CHAPTER NINE.docx

CHAPTER NINE Some non-traditional objectives for this section of the course Correlation is not causation Nearly everything of interest to psychologists is multifactorial Psychologists have biases Intelligence Crack 1: Mental abilities Judgment, comprehension, reason Understanding Acting purposefully, rationally and effectively Crack 2: IQ= measurement that attempts to estimate a person?s probable performance in school and similar settings 1. INTELLIGENCE IS: A HYPOTHETICAL PROPERTY THAT CANNOT BE DIRECTLY MEASURED 2. THE FIRST INTELLIGENCE TEST WAS DEVELOPED IN ORDER TO: IDENTIFY CHILDREN WHO NEEDED REMEDIAL EDUCATION Expressions of IQ Ratio: Subject?s mental age, expressed as a ratio to physical age Deviation: Subject?s score, expressed in relation to the scores of others of the same age Usually expressed in 10% increments IQ Tests Standford-Binet (first original test), Wechsler, Progressive Matrices Each has particular foci, biases, advantages, disadvantages IQ Testing and Intelligence With reasonable measures, correlations can be made (predictions) Turns out that performance on a number of distinct tasks is correlated significantly Hypothesis: some general factor underlies performance on all (like a general ?third factor) IQ: How many ?factors?? Factor Analysis is a statistical technique that explains large numbers of relationships/correlations with a relatively small number of underlying processes or variables (factors) The relationship among many different mental abilities can be explained by appealing to surprisingly few ?factors.? Two factors originally implicated in IQ: S, a factor specific to each ability G, a factor generally applicable across abilities Potential ?g? Analytical speed Breaking up a big problem into its component parts Neuronal plasticity Brain?s ability to change itself Attention Speed with which you might transduce, encode and perceive the world Visuospatial capacity Almost all IQ tests are in this domain (heart of everything) Also, maybe: ?Non-psychological? factors that generally influence performance, some things that tend to covary with IQ and performance: Socio-economic standing Birth weight Diet Illness 3. COMPARED TO PEOPLE WITH AVERAGE SCORES, PEOPLE WITH HIGH INTELLIGENCE TEST SCORES HAVE ______ REACTION TIMES TO MOST STIMULI. FASTER AND LESS VARIABLE IQ Testing Flynn Effect: Raw scores on IQ tests increase across generations Education Technology Health 4. THE AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE TEST SCORE HAS BEEN RISING BY ABOUT 0.3% EVERY YEAR. THIS IS KNOWN AS: THE FLYNN EFFECT Heritability Revisited Heritability: Estimate of how much variance in some characteristic is due to variance in heredity. Heritability is a value for the characteristic. Heritability ranges from 0 (no relationship between variance in characteristics and variability in the genes) to 1 (variability in characteristic is completely predicted by variability in the genes) IQ: Nature, Nurture First: Intertest is about .9 Fraternal twins share 50% of genome If you are raised in the same family, you will score much closer than if you are raised in different ones Bias in IQ Testing? If the IQ test is designed to predict performance in school (and, it is), then bias in the test itself would be indicated by a difference in the predictive utility of the test across groups? This generally has NOT been found. If one mistakenly believes that IQ is ?intelligence,? then both the IQ test and school tests might be similarly biased against measuring ability in particular groups Bias in IQ Theory? Hells yes. This is really where the controversy lies. The interpretation of this data leads people to say dumb things. Potential Things that have been found to covary with IQ Sex (men normally test higher) Religiosity ? atheism (+.6) is associated with higher IQ scores, Protestantism is associated with higher IQ scores than Catholics Brain size (+.4) Head size (+.2) Thyroid function Height (+.22) EEG activity Education Some of these measures are related in populations, rather than individuals Analytical speed Neuronal plasticity Attention Visuospatial capacity SES Birth weight (+.8 per standard deviation) Diet Illness Breast feeding (+5.4 points per month) Gestational maternal smoking (-.5) Parental education (+.41) Family Income (+1.6 pts for 50% increase) Grade level achievement (+.52) Maternal ethnicity (+4.4 points Asian vs. white) Genetics and Environment Genetics or prenatal environment determine everything Environmental difference in prenatal environment is massively important and makes you different CHAPTER SEVEN LANGUAGE CATCH UP Levels of Language Phonological Level Phoneme= Element of speech SOUND Morphological Level Morpheme= smallest unit of MEANING Semantic Level Semantics= Sentence/Phrase Meaning Syntactical Level Grammar/Syntax= Rule of Speech STRUCTURE, how words can be combined to produce meaning Nonhuman Language Various primates have been taught elements of language, with various success Without exception, the use of these ?languages? by other species fails to meet the definition of productivity That is, non human subjects use symbols to make demands and sometimes to describe. Never to express new ideas. ?If higher apes were incapable of anything beyond the trivialities that have been shown in these experiments, they would have been distinct millions of years ago. If you want to find out about an organism, you study what its good at. If you want to study humans you study language. If you want to study pigeons you study their homing instinct. Every biologist knows this. This research is just some kind of fanaticism.? Dr. Chomsky Theories of Language Development (Phylogenetic Development) Language is emergent (accidental) result of overall brain development Humans have more language because they have more brain Language is a property of an evolved, specialized, ?added? part of the brain Humans have language because they have a language part of the brain, a language acquisition device The Evidence Language not correlated with brain size Language deficits not caused by small brains Language deficits not even correlated (sometimes) with intelligence deficits Critical Periods for Language Grammar rules are learned best when a subject is young Vocabulary is learned best when older Language must be learned during a ?critical period?: With sign language: if no language is acquired by adolescence, then no language can be learned Theories of Language Development (Ontogenetic Development) Conditioning theory: Language is learned by reinforcement of utterances ?Module? theory: Human brain has a Language Acquisition Device, a collection of processes that facilitates learning The Evidence Seems to NOT be trial and error: Conditioning rules can?t explain speed of acquisition ?Poverty of the Stimulus? Argument: Children do not hear every instance of most of the rules that apply Children over-generalize grammar rules Certain parts of the brain ARE specialized for language 5. A COLLECTION OF PROCESSES THAT FACILITATE LANGUAGE LEARNING IS CALLED: A LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE 6. THE BEHAVORIST THEORY OF LANGUAGE CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR WHICH ASPECT OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT PARENTS DON?T SPEND MUCH TIME TEACHING THEIR CHILDREN TO SPEAK GRAMATICALLY CHILDREN GENERATE GRAMMATICAL SENTENCES THEY HAVE NEVER HEARD CHIDLREN?S LANGUAGE ERRORS ARE OVERGENERALIZATIONS OF RUELS RATHER THAT IMITATIONS OF HEARD SPEECH Broca?s Aphasia Difficulty in production SYNTAX incorrect (word order) Speech consists of almost entirely OPEN class words: Nouns, Verbs, Adverbs, Adjectives Classes to which we are always adding new exemplars Comprehension difficulty when sentences contain embedded phrases Closed class words: of, by, word endings that indicate tense AKA non fluent aphasia Wernicke?s Aphasia Difficulty in comprehension Speech is rapid and effortless Speech is dominated by CLOSED class words: prepositions, pronouns, etc. Speech is grammatically correct Difficulty is SEMANTIC (word meaning) Trouble naming Nouns, Verbs AKA Fluent aphasia Understanding Language Understanding the meaning of any given word entails a lot of interpretation and depends upon, at least: Context within a sentence Knowledge about the world If spoken, verbal cues given by the speaker CHAPTER 11 Developmental Psychology ? lots of psychologists like to experiment on their own kids? Impact of Prenatal Environment The zygote (fertilized egg) develops into a fetus at about 8 weeks after conception Fetal Alcohol Syndrome develops when the mother ingests excessive amounts of alcohol during pregnancy Stunted skelatofacial development, stunted organ development, behavioral difficulties Prenatal smoking can lead to violent aggression Testing Newborns and Infants Newborns, obviously, are not very capable of complicated movements or language Historically, little was known of their cognitive capacities or memories Modern psychological testing takes advantage of the few responses they can make (eg. Suckling, kicking, looking) As babies mature, their motor skills develop in cephalocaudal direction and the proximaldistal direction Learning and Memory in Infants and Newborns Infants show both habituation and sensitization, two forms of non-associative learning Habituation= decrease in responding to a repeated stimulus Sensitization= increase in responding to a repeated stimulus 7. MARIA AND CARLOS PURCHASE A MOBILE FOR THEIR NEWBORN?S CRIB TO KEEP HIS ATTENTION. AFTER A PERIOD OF TIME, THE INFANT MAY STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THE MOBILE. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING PROCESSES? HABITUATION Operant Learning in Infants Infants will learn to suck or kick in order to receive an outcome of either the human voice or audiovisual feedback The voice of the infant?s mother works better as a reinforce than the voice of others This result emerges within a day of birth and presumably reflects prenatal learning Memory in Infants Pre-natal exposure to story is remembered after birth Piaget?s Theory Piaget asserted that children make qualitative progress in cognitive development That is, they make ?leaps? from one type of cognition to the next Children make these new types of cognitive processes by forming and modifying schema: organized method for interacting with objects/events in the world Schema are applied and changed through the processes of assimilation and accomodation Assimilation: Applying an old schema to a new experience; putting new objects/events into an old structure Accomodation: revising an old schema to fit a new experience; changing the old structure to fit a new object/event Equilibrium refers to establishing a mix of assimilation and accomodation Four stages characterize intellectual development Sensorimotor (birth to 2 yr) Behavior is dominated by simple responses to sensory stimuli Children in this stage process only the stimuli present at any given time Children supposedly lack ?object permanence? and will not reach for a hidden object Preoperational (2 to 6 yr) Children?s behavior is limited by a mental restriction to their own perspective Children still lack reversible mental processes Children can ?respond? to stimuli not present, through processes of memory Misunderstanding of illusion or change in appearance: Children in the preoperational stage assume that an object actually changes when its appearance changes They misunderstood optical illusions and seem to lack color constancy Egocentricity: The child fails ?to understand that the world appears differently to different observers,? acts based on its own perspective and cannot comprehend the perspective of others Egocentricity prevents the child from developing a theory of mind: understanding that behavior is guided by mind, that every person has a mind, and the contents of the mind are private Thought that what you think everyone thinks 4.5-5 the children realize they can deceive because their thoughts are private and no one can hear what they think Children at this stage demonstrate the lack of ?conservation.? Children in the preoperational stage have no effective understanding of the conservation of volume, mass, or number Conservation: quantitative properties (volume, mass, number) remain the same despite changes in appearance Concrete operational (6 to 11 yr) Operations are transformations, mathematical processes that can be reversed Concrete operations are processes performed in the course of solving physical problems Color, number, volume, mass constancy emerge during this stage and children can solve problems involving these properties Formal Operational (11 yr onward) Formal operations are mental reversals that deal with abstract or hypothetical situations or problems Examples include concepts such as justice Evidence on Piaget?s Theory Most traditional evidence tended to support Piaget?s theory However, many experiments show that Piaget?s stages are not really qualitative stages Children tend to progress through the stages slowly, and may develop some characteristics of each stage progressively This progress can be expedited by the help of competent adults. Each child has a ?zone of proximal development,? which defines the limits of what can be learned with help 8. VYGOTSKY BELIEVED THAT AT ANY AGE, A CHILD WAS CAPABLE OF ACQUIRING A WIDE RANGE OF SKILLS. HE CALLED THIS RANGE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT Moral Development: Kohlberg?s Stages Kohlberg used a series of moral dilemmas to examine the development of moral reasoning in his subjects Each dilemma pits one moral value against another rand each has no real ?correct? answer The key is the considerations that the subject makes in coming to a conclusion In early stages, moral reasoning is dominated by immediate or delayed outcomes of reinforcement of punishment (pre-conventional) In later stages, moral reasoning is dominated by consideration of others? points of view and is driven by social rules (conventional) In still later stages, moral reasoning is based on consideration of absolute values (post-conventional) One final word (or two) about Kohlberg?s stages: As with Piaget?s stages, development through Kohlberg?s stages is most likely more gradual than first believed Kohlberg based most of his theory on very ?western? ideas of morality Moral reasoning doesn?t always lead directly to moral behavior 9. MORALITY IS DETERMINED PRIMARILY BY ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE ACTOR IN THE _____ STAGE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT PRECONVENTIONAL Early Childhood Development Infant behaviors can be defined objectively, based on particular operational definitions For instance, social behaviors regarding caregivers and strangers can be measured in the ?Strange Situation? and defined as Securely attached: child treats caregiver as a base for environmental exploration Anxious: child treats caregiver as essential, shows no environment exploration Avoidant: child avoids caregiver Disorganized: child alternates between anxious and avoidant Determinants of Attachment It turns out that characteristics of the child are only half the story of attachment Children have particular ?temperaments? that are a significant factor in attachment However, the response of the parent to the child?s temperament is the second major factor in determining attachment While temperament is relatively permanent, attachment is not ?Innate/Heritable? Personality Factors Temperament: refers to a characteristic pattern of reactivity, the tendency to be active/inactive, outgoing/reserved, responsive/non-responsive Temperament is operationally defined, typically, by reports on survey tests, observed interaction with peers, responses to controlled stimuli Temperament has been shown to be very stable over the lifespan: social interactions in infancy/young adulthood predict interactions later on (even in adulthood) Temperament has a large heritability Temperament has a somewhat-known biological basis: Activity in fear/anxiety-related areas of the brain predict responses to stimuli along the lines of temperament 10. THE TERM TEMPERAMENT IS DEFINED IN THE TEXT AS: CHARACTERISTIC PATTERNS OF EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY Adolescence Not much is known about adolescence?it may be a completely contrived stage of life Most psychology of adolescence focuses on the development of identity, which entail changes in sexual behavior and group affiliation Adulthood In adulthood, defined as 21 years to death, gradual changes occur in mental processes Declines in working memory, but typically not in long term memory Some declines in episodic memory, but not semantic memory CHAPTER SIXTEEN Social Perception and Cognition Process by which an individual gathers and uses information about others Social Psychology: study of the causes and consequences of interpersonal behavior Includes all possible relations among individuals and groups Gathering Information In gathering information and making judgments about others, people tend to show particular biases in cognition One rather pure cognitive phenomenon, the primacy effect, results in the importance of first impressions We are likely to remember and use information learned first, whether the info is about a word list or a person The primacy effect strengthens with time Primacy Effects in Social Psychology Why do first impressions matter so much in estimating others? 1. Perceptual Confirmation: We perceive what we expect to perceive; once an opinion is formed, further ?evidence gathering? is biased toward evidence that fits the opinion 2. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Expectations about an event (a person?s behavior) actually influence the likelihood of the event (people live up to, or down to, expectations) Stereotypes A stereotype is a generalized belief or expectation about a group/category of people Actually, the result typically is an expectation about a person?s behavior because of a belief about the group to which that person belongs Stereotypes represent the use of the availability heuristic when making social/personal judgments: over-generalization of the probability of events based on the experienced frequency of those events Heuristics/stereotypes often are correct, as generalizations Prejudice and Discrimination Prejudice: evaluation of a person based on group membership Discrimination: behavior (Treatment) of a person based on group membership Modern social structures can produce a conflict between the two Racism and Sexism Aversive racism = ?modern racism,? negative perception of individuals based on race without overt unequal treatment. Overt treatment and expressions do not reflect the unequal negative perception Ambivalent sexism= negative perception of people based on sex without overt unequal treatment Measures of Aversive Racism and Ambivalent Sexism Modern racist and sexist attitudes persist despite a lack of behaviors that indicate them This poses a problem for psychologists who wish to study these attitudes, because we need to study overt behavior Various, complicated methods are used to reveal attitudes and perceptions without asking them directly about them The Implicit association task (IAT) demonstrates that we prefer young to old, thin to fat, straight to gay, and such associations as family-females and career males. One last thing These effects are small and they depend heavily on the instructions When people are asked to focus on race (or gender, etc.) then the effects emerge If race (or gender, etc.) is just one characteristic of the target but not the key characteristic, then the effect dissipates 11. A SCIENCE PROFESSOR BELIEVES THAT HE HARBORS NO NEGATIVE FEELINGS ABOUT WOMEN IN SCIENCE, YET HE GRADES HIS FEMALE STUDENTS MORE HARSHLY THAN HIS MALE STUDENTS. THE PROFESSOR IS DISPLAYING: DISCRIMINATION Attribution Theory Animals spend much of their time discerning the causal relationship among events in environment As social animals, people spend much of their time discerning the causes of the actions of others When discerning the cause of behavior, we can make 2 types of attributions Dispositional Attributions assume that the root cause of action is internal (that the act is a reflection of the characteristics of the individual) Situational Attributions assume that the root cause of action is external to the actor (that the act is a reflection of the characteristics of the situation) When discerning the internal/external cause of an act, we use three types of information Consensus Information: How the act compares to other people?s behavior. Unusual acts are attributed to internal factors Consistency Information: How the act varies from one TIME to the next. Inconsistent acts are attributed to internal factors Distinctiveness: how the act varies from one SITUATION to the next. Consistent acts are attributed to internal factors Attribution Biases Fundamental Attribution Error: Over-attribution of the others? actions to disposition (underemphasizing situation) Actor-Observer Effect: Applying the opposite tendency to our own behaviors 12. SUPPOSE YOU YELL AT A BANK TELLER BECAUSE OF A MISTAKE ON YOUR ACCOUNT. OBSERVERS ARE LIKELY TO THINK YOU ARE A RUDE, QUARRELSOME PERSON. YOU, HOWEVER, WOULD PROBABLY ATTRIBUTE YOUR ANGRY OUTBURST TO THE FRUSTRATING SITUATION OF WAITING IN LINE AND DEALING WITH A SURLY TELLER. THIS APPARENT CONTRADICTION ILLUSTRATES ACTOR-OBSERVER EFFECT Attitudes and Persuasion Routes to persuasion (how/why people are persuaded by a message): Systematic Persuasion: Persuasion results from appeals to reason; the subject actually evaluates the evidence and logic behind the persuasive message Heuristic Persuasion: Persuasion results from appeals to habit or emotion*; the subject?s perception of messenger and the sheer # of arguments presented Persuasion: Influences Message: Messages that appeal to fear often are more effective (systematic) Messengers that are more similar to the audience often are more effective (heuristic) Messages endorsed by a group to which the audience belong are more effective (heuristic) Audience: Intelligent audiences are more likely to focus on the particulars of the argument (systematic) Forewarned audiences are more likely to focus on the particulars of the argument (systematic) Forewarning can reduce the chance of persuasion but increase its performance 13. WHEN STUDENTS ARE MOTIVATED TO ANALYZE ARGUMENTS BECAUSE THEY WILL BE PERSONALLY AFFECTED BY THEM, THEIR ATTITUDES ARE MOST LIKELY TO BE INFLUENCED BY: STRENGTH OF THE ARGUMENT Again, shallow emotional appeals don?t usually work to make a persuasive method more effective, but they can work to make a message more memorable Cognitive Dissonance: When Behavior Doesn?t Match Attitude A person experiences dissonance when his/her behavior does not match his/her attitudes When this occurs, the person could: Admit the conflict and change behavior Change the attitude to fit the behavior Interestingly, people often choose to change their attitudes to fit the behavior Social Influence Informative: others provide information Normative: others provide standards, expectations, models for behavior Children raised around an aggressive environment are more apt to be aggressive themselves Model what others do around them A lot of what we do is based on the behavior of other people Conformity Conformity is behaving in a manner to match the behavior of others or to suit the expectations of others Under many circumstances, conformity is an adaptive strategy (the information provided by the group is correct and useful) Sometimes, individuals conform even though they know (or suspect) that the information provided by the group is wrong Obedience Stanley Milgram showed the extent to which people will follow the directions of an authority, even when suspecting that those directions would have dire consequences for another subject Subjects were asked to ?teach? word lists to a learner in another room The teachers were told to shock the learners whenever they made a memory error As the experiment progressed, teachers were told to use more extreme shocks (Some) Important variables Teachers were told that the shocks were painful but not dangerous Teachers were told that the experimenters would take responsibility for any harm done Results: many individuals applied very large shocks even though the ?learners? could be heard screaming loudly in the next room Note: variations of the methods produced various amounts of obedience. For example, people tended to be less obedient if in the presence of other people who disobeyed One last thing: being obedient has emerged over the course of evolution as a major, usually effective, strategy for survival Given the social structure, leaders are most likely to be the best models for behavior On occasion, this strategy fails because the leadership is NOT the best model for behavior 14. IN THE MILGRAN OBEDIENCE STUDIES, PARTICIPANTS RARELY OBEYED THE INSTRUCTIONS WHEN THE EXPERIMENTER WASN?T WEARING A LAB COAT Drops a little bit when the participant complained of heart trouble Characteristics of the authority figure are major drivers of obedience Diffusion of Responsibility and Social Loafing We tend to feel diminished responsibility when surrounded by others who act the same way we do We tend not to act as vigorously when others are acting with us Group Polarization Group discussions and group decisions tend to shape the attitudes and behavior of the members and then, in turn, the group characteristics Group?s initial leanings actually strengthen over time Groupthink When groups must form a decision, individual members suppress their attitudes or beliefs for fear of disrupting the cohesiveness of the group 15. COMPARED WITH WHEN THEY ARE ALONE, PEOPLE IN GROUPS LEAVE WORSE TIPS IN RESTAURANTS AND GIVE LESS MONEY TO CHARITABLE CAUSES. THIS BEHAVIOR IS AN EXAMPLE OF: SOCIAL LOAFING Cooperation Cooperation happens when we anticipate reciprocation Sometimes, self interest conflicts with the interests of others In these cases, individuals can cooperate to ensure the interests of each party are served to at least some degree In the laboratory, we can set up various situations where individuals must act in cooperation or competition to achieve some goal The particulars of the conflicts are not important What is important is this: Individuals are most likely to cooperate with one another if such cooperation is likely to produce returns in later social situations (aka reciprocal altruism) REVIEW SESSION Language There is a critical period for developing it If a child doesn?t grow up hearing language, they won?t develop language Feral children ? raised by wolves Essential grammar rules are best learned when young and you can expand on vocabulary as you get older Broca?s Aphasia Comprehension generally okay Production problem Syntax (word order) sometimes flipped/wrong Non-fluent aphasia Wernicke?s Aphasia Difficulty with comprehension Can speak effortlessly Content itself is nonsensical Fluent aphasia because general rules of structure and sentence are still followed Piaget?s Theory Children make leaps from one level of cognition to another Two modes Assimilation Take the new stuff and mix it in with your old schemas Accomodation Revise what you knew in the past to accommodate what you are learning now Four Stages that characterized the intellectual development of children Sensory-motor Birth to 2 years old Basic stimulus and response Don?t have object permanence Pre-operational 2-6 years old So stuck in their own ways, mentally restricted to own perspectives Understand what things mean Assume that when something changes, an object actually changes when its appearance changes Egocentricity- don?t understand that the world is different to different observers Conservation- don?t understand volume, mass or number Before children fully understand the necessity of being quiet in certain social situations Concrete operational Ages 6-11 Capable of solving more complex mental processes like mathematics, other physical problems involving color, number, volume and mass Formal operational 11 years up Can deal with really abstract things What is justice? Fair treatment, morals and form own opinions about that Evidence found recently contradicts this Children vary from one to another and certain stages may take longer for certain children Kohlberg?s Stages Looked at the development of moral reasoning in his subjects The most advanced stages are based on considering absolute values ? post conventional These are not cut and dry Primacy Effects Show us that first impressions really do matter Once an opinion is formed, further evidence gathering is biased towards what fits your original opinion Stereotypes Generalized belief about a group of people Prejudice Evaluation of a person based on their membership in a group Discrimination Treatment of a person based on their membership of their group Dispositional Attribution Evaluation connected to central personality Situational Attribution That person acted that way because of the situation Consensus Information- what is everyone else doing? Consistency Information ? how one act varies Distinctiveness- how this act varies from one situation to the next We have a bias toward telling ourselves that our actions are linked to the situation Zimbardo at Stanford (Prison Experiment) Took students from Stanford and assigned them to either be the guards or prisoners in a prison situation They would spend their time in the basement of the psych building for a week The guards started to brutalize the prisoners and the prisoners showed defensive responses and anxieties Called the experiment after a couple of days Heritability Coefficient Ability of genetic differences to explain behavioral differences Relates 2 measures ? how we differ in terms of our genome and in terms of our behavior Can?t tell us how much of our behavior is determined by genome or surroundings7