Exam Review, HNR-Introduction to Psychology - Study Guide | PSYC 107, Study notes of Psychology

Download Exam Review, HNR-Introduction to Psychology - Study Guide | PSYC 107 and more Study notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Psychology Exam Review 3 Syntax  Grammar provides rules about which combinations of sounds and words are permissible and which are not. Grammar has three aspects- phonology, semantics, and syntax.  Syntax o Rules for combining words o concerned with how we use rules about word order to form sentences o also concerned with how we are able to determine if a particular sentence we read or hear is grammatical and logical o Parsing is the process of assigning words to particular syntactic categories  My dog ate burritos.  Subject - Verb – Object Morphemes and Phonemes  All human languages possess a hierarchal structure, which ranges from the fundamental sounds of speech to the more complex levels of spoken conversation.  Phonemes o the bottom of the spoken language hierarchy. o Smallest significant sound units in speech  Ex: “ee” as in feet. o They are produced through a complex coordination of the vocal cords, lungs, lips, tongue, and even the teeth. o There is no simple one-to-one mapping between a given letter of the alphabet and a phoneme. Ex: the letter “e” maps onto one kind of speech sound in the word head and a different kind in the word heat. o English speakers use only about 40-45 phonemes  Morphemes o The next level in the spoken language hierarchy o The smallest units of language that carry meaning. o The usually consist of single words such as cool or hip, but they can also be prefixes and suffixes.  Ex: the word cool contains a single morpheme but the word uncool contains two o The grammar of a language dictates the acceptable order of morphemes within a word  Ex: uncool has meaning but coolun doesn’t Coarticulation  This is the tendency to pronounce phonemes differently depending on the surrounding phonemes. For example, say the words "good" and "food" to yourself. Notice how both words have a common -ood ending, but the -ood is pronounced differently depending on the first phoneme (in this case f or g) Noam Chomsky’s Theories of Language  Language researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the rules people use to combine words into phrases and phrases into sentences but the linguist Noam Chomsky pointed out that it’s unlikely that such a set of rules even exists.  He says that we cannot capture why or how sentences are generated during a meaningful conversation by appealing only to the phrase structure…  Therefore, to understand how language really works, you first need to accept that there’s a difference between the “surface” structure of a sentence and its accompanying, more abstract, “deep” structure o Surface structure corresponds to the literal meaning of the words o Deep structure refers to the underlying representation of the meaning  Two sentences can have the same surface structure but two different deep structures o Ex: Visiting relatives can be a nuisance. – are we annoyed that the relatives are visiting or is it a nuisance to visit relatives?  Two sentences can have different surface structures but the same deep structure o Ex: Stephanie kissed the crying boy. or, The crying boy was kissed by Stephanie.  According to Chomsky, language production requires the transformation of deep structure into an acceptable surface structure- convert the deep structure into a surface structure Pragmatics  The social rules of language  How do we decide what another person is trying to communicate? o Communication depends on common knowledge among speakers  Pragmatic rules: how practical knowledge is used to comprehend speaker’s intention and produce an effective response. Articulators  Articulators + Source Energy = Speech Sounds  Speech o Vocal cords open slowly and close quickly o Airflow pulses to produce a buzz (a waveform with a characteristic period and, hence, frequency) o The original source spectrum is filtered by the vocal tract; specific effect on the sound you hear depends on articulator position  Spectrogram  An overview of the spectral characteristics and spectral changes in the time domain  A 3-D display with y-axis representing frequency, x-axis representing time, and the shade of darkness representing amplitude  Broca’s and Wernicke’s Aphasias  Broca’s area concentrates on motor memory for words  Wernicke’s area is the region concerned with sensory memory for words  Area ‘storing’ permanent information about word sounds (~Wernicke’s)  Area for speech planning and programming (~Broca’s)  Broca’s Aphasia o They tend to have weakness on their right-hand side o Speech output is slow and effortful and lacks function words (like a telegram) o Broca’s aphasics have a hard time understanding reversible sentences, where a full understanding of the sentence depends on syntactic assignment of thematic roles (e.g., the boy kicked the girl/the boy was kicked by the girl) o Problems with speech articulation because of deficits in regulation of articulatory apparatus.  Wernicke’s Aphasia o Wernicke’s aphasics speak fluently, but make no sense; their speech is meaningless o They make many notable semantic errors Ex: o It attacks problems by devising means, or actions, that reduce the gap between the current starting point and the desired goal, or ends. o Specify the ends to be achieved and the means to be used to obtain these ends (e.g., cooking dinner) o Carries out state space searching by state evaluation and operator ordering. o If a difference is detected between the current and goal states, then a sub-goal to eliminate the difference is created. o Apply the operator that will make the most important difference to the current state. o In selecting the operator to apply, match the conditions of the operator to the current state to identify the most important difference.  Another effective heuristic is working backward o Starting at the goal state and trying to move back toward the starting point to see how the goal state can be reached.  Another useful heuristic is to search for analogies. o Trying to find a connection between the current problem and some previous problem you have solved successfully. Insight aka the Aha! Moment  The moment when a problem solution seems to pop suddenly into one’s mind.  It tends to be sudden, rather than systematic progression toward solution  What causes it to happen? o Difficulty of re-creating and studying insight in laboratory studies makes this difficult to answer. o The answer is largely a mystery. Confirmation Bias  Tendency to seek out and use information that supports and confirms a prior decision or believe o People avoid seeking out information that might contradict a prior belief o Related to the confirmation bias is the tendency to show belief persistence, which means that people tend to cling to their initial beliefs even when confronted with disconfirming evidence. Representativeness  When judging the likelihood of something falling into a class, compare the similarity of that thing to the average member of that class o Ex: which is the probability of a random series of coin flips: HHHTTT or HTTHTH?  Both are equally likely, but one is more representative  Mistakes can result from representativeness: o Ignoring the base rate  The number of times that an object or event is likely to occur in the population being sampled. o Conjunction error  The tendency of people to say that the combination of two events is more likely to occur than one event on its own.  Ex: Shy and reserved girl who is really interested in politics. Is she a librarian of liberal librarian? It’s more probable that she is a librarian but because of the way she is described we ignore the probability and say that she is liberal librarian. Crystallized and fluid intelligence  Fluid intelligence- the natural ability to solve problems, reason, and remember; fluid intelligence is thought to be relatively uninfluenced by experience.  Crystallized intelligence- the knowledge and abilities acquired as a result of experience- schooling and cultural influences. G and S factors in intelligence testing  Intelligence is the ability to solve the problems that are unique to your environment  Spearman developed factor analysis.  Factor analysis is a procedure that groups together related items on tests by analyzing correlations among test scores. o Scores that reflect a single underlying ability should correlate o When spearman applied factor analysis to the testing of mental ability, he discovered evidence for general intellectual ability.  g (general intelligence) – according to spearman, a general factor, derived from factor analysis, that underlies or contributes to performance on a variety of mental tests.  The correlations among test scores were high but they weren’t perfect, for example, he found that someone who performed well on a test of verbal comprehension did not necessarily excel on a test of spatial ability. Therefore, it’s necessary to take specific abilities into account.  s (specific intelligence) – according to spearman, a specific factor, derived from factor analysis, that is unique to a particular kind of test.  For example, to predict performance on a test of verbal comprehension, you need a measure of ability that is specific to verbal comprehension in addition to g. How does one calculate an IQ score?  Mental age divided by chronological age then multiplied by 100. Creativity  A psychological characteristic often aligned with the topic of intelligence that is a measurement of individual differences.  Creativity is the ability to generate ideas that are original, novel, and useful. o Creative thinkers tend to see the “big picture” and are able to find connections among things that others might not see. o Creativity is not well correlated to IQ. Interaction of Nature and Nurture for IQ scores  Your intelligence is determined by a mixture of genes and environment.  Genes may importantly determine how your brain is wired, and possibly the speed of neural transmission, but the expression of your genetic material is strongly influenced by the environment.  Two people can be born with similar genetic potential, but the degree to which their intellectual potential will “blossom” will depend critically on the environment.  The environment will partly determine how genetic information is expressed, but so too will genetic information determines experience. o If you’re born with “smart” genes, then early on you’re likely to be exposed to opportunities that will help you realize your full intellectual potential; conversely, if you’re born with “slow” genes, the environment is likely to shape you away from intellectually nurturing experiences. Drives and Instincts  Instincts- unlearned characteristic patterns of responding that are controlled by specific triggering stimuli in the world.  Regarded to lower forms of animals  Psychologists are skeptical about human behavior… o How many human instincts are there? o How do we define them?  Charles Darwin suggested that instincts underlie much of human motivation. o Humans don’t need to be taught to take care of their young, to cry as infants, to clean themselves when dirty or even to play, love imitate, or be curious. o But….  There is no way to measure an instinct directly by looking inside the body  Psychologists argue about which behaviors qualify as instincts o So…. Because of these, instincts are not a widely applied explanation for goal-directed human behavior.  Drives- a psychological state that arises in response to an internal physiological need, such as hunger or thirst.  Regarded to humans  The body maintains its steady state through homeostasis- a process through which the body maintains a steady state, such as a constant internal temperature or an adequate amount of fluids. o Once a specific need is detected, drive serves a general activating function- drive energizes the organism, causing it to seek immediate reduction of the need. o Reducing the drive restores homeostasis. o Drive is a more flexible concept than instinct-  People can use what they’ve learned from experience to help them satisfy the need; they’re not stuck with one fixed pattern of behavior that’s triggered only by a restricted set of stimuli. Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation  Intrinsic Motivation- goal directed behavior that seems to be entirely self-motivated o Ex: a child spends hours carefully coloring a picture or playing with a doll; there’s no biological need that drives coloring or a clear-cut external incentive.  Extrinsic Motivation o Motivation from an outside source  Achievement motivation- motivation based on a non physical reward  Ex: praise from parents  Incentive motivation – getting money to get good grades in school Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs  The idea introduced by the humanistic theorist Abraham Maslow that human needs are prioritized in a hierarchy.  The essential component of Maslow’s theory is the prioritizing of needs: o Needs differ in origin: some biological, some psychological; which come first? o Some needs have special priority and must be satisfied before others can be addressed.  Physiological needs come first  Then safety needs  Belongingness and love needs  Esteem needs  Self-actualization needs Set Point for Body Weight  Set point- a natural body weight, perhaps produced by genetic factors, that the body seeks to maintain. It more or less controls our tendency to gain or lose weight.  Genetic factors probably play the greatest role in determining out set point.  Your metabolic rate is also another important factor o Metabolic rate- how quickly you burn off calories Anorexia and Bulimia  Anorexia nervosa- an eating disorder diagnosed when otherwise healthy person refuses to maintain a normal weight level because of an intense fear of being overweight. o They appear extremely thin o Can cause low blood pressure, loss of bone density, digestive problems, even death  Bulimia nervosa- an eating disorder in which the principal symptom is binge eating followed by purging, in which the person voluntarily vomits or uses laxatives to prevent weight gain. o They appear to be normal weight o Can lead to tooth decay and intestinal damage Sex Stages (a la Masters and Johnson)  Excitement phase- the first component of the human sexual response cycle; it’s characterized by changes in muscle tension, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and rushing of blood into the genital organs.  Plateau phase- the second stage in the human sexual response cycle. Arousal continues to increase, although at a slower rate, toward a pre-orgasm maximum point.  Orgasmic phase- the third stage in the human sexual response cycle. It’s characterized by rhythmic contractions in the sex organs; in men, ejaculation occurs. There is also the subjective experience of pleasure, which appears to be similar for men and women.  Resolution phase- the fourth and final stage in the human sexual response cycle. Arousal returns to normal levels. For men, there is a refractory period during which further stimulation fails to produce visible signs or arousal. Brain Area(s) associated emotional with response  Amygdala- brain structure in midbrain associated with emotional response  Frontal lobe- associated with control of emotions Theories of Emotion  What’s the relationship between our bodily reactions and our subjective experience? o Common sense suggests that the experience comes first, but psychologists disagree  James-Lange Theory- a theory of emotion that argues that body reactions come first and they drive the subjective experience of emotions.  Cannon-Bard theory- Body reactions happen together, but independently.  The Two-Factor theory- the cognitive interpretation, or appraisal, of a body reaction drives the subjective experience of emotion  Schacter and Singer: How you experience the effects of a drug that increases arousal depends on your appraisal o Participants either led to expect the effect of the drug or not o They interpreted their feelings or arousal as a function of drug, or other factors. o