Psychology 2, Exam 2

Front 1

Hormone

Back 1

A chemical messenger that travels short or long distances to cause a reaction.

Synthesized ---> travel in blood ---> secreted ---> reaches receptor ---> action ---> degradation

Front 2

Pituitary

Back 2

Gland sits in a bony hollow called the pituitary fossa (behind the bridge of the nose and below the base of the brain)

Produces growth hormone, puberty hormones (or gonadotrophins), thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH --> Thyroxine), prolactin and Adrenocorticotrophic Hormone (ACTH--> cortisol).

The posterior pituitary makes the fluid balance hormone called anti-diuretic hormone (ADH).

Front 3

Testosterone

Back 3

In a normal male, behavior is normal, and in a castrated male, there is a lack of mating behavior. In a castrated male on Testosterone supplements, there is normal behavior

(move-and-replace experiment).

Testosterone ---> Reductase ---> DHT ---> binds to hair follicles and prevents hair growth

Front 4

Vasopressin/antidiuretic hormone

Back 4

Vasopressin: two primary functions are to retain water in the body and to constrict blood vessels.

ADH: Antidiuretic Hormone: Prevents urination, expelling toxins

Alcohol inhibits ADH ---> frequent urination

Front 5

Growth Hormone

Back 5

GH directly influences fat metabolism.

IGF (Insulin Growth Hormone) allows for bone growth.

Front 6

Personality

Back 6

An individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Front 7

Personality Trait

Back 7

A characteristic; a dispositional tendency to act in a certain way over time and across circumstances. Affected by culture, learning, biology, cognition

Front 8

Ego

Back 8

Rational, planning, problem-solving; develops later in life

Front 9

Superego

Back 9

Moralistic, judgmental, perfectionist ID; schooling and development, comes from society and environment

Front 10

Id

Back 10

Irrational, illogical, impulsive; more primitive, comes from birth

Front 11

Temperament

Back 11

Biologically based tendencies to feel or act in certain ways, most basic level of personality. Broader than traits, very innate, and does not need experience to develop.

Front 12

The "Big 5" Traits

Back 12

Openness to Experience

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

Front 13

Barnum Effect

Back 13

The name given to a type of subjective validation in which a person finds personal meaning in statements that could apply to many people.

Front 14

Evaluativeness (of a trait)

Back 14

Something people want to appear positively in

Front 15

Observability (of a trait)

Back 15

Whether can be detected easily by others

Front 16

Strong Situation vs Weak Situation

Back 16

Situationism: The theory that behavior is determined more by situations than by personality traits

Strong situation ---> constrain personality

Weak situation ---> less constraint

Front 17

Group Selection Theory

Back 17

Groups that are stronger together compete better against other groups (V. C. Wynne-Edwards, E.O. Wilson). Being altruistic does not benefit the individual. There must be a balance between group and individual needs

Front 18

Attachment

Back 18

Attachment: A strong emotional bond that persists over time, begins between child and caregiver(s). It's adaptive: Infants need care to survive. Motivates infants & caregivers to stay close. Infants experience separation anxiety.

(Harlow's Monkey's)

Front 19

Strange Situation Test

Back 19

Measure of how child reacts when separated from and reunited with his or her caregiver.

Secure: loving, warm, trusting. The child is slightly upset to be alone, but moves on, and is happy when reunited

Anxious: worried, intrusive. The child cannot calm down once they are alone.

Avoidant: dismissive, cold. Is not bothered when the caretaker leaves, and does not have a positive reaction once reunited.

Front 20

Stonewalling

Back 20

Refusal to communicate or cooperate. Mechanism in problematic bonds.

Front 21

Teratogens

Back 21

Environmental agents that harm the embryo or fetus.

EX: fetal alcohol syndrome.

Thalidomide was prescribed to treat morning sickness, but led to severe birth defects.

Father's smoking, drug use, etc. can have an effect

Front 22

Synaptic Pruning

Back 22

For first few years, more synapses than are needed are formed to prepare the brain to adapt to any environment. This contributes to early brain plasticity why children can recover from brain injury easier. Synaptic pruning: Unused synaptic connections decay and disappear. Makes brain more efficient.

Front 23

Critical Period

Back 23

During critical periods, experience is necessary for normal development.

EX: congenital cataracts, language acquisition.

Critical period for vision in within the first few months, so a cataract needs to be corrected right away or the brain will develop the optic cortex incorrectly

Front 24

Confabulation

Back 24

Young children have poor source memory and are prone to confabulation: the unintended false recollection of episodic memories; cannot remember specific details

Front 25

Object Permanence

Back 25

Develops in sensory-motor stage (birth-2yrs).

Deals with basic senses, learn through sensory and motor exploration. Movements become more deliberate. Object permanence is The understanding that an object continues to exist when it can’t be seen (9 months)

Front 26

Ego Centrism

Back 26

Develops in preoperational stage (2-7yrs). They learn symbolic thinking, intuitive reasoning, not logic.

Limited by centration: inability to think about more than one detail at a time

Egocentrism: Don’t realize others have different perspectives; view world through own experience

Front 27

Theory of Mind

Back 27

Develops during concrete-operational stage (7-12yrs). There is a sense for consequences and operations, and develop a Theory of mind: The ability to explain and predict someone’s behavior based on recognizing his or her mental state. Seems to involve frontal lobe. It enables successful social interactions

Front 28

Social Construct of Gender

Back 28

Gender makes it hard to say what is due to sex and what is due to society. Gender is a social construct. They are things that are assigned to a specific sex.

EX: Money, political systems, keeping time, marriage, nations.

Makes it difficult to distinguish between real capabilities and social ideas.

Front 29

SRY Gene

Back 29

The germinal ridge develops into a testis if the SRY gene is expressed (carried on the Y chromosome). Ovaries develop in the absence of SRY gene and its product, testis-determining factor (TDF).

Front 30

In-Group Favoritism

Back 30

Tendency for people to evaluate favorably and privilege members of the In-group more than members of the out-group The same behavior: in-group would be "tactful, or smart", while the out-group would be described as "devious or sneaky"

Front 31

Out-Group Homogeneity

Back 31

Tendency to see other groups as less varied than our own.

Front 32

Stereotype

Back 32

Schemas that allow for easy, fast processing of information about people based on their membership in certain groups.

We naturally group things based on common features. Quick problem solving method that the brain uses so resources aren’t wasted. Its efficient way to make judgments; we have a limited amount of attention

Front 33

Confirmation Bias

Back 33

Tendency to seek out information that supports existing views and ignore inconsistent information (Political beliefs, scientific experiments).

Front 34

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Back 34

Tendency to behave in ways that confirm own or others’ expectations (“Blooming” students, “charming” women).

Front 35

Normative Behavior

Back 35

Standard of correct behavior that follows societal rules, typically motivated by the desire to gain social acceptance and approval (don’t look stupid!)

Three ways to maintain: Conformity, Compliance, Obedience

Front 36

Conformity

Back 36

The altering of one’s behaviors and opinions to match those of other people or to match other people’s expectations.

Groups enforce conformity. Deviants ostracized and excluded; social exclusion elevates stress, suppresses immune function, and is felt as pain

Front 37

Consolidation

Back 37

Storage of new memories in the brain, transferring from STM/working memory into LTM.

Front 38

Encoding

Back 38

Initial imprinting of experience within the brain; takes less than a second

Front 39

Recal

Back 39

Bringing back stored memory

Front 40

Working Memory

Back 40

Concept of working memory proposed by Baddeley & Hitch (1974, 1994) as an alternative to short-term memory. Temporary storage of information that we are actively attending to or working with; “chalkboard of the mind”.

Front 41

Declarative Memory

Back 41

Things that you can tell others. Is either episodic or semantic.

Front 42

Episodic Memory

Back 42

A memory of a specific event

Front 43

Semantic Memory

Back 43

Specific facts, information, details, etc.

Front 44

Long Term Potential

Back 44

The act of learning changes synaptic strength and quantity. The strengthening of connections is LTP. Proposed by Donald Hebb 1949: Repeated firing of neurons within a circuit increases the strengthen of connection within that circuit (“Neurons that fire together, wire together”)

This makes it easier for the post-synaptic neuron to respond to the pre-synaptic signal.

Front 45

Hippocampus

Back 45

Crucial in forming new declarative, episodic memories (H.M.). Memory for procedural (non-declarative) motor skills and habits depends more on motor areas, like basal ganglia and cerebellum. Spatial cells in hippocampus fire when in certain places

Front 46

Synthesis

Back 46

Relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the real world.

Front 47

Interleaving

Back 47

Mixing the types of things you're learning so it is not creating fluidity, but an actual thought process.

Interleaved practice feels harder, participants think they are not learning as well, but their performance greatly improves.

Front 48

Valence

Back 48

How pleasant/unpleasant something is. Do you want to move toward or away?

When paired with level of arousal, most emotions can be classified on the Circumplex Model of emotion.

Front 49

Autonomic Nervous System

Back 49

Nerve damage ---> has time experiencing clear emotion.

In the “periphery” (body)

Contains neurons that receive information from and send commands to the heart, intestines, and other organs (heart, intestine).

Functions below level of consciousness.

Front 50

Parasympathetic Nervous System

Back 50

Facilitates non-emergency “Rest and digest” responses, conserves energy, decreases heart rate, increases digestive activity.

Front 51

Six Basic Facial Expressions

Back 51

Anger, happiness, disgust, surprise, sadness, fear

Front 52

Amygdala

Back 52

Associated with fear, learning, and avoidance. The amygdalae receive sensory information and links this information to an emotion.

Threatening stimuli increase neuronal activity in the amygdala ---> fearful or agitated responses. Ablation of the central nucleus of the amygdala abolishes fearful emotional responses and fear conditioning, and people with amygdala damage have difficulty recognizing fearful facial expressions. Communicates with hippocampus; emotion --->better memory

Front 53

Orbifrontal Cortex

Back 53

Heavily interconnected with the amygdala. Receives inputs from senses and has outputs to centers responsible for controlling autonomic nervous system. Important for regulating aggression and involved in feelings of “like” and “dislike” (very difficult to make decisions without OFC!).

Front 54

Duchenne Smile

Back 54

Genuine smile that required a different area of the brain.

EX: Damage to the right hemisphere of primary motor cortex --> voluntary MC produces a ‘fake’ smile only on right side When genuinely smiles, however, both sides respond.

EX: Damage to left orbitofrontal cortex --> voluntary MC produces ‘fake’ smile When genuinely smiling only the left side of face responds

Front 55

Capgras Syndrome

Back 55

Patients are no longer able to associate visual and/or auditory stimuli with the appropriate feelings. They believe the people they know have been “replaced by imposters".

Theorized to involve connection between amygdala and sensory areas or memory