NEW LECTURES
7/16/07 Introduction and
Experimental Methods
I. What is psychology?
A. Study of human behavior
1. Why?
Find out what humans do
2.
Determine what is normal or abnormal?
3. Only
human behavior? Animals
B. Psychology is a science first!
1. Use
scientific methods
2. Second
purpose: improve human and animal conditions
C. Scientific method
1. Start
with an hypothesis
2. Test it
3. If it
works: accept it; if it doesn’t work- make a new hypothesis
4. Define
our observation methods and tools
II. Major study areas of psychology
A. Sub disciplines
1.
Neuroscience
2.
Sensation and perception
3. Learning
and cognition
4.
Developmental
5.
Personality
6. Social
interactions
7.
Psychopathology
8.
Treatments: Therapies
B. Who are psychologists
1. Degree
in psychology or a related field
a. Psychology
b. Education
c. Counseling
2. At least
a master’s degree to practice or do research
a. MS
b. MA
c. MSN
d. MSW: social work
3.
Doctorate
a. PhD: primarily a research degree, although many clinicians have a PhD
b. PsyD: practitioners doctorate
4. Neither
MS or PhD/PsyD can prescribe ANY medication!
5.
Psychiatrists or MDs can only prescribe
a. Psychiatrist is an MD with special training in psych
b. Primary resp: handing out drugs
III. History of Psychology
A. Psychology began as a hybrid
between philospophy, religion and physiology
1. Attempt
to explain WHY we do what we do!
2.
Integrate spiritual explanations with physical explanations with philosophical
explanations
B. Religious influences
1. Stone
Age: Trephoning
a. Cause of bad behavior = evil spirits in your body
b. Resided in head/heart
c. Make holes in your head to let the evil spirits out
2.
Exorcisms: getting evil spirits out
a. Devil causing behavior
b. Witch hunts
3. Early
Greek philosophers: gods
a. Zeus and Aphrodite
b. Behaviors were caused by tensions between the gods, and not human
fault
C. Natural Causes of behavior
1.
Hippocrates (3460-370 BC)
a. Cause no harm, treat the physical illness
b. Proposing that the cause of bad behavior is physical
c. 4 humors or fluids in the body being in balance
i. Blood: too much- aggressive and oversexed; too little- weak and
undersexed
ii. Black bile: poop
iii. Yellow bile: indigestion
iv. Phelgm
2.
Aristotle: Father of Western thought
a. Divided the psyche into two parts
i. Mental mind
ii. Physical body
b. Mind is not the body; different rules control each
D. Dark Ages or middle ages:
1. Return
to religious influences
2. Setting
up for the Renaissance
E. Renaissance:
1. Period
of enlightenment
2. Break
from religion- return to natural causes
3.
DesCartes:
a. Gentleman soldier/philosopher
b. Philosophy and anatomy
c. Discovered the reflex arc: spinal control, not brain control of some
basic behaviors
d. Mind is separate from the body: Dualist
4. British
Empiricists or Associationists
a. Disagree with DesCartes
b. Monists: brain = mind, one and the same
c. Believe that we learn through experience or associations
d. We are born as a blank slate (tabula rasa)
IV. Psychology is Born:
A.
Zeitgeist:
1. Tremendous shift in the way we think about something
2. Best example: DOS to Windows
3. Three important people:
a. Karl Marx: Marxism or communism
b. Charles Darwin: evolution
c. Sigmund Freud: psychoanalysis
B.
Psychology was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1878
1. Wilhelm Wundt
2. Teacher of first American psychology: Titchner
3. Researchers and explainers first, not practitioners!
C. Systems
or schools of psychology
1. Structuralism: studied structure of the mind and behavior
a. Wanted to determine the important elements or parts to the brain and
the mind
b. Modern day: neuroscientists
c. Early: introspection
2. Functionalists: studied the function of the mind and behavior
a. What purpose did the elements serve
b. Why were they there!
c. How behavior changes or evolves over time
3. Behaviorists: focus on studying behavior, not the mind
a. How do you define ‘internal” events? How do we use scientific method
to observe the unseen?
b. Need behavior!!!!
4. Gestalists: German group
a. No longer exist, because they were right!
b. Early hippies
c. Mantra: The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts!
. . . . .
is a line
.
. . . .
is a triangle
but, although they both contain 5 "elements"
or dots they are not the "same"
5.
Psychoanalysts: underlying mind!
a. Unconscious
b. Things, feelings, behaviors we are not aware of
c. Mentalism: rules for our mind
d. Id, ego, superego
6.
Ecclectic: psychologists who steal a little from each of these schools- they are
a mix of philosophies
V. Three controversies that are pervasive in Psychology
A. The mind body problem
1. Are you
a dualist or monist
2. Do
humans have souls?
3. Do
animals have souls?
4. Is the
treatment of the soul different than the treatment of the body?
B. Nature or nurture
1. How
important are genetics?
2.
Huntington’s Chorea: dominant gene defect (if one parent carries it, you have a
50/50 chance of getting the disease)
3. Violent
behavior? Nature or nurture- learned or innate?
C. Free will versus Determinism
1. Do we have the free choice to
behave as we choose
2. Or, are our choices determined
by our behavior, by our environment, and by our genetics?
3. Criminally insane
VI. Research methods
A. Populations and samples
1.
Population: all possible cases of your individuals you are studying
2.
Theoretical, not real
3. Sample:
sub set of the population
4. Sample
is typically random
5.
Representative sample: make sure that all groups are included in the sample
(percentage based)
B. Non experimental methods
1. Cannot
imply causality from these
2.
Naturalistic observation:
a. Observe the subjects in their natural environment
b. Biologists use
c. Developmental psychologists
3. Case
Study:
a. Observation and potentially an intervention on an individual or small
group of individuals
b. There is something special about them
4. Survey:
a. Ask questions
i. Open ended
ii. Multiple choice
b. Individuals or give to a group
c. People LIE
5. Correlational studies
a. Establishing a relationship between one event or thing and another
b. Correlation: r =
i. Slope of a line
ii. 0 slope: no relationship between two things
iii. +1.0: 1:1 relationship between two things, perfect relationship
iv. -1.0: 1:1 relationship, but as one goes up, the other goes down
c. Positive correlation between BBQing and water skiing
d. Negative correlation between hot chocolate consumption and temperature
e. Positive correlation between eating dinner with your family and your
ACT score
f. -1.0 to +1.0; correlation between IQ and grades is about 0.3
C. Experimental studies
1. These
CAN show causation
2. Use the
scientific method to determine causes
3. General
experimental method
a. Independent Variable: IV
i. What the experimenter changes or manipulates
ii. It’s the changed variable
b. Dependent variable: DV
i. What the experimenter measures
ii. What is affected by the IV
c. Example:
i. Effects of alcohol intake on test performance
ii. IV: alcohol: give different groups different amounts
iii. DV: measure: test scores
4.
Different groups or levels of my Independent variable
a. Several treatment groups (dose groups or conditions)
b. Control group: a group that gets nothing or the standard treatment
c. Placebo group: a group that is made to believe they got the treatment,
but got nothing
D. Problems in research
1. Demand
characteristics
a. Subjects react to perceived demands from the experimenter
b. Demands from the experimenter on him or herself- observational bias
2. Blind
experiments
a. Single blind: subject doesn’t know the reason for the experiment or
their group
b. Double blind: neither the experimenter nor the subject knows the
condition being tested
3.
Hawthorne effect: attention creates people who try harder
4.
Pygmalion effect: labeling
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7/17/06 Ethics and The Neuron and
synaptic transmission
I. Ethics
A. General rights for human
subjects
1. Right to
privacy: HIPA
2.
Voluntary participation
3. Adults
must give consent; children give assent with parents giving consent
4. No
unjustified deception
a. Milgram study at Yale: deceived the subjects
b. Because of this, laws were changed
5. Cannot
cause lasting harm
6.
Debriefing: must tell you the point of the study after your participation
B. Rights for animal research
1. At ISU
we use: rodents, birds, farm animals
2. Must
have approved protocol that is approved by our ISU vet (and others)
3. Follow
AVA guidelines for pain and distress
C. Ethics committees
1. For
humans: IRB or institutional review board
2. For
animals: IACUC: Institutional animal care and use committee
a. Oversight by 5 federal government agencies
b. Dept of ag, NIH, NSF, OPRR
c. Panel includes a vet for ISU, an outside consulting vet, animal users,
nonscientists and community members
II. Neuronal transmission
A. Think of your brain as a
computer
1. get info
in to the brain
-Sensory organs
2. Process
the information
3. Take
action on the information
4. Brain
must decide what is relevant information and what is irrelevant information
5. As a
feedback loop like a furnace
a. Thermostat that “takes the temp”
b. Furnace will turn on or off and take action based on the temp reading
B. Example: Dopamine
1. has two ways of being released
a. slow
steady release
b.
transient bursts of release
2. slow, steady release maintains
an ongoing behavior (furnace stays on)
3. transient pulsing causes a
switch to a new behavior, depending on the environment
4. What happens if you mess up this
DA system
a. If over
react to everything: you are hyper sensitive because of too much transient DA
action: autism
b. ADHD
kids: get little transient action
c. Drug
addiction: train the brain to pay attention to the wrong signals
d.
Schizophrenia: not split personality, but split from reality…..can’t tell brain
firing from real life
D. The neuron
Neuron slides
1. Highly
specialized cell in the brain and nervous system
2. Several
kinds of cells in the nervous system
a. Receptor cells: receive information
b. Effector cells: send messages from the nervous system to the “action”
parts of body….muscles, heart, etc.
c. Glial cells: glue cells
i. Neuron assistants
ii. Next to or wrapped around neurons
iii. Hold neurons in place, allow sending the signals between neurons
d. Neurons: specialized cell in nervous system that engages in
neurotransmission
i. Send chemical signals to other neurons
ii. Communication system for the nervous system
3. Overall
we have approximately 10 billion neurons and 10 x 14 glial cells
4. 10 x 15
connections between neurons
5. Not
the number of cells that is important, but the connections
E. Parts of a neuron
1.
Dendrites
a. Hair like projections
b. Receive incoming chemicals from the presynaptic neuron (the neuron on
the other side of the synapse)
c. Lots of dendrites on neuron: Alzheimer’s disease/disorder the
dendrites fall off
2. Soma or
cell body
a. Contain the life functions of the neuron
b. Cell wall is critical here
3. Axon
a. Long long projection off of the soma
b. Often wrapped in a myelin sheath made of glia cells (increases
transmission speed)
4. Terminal
Buttons
a. End of the axon
b. Where chemical (or neurotransmitter) will be released
c. Contains vesicles of neurotransmitter
5. Synapse:
a. Space between the presynaptic terminal button and post synaptic
dendrite
III. Synaptic Transmission
A. Neuron at “resting potential
1. The
neuron is resting
2.
Potential = electrical charge
3. What the
electrical charge is at rest: -70mV
4. Ion
charges contained by the chemicals in and out of the cell
a. Inside the cell: Anions (A-) and potassium (K+)
b. Outside the cell: extracellular fluid: sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl-)
(NaCl solution or salt water)
c. Anions cannot leave the cell (stuck inside)
B. Action potential
1. The
electrical charge during the action portion of the transmission
2. Action
potentials occur ALL or NONE
a. The cell either fires or doesn’t fire (no wimpy ½ firing)
b. Change from -70mV to +40mV or about a 110 mV change
c. For a brief millisecond, the cell goes positive
d. Then reset
e. To do this: ions change places: ion exchange
i. Na+ and then Cl- go in
ii. K+ goes out
iii. Then returns to “normal” or resting
3.
Refractory period:
a. Briefly, after an action potential, the cell is more negatively
charged
b. Very, very hard, if not impossible for the cell to fire at this point
4.
Neurotransmitter release at the terminal buttons
a. Synaptic vesicles hit the terminal button membrane wall
b. Burst
c. Neurotransmitter is released into the synapse
d. Neurotransmitter floats in the synapse until it attaches to another
dendrite
5. Get rid
of extra neurotransmitter in the synapse through several mechanism
a. Obviously, the NT can attach to another dendrite
b. Destroyed by enzymes in the synapse: MAO or monoamine oxydase
c. Reuptake: extra NT is sucked back into the terminal button and
recycled
C. Buildup of NT on dendrites
until its sufficient to cause an action potential
1. Two
kinds:
a. Build up towards an action potential: Excitatory post synaptic
potential or EPSP
b. Build up away from an action potential (makes cell more negative):
inhibitory post synaptic potential or IPSP
2. Adds
up all the incoming signals:
a. Summation: adds up the signals
b. Temporal summation: adds up over time
c. Spatial summation: adds up over some area
IV. Neurotransmitters and drugs
A. Two basic categories of
neurotransmitters
1.
Excitatory
2.
Inhibitory
3. Increase
or decrease chances of an action potential
4. NOTE:
this does not necessarily parallel behavior
5.
Agonists: excitatory
6.
Antagonists: inhibitory
B. Amino acids
1.
Glutamate
2.
Aspartate: PKU
3. Glycine
4. Made of
amino acids
5.
Regulatory function:
a. Control basic body functions
b. Memory
C. Soluable gases
1. Nitric
oxide
2. Carbon
monoxide
3. Help
protect neurons
4. Also
kill neurons:
D. Acetylcholine: Ach
1. Brain
and spinal cord
2.
Peripheral nervous system at neuromuscular junctions
3.
Important for memory formation
4. Controls
motor movements
5. Too much
or too little: paralysis or muscle spasms: muscles are flaccid or over flexed
6. Most
incesticides are Ach based
7. Atropine
is made from Bella Donna or nightshade
8. Brown
recluse spider: atropine based venom
E. Norepinephrine: NE in the
central nervous system and ephedrine (E) in the peripheral nervous system
1.
Biologists call this noradrenalin and adrenalin
2. Excitory:
increases arousal
3. In CNS
for arousal and attention
4. In
peripheral NS: controls heart, lungs, digestion (and sex)
5. Beta
blockers block the beta noradrenergic receptor: Inderal
6. Sudafed:
pseudoephedrine
F. Dopamine
1. Kissing
cousin of NE
2. Found in
CNS and periphery
3. CNS:
arousal and motivation and reward
4.
Periphery: heart and lung
5. Too
little DA: Parkinson’s disease
a. DA cells in substania nigra die
b. DA act on Ach neurons which act on muscles
c. Treatment is DA
i. DA won’t cross the blood brain barrier
ii. Precursor form: L-Dopa
6. Too much
DA: hallucinations and delusions similar to schizophrenia
a. Reduce DA using an antipsychotic medication such as thorazine,
serentil
b. Side effect: tardive dyskinesia: drug induced parkinson’s
G. Seratonin: 5HT
1. Five-hydroxy-tryptomine
2. In both
the CNS and periphery
3. CNS:
arousal and anxiety or anticipation
4. Too
little serotonin, more anxiety
a. Depression is often the result of anxiety
b. Decreasing serotonin affects DA, NE
c. SSRI: serotonin selective reuptake inhibitor
H. GABA:
1. Mimics
GABA effects: valium
2. Reduce
or eliminate the function of anxiety circuits
3.
Immediate acting
4. Highly
addicting
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7/18/07 Neuroanatomy: The Brain and Spinal Cord
Brain Anatomy Slides
I. Brain and Spinal cord
A. Central nervous system
1. Closed
system: protected from outside penetration
2. Brain
and spinal cord
3. Best
protected set of organs in the body
a. Hard skull to protect the brain
b. First to get oxygen and nutrients
4. Size
isn’t important, its density
5. Outer
covering of the brain: meninges
a. Three layers: dura mater, arachnoid and the pia mater
b. Form a protective covering that keeps out bacteria and other
substances
c. Can get infected: meningitis
6. Brain
and spinal cord are bathed in fluid called the cerebral-spinal fluid or CSF
B. Spinal cord
1. Not as
well protected as brain
a. Flexible (you bend)
b. Accessible to rest of the body
c. Encased in vertebrae: bone-like structures
2. Two
kinds of fibers
a. Afferent fibers: incoming sensations
b. Efferent fibers: motor neurons
c. Reflex centers: DesCartes Reflex Arc
i. Connection between sensory and motor neurons
ii. Action for certain events occurs at spinal level
II. Peripheral nervous system
A. Two basic systems
1. Somatic
or voluntary
2.
Autonomic: involuntary
a. Sympathetic
b. Parasympathetic
B. Sympathetic:
1.
Expending energy
2. Fight or
flight
3. System
of behavior: freeze, run, fight
4. Increase
in heart rate, lung function, stop digestion, dilate eyes, arousal
C. Parasympathetic
1. Conserve
or gain energy
2.
Digestion
3.
Digestive/growth hormones
4. Sexual
behavior
D. Hormones vs. neurotrasmitters
1. Often it
is the same chemical
2.
Adrenalin (epinephrine) vs. noradrenalin or norepinephrine
3. Speed of
action: NT are fast, hormones are slow (through the blood)
III. Brain
A three main divisions of the brain
1. Hind
brain: lower part of the brain
2. Mid
brain: middle brain
3. Cerebrum
or forebrain: top of the brain
B corresponds to evolution and
prenatal development
1. Brain as
it develops, follows an evolutionary course
2. Starts
with the earliest, ends with the most recent
C. Brain also has two halves
1. Left hemisphere
2. Right hemisphere
3. Connected by the corpus callosum
4. Left brain controls the right
side of the body
5. Right brain controls the left
side
6. Left brain = primarily
language/sequential tasks
7. Right brain = spatial/pictoral
D. Hindbrain: several major structures
1. Medulla oblongata:
a. Basic
life functions: breathing, heart, blood pressure
b. Serious
damage: fatal
c. Area
postrema: nausea center (location of a leaky blood brain barrier)
2. Cerebellum:
a. Large
swelling on the back of brain
b. Striated
tissue: its striped
c.
Coordinate muscle movements, especially fine motor
d. Damage:
cerebral palsy
3. Pons:
a. Bridge
or pathway
b.
Coordinates and organizes incoming information and sends to the thalamus
4. Reticular formation:
a.
Attention and arousal
b. Sentry
system: determines what information to pay attention to and what to ignore
c.
Responsive to change
E. Midbrain
1. In
humans, not much of a mid brain
2. Birds,
prey animals (animals that get chased), very large
3. Lateral
geniculate bodies: LGN
4.
Coordination system to tune your attention to a sudden change
IV. Forebrain
A Thalamus
1. Relay
station for the forebrain
2. Directs
incoming information to the correct location
3.
Coordinates all senses EXCEPT smell for humans
4. Smell is
directly wired to the frontal lobes
B. Hypothalamus:
1. just
above and surrounding the Thalamus
2. controls
basic instinctual behaviors or the 4 F’s
a. feeding
b. fighting
c. fleeing
d. sex
3. controls
the autonomic nervous system
C. Corpus Striatum: motor habits
1. located
between the thalamus and cortex, near the hypothalamus
2. composed
of several structures
a. caudate nuclelus
b. putamen
c. globus pallidus
d. substantia nigra
3. complex
but well rehearsed motor movements are controlled here
4.
Parkinson’s syndrome results in damage here
D. Limbic system
1. emotion
area
2.
encircles the thalamus/hypothal/corpus striatum
3. several
structures:
a. amygdala
b. hippocampus
c. septal area
4.
amygdala: decision center
5.
hippocampus: nonverbal memories for emotional events and actions
V. Cerebrum
A Thinking part of the brain
1. 2
hemispheres
2. 4 lobes
or areas on each hemisphere
a. Temporal lobe: by your temple
b. Frontal lobe: front most part of brain
c. Occipital: back part of brain
d. Parietal: top of the brain
3. Newest
part of the brain
4. Highly
convoluted and compacted
a. Sulci or valleys (sulcus)
b. Gyri or hills (gyrus)
c. Allows more tissue in less space
d. Use sulci and gyri as landmarks
B. Parietal lobe
1. top of
your head
2.
somatosensory cortex or brain area
3.
body-sense interactions
4.
sensations such as feeling is here
a. touch
b. pressure
c. hot/cold
5. spatial
body location/awareness are processed here
6. body
awareness issues: somatosensory disruptions and distortions
a. sensory neglect
b. phantom limb: limb is gone, but the brain doesn’t know it
C. Occipital lobe: vision
1. best
charted area of the brain
2. certain
kinds of cells for different kinds of vision
a. cells for color
b. cells for shape
c. cells for spatial location
d. etc, etc.
3. two
vision pathways in the brain
a. spatial location pathway: Where is it?
b. object or focal pathway: What is it?
4. cortical
blindness: damage a pathway at the brain level- so the eyes work , but the brain
doesn’t
D. Temporal lobe:
1. Sides of
your head by your temple
2. Clear
left/right distinction
a. Left: language/linear or logical function
b. Right: spatial/pictoral
3. Hearing
or audition
a. Language based and spatially based
b. Pitch, timbre, spatialness of sounds
c. Linear speech
4.
Processing speech: two process that must happen
a. Understanding: receptive
b. Produce speech: expressive
c. Motor production
5. Two
brain areas
a. Broca’s area: speech production (more frontal lobe)
b. Wernicke’s area: speech understanding- knowing the words/meaning
E. Frontal lobe:
1. Motor
and cognition
2. Motor
areas closer to parietal lobe
a. Integrate volunary movement
b. Coordination
3.
Prefrontal lobe (front most part of brain)
a. Thinking part
b. Planning and execution of cognitive behavior
c. Damage here disrupts cognitive functions: Wisconsin Card Sorting Task-
you can’t dual sort cards by color and shape
d. Damage here affects “surprise”
F. Problems with research areas:
1. Rely on
animal models: animals aren’t humans
2. Human
subjects tend to be brain damaged subjects: old adage: where there is one injury
there is likely to be more
3. What we
know about humans:
a. Integration in the brain
b. Left hemisphere doesn’t work in isolate of the right hemisphere!
i. Split brain surgery
ii. Show visual image to one side of the body and not to the other, get
differences:
1. Show “left brain” a naked person: name “a naked person”- no emotional
content
2. Show “right brain” a naked person: can’t name the visual image, but
they blush
4. Very
true that humans have old parts of their brain and thus we have animal like
instincts:
a. Sex behaviors may be instinctual in certain ways:
b.. Female strategy: get the strongest, wealthiest male possible
c. Male strategy: get the most fertile female
d. Male: love em and leave em
e. Female: keep em
back to top
7/19/07 Vision, Audition and
Perception!
Remember the first test is Monday!
Vision
slides
Audition slides
I. Vision
A. Light and the nature of light
1. Light is
composed of photons
2. Photons
travel in waves
3. Length
of the wave (from crest to crest) gives color (psychological level)
4. Height
of the wave and the compactness of the waves give saturation of color
5. This
allows us to have a physical measurement of something and a psychological
measure of our reaction to it!
B. Sensation and perception:
1.
Receiving an incoming message from the outside world
2.
Perception: interpreting that sensation
3. Problem:
when is it a sensation and when is it a perception
C. Visible spectrum to humans:
1. We only
see or perceive a certain range of light waves
2. We
perceive light waves in other ways: other forms of electromagnetic energy:
a. X rays
b. Ultraviolet
c. FM, AM TV, etc.
3. The
visual spectrum:
a. Red to violet
b. Each wavelength of light = color
c. Light with all wavelengths = white
4. Your eye
must:
a. Receive a signal says “photons out there”
b. Turn the light wave stimulation into an action potential
c. Coded in brain
d. Make sense out of the stimulation
II. The Eyeball!
A Eye parts:
1. Cornea:
clear outer membrane of the eye
a. Clear
b. Rounded
c. Smooth
d. Astigmatism: waffle iron cornea!
2. Aqueous
humor: small amount of liquid right behind the cornea- irrigation system
3. Iris and
pupil
a. Iris is the colored part of your eye
b. Muscle: striated muscle or a sphincter muscle
c. Control amount of light coming into the eye
d. Pupil: hole!
4. Lens
a. Hard membrane
b. Smooth
c. Clear
d. Oval to round
e. Change shape to bend the light depending on how far away you are
trying to see
f. Near things: very round
g. Far thins: very flat
h. Ciliary muscles that push and pull on the lens
i. Cataracts: cloudiness of lens
5. Vitreous
humor: large chamber of fluid that gives the eyeball its shape
6. Retina:
a. Layer of tissue
b. Contain lots of different kinds of cells
c. Receptor cells for vision:
i. Rods: black/white or light/dark vision
1. About 120 million rods
2. Many rods connect to a single neuron
ii. Cones: color vision
1. 5 million cones
2. One cone to one neuron
3. Most of cones are in the FOVEA
7. Blind
spot: where the optic nerve exits the eye (no receptor cells here)
B. pathway to eye
1. retina’s
rods and cones connect to a ganglion cell (kind of neuron)
2. ganglion
cell forms the optic nerve
3. the
optic nerve from each eye splits into 2: ½ goes left, ½ goes right: where cross
is called the optic chiasm
4. from
optic chiasm goes to the lateral geniculate nuclei (midbrain!)
5. splits
into form vision vs spatial vision and travels to occipital lobe
D. Eye problems
1.
Nearsighted:
a. Only see clearly the near objects
b. Myopia
c. Lens too curved or eyeball is too long!
d. Focus ahead of the retina
e. Concave lens
2.
Farsighted
a. Only see clearly the far objects
b. Hypermetropic
c. Lens is too flat or eyeball is too short!
d. Focus behind the retina
e. Convex lens: magnifies light
3.
Presbyopia: lens is stiff due to old age
4. Eyes can
be out of alignment: strabismus
a. Eyes might turn in or out
b. Only affect one eye
c. This doesn’t allow the eyes to focus together….so, the brain starts to
ignore one eye
d. Brain tissue death if this is not corrected by about age 6
III. Two basic theories of color vision
A Trichromatic theory
1. Three
color theory
2. Young
(1880) and then von Hemmholtz (1950)
3. Can’t
have specialized cone for each color in the world- too complicated
4. Three
primary colors
a. Red
b. Green
c. Blue
5. Three
primary cones: red, green and blue
a. These mix to form color signal
b. Different amounts of red, green or blue respond to a particular color
c. There ARE three kinds of cones!
B. opponent process theory
1. there
are 3 cones in the retina (correct)
2. at the
brain level: opponent processes
a. dark/light or black/white unit
b. red/green unit
c. blue/yellow unit
3. Hering
(1850) and then Hurvich and Jamison (1957) demonstrated this model or theory
4 why
see american flag as an after image:
Yellow turns to blue
Black turns to white
Green turned to red
White is all color: G + R so (G+R)-G = R
5. Color
blindness:
a. Mostly men (X-recessive trait)
b. Women: birth damage
c. Most typically red-green
IV. Audition
A Sound waves
1. Have
“waves”
2. Measure
waves: apex to apex
3. Physical
measurement to psychological measurement
a. Size of the wave: loudness
b. Distance of the wave (apex to apex) = pitch
B. loudness in decibels or dB
1. normal
hearing: 5 dB
2. kids
have better hearing
3. as
sounds get louder, they hurt the ear
C. parts of the ear
1. outside
flap: pinna
2. outer
ear canal
3. middle
ear
a. tympanic membrane: ear drum
i. living tissue
ii. drum head
b 3 bones: malleus, incus, stapes (hammer, anvil, stirrups)
c. Oval window- opening into the inner ear
4. Inner
ear
a. Cochlea: hearing organ
b. Vestibular membranes: balance
i. Semicircular canals
ii. Vestibular membrane
D semicircular canals and vestibular membrane
1.
Balance
2. Linked
by nerve to brain stem (area postrema)
3.
Meinere’s disease or disorder: vestibular membrane autoimmune disorder
E Cochlea
1. Snail
like
2. Membrane
that is covered with hair cells
3. When air
pressure passes through, bends the hairs which stimulate the hair cells which
send a signal to the auditory nerve
4. Two ways
of processing sound information
a. Place or location of the hair cell movement on the cochlea
b. How fast the hair cells move: frequency theory
c. Volley principle: different hair cells at different locations can move
at different places and speeds
d. 200-20,000 Hz or cyles: place theory is correct
e. 20-4,000 hz: frequency theory
f. Between 200 and 4000 hz, both the location and speed of the hair cells
changes
g. Human speech ranges from 200-4000 hz
F.
Hearing loss
1. Two
basic kinds of hearing loss
a. Conductive loss: middle ear is bad
b. Sensorineural loss: nerve and cochlea are bad
c. Mixed loss: both
2. Causes?
a. Hundred and hundreds of causes
b. Range of hearing loss
i. Mild: 20-40 dB
ii. Moderate loss: 40-60 db
iii. Severe profound: 60-100 db
iv. Deaf greater than 100db
c. Tinnitus: ringing/buzzing or clicking in your ears
G. treatments
1. hearing
aids
a. analog aids: louder: good for conductive loss
b. digital aids: selectively enhance or screenn out sounds: tinnitus or
sensoryneural or mixed
2.
Cochlear implants: electrical/computer chips implanted on the cochlea
a. Implant
b. Receiver on head
c. Microphone or hearing aid on the ear
V. Gestalt psychology and perception
A history
1. German
2.
Interested in the function of vision
3. How we
put the pieces together
4. Mantra:
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
B. We organize what we see and hear
1.
organization = gestalt or good figure
2. use
distinctive features of incoming messages
a. discriminate figure vs. ground
b. use the total configuration
c. 1234 1augh
C. rules for organizing our
world:
1.
proximity: closeness shows membership
2.
similarity: similar things go together
3. contrast
or edges
4. good
continuation: like patterns to continue
5. closure:
like end points
6. pragnanz
or simple and symmetric figures
7. when
given ambiguous figure: we make it good figure by using common fate
D. Perceptual constancies:
1. Finish
objects
2. Prefer
our sounds and visual cues to agree
3. Biases
how and who we perceive
VI. Depth perception
A translate a 2 dimensional image
into a 3 dimensional image
1. Make a
neural signal into height, width and depth
2. Can do
this even with pictures
3. Three
ways to do this:
a. Eye feedback cues
b. Picture cues
c. Binocular (2-eyed) disparity
B. picture cues
1.
stationary 2-D objects
2. size =
cue:
a. far objects are smaller than near objects
b. even infants understand this
3.
interposition: the near object can block the far object
4. lighting
and shadowing
5. linear
and texture perspective
a. babies and visual clif
b. babies crawl out onto a plexiglass bridge-refused but precrawling
babies were fascinated
c. precocial animals (animals that can feed themselves and walk) show
fear immediately
C. feedback cues:
1.
accommodation: lens muscles in the eyes pushing and pulling on the lens
2.
convergence: eyes turning in or out tells you depth
D. Binocular disparity:
1. each eye
sees a little different image
2.
acceptable degree of overlap between the images:
a. if less overlap: far away
b. more overlap: closer
c. no overlap or way to much overlap: fall down and puke
back to top
7/24/07 Basic Learning
I. Learning
A. Learning defined
1. a relatively
permanent change in behavior not due to maturation but to experience or practice
2. forms a continuum from very basic
habituation to classical condition, operant conditioning, modeling and then
cognitive behaviors
B. Classical Conditioning
1. The reflex arc:
a. reflex is elicited by a stimulus
b. classical conditioning = learning to react to a new stimulus
c. new stimulus predicts some event
2. Ivan
Pavlov: 1927 first wrote about classical conditioning
a. Russian physiologist
b. famous salivation experiment:
i. knew that food elicited salivation: unlearned or unconditioned
ii. found that when a stimulus was paired with food presentation, this
stimulus alone could produce the salivation: learned or conditioned
3.
e.g.: bell = learned stimulus:
BELL (CS) ---> Food presentation (US) ---> Salivation (UR)
\
\
-> Salivation (CR)
4.
Specific labels for each of these events:
a. unconditioned stimulus:
1. what is unlearned or automatically evokes the response
2. can be previously learned
3. e.g. the food presenation
b. unconditioned response
1. the unlearned or automatic response
2. could be a previously learned response
3. the initial salivation
c. the conditioned stimulus
1. the new learned stimulus
2. what predicts the UC
d. conditioned response:
1. the response which occurs to the newly learned CS
2. what you do as result of the CS
3. NOTE: NOT HAVE TO RESPOND- no contingency
4. may be similar or different than original UR
C. Characteristics or Parameters
of Classical Conditioning
1. Form of
the CR vs UR
a. CR and UR are not always the same
b. can even be opposite: e.g. Siegel's morphine work
c. remember: is an anticipatory response in a way
d. react because the CS predicts some event
2.
Strength of the CR: how much or how strongly do you show it
a. gradually increases with trials
b. monotonically increasing curve: levels off at some point
c. reaches an ASYMPTOTE or highest level
3.
Extinction:
a. CR goes away if CS stops predicting an event
b. stop the CS-US pairing
c. slowing declines- almost opposite of learning curve
4.
Spontaneous Recovery:
a. if give an occasional CS presentation after extinction, occasionally
the organism reacts to the CS as before extinction
b. unpredictable as to when this will occur
5.
Relearning:
a. after original learning, is faster to relearn
b. that is: training, extinction, then training again
c. not as difficult as first situation
6.
Generalization
a. conditioned response may generalize to similar CS's
b. that is, react to stimuli which are characteristically similar to
original stimulus
7.
Discrimination
a. conditioned response may be trained to occur only to the particular CS
or CS's that predict the response
b. e.g. learn that only certain bell rather than all bells predict food.
D. Four Procedural forms of
Classical Conditioning:
1.
remember: basic set up
a. CS then US
b. CS predicts US, so get a CR to it
c. can vary the amount of time between the CS and US to produce different
effects
2. Four
types of classical conditioning:
a. simultaneous conditioning:
1. CS and US presented AT THE SAME TIME
2. no gap between the 2 events
3. produces so-so conditioning
b. Delayed conditioning:
1. CS presented, then US follows IMMEDIATELY after
2. NO gap between CS and US
3. produces very strong conditioning
c. Trace Conditioning
1. CS presented, then a short time gap, then US presented
2. GAP between the CS and the US
3. thus, organism must have a "memory trace" of the CS
4. produces good conditioning if gap not too long
d. Backward conditioning:
1. US presented first, then the CS
2. thus is backwards
3. doesn't work EXCEPT in case of taste aversion conditioning
e. why get these effects: boils down to predictability issues
E. Applications of Classical
Conditioning:
1. Learning
of Emotional Reactions:
a. learn that certain stsimuli predict certain events, thus come to
elicit certain emotions
b. e.g. : Little Albert study
1. CS = white rat
2. US = loud noise
3. UR = fear
4. CR = fear, anxiety, avoidance
c. thus: Classical conditioning may result in development of phobias
d. may also deliberately develop these phobias:
1. taste aversion
2. food aversions for weight loss
3. smoking and drinking clinics
2.
Removing emotional conditioning:
a. systematic desensitization
b. teach client progressive relaxation techniques
c. then: pair some stimulus with these relaxation techniques
d. gradually begin to pair fear-eliciting stimulus with relaxation in
sort of a "stimulus replacement" program
1. fear hierarchy
2. use until can tolerate fear situation
3. Use
in Pain control
a. same set up w/relaxation program
b. then teach to concentrate on some stimulus during times of intense
pain
c. e.g. Lamaze
4.
Advertising and commmercials
a. pair a CS (your product or jingle) w/ US (Feeling or emotion)
b. e.g McDonald's:
1. CS = McDonald's jingle
2. US = picture of big Mac
3. UR = salivation, desire for hamburger
4. CR = going and getting it at McDonald's
c. also: Ford Taurus commercials, etc.
II. Operant Conditioning
A. The Law of Effect
1.
Thorndike (1911): The law of effect
a. puzzle box experiments with cats
b. first law of effect: When a response is followed by a satisfying state
of affairs, that response will increase in frequency
c. also negative law of effect
2.
Skinner: made two modifications:
a. first: problem with "satisfying state of affairs"
(1) reinforcement
(2) punishment
b. second: stated would increase PROBABILITY of response, not actual
frequency
B. Important distinction between
operant and classical conditioning
1. in
classical conditioning:
a. CS predicts US, so react
b. not HAVE to respond
2. in
operant conditioning:
a. is a contingency in place
b. S+: R---> Sr or P
c. a stimulus may or may not predict the contingency
d. in a contingency: The organism MUST make the contingent response in
order to gain the consequences
3. any
event which increases the probability of a response = reinforcer
4. any
event which decreases the probability of a response = punisher
C. Four types of consequences
for producing behavior change
1. Reinforcement and Punishment Defined:
a. two types of behavioral consequences: Reinforcement and punishment
b. using a stimulus to increase behavior = reinforcement
c. using a stimulus to decrease behavior = punishment
2. two types of stimuli/ways to present stimuli:
a. adding of a stimulus (consequence)
b. removing a stimulus (consequence)
3. 4 square way of looking at:
4. Thus:
2 types of reinforcement
a. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
1. application of a stimulus to increase behavior
2. you RECEIVE something and your behavior increases
b. NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
1. withdrawal of a stimulus to increase behavior
2. something is removed or taken away and your behavior increases
5. ALSO:
2 types of punishment:
a. POSITIVE punishment
1. application of a stimulus to decrease behavior
2. you RECEIVE something and your behavior decreases
b. NEGATIVE punishment
1. withdrawal of a stimulus to decrease behavior
2. you LOSE something as a result of your behavior
3. e.g.
(a) Response cost
(b) time-out
D. Basic parameters:
1. strength
of the response:
a. learning curve, similar to CC
b. monotonically increasing
2. delay
of the reinforcer or punisher
3. the
size, amount or quality of a reinforcer or punisher
4.
extinction:
a. differs significantly from CC
b. initially is a SPONTANEOUS INCREASE in responding before get the
decline in responses
c. also get EXTINCTION INDUCED AGGRESSION
d. ALSO; spontaneous recovery
5.
generalization:
a. response may occur in highly similar situations to that of the
training setting
b. or highly similar responses may come under stimulus control
6.
discrimination:
a. response occurs only for specific situation in which contingency is in
effect
b. or contingency only evokes a particular response or set o responses
7.
Schedules of Reinforcement:
a. Schedules of reinforcment: rules that specify which response will be
followed by a reinforcer
b. literally- a time or frequency schedule
c. Types of reinforcement schedules:
(1) continuous reinforcement: CRF
(2) Partial or intermittent reinforcement: PRF
E. four basic kinds of PRF:
1. fixed
ratio:
a. cumulative recorder
b. fixed or set amount of responses required by the schedule
c. e.g. a FR 5 sets a contingency such that every 5th response is
reinforced
d. end up with a break and run pattern of responding
2.
variable ratio
a. vary the amount of responses required
b. based on some average number of responses:
(1) e.g. like a grade point or a slot machine
(2) FR5: the average of every 5 responses is rewarded
c. ends up with steady state responding: no breaks
3. fixed
interval
a. fixed or set amount of time required to pass before a contingent
response will result in a reinforcer
b. can respond inbetween- but does no good
c. e.g. pay checks- every 2 weeks: FI 2 weeks
d. results in a fixed-interval scallop pattern
4.
variable interval:
a. vary the amount of time required to pass before a contingent response
will result in a reinforcer
b. again, can respond inbetween- but get no reinforcer
c. like dialing the phone when get a busy signal
d. results in steady state behavior
5.
Characteristics of partial reinforcement schedules:
a. more resistant to extinction
b. produce more lasting behavior
c. avoid satiation problems
F. Superstition:
1.
according to Skinner: occurs when randomly reinforce
2. looks
like whatever is accidently paired with the Sr is reinforced
3. newer
research suggests is not just any old response:
a. biologically relevant responses
b. waiting responses
c. maintained easily, particularly in punishment situations
III. Biological boundaries of learning
A. (wrong) the old equipotentiality
principle
1. old
(early) learning theorists didn’t believe in biology interacting on learning
2. believed
that:
a. any CS could be paired with any US
b. any response can be reinforced
c. anything can be learned if you have enough time
B. Taste Aversion or Poison
Based Avoidance conditioning (PBAC)
1. learn CS
(food) –US (poison) learn in ONE trial
2. most if
not all species show it!
3. species
show it in different ways: modality specific
4.
limitations on what we can learn: Garcia Effect
5.
limitation to connections between a CS and US
C. SSDR: Species Specific
Defense Reactions
1. Bob
Bolles (1967)
2. three
categories of fear reactions
a. freezing
b. fleeing
c. fighting
3. which
behavior you do depends on where the threatening stimulus is
4. animals:
1 way vs 2-way shuttle
D. Instinctive Drift:
1.
instinctual behaviors drift over and interfere with our learned behaviors
2.
sometimes we disrupt the learned response
3. Breland
and Breland: 1960’s: Misbehavior of Organisms
a. Piggy Bank Pig
b. Miserly Raccoon
c. Dancing Chicken/ baseball chicken
4. watch
people in front of the elevator or “waiting”
E. Learned helplessness:
1. animals
and people learn a “contingency rule”
a. rule about the way a response and reinforcer are connected
b. “be good, get candy”
c. I can’t
2. may
or may not be true, but as long as the animal/person acts like it is true, it
works
3. the
person or animal gives up
4.
treatment: unlearn the contingency
a. extinguish the old contingency
b. reinforcer “help” behaviors
back to top
7/25/07 Modeling and Memory
I. Review
A. Couple kinds of learning
yesterday
1.
Classical conditioning
a. Take a neutral stimulus and teach to it: make it meaningful
b. CS-US
c. Key to classical conditioning is predictability of the CS
d. No response requirement
2. Operant
conditioning
a. R-Sr
b. Response is rewarded or punished
i. Reinforced (pos. or neg) response increases
ii. Punished (pos. or neg) response decreases
c. Responses must occur to get the consequence: contingency
B. New or higher learning: modeling
or learning by watching
1. Observed
individual can be learning by CC or OC
2. Learning
learns by watching
II . Modeling or social learning
A. Albert Bandura (1950’s and
1960’s)
1. Noticed
that kids learned by watching
2. Wanted
to formally describe this kind of learning
3. Basic
idea: observer learns by watching a model
B. 4 mechanisms or steps
1.
Attentional processes
a. Observer must watch the model
b. Characteristics of the model that impact
this
i. Status
ii. Gender
iii. Age
c. Characteristics of the observer
i. Affective valence: mood
ii. Sensory abilities
iii. Complexity of the task and developmental level
iv. Value of the behavior to the observer
2.
Retentional processes
a. Must be able to remember what you saw
b. 2 types of remembering
i. Verbal: words
ii. Imaginal: doing
c. Several memory factors
i. Symbolic coding
ii. Cognitive organization
iii. Rehearsal
3. Motoric
reproduction
a. Physical capacity to do the behavior
b. Self feedback
4.
Reinforcement
a. You must be rewarded for doing it
b. Vicarious reward: if the model gets rewarded, you are more likely to
try it
D. Implications for education and society
1, animals
model
a most primates and many mammals model
b. dogs imitating others
c. tool use in nonhuman primates relies on modeling
d. sea mammals are excellent at modeling
2. Bobo
doll studies
a. Bobo was a large inflatable clown toy from the 1960’s: hit Bobo and he
stood back up
b. preschool kids: watched a video of Bobo being beaten by a grad student
or a nature film
c. put the kids in a room with Bobo
1. all the kids hit Bobo
2. the kids who had watched the model hit Bobo imitated the words and the
movements of the model
d how do kids imitate and what do they imitate the most
1. Compared live action to cartoon: live and real action is worst
a. Kids seemed to pick up on “real” vs “fake”
b. Cartoon characters weren’t real and they knew they couldn’t do those
things
2. Imitate violent behavior
3. Also imitate: helping behavior
a. Use this as therapy
b. Kids are good “role models”
4. Also model: sexual behavior and drug/alcohol use
II. Memory
A memory involves the 3 R’s
1.
Register: acquisition or getting the information in
2.
Rehearsal: practice it
3.
Retrieval: getting the info back out
B. Several different kinds of
memory
1. Semantic
memory:
a. Verbal memory
b. Memory for language
2. Episodic
memory:
a. Memory for events and places
b. Picture memory
c. Nonverbal
3.
Procedural memory:
a. Memory for an action
b. Doing memory
4.
Eidectic memory
a. Photographic memory
b. Snapshot memory
c. Mostly observed in young children
d. Sometimes in adults for traumatic events (unreliable)
C. Two important abilities required for using your
memory
1.
Metalinguistic awareness
a. Awareness of how language works
b. Acquire this about 6 or 7 years old
2.
Metacognition
a. Awareness of how you think and how you develop memory
b. Ages 6 or 7
D. Three stages of memory
1. Sensory
register memory
a. Brief: less than 1-2 seconds
b. Non categorical: you take in everything
c. Decision process: process or not?
2. Short
term memory: STM
a. Duration is about 20 seconds uninterrupted
b. Limited capacity: 5-9 items (7 plus or minus 2)
c. To keep it in memory you must rehearse it
i. Repeating it: maintenance
ii. Make it meaningful: elaborative
d. Chunking: put the info into meaningful pieces
e.g.. Phone number: 309-438---8333
3. Long
term memory
a. Forever (technically)
b. You must have used elaborative or maintenance rehearsal to get
information into LTM
c. Mnemonics are memory devices used to make the information more
meaningful
E. Forgetting
1. Long term memory problem
2. Two basic ways to forget
a. Decay:
physical damage to the neuronal circuit in the brain
b.
Interference:
i. Other information gets in the way
ii. Two kinds: proactive and retroactive interference
3. Proactive interference:
a. The new
learning disrupts old learning
b. Old
learning gets wiped out or under processed
4. Retroactive interference
a. The old
learning disrupts the new learning
b. New
learning gets wiped out
5. Degree of original learning and
new learning and the degree of interference
a. You
remember the material you learned best!
b. The
degree of similarity between the two
c.
Contextual factors
i. Your physical and mental states
ii.
Eliciting cues: similarity of the room/time of day, etc
d. Recognition vs recall
i. Recognition: multiple choice- just ID it
ii. Recall: write it from scratch
concept formation and
problem solving slides
III. Concept formation
A concept:
1. Form a
category for grouping items together
2.
Efficient and easier to remember
3. Form of
chunking
B. General hierarchy to
categories or concepts
1.
superordinate category: animal, mineral vegetable
2. basic
category: mammal
3.
subordinate: dog, breed,
4.
individual: your dog: Seamus
C. use a protype:
1. examplar:
an example
2. protypes
contain all the essential features of a concept
3. compare
the individual to the exemplar or protype
4.
physiological evidence for protype neurons: feature detection neurons
D. Out of concepts come schemas
1. A schema
is a grouping of similar concepts
2. Global
concept
3.
Stereotyped
4. You use
them to organize your world, and expect the world to be organized according to
your schema
5 Schemas
can be unreliable
a get rid of unimportant details
b fill in missing details
c make your story or schema complete
d eyewitness testimony is horribly unreliable because of schemas
1. Elizabeth loftus
2. She shows that how you interview an individual can change their story
3. Extraneous information can through off a schema
IV. Problem solving
A Several ways and thus theories
about how we solve problems:
1. Trial
and error:
a. Just keep doing new behaviors until you hit the solution
b. Head banging!
c. Problem with this is that it is very inefficient
2.
Gestalts: Insight or the Aha Phenomenon
a. Several stages: suspense, confusion, walk away and ignore, then the
solution is there!
b. Can’t explain, but we can replicate
3.
Hypothesis testing
a. Make an hypothesis
b. Test it
c. Redo it as needed
4.
Information processing model
a. Algorithm: always gets the correct answer
b. Heuristic: usually gets the correct answer
c. Rules for working
5.
Analogies:
a. We use examples to solve new problems
b. This problem is “like” another
c. Use of video games can train the use of analogies
B. problems with problems
1. well
defined problems have
a. well defined and generally single answer
b. strict set of givens and operations
2. Ill
defined problem: A fuzzy problem
a. there is no set answer
b. are no strict set of givens and no set operations
C. functional fixedness:
1. we get
stuck on the intended function of an object
2. we can’t
see a novel use for the object
3. McGwyver
NEVER had this!
D. problem set:
1. you find
a solution routine that works
2. you keep
using it and can’t switch even when confronted with a different problem
3.
Examining forward vs backward problem solvers
a. Forward problem solvers are experts
b. Back ward problem solvers (they start with the solution and work
backwards) are novices
c. Mastery and fluency
back to top
7/26/07 Personality, IQ and testing
I. What is personality?
A. Definition
1. Mood vs.
personality
a. Mood is fluctuating
b. Personality should be a relatively stable trait
2.
Distinctive patterns of behavior, thought and emotions that characterize an
individual
3. Key
aspects or traits
B. Explaining where your
personality comes from and how it develops
1.
“systems” of psychology
2.
Psychodynamic and humanistic approaches
3. Still
have neuroscience, behavioral, cognitive, etc.
4. Factor
analysis or trait approach: statistics to describe the population
C. Trait theorists
1. Factor
analysis: statistical technique for categorizing a variable
2. Identify
the main set of traits that describe an individual
3. Two
basic approaches:
a. Iographic: study individuals for long periods of time
b. Nomothetic: study groups of people at set times
D. Early use of trait theories to
identify basic human traits
1. Catell
and Eysenck; started in the 1950s and still work today
2. Catell
uses 16 basic personality traits: 16PF
3. Eysenck:
3 main factors:
a. Extroversion
b. Neurotocism
c. Psychoticism
4. The Big
Five factors:
a. Extroversion-introversion
b. Agreeableness vs contrariness
c. Consciousness vs sociopathic
d. Neuroticism
e. Openness
5. Alport:
cardinal, central and secondary traits
a. Trait is very enduring if not inherited
b. Cardinal trait: dominating trait, it overwhelms personality
c. Central traits: 3-5 basic traits that describe personality
d. Secondary traits: distinguish the individual but don’t dominate
personality
slides
II. Freudian theory
A put Freud in perspective
1.
Victorian Vienna
2. Jewish
3. Only
treated the wealthy women
4. He was a
wonderful describer of behavior
B. basic structures of personality
1. all
three basic structures are
a. deterministic: you behave because of them and they are determined
b. believed in conscious awareness vs. unconscious- what we are unaware
of
2. id:
basic source of energy, motivation
a. unconscious
b. ruled by two instincts
1. eros: life instinct, libido
2. thanatos: death instinct
c. follows the pleasure principle: if it feels good, it wants to do it!
d. not connected to reality
3. Superego: ego ideal,
perfection seeking
a. Ruled by the two life instincts
b. Conscience, guilt, morality
c. Also not connected to reality
4. Ego:
reality principle
a. Conscious
b. Connected to reality
c. Mediate the id and superego
E. Defense mechanism
1. Means by
which the ego defends itself from the battle between the id and superego
2. Denial:
the problem doesn’t exist
3.
Repression: force memories back into unconscious rather than deal with them
4.
Projection: project your feelings onto another person
5.
Displacement: act on a “safe” person rather than the object of your feelings
6. Reaction
formation: act the opposite of how you really feel
7.
Rationalization: make up excuses
8.
Intellectualization: turn the problem into an
intellectual exercise
9.
Sublimation: turn an unacceptable impulse into a socially acceptable impulse
F. Formation of personality
1. Oral
Stage: birth to about 2
a. Main explanatory idea is how you experience pleasure and how your
superego tries to control it
b. Seek pleasure or sensory stimulation through your mouth
c. Several steps that must occur to get through this stage
i. Orally satisfied : breast feeding
ii. Must learn to delay your oral gratification
d. If you do not resolve the issues at this stage you become orally
fixated
i. Sexual pleasure is oral
ii. Oral fixations
iii. Sarcastic and gullible
2. Anal
stage: 2-4 years old
a. Pleasure: anus, feces and urine
b. Several steps:
i. Learn that elimination feels good
ii. Learn to delay and control elimination
iii. Learn to organize and delay pleasure
c. Two complications:
i. Anal retentive: harshly toilet trained and have too much superego and
fear elimination
ii. Anal expulsive: too lax a toilet training, never learned to control
elimination, too much id
3. Phallic
Stage: age 3 to 4 to about 6 or 7
a. Developing sexual role and gender identity behaviors
b. Pleasure is from genitalia
c. Have “sexual’ feelings about the opposite gender parent
d. Boys: Oedipus complex
i. Boy child desires his mother
ii. Castration anxiety: due to superego fear of castration by the
competing “dad”
iii. Unacceptable hate for dad forms a reaction formation where they
develop appropriate gender identity
e. Little girls
i. Little girls suffer from penis envy
ii. According to Freud himself, the only resolution for penis envy is to
give birth to a male child
iii. Modern Freudians or neoFreudians believe in the Electra complex
1. Yes, penis envy
2. Love for father, jealousy of mom
3. Resolution: marry someone like dear old dad
4. Final
stage: genital stage: adolescence
a. Here you find out where you didn’t resolve your conflicts
b. Problems begin
III. Neofreudians and humanists
A Vienna circle
1 group of
Freud’s followers that broke off and formed their own group
2. upset
with the emphasis on sexuality and the neglect of other human behaviors
B. Adler: Inferiority and
compensation
1.
overwhelming goal: feel competent
a. physically and psychologically
b. if you feel incompetent, you have problems in life
2. often
develop inappropriate coping mechanisms: Napoleonic complex
a. make yourself feel more competent by making others feel less competent
b. Napoleon: tallest horse, highest hat
.3.
child birth order: clear identities based on your birth order
a. oldest: most rule bound, most hard working, want parental approval the
most- most successful and most likely to suffer from an anxiety disorder
b middle: peacemaker or arbitrater, most left out and forgotten, most
social, moderately successful in comparison to oldest, most likely to commit a
crime
c youngest: most outgoing, often are the actors or actresses or
performers, moderately successful, most needy, least likely to leave home, and
most immature
d only: is most like an oldest, but more spoiled and selfish and more
neurotic
C. Carl Jung: Swiss physican
1.several
differences with Freud
a. less emphasis on sex
b. libido – more life energy, not sex
c. three parts to personality:
i. ego: conscious, “I”
ii. personal unconscious or persona: unique “you”
iii. collective unconscious: all the experiences of humanity that have
occurred over time
2.
collective unconscious is expressed in archtypes
a. psychically inherited tendencies to think and behave in a certain way
b. psyche that comes from our ancestors- unconscious
c. expressed in our writing, art, in our everyday experiences
3.
Archtypes:
a. Self: true self, the real you
b. Persona: public you, artificial and socially acceptable
c. Shadow: darker aspects of your self, your evil, animal instincts that
are aggressive or violent
d. Anima or animus: feminine and masculine aspects of your personality,
often expressed in animal like imagery
e. Wise old man: spiritual wisdom
f. Magna mater: oneness with earth, mother earth and understanding of
nature
g. god : psychic reality- projection of the final answer
h. quaternity: ideal completeness, one with god
D. Humanistic psychologist: Maslow
1.
humanistic psychology: believe in the essential goodness of humans
2. all
humans are good, but they may be thwarted in their self discovery, and thus
their paths to goodness is slowed or blocked
3. must
give humans unconditional positive regard: we love them no matter what
4. Maslow:
hierarchy of needs
a. describe the steps required for self actualization
b. must achieve each lower step before you can take the next step
IV. Testing for IQ and Personality
A in any test: need two things
1
reliability
a. you get the same result each time you take the test
b. important: it says the test is testing the same trait or intelligence
each time
2. valid:
a. the test measures what it is suppose to measure
b. this can be problematic: well defined variable
i. criterion validity: set standard against which our test is measured
ii. predictive validity: does our test measure the outcome of something
else
B. tests must be: two ways to write
1. open
ended or projective test:
a. you provide the answer
b. open ended
c. you introduce the information by which I test you
2.
objective test:
a. multiple choice or T/F
b. set answers
V. Intelligence tests
A. Why intelligence tests?
1.
Screening device for children
2. Albert
Binet started in France
3. WWI: the
US army got ahold of this test: screening device for enlisted men
a. Army alpha: literates
b. Army beta: illiterates
4.
Standford university: Stanford/Binet IQ test
a. Test kids nationwide
b. All children are given IQ tests
c. Use to use the standard IQ formula: MA/CA * 100
i. Mental age: score on a test in years and months
ii. Chronological age: how old you are in years, months, days
iii. If MA = CA then your score is 100
iv. Anything below 70 is mentally retarded
v. Gifted is anywhere from 120 to 140 or 145
5. Second
series of IQ tests: Weschler series
a. Three tests:
i. Preschool version: WPPSI
ii. Elementary: WISC
iii. Adult: WAIS
b. Several scores:
i. Verbal score: several subtests
ii. Spatial score: several subtest
6. Howard
Gardner: 7 intelligences and a test for these
a. Verbal
b. Mathematical
c. Spatial: art
d. Musical
e. Kinesthetic: physical ability
f. Interpersonality
g. Intrapersonality
VI. Personality tests
A. Projective tests: open ended
tests
1. You
supply the answer
2. Rorshach
inkblot test
3. Thematic
apperception test: series of people pictures
B. Objective tests
1. Get
around the open ended ness of the projective tests
2. Multiple
choice or T/F questions
3. Set
answers
4. Beck
Depression Inventory
5. MMPI:
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
a. 550 T/F questions
b. Subtests
c. Lie detector questions
d. Exams answer patterns
6.
California Apperception Test and Cattell
back to top
07/30/07 Prenatal and Physical
Development
Test on Wednesday
Prenatal
Slides
I. Prenatal development
A. Gestation
1. 280 days
or 40 weeks
2. Full
term: 38-42 weeks
3. Anything
less than 36 is preterm birth
4. Three
distinct periods of pregnancy or gestation
a. Period of the ovum
b. Period of the embryo
c. Period of the fetus
B. Three periods of fetal development
1. Period
of the ovum
a. Conception to about 4-5 days post conception
b. Implantation in the uterus
c. Fertilized egg or ovum has to travel down the fallopian tube and
attach to the uterine wall
d. 50% of fertilizations area lost here
2. Period
of embryo
a. Uterine attachment to about 8 weeks
b. MOST CRITICAL period
c. Cell differentiation
d. 2 million % increase in size
e. All internal and external organs are formed during this period
f. 1 ½ inches in length
3. Period
of fetus
a. 8 weeks to birth
b. Virtually all organs are in place
c. Refining, growing and weight gain
d. Point of viability: 50% chance of survival: 20 weeks
II. When things go wrong
A two kinds of “problems”
1. Genetic
2.
Developmental/gestational problem
B Genetic defects
1. Single
gene defects: takes one gene to cause the problem
2. Multiple
gene defects: more than one gene is involved
3. Dominant
gene: that gene will cause the effect
4.
Recessive gene effect: takes two
5. Single
gene defects include:
a. Huntington’s chorea
b. Usually fatal or very chronic illness
6.
Recessive gene defects
a. Color blindness
b. Hemophilia
c. Cystic fibrosis
d. Phetylketonuria or PKU
e. Tay sachs
7.
Incomplete cell division
a. By definition: not “inherited”
b. But: causes a disruption in cell itself
c. Most common: Down Syndrome
i. Incomplete cell division
ii. Typically the 21st chromosome (Trisomy 21)
iii. Mosaicism
iv. Relation with mom’s age
1. Overall 1/600 births
2. At age 44: 1/65 live births
8. Most
common form of mental retardation: Fragile X syndrome
C. Environmental effects
1.
teratogens
a. Monster maker
b. Any environmental agent which increases the rate of birth defect
c. Lead: mental retardation, deafness and blindness
d. Drugs:
i. Illegal drugs are teratogens
ii. Prescription drugs:
1. Seizure meds
2. Antidepressants
3. Blood pressure drugs
4. Most anything in category B or C
iii. Alcohol
iv. Labor and delivery drugs
v. Maternal disease
1. HIV/AIDS
2. Syphilis/herbes
3. Rubella or german measles
vi. Mom’s health
vii. Father’s health
D. Birthing factors:
1. Toxemia:
poisoning of the mom
2.
Gestational diabetes
3. Placenta
dysplasia: placenta separates from the uterine wall and ruptures
4. Breech
birth
5. Anoxia:
lack of oxygen at birth- birth defects
E. Most births are normal
1. 10% of
births have a significant birth defect
2. Boys
have more birth defects and are more likely to die than girls: 48% boys/52%
girls
a. Genetics
b. Size at birth
F. How diagnosis?
1.
Amniocentesis
2. Blood
tests: AFP, etc.
3. Chorian
sampling
4.
Ultrasound
5. Genetic
sampling from parents
infant
development slides
III. Early infant development
A birth
1. several
stages to birthing process
a. Early labor: last days to hours
i. Practice contractions at first: Braxton hicks
ii. Slowly become the real thing
iii. Mom is walking around and starting to dilate and efface
iv. Baby drops down and becomes engaged in the pelvis
b. Start labor: active labor
i. At first, irregular contractions
ii. Not painful at first
iii. Baby is beginning to move down the birth canal
iv. By end: contractions that 1-2 minutes apart and begin to be painful
v. Active labor can last up to 36 hours
c. Transition: transition between labor and delivery
i. Mom is fully dilated: 10 cm
ii. Baby is in the end of the birth canal
iii. Pushing will begin
iv. Generally lasts less than 1 hour
d. Delivery: pushing part
i. First time moms: last 1-2 hours
ii. More typically: 30 minutes or less
f. 25% of births end up in C-section
g. After baby is delivered, the placenta is delivered
B. give the baby his or her first
TEST: APGAR test
1. test
examines the basic health and neurological status of the infant
2. 10 point
scale:
a. 9-10 excellent
b. 7-8: okay
c. 5-6 points: at high risk
d. 3-4 points: emergency
e. below 3 points: critical
C. 2nd test: Brazelton test of
reflexes:
1. blink
2. knee
jerk or patellar reflex: knees ( and elbows) should respond to a sharp tap
3. Palmar
or Darwinian or hand grasp: babies hang on to anything that goes across or in
their hand
4. Babinski
reflex: flex toes when the bottom of their foot is tickled
5. Moro or
startle reflex:
a. throw arms out, then tuck them in
b. turn their heads
c. curl
d. (scream)
6.
Stepping and swimming reflex
a. If upright- they step
b. If on belly: they swim (up to 4 months of age)
7. Rooting
and sucking reflex: turn towards anything that brushes their cheek, latch on and
suck on it
IV. Physical development
A.
Development occurs: cephalocaudal
1.
head to toe
2.
gross to fine motor movements
3.
babies triple their birth weight and walk in first year
B..
developmental differences
1.
gestational age when born
2.
stimulation and environment makes a difference
3.
individual differences\
C. developmental milestones
1. fairly
set sequence
2. mean
ages we use as guidelines for determining problems
3. kids
tend to work on one task to the neglect of others
back to top
7/31/07 More Development
I. Language
A. Language
1. Symbolic
system
2. Serve 4
functions
a. Instrumental: using language results in a behavior from another
organism
b. Stimulus for a chain of behaviors
c. Means of communicating ideas with others of your kind
d. Conveys meaning of abstract concepts
B. Several basic parts or units of language
1.
Phonemes: basic unit of sound
a. Phonics
b. Most adults produce about 100 phonemes
c. Developmental process:
i. Babies babble with many phonemes, not language specific
ii. Sounds change over first year to be consistent with their primary
language(s)
d. English has about 45 phonemes
e. Phonemes differ by language: cultural differences
2.
Morphemes: smallest unit of MEANING
a. Usually consists of at least 2 phonemes
b. Exceptions: “I” and “a”
c. Prefixes and suffixes: -ing; -s
3. Syntax:
rules for combining phonemes and morphemes
a. Grammar
b. Rules for words
c. Rules for sentences, paragraphs, etc….
4. Semantic
content
a. Perhaps most important
b. Word meaning
c. Word meaning changes over time
d. Word emphasis changes meaning
II. Language development
A. language progression
1. sounds
the baby makes change over time
2. slow
emergence of language
3. at
birth: babies communicate
a. cry: three distinct cries
b. pain cry: sharp, loud, fast
c. hunger/discomfort cry: loud, warm up sequence to it, speeds up as
intensity grows
d. fuss cry: slight discomfort, low intensity, not as loud
e. control eye contact
4. 2 mos:
coo
a. Vowel sounds
b. Social interactions
c. Adults react to the cooing: move to baby’s level, voices rise in
pitch, speak softly, and face softens
5. 4-6
months: add consonants to vowels
a. Dada and baba; learn dada= daddy
b. Mama doesn’t come till 6-7 months
c. True babbling
6. 12
months: first word
a. Usually an important object in their life or an action word
b. Mother’s ear: only family can understand
c. Should have 5-10 words
7. 18-20
mos: telegraphic speech
a. 2 word utterances
b. Carry meaning
c. Functional but have no extra words
d. Go car; bye daddy; me ball
8.
Functional language by age 3 to 4 years:
a. Sentence development: 3 to 5 word sentences
b. Overgeneralization errors: over use grammar rules
i. I walk, I walked
ii. I run, I runnded
iii. 1 cat, 2 cats; 1 mouse, 2 mouses
C. Theories of language
1. Nature
viewpoint: language is innate
a. Noam Chomsky
b. Language is hard wired in brain, just have to let kids express it
2. Nurture:
language is learned
a. B.F. Skinner
b. Kids must be taught to use language
3.
Evidence: experiments
a. Case studies: kids who are not exposed to language in early childhood
do not ever learn language
b. Animals: teach animals OUR human language
i. Washoe: chimp who learned ASL
ii. Koko the gorilla: ASL
iii. Premack: computer generated programs at Yerkes
c. Examining animal language:
i. Evidence of infant development
ii. Phonemes, morphemes, syntax and semantics
iii. Little abstract
III. Cognitive development
A. Piagetian development
1. Jean
Piaget: first child development theorists to gather data
a. No experimentation
b. Just observed kids
2.
Cognition = active process
a. Act of knowing
b. Acquiring information
c. Thinking
d. Imagining
e. Creating and problem solving
3. Stage
theorist: “all kids go through the same stages at the same time and same order”
(Piaget was a little rigid)
4. Child’s
job: organization and adaptation
B. Assimilation and accommodation
1.
assimilate: take new information and assimilate or organize it into existing
schemas
a. add another example to your existing schema or concept
b. “dog”: brown dog, now add white dog
2.
accommodation: take new information and it changes our existing schema or
concept: adapt or change our definition
a. see a “dog”; mom says, “no, it’s a cat”
b. add a category of “cat”
C. Stages of cognitive
development
1. Sensori
motor development:
a. Birth to about 2
b. Integrate and build on their reflexes
c. Cause and effect
d. Object permanence:
i. Out of sight does not mean it doesn’t exists
ii. Steps: initially- no permanence; then partially cover, then cover,
then move object
2.
Preoperational period:
a. Preschool years: ages 2 to about 6
b. Transition in thinking
c. Ego centric:
i. Believe the world revolves round them: they are the center of the
universe
ii. Self = everyone else
iii. Believe that inanimate objects have feelings
d. Important language steps:
i. Symbolic functioning: get symbols and language
ii. Deferred imitiation
iii. Symbolic play
e. Mental operations:
i. Begin to classify objects
ii. Very concrete
iii. Can’t manipulate numbers mentally
iv. No reversibility of set
v. No reciprocity
vi. No conservation
vii. Rudimentary seriation
3. Concrete
operations: age 6 to about 11 or 12
a. Less egocentric and may become “bleeding heart liberal”- very
empathetic
b. Gain better control of mental operations:
i. Mental capacity to do math (but not abstract)
ii. Have reversibility of set
iii. Have conservation
iv. Begin to do experiments and higher writing
4. Formal
operations:
a. Ages 11 or 12 through adulthood
b. Only about 75-80% of the population masters this stage
c. Deal with the abstract
i. Higher math
ii. Theoretical concepts
iii. Logic; reasoning
d. Flexibility in thinking
e. Thinking styles
i. Pessimistic thinkers: expect the worse to happen
ii. Optimistic thinkers: expect the best to happen
IV. Social development
A newborns
1. Even at
birth: social
a. Turn to familiar voices
b. Prefer mom’s and dad’s face
c. Imitate facial expressions
d. By 6-7 weeks: first social smile
e. Crying as communication
f. Erik Ericson: trust vs. mistrust in infancy
2. Develop
2 important fears:
a. Stranger anxiety
b. Separation anxiety
c. Forms the basis for attachment
B. Attachment
1. strong
and enduring bond between two humans: love
2. critical
period for attachment: first 3 years of life
3. the two
fears develop across several months: stages
a. preattachment phase: 0-2 mos
1. any caretaker will do
2. want: love and comfort
b. Initial attachment phase: 2-6-8 months
i. Around three months: recognize familiar/unfamiliar people
ii. Puzzlement but no fear; wariness
c. 6-8 months: strong attachment
i. Now the two fears come out in force
ii. Separation anxiety: being separated from caretaker
iii. Stranger anxiety is fear of strangers (kids’ point of view)
iv. Social referencing: look at
parent to judge the reaction
d. Fear dissipates and then comes back at 12 mos, 18 mos and about 2
years
4.
Different KINDS of kids in terms of attachment:
a. Test: strange situation test
b. 90% of children are securely attached: strong 2 fears, use parents as
anchors
c. 7% of kids: anxiously attached
i. Nervous nellies
ii. Cry when parent leaves, but never seem completely comfortable in
strange situation
d. Relatively rare: avoidant attached kid: show no attachment to any
adult
i. Avoid caretaker when afraid
ii. Show inappropriate comforting techniques
iii. Signal of a problem:
1. Kid: autism or other developmental problem
2. Parent: depression or drug/alcohol abuse
C. Research on attachment:
1. Animal
studies: Harry Harlow
a. Behavioral researcher working with rhesus monkeys in the 1950’s
through 1980s
b. Wanted to show that attachment was only due to need for food
c. Separated newborn monkeys from mom
i. Alone in the cage
ii. Wire mother only (food)
iii. Wire mother (food) + terry cloth mom
d. Results:
i. Alone babies mostly died before adulthood
ii. Wire only: severe developmental problems
iii. Wire + cloth: severe but not as severe developmental problems
iv. Cloth mom was used as comfort
v. Not only is food important, but physical comfort and contact is
critical for development
2. Human examples:
a. Bowlby
studies: orphanages right after WWII
i. Infants who were picked up and carried developed b etter than those
who weren’t
ii. Stimulation: mobiles, mittens, etc., improve development
iii. Today: Chinese vs. Eastern European orphanages
b. Prison
study: compared babies of prisoners who were allowed to stay in prison with mom
vs. those put in orphanage
c.
Premature and ill babies:
i. Cut mortality rate by almost 50% by allowing sick babies to be
touched: kangarooing
ii. Grandparent program: hire senior citizens
3. Data show humans need:
continuity of care and consistency of care
V. Adolescence and adulthood
A adolescents
1. Two
major characteristics
a. Idealistic rebellion: they are going to fix the world
b. Ego centricism: they are self centered- feel they are on stage (even
in a bad way)
2.
Parent/adolescent conflicts
a. Parents are reflecting on their lives, losing sexuality
b. Adolescents are preparing for their future and beginning their sexual
path
c. Crises:
i. Parents want to cling, keep kids near
ii. Kids want to get away from family- autonomy
iii. Parents who are jealous; competition
iv. Emotional adjustments on the part of both- parents must take lead
B. dating and friends
1.
preschool years: same sex friends or whom ever is nearest
2. grade
school : opposite sex is “bad”
3. late
grade school/middle school/junior high: interest in opposite sex
a. groups of mixed gender
b. little individual pairing off
4. By
high school: begin to pair off
a. Several purposes to dating
i. Recreation
ii. Companionship
iii. Status’
iv. Personal and social growth
v. Sexual exploration
vi. Mate selection
vii. Intimacy
b. Late adolescence/early adulthood
i. Pair off more permanently
ii. Longer relationships
iii. Eventually: marriage
1. Average age women: 24
2. Average age men: 26
D. adulthood
1. adults
need socialization and attachment as well
2. not just
for sex, also for intimacy
3. early in
marriage: developing the pattern for intimacy
4. what
makes a happy marriage: like each other
5. children
come along: disrupt the intimate relationship:
a. like having another boy friend or girl friend move in on your spouse
b. pre child: in a fire you save your spouse; post child: in a fire you
save- the baby
c. relation with spouse becomes different
6. Late
in life: alone again
a. Elderly are very lonely
b. Older folk need love and comfort as much as babies
c. Most senior citizens are sexually active
d. Even old people need to be hugged
back to top
8/2/07 Social Psychology and Stress
I. Social Psychology
A. Social psych
1. Instead
of studying individuals, you study groups of people
2.
Sociology is interested in the behavior of the group
3. Social
psych is interested in the behavior of the individual within the group
B. Social behavior is
1.
Homogenous
2. Why?
a. Random chance
b. Disposition (personality) plus affiliation: like people hang out
together
c. Social influence
C. Social perceptions:
1. How we
decide that people have certain qualities
2.
Impressions of others
a. First impressions are critical- first impression “sets” how you think
about someone long term
b. Primacy effect
c. Recency effect
3. Schemas:
a. Collection of concepts and impressions about someone or something
b. Social schema
c. Schema about a group influences your impression about an individual
from that group
D. Attributions
1. Place
causes on individual behavior
2. 2 basic
attributions
a. Dispositional: part of the person
b. Situational: the cause is from the situation or environment
3. Several
ways to attribute causes
a. Social desireability
b. Non normative effects: is it unusual for that person’s group?
c. Non common effects: is it unusual for that person
d. Free choice
4. Three
major errors that humans make:
a. Fundamental attribution error:
i. Your good behaviors = dispositional
ii. Your bad behaviors = situational
iii. Other’s good behavior: situational
iv. Other’s bad behavior = dispositional
b. False consensus bias: we think that others agree with us!
c. Illusion of control:
i. After a bad experience- we feel we should have prevented it
ii. We attribute a higher degree of control to our behavior than we
really have
5.
Explanation for illusions:
a. Being aware of internal feelings/emotions/thoughts
b. Actors vs observers
i. Actors acted out a scene of violence
ii. Both actors and observers were asked to make attributions as to why
the violent person was violent
iii. Observers: dispositional
iv. Actors: situational
E. Attitude
1. Attitude
is your working schema about something
2.
Attitudes can
a. Alter behavior
b. Elicit behavior without thinking: automaticity
c. Change with changes in social situation
3.
Attitudes are important because
a. Increase understanding of a situation
b. Social identification
c. Social adjustment
d. Impression management
e. Value expression
f. Ego-defensive
4.
Cognitive dissonance
a. Behavior and attitude disagree
b. Creates a discomfort
i. Physical comfort
ii. Psychological discomfort
c. One or other has to change:
i. Which ever one is stronger
ii. Which ever one is more supported by the social group
5.
Different ways to manipulate attitudes and schemas
a. Elaboration likelihood model: two routes
i. Central route:
1. Use on motivated people
2. Directly work on attitude
ii. Peripheral route
1. Unmotivated people
2. Indirect: make the change attractive
b. Two procedures or approaches
i. Foot in the door effect: start small and work your way up
ii. Door in the face effect: start ridiculous and get more reasonable
II. Altruism and helping behavior
A. Altruism
1.
helping others for no apparent gain to yourself
a. interesting assumption among biologists and many psychologists:
optimizing organisms
b. Optimizing organisms work for the most gain for the least effort
c. Why altruism?
d. We probably don’t: altruism can occur on a group level
B.
Bystander intervention
1. Altruism
is a bystander intervening or helping someone else
2. Kitty
Genovessee (1964): murdered in plain sight of hundreds of people
3.
Replicate in the lab: simulation
a. Usually is a smoking room
b. People waiting: some of them are confederates (they are data takers)
4. When do
people act:
a. When they perceive they have authority
b. When children are involved or other people who are deemed “at risk”
c. People are more likely to save people who look like themselves
d. To increase the likelihood of a taking action: make a connection
between the individual who is threatened and ourselves
C. Conformity and
compliance
1.
Compliance is obeying another’s command
a. How compliant you are depends on how much authority you think the
commander has
b. Milgram compliance study
i. 1963
ii. Teacher and a learner (learner was a confederate)
iii. Teacher shocked the learner each time an error was made (or so the
teacher thought)
iv. Examining compliance: 65% of people killed the learner (or so they
thought)
v. Milgram’s authority over the students: replicated it with gang
members- no compliance
2. Comply
with a group
a. Follow the group and behave like they do
b. Conformity: you don’t want to stick out of your group- belongingness
c. Asch: line study;
d. Stanford Prison study:
i. 24 male Stanford undergrads
ii. Week long experiment
iii. Simulate a prison in the classroom wing: prisoners and guards:
RANDOMLY assigned
iv. Students began to act their roles
v. Stop the experiment after 2 days
D. .
prejudice and discrimination
1.
prejudice is a negative and unjustifiable and inflexible attitude about someone
or something
2.
discrimination: BEHAVIOR based on the prejudice
3. in
groups vs out groups
a. ingroup is your group
1. attitudes and beliefs are positive about your group
2. defend our ingroup
b. outgroup = other guys
1. attitudes and beliefs are generally negative about the outgroup
2. protect ourselves from the out group
c. when resources tighten and competition
increases, the tension between ingroups and out groups increases
4. How change?
a. Reduce
frustration and scape goating
b. Reduce
the differences between in groups and outgroups
i. Make them likeable to eachother
ii. Start early before the schemas are set
c. Blue
eye/brown eye study
III. Stress
A. Behavioral medicine
1. New area
for psychology
2.
Prevention rather than intervention
3. Help
people be healthy rather than ill
B. Stress:
1. Stress
is a reaction to demands placed on you
2. Physical
and psychological (body doesn’t care!)
3. Complex
interaction between physiology and your mental state
4. Involve
your fear-flight-fight system (sympathetic nervous system)
5. All
stress can be bad
a. Eustess = positive
b. Distress = negative
c. All can hurt you
C. Hans Selye: first to identify
“stress”
1. General
Adaptation syndrome or GAS
2. Three
stages:
a. Alarm stage: short term, days to weeks
b. Resistance stage: weeks to years: chronic stress stage
c. Exhaustion: collapse and even death
3.
Richard Lazurus: redefined GAS to a more cognitive interpretation
a. Thoughts and attitudes make or break the reaction to stress
b. Our own cognitions interact with physical stress and make it better or
worse
c. Cognitive appraisal or framing of the stressor
D. Ways to cognitively appraise our
stress:
1. Holmes
and Rahe stress scale
a. Listing of life events and “points” total
b. Anything over 100 increases your risk of injury or illness by 50%
c. Anything over 300 is critical
d. It’s the little stressors that add up that can impact your stress
levels
2. Coping
mechanisms
a. Primary appraisal style:
1. How decide if it is a stressor
2. Internalizer or externalizer
b. Secondary appraisal: how you deal with it
1. Support system?
2. Outlets to resolve your anxiety and stress? Recreation
3. Internalizing and anxiety: worry
4. Type A vs Type B individuals
a. Type A person is driven
1. More agitated
2. Can’t sit still, have to be active
3. Have more stress related health problems
b. Type B person is laid back
1. Less agitated, rarely angry
2. Relaxed, not worrying
3. Fewer health problems
D. Health Effects of stress
1. immune
reaction: your body reacts immunological reaction to stressors
a. psychoimmunology
b. when stressed:
1. brain chemicals: NE, Ach, DA; serotonin is often reduced
2. corticosteroids are increased and released in mass amounts
2. these 2
reactions result in an immune reaction
a. lymphocytes- T-cell release are activated
b. attach to antigens which are markers for intrusion cells
3. With stress: body overacts
initially, then underracts
a. Identify normal cells as intruders
b. Uses up all the lymphocytes/T-cells so your immune system is depleted
c. Autoimmune disorders:
1. Disorders where the immune system attacks the body
2. M.S.
3. Asthma
4. Fibromyalgia
5. Schleroderma
6. Allergies
7. Lupus
d. Wear out our bodies
1. Sympathetic nervous system arousal: increased heart rate, BP,
respiration, etc.
2. Wear out heart, lungs, stomach, etc.
a. Heart disease
b. Diabetes
c. Lung disorders
3. Opportunist disease
a. Cancer
b. More susceptible to diseases
4. Less able to fight off the invasive disease
F. Coping mechanisms
1. Identify
our stressors
a. Correctly ID source of stress
b. Correctly ID the type of stress
1. Changeable
2. Unchangeable
2. Deal with it
a. Changeable: get rid of the stressor
b. Unchangeable: learn to cope
1. Offset the stress with a healthy lifestyle
2. Learn to relax
3. laughter
back to top
8/6/07 The minor disorders and
Depression/Bipolar disorder
I. Mental Illness or Psychopathology
A. Beware of medical student
syndrome
1. After
reading about a disorder, you are sure you have it!
2.
Difference between a “normal” person and one with a disorder is the magnitude
and frequency of symptoms
3. Older
terms of neurosis vs. psychosis
a. Not used today
b. Neurotic individuals know that there is something odd about their
behavior
c. Psychotic individuals have a break from reality and are unaware that
their behavior is radically different
B. How do we define psychopathology?
1. Mind or
brain pathology or disease
2. Even the
title implies a disease or disorder
3.
Statistical model: behavior is outside the normal distribution of behavior
4. Social
desireability model: behaviors are outside societal norms
5. Self
help model: are the behaviors interfering in that person’s life
6. Medical
model: you are ill, or have a disease process
C. Where the cause for the psychopathology comes from
1.
Psychoanalytic model
a. Problem with your ego defending against the id and superego
b. Result of defense mechanisms
c. Talk therapy approach
2..
Cognitive behavioral approach
a. Have abnormal thoughts and behaviors
b. Reinforcers have been inappropriate or reinforced inappropriate
thoughts and behaviors
c. Treatment is going to be talk and behavior
3.
Humanistic therapies
a. Injured psyche
b. Haven’t been able to develop full potential
c. Help guide you to existential full potential
d. Talk therapy- focus is on you
4. Organic
perspective: medical model
a. Assumption: you have a disease or disorder in your brain
b. Diathesis stress model:
i. Takes the disorder process
ii. PLUS stressors
iii. Equals disease or psychopathology
D. DSM-IVR
1.
Diagnostic and statistical manual, 4th edition revised
a. Produced by the American Psychiatric association
b. Committee
2. Divide
your mental illness along three axes:
a. Axis I: primary diagnosis (-es)
b. Axis II: contributing disorders: physical or mental disorders (mental
retardation)
c. Axis III: more contributing factors, more likely psychosocial
3.
Functional level: level of functioning scale- given a number which suggests your
daily living ability
II. Anxiety disorders
A. Anxiety
1. Sense of
impending doom or dread
2. Afraid
that something bad is going to happen
3. Physical
symptoms: Sympathetic nervous system arousal
4. last at
least 1 month
5. 6-10% of
population has general anxiety at any 1 time
6. Most
people will have one or more episodes in their life
B. Panic disorder
1. Advanced
anxiety
2. 4 or
more panic attacks within a 28 day period
3. 1-2% of
population at any one time has the disorder (most if not all people will have at
least 1 panic attack)
4. Attack
of anxiety:
a. Overwhelming tremendous feeling of fear
b. Feelings of heart attack/asmtha attack, other physicial symptoms
c. Feel like you will die
d. May or may not be situation specific
C. agoraphobia
1. Fear of
“open” places
2. Fear of
having a panic attack
3. Avoid
any place where you might have had a panic attack
4. Intense
fear of any place
5. 1% of
population
D .simple phobias
1. Afraid
of a specific situation or thing
2.
Irrational fear and you know it is irrational
3.
15% of population has a clinically significant phobia at any one time- interfere
in your daily life
4. Learned
or modeled
E. Social phobias
1. Fear of
social setting
2. Public
speaking
3.
Performance anxiety
4. More
common in men than women: bathroom anxiety
F. Obsessive compulsive disorder
1.
Outgrowth of an anxiety disorder
2. Defense
against anxiety
3.
Obsession: pervasive thought
4.
Compulsion: pervasive and repetitive action
5.
Ritualized and rigid thinking
6. Often
includes counting or superstitious behavior
7. Engage
in the behavior to keep the bad away
G. Post traumatic stress disorder
1. Observed
in people who have experienced a profound trauma
2. Classic
symptoms
a. Re experience the event
b. Avoid stimuli that remind them of the event
c. General numbing of affect
d. Hyper aroused: trigger happy to noise, strong startle
e. Symptoms must persist for at least 1 month after the event
III. Dissociative disorders
A dissociative disorder
1. You diss-
associate from reality
2. Part of
you or situationally you separate yourself from the situation
3. Usually
in reaction to a trauma
B Psychoenic amnesia
1. Most
common of the uncommon dissociative disorders
2. Sudden
loss of memory
3. Loss of
memory for the event itself or time period around the event
4.
Repression
5.
Protective for the individual
a. Often memories come back slowly over time
b. Sometimes memory floods
c. Not due to physical memory decay- no brain “damage”
C Psychogenic fugue
1.
Combination of amnesia with flight
2. Lose
yourself and you run away
3. NO
planning or foresight
4. Take on
a new identity
D. Multiple personality disorder
1.
controversial: not sure whether this exists or not
2.
individual develops separate personalities that may or may not know about the
others
3. Sybil,
etc. were fake
4.
isolating the trauma and particularly the abuse
a. one personality is abused and suffers the consequences
b. develop a second personality that IS NOT abused and doesn’t feel the
effects
IV. Somatoform disorders
A. body
disorders
1
abnormality about how you view your body
2 very real
symptoms but not always with a known physical cause
B.
somatization disorder
1. Second
in pervasiveness across the population to anxiety
2. Stress
disorder
3.
Individuals with physical complaints but the symptoms are due to stress
a. Head ache
b. Stomach ache
c. Digestive disorders
d. Back pain
C. hypochondriasis
1.
individual is fearful of getting a disease
2. reader’s
digest disorder
3. problem
is the fear of getting the disorder and the treatment seeking behavior
4. bizarre
form: Munchhausen’s by Proxy
a. munchhausen: make yourself sick for attention
b. by proxy: make a family member, typically child ill and then save them
D. conversion disorder
1. disorder
in which the individual has a developed a nonworking limb or sensory organ
2. leg or
arm or eyes don’t work
3. NO known
cause, defies medical logic
4. glove
anesthesia
5. la belle
indifference- they don’t care
6. occurs
after a traumatic event, it may be a form of repression or self punishment
V. Personality disorders
A.
definition
1
malfunctioning personalilty
a. Odd or eccentric
b. Maladaptive
c. Interfering in your life or other’s life
2 problem:
unless the individual is bothered, there is no impetus to get better
3. Grouped
around clusters or groups of behaviors and symptoms
a. Highly rigid in personality characteristics
b. Resistant to change
c. Poor prognosis
B eccentric or odd cluster
1. Paranoid
personality
a. Your are suspicious of others and think everyone is out to get you
b. Mistrustful and envious
c. Hypersensitive
d. Difficulty getting along with others
e. Avoid emotions and intimacy
2. Schizoid
personality
a. Cold, aloof, socially isolated
b. Frazier Crane
c. Humorless and indifferent to praise and criticism
d. Trouble forming intimate relationships
3.
Schizotypal personality
a. Border line schizophrenia
b. Social isolation, often a- motivational
c. Very self centered or egocentric
d. Oddities or eccentricities in thought, perception, speech or behavior
C dramatic emotional and erractic cluster
1
histrionic personality
a. overly dramatic
b. self indulgent
c. manipulative and inconsiderate
d. self centered
e. dependent on others
2
narcissistic personality
a. grandiose sense of self importance
b. pre-occupied with fantasies of their greatness
c. childish demands for attention
d. like to be center of attention
D. odd but potentially dangerous category
1.
antisocial personality disorder
a. no conscience
b. lack the ability to know right from wrong other than getting caught
c. life history of issues
1. early contact with law
2. three important “markers”
a. animal torture
b. fire setting
c. bed wetting
d. most people with sociopathic tendencies find a job that supports their
tendencies
2.
borderline personality disorder
a. usually a combination of many personality disorders
b. overwhelming characteristic is a need for attention
c. depression and moodiness
d. impulsive and act out
VI. Affective disorders
A. mood
disorders
1.
problems regulating your mood
2.
abnormally high or low moods
3.
typically three diagnoses
a. depression
b. mania
c. bipolar disorder
B mania
1. rare
2.
typically diagnosed as schizophrenia rather than just mania
3. abnormal
highs
a incredible energy
b lack of sleep
c delusions: grand plans
d flight of ideas: they think like they are on speed
4. levels
of mania
a. hypomania: low level
i. extroversion, uninhibited
ii. overly confident, but lack skills to go with confidence
iii. dominate conversation
iv. unreliable
b. acute mania:
i. attempt to display your “superior” abilities
ii. defensive when thwarted
iii. engage in bizarre behavior
iv. become delirious- experience hallucinations
c. psychotic mania
i. psychotic
ii. not connected to reality
iii. experience delusions and hallucinations
iv. no sleep, no eating, they just running
C depression
1. basic
symptoms
a. prolonged feeling of sadness (at least 1 month)
b. low self esteem
c. sense of worthlessness
d. seeking death
e. eating/sleeping disturbances
f. agitation
g. difficulty concentrating
h. any age
2. levels
of depression
a. dysthymia:
i. low mood
ii. low level depression
iii. typically there is a known cause
iv. tends to resolve itself
b. simple depression
i. most of the symptoms
ii. may or may not be a known cause
iii. still engage in most daily life activities, but lost enjoyment
c. acute depression
i. begin to show inactivity and withdrawal
ii. daily life begins to be disrupted
iii. episodes of inappropriate affect
iv. most suicidal
d. depressive stupor
i. lose most behavior
ii. completely withdraw
iii. typically curl up in fetal position and just lie there
3. two
causes
a. reactive depression
i. environmental
ii. reacting to a terrible situation in your life
iii. resolveable
b. endogenous depression
i. familial if not genetic
ii. family clusters
iii. diathesis stress model: a bad situation turned on the depression
iv. long term
D. Bipolar disorder
1. have
episodes of mania and depression
2.
generally, the shifts are months or more apart, even just be one shift
3. onset in
late teens/early 20’s
4. family
history typically
5. most
individuals tend to be more depressed or more manic
6.
treatment is interesting:
a. appears to be a regulatory disorder in the brain, much like diabetes
b. don’t produce right levels of DA and serotonin
c. treatment is to alter the tonicity in the extracellular fluid in the
brain
1. Lithium chloride
2. antiseizure medication
3. during a depressive episode, may want concurrent treatment with a low
level antidepressant
back to top
8/7/07 Schizophrenia
I. Schizophrenia
A. Definition
1. This is
NOT split personality disorder or multiple personality disorder
2.
Schizophrenic has ONE personality
3. Split
from reality
4. Most
debilitating and least treatable of all mental disorders
a. About 2% of the population
b. Cross cultural
c. Suggests that this may be a genetic defect
d. Age of onset is late teens early 20’s: most likely time to see first
breakdown is frosh/soph year in college
5. Extreme
disruptions in thoughts, emotions and behaviors
6.
Distinguish from other disorders by behavior pattern:
a. Lack of contact with reality
b. Split between thoughts and emotions
c. Extremely maladaptive behavior
d. Speech patterns
7.
Generally see a core of symptoms (primary symptoms) with secondary symptoms
a. Positive symptoms: addition of bizarre behavior
b. Negative symptoms: loss of normal behavior
B. Primary symptoms:
1. Negative
symptoms
a. Loss of affect
b. Develop amotivational syndrome: lose motivation
c. Loss of self help skills
2. Positive
symptoms
a. Disturbances of thought
b. Disturbances of perception
c. Disturbances of affect
3.
Disturbance of thought
a. Delusions: false beliefs which are not altered by contrary evidence
b. Delusions of grandeur: think they are very important people
c. Delusions of persecution: delusion that someone is trying to harm you
or get you
d. Somatic delusions:
i. Delusions of the body state
ii. Invisible, stomach is made of glass, etc.
e. Delusions of influence:
i. Believe that radios or TVs or other devices are sending messages to
them
ii. Others are controlling your behavior
f. Delusions of reference
i. Delusion that others are talking about you
ii. President includes you in his Presidential Address
g. Delusions of nihilism
i. Believe they are dead or an alien
ii. Delusion that reality doesn’t exist, there is their own reality
4.
Disturbances of perception
a. Hallucinations:
i. Most commonly are auditory: hear voices
ii. Tactile hallucinations: feel things crawling on them
iii. Less common are visual
b. Loosening of associations
i. Still some degree of logic
ii. Input is very bad
iii. Word salad: words are scrambled
iv. Clang associations: you can tell where the logic shifted
v. Neologisms
5. Loss of
affect
a. Slowly lose affect
b. Become expressionless and eventually catatonic
6.
Disturbances of speech
a. Develop echolalia: echo speech
b. Mutism in advanced stages
7. Social
withdrawal
a. Consequence than a cause
b. Prefer to be alone and away from social situations
c. Probably due to their inability to deal with social situations
C. Three stages of disease process
1.
Prodromal stage:
a. Early stages
b. Characterized by social withdrawal, flattened affect, poor motivation
c. Biggest cue: loss of self help skills
d. Typically late adolescence
2. Active
stage:
a. Typically results in a hospitalization
b. Major positive symptoms appear
c. Behavior is inappropriate, self destructive and represents a huge
change in personality
3. Residual
phase:
a. Remission
b. Symptoms have dissipated
c. Considered never cured
II. Types of schizophrenia
A diagnosis is more an art than a
science
1. General
symptoms that could also be many other problems
2.
Psychiatry and psychology are in their infancy….we don’t always have good ID and
treatment
B Paranoid schizophrenic
1. Paranoia
2. Fearful,
delusions of persecution
3. Often
have delusions of gradeur
4. Highest
functioning: most logical and have the best self help skills
5. Have a
potential for violence
a. Violence comes from defending themselves from the perceived
persecution
b. Reacting logically to an illogical threat
C. disorganized or hebephrenic schizophrenia
1.
loosening of associations
2. lack of
social skills/self care
3.
delusions and hallucinations are often sexual or religious
4.
infantile behavior
5. silly
D. Catatonic schizophrenia
1. advanced
stage, typically
2. extreme
psychomotor disturbances
a. no movement followed by
b. violent episodes
c. no warning
3.
catatonic stupor: remain stationary and even can show waxy flexibility
4. SIB:
self injurious behavior: hurt themselves and if thwarted, hurt you
5. can be
dangerous because of their unpredictability
E. Undifferentiated
1. Hell if
I know category
2. Many
symptoms of schizophrenia, but they are not clearly one type
F. Residual category
1. Addendum
to your diagnosis
2. Added to
your regular diagnosis, but indicates no active symptoms at the present time
III. Treatment options?
A first treatment: Medication
1. Know
that this disorder is the result of overactive DA system
a. Not sure if they are overproducing DA
b. If DA system is hypersensitive
c. Or other DA dysfunction
2.
Traditional treatment: typical antipsychotics
a. Thorazine, mellaril, serentil, navane
b. Reduce DA in the brain
c. Produces reduction in symptoms
3. Problem
with typical antipsychotics: Tardive dyskinesia
a. Develop parkinson’s like symptoms
b. Tremors, pillrolling, shuffle
c. Affect speech, lip movements, eatng and drinking
d. It is likely permanent
e. Diarrhea, stomach upset, head ache and thinking is slowed, sleepy
4. Atypical
antipsychotics
a. Risperidone/risperidal, clonopine, olanzapine, etc.
b. Act more directly on the DA neuron
c. Side effects are just as bad if not worse:
i. Take longer to appear
ii. Same as a typical
iii. Decimates white blood cells
B. alternative
1.
cognitive behavior therapy WITH drug treatment
2.
schizophrenics have an absence of social skills: lack appropriate behavior
a. during a critical time in young adulthood/late adolescence, the
symptoms appeared
b. never learned “normal”
c. replace and teach appropriate coping skills
3.
Diathesis stress model: being stressed elicits another active stage of
schizophrenia
back to top
8/8/07 Treatment of Mental Illness
I. Treating mental illness and mental disorders
A. modify our language
1.
difference between
a. individuals seeking treatment for a specific adjustment issue
b. individuals with full blown mental illnesses
2.
therapies will differ depending on the level of needs
a. short term therapy
b. longer term therapy
c. permanent basis therapy
B. Who does therapy?
1.
psychologist
a. licensed counseling or clinical psychologist
b. MS or MA: limited practice
c. PhD or PsyD
i. PhD is technically a research degree
ii. PsyD is a purely clinical degree
d. counseling or clinical
i. counseling: deals with less severe issues
ii. clinical deals with more severe
e. CAN NOT prescribe meds at this time
2.
Psychiatrist:
a. Medical doctor first
b. Specialization is in psychiatry
c. Generally 1 psychiatrist for a large number of psychologists in a
practice
d. Mostly prescribe drugs
3.
Social workers
a. Degree in social work
b. MSW most likely
c. Focus more on family dynamics
d. Cannot prescribe drugs
4. Psychiatric
nurses
a. MSN in psychiatric nursing
b. Usually in an inpatient setting
c. Can also do private practice
d. IF they are a licensed nurse practitioner, they can prescribe meds
5.
psychoanalyst:
a. any of the above
b. who gets specialized post-grad training in psychotherapy (Freudian or
neoFreudian) techniques
C. Where is therapy done?
1. mental
hospitals or mental health units (wards)
a. stand alone institution (state or private)
b. unit within a hospital setting
2.
mental health clinic
3. group
homes or halfway houses
4. private
offices
D. What happens when you go to
therapy?
1. initial
stage
a. develop a relationship with therapist (and the client)
b. assess symptoms and make a treatment plan
2. start
treatment
a. many different kinds
b. long term or short term depending on
i. treatment plan
ii. type of therapy
iii. type of problem
II. Types of therapies
A. Behavior therapies
1. focus on
changing observable and measurable behaviors
2. ABC’s of
behavior
a. Antecedents or precursors
b. Actual behavior
c. Consequences
d. History of the behavior
3.
rearrange the contingencies to support appropriate behavior
B. Cognitive therapies:
1. combined
behavior therapy focusing on thoughts rather than behavior
2. focus on
ABC’s
3. Albert
Ellis: Rational Emotive therapy or RET
a. Teach you to think rationally in emotional situation
b. Replace irrational coping strategies with rational coping strategies
4. three
strategies
a. self downing: put downs
b. hostility and rage
c. low frustration tolerance
5.
cognitive restructuring: reframe the problem
C. psychodynamic therapies or
psychoanalysis
1. insight
oriented: want to uncover issues in your unconscious
2. two
major techniques
a. dream analysis
i. latent content: symbolic meaning
ii. manifest content: concrete
b. free association:
i. client talks freely
ii. therapist’s job is to make meaning out of the talk
3.
problems that emerge particularly out of this kind of therapy
a. resistance: client refuses to discuss the problem or avoids the
problem
b. transferences:
i. client begins to feel towards the therapist the feelings they feel
about an important person in their life
ii. fall in love, hate, angry
c. counter-transference when the therapist has feeling back (if severe
counter transference, the therapist should end the relationship)
D. humanistic therapy
1. client
centered therapy
a. client has thwarted self actualization, therapist’s goal is to restart
the client on the path to self actualization
b. incongruence between their real self and their ideal self
2.
several critical techniques
a. genuineness
b. rephrasing technique
c. true interest in getting people better
d. empathy: understand client’s feelings
i. understand but not accept
ii. “I understand you felt angry, but it is not okay to hit people”
3.
Gestalt or confrontive therapy
a. Form of humanism
b. Confront the individual with their irrationalities
E. Pharmacology
1.
Schizophrenia
a. Most common and first approach is through drugs
b. Too much dopamine (we don’t know why, but its too much)
c. Antipsychotic drug
i. Thorazine or stellazine, navane, serentil
ii. Atypicals: newer drugs like respiridone (risperidol)
iii. Side effects: tardive dyskinesia- causes parkinson’s like effects
d. behavior and some cognitive therapy focusing on life skills and social
skills
2. Mood
disorders and primarily depression
a. Most common disorder
b. Wide acting drugs: ]
i. Affect norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine
ii. Elavil, amitrytalline
iii. Problem: wide acting
3. more
specific treatments
a. anxiety based depression: Serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors or
SSRI’s (prozac, lexapro, Zoloft)
b.
lack of energy based depression: NE: NSRI like effexor; welbutrin
c.
lack of motivation with lack of energy: DA agonist with NSRI
d.
other option: anxiolytic like valium, Librium, ativan (problem is that they are
highly addictive)
e. replace inappropriate coping responses with appropriate coping responses
f. http://www.crazymeds.org
: GOOD WEBSITE FOR READING ABOUT THESE DRUGS!
F. work on the brain
1. electro
convulsive shock therapy or ECT
a. only used for depression now
b. used to be used for schizophrenia and it was completely worthless
c. control-alt-del to the brain
2.
transcranial magnetic stimulation
a. electrical stimulator from chest to your brain
b. unit is implanted in your chest
c. when you feel depressed, you deliver a mild shock to your brain
d. also use for epilepsy
3. other
surgeries (Not used anymore in general)
a. frontal lobotomies
i. sever the connections between the frontal lobe and limbic system
ii. problem: lost ALL emotions
b. amygdalectomies or brain sectioning
G. other types of therapies
1. group
therapy: therapy conducted with a group of people
2. family
therapy: focuses on the family and NOT just the individual with the mental
illness
3. self
help groups
4.
combination therapies and in fact MOST therapists use a combination of
approaches
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OLD LECTURES
5/22/06 Introduction,
history and ethics
I. What is psychology?
A. Layperson’s definition?
1. study
human behavior
2. help
people with mental problems
3. study
animals and their behavior
4. treat
animals
B. psychology as a science
1. use
scientific procedures
2.
scientific method
a. first create an hypothesis
b. test the hypothesis
c. reformulate if you were wrong
3. rely
on empirical data
a. data that were obtained using the scientific method
b. not hearsay or personal experiences or common sense
4. moral
obligation to use our information to promote human and animal welfare
II. Where did psychology come from?
A. Philosophy, physiology, religion
1. an
attempt to explain WHY we behave the way we do
2. decide
what causes behavior
B. religious influences
1. stone
age practices of trephoning
a. trephoning is placing holes in your head to let evil spirits out
b. cause of “bad” behavior = evil spirits
2. Early
greek philosophers
a. Behavior = result of gods fighting
b. Zeus was mad at Aphrodite, and you got caught in the crossfire
c. The gods caused bad behavior
3. Early
American history:
a. Salem witch hunts
b. Why did kill the witch? Get rid of those evil spirits
4.
today:
a. exorcisms
b. language” the devil made me do it”
C. Natural causes of behavior
1.
Hippocrates (460-370 BC)
2.
questioned the belief that gods caused behavior
3. behavior
was caused by the balance of 4 humors or fluids in the body
a. blood:
i. too much blood: aggressive, oversexed
ii. too little blood: weak, wimpy, can’t make decisions
b. black bile: poop
i. too much: constipated
ii. too little: diarrhea
c.
yellow bile: liver function
i. too much: anxious, fearful
ii. too little: wimpy and not alert
d. phlegm:
i. too much mucous: stuffed up
ii. too little mucous (runny nose)
2.
Aristotle: father of western thought
a. divide the soul and psyche into two
i. mind
ii. physical body
b. these are ruled by different natural laws
D. Middle Ages
1. return
to religion as cause
2. all
psychological treatments are tied up in church dogma
3. monks
working on medicine and biology as an aside to the church
E. Renaissance
1.
philosophy breaks away from the church
2.
philosophy begins to address the causes of mental illness
3. in
particular- look for natural causes
4. Rene
DesCartes:
a. French
b. Reflex arc: nerve connection from extremity to the spinal cord
c. Dualist: believes that the mind is separate from the body
5.
British associationist or empiricists
a. You were born as a blank slate: Tabula Rasa
b. Everything must be learned
c. Mind = body
III. Zeitgeist in the 19th century
A. Zeitgeist
1. Huge
change in thinking
2. paradigm
shift
3. going
from DOS to Windows platform
B. Three important individuals
1. Karl
Marx:
a. Father of communism
b. First to study work environment and behavior
c. Made interesting assumption: everyone is equal
2.
Charles Darwin
a. Degree was in theology
b. Upper class: limited his work potential
c. “Origin of the species”
i. Bodies change over time
ii. Biological pressures that guide these changes: environment
iii. Fitness and survival
iv. Behavior as well as body shape and function are PURPOSEFUL
3. Sigmund
Freud
a. Medical doctor
b. Studied the unconscious
c. Studied the mind
d. Thoughts and feelings that are overt (hidden from view) may cause
behavior
C. first psychologist
1. Wilhelm
Wundt: 1878
a. Studied human experiences
b. Leipzig, Germany
c. Trained as a psychological researcher
2. then,
the fight began
IV. Systems of Psychology
A. Systems or schools of psychology
1.
philosophical camps
2. problem:
no right answer at the moment
B. Structuralism:
1.
structure of the mind and behavior
2. Wundt,
Titchner (first American)
3. study
the mind and its parts
4. today:
neuroscientists
a. study brain and its parts
b. map the brain
C. Functionalism
1. study
function
2. study
how the parts work together
3. study
WHY they work together
4. what is
the function of each part
5. highly
influenced by Darwin
D. Behaviorsm
1.
Behaviorsts want to make observations external
2.
observable events
3. in
studying the mind, how can we use scientific method?
4.
nonverbal behavior
5.
environment influences
E. Gestaltists
1. Gestalt
= the whole
2. mantra:
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
3. emphasis
was studying the whole organism, not just one part
. . . . . .
a six element line
.
.
.
. .
.
six elements but two triangles
F. Psychoanalysis
1. Freud,
his followers
2.
deterministic: you are what you are and can’t change it
3.
instinct: Eros and Thanatos
life
death
4. guided
by your unconscious
G. out of all of this emerges
some controversies
1. mind
body controversy
2. nature
and nurture
3. free
will and determinism
V. Controversies
A. Mind body
1. dualist
position: mind is separate from body
2. monist
position: mind = body
B. nature vs nurture
1. nature:
genetics
2. nurture:
environment, including womb
C. Free will vs determinism
1. free
will is the assumption that you are freely able to choose options
2.
determinism: pre destined due to genetics, environment, etc., to behave in a
certain way
Person has committed a crime
Person has a history of mental illness
Are they guilty?
VI. Ethical rules
A. General rights
1. right to
privacy
2.
voluntary participation
3. must
give consent
4. no
unjustified deception
5. cannot
cause lasting harm
6.
debriefing: must explain in detail the reasons for the experiment
B. animal rights
1. why
study animals: good model for humans
2. animals
at ISU?
a. Rats
b. Mice
c. Hamsters
d. Guinea pigs
3.
Institutional Animal Care and Use committee: IACUC
a. Oversees ALL animal use including the farm
b. ISU vet
c. Caretaker: animal technician
4.
guidelines
a. cannot inflict pain with out anesthesia
b. cannot restrict food/water without cause
c. environmental enrichment: toys and socialization if needed
C. human ethics committee: IRB
1.
institutional review board
2.
physician on the committee
3. ensure
human protection
4. must be
18 to give consent, under that and parents give consent
5. kids
give assent
6.
compromised population (prisoners, mentally ill): may need a legal guardian to
give consent
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5/23/06 Experimental methods, the
neuron and synaptic transmission
I. Experimental methods
A. Populations and samples
1.
population makes up all possible cases (hypothetical)
2. sample:
small portion of possible cases
a. random sample
b. representative sample
i. include set number of individuals from each cohort group
ii. of each type
B. Two kinds of research
1.
experimental research
a. use the scientific method
b. manipulate variables
2. quasi
experimental or non-experimental methods
a. use the scientific method
b. can’t randomly assign groups or adequately manipulate variables
c. cannot show causation
II. Non experimental or quasi experimental methods
A. naturalistic observation
1. observe
in natural habitat
2. don’t
generally manipulate the environment
3. just
watch
B. Case study
1. uses one
or a select few subjects or participants
2. special
case- the individual or individuals are unusual or rare
3. might
manipulate variables
C. Surveys
1.
questions answered by a sample of a population
2.
difficult to give well
3. quick,
easy and fairly nonintrusive
4. not
necessarily reliable
D. correlation used in the above
procedures
1.
establishing a relationship between 2 or more variables or things or events
2. in many
ways really just regression
3.
correlations range from -1.0 to 0 to +1.0
a. zero correlation means the variables are unrelated
b. -1.0 means as one goes up the other goes down
c. +1.0 means as one goes up the other goes up
4. does
NOT mean the one event caused another
III. Experimental methods
A. show causation
1. use the
scientific method
2.
manipulate variables
3. use
random assignment and control groups
B. Two kinds of variables
1.
independent variable: IV
a. what the experimenter manipulates or changes
b. changed variable
2.
dependent variable: DV
a. what the experimenter measures
b. measured variable
c. result of the IV
3.
effects of caffeine on test performance in early morning classes:
a. manipulated the number of cups of coffee: IV
b. measure: test scores are the DV
C. different treatment levels
1. control
group: gets nothing- serve as a baseline
2. several
levels of IV
3. placebo
effect: placebo group
a. special control group
b. thinks they got the treatment, but they got nothing
D. problems in research
1.
experimenter bias
a. experimenters should not take their own data
b. mechanical, or an unbiased observer
c. might influence the research
2.
demand characteristics from participants
a. they act like they think the researcher wants
b. take a screw you attitude
3.
single blind or double blind procedures
a. single blind: participant doesn’t know what is happening
b. double blind: both the researcher and the
c. participant are blind to the condition
4.
measurement problems: be sure you are measuring what you thought you were
measuring
Neuron slides
IV. Central Nervous System
A. Nervous system
1. central
nervous system
a. brain
b. spinal cord
2.
peripheral nervous system
a. everything outside brain/spinal cord
b. nerves in arms, legs, etc.
B. composed of various kinds of
cells
1. effector
cells: motor neuron cells: cells that contact muscles and joints and glands
2. affector
cells: sensory cells that receive info from rest of body
3. glial
cells: glue cells
4. neurons:
nerve cells
C. glial cells:
1.
primarily made of cholesterol
2. form the
glue and the insulation for neurons
3. hold
neurons in place
4. insulate
the axon of the neuron
5. multiple
sclerosis is an allergy to your own glial cells
6. in
peripheral nervous system glial cells form hard shells
7. in the
central nervous system glial cells form soft shell
8. glial
cells reproduce: where most brain tumors come from
D. The neuron
1.
dendrites:
a. hairlike projections off of the soma or cell body
b. receive information from other neurons
2. soma
or cell body
a. contains life
functions for the neuron
b. location where cell wall shifts
3. axon
hillock: or little hill of the axon
a. location where action potential will begin
b. where the axon connects to the soma
4. axon:
leg like projection off of the soma
a. where the action potential occurs
b. chemical is stored here
c. very long or very short
5. end
brush or terminal buttons
a. foot like projections off the axon
b. these are going to communicate with dendrites
c. don’t touch the dendrites
d. synaptic vesicles move down to here
6.
synaptic vesicles
a. little boats
b. water balloons
c. contain chemcicals called neurotransmitters
7.
synapse
a. space between presynaptic neuron’s terminal buttons and the
postsynaptic neuron’s dendrites
b. space between two neurons
8.
myelin sheath: glial cells wrapped around the AXON
9. space
between glial cells: Nodes of Ranvier
V. synaptic transmission
A. Resting potential
1.
potential = electrical charge of something
2.
electrical charge at rest: -70 mV
3. why:
which ions are inside or outside
4. inside
the cell:
a. anions: A-
b. potassium: K+
c. overall potential is slightly negative at -70mV
5.
outside the cell:
a. sodium: Na+
b. chloride: CL-
c. NaCl: saline or salt water
B. incoming message from another
neuron (terminal buttons)
1. message
is originally chemical (neurotransmitter)
2.
chemicals have charge
3. cell
adds up the incoming message: adds up all the positive and negative ions:
summation
4. IF and
ONLY IF it reaches the critical value, then the neuron will fire: action
potential
5. All or
None Law: the neuron fires only if it receives sufficient stimulation
6. neuron
experiences a huge flux and ion exchange across the cell walls
C. during an action potential
1. caused
by +100 mV change
2. starts
at axon hillock
3.
continues at each node of Ranvier
4. ions
exchange places:
a. Na+ and Cl- go in
b. K+ goes out
c. Then reverts to normal
5. axon
is temporarily at about +40 to +50mV
D. refractory period
1. neuron
reverts back to normal
2.
temporarily it overshoot and remains more negative
3. can’t
fire during refractory period
E. synaptic transmission
1. synaptic
vesicles are pushed down into the terminal buttons by this action potential
2. vesicles
smash up against the walls of the terminal button and burst
3. spill
neurotransmitter into the synapse
4. chemical
(neurotransmitter) moves across the synapse and attaches to the dendrites on the
next neuron cell
5. receptor
sites on the dendrites that are specific for each kind of neurotransmitter
F. clean up the synapse:
1. brain is
very efficient: it recycles: reuptake
2. enzymes
in the synapse eat up the extra NT
3. NT
attaches to the next dendrite and is used up
VI. Neurotransmitters
A. how neurotransmitters work
1. increase
the probability of an action potential: EPSP or excitatory postsynaptic
potential
2. decrease
the probability of an action potential: IPSP
3. this is
not necessarily the behavioral outcome
B. neurotransmitter
1. be made
in the axon
2. must be
contained in synaptic vesicles
3. must be
specific to a receptor site
4. must be
released during an action potential
C. Acetylcholine; ACh
1. made
from choline, comes from legumes
2.
primarily in CNS, target organs of the autonomic nervous system (heart, lungs,
etc.)
3.
important for memory
4. too
much: muscle contractions (atropine poisoning)
5. too
little: flaccid muscles: curarae
D. norepinephrine: NE
1.
noradrenalin by biologists
2.
epinephrine in the peripheral nervous system
3. acts in
both the periphery and the CNS
4.
primarily in CNS and around the heart and lungs
5.
important for arousal, and depression
6. if too
little: slowed, have difficulty learning, depression
7. if too
much: mania, heart arrhythmias and high blood pressure
8. Beta
blockers: common heart medication: block the beta receptor on the NE neuron
E. Dopamine: DA
1.
primarily CNS and autonomic organs (heart, lungs, etc.)
2. DA is
your motivation neurotransmitter: important for
a. Sex
b. Reward
c. Eating/drinking
d. Motivation activity
e. Addictions
3. too
little: Parkinson’s disease or parkinson’s like symptoms
a. 80% loss of neurons in substania nigra
b. More dopamine as a treatment: l-dopa
4. too
much: mania and psychosis (schizophrenia symptoms)
a. hallucinations, delusions
b. treatment: antipsychotics: anti-dopamine drugs
i. thorazine
ii. stellazine
iii. respiridol
iv. olanzapine
c.. side effect: parkinson’s like effects – tardive dyskinesia
F. serotonin: 5HT
1.
precursor or stuff it is made from is tyrosine and tryptophan- these are found
in cheese, dairy products and white meat
2.
serotonin is important for sleep and arousal
3. critical
for depression: controls some anxiety or anticipation circuts
4.
depression drugs:
a. elavil (works on DA, NE and serotonin)
b. paxil, lexapro, prozac……
c. SSRIs: serotonin reuptake inhibitors
G. GABA: gamma amino butyric
acid
1. mostly
in the brain
2.
inhibitory
3. reduce
anticipation and anxiety directly
4.
benzodiazepines mimic the action of GABA
a. valium
b. Librium
c. Antivan
H. Endorphins and enkephalins
1. pain
receptor neurotransmitters
2. all over
the body
3. released
in the brain- but the brain doesn’t feel pain, it processes pain
4. drugs
such as opiates mimic endorphins
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5/24/06 Brain Anatomy and Audition
Brain Anatomy Slides
Audition slides
I. Division of the Nervous system
A. CNS: central nervous system
1. brain
and spinal cord
2. brain:
a. best protected organ in the body
b. hard skull
c. first to get oxygen and nutrients
d. not size that matters- density
3. three
“skin” layers that cover the brain: meninges
a. dura
b. arachnoid
c. pia mater
4. brain
and spinal cord bathed in cerebral spinal fluid or CSF
5.
spinal cord is inside the vertebrae
a. two sides to spinal cord
i. afferent: sensory side
ii. efferent: motor side
b. many reflexive behaviors are processed here, including sexual
responses
6. the more
important the function, the more space in the brain is devoted to that function
B. The peripheral nervous system
1. somatic
nervous system
a. voluntary action system
b. controls primarily skeletal muscles
2.
autonomic system
a. automatic system
b. control visceral muscles: heart, lungs, intestines, glands, etc.
c. basically involuntary
3. two
divisions of the autonomic
a. sympathetic nervous system
i. expending energy
ii. fear, flight, fight system
iii. speed up heart, blood pressure, send blood to the muscles
iv. stops digestion and sexual behaviors
b. parasympathetic nervous system
i. save energy, conserve energy
ii. opposite of fear, flight, fight
iii. slow the heart, lungs, etc.
iv. responsible for digestion and sexual behaviors
v. sleep
II. The Brain
A. evolution of the brain
1. oldest
to the newest part of the brain from the back and inside to outside
2. as brain
develops, it goes through this evolution process
B. hindbrain (back underside)
1. medulla
oblongata
a. right above the spinal cord
b. regulate heart rate, digestion, breathing, basically most life
functions
c. nausea center: area postrema
2.
cerebellum: little brain
a. striated or striped tissue at the back, underside of the brain
b. integrates motor movements into fine and coordinated smooth movements
c. allows walking, dancing, writing
d. common site for damage from cerebral palsy
3.
reticular formation: (ascending reticular formation, etc….)
a. controls arousal
b. first sentry system for stimulation
c. gating mechanism that detects change
d. one of the problem areas for autism and attention deficit disorder
4. pons
a. bridge or pathway to higher areas of the brain
b. top of the hindbrain
c. begins to send right fibers to the right areas
C. Midbrain
1. in
humans is very small
2. startle
response
3. look or
turn to the direction of the stimulus
4.
beginnings of processing for hearing in particular
D. thalamus
1. major
relay center
2. exact
middle of the brain
3. all
sensory information EXCEPT smell is processed through here
E. Hypothalamus:
1. located
ventral or under the thalamus
2. control
most regulatory functions and most hormones via the pituitary gland
3.
responsible for the 4F’s
a. feeding behavior
b. fighting behavior
c. fleeing
d. sex
4.
control most hormones
a. exerts both neurotransmission functions in brain
b. acts on hormone system in the body
F. Corpus striatum
1. right
above the thalamus and hypothalamus
2. composed
of three parts
a. caudate nucleus
b. putamen
c. globus pallidus
3.
coordinate motor movements
4. begin
the motivation system
5.
substantia nigra is very near and connected as well
6. involved
in Parkinson’s disorder
G. Limbic System
1. wrap
around the thalamus and hypothalamus and between the corpus striatum
2. control
emotions
3. amygdala:
control center for emotions or decision center
4.
hippocampus: memory center for emotions
5. connect
to both hypothalamus and thinking parts of the brain
6. where
frontal lobotomies were performed
a. disconnect the forebrain from the limbic system
b. partially severe the limbic system from lower functions
III. Cerebrum or Cerebral cortex
A. two hemispheres
1. left
hemisphere that controls the right side of the body
2. right
hemisphere controls the left side of the body
3.
centralization of function
a. language is left hemisphere
b. spatial is right hemisphere
B. 4
lobes on each hemisphere
1. occipital lobe
2. parietal lobe
3. frontal lobe
4. temporal lobe
C. highly convoluted
1. lots of
ridges and valleys
2. valleys=
sulci
3. ridges=
gyri
4. allows
more tissue in less space
D. Parietal lobe
1. top of
the brain towards the back
2. sensory
cortex
3.
somatosensory integration area: coordination of body parts
4. sensory
neglect with damage to this area
a. neglect parts or areas of your body or sensory function
b. stroke: might neglect the damaged side of the body
E. Occipital lobe
1. vision
center
2. back of
your brain
3. vision
center is highly specialized
a. two different pathways from eyes
i. object pathway
ii. location pathway
b. really only need location pathway to react to visual stimuli
c. cortical blindness is brain damage that causes the blindness
F. Temporal lobe
1. hearing
or audition
2. left
hemisphere: Wernickes area
a. allows processing of language
b. understanding of language, not production
c. using or understanding the right words
3. cortical
deafness here: deaf because of the brain damage, not ear damage
G. Frontal lobe
1. two main
functions
a. motor function
b. thinking
2.
prefrontal area: decision or rational center- planning and foresight
3. Broca’s
area: speech production
a. Stuttering and speech disorders may occur with damage here
b. Can’t make the right sounds/words
c. Left hemisphere only
IV. Anatomy of the Ear
A. audition = hearing
1. hearing=
processing pressure changes
2. many
kinds of pressure changes
a. weather
b. altitude changes
c. colds, flus, allergies
d. sound
3.
loudness = intensity of the sound = decibels
a. psychological measure that correlates with physical measure
b. measure a sensation
c. most people can hear at 5 to 10 dB
d. painful sound starts at around 90dB
4. pitch
of a sound: frequency
a. highness or lowess of a sound
b. most people can hear a 20Hz sound
c. 250 Hz you being to feel the sound as well as hear it
5.
timbre:
a. harmonics or overtones of a sound
b. pitch + loudness combination
c. gives a unique voice to each instrument or human
B. ear parts
1. outer
most part: pinna
2. outer
canal: funnel sound
3. middle
ear
4. ear
drum: tympanic membrane
5. three
bones:
a. malleus, incus and stapes
b. bones push and pull and move around to help push air back
6. oval
window: oval opening in the bone
7. cochlea
a. snail shaped indentation in the skull
b. three chambers
i. vestibular membrane and semi-circular canals
ii. basilar membrane
iii. tectal membrane
C. cochlea processing “hearing”
1. air
pressure flows across the basilar membrane
2. hair
cells sticking up on the membrane
3. air
pushes the hair back and forth, which stimulates the hair cell, which stimulates
a neuron
D. vestibular membrane and
semicircular canals
1. process
gravity, pressure and movement
2. as fluid
in these areas move, tells you gravity (up or down), pressure and where you are
3. any
mixed signal between eyes and ears is processed as a “poison” signal- nauseous
E. two ways we hear
1. hair
cells can move in two ways
a. move or not move
b. move fast or move slow
2.
location model
a. only certain hair cells are stimulated by certain frequencies and
decibles
b. high frequencies: 400-20000 HZ individual hair cells move
3. at
low sounds: hair cells move at different speeds
a. most hair cells move, but at different speeds of waving
b. 20-200 hz
c. Frequency model
4. most
of the time: both happen
a volley principle
b. location changes with the sound
c. and the frequency of waving changes
V. hearing loss
A. three kinds
1.
conductive loss
a. the parts of the ear in middle or outer ear don’t work
b. sound isn’t conducted back to the cochlea
2.
sensorineural loss
a. cochlea is damaged
b. auditory nerve is damaged
3. mixed
loss
a. both conductive
b. and sensorineural
B. conductive loss
1. middle
or outer ear is damaged
2.
reduction in overall sound
3. causes
a. too much wax in your ears
b. punctured ear drum
c. calsification of three bones
d. foreign objects
e. malformations
f. ear infections
4.
treatment is augmentation of the sound: hearing aid
C. sensorineural loss
1. damage
to the cochlea or nerve
2. cannot
be “fixed”
3. loss
specific to certain sounds, not necessarily ALL sounds
4.
treatment: specially augment the sound
D. hearing loss
1. normal:
0 to 10 dB
2. mild:
20-40 dB
3. moderate
40-60
4. severe
60-80 dB
5. profound
loss: only hear 80dB or louder
E. augment your hearing
1. hearing
aids
a. analog: makes everything louder
b. digital aids: only make the programmed frequencies louder
2.
cochlea implant
a. nerve and sensorineural loss
b. implant on the cochlea itself
c. microprocessor to stimulate the nerve and bypass the cochlea
back to top
5/26/06 Vision and Perception
I.
Nature of Light
A.
light = electromagnetic radiation
1.
composed of photons
2.
travels in waves
3.
various wavelengths = psychological concept
of color
4.
all light mixed together = WHITE light
5.
a single wavelength of light = single color
6.
intensity of the light = brightness of color
B.
we see in the visual spectrum of
electromagnetic radiation
1.
not everyone sees the same wavelengths
2.
other animals see a slightly different range
C.
eye must convert electromagnetic radiation
into nerve impulses that are organized and make sense
1.
light goes through the eye onto the retina
2.
focus on the fovea
3.
cause a chemical reaction
4.
chemical reaction produces action potentials
in the nerve cells
II.
The Eye
A.
Parts
1.
cornea
a.
outer most part
b.
tough, transparent
c.deeply curved- bend the light to focus on
the fovea
d.
astigmatism is waffle-iron cornea
2.
aqueous humor: watery fluid
a.
pouch of liquid between the cornea and lens
b.
helps with irrigation and with pressure
3.
Iris and pupil
a.
Iris is the colored part of eye
b.
Striated muscle: sphincter muscle
c.Regulates the amount of light getting into
the eye
d.
Pupil: hole
4.
Lens
a.
Transparent and it is very tough
b.
Feels like a piece of fingernail
c.Change shape to focus light onto the fovea
i.
Far away: flattens
ii.
Near: rounds
iii.
Ciliary muscles that push and
pull the lens
d.
cataracts are cloudy or dying lens
i.
the fix- get new one
ii.
plastic ones!
5.
vitreous humor:
a.
large eye cavity
b.
fluid filled
c.irrigation and disposal system
d.
helps the eyeball keep its shape
6.
Retina
a.
Layer of skin on the back of the eye
b.
Contains actual light receptors
i.
Rods: black and white vision
ii.
Cones: color vision
c.rods:
i.
rod shaped
ii.
many rods to 1 ganglion
(nerve) cell connection
d.
cones:
i.
cone shaped
ii.
one cone to one ganglion
connection
iii.
concentrated in the fovea
e.fovea: indentation in the retina where all
the cones are
f.
optic disk or blind spot
i.
this is where the optic nerve
exits the eye
ii.
no receptors there
B.
The pathway to the brain
1.
light stimulates the retina
2.
on the retina rods and cones are stimulated
3.
these stimulate bipolar cells and then
ganglion cells
4.
optic nerve
5.
optic nerve goes to lateral geniculate
nuclei LGN (midbrain)
6.
from the LGN goes to the visual or occipital
lobe
a.
ambient vision: spatial vision
i.
tells us that something is
there
ii.
tells us movement
b.
focal vision
i.
object vision
ii.
tells us what the object is
C.
Vision problems
1.
at the eye:
a.
nearsightedness:
i.
you can only see clearly at
near distances
ii.
lens is too curved
iii.
eyeball is too long
iv.
light is focusing ahead of the
retina not on the fovea
v.
concave lens
b.
farsightedness
i.
only see clearly at far
distances
ii.
lens is too flat
iii.
eyeball is too short
iv.
light is focusing behind the
retina
v.
convex lens (magnifies)
2.
amblyopia
a.
middle age
b.
both farsighted and nearsighted
c.lens is wearing out and it just doesn’t
adapt or move
3.
crossed eyed: strabismus
a.
uneven focus because of uneven muscle
development
b.
one side of the eye has a weak muscle or one
side has an overly strong muscle
c.like riding a tricycle with one leg
stronger than the other
d.
solution is to patch the good eye and
exercise the weak eye
III.
vision processing
A.
rods and cones (photoreceptors) turn light
into a neural impulse
1.
rods: rhodopsin
2.
cones: various kinds of iopsins
3.
chemicals in the rod or cone get used up
with light exposure
4.
stimulates a nerve response
B.
Trichromatic theory
1.
Thomas Young (1880’s), von Hemmholtz
(1950’s) found direct evidence
2.
only need three kinds of cones to make all
color combinations
a.
short wavelength: blue
b.
medium: green
c.long: red
3.
if true, there should be 3 kinds of cones in
the eye- and there are!
C.
Opponent Process model of color vision
1.
Ewald Hering (about 1850) and then Hurvich
and Jameson (1957)
2.
