Ch 4 Lec 13 & 14 Flashcards
What are major research methods to disentangle heredity and environmental factors?
- Adoption
* Twin studies
What does behavior genetics study?
The field of behavior genetic studies contributions of genetic and environmental factors in psychological traits and behaviors.
Adoption study
A person who was adopted early in life is compared on some characteristic both with biological parents and adoptive parents
Heredity
Passages of characteristics via genes.
- Heritability
* Heritability coefficient
- How much variation in a characteristic is attributed to genetic difference.
- Estimate of how much of characteristic is due to genetic factors.
Neuroscience and Dyslexia
- Dyslexia show less activation in 2 areas of left temporal lobe
- Left inferior temporal cortex(IT)
- Middle temporal cortex(MT)
- Activation within these areas correlates with reading ability across range of reading skill
- Activity within the IT and MT is lower among dyslexics
Evolutionary Psychology
•How behavior and tendencies have evolved in response to environmental demands
What is evolutions?
•Change over time in frequency with which genes and characteristics they produce, occur within an interbreeding population
Mutations
- Create genetic variations, making evolution possible
* Can be passed to offspring
Evolution of human brain
- Greatest growth in areas concerned with higher mental process-attention, memory, thought, language
- Remote and proximate factors involved in changes
- Environmental input (culture) to evolutionary mechanisms
What are two types of adaptations?
- Broad
* Domain-specific
Broad Adaptations
•Learn language, reason logically
Domain-specific adaptaion
•Solve particular problem
- Mate selection
- Choosing safe food
- Avoiding certain environmental hazards
•Mind is composed of specialized and independent modules
Evolutionary snapshot
- Innate ability to acquire language
- Newborns more responsive to human faces
- Need to belong to a group
- Some basic emotions universal
