exam revision unit 1/2 Flashcards
Piaget stage 1
Sensorimotor stage
Piaget stage 2
Preoperational stage
Piaget stage 3
Concrete operational stage
Piaget stage 4
Formal operational stage
Sensorimotor stage cognitive accomplishments
Object permanence
Goal-directed behaviour
Preoperational stage cognitive accomplishments
Animism
Centration
Egocentrism
Symbolic thinking
Concrete operational stage cognitive accomplishments
Classification
Conservation
Reversibility of thought
Formal operational stage cognitive accomplishments
Abstract thinking
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
Assimilation
fit new information into existing cognitive schemas and understanding
Accommodation
when you alter your existing ideas and schemas to accommodate new information and understandings
Cognitive schema
Memory structure or mental representation developed from experiences, that represent someone’s general knowledge about different types of objects or events.
Atypical behaviour
behaviour that is not like the behaviour of majority of people in a population or is inconsistent with the way an individual normally behaves
Hereditary factors
factors which influence development that are genetically passed down from biological parents to their offspring.
Environmental factors
factors that influence development from an individuals’ physical and social surroundings.
Emotional development
factors that influence development from an individuals’ physical and social surroundings.
Three types of attachment (Ainsworth)
Secure attachment, insecure resistant attachment, insecure avoidant attachment
Cognitive development
the growth and maturation of our thinking processes
Sensitive periods
optimal developmental time frames in which there is the opportunity to learn a skill or process in the fastest and easiest way.
Critical periods
are narrow, rigid periods in which a specific skill or function must be learnt. If these functions are not acquired during this time, they may never develop.
5 categories used to categorise behaviour as atypical or typical
Cultural perspectives
Social norms
Statistical rarity
Personal distress
Maladaptive behaviour
Neurodiversity
the natural neurological difference that occurs between people’s nervous systems, particularly their brain, resulting in differences in learning, thinking and processing.
Left brain
Language and analytical thought
Right brain
Non-verbal processing such as pattern recognition and spatial skills
Neuroplasticity
the nervous system’s ability to change its structure and function as a result of experience and in response to injury.
Neurogenesis
The production of new neurons during early development of the nervous system and throughout the lifespan
Neural migration
The movement of newly formed neurons to their final destination in the nervous system.
Synaptogenesis
the process by which new synapses are formed between neurons
Synaptic pruning
the process of removing extra, weak or unused synaptic connections to increase the efficiency of neural transmission
Sprouting
New axon and dendrite extensions allow existing neurons to form new connections
Rerouting
New connections are made between active neurons to create alternative neural pathways
Acquired brain injury (ABI)
brain damage caused by events after birth that affects the functional ability of the brain’s nerve cells.
Three causes of TBI
Falling, assault, sports injury
Three causes of NTBI
Stroke, tumour, degenerative neurological diseases
Spatial neglect
n attentional disorder in which the individual fails to notice anything either on their right or left side.
What injury most commonly causes spatial neglect
An injury to the rear of the right parietal lobe
Neurological disorders
diseases or events that affect the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves that connect them.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)
a progressive, degenerative and fatal brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head; characterised by behavioural problems, personality changes and deficits in thinking.
What causes CTE?
CTE causes areas of the brain to waste away (atrophy), which results in the person losing brain mass. There also appears to be higher levels of a protein called Tau in some brain areas of people with CTE.
after trauma, when the nerve cells are damaged, the tau separates from the cytoskeleton and forms tangles in brain cells. These eventually become defective.
If enough tau builds up over time, the affected parts of the brain shrink, adversely affecting the person’s cognition and behaviour, and usually resulting in dementia.
Stage 1 of CTE
headaches, loss of attention and concentration, mild short-term memory deficits
Stage 2 of CTE
anxiety, depression, suicidality, irritable mood and increased aggression, lack of impulse control
Stage 3 of CTE
cognitive impairment and problems with executive functions, more severe memory loss and apathy
Stage 4 of CTE
a form of dementia (e.g. profound language deficits, psychotic symptoms, motor deficits, memory and cognitive impairments severe enough to impact daily living)
Person perception
the mental processes we use to form impressions and draw conclusions about the personal characteristics of other people.
Fundamental attribution error
the tendency to overestimate the influence of internal factors and underestimate the impact of external factors on other people’s behaviour.
Tri-component model of attitudes
Affective, behavioural, cognitive
Cognitive dissonance
The psychological discomfort that a person experiences when there is inconsistency between their attitudes and their behaviours
Limitation of the tri-component model of attitudes
The model doesn’t indicate the strength of a persons attitudes
Stereotypes
a collection of beliefs that we have about the people who belong to a certain group, regardless of individual differences among members of that group.
Prejudice
holding a negative attitude towards the members of a group, based solely on their membership of that group.
Cognitive biases
systematic errors (consistent mistakes) that occur in our decision-making.
Discrimination
the action of being prejudiced or treating others in an unfair manner based on the negative attitude held about them or the group they belong to.
Prejudice leads to ___________
Discrimination
Direct discrimination
occurs when someone is unfairly treated and is disadvantaged because of a personal characteristic protected by the law
Indirect discrimination
occurs when treating everyone the same way disadvantages someone because of a personal characteristic
Three forms of discrimination
Racism, sexism, ageism
Ingroup
any group that an individual belongs to or with which the individual identifies.
Outgroup
any group to which an individual does not belong or identify.
Ways to reduce prejudice
Intergroup contact, sustained contact, superordinate goals, mutual interdependence, equality of status, changing social norms
Intergroup contact
Members of opposing groups spending time with each other to break down stereotypes and recognise shared beliefs and values
Mutual interdependence
Groups are reliant on each other to achieve their own goals
5 types of social power
Reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, expert
Collectivist cultures
value group needs or interests over the interests of the individual.
Individualist cultures
place the needs of the individual above the interests of groups.
Horizontal culture structure
people are seen as mostly equal in status
Vertical culture structure
people are seen to have varying levels of social status
Examples of each culture
Horizontal individualist- Australia
Horizontal collectivist- Rural cultures central America
Vertical individualist- USA
Vertical collectivist- Japan
Groupthink
when the members of a group prioritise the strong bonds of the group over clear decision-making.
Group shift
the tendency for group members discussing an issue or dilemma to adopt a more extreme position than their individual position before the discussion.
Social connection
refers to the belief that we belong to a group and generally feel close to other people.
Social comparison theory
suggests that to gain an accurate understanding of who we are, we make decisions, evaluations and judgements about ourselves in relation to those around us
Anti-conformity
is a deliberate refusal to comply with social norms as demonstrated by ideas, beliefs or judgements that challenge these social norms.
Bottom-up processing
processing information by starting with the individual elements of a stimulus and building up to an interpretation.
Top-down processing
using psychological factors such as pre existing knowledge and expectations to interpret and assign meaning to a stimulus.
Attention
voluntary (conscious) or involuntary (unconscious) tendency to focus awareness on a specific stimulus and ignore other stimuli.
Controlled processes
Conscious, voluntary actions or cognitive processes that require a high level of attention and monitoring
Automatic processes
Actions that require little conscious awareness or mental effort, and do not interfere with performance on other activities
Sustained attention
Focusing attention on an activity or stimulus over a prolonged period without being distracted by other stimuli.
Divided attention
(often referred to as multitasking): refers to rapidly switching the focus of your awareness between two (or more) sources of information so you can perform two (or more) tasks at the same time.
Selective attention
Choosing to focus your awareness on a specific or limited range of stimuli while ignoring other stimuli.
Depth cues
a variety of internal and external stimuli or processes that inform the visual system about an object’s depth or distance from the observer.
Binocular cues
depth cues that require both eyes to work together and provide the brain with information about depth and distance.
Retinal disparity
because our eyes are approximately 6.5cm apart, each retina receives a slightly different image. When the brain receives the separate images, it fuses (overlaps) them into one overall image and compares them. The fused image results in three-dimensional sight. Any disparity (difference) between the two images provides the brain with information about the distance of objects in the environment.
Convergence
involves both eyes simultaneously turning inwards as an object moves closer (within approximately 7m) in order to maintain focus on the object
Monocular cues
depth perception cues that rely on information from only one eye.
Accommodation
the changing shape of the lens to maintain focus on objects of varying distances. When the object is close the lens is more rounded. When the object is further away the lens flattens.
Psychological factors that influence visual perception
visual perception principles, context, motivation, past experiences and memory.
Four gestalt principles
Figure ground, closure, similarity, proximity
Four visual constancies
Shape constancy, orientation constancy, size constancy, brightness constancy
Social factor that influences visual and gustatory perception
Culture
Biological factors influencing gustatory perception
Genes, age
Psychological factors influencing gustatory perception
Food packaging, memory, appearance,
Fallibility
the tendency to make mistakes or be wrong
Perceptual distortion
an inconsistency, or ‘mismatch’, between a perceptual experience and physical reality.
Visual illusions
Visual illusions are a consistent misinterpretation of a visual stimulus.
Agnosia
a perceptual disorder, which occurs when a person’s perceptual processing is impaired, so they have limited ability to make sense of sensory information.
Visual agnosia
A perceptual disorder where you can see, but not interpret what you see
Three types of visual agnosia
Apperceptive visual agnosia, associative visual agnosia, prosopagnosia
Apperceptive visual agnosia
inability to recognise visual stimuli such as shapes or forms of an object despite having no visual deficits
Associative visual agnosia
inability to recall information associated with an object, such as its name or what it is used for.
Prosopagnosia
inability to recognise familiar faces
Supertasters
are born with more taste buds and taste receptors on their tongue than average, and so have a higher taste sensitivity.
Miraculin
a natural substance that when consumed with something sour, turns the sour tasting food or drink into a sweet-tasting food or drink.
How does miraculin work
Miraculin protein binds to the sweet taste receptors in the taste buds.
When sour and acidic foods (low pH) come into contact with the miraculin-sweet receptor complex a molecular response is triggered that activates the sweet receptors.
Neural impulses are transmitted from the tongue to the gustatory cortex of the brain.
This information is integrated with taste information stored in other brain areas.
Synaesthesia
refers to a group of neurological conditions where information taken in by one sense is involuntarily experienced in a way normally associated with another sense.
