
Smoothens movements and helps maintain postural stability
Limbic system
Controls emotion and memory
Includes septal nuclei (pleasure-seeking), amygdala (fear and aggression), hippocampus (memory), and fornix (communication within limbic system)
Frontal
Executive function, impulse control, long-term planning (prefrontal cortex), motor function (primary motor cortex), speech production (Broca’s area)
Parietal
Sensation of touch, pressure, temperature, and pain (somatosensory cortex); spatial processing, orientation, and manipulation
Occipital
Visual processing
Temporal
Sound processing (auditory cortex), speech perception (Wernicke’s area), memory, and emotion (limbic system)
Methods for mapping the brain
EEG, rCBF, CT, PET, MRI, fMRI
Acetylcholine
Voluntary muscle control, parasympathetic NS, attention, alertness
Epinephrine and norepinephrine
Fight-or-flight responses, wakefulness, alertness
Dopamine
Smooth movements, postural stability
Serotonin
Mood, sleep, eating, dreaming
GABA, Glycine
Brain “stabilization”
Glutamate
Brain “excitation”
Endorphins
Natural painkillers
Weber’s law
States that the just-noticeable difference for a stimulus is proportional to the magnitude of the stimulus, and this proportion is constant over most of the range of possible stimuli
Signal detection theory
Studies the effects of nonsensory factors, such as experiences, motives, and expectations, on perception of stimuli
Visual pathway
Retina - optic nerve - optic chiasm - optic tracts - lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of thalamus - visual radiations - visual cortex
Cochlea
Detects sound
Utricle and saccule
Detect linear acceleration
Semicircular canals
Detect rotational acceleration
Auditory pathway
Cochlea - vestibulocochlear nerve - medial geniculate nucleus (MGN) of thalamus - auditory cortex
Drive reduction theory
Individuals act to relieve internal states of tension
James-Lange
Stimulus - physiology - emotion
Cannon-Bard
Stimulus - physiology and emotion
Schacter-Singer
Stimulus - physiology and cognitive appraisal - emotion
Primary appraisal
Classifying a potential stressor as irrelevant, benign-positive, or stressful
Secondary appraisal
Directed at evaluating whether the organism can cope with the stress, based on harm, threat, and challenge
General adaptation syndrome (GAP)
Alarm, resistance, and exhaustion
Self-concept
The sum of the ways in which we describe ourselves: in the present, who we used to be, and who we might be in the future
Self-efficacy
The degree to which we see ourselves as being capable of a given skill in a given situation
Locus of control
A self-evaluation that refers to the way we characterize the influences in our lives. Either internal (success or failure is a result of our own actions) or external (success or failure is a result of outside factors)
Freud
Psychosexual development based on tensions caused by the libido, with failure at any given stage leading to fixation
Schizophrenia
Psychotic disorder characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances in content and form of thought, perception, and behavior
Positive symptoms: hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thought
Negative symptoms: Social withdrawal, emotional flattening, anhedonia (lack of pleasure)
Major depressive disorder
Contains at least one major depressive episode
Persistent depressive disorder
A depressed mood (either dysthymia or major depression) for at least two years
Bipolar I disorder
Contains at least one manic episode
Bipolar II disorder
Contains at least one hypomanic episode and at least one major depressive episode
Cyclothymic disorder
Contains hypomanic episodes with dysthymia
Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning development
- Describes the approaches of individuals to resolving moral dilemmas
- Six stages are divided into three main phases: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional
Zone of proximal development
Area of learning where one cannot progress on their own, but can with assistance from a “knowledgeable other”
Generalized anxiety disorder
Constant disproportionate and persistent worry
Social anxiety disorder
Anxiety due to social or performance situations
Agoraphobia
Fear of places or situations where it is hard for an individual to escape
Panic disorder
Recurrent attacks of intense, overwhelming fear and sympathetic nervous system activity with no clear stimulus; it may lead to agoraphobia
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Obsessions (persistent, intrusive thoughts and impulses) and compulsions (repetitive tasks that relieve tension but cause significant impairment)
Body dysmorphic disorder
Unrealistic negative evaluation of one’s appearance or a specific body part
Dissociative amnesia
Inability to recall past experience. May involve dissociate fugue, a sudden change in location that can involve the assumption of a new identity
Dissociative identity disorder
Two or more personalities that take control of behavior
Depersonalization/derealization disorder
Feelings of detachment from the mind and body, or from the environment
Psychoanalytic perspective
Personality results from unconscious urges and desires
Freud: id, superego, and ego
Jung: collective unconscious, archetypes
Humanistic perspective
Emphasizes internal feelings of healthy individuals as they strive toward happiness and self-realization
Maslow: hierarchy of needs
Rogers: unconditional positive regard
Type and trait theory
Personality can be described as a number of identifiable traits that carry characteristic behaviors
- Type theories of personality: ancient Greek humors, Sheldon’s somatotypes, division into Types A and B, and the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory
- Eysenck’s three major traits: psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism
- Trait theorists’ Big Five: OCEAN
- Allport’s three basic types of traits: cardinal, central, and secondary
Smell
Detection of volatile or aerosolized chemicals by olfactory chemoreceptors (olfactory nerves)
Taste
Detection of dissolved compounds by taste buds in papillae
Somatosensation
Four touch modalities (pressure, vibration, pain, and temperature)
Kinesthetic sense (proprioception)
Ability to tell where one’s body is in space
Bottom-up (data-driven) processing
Recognition of objects by parallel processing and feature detection; slower, but less prone to mistakes
Top-down (conceptually-driven) processing
Recognition of an object by memories and expectations, with little attention to detail; faster, but more prone to mistakes
Gestalt principles
Ways that the brain can infer missing parts of an image when it is incomplete
Habituation
The process of becoming used to a stimulus
Dishabituation
Occurs when a second stimulus intervenes, causing a desensitization to the original stimulus
Classical conditioning
A form of associative learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus such that the neutral stimulus alone produces the same response as the unconditioned stimulus; the neutral stimulus thus becomes a conditioned stimulus
Operant conditioning
A form of associative learning in which the frequency of a behavior is modified using reinforcement (increases behavior) or punishment (decreases behavior)
Behavior vs stimulus
Behavior stops and stimulus added: positive punishment
Behavior stops and stimulus removed: negative punishment
Behavior continues and stimulus added: positive reinforcement
Behavior continues and stimulus removed: negative reinforcement
Sleep cycle
Awake: beta and alpha waves - able to perceive, process, access, and express information
Stage 1: theta waves - light sleep
Stage 2: theta waves - sleep spindles and K complexes
Stage 3/4: delta waves - slow-wave sleep; dreams; declarative memory consolidation; some sleep disorders
REM: mostly beta - appears awake physiologically; dreams; paralyzed; procedural memory consolidation; some sleep disorders
Sleep disorders
Dyssomnias: amount or timing of sleep (insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and sleep deprivation)
Parasomnias: odd behaviors during sleep (night terrors and sleepwalking (somnambulism))
Drug addiction
Mediated by the mesolimbic pathway, which includes the nucleus accumbens, medial forebrain bundle, and ventral tegmental area; dopamine is the neurotransmitter
Depressants (alcohol, barbituates, benzodiazepines)
Sense of relaxation and reduced anxiety
Stimulants (amphetamines, cocaine, and ecstasy)
Increased arousal
Opiates/opioids (heroin, morphine, opium, pain pills)
Decreased reaction to pain; euphoria
Hallucinogens (LSD, peyote, mescaline, ketamine, psilocybin-containing mushrooms)
Distortions of reality and fantasy; introspection
Marijuana
Has some features of depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens (in very high doses)
Memory pathway
Sensory (< 1 sec), short-term (< 1 min), working memory, long-term memory (lifetime)
Long-term: implicit (unconscious) - procedural (skills, tasks), explicit (conscious) - declarative (facts, events) – episodic (events, experiences) - semantic (facts, concepts)
Facts are stored via
Semantic networks. Retrieval of information is often based on priming interconnected nodes of the semantic network
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Sensorimotor: focuses on manipulating the environment to meet physical needs through circular reactions; object permanence ends this stage
Preoperational: focuses on symbolic thinking, egocentrism (inability to imagine what another person thinks or feels), and centration (focusing on only one aspect of a phenomenon)
Concrete operational: focuses on understanding the feelings of others and manipulating physical (concrete) objects
Formal operational: focuses on abstract thought and problem-solving
Problem-solving techniques
Trail-and-error, algorithm, deductive reasoning (deriving conclusions from general rules), and inductive reasoning (deriving generalizations from evidence)
Decision-making
Heuristics (simplified principles used to make decisions, “rules of thumb”), biases, intuition, and emotions
Can lead to erroneous or problematic decisions
Divided attention
Uses automatic processing to pay attention to multiple activities at one time
Wernicke’s area
Language comprehension; damage results in Wernicke’s aphasia (speak fluently but have difficulty understanding language)
Broca’s area
Motor function of speech; damage results in Broca’s aphasia (speak comprehensibly in short sentences with great effort)
Arcuate fasciculus
Connects Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas; damage results in conduction aphasia (inability to repeat words despite intact speech generation and comprehension)
Arousal theory (Yerkes-Dodson law)
The state of being awake and reactive to stimuli; aim for optimal level of arousal for a given task
Somatic symptom disorder
At least one somatic symptom, which may or may not be linked to an underlying medical condition, that causes disproportionate concern
Illness anxiety disorder
Preoccupation with having or coming down with a serious medical condition
Conversion disorder
Unexplained symptoms affecting motor or sensory function
Personality disorders
Cluster A (odd, eccentric): paranoid, schizotypal, schizoid
Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, erratic, “wild”): antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic
Cluster C (anxious, fearful, “worried”): avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive
Social facilitation
Tendency to perform at a different level (better or worse) when others are around
Deindividuation
Loss of self-awareness in large groups; can lead to drastic changes in behavior
Bystander effect
In a group, individuals are less likely to respond to a person in need
Group polarization
Tendency toward making decisions in a group that are more extreme than the thoughts of the individual group members
Group think
Tendency to make decisions based on ideas and solutions that arise within the group without considering outside ideas
Socialization
The process of developing and spreading norms, customs, and beliefs
Compliance
Individuals change behavior based on the request of other; techniques for gaining compliance include foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, lowball, and that’s-not-all
Display rules
Unspoken rules that govern the expression of emotion
Impression management
Maintenance of a public image through various strategies
Dramaturgical approach
Individuals create images of themselves in the same way that actors perform a role in front of an audience
Interpersonal attraction
Influenced by physical, social, and psychological factors
Altruism
Helping behavior in which the person’s intent is to benefit someone else at personal cost
Correspondent inference theory
Describes attributions made by observing the intentional (especially unexpected) behaviors performed by another person
Fundamental attribution theory
Bias toward making dispositional attributions rather than situational attributions
Self-fulfilling prophecy
The phenomenon of a stereotype creating an expectation of a particular group, which creates conditions that lead to confirmation of this stereotype
Cultural relativism
Studying social groups and cultures on their own terms
Functionalism
Macro-level theory focused on how parts of society work together
Conflict theory
Focuses on how unequal division of resources create power differentials
Symbolic interactionism
The study of how individuals interact through a shared understanding of words, gestures, and other symbols
Social constructionism
Explores how individuals and groups make decisions to agree upon a given social reality
Socioeconomic status (SES)
Class, power, social capital (the investment people make in society in return for economic or collective rewards), social production (passing on of social inequality, especially poverty, to other generations)
Incidence
New cases / population at risk (per time)
Prevalence
Number of cases (new or old) / total population (per time)
