Unit IV: Developmental psychology/Types of Intelligence:

Developmental psychology: study from birth to death
Nature vs Nurture
- are you the way you are because of the way you were born? (Nature)
- are you the way you are because of the way you were raised (Nurture)

Cross- sectional
- participants is different ages studied at the same time
Longitudinal Studies
- One group if people studied over a period of time

Physical Development
- focus on our physical changes over time


{Parental development}
- sperm tries to enter the egg

Once the sperm penetrated the egg- we have a fertilized egg called a...

Zygote: the first stage of parental development lasts about two weeks and consists of rapid cell division.
- less than half of all zygotes survive first two weeks
- about 10 days after conception, the zygote will attach itself to the uterine wall
- the outer part of the zygote becomes the placenta

After two weeks the zygote develops into an...

Embryo
- Last about 6 weeks
- Heart begins to best and the organs begin to develop

By nine weeks we have a..

Fetus
- by nine weeks we have a...
- the fetus by about the 6th month, the stomach and other organs have formed enough to survive outside of mother
- At this time the baby can hear and recognize sound and respond to light

Teratogens
- chemical agents that can harm the prenatal environment
- alcohol
- STDs can also harm the baby
- HIV
- herpes

Parental Development
- 40 days
- 45 days
- 2 months


Healthy newborns
- turn head toward voice
- see 8 to 12 inches from their face
- gaze no longer at human like objects right from birth

Types of Reflexes: inborn automatic response
-Rooting(cheek): when a newborn is touched on the cheek the newborn will turn its head toward the source of stimulation.
-Sucking
-Grasping Reflex: if an object is placed into a baby's Palm the baby will try to grasp the object with his or her fingers
-Moro (startle): when startled a baby will fling his or her limbs out and quickly retract them.
-Babinski (foot): when a baby's foot is stroked he or she will spread their toes.

Maturation: physical growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior regardless of the environment. Although the timing of our growth may be different the sequence is almost the same.

Motor Development: sequence is the same but once again timing varies. First learn to roll over sit up unsupported

Cognition: all mental activities associated with thinking knowing and remembering.

Schemas: schemes are ways we interpret the world around us(concepts)

Assimilation: incorporating new experiences into existing schemes.

Accommodation: changing on existing schema to adapt to new information.

4 Stages of Cognitive Development:
1. Sensorimeter Stage: (0-2) experience the world through our senses
Object Permanence develops around 6-8 months of age.
2. Pre-operational Stage:(2-6 or 7): begin to use language to represent objects and ideas(thinks in symbols) no logical, magical thinking, egocentric: early in this stage they cannot look at the world through anyone's eyes but their own. Conservation: refers to the idea that a quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance and is part of logical thinking.
3. Concrete Operational Stage: (7-11) can demonstrate concept of conservation. Learn to think logically. Understanding of reversibility or awareness that actions can be reversed.
4. Formal Operational Stage:(12 yrs and older) abstract reasoning. Hypothesis thinking. Reasoning with metaphors and analogies.

Attachment: bond with caregiver
Konrad Lorenz discovered that some animals form attachment through imprinting
Harry Harlow: showed that monkeys needed touch or body contact to form attachment.
Critical period: shortly after birth when an organisms exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produce proper development.
Responsive Parenting: Mary Ainsworth "Strange Situation" study.
Three types of attachment: 1. Secure- children show some distress when parent leaves, seek contact at the reunion, explore when parent gone, play and greet when parent present. Insecure attachments lack 1 or more of these traits.  2. Avoidant -
3. Anxious/ambivalent
Stranger Anxiety: fear of strangers that infants commonly display , 8 months of age.
Separation Anxiety.

Parenting Styles: Authorization parents- expect obedience. Permissive Parents- child's desire  Authoritative Parents-both the parent and child compromise


Adolescence: the transition period between childhood to adulthood.
Puberty: the period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.
Primary Sexual Characteristics: body structures that make reproduction possible.
Secondary Sexual Characteristics: non reproductive sexual characteristics.
Landmarks for Puberty: -menarche for girls. First ejaculation for boys.
Adulthood: all physical abilities essentially peak by our mid twenties.
Physical Milestones; menopause: the natural ending of a women's ability to reproduce. There are physical symptoms led by a lack of estrogen.

Types of Intelligence:
 crystallized intelligence: accumulated knowledge. Increases with age.
Fluid Intelligence: ability to solve problems quickly and think abstractly. Peaks in the 20s and then decreases over time.
Alzheimer's Disease: a progressive and irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory language and physical functioning. (Acetylcholine)
Life expectancy keeps increasing- now about 75.
Women outlive men by 4 years but more men are conceived 126 to 100. Then 105-100 by birth. Men die easier.
Death: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's Stages of Grief: 1.Denial 2.Anger 3.Bargaining 4.Depression 5.Acceptance

Unit IV: Stage theorists

Stage Theorists: believe that we travel from stage to stage throughout our lifetimes.

Sigmund Freud: we all have a libido (sexual drive)
Our libido travels to different areas of our body throughout our development (psychological stages of development)
Oral Stage:(0-1) seek pleasure the through mouth
Psychological task- weaning
Anal Stage:(1-3): psychological task- toilet training. Libido is focused on controlling waste and expelling waste.
Phallic:(3-6): children first recognize their gender. Psychological task: identify with the same sex parent. Causes conflict in families with Oedipus and Electra
Latency Stage:(6-11): libido is hidden. Cooties stage.
Genital Stage: libido is focused on their genitals. Experience sexual feelings towards others And conflicts from childhood reappear

Unit IV: Endocrine System/Brain Tests/ Parts of the brain

The endocrine system: a system of glands that secrete hormones. Similar to nervous system except hormones work a lot slower than transmitters.

Brain Tests:
Lesions: removal or destruction of the brain. Frontal Lobotomy.
Electroencephalogram: EEG, Detects brain waves through heir electrical output. (Sleep research)
Co outsized Axial Tomography: CAT Scan, 3D X-ray of the brain.
Good for tumor locating but not for function.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: MRI- more detailed picture of the brain using magnetic field to knock electrons off axis. Takes many pictures into moving like productions.
PET scan: positron emission tomography; measures of much of a chemical is released

Parts Of The Brain:
Pons- located above the medulla. Connects hindbrain with midbrain and forebrain. Involved in facial expressions.

Forebrain: make us humans, largest part of the brain, made up of thalamus, lambic system.

The Cerebral Cortex: made up of densely packed neurons called "gray matter". Glial Cells support brain cells. Wrinkles are called fissures.

Hemispheres: divided into two hemispheres. Contra lateral control: right controls left and vise versa. In general, left hemisphere is for logic and sequential tasks. Right hemisphere is for spatial and creative tasks.

Association Areas: any area not associated with receiving sensory information or coordinating muscle movements.

Brain Plasticity: the idea that the brain, when damaged,will attempt to find new ways to

The Corpus Callosum: bridge if nerve fibers that connects of divides the two hemispheres.

Cerebrum: largest part of the brain. Divided into left and right hemispheres and divided into lobes. Contains cerebral cortex. Controls voluntary movement, coordinates mental activity and it's the center for all conscious living


Frontal Lobes
- abstract though and emotional control
- contains Motor Cortex: send signals to our body controlling muscle movements
- Contains Brocas Area: responsible for controlling muscles that produce speech
- Damage to Brocas Area is called Brocas Aphasia
- unable to make movements to talk.

Parietal Lobes
- Contain Sensory Cortex: receives incoming touch sensations from rest of the body
- Most of the parietal lobes are made up of Association Areas

Association Areas
- Any area not associated with receiving sensory information or coordinating muscle movements

Occipital Lobes
- Deals with vision
- contains visual cortex: interpreters messages from our eyes into images we can understand

Temporal Lobe
- process sound sensed by our ears
- interpreted in auditory cortex
- not lateralized
- contains wernikes area: interprets written and spoken speech
- Wernikes Aphasia: unable to understand language: the syntax and grammar jumbled

Unit IV: Biological School: The Nervous System:

Biological School:
The Nervous System:
Neuron-individual nerve cell
How does a Neuron Fire?:
Resting Potential: slightly negative charge
Reach the threshold when enough neurotransmitters reach dendrites
Go into Action Potential (firing)
All or None Response: the idea that either the neuron fires or it does not - no part way firing

Neurotransmitter: chemical messengers released by terminal buttons through the synapse.
Acetylcholine: ACH : deals with motor movement and memory. Lack of ACH has a link to Alzheimer's disease
Dopamine: deals with motor movement and alertness. Lack of dopamine has been linked to Parkinson's disease. Too much has been linked to schizophrenia
Serotonin: involved in mood control. Lack of serotonin has been linked to clinical depression.
Endorphins: involved in pain control. Many of our most addictive drugs deal with endorphins.
Norepinephrine: helps control alertness and arousal. An under supply can lead to depression. An oversupply can lead to manic symptoms.
GABA(gamma-aminobutyric acid): major inhibitory neurotransmitters. An under supply can lead to seizures.
Glutamate: major excitatory neurotransmitter; involved in memory. Oversupply can overstimulate the brain leading to migraines

Drugs can be ...
Agonists: make neuron fire
Antagonists: stop neural firing
Reputable Inhibitors: block transmitters from entering the neuron.
Three Types of Neurons:
1. Sensory Neurons(afferent Neurons): take information from the senses to the brain
2. Inter Neurons: take messages from sensory neurons to other parts of the brain or to motor neurons.
3. Motor Neurons(Efferent Neurons): take information from brain to the rest of the body

Reflexes: normally sensory(afferent) neurons take info up through the spine to the brain.

Unit III: Social Psychology II

Social Influence-----
Conformity
• adjusting ones behavior or thinking to counad with a group standard

Conditions that strengthen conformity
• One is made to feel incompetent
• Group is at least three people
• Group is unanimous
• One admires the groups status
• One had made no prior commitment

Social Facilitation
• improved performance of tasks in the presence of others
• occurs with simple or well learned tasks
• Not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered

Yerkes- Dodson Law
• There is an optional leek of arousal for the best performance of any task:
• easy task--relatively high
• difficult tasks-- low arousal
• other tasks-- moderate level

Social Loafing
• The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable

Deindividuation
• The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity

Group Polarization
• The concept that a groups attitude is one of extremes and rarely moderate
• as a group, both the Black Panthers and the Klu Klux Klan are more extreme than the average individual in the group

Groupthink
• The mode of thinking that ours when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides common sense

Self-fulfilling Prophecies
• Occurs when one persons belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm the belief

Social Relations-----
- Attraction
-Conflict and Prejudice

Prejudice
~ an unjustifiable attitude towards a groups of people
~ Usually involves stereotyped beliefs
~ ( a generalized belief about a group of people)
~ "all white people are stupid"
~ OVERT or SUBTLE

Social inequalities
• INGROUP: "us"- people with whom one shares a common identity
• OUTGROUP: "them"- those perceived as different than ones in-group

• INGROUP BIAS: the tendency to favor ones own group

Unit III: Social Psychology I

Social Psychology
The study of how we think about influence and relate to one another's

•Social Thinking----
how do we think about one another?
  •Attribution Theory: the idea that we give a casual explanation for someone's behavior
    -we credit that behavior either to the situation or..
    -to the persons disposition

•Fundamental Attribution Error
    - the tendency to underestimate the impact of a situation and overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
    - how do you view your teachers behavior? You probably attribute it to their personality rather than their profession.

Attitudes
• a belief it feeling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to something

Do our attitudes guide our actions
Only if...
-External pressure is minimal
-We are aware of our attitudes
-The attitude is relevant to the behavior.

Our actions affect our attitudes

Foot-in-the-door phenomenon
• The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

Door-in-face phenomenon
• The tendency for people who say no to a huge request, to comply with a smaller one

Zimbardo Prison Study
• Role playing affects attitudes. What do you think happened when college students were made to take on the roles of prison guards and inmate.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• We do not like when we have either conflicting attitudes or when our attitudes do not match our actions
• When they clash we will change our attitude to great balance

Unit II: Research Methods:

Unit II:
Research Methods:
*Psychology is a science

Hindsight Bias: tendency to believe, after learning the outcome,that you knew it along.
Overconfidence: we tend to think we knew more than we do.
The Barnum Effect: the tendency for people to accept very general or vague characterization of themselves and take them be accurate.
Applied vs. Basic Research:
Applied research- clear and practical applications.
Basic Research: explores questions that you may be curious about, but not intended to be immediately used.


Thursday February 05,2015
Hypothesis: expresses a relationship between a variable. *anything that can vary among participants in a study.

Independent variable: whatever is being manipulated in the experiment.
(If there is a drug, the drug is always the independent variables)

Dependent variable: whatever is being measured in the experiment.
(The effect of the drug)

Operational Definitions: explain what you mean in your hypothesis. How will the variables be measured in "real life" terms.

Sampling: identify the population you want to study. The sample must be representative of the population you want to study.

Experimental Method: looking to prove causal relationships.
Cause=effect
Laboratory v. Field Experiment

Confounding variable is anything that could cause a change in B, that is not A.

Hawthorne Effects: even the control group may experience changes, just the fact that you know you are in an experiment can cause change.

Correlational Method: expresses a relationship between two variable. Does NOT show CAUSATION!

Types of Correlation
Positive Correlation: the variables go in the SAME direction
Negative Correlation: the variables go in opposite directions.

Survey method: most common type of psychology measures correlation. Cheap and fast. Need a good random sample. Low response rate

Naturalistic Observation: Watch subjects in their natural environment. Do not manipulate the environment. The good is that there is Hawthorne effect. The bad is that we can never really show cause and effect.

Correlational Coefficient: A number that measures the strength of a relationship. Range is from -1 to +1. The relationship gets weaker the closer you get to zero.

Case Studies: a detailed picture of one or a few subjects. Tell us a great story...but is just descriptive research. Does not even give us correlation data.

Statistics: recording the results from our studies.
1. Mean
2. Mode
3. Range

Descriptive statistics: just describes sets of data.
 Standard Deviation: the variance of scores around the mean. The higher the variance or SD, the more spread out the distribution is.
Z scores: a unit that measures the distance of one score from the mean. A positive z score means above the mean. A negative z score means a number below the mean.

Animal Research: clear purpose. Treated in a humane way. Acquire animals legally. Least amount of suffering possible.

Human Research: No Coercion-must be voluntary. Informed consent. Anonymity. No significant risk. Must debrief.

Social Psychology:
Social psychology- The study of how we think about influence and relate to one another.
Social Thinking- how do we think about one another
Attribution Theory: the idea that we give a casual explanation for someone's behavior. We credit that behavior either to the situation or to the persons disposition.
Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency to underestimate the impact of a situation and overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
Attitudes: a belief or feeling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to something
Foot in the door phenomenon: the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to complete later with a larger request.
Door in the face phenomenon: the tendency for people who say no to a huge request, to comply with a smaller one.
Zimbardo Prison Study: Role playing affects attitudes. What do you think happened when college students were made to take on the roles of prison guards and inmates.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory: we do not like when we have either conflicting attitudes or when our attitudes do not match our actions.


Social Influence:
Conformity: adjusting ones behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standards.
Condition that strengthen conformity: one is made to feel incompetent. The group is at least three people. The group is unanimous. One admires the groups status. One had made no prior comment.

Social Facilitation; improved performance of tasks in the presence of others. Occurs with simple or well learned tasks. Not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered.
Yerkes Dodson law: there is an. Optimal level of arousal fiber he best performance of any task. Easy tasks- relatively high
Difficult task - low arousal
Other task-moderate level
Social Loafing: the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable.
Deindividuation: the loss of self awareness and self restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Group Polarization: the concept that a groups attitude is one of extremes and rarely moderate. Ex KKK
Groupthink- the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision making group overrides common sense.
Self fulfilling prophecies: occurs when one persons belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm beliefs.

Social Relations: attraction, conflict and prejudice, peace making, aggression
Prejudice: an unjustifiable attitude towards a group of people.
Social Inequalities: a principle reason behind prejudice. In group- "us" people with whom one shares a common identity
Out group"them" those perceived as different than ones in group
In Group bias: the tendency to favor ones own group.

Scapegoat Theory: the theory that prejudice provides an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.
Aggression: any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
The Biology of Aggression:
1. Genetics
2. Neural Influences
3. Biochemical

The Psychology of aggression: frustration aggressive principle: the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal. Creates anger which generates aggression.

Conflict: a perceived incompatibility of actions goals or ideas.
Situation where people must choose between an act that is beneficial to themselves but harmful to others and an act that is moderately beneficial to all.

Attraction: 5 factors of Attraction; 1. proximity= geographic nearness. Mere exposure effect: repeated exposure to something breeds liking. Taiwanese Letters.
2. Reciprocal Liking= you are more likely to like someone who likes you.
3. Similarity: Breeds content
4. Liking through association
5. Physical Attractiveness

Altruism:
Social Exchange Theory: the idea that our social behavior is an exchange process, which we maximize benefits and minimize the cost.
Peacemaking: give people superordinate that can only be achieved through cooperation.