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VPSYC > Midterm > Flashcards

Midterm Flashcards

1
Q

What philosophy is science founded on?

A
  1. Empiricism: knowledge comes from observation

2. Determinism: laws of nature, not free will

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2
Q

What is the history of psychology?

A
  • Aristotle: to understand the mind, look at the body (causality)
  • Wundt: used introspection (look within yourself) and experiments to understand thoughts
  • Titchener: structuralism, elements add up to a more complex mental experience, used introspective reports to build brain map
  • William James: functionalism, how did this behaviour help ancestors survive (evolution)
  • Freud: psychoanalysis, unconscious processes
  • Galton: behaviour from genetics, eugenics
  • Skinner: behaviourism, observable behaviours only, no free will
  • Humanistic: free will, humans are better than animals
  • Piaget: cognitivism
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3
Q

What are the principles of the scientific approach?

A
  • Falsifiability
  • Replicability
  • Extraordinary claims need the evidence
  • Occam’s razor (simplest explanation is best)
  • Ruling out alternative hypothesis
  • Can we know for sure if it is causation or is it correlation?
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4
Q

Why do we need a scientific approach?

A
  • Intuition is coloured by bias (hindsight, single case, lucky streaks) which helped us survive
  • Need organized method to understand complex things
  • Constantly missing sensory information
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5
Q

What are some good research characteristics?

A
  1. Objective (3rd party report, introspection), reliable (test-re-test, internal consistency), valid (construct validity = discriminant and convergent validity)
  2. Generalizable (use random sampling)
  3. No bias
    - Experimenter (double blind)
    - Placebo (double blind with control)
    - Hawthorne Effect (naturalistic observation, anonymity, confidentiality)
  4. Replicable
  5. Shared with others
    - Knowledge mobilization (peer reviewed journals open access)
  6. Ethical
    - Research Ethics Board looks at research protocol to see if pros outweigh cons
    - Must get informed consent, only have minimal risk
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6
Q

What are the research methods?

A
  1. Descriptive (observation of variables)
    - Case study, naturalistic observation, survey
  2. Correlational (statistically analyzing survey)
  3. Experimental (only way to test causation)
    - Use control group to compare, random assignment
    - Use standardizing procedures to control external factors
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7
Q

How do you statistically test a hypothesis?

A
  1. Generalizable?
  2. If overcome null hypothesis, cannot be ignored (statistical inference)
  3. Effect size: how much does independent variable influence dependent
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8
Q

What is a neuron and the types?

A
  • Basic cell of nervous system
  • Sensory neuron: organs to brain (afferent)
  • Motor neuron: brain to muscles (efferent)
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9
Q

What does a neuron do?

A
  • Receives/sends messages by firing a charge (depolarization), initiating action potential
  • Negative charge to positive
  • Law of all or nothing: always same intensity
  • Axon terminal releases neurotransmitters to synaptic gap which bind to receptor of another’s dendrite
  • After neurotransmitter is released, it is broken down or goes through reuptake
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10
Q

What is the structure of a neuron? What are the types of cells?

A
  • Cell body, dendrite (receives messages), axon (conducts charge), axon terminal (releases neurotransmitters)
  • Presynaptic cells: release chemical
  • Postsynaptic cells: receive chemical
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11
Q

What are the common neurotransmitters? What are they correlated with?

A
  • Acetylcholine: muscle action, learning, memory (Alzheimer’s is correlated with low acetylcholine)
  • Dopamine: influences learning, attention, movement, positive reinforcement (overstimulated dopamine led to Parkinson’s disease)
  • Serotonin: mood, hunger, sleep, arousal (depression)
  • Norepinephrine: alertness, attention (ADD)
  • Glutamate: excitatory = learning, memory (oversupply causes migraines)
  • GABA: inhibitory = learning, memory (alcohol increases GABA activity)
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12
Q

What are agonists and antagonists?

A

Agonist: activate receptor site, mimicking
Antagonist: bind to receptor, blocking

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13
Q

How is the nervous system divided? How does brain receive information?

A
  1. Central nervous system
    - Brain, spinal cord
  2. Peripheral nervous system (sensory organs to CNS)
    - Autonomic (cannot control)
    ♣ Parasympathetic: rest and digest, homeostasis
    ♣ Sympathetic: fight or flight
    - Somatic (what you can control)

Brain receives information using PNS and hormones.

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14
Q

What are the 4 old brain structures?

A

Brain stem
Thalamus
Cerebellum
Limbic system

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15
Q

What is the brain stem?

A
  • Medulla (bottom): life-sustaining functions
  • Pons: coordinate unconscious movements, sleep
  • Midbrain: movement, visual stimuli, sensory information to motor neurons (reticular formation: sleep, consciousness, filter irrelevant information)
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16
Q

What is the thalamus?

A

Relay centre for sensory organs and motor information to cerebral cortex, medulla, cerebellum

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17
Q

What is the cerebellum?

A

Coordination of voluntary movement, balance, learning new motor skills

Back of brain stem

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18
Q

What is the limbic system?

A
  • Hypothalamus: hunger, emotions, motivation, body temperature, hormones
  • Amygdala: fear emotions
  • Hippocampus: processing conscious memories, either good (hypothalamus) or bad (amygdala)
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19
Q

What is the cerebral cortex?

A

External stimuli dealt with in these lobes, densely packed neurons (gray matter)

  • Occipital: visual information of thalamus sent here, sends to temporal or parietal
  • Temporal: auditory information, facial recognition
  • Parietal: sensory information, put information together (reading), somatosensory cortex are nerve cells to register touch
  • Frontal: language, emotion, speech, movement, judgement
    ♣ Primary motor cortex: voluntary movement
    ♣ Prefrontal cortex: decision making, attention
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20
Q

What is the optic chiasm? Talk about the hemispheres.

A

All 4 of these lobes are found in both hemispheres of cerebral cortex, communicate through corpus callosum.

Optic chiasm: where visual fields switch sides in the brain

Left hemisphere: language localized, controls right side of body
- Broca’s area: speech (“what did you see” can only do right side)
- Wernicke’s area: language comprehension
Right hemisphere: creativity, controls left side of body
- Visual (“draw what you see” can only do left visual field)

21
Q

What are strategies to study the brain?

A
  1. Stimulation (chemically numbing, magnetically deactivating, electrically stimulating parts of brain)
  2. Lesion based (surgeries, accidents)
    - Size of damage has an effect
  3. Animal models
  4. Non-invasive
    - Electroencephalogram: electrodes placed on skull, pick up electrical activity (cheap, poor spatial resolution, good temporal resolution)
    - Imaging
    ♣ CAT (x-rays), MRI (magnetic field moves oxygen through structures)
    ♣ PET (glucose with radioactive tracer, active cells will consume more glucose), fMRI (same as MRI) = poor temporal resolution, good spatial resolution
22
Q

What is Jean Piaget’s stages of development?

A
  1. Sensorimotor (birth-2): experience world through senses
    - Object permanence: know object is there even though it doesn’t seem to be
    - Stranger anxiety
  2. Preoperational (2-7): representing things with words and images
    - Pretend play
    - Egocentrism
    - Theory of mind: others have their own perspective
  3. Concrete operational (7-11): thinking logically
    - Conservation: changing form doesn’t change amount
    - Mathematical operations without concrete units
  4. Formal operational (12+): abstract logic
23
Q

What are the types of attachment?

A
  • Secure: most common, explore when mother is in room, distress at separation, seek contact at reunion
  • Insecure attachment (anxious): cling to mother, distress at separation and reunion
  • Insecure attachment (avoidant): seems indifferent to mother
  • Disorganized: child has learned caregivers are source of fear and comfort
24
Q

What factors affect the types of attachment?

A

Factors include interaction of parent and child’s temperament.

25
Q

What does deprivation of attachment lead to?

A
  • Difficulty forming secure forms of attachment
  • Increased risk for depression and anxiety, -
  • Lowered intelligence
  • Increased aggression.
26
Q

What are the styles of parenting?

A
  • Authoritarian: expect obedience
  • Permissive
  • Authoritative: respect child’s ideas
    ♣ Associated with social competence, increased self-esteem, decreased aggression
27
Q

What are the behavioural systems?

A
  • Attachment behavioural system: own needs
  • Caregiving behavioural system: other people’s needs
  • Instrumental helping: practical assistance
  • Empathic helping: make others feel better
28
Q

What development occurs during adolescence?

A
  • Hypothalamus stimulates release of sex hormones
  • Brain focuses on pruning connections not used by coating myelin to protect pathways
  • Frontal lobes are last to mature, and the limbic system matures before
  • Risky behaviour when faced with potential reward
  • Focus on social representation
  • Plan how to pursue goals in the future
  • Appreciate how reality compares to ideal
  • Ability to tolerate intellectual uncertainty and to use critical thinking
  • Will later develop delayed gratification
29
Q

What is Kohlberg’s levels of moral reasoning? What are the criticisms?

A
  1. Preconventional morality (9): follow the rules or you’ll get in trouble
  2. Conventional morality (teens): follow rules so society will get along
  3. Postconventional morality (adults): rules need to be set aside to pursue higher principles

Criticisms include cultural bias, causal direction, assumes cognition comes before emotions, and does not actually happen (kids do not always follow the rules).

30
Q

What is Erik Erikson’s model of social development?

A
  1. Infancy (trust vs mistrust)
  2. Toddlerhood (autonomy vs doubt)
  3. Preschool (initiative vs guilt)
  4. Elementary school (competency vs inferiority)
  5. Adolescence (identity vs role confusion)
  6. Young adulthood (intimacy vs isolation)
  7. Middle adulthood (generativity vs stagnation)
  8. Late adulthood (integrity vs despair)
31
Q

What development occurs when you are growing old?

A
  • Verbal ability and numeric ability don’t change
  • Verbal memory, spatial orientation, inductive reasoning, and perceptual speed decline
  • Emotional regulation increases
  • Lack of stimulation accelerates decline in motor coordination and intelligence
  • May deal with isolation and loneliness
32
Q

How does sensation transfer into perception?

A
  • Reception: sensory receptor cells
  • Transduction: neural impulses
  • Transmission: neural information to brain
33
Q

What are the types of processing for perception?

A
  • Bottom up: what are you seeing?

- Top down: using expectations/schemas (have you seen it before)

34
Q

What is the signal detection theory?

A

Detection depends on psychological factors such as alertness and expectation (top-down not just bottom up)

35
Q

What is the law of Pragnanz?

A

See stimuli in simplest form, part of Gestalt psychology

Proximity, similarity, continuity (interruptions doesn’t mean it isn’t 1 line), closure, symmetry, figure ground

36
Q

What is parallel processing?

A

Building perceptions out of sensory info processed in different areas of brain

37
Q

How does vision work?

A
  • Light enters through cornea (reception) = passes through pupil = photochemical reaction in retina (transduction) = activates bipolar cells = activate ganglion cells which form optic
  • Lens: adjust shape to focus light (accommodation)
  • More rods than cones
  • Optic nerve travels to optic chiasm (midline of brain) from ipsilateral or contralateral side = thalamus (transmission)
  • Right half of visual field processed by left hemisphere, vice versa
  • Lateral geniculae nucleus sends messages to visual cortex in occipital lobe (not smell though)
  • Primary visual cortex: feature detection cells which respond to specific aspect of stimuli
  • Secondary visual cortex: receives information and processes more
    ♣ Ventral stream (sent to temporal lobe): object recognition, perceptual constacy
    ♣ Dorsal stream (sent to parietal lobe): locates object in space
38
Q

What are monocular cues?

A
  • Linear perspective (lines converge to common point in distance)
  • Relative size (more distant objects look smaller)
  • Texture gradient (texture becomes less obvious the further they are)
  • Interposition (closer objects block our view of further ones)
  • Height in plane (distant objects are seen as higher up)
39
Q

What are binocular cues?

A
  • Binocular disparity: closer together means an overlap in visual fields
  • Binocular convergence: track muscle movement to estimate distance
40
Q

What are the consciousness tracks?

A

Unconscious low track: bottom up, leads to automatic actions, below absolute threshold

Conscious high track: top down, requires attention, above absolute threshold

41
Q

What is the binding problem?

A

Binding problem: combine pieces of high and low track for unified whole

Initial iterations provide quick perceptions and inform if additional ones are needed

Additional iterations are high track and yield more perceptions

42
Q

What are the stages of sleep?

A
  1. 1) Awake and active
    - Beta waves: high frequency, low amplitude, often irregular
  2. 2) Awake and calm (daydreaming, falling asleep, relaxing)
    - Alpha waves: lower frequency and higher amplitude than beta waves, more regular

1/2) Stages 1 and 2

  • Theta waves: lower frequency and larger amplitude than alpha waves
  • Breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate decreases
  • Sleep spindles: suddenly in stage 2, rapid burst in activity that appears and disappears quickly

3/4) Stages 3 and 4

  • Delta waves: very low frequency, high amplitude, regular
  • Memory consolidation and growth hormones are released the most during this stage
  • Furthest away from consciousness

5) Stage 5 (Rapid Eye Movement)
- After reaching stage 4, cycle returns to starting point
- Brain activity increases, beta and alpha waves appear
- Heart rate and respiration increases
- Eye movements under eyelids
- Associated with dreaming
- If you miss some REM sleep, you will spend more time in REM the next night (REM Rebound)

43
Q

Why do we sleep?

A
  • Protection
  • Recovery: restore and repair brain tissues
  • Consolidation: build/rebuild memories
  • Growth: pituitary gland releases growth hormones (less as you age and need less sleep)
44
Q

What occurs when we are sleep deprived?

A

Your concentration, memory, emotional control, and immune system decreases

45
Q

What are the types of sleep disorders?

A
  • Nightmares: dreams during REM
  • Night terrors: panic during non-REM
  • Somnambulism: wandering during sleep, non-REM
  • REM behavioural disorder: acting out REM dreams
  • Sleep apnea: can’t breathe
  • Narcolepsy: daytime sleep attacks
46
Q

What are stimulants?

A
  • Euphoria, increased energy, lower inhibition
  • Increase dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine
  • Eg. cocaine, amphetamine, caffeine
47
Q

What are hallucinogens?

A
  • Distortion of perception leads to fear, panic, paranoia
  • Increased serotonin activity, block glutamate receptors
  • Eg. LSD, ketamine
48
Q

What are depressants?

A
  • Drowsiness, relaxation, sleep
  • Increase GABA activity, release of endorphins
  • Eg. benzodiazepines, opiates
49
Q

What does alcohol do?

A
  • Stimulant and depressant
  • Causes euphoria, relaxation, lowered inhibition
  • Facilitates GABA activity, endorphin release, dopamine receptors
  • Has delayed effect on body (20% in stomach, 80% SI)
  • As ethanol goes up, fun effect
  • Liver processes 1 oz. of alcohol an hour, rest accumulates in blood and body tissues

VPSYC (13 decks)

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