module 2 Flashcards
1
Q
genetics as a biological influence
A
- behaviour, personality, intelligence are polygenic and all of which are influenced by environment
- specific genes/small groups of genes are associated with certain psychological disorders
- genetic factors account for less than 50% of the variability in most psychological disorders
2
Q
p factor study
A
- longitudinal study lasting 20 years, followed 1000 NZ, between 18-38, and continually assessed them and their mental disorders
- 3 factor model fit the data:
1. internalizing vulnerability to depression and anxiety
2. externalizing vulnerability to antisocial and substance use disorders
3. a thought disorder vulnerability for symptoms of psychosis
3
Q
p factor psychopathology
A
can account for the presence or absence of psychiatric symptoms and can give you information about someone’s predisposition for developing all psychopathology
4
Q
high p
A
- worse score of severity and duration of disorder and comorbidity and impairment functioning
- more likely to develop a psychological disorder, have multiple, etc
- not purely genetic but some aspects in your environment can raise or elevate your p factor
5
Q
diathesis
A
- innate predisposition, meaning you are already at risk of developing a disorder
- e.g. biological, sociocultural and psychological factors
6
Q
stressors
A
- triggers the onset of the disorder
- individuals that have a higher diathesis, require less of a stressor and vice versa
7
Q
diathesis-stress model
A
discusses how psychological disorders can be caused by both nature and nurture
8
Q
gene-environment model (bio influence)
A
- genetic vulnerabilities increase probability of experiencing stressful life events that can trigger a disorder
- genes that predispose you to alcoholism can also predispose you seek out certain environments and situations that trigger the onset of a disorder
9
Q
epigenetics and “inheritance” or behaviour (bio influence)
A
- genes appear to be turned on or off by cellular material located on or around the genome
- stress, nutrition, and other factors can affect this epigenome, which gets passed down through generations
- environmental manipulations can override these inherited tendencies towards undesirable behaviours or emotional reactions
- mice & cherry blossom study
10
Q
neuroscience as a biological influence
A
- central nervous system (CNS)
- peripheral nervous system (PNS)
- automatic nervous system (ANS)
11
Q
CNS as a bio influence
A
- brain and spinal cord
- processes information received from all senses and reacts accordingly
- the brain uses 100 billion neurons and neurons involved in psychopathology
12
Q
PNS as a bio influence
A
- somatic nervous system: muscles and voluntary movement; under conscious control
- autonomic nervous system: involuntary bodily functions like heart rate, respiration
- sympathetic nervous system: mobilizes your body to respond to a threat, stress or danger (high HR)
- parasympathetic nervous system: calms you down (low HR)
13
Q
the brain as a bio influence
A
- hindbrain: involved in basic involuntary actions/keeps you alive
- midbrain: where sensory input happens
- forebrain: everything above the midbrain
14
Q
thalamus
A
involved in emotion regulation and behaviors
14
Q
the limbic system as a bio influence
A
- plays a large role in psychopathology, impulse control, emotion regulation and basic drives (sex, hunger)
- contains: thalamus hypothalamus, amygdala and hippocampus
15
Q
hypothalamus
A
four f’s:
1. fighting
2. fleeing
3. feeding
4. mating
16
Q
amygdala
A
agression, sex drive, and detection of threats
17
Q
hippocampus
A
memory
18
Q
neurotransmitters as bio influences
A
- agonist: mimic and/or increase the effects of a NT
- antagonist: inhibit or block the effects of a NT
- reuptake inhibitor: blocks the NT from returning to the axon = pooling in synaptic cleft
19
Q
2 types of NT’s
A
amino acids and monoamines
20
Q
amino acids
A
- glutamate: excitatory, possible link to schizophrenia
- gama aminobutyric acid (GABA): inhibitory, reduces anxiety, aggression
21
Q
monoamines
A
- norepinephrine: fight-or-flight
- serotonin: modd, appetite, sleep, memory
- dopamine: reward & motor control, addictions, exploratory behaviour, pleasure-seeking
22
Q
psychosocial influences - brain structure and function treatment strategy
A
- target either brain or environment and we will be able to determine the cause of the disorder
- effect of treatment does not imply a/the cause but can imply clues
23
Q
psychosocial influences - therapy and brain activity
A
- what’s the best treatment for circuitry, therapy, surgery or drugs?
24
Q
baxter et al. (1992)
A
- treat individuals with OCD with therapy (CBT), or medication (prozac) and scan the brain to see if it had similar or different facts if brain areas
- found effects on the basal ganglia
- when treatment worked, activity in the basal ganglia decreased in both the CBT and prozac groups, and their brains became more similar to those without OCD (control worked)
- determined therapy and medication can change brain circuitry
25
Q
subsequent research on brain circuitry
A
- normalizing brain circuitry and treatments of depression, social anxiety, and specific phobias
- therapy works equivalent to medication and sometimes use the same neural pathways in the brain
26
Q
placebo effect
A
- do our expectations affect our brain functioning?
- treating IBS with either no-treatment, sham treatment (acupuncture), or sham + warm therapist (nice, engaging)
- sham treatment produced better results then no treatment, and when adding the warm therapist also improved results more
- warm therapist increased expectancy of having more alleviation of symptoms
- effectiveness of therapy is attributed to placebo
- acceptation is pain which produces effects in the same areas; anticipating pain relief created by place can cause the brain circuits in the brain related to pain relief to turn on
27
Q
psychosocial interactions with brain function
A
- psychosocial factors can directly affect neurotransmitter activity
- rhesus monkeys and benzodiazepine
- monkeys that had control, became angry and aggressive after being given the drug; the group with no control had a panic response
- had different effects based on psychological backgrounds of monkeys
- the environment your raise din can affect the nerve connections in your brain
28
Q
mowrers two-process theory of anxiety - behavioural influence
A
- fears Acquired through Classical conditioning
- Neutral stimulus (NS) that becomes a Conditioned stimulus (CS) that elicits a fear response - Fears Maintained through Operant conditioning
- Negative reinforcement
- Reinforcing escape and avoidance behavior response
29
Q
other theories that can explain phobias (behavi. influences)
A
- evolutionary theory: predisposed to fear certain things more readily turn others
- social learning theory: fears are modelled to us and that is how we develop our fears
30
Q
learned helplessness
A
when behaviour has no effect on environment, animals give up trying to cope with stress
31
Q
learned helplessness in humans
A
- a dysfunctional belief that there is no control over their environment whether or not that is true
- individuals need to do it themselves till they can internalize it; being told to change doesnt work
32
Q
learned optimism
A
- people faced with considerable stress and difficulty tend to show better psychological functioning if they exhibit some upbeat optimistic attitude
- still acknowledging challenging experiences, the fact that it sucks, and the associated emotion but when you process those emotions while maintaining hope and optimism you will show better long-term psychological functioning
33
Q
social influences
A
- albert bandura & bobo doll experiment
- people learn from observing other people
34
Q
social cognitive theory
A
- conceptualizes humans as agents that are capable of shaping their environment and self regulation but multiple factor influence on another that determine human behaviour
- interplay of 3 keys factors that work together to influence an individual’s behavior:
1. cognitive/personla factors
2. environmental factors
3. behavioural factors
35
Q
evolutionary influences: learning
A
- biology influences what/how easily we learn
- through evolution we are highly prepared to learn about certain objects/situations
- this knowledge contributed and enabled to the survival of ancestors
- more readily learn to fear snakes/spiders/heights than flowers/rocks
36
Q
cognitive influences - cognitive science
A
- cognitive science examines how behavioural and cognitive influences affects our learning and adaptations
- we process, store and act upon information, often without awareness
- evolves implicit memory and implicit cognition
37
Q
implicit memory
A
acts based upon things that have happened in the past which they can’t remember the events of
38
Q
implicit cognition
A
processes that happen in the brain beyond your awareness; unobservable, unconscious processes
39
Q
emotional influences - emotions
A
tendency to behave a certain way, elicited by an event and a feeling state, accompanied by a characteristic physiological response
39
Q
physiology of fear (emot. influences)
A
- fight, flight, freeze response
- fear activates the cardiovascular system to respond to a threat
- pupils dilate to improve vision
- increase blood/oxygen to brain to think/respond quicker
40
Q
emotional phenomena (emot. influences)
A
- emotion vs. affect vs. mood
- emotion: short-lived, temporary states, lasting from few minutes to several hours in response to an event
- affect: momentary emotional tone that accompanies what we say or do (outward expression)
- mood: enduring states of affect or emotionality
41
Q
components of emotion
A
- behaviour: emotional behaviour as a means of communication
- cognition: appraisals of environment determine the emotion experienced
- physiology: direct connection between these areas and the eyes allow emotion processing to bypass higher cognitive processes
42
Q
emotions and psychopathology (emot. influences)
A
- emotions can indirectly impact psychopathology
- suppressing emotional responses over time increases sympathetic nervous system activity, this makes it easier to trigger the system/makes it more sensitive
- emotions can affect cognitive processes b/c how we feel can affect how we appraise something/situations
43
Q
cultural influences
A
- culture influences symptoms that individuals can present with
- influence form and content of psychopathology and can vary among cultures social groups
- implicit or explicit rules about what abnormal behaviour is acceptable varies between cultures
44
Q
depression in the west vs. east countries
A
- different symptoms depending on cultures and differences in how emotions are though of
- looked at 3 key areas and how they varied from west to east:
1. emotions can co-occur
2. emotions change
3. emotions arise from context
45
Q
emotions can co-occur - westerners
A
- tend to approach the world from an analytical perspective and divide the world into mutually exclusive categories
- westerns view happiness and sadness as opposites and tend to avoid sad feelings at all costs
46
Q
emotions can co-occur - easterners
A
- open to experiencing contradictory emotions at the same time
- always some sadness in any happy occasion and vice versa
- negative experiences are less threatening
- just because they are sad doesn’t mean they can also experience happiness in this time
47
Q
emotions change - westerners
A
- tend to think of emotions as arising from a stable self
- who they are is stable and relatively unchanging
- if you think of yourself as a happy person, you need to discount any negative experiences an anomalies and not who you are
48
Q
emotions change - easterners
A
- view emotion as well as the self as constantly changing
- negative experiences are less threatening because they view them as temporary
- any feelings are temporary and the self is constantly changing
49
Q
emotions arise from context - westerners
A
- western societies tend to view emotions as arising from within themselves; stable view of self is less likely to change and therefore emotions don’t depend on context
- emotions depend on themselves and arise from within themselves
50
Q
emotions arise from context - easterners
A
- see emotions as emerging from the situation they are in
- moods can be changed by altering the context
- align thoughts and behaviours with expectations from social groups or distancing themselves from emotions
- better emotion regulation
- negative experiences are less threatening b/c there is always something you can do ti change or later the context you are in
51
Q
culturally specific disorders
A
- susto: belief of being the subject of black magic/witchcraft that causes the soul to leave the body to explain misfortune, illness, disorder, etc
- voodoo death: documented reports of individuals dying after being hr subject of voodoo magic
52
Q
culture and gender roles
A
- gender roles and expectations of how gender are to carry themselves can contribute to different rates of psychological disorders by gender
- differences in coping strategies
- study on masculine vs. feminine traits to see if they are risk factors or protective factors for psychopathology
53
Q
rumination vs. activation (cult. influences & gender)
A
- ruminate: sit, stew and think about the problem repeatedly, and are more likely to engage in self blame; commonly seen in women
- activation: cope by going out and doing something; commonly seen in men
54
Q
masculine vs feminine traits study
A
- masculine traits: stand up well, never give up, active , decisive
- feminine traits: warm, tender, gentle, affectionate, sympathetic, understanding
- researchers found masculine traits are associated with less depression amongst men and women
- found being androgynous was most protective of individuals against psychopathology
- individuals low in both masculine and feminine traits were most likely to report highest rates of depression
- individuals that conform to typical gender norms may promote distress and further mental health disorders; specifically depression
55
Q
social influences - social relationships
A
- individuals that have more connections report less symptoms
- social isolation increases risk of death and is linked to smoking and obesity
- perception of loneliness increase psychopathology
- living in cities is related to the likelihood of developing schizophrenia
- individuals that have pets tend to report less mental health issues
- poverty, SES, and oppression are higher among groups and tend to explain elevated levels of psychopathology
56
Q
stigma associated with mental health issues
A
- loss of friends and family
- loss of employment opportunities
- loss of assistance from professionals
57
Q
developmental influences
A
- changes over time; no disorder is static, meaning no disorder is unchanging
- must consider all experiences and influences such as early parenting styles and prenatal experience
- environments impact genes and their ability to “come out”
58
Q
androgen exposure - developemental influences
A
- discovered androgen exposure (sex hormone)
- 2D4D ratio can cause androgen exposure; generally both sexes have a ratio less then one
- however, men generally have even shorter index finger meaning they have a lower ratio
- a lower ratio is associated with things like autism, ADHD, alcohol use, psychopathy (2D4D ratio can predict psychopathology)
- a higher ratio is associated with depression and anxiety
59
Q
equifinality (dev. influence)
A
- the same symptoms may be explained by different disorders/behaviors
- multiple paths can lead to the same disorder/symptoms
- e.g. individuals could end up with depression because of a series of bad relationships or genetics of childhood abuse
