Psych 3

Question 1

Child Cognition- Early Visual Development

Answer 1

At birth we aren’t ready to view the world, and it takes experience to understand the world, with vision. When we are born, we don’t have that many photo receptors and can’t see too much color.

Question 2

Early Visual Development

Answer 2

2-3 months- A child can switch attention. But before this time, the infant stares at whatever is most salient. 6-9 months, can converge or diverge eyes, learns about depth through binocular vision and Gestalt grouping. 9-12 months old, has experienced depth, gravity, and shadows, so after 9 months we have more experience. Ex. Baby visual cliff experiment.

Question 3

Early development

Answer 3

As a result of fetal develop. in the brain, neurons have way too many connections (synapses), and everything is connected with everything (neurotically speaking). So babies don’t know what language their parents speak, so all these connections mean they can learn any language.

Question 4

Preferential Looking- How we test babies

Answer 4

Infants prefer looking at novel and interesting stimuli. The sucking rate means that babies suck on their pacifier if they are interested in something. Gaze duration means they will look at an item that’s new or exciting, and head turning means the infant will turn their head if shown certain stimuli.

Question 5

Early Brain Development- “Use it or lose it system”

Answer 5

Neural pruning is the less we use something, the connections will die off. And the specialization lasts until mid-20s, when we are finished pruning.

Question 6

Jean Piaget

Answer 6

Swiss Psychologist who was interested in the nature of knowledge and intelligence. Interested in children and how they are little scientists as they perform experiments, observations and learn about the world.

Question 7

Jean Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Answer 7

Sensorimotor Stage- 0 to 2 years
Preoperational stage- 2 to 7 years
Concrete Operational stage- 7 to 11 years
Formal Operational Stage- 12 years and up

Question 8

Sensorimotor Stage (Stage 1) 0 to 2 years

Answer 8

Explores the world through their movements and sensations. Children learn about the world through basic sensations, and actions, such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening. Learn/realize that their actions have consequences. They are separate beings from the people and objects around them. About age 1, babies learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen.

Question 9

Object Permanence (gained around age 1)

Answer 9

Object permanence means knowing that an object still exists, even if it is hidden. It requires the ability to form a mental representation of the object. For example, if you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence knows it is there and can actively seek it.

Question 10

Pre-operational Stage (Stage 2) 2-7 years

Answer 10

Children in this stage do not understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information, so they don’t have conservation. Begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects. Ex. a box is a rocket ship, they play pretend. And they are egocentric and struggle to see things from other people’s perspectives.

Question 11

Early Visual Development

Answer 11

We are not born with the ability to see in 3-D (binocular vision), and have to learn about things like Gestalt grouping principles and monocular cues of depth by observing the world around us.

Question 12

Conservation

Answer 12

Refers to the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes.

Question 13

Concrete Operational Stage (Stage 3) 7-11 years

Answer 13

Children now understand Conservation, they now begin to think logically about concrete events (but are unable to think hypothetically). Begin to understand hard facts and lose egocentrism. And realize that other people can have different viewpoints and thoughts different from their own. Thinking becomes logical and concrete and organized, their logic is defined by rules and the observations they have learned.

Question 14

Formal Operational Stage (Stage 4) 12-17 years

Answer 14

The ability to use hypothetical and deductive reasoning and abstract concepts, fully achieved around 15 years old. Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning. Ex. eye placement example, stage 3 kids say eye should be in the forehead, while stage 4 people will have more creative answers, like in the hands.

Question 15

Some Extreme Cases of the manipulation of the neural pruning system in children.

Answer 15

GenieWiley (negative outcome) and Bella Devyatkina (positive outcome)

Question 16

Genie Wiley

Answer 16

Her language acquisition, over the years Genie learned words one at a time, after a few years she could produce 2-word sentences. She was unable to use grammar and surpassed the critical period and was unable to use language.

Question 17

Bella Devyatkina

Answer 17

Bella Devyatkina from Moscow. Her mother was a language tutor and socialized Bella by exposing her to dif. languages through a combination of daily lessons and socializing with people who spoke the foreign languages Bella wanted to learn. So by age 4, able to speak 7 languages, so exposing children to dif. languages is beneficial during the critical period.

Question 18

Cognitive Development and Illusions

Answer 18

As we go through life we acquire experiences with different objects, and make assumptions about our world based on our past experience. Children are not as experienced with the world as adults, so some
illusions operate differently on children versus adults.

Question 19

Critical Period for Language Acquisition

Answer 19

Thought to be active only from roughly birth to
age 12, our brains are primed and particularly
efficient during this time at acquiring and
processing language. For Genie Wiley, she was not properly socialized nor exposed to language during that time period, so she never was able to acquire
language later in life. But Bella Devyatkina has been exposed to many languages within the critical period, so she will likely still be fluent in them decades from
now.

Question 20

Early Language Acquisition

Answer 20

To facilitate the acquisition of new words in very young children, adults use “baby talk” (intonation & pitch changes). This helps the infant with sentence segmentation, pronunciation (by exaggerating changes in prosody), as well as keeping their attention better. This is more effective than adult-directed speech.

Question 21

Adolescents Online

Answer 21

Research has confirmed that children using
technology near bedtime likewise upset their Circadian Rhythms and leads to health issues. So, the hippocampus which is in charge of processing and retrieving memory is affected because the sleep cycle is critical for the formation of processing memories. Memories aren’t encoded and consolidated well because of disrupted sleep.

Question 22

The Streisand Effect

Answer 22

The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information. This effect is an example of psychological reactance, because Barbara Streisand was trying to hide her house.

Question 23

Aging and Cognitive Decline

Answer 23

The trend for nearly all of cognition is a peak very early in either childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood, and then a steady decline until death.

Question 24

For all sensory modalities, there is a Presby-word to describe the decline of that modality with age

Answer 24

Ex. Presbycusis- Loss of hearing
Presbygeusia: Loss of taste
Presbyopia: Loss of vision
Presbyosmia: Loss of smell
Presbystasis: Loss of balance

Question 25

Aural Anatomy- The Inner Ear

Answer 25

Inner year has cochlear hair cells that vibrate with the vibrations in the fluid and transmit signals to the brain. But cochlear hair cells do not grow back, using earbuds, loud noises and videogames makes people have worse hearing.

Question 26

Presbygeusia- Loss of Gustation (taste perception)

Answer 26

Like the hair cells in our inner ear, we lose our taste receptors over time (a person will have more taste receptors as a child than they will as an adult). This partially explains why children can be “picky eaters,” as their heightened sensitivity to taste sensations (compared to that of an adult) can make many foods particularly unpleasant. As we age, we continue to lose our taste receptors, leading to a marked loss of taste sensations, causing most foods to become more “bland.”

Question 27

Presbyopia- Cataracts

Answer 27

Photoreceptors in eyes decay with age. Macular degeneration is age-related, various cells in retina in you see a grey blob in the middle of your eye and only have peripheral vision.

Question 28

Attention and Memory part 1

Answer 28

Hippocampus slowly atrophies overtime; this means everyone's memory gets worse over time. Sensory memory is affected, which will affect the accuracy of further stages of memory encoding.

Question 29

Attention and Memory in the elderly part 2

Answer 29

Due to slower reaction time and other difficulties with attention, info in short-term memory is less likely to be rehearsed effectively and makes it more likely to be forgotten. And so long-term memories are affected the most, due to a combination of blocking, transience and hippocampal atrophy.

Question 30

Dementia

Answer 30

General term for a decline in mental stability severe enough to interfere with daily life.

Question 31

Alzheimer's Disease

Answer 31

Alzheimer's disease is one type of dementia in which abnormal deposits of plaque and tangled proteins cause the affected neurons to die. Alzheimer's spreads beyond the hippocampus, like the frontal lobe (emotions, planning, decision-making, motor control). Poor sleep is because of Alzheimer's since sleep is the maintenance cycle of the brain, so no sleep makes it worse and a partial cause of Alzheimer's.

Question 32

So as we get older, does everything get worse?

Answer 32

Aside from issues like hearing loss (presbycusis) and reaction time, speech and language are largely intact in the elderly under normal conditions (eg. not suffering from dementia).

Question 33

Spatial Awareness

Answer 33

Children in Piaget's Preoperational stage aren't able to understand this concept yet. And in the elderly, there is also difficulty in these tasks involving spatial awareness.

Question 34

Sensory Memory in the Elderly

Answer 34

Because the senses aren’t relaying fully accurate information anymore due to presbyopia, presbycusis, et cetera, Sensory Memory is affected, which will in turn affect the accuracy of further stages of memory encoding.

Question 35

Short-Term Memory in the Elderly

Answer 35

Due to slower reaction time and other difficulties with attention, information in Short-Term Memory is less likely to be rehearsed effectively (to be passed on to form a Long-Term Memory) and thus is more likely to be forgotten (Absent-Mindedness)

Question 36

Long Term Memory in the elderly

Answer 36

Long-Term memories are affected the most, due to a combination of blocking (more information gathered over a lifetime equates to more blocking occurring), transience, and hippocampal atrophy.

Question 37

Deductive Reasoning

Answer 37

Applying your general knowledge to one specific instance.

Question 38

Inductive Reasoning

Answer 38

Involves taking specific observations and look for the generalization/overall trend.

Question 39

Inductive and Deductive Reasoning in the elderly

Answer 39

Inductive reasoning means identifying patterns, taking new info, and that includes tasks on spatial awareness, which declines with age. While deductive reasoning, (which involves using general knowledge to make specific conclusions) remains stable.

Question 40

Fluid Intelligence (fluid Reasoning)

Answer 40

The ability to deal with new and unusual problems, identifying patterns and problem solving. This includes inductive reasoning and spatial awareness tasks.

Question 41

Crystallized Intelligence (Keeps growing/ deductive)

Answer 41

Acquired knowledge, including verbal knowledge (vocabulary and having expertise in a subject)

Question 42

Social Thinking and Behavior- Obedience

Answer 42

When behavior is influenced due to the commands of an authority figure.

Question 43

The Milgram Study

Answer 43

The teacher subject is led to another room. Where they see the student is hooked up to an electro-shock machine., etc. Basically, these people were confronted with the decision o walk out of the experiment or continue the trial just because a person in a white coat told them to. The results: a vast majority went all the way in the experiment.

Question 44

Conformity

Answer 44

Involves changing one's behavior (subconsciously or consciously) to fit into a group. You aren't thinking logically, you just follow along the group average. Ex. ASCH 1956 study, with the different sized lines.

Question 45

Deindividuation

Answer 45

Loosing ourselves and our critical thinking goes away. when we are alone, we are an individual, but in a social context we are de-individual. This can manifest in aways like social loafing and the bystander effect.

Question 46

Social Loafing

Answer 46

A person in a group tends to exert less effort when combining efforts with others to attain a common goal, than when held individually accountable.

Question 47

Bystander Effect

Answer 47

Individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. Ex. The murder of Kitty Genovese, murder and abused in front of apartment residents but no none called the police until she was dead.

Question 48

Attitudes- The ABC's of Prejudice, Discrimination and Stereotypes

Answer 48

An attitude is a positive, negative, or mixed evaluation of a person, place, thing or event. They consist of 3 components: Affect, Behavior, and Cognition. * A—Affective (feelings) * B—Behavioral * C—Cognitive (Thoughts/beliefs) Example: Dogs (or cats)

Question 49

A- Affective= Prejudice

Answer 49

A—Affective = Prejudice Negative, unjustified feelings toward a group based solely on their group membership

Question 50

B- Behavioral= Discrimination

Answer 50

B—Behavioral = Discrimination Negative or unjustified harmful behavior based solely on someone’s group membership

Question 51

C- Cognitive= Stereotypes

Answer 51

C—Cognitive = Stereotypes Thoughts/beliefs that associate groups of people with traits

Question 52

The Problem with Intelligence

Answer 52

We have this concept of intelligence but cannot clearly define it, and for this reason we are not very good at measuring it, and yet we put so much emphasis on it, and even utilize it to justify discrimination, cruelty, and murder. Furthermore, we label non-humans (computers, chimps, my dog...) with respect to our already ill-defined notions of intelligence. We like to claim that an animal is “intelligent” if it thinks or behaves like us, but is that really fair to the animal?

Question 53

Anthropomorphism

Answer 53

projecting human qualities onto animals

Question 54

How do humans solve problems?

Answer 54

Algorithms Heuristics Trial and Error Insight

Question 55

Algorithms

Answer 55

A step-by-step procedure that will always produce a correct solution. Ex. mathematical formulas.

Question 56

Heuristics

Answer 56

A mental shortcut that allows people to quickly make judgments and solve problems. These mental shortcuts are typically informed by our past experiences and allow us to act quickly. However, heuristics are really more of a rule-of-thumb; they don't always guarantee a correct solution.

Question 57

Trial-And-Error

Answer 57

Trying a number of different solutions and ruling out those that do not work. This approach can be a good option if you have a very limited number of options available. If there are many different choices, you are better off narrowing down the possible options using another problem-solving technique before attempting trial-and-error.

Question 58

Insight

Answer 58

Also known as the Aha! moment or Eureka Effect)– refers to the common human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept.

Question 59

Functional Fixedness

Answer 59

A cognitive bias negatively affects a person's ability to problem-solve and innovate. The bias causes a person to look at a problem in one specific way, we limit ourselves because of this.

Question 60

Are animals intelligent?

Answer 60

We don't have an exact definition of intelligence, so this comparison is unfair to animals. Animals evolved to respond to certain unique challenges they faced in their unique evolutionary histories Just because an animal does not think or solve problems in the same way as a human doesn’t mean it is “Unintelligent,” so it’s not really fair to use that word.

Question 61

Testing for Object Permanence

Answer 61

Researchers had dolphins utilize this rolling ball task. Balls don’t roll well underwater, so they had the dolphins poke their head out of the water to watch a ball rolling behind a panel. Dolphins didn't move their heads to anticipate the ball. But once the experiment was made correctly underwater, and flipped the apparatus vertically, the dolphin did correctly look at the bottom to anticipate the ball falling. Showing they do have object permanence.

Question 62

Inductive Reasoning with Animals

Answer 62

Pavlov's Dogs, “Inductive Reasoning involves observing specific trends or patterns, and then generalizing.” The dogs observed specific instances of a bell being rung when food was served. When the bell was rung in the future, the dogs salivated, indicating the dogs had utilized inductive reasoning to make the generalization that bells signal food.

Question 63

Deductive Reasoning with Animals

Answer 63

The experiment: Naïve honeybees who have never foraged observe (through glass) fake/plastic honeybees “foraging” on orange-colored flowers. honeybee version of deductive: Bees go to flowers for food (major premise) The bees are on orange flowers (minor premise) Therefore, orange flowers are food.

Question 64

Can animals speak human-like languages?

Answer 64

No, Animals produce a particular behavior in response to a particular stimulus or ‘noise’, but do not actually understand what the words mean. Animals can still convey an impressive amount of information about the world immediately around them, but lack the ability to communicate abstract concepts (e.g. symbols) which is one of the most important elements of human communication.

Question 65

Talking to Animals- Analog of the Chinese Room

Answer 65

There is a box in which you can ask a question (in Chinese) and afterwards, the box will output a response in Chines. It would seem that the a mechanism in the box understands Chinese. However, that doesn’t have to be true. The person inside doesn’t have to know Chinese at all. This demonstrates that you could ask the man a question in your native language, and he will respond correctly to you in your own native language, even though he has no understanding of what he is saying to you. Ex. Clever Hans or Bunny the Dog.