PGS101.EXAM2.doc

Psychology 101-Exam 2 Sleeping & Dreaming Freud: came up with the concept of that dreams are Wish Fulfillment. That dreams are manifest (make sense) content and have latent (symbolic) content. Cartwright: believed that one of the processes of dreaming was to process information. Hobson & McCarley: believed that dreams are random firing of electrons and the brain is trying to draw references, this is called activation-synthesis model. Biorhythms & sleep: Biological rhythms are periodic fluctuations in physiological functioning. Typles of Biorhythms and Sleep: Circadian rhythms; 24 hour biological rhythms Natural sleep ?Light Body temperature Resetting the biological clock: Retina detects light Sends message to Hypothalamus Suprachiasmic nucleus (SCN) SCN sends message to pineal gland Pineal gland releases melatonin Melatonin adjusts clock EEG: electroencephalograph is a device that monitors the electrical activity of the brain over time by means of recording electrodes attached to the surface of the scalp. MEASURES BRAIN WAVES. Sleep cycles: Awake: Beta (lo v, hi f) Drowsy: Alpha Stage 1: Theta, few minutes. Stage 2: Sleep spindles, mixed waves, ~20 minutes Stage 3 & 4: Delta (hi v, lo f), ~30 minutes REM: (lo v, hi f), most dreaming [Notes: Sometimes in Stage 1 we have ?fantastic images?- feels like you?ve just fallen off a cliff and the body jerks. Some people feel their ?floating? though Delta is the deepest sleep cycle Children wet the bed/people sleep walk the most in the end of stage four] Three functions of sleep: Protective, Restorative, Growth Sleep disorders: Insomnia- persistant problems in falling or staying asleep Recommended treatment: Relax, read in dim lighting NO SLEEPING PILLS (Sleep pills do not allow the brain to go into REM. They make you unconscious) Avoid caffeine in the evening Regular exercise; cannot be in the late afternoon or evening Keep a regular schedule Don?t stress about falling asleep Narcolepsy- falling asleep randomly for five seconds Sleep Apnea- stop breathing during sleep followed by snoring, gasping for air. Features of dreams: Story-like, day residue (something connected to the senses during the day), mostly mundane. Three theories of dreaming: Wish Fulfillment (FREUD), Information Processing (CARTWRIGHT), Activation Synthesis (HOBSON&MCCARLEY). Learning Bandura: worked with children who watched other. Skinner: worked with rats. Pavlov: worked with dogs. Classical conditioning: Pavlov?s Dogs. A type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response originally evoked by another stimulus. Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) Naturally evokes UCR Hunger Unconditioned Response (UCR) Natural response to UCS Salivating Conditioned Stimulus (CS) Learned, evokes CR The bell Conditioned Response (CR) Response to CS Generalization: CR ?spreads? to similar stimuli. Occurs when an organism responds to new stimuli besides the original stimuli. Discrimination: CR is restricted to specfic stimuli. Occurs when an organism does NOT respond to other stimuli that resembles the original stimulius. [EX: Dogs are moved to a high school. Different bells go off but the dogs will still have the same reaction. Dogs cannot discriminate the difference between the bells] Acquisition: form of a new CR; is the formation of a conditioned response tendency. Extinction: is the gradual weakening of a conditioned response tendency. Spontaneous Recovery: is the reappearance of an extinguished response after a period of nonexposure to the CS. Higher-order conditioning: occurs when a CS functions as if it were a UCS. Reinforcement schedules: determines which occurrences of a specific response result in the presentation of a reinforcer. Continuous reinforcement offucres when every instance of a designated response is reinforced. Intermittent, or partial, reinforcement occurs when a designated response is reinforced only some of the time. Operant conditioning: is a form of learning in which responses come to be controlled by their consequences. Skinner?s rats. Reinforcement (reward) & punishment. Skinner box: Demonstrations of operant conditioning typically occurred in a Skinner box where an animal?s reinforcement is controlled. Delayed reinforcement: Primary reinforcement: events that are inherently reinforcing because they satisfy biological needs. Secondary reinforcement: or conditioned, are events that acquire reinforcing qualities by being associated with primary reinforcers. Shaping: consists of the reinforcement of closer and closer approximations. Shaping is necessary when an organism does not, on its own, emit the desired response. Positive reinforcement: occurs when a response is strengthened because it is followed by the presentation of a rewarding stimulus. Positive means adding, or giving. Negative reinforcement: occurs when a response is strengthened because it is followed by the removal of an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus. Negative means removing, or taking away. Punishment: occurs when an event following a response weakens the tendency to make that response. Positive punishment: Negative punishment Observational learning: Bandura?s Bobo Doll Study. Occurs when an organism?s responding is influenced by the observation of others, called models. Criteria necessary for observational learning: processes of attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Instinctive drift: occurs when an animals innate response tendencies interfere with conditioning processes. Conditioned taste aversion: Memory Personal relevance in memory: Three kinds of processing; Encoding: forming a memory code. Phoentic-sound of the word. Structural- structure of the word. Semantic- think of the meaning of the word. Storage: maintaining encoded information in memory over time. Sensory memory: a couple of seconds, ?echo? Working memory: limited, magic 7, 20 seconds Long term memory: unlimited Retrieval: recovering information from memory stores. Schemas: is an organized cluster of knowledge about a particular object or event abstracted from previous experience with the object or event. Serial effects; 1) Primacy effects- most rehearsal 2) Recency effects- most recent/fresh Most effective memory strategy: Primacy effects, REHEARSAL. Sensory memory: preserves information in its original sensory form for a brief time, usually only a fraction of a second. Short-term memory: is a limited-capacity store that can maintain unrehearsed information for up to about 20 seconds. Long-term memory: is an unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time. Retrograde amnesia: involves the loss of memories for events that occurred prior to the onset of amnesia. Anterograde amnesia: involves the loss of memories for events that occur after the onset of amnesia. Implicit & explicit memory Declarative memory: handles factual information. Procedural memory: or, nondeclarative memory houses memory for actions skills, conditioned responses and emotional responses. Semantic memory: contains general knowledge that is not tied to the time when the information was learned. Episodic memory: is made up of chronological, or temporally dated, recollections of personal experiences. Problem Solving Structural problems: require people to discover the relations among numbers, words, symbols, or ideas. Arrangement problems: require people to arrange the parts of a problem in a way that satisfies some criterion. Transformation problems: require people to carry out a sequence of transformations in order to reach a specific goal. Irrelevant information: is information that leads people astray. Functional fixedness: the tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use. Mental set: exists when people persist in using problem solving strategies that have worked in the past. Unnecessary constraints: problem solving that requires specifying all the constraints governing a problem without assuming any constraints that don?t exist. Six approaches to problem solving: Trial and error-involves trying possible solutions and discarding those that are in error until one works. Heuristics-guiding principle or ?rule of thumb? used in solving problems or making decisions. Forming subgroups Working backword Search for analogies-if you can spot an analogy between problems you may be able to use the solutions to a previous problem to solve a current one. Changing the representation. Decision making strategies: Additive strategy Elimination-by-aspects Risky decision making factors: Objective value (how much is the condo?) Subjective utility Subjective probabilities Availability bias: involves basing the estimated probability of an event on the ease with which relevant instances come to mind. Representativeness bias: involves basing the estimated probability of an event on how similar it is to the typical prototype of that event. Ignoring base rates: on estimating probabilities, people often ignore information on base rates. The conjunction fallacy: occurs when people estimate that the odds of two uncertain events happening together are greater than the odds of either event happening alone. The gambler?s fallacy: the belief that the odds of a chance event increase if the event hasn?t occurred recently. Ignoring sample size Language Whorf: Whorf had considerable influence in the field of sociolinguistics for his theory of linguistic relativity. Skinner & language: Skinner argued that children learn language the same way they learn everything else: through imitation, reinforcement, and other established principles of conditioning. Chomski: argued that there are an infinite number of sentences in language, and therefore, unreasonable to expect that children learn language by imitation. Criteria for language; Symbolic Infinitely generative Structured Phonemes: are the smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually. Morphomes: the smallest units of meaning in a language. Syntax: is a system of rules that specify how words can be arranged into sentences. Vocabulary spurt: happens in roughly 18 months, when a child will rapidly acquire new words. Babbling: verbalizes in response to speech of others; responses increasingly approximate human speech patterns. Holographs: Telegraphic speech: consists mainly of content words; articles, prepositions, and other less critical words are omitted. Whole sentences: Metalinguistic awareness: the ability to reflect on the use of language. Three theories of language acquisition Behaviorists: (Skinner) believe that children acquire language through imitation, reinforcement, and other aspects of learning and experience. Nativists: (Chomski) humans are neurologically prewired to quickly acquire the rules of language. Interactionsists: an innate predisposition and a supportive environment both contribute to language acquisition. Linguistic relativity: the hypothesis that one?s language determines the nature of one?s thought. Can animals think? YES Do animals exhibit language? YES. Sign language. Research Methods Qualitative vs quantitative research: Qualitative is explore, quantitative is descriptive, or comparing. Qualitative survey: When? To explore peoples opinions or attitudes. How? Questionnaires or interviews Limitations? Careful instruction: Can people answer correctly? Will people answer correctly? Natural observation (Qualititative): When? To observe public behavior. How? Observation. Limitations? Trick: Not intervening! Case Study (Qualititative): When? To study unusal/infrequent phenomenon. How? Interviews, observations, records, testing. Limitations? Generalizability. Descriptive research (Quantitative): When? To learn descriptive info about a group or event. How? Records, surveys, interviews, observations. Mean (average), median (middle-use if extremes), mode (most frequent), percentages (use for categories) (Quantitative) Correlational research (Quantitative): When? To investigate possible relationships How? Just measure both Correlation coefficient : is a numerical index of the degree of relationship between two variables. It indicates (1) the direction (positive or negative) of the relationship and (2) how strongly the two variables are related. R can only be from -1.00 to 1.00. Positive & Negative relationships: Positive example; high school gpa and college gpa are high. Negative example; high absences show low exam grades. Experimental Research: When? When you wish to draw cause and effect conclusions. How? Manipulate a variable under controlled conditions. IVs and DVs: Independent: the one the experiment manipulates (or varies) Dependent: the outcome thought to be affected by the IV Experimental group: gets the IV. Control group: doesn?t get the IV. Random assignment P-Value: P< .05 = significantly different P=.05-.10 = marginally significant P>.10 = NOT significant.