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PSYC*2410 > PSYC*2410 Chapter 2: Evolution, Genetics, and Experience > Flashcards

PSYC*2410 Chapter 2: Evolution, Genetics, and Experience Flashcards

1
Q

What is the general intellectual climate of a culture?

A

Zeitgeist

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2
Q

What is dichotomous thinking?

A

Thinking that involves viewing situations as having only two extreme options without considering any middle ground

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3
Q

What two questions demonstrate the tendency to think about behaviour in terms of dichotomies?

A
  • Is it physiological or psychological?
  • Is it inherited or learned?
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4
Q

What was the philosophical position of René Descartes?

A

Cartesian dualism

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5
Q

What is Cartesian dualism?

A

The belief that the universe is composed of two elements… physical matter and the human mind

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6
Q

What is aomatognosia?

A

A deficiency in the awareness of parts of one’s own body

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7
Q

What type of brain damage is typically involved in aomatognosia?

A

Damage to the right frontal and parietal lobes

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8
Q

What is the nature-nurture issue?

A

The debate about the relative contributions of genes (nature) and experience (nurture) to the behavioural capacities of individuals

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9
Q

Which side of the nature-nurture debate were most early North American experimental psychologists committed to?

A

The nurture side

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10
Q

Which side of the nature-nurture debate did most early European ethologists take?

A

The nature side

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11
Q

What is ethology?

A

The study of the behaviour of animals in their natural environments

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12
Q

What was the focus of early European ethology?

A

Instinctive behaviours

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13
Q

What are instinctive behaviours?

A

Behaviours that occur in all like members of a species, even when there seems to have been no opportunity for them to have been learned

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14
Q

What is problematic about the question “how much of it is genetic, and how much is experience?”

A

This type of questioning and thinking is based on the premise that genetic factors and experiential factors combine in an additive fashion

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15
Q

The model of the biology of behaviour boils down to the single premise that all behaviour is the product of the interactions among what three factors?

A
  1. The organism’s genetic endowment
  2. The organism’s experience
  3. The organism’s perception of the current situation
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16
Q

How do evolutionary psychologists attempt to understand behaviours?

A

By considering the evolutionary pressures that led to development of the behaviours

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17
Q

What type of psychological research focuses on comparing divergent mating behaviours of promiscuity and mate bonding?

A

Evolutionary psychology

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18
Q

What are the three types of mate bonding?

A
  • Polygyny
  • Polyandry
  • Monogamy
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19
Q

What is polygyny?

A

One male bonds with multiple females

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20
Q

In which type of bonding are males not overly involved in the development of their young?

A

Polygyny

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21
Q

What is the most common type of mate bonding?

A

Polygyny

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22
Q

What is polyandry?

A

One female bonds with many males

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23
Q

In which type of bonding do males contribute more to the development of young than the females?

A

Polyandry

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24
Q

What is monogamy?

A

One male bonds with one female

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25
Q

What is the ultimate form of mate bonding?

A

Monogamy

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26
Q

What are the three key points emphasized by developments in evolutionary psychology?

A
  • Evolutionary analyses can be applied to the most complex human behaviours
  • Humans are the product of evolution
  • Humans are closely related to other animal species
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27
Q

What were the four pieces of evidence presented by Darwin to support his assertion that species evolve?

A
  • Fossil records
  • Similarities among diverse species
  • Selective breeding
  • Evolution in progress
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28
Q

Darwin argued that evolution occurs through natural selection, based on what?

A

Fitness

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29
Q

What is natural selection?

A

The idea that heritable traits associated with high rates of survival and reproduction are most likely to be passed on to future generations

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30
Q

According to Darwin, what is fitness?

A

The ability of an organism to survive and contribute its genes to the next generation

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31
Q

How does social dominance contribute to evolution?

A

Dominant males tend to copulate more than non-dominant males and are thus more effective in passing on their characteristics to future generations

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32
Q

What are courtship displays?

A

An intricate series of behaviours that precedes copulation in many species

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33
Q

How are courtship displays thought to promote the evolution of new species?

A

By creating behavioural reproductive barriers

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34
Q

What is a group of organisms that is reproductively isolated from other organisms?

A

A species

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35
Q

When does a new species begin to branch off from an existing species?

A

When some barrier discourages breeding between a subpopulation of the existing species and the remainder of the species

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36
Q

What are two types of reproductive barriers?

A
  • Geographic
  • Behavioural
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37
Q

What are conspecifics?

A

Members of the same species

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38
Q

What are chordates?

A

Animals with dorsal nerve cords

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39
Q

What did chordates evolve from?

A

Complex multicellular water-dwelling organisms

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40
Q

What are vertebrates?

A

Chordates that posses spinal bones

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41
Q

What are the seven classes of vertebrates?

A
  • Mammals
  • Amphibians
  • Reptiles
  • Birds
  • Three classes of fish
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42
Q

Which class must live in water during their larval phase, but can survive on land during adulthood?

A

Amphibians

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43
Q

What did reptiles evolve from?

A

Amphibians

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44
Q

Which class was the first to lay shell-covered eggs and be covered by dry scales?

A

Reptiles

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45
Q

What did mammals evolve from?

A

Reptiles

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46
Q

Today, most classification systems recognize about how many different orders of mammals?

A

26

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47
Q

T or F: Primates are difficult to categorize because there is no single characteristic possessed by all primates but no other animals.

A

True

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48
Q

What is the closest living relatives to humans?

A

Chimpanzees

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49
Q

What are primates of the same group that includes humans?

A

Hominins

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50
Q

What was one distinctive feature of the early Homo species?

A

The relatively large size of their brains

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51
Q

What kingdom are human classified under?

A

Animalia

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52
Q

What phylum are humans classified under?

A

Chordate

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53
Q

What class are humans classified under?

A

Mammal

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54
Q

What order are humans classified under?

A

Primate

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55
Q

What family are humans classified under?

A

Hominin

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56
Q

What genus are humans classified under?

A

Homo

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57
Q

What species are humans classified under?

A

Sapiens

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58
Q

What are the big three human attributes?

A
  • Large brain
  • Upright posture
  • Free hands with an opposable thumb
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59
Q

T or F: Evolution proceeds in a single line.

A

False

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60
Q

T or F: Humans have little reason to claim evolutionary supremacy.

A

True

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61
Q

T or F: Evolution does not always proceed slowly and gradually.

A

True

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62
Q

T or F: Many products of evolution have survived to the present day.

A

False

63
Q

T or F: Evolution does not proceed to preordained perfection.

A

True

64
Q

T or F: All existing behaviours and structures are adaptive.

A

False

65
Q

What are spandrels?

A

Traits that are non-adaptive by-products of and adaptive evolutionary characteristic (ex. belly buttons)

66
Q

T or F: All existing adaptive characteristics evolved to perform their current function.

A

False

67
Q

What are exaptations?

A

A characteristic that evolved to serve one function, but later became used for another

68
Q

Do similarities among species mean that they have a common evolutionary origin?

A

No

69
Q

What are homologous structures?

A

Structures that are similar between species because of a common evolutionary origin (ex. human arms and bird wings)

70
Q

What are analogous structures?

A

Structures that are similar between species because of convergent evolution (ex. bird wings and bee wings)

71
Q

What is convergent evolution?

A

Two independent species evolve to acquire similar characteristics due to similar environmental demands

72
Q

T or F: There is now considerable evidence that Homo sapiens mated with other Homo sapiens (ex. Neanderthals)

A

True

73
Q

What was the primary focus of early research on the evolution of the human brain?

A

Brian size

74
Q

What seems to be the most reasonable approach to the study of brain evolution?

A

To compare the evolution of different brain regions

75
Q

What are three important points about the evolution of the human brain?

A
  • It has increased in size during evolution
  • Most of the increase in size has occurred in the cerebrum
  • An increase in the number of convolutions has greatly increased the surface area of the cerebral cortex
76
Q

Can neural structures in the brains of one species typically be found in the same locations in the brains of related species?

A

Yes

77
Q

What are two things Darwin didn’t understand?

A
  • Why conspecifics differ from one another
  • How characteristics are passed from parent to offspring
78
Q

What were the two wise decisions Mendel made when designing his experiments with pea plants?

A
  • He studies dichotomous traits
  • He began his experiments by crossing the offspring of true-breeding lines
79
Q

What are dichotomous traits?

A

Traits that occur in one form or another, never in combination

80
Q

Which trait of a dichotomous pair is expressed in the phenotypes of heterozygous individuals?

A

The dominant trait

81
Q

Which trait of a dichotomous pair is not expressed in the phenotypes of heterozygous individuals?

A

The recessive trait

82
Q

In which type of breeding lines do interbred members always produces offspring with the same trait?

A

True-breeding lines

83
Q

What is a phenotype?

A

An organism’s observable traits

84
Q

What is a genotype?

A

The genetic makeup of an organism

85
Q

What are genes?

A

Units of inheritance

86
Q

What are alleles?

A

Two genes that control the same trait

87
Q

What does it mean for an organism to be homozygous?

A

They possess two identical alleles for a particular trait

88
Q

What does it mean for an organism to be heterozygous?

A

They possess two different alleles for a particular trait

89
Q

What are the four central ideas of Mendelian genetics?

A
  • There are two kinds of inherited factors (genes) for each dichotomous trait
  • Each organism possesses two genes for each of its dichotomous traits (alleles)
  • One of the two alleles for each dichotomous trait dominates the other in heterozygous organisms
  • For each dichotomous trait, an organism randomly inherits one of its father’s alleles and one of its mother’s alleles
90
Q

What are the threadlike structures in the cell nucleus containing genes?

A

Chromosomes

91
Q

What type of molecule are chromosomes?

A

DNA molecules

92
Q

Which process of cell division produces gametes?

A

Meiosis

93
Q

What is genetic recombination?

A

The meiotic process by which pairs of chromosomes cross over each other at random points, break apart, and exchange genes

94
Q

Which process of cell division produces cells with the same number of chromosomes as the parent cell?

A

Mitosis

95
Q

What is replication?

A

The process by which the DNA molecule duplicates itself

96
Q

What occurs during replication?

A

The two DNA strands unwind and the exposed nucleotide bases attract their complementary bases until the unwinding is complete and two DNA molecules have been created

97
Q

What do most errors in replication take the form of?

A

Mutations

98
Q

What term is used to describe the accidental alterations in individual genes?

A

Mutations

99
Q

Which type of chromosome comes in matched pairs?

A

Autosomal chromosomes

100
Q

What are autosomal chromosomes?

A

In mammals, all chromosomes except sex chromosomes

101
Q

What are sex chromosomes?

A

The pair of chromosomes that determine an individual’s genetic sex

102
Q

What are sex-linked traits?

A

Traits that are influenced by the genes on the sex chromosomes

103
Q

What are the building blocks of protein?

A

Amino acids

104
Q

What are long chains of amino acids?

A

Proteins

105
Q

What are promoters?

A

Stretches of DNA whose function is to determine whether particular structural genes are converted into proteins via gene expression

106
Q

What are activators?

A

Proteins that bind to DNA and increase gene expression

107
Q

What are repressors?

A

Proteins that bind to DNA and decrease gene expression

108
Q

What is gene expression?

A

A two-phase process in which the protein specified by a particular gene is produced

109
Q

What are the two phases of gene expression?

A
  • Transcription
  • Translation
110
Q

What occurs during transcription?

A

A strand of messenger RNA is transcribed from one of the exposed DNA strands and carries that genetic information from the nucleus into the cytoplasm of the cell

111
Q

How do the nucleotide bases differ between RNA and DNA?

A

RNA has uracil and DNA has thymine

112
Q

What occurs during translation?

A

The strand of recently transcribed mRNA is converted by a ribosome and tRNA into a protein

113
Q

What is a codon?

A

A group of three consecutive nucleotide bases

114
Q

What role do tRNA molecules play in translation?

A

They carry the complementary amino acids to ribosomes during protein synthesis

115
Q

What is the Human Genome Project?

A

An international research effort to construct a detailed map of the sequence of all 3 billion nucleotide bases that compose human chromosomes

116
Q

What were the three major contributions of the human genome project?

A
  • New techniques for studying DNA were developed
  • The discovery that humans have relatively few structural genes
  • Many variations in the human genome related to particular diseases have been identified
117
Q

What is the human proteome?

A

A map of the entire set of proteins encoded for my human genes

118
Q

What are epigenetics?

A

The study of all mechanisms of inheritance other than those mediated by changed to the DNA gene sequence

119
Q

What four human conditions “set the stage” for epigenetics?

A
  • The human genome project
  • The discovery that protein-encoding genes constitute only about 1% of human DNA
  • The finding that the majority of RNA molecules were small
  • The fact that the mechanisms by which gene-experience interactions took place were unknown
120
Q

T or F: Non-gene DNA is junk DNA

A

False

121
Q

What are the two most studied epigenetic mechanisms that can modulate gene expression?

A
  • DNA methylation
  • Histone remodelling
122
Q

Which epigenetic mechanism involves methyl group attaching to DNA molecules?

A

DNA methylation

123
Q

T or D: DNA methylation only decreases gene expression.

A

False. Can increase or decrease gene expression.

124
Q

What is histone remodelling?

A

An epigenetic mechanism where histones change their shape, which influences the shape of the adjacent DNA

125
Q

T or F: Histone remodelling only increases gene expression.

A

False. Can increase or decrease gene expression.

126
Q

What is an epigenome?

A

A catalogue of all epigenetic mechanisms involved within a particular cell type

127
Q

What is an epitranscriptome?

A

Refers to all modifications of RNA that occur after transcription and don’t involve modifications to the RNA base sequence

128
Q

What is the subfield of epigenetics that examines the transmission of experience via epigenetic mechanism across generations?

A

Transgenerational epigenetics

129
Q

What is ontogeny?

A

The development of individuals over their life span

130
Q

What is phylogeny?

A

The evolutionary development of species

131
Q

When both maze-dull and maze-bright rats were reared in enriched environments, what was discovered about the number of errors they made?

A

Maze-dull rats did not make significantly more errors than maze-bright rats

132
Q

What is phenylketonuria (PKU)?

A

A neurological disorder whose symptoms include vomiting, seizures, hyperactivity, hyper-irritability, intellectual disability, brain damage, and high levels of phenylpyruvic acid in the urine

133
Q

How is PKU transmitted?

A

A single gene mutation

134
Q

Is the gene that causes PKU dominant or recessive?

A

Recessive

135
Q

Which neurotransmitter is normally synthesized from tyrosine?

A

Dopamine

136
Q

Individuals with what neurological disorder lack phenylalanine hydroxylase and as a result have an accumulation of phenylalanine?

A

Phenylketonuria (PKU)

137
Q

Phenylalanine hydroxylase is required to convert phenylalanine into what?

A

Tyrosine

138
Q

What must occur for a phenylalanine-restricted diet to effectively reduce the development of intellectual disabilities in people with high phenylalanine levels?

A

It must be initiated within the first few weeks of life

139
Q

What are sensitive periods?

A

Intervals of time when an experience will have more of an effect on development

140
Q

In the development of individuals, can the effects of genes and experience be separated?

A

No

141
Q

In the development of differences among individuals, can the effects of genes and experience be separated?

A

Yes

142
Q

What are monozygotic twins?

A

Twins that develop from the same zygote and are thus genetically identical

143
Q

What are dizygotic twins?

A

Twins that develop from two zygotes and are as genetically similar as any other pair of siblings

144
Q

In the Minnesota study of twins reared apart, what was found about the psychological profile of adult monozygotic and dizygotic twins?

A

Monozygotic twins were substantially more similar on all psychological dimensions than dizygotic twins, regardless of if they were raised in the same family environment

145
Q

What are heritability estimates?

A

The proportion of variation in a population that can be attributed to inherited genetic factors

146
Q

What does a heritability estimate of 0 mean?

A

Genes have no effect on phenotypic differences

147
Q

What does a heritability estimate of 1 mean?

A

Genes contribute completely to the phenotypic differences

148
Q

T or F: Heritability estimates indicate nothing about specific genes that contribute to a trait.

A

True

149
Q

Can heritability estimates be interpreted as the proportion of genetic contribution to a particular trait?

A

No

150
Q

If the environment in a study is uniform, will the heritability estimate be high or low?

A

High

151
Q

What are most heritability estimates of complex traits and behaviours in the representative western samples that have been studied?

A

Between 40% and 80%

152
Q

T or F: Monozygotic twins are epigenetically identical early in life, but differences accumulated as they aged.

A

True

153
Q

What are disease-discordant monozygotic twin studies?

A

The examination of the epigenetic differences in monozygotic twins who are discordant for a particular disease

154
Q

What is the multiplier effect?

A

People with similar genetic profiles tend to have similar experiences because they often seek out similar environments and engage in similar activities

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