MCQs Flashcards
The approach to the study of personality aiming to identify variables or traits that
occur consistently across groups of people is called:
Idiographic Approach
Who introduced the idea of the inferiority complex, stressing the importance of
social context in the development of personality?
Adler (social context)
Eysenck mapped the personality traits of extrovert-introvert and neurotic-emotionally
stable onto a biological framework of the ascending reticular activating
system. This included
The Reticulo-cortical and Reticulo-limbic pathwayds
R-C = arousal to physical stimuli R-L = arousal to emotional stimuli
According to Gray’s BAS/BIS biological model of personality, individuals who have
a highly active behavioural approach system are:
Impulsive
Digman (1990) raised what concern about the lexical hypothesis:
There are not enough words in the dictionary to capture personality
Eysenck’s Big Five model of personality included which three personality traits?
OCEAN Openness (to experience) Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
Cattell took the 4,500 words that Allport had identified as related to personality
and employed a multivariate ‘data reduction’ technique to identify correlations
between personality descriptors and identify clusters of personality attributes. What
statistical approach was used?
Factor Analysis
True Statements about Pavlovian Conditioning:
- Pavlovian conditioning still works when unsignalled delays of longer than a minute occur
between the CS and the US. - Pavlovian conditioning may occur following the presentation of a CS and a US
- Pavlovian conditioning is sometimes referred to as classical conditioning
- Some conditioned stimuli are more resistant to extinction when trained as predictors of phobic
stimuli - Pavlovian conditioning is often subject to cue competition effects
Morgan’s cannon stated that:
Behaviour should not be explained by complex, high level mental processes if it can be explained by a
simple one
Premack (1971) demonstrated that the value of a reward was variable,
depending on the current state by showing that;
- Water deprived rats would run on a wheel for water (i.e., drinking reinforces running)
- Water satiated rats would lick water to run on a wheel (i.e., running reinforces drinking)
If you work every day, but only receive a pay check
at the end of the month. This is an example of:
A fixed interval schedule
Colwill and Rescorla (1985) trained animals to learn that Response 1 -> US1, and
Response 2 -> US2, before they devalued US1 by pairing this with lithium chloride to
induce illness. In a test stage, animals were allowed to make either Response 1 or
Response 2. How did animals respond?
R2 > R1
Habituation has been shown to be stimulus specific. A good example of this is:
Children habituated to a cheeseburger will salivate to apple pie
Blocking occurs when the outcome paired with a new stimulus is not surprising
(i.e., A+, AB+, B?) What steps will produce un-blocking and allow learning with B?
- Changing the outcome that occurs when B is introduced, I.e., AB++
> (unblocking)
or
- Removing Initial training with A+
> this would form an association with B+ that was half as strong
The Rescorla-Wagner model of learning includes a summed error term, capturing
cue competition. Which of the following training designs would lead to the strongest
association forming between stimulus A and the paired outcome?
A+
Donald Hebb proposed a learning theory stating that:
When individual cells are activated at the same time they establish connecting synapses.
Schultz (2007) showed a neural response to training with a stimulus-outcome
association such that after training:
Midbrain dopamine neurons show phasic activation following the conditioned stimulus.
A drug addict habitually takes heroin, but only in a specific context. If they were to take their drug in a new context, for the first time, which of these would be predicted as a result of their previous learning?
The addict will be more likely to overdose in the new context
Koob and Le Moal (1997) describe the response to a drug, such that the
____(1)____ which has a _____(2)_____ hedonic effect, is always followed by a
____(3)____ with a ____(4)_____.
alpha response which has a positive hedonic effect will be followed by a beta response with a negative hedonic effect
In a demonstration of Peak Shift, pigeons trained with S+ of 550nm and S- of 560nm, will
respond at test most strongly to light of what wavelength?
540nm
The other race effect describes a tendency to:
Being able to recall the faces of one’s own race more accurately (due to experience)
Symonds and Hall (1995) studied perceptual learning, assessing ability to discriminate between a
saline and sucrose flavour. Which training schedule produced the best perceptual learning?
AX/BX AX/BX AX/BX AX/BX
Collins and Quillian (1969) tested verification of semantic knowledge and found
that participants were quicker to confirm:
that a canary is yellow, than a canary has skin
providing evidence for their theory of semantic processing, due to the more Superordinate terms being recalled faster
Rips, Shoben and Smith (1973) demonstrated a typicality gradient, finding that
participants are quicker to identify as true:
“An apple is a fruit” than “a fig is a fruit”
(providing evidence against Quillian’s semantic knowledge model, since these reaction times should be the same, since the ‘distance’ to travel superiorly up the network is the same for both
The properties of “having wings,” “having feathers” and “being able to fly,” broadly co-occur across all birds. This is referred to as:
Coherent Covariation
Depressive realism, was a term coined by Alloy & Abramson (1979), after
observing that when students completed a zero contingency task:
Depressed students gave lower judgements of control than non-depressed students
(idea that this was because they felt generally out of control of things in the world, which is fairly realistic)
When estimating the heritability of a genotype, which factors are usually
considered:
A. Additive genetic variation and non-additive genetic variation
B. Additive genetic variation, shared environment and residual effects
C. Shared and non-shared environment
D. Gene x Environment interactions and shared environment.
E. Gene X Environment interactions, measurement error and shared environment.
The behavioural genetics approach to estimating heritability faces problems
because:
A. Complex human behaviours are the result of many genes of small effect
B. Genetic variance may be dominant or epistatic, rather than simply additive
C. Genes change our environment.
D. Adoption agencies are more likely to place a child with a high SES family than a low SES family.
E. All of the above.
Brickman et al (1978) assessed the effect of winning the lottery on life happiness.
They found that:
Lottery winners were equally happy with their lives as the control group
(as they had become accustomed to the finer way of living)
(happiness can be measured as deviation from baseline)
Sternberg studied the lay understanding of intelligence and highlighted three
implicit components of intelligence, which were:
- Practical problem solving
- verbal ability
- social competence
IQ scores have increased at a remarkable rate in most industrialised societies
throughout the 20th century. This is referred to as:
The Flynn effect
Anders Ericsson has suggested that individuals need extended practice to perform at a world-class level. This required:
10,000 hours
How stable is IQ?
- By the age of 8 childhood IQ will predict adult IQ well.
- Absolute performance will change substantially between childhood and adulthood, though relative intelligence (in terms of age group {IQ}) will remain stable
- Fluid intelligence declines in later life
- Crystallised intelligence increases through adulthood.
What does Factor Analysis do?
A statistical technique that simplifies the relationship between a number of variables
Is a habit goal directed?
no
How can we test whether a behaviour is habitual?
through a devaluation paradigm
- devalue the outcome
- if the organism continues to achieve the devalued outcome, it must be habitual
Which reinforcement schedule is the most effective and difficult to extinguish?
(the one where the outcome is hardest to predict)
- Variable Ratio Schedule
Define the Premack Principle
A preferred behaviour can be used to reinforce an undesirable behaviour
According to Eysenck, where does the Ascending reticular system connect to in the brain? (3)
Thalamus
Hypothalamus
Cortext
Eysenck states the resting arousal level for introverts is
Introverts have a high resting level of arousal, meaning that their activation threshold is lower. In other words, it does not take much excitement for an introvert to be over-aroused, since their resting level is so high
Is differential psychology based on a finite number of personality traits?
yes
According to research, depressed individuals are more likely to:
- overgeneralise memory
- focus less on the wider context
- have a generally negative memory
What effects our ability to learn from others?
- associative learning
- social perception, attention and motivation
- genetic predisposition
Transitional probability
the probability that one sound will follow another
Progressive Differentiation
new concept introduced, then is progressively differentiated in terms of detail and specificity
Typicality Gradient
We are quicker to identify typical members of a set than untypical
Prototype approach
.
Perceptual Learning
.
Outlining the biological basis of the BIS/BAS model, Gray proposed that the following neural systems were involved in the Behavioural Inhibition System:
Dorsal PFC, Amygdala, Posterior Cingulate Cortex
Digman (1990) raised what concern about the lexical hypothesis:
The factors identified might represent linguistic categories rather than the underlying structure of personality
Idiographic Approach
Focuses on the individual: describes the personality variables within that individual
- difficult to make generalisations
Nomothetic Approach
Based on the assumption that there are a finite set of variables that can be used to describe human personality.
- can lead to a fairly superficial understanding of any one per
People with profound hippocampal damage still show the ability to:
- acquire new associations
- learn new habits
- learn new procedural motor skills
- acquire semantic knowledge through associative training
> showing that some memory is not dependent on the hippocampus
What is renewal?
Renewal refers to the return of the original behaviour or expectation following extinction. This is commonly seen when contexts change.
Rescorla-Wagner model and meaning
ΔV = α * β * (λ – ΣV)
Where,
ΔV – change in associative strength
> (i.e., the strength of the association between the CS and the US)
α is the salience of the CS
> i.e., how much the CS grabs your attention. E.g., the salience of a bright flashing red light should be higher than the salience of a plain red square.
β is the salience or motivational value of the US, the outcome
> e.g., the motivational value of chocolate as a US might be higher than the motivational value of lettuce as a US.
λ is the outcome.
> This is usually only 1 or 0 – 1 when the outcome or US is present, and 0 when the outcome or US is absent.
ΣV is the sum of all the associative strengths of all the stimuli present on that trial.
Semantic Memory
a part of long-term memory based on ideas that are NOT drawn from personal experience
i.e. colours
Declarative Memory
Procedural and Declarative memory are the two types of long-term memory
Declarative memory is of facts and event
Procedural memory is of how to do things (non-declarative(
The two types of declarative memory are Semantic and Episodic memory (particular event)
Non-declarative memory
remembering without conscious effort (procedural memory)
working memory
short term memory
temporary
Factors concerned with when estimating heritability
- Additive genetic variation
- shared environment
- residual effects
What are Axis 1-5 measuring
Axis I assesses clinical disorders.
Axis II assesses personality disorders and intellectual disabilities.
Axis III assesses physical disorders.
Axis IV assesses the psychosocial and environmental stressors of an individual.
Axis V is an overall assessment of individual’s functioning levels.
Elemental vs Configural theories of associative learning
Elemental:
- overshadowing should not occur in these circumstances because for the first trial with a compound CS, each component will gain as much associative strength as if it were conditioned in isolation
- predict that retroactive interference can be catastrophic
- does not always predict difficulty discriminating between two similar but different stimuli
Configural
- correctly predicts that overshadowing will be seen after a single compound trial because of the generalisation decrement incurred by the transition from training with a compound to testing with an element
- makes less dramatic predictions about some forms of retroactive interference.
- a discrimination between two patterns of stimulation will be more difficult when they are similar than when they are different.
Why is alpha not required in Pearce’s version of the R-W model? (configural model) ΔVp=β(𝝀- Vp+ pSp’ * Vp’)
ΔVp=β(𝝀- Vp+ pSp’ * Vp’)
because alpha (conditioned stimulus salience) already exerts its influence on the equation by contributing to the degree of generalisation from one stimulus to another
How is imitation abolished
through associative learning
biases affecting imitation
Perceptual bias
motivational bias
social bias
attention bias
What is Latent learning and who developed it?
Tolman
- a type of learning where there is no obvious form of reinforcement
evidence that memory is reconstructive
native american folktale experiment
car crash experiment
colonoscopy experiment
Autonoetic awareness
the ability to mentally place ourselves in the past
consolidation theory
the process of modifying memories into long-term memory for longer storage
procedural learning
a part of long term memory responsible for how to do things (motor skills)
perceptual representation
perception of the difference between physical objects or tones etc
Kahneman and Tversky’s dual process model
System 1 (automatic responses learnt through associative learning or executed automatically)
System 2
slow, consciously controlled thinking
(system 2 can override system 1)
Vicarious conditioning
learning to imitate someone else’s behaviour after observing them get rewarded for doing that behaviour
Eysenck’s big 3 model of personality
Psychoticism
Extraversion
Neuroticism
