PSYC 100: FInal Review with Practice Questions, Study notes of Psychology

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PSYC 100: Final Review

Thought & Language 2

Human development 14

Practice questions 19

Thought & Language

1. The Elements of Cognition Cognition? = Mental Activity -> Obtaining, converting, and using knowledge Thinking: a type of cognition - mentally manipulating internal representations of objects, activities

• Making a decision
• Finding a solution
• Forming a belief
• Developing an attitude Cognitive activity mental images:

• Mental images: mental (internal) representations
• Visual (3D, rotating): picturing it
• Auditory: hearing it
• Kinesthetics: feeling it How to use mental imagery? Remembering information: alphabet song Making decisions: what music to play during dinner Solving problems: assembling furniture from IKEA Planning: visualizing a route to drive Developing skills: imaging yourself in the perfect yoga pose or throwing a curve ball. What happens in the brain? Brain is activated like it would be for sensation of image -> Activated by memory and perception brain areas, not by sensory input

• Can be more specific or subordinate (eg. Volkswagen Beetle)

Culture considerations:

• (^) Categories and concepts, and their boundaries, can differ between cultures and languages + Politics between USA & Canada
• (^) Basic categories can differ as well
  • Tree, bird, yard How are concepts mentally represented? Organizing Knowledge: Cognitive schemas: Mental networks of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations
  • Each schema concerns a particular topic or aspect of the world

• When we learn new things, we try to fit them into the knowledge we already have about the world.

2. Problem - Solving: Heuristics and Algorithms
3. Cognitive Processes that may lead to Inaccuracy Problem: something that gets in the way of reaching a goal. Eg. The air conditioning in my car is broken I have a cold that won’t go away. Problem solving: approaches that can be used to achieve a goal. Initial state —> Problem solving —> Goal State Approaches to Problem solving:

• Trial and error:

• Finding a solution via a series of different attempts.
• There might be a lot of possibilities to try

• Algorithms:

• Formulas, or sets of rules, that if followed lead to a solution

• Heuristics:

• Use a “rile of thumb” or general strategy
• Less trial and error - use your rule of thumb to eliminate some possibilities. Creativity: The ability to generate original ideas.

• depends on: originally, fluency (generating lots of solutions), flexibility (using different approaches to generate ideas), knowledge, thinking, personality (willing to take risks), self-motivation

—> mental processes occurring outside of and not available to conscious awareness. -> eg. Relying on insight or intuition

Barriers to Reasoning Rationally

• (^) Exaggerating the probability of rare events (eg.getting in a plane crash)
  • (^) Happens partly because we are affected by emotion (Affect Heuristic) and also the attention -grabbing nature of some events (Availability Heuristics)
• Avoiding loss:we respond more cautiously when choices are explained in terms of the risk rather than gain (Framing effect)
  • Goal is to minimize losses
• (^) The fairness bias: a sense of fairness seems more important than rational self-interest
  • (^) Ultimaturm game - there is some amount that people are not willing to accept.
• (^) The Hindsight Bias: overestimating one’s ability to have predicted an event once the outcome is known, the “I knew it all along” phenomenon.
  • (^) Impedes future learning - not motivated, thought it was an easy thing figure out
• (^) The Confirmation Bias: the tendency to look for or pay attention to only information that confirm one’s own belief
• (^) Mental sets: reusing the same solution strategies you have always used, even if they don’t work so well.
  • (^) Eg. Reboot your computer
• (^) The need for Cognitive Consistency
  • (^) Cognitive dissonance = a state of tension the occurs when a person holds two cognitions that are inconsistent, or when a person’s belief is inconsistent with their behaviour

Language

—> A system for using symbols to think and communicate

—-> Symbol: verbal speech - sounds

written language - letters/words/sentences

—> Requirements:

1) Symbol: stand for objects and ideas (eg.spoken, written or gestured)

no specific modality is required

Sign language uses only gestures

2) Grammar: set of rules for making sound into words and sentences

Syntax: order of words matters for meaning

sign language has its own syntax and semantics but they are

similar to those for spoken languages

3) Productive usages or generatively

• Can generate new thoughts and ideas
• Rearrangement of words into a nearly infinite number of sentences Semantics: study of meaning in language not as straightforward as one might assume context can determine meaning of words with multiple options
• I need to store my gnome collection in something. I’d better go to the store to find a container

Gossip & Social Networks: Life as a Boundless Telephone Game

Stories about emotional experiences make for especially transmissible gossip

• Trauma, shock, amazing, coincidence, miraculous.
• (^) People will often share emotional stories with numerous other people, who will also tell serval other people.
• (^) A story may be verbally shared with hundred of people
• (^) Stories tend to become conventionalized to conform to stereotypes (eg. Women as caretakers; warriors as brave)

Localizing language in the Brain

Broca’s area

• Anterior speech area in the left hemisphere (frontal lobe)
• Functions with the motor cortes to produce the movements needed for speaking Wernicke’s area
• Posterior speech area at the rear of the left temporal lobe
• regulates language comprehension
• Also called the posterior speech zone

Aphasia

Brock’s aphasia: inability to speak fluently despite having normal comprehension and intact vocal mechanisms. Wernicke’s Aphasia: inability to understand or produce meaningful language even though the production of words is still intact.

Development of Language

• Human have a “built-in” capacity for learning language - genetics
• Language is universal in human populations
• Different languages have many structural elements in common eg. Requiring syntax, Chomsky’s

Working on prefixes, suffixes, phrases, metaphors… Words become important for curriculum understanding

Language shifts in bilingual children

• children often become more fluent in the school language than in the home language (it’s more immediately appealing)
• Ability to switch between languages correlates with school achievement
• Learning a second language is more word in middle childhood than in infancy but can be quite successful (faster for younger children)
• Results in observable brain changes (Eg. Increases left cortical thickness:
• Bilingual brain may facilitate some resistance to neuro cognitive disorder (eg.Alzheimer’s)

The Great Apes and Other Animals

Human tend to consider language to be intentional - the communicator sent a message the receiver will understand Studies suggest that the most animal vocalizations are not intentional, but rather, largely emotional

• nonetheless. They may cause changes in other animals’ behaviour Great apes tend to intentionally communicate using gestures rather than vocalization

Human development

Development psychology? —> The study of how people change physically, mentally, and socially throughout the lifespan (birth - childhood - adolescent - adulthood - dead)

Conception & Prenatal Development

Nature & Nature

Nature (Heredity)

Genetic transfer of psychological & physical characteristics from parents to children DNA: code of instructions - how to make a human 46 chromosomes: 23 from each parent Genes: small segments of DNA for particular characteristics Many characteristics are “polygenic” (determined by more than one gene) Nurture (Environment) Effects of external conditions

• Nutrition, love, mental stimulation
• Effects of learning Prenatal Problems

Congenital problems: exposure to conditions before birth that cause defects. Teratogens: agents that can harm the embryo/fetus

Infancy = conception to 1 year old Childhood = 1 year old to puberty

Infancy & Childhood: Exploring, Learning, and Relating

Newborn Abilities Human babies are born able to sense (see, hear, smell, taste, feel pain and touch) and move their bodies.

Ability to sense, and motor function, are not fully developed Reflexes (Genetically programmed) Rooting: turn head & open mouth toward direction of touch to cheek => Find food Sucking: rhythmic in response to oral stimulation => for nursing Grasping: strong grip on objects => Avoid falling Moro: throw arms out and arch back in response to loud noise => startle; hang onto

mother The Sense

Vision, hearing, smell, and touch are highly attuned to people. Can feel pain. Preference for mom’s face, scent, voice Eyes follow motion, turn to sounds Vision: least developed sense at birth Temperament Inborn predisposition to behave or react a certain way (old, classic study)

• Easy (40%)
• Difficult (10%)
• Slow-to-warm-up (15%)
• Average (35%)

Strong genetic influence on temperament Can affect parenting 3 dimensions have been confirmed: Effortful control: balanced self-soothing Negative mood: fearful, angry, unhappy Exuberant: active, social, not shy

Interactions with Parens

Attachment: emotional bond that forms between infant and caregiver The quality of early attachment plays a role in physical and psychological health

Attachment theory:

• (^) Orphanages: physically healthy babies raised without touches or snuggling had psychological consequences.
• (^) Eg. Detached, inhibited, withdrawn
• (^) Attachment begins with contact comfort - the innate pleasure from close physical contact; basis of infant’s first attachment.
• (^) Harlow’s Attachment theory:
  • (^) Infant monkeys spent more time with soft cuddly “mother” than the “mother” with food
  • (^) Contact comfort was preferred over food.
• (^) Once attached, most infants/children show separation anxiety (distress) if primary caregiver leaves
  • (^) Develops at about 8 months of age, declines during 1->3 years old.
• (^) Attachment bonds studies through Strange Situation Test - mother leaves baby with toys and stranger, returns, then leaves baby alone with just toys.

Practice questions

1. Substance that can injure a fetus - teratogen
2. Anti-Freudians; human free will, personal growth - Humanists
3. Difficulty speaking, understanding language - Aphasia
4. Extraversion agreeableness conscientiousness neuroticism and openness to experience - Big Five
5. Understanding that changes in shape but do not mean change in volume - conservation
6. Level of categorization with specific example - subordinate
7. Newborn reflex for seeking food - rooting
8. Type of culture, value the group (eg coworkers, family) over individual - Collectivist
9. Types of intelligence that can slow or decline in elderly - Fluid
10. A consistent element of personality - trait
11. Piaget's stages during which items that are out of sight are not thought about - sensorimotor
12. First two weeks after conception, before implantation - Germinal
13. Mechanisms used without awareness to lessen conflict experienced by the ego -
14. Suddenly solve a problem in the absence of conscious thought - Ego defense
15. Heuristic, assuming emotionally intense events are more common they are - affect
16. Believing in one self, can reach goals, can recover from set back - self efficacy
17. If internal take responsibility for outcome, if external believe in fate or luck - locus of control
18. The freudian conscience - superego
19. Like personality but predominantly genetic, observed in infants - temperament
20. Understanding that changes in shape do not mean changes in volume - conservation
21. Type of thought important win creativity - divergent

22. Personality testing; ambiguous stimuli - projective
23. Suddenly solves a problem in the absence of conscious thought -
24. Uncaring, attachment style - insight
25. Heuristic; assuming emotionally intense events are more common than they are - affect
26. If internal; take responsibility for outcomes; if external; believe in fate or luck - locus of control
27. Morality is largely determined by consideration of rewards/punishments - pre conventional
28. The Freudian conscience - superego
29. Stage of rational thought; relative value of different pieces of information is weighed

• reflective

30. Bias; only take note of examples that support your opinion - confirmation
31. Learning the meaning of a word after just one experience with it. - Fast mapping
32. A shortcut to use in problem solving - heuristic
33. Difficulty speaking, or understanding , language - aphasia
34. Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience - big five
35. Level of categorization with specific examples - subordinate
36. Can be represented by mental concepts; might be fuzzy - categories
37. Piaget’s stage during which items that are out of sight are not thought about - sensorimotor
38. First two weeks after conception, before implantation - germinal
39. The study of meaning in language - semantics
40. Believing in oneself; can reach goals, can recover from setbacks - self efficacy
41. Theory, each example is compared against an internal database for categorization - exemplar