Psych Unit 5 Study Guide

Test on: Friday, November 30th

Names and experiments quizlet: https://quizlet.com/_5o1s0f
Vocab Quizlet w examples: https://quizlet.com/_2tibr7
Practice test: https://classroom.google.com/u/2/r/MTYzMDMxODQ3MTRa/sort-last-
name (study this guide > take practice test > add what I got wrong, why I got it wrong,
and all info regarding the Q to this guide> study the Qs again)
Classical Conditioning
● NS- neutral stimulus- bell before conditioning
● UCS- unconditioned stimulus- event that naturally causes something to happen-
food
● UCR- unconditioned response- event that naturally occurs in response to the
UCS- salvitation
● CS- conditioned stimulus- once neutral stimulus that now produces the same
result as the UCS- bell
● CR- conditioned response- event that occurs in response to the CS that is
similar or the same as the UCR- salvitation (to tone, the previously neutral
stimulus)

● Generalization- the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli
similar to the conditioned response to elicit similar responses
○ Eg: dog conditioned to salivate when rubbed will also drool a bit when
scratched
● Discrimination- the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus
and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned response
○ Eg: dogs respond to the sound of a particular tone and not to other tones

● Extinction- diminishing of a CR (salvitation @ bell) bc the US (food) no longer

follows the CS (bell)
○ Extinction suppresses the CR, doesn’t eliminate it
○ Eg: dogs salvitated less and less when no food came
● Spontaneous Recovery- reappearance of (weakened) CR after a pause
○ Eg: dogs salvitated less and less when no food came, but after
experimenters waited several hours to sound the bell again, the salvitating
resumed

● Higher order conditioning- A new NS (light) can become a new CS (cause of

salvitation like the bell) when its associated with an old CS (bell)
 ○ Eg: light that gets associated w the bell can also trigger salvitation
○ Weaker than first-order conditioning, but affects us everyday
■ Eg: guard dog (US) makes someone scared (UR) because of a
previous dog bite, the sound of a dog’s bark (CS) might also make
us scared (CS)

● Classical Conditioning and Timing

○ Acquisition- initial learning of the stimulus-response relationship
○ Usually, learning doesn’t occur when the CS (bell) comes after the UCS
(food)
○ For best results, the CS (bell) has to happen right before the UCS (food).
Usually half a second is used.

● Habituation- the decreasing response to a stimulus when repeated exposure to it

yields nothing.
○ Eg: sea slug protectively withdraws its gills when water is first squirted at
it, but as the squirts happen regularly (as they do in choppy water), the
withdrawal response bc the slug realizes the squirts are irrelevant
Operant Conditioning
● Reinforcement= any consequence that strengthens behavior
○ Positive Reinforcement
■ Strengthens behavior
■ Add a desired stimulus
■ Eg: dog gets pet when he’s called
○ Negative Reinforcement
■ Strengthen behavior
■ Remove an aversive stimulus; relief
■ Eg: Fasten seatbelt to end beeping
● Punishment
○ Decreases behavior
○ Swift and sure punishments work better than delayed punishments
■ Eg: touching a hot stove vs detention after weeks of tardies

Schedules of Reinforcement
Fixed = set Variable = unpredictable

Ratio = behavior, more Set behavior Unpredictable amount of

frequent you are, more Every so many: behavior
rewards you get reinforcement after every After an unpredictable
nth behavior #:reinforcement after a
Eg buy 10 coffees get 1 random # of behaviors
 free Eg slot machines

Interval = amount of time Set amount of time Unpredictable amount of

must pass, nothing the Every so often:
learner can do can shorten reinforcement for
the amount if time behaviour after a fixed time
Eg Tuesday discount
prices
time
Unpredictably often:
reinforcement for behavior
after random amount of
time
Eg: checking instagram

● Operant Chamber (Skinner Box)

○ Controlled environment used in Skinner’s experiments
■ Inside the box, the rat presses a bar for food reward
■ Outside, a measuring device records the animal’s accumulated
responses

● Shaping successive (successive approximations)

○ An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior
toward closer approximations of the desired behaviors
○ Shaping behaviors help us understand what nonverbal organisms
perceive - by shaping, them to respond to one stimulus and not the
other,we know they can perceive the difference
1. See how an animal naturally behaves, so you can build on existing
behaviors
2. Successive Approximations - rewarding responses that are ever
closer to final desired behavior, and ignoring all other behavior
○ Experiences reinforced pigeons for pecking after seeing a human face, but
not seeing other images = pigeons showed that they could recognize a
human face
■ Human’s face = discriminative stimulus
● discriminative stimulus- in operant conditioning, a stimulus
that elicits a response after association with a reinforcement
(in contrast to related stimuli not associated with
reinforcement)

● Biological Predispositions (including research on taste aversion)

○ We most easily learn and retain behaviors that reflect our biological
predispositions
■ Could easily teach a pigeon to flap wing to avoid being shocked
and pec a button to get food, because fleeing w/ wings and eating
w/ beaks are natural pigeon behaviors. However, pigeons would
 have a hard time learning to peck to avoid shock and flap wings to
get food
○ Taste Aversion
■ If you become violently ill after eating oysters, you probably would
have a hard time eating them again. Their smell and and taste
would have become a CS for nausea. This learning occurs readily
because our biology prepares us to learn taste aversions to toxic
foods
■ Garcia’s rat radiation experiment
● Rats avoided the taste even though the sickness didn’t come
until after they ate the food (so US didn’t have to come
immediately after the CS)
● The rats developed taste aversions, not sight or sound
aversions
● Shows biological predisposition to learn some aversions but
not others
○ Taste aversions
● People believed that any unnatural response could be
conditioned to any neutral stimulus, showed that every
stimulus isn’t the same bc predisposition
● Primary vs Conditioned reinforcers
○ Primary:
■ Necessary for survival
● Food
● Water
● Sex
● Affiliation
● Removal of Pain
○ Conditioned
■ Related to a primary reinforcer
● Trophies
● Applause
● Money
● Grade
● Partial / intermittent vs. continuous reinforcement
○ partial/intermittent reinforcement
■ Reinforcing a response only part of the time; results in slower
acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinciton
than does continuos reinforcement
● Responses are sometimes reinforced, sometimes not
 ● Real life
● Resistance to extinction is greater
● Occasional and unpredictable = eternal hope
○ Gambling machines, lotto tickets
● Best 4 making a behavior persis
○ Continuous reinforcement
■ Reinforcing the desired behavior every time it occurs
● Learning happens very quickly
● Best choice 4 mastering behavior
● Extinction also happens rapidly
● Immediate vs Delayed Reinforcement
○ Rats cant delay gratification- if the rat presses the bar and you don’t give it
food after 30 secs or so, it will not know to press the bar to get food. Other
behaviors that happened in the interval, like sniffing and moving, will have
been reinforced
● Learned Helplessness
○ The helplessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns
when unable to avoid repeated aversive effects
○ Uncontrollable bad events -> perceived lack of control -> generalized
helpless behavior
○ 2 groups of dogs are shocked, one group can get away, the others cant,
the group that couldn’t doesn’t even try when their constraints are taken
away and they have the potential to get away
● Biofeedback
○ A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back
information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure
or muscle tension.
○ Allows people to monitor their subtle physiological responses
■ Eg for tension headaches- records forehead muscle, as a person
relaxes their forehead muscles, one of the pointers on one of the
screens may go lower
○ Some paralyzed patients could learn to control blood pressure
○ Not super great, works best on tension headaches
○ App idea for runner/athletes in general, dancers (?) breathing and
movements

● Classical vs. Operant conditioning

○ Conditioning = the process of learning associations.
○ Classical associating two stimuli to anticipate events -- the learner does
not have a choice
 ○ Operant associating a behavior with a consequence - the learner has a
choice

Social Theories of Learning (modeling)

● Bandura - Bobo the clown experiments
○ Some kids watched an adult aggressively beat up a Bobo doll for 10 min
■ Both kids who saw and kids who didn’t see were brought into a
room w very appealing toys and taught and told the toys were for
the “other kids”, brought into a room w less attractive toys (including
the bobo doll)
■ Kids who saw the adult beat the kid up were much more likely to
assault the Bobo doll; often, the methods they used were identical
in some ways
■ Social learning (observational learning)- learning by observing
others
● Cognition is a big factor
● Learning your native language, learning not to touch hot
stove by watching sis get burned
● Modeling
○ The process of learning and imitating a certain
behavior
○ We receive a vicarious reinforcement or vicarious
punishment when we watch a model
● Esp. likely to learn from people we percieve as similar to
ourselves, successful, or admirable
● When we observe someone winning an award, our own
brain reward system activates as if we won the reward -
mirror neurons! (see mirror neuron section)
● Research on TV violence
○
● Prosocial modeling, antisocial modeling
○ Models may have good or bad effects
■ Learn morality from parents by observing at a young age
■ Social activists modeled nonviolent action that enacted powerful
social change
● Gandhi
● MLK jr
○ Prosocial (positive, helpful) models can have prosocial events
○ Antisocial (negative, unhelpful) models can have antisocial effects
○ Many businesses use behavioral modeling to help employees learn skills
 ■ AEO TV - “engage discover share! Live your life!”
○ Models most effective when actions + words are consistent
■ “Do as I say, not as I do” = bad

● ETC
○ Cognitive maps, latent learning
○ Mirror neurons (location and function)
■

Review
● Perception
○ Gestalt (proximity, closure, continuity, similarity & connectedness)
■ Gestalt Psychology- Emphasize the tendency to integrate pieces of
information into meaningful wholes
■ Figure Ground Relationship- The organization of the visual field into
objects that stand out from their surroundings
■ Proximity- We group nearby objects together
■ Similarity- We group similar objects together
■ Continuity- We perceive smooth continuous patterns rather than
disconnected ones
■ Connectedness- Uniform and Linked
○ Perceptual set- A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not
another
○ Visual Capture- the tendency for vision to dominate the other senses
○ Sensation- Detecting physical energy from the environment and encoding
it as neural signals
○ Absolute thresholds- The minimum stimulation needed to detect a
particular stimulus 50% of the time
○ Rods & cones
■ Rods-Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and grey,
necessary for peripheral vision
○ Cones- Retinal receptors that are concentrated near the center of the
retina, detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations
○ Additive color mixing- spotlights in a dark room, all colors together = white
○ Subtractive color mixing- crayons on white paper, all colors together =
black
○ Anatomy of the eye
■ Pupil- A small adjustable opening in the center of the eye through
which light enters
 ■ Iris- A ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye
around the pupil and controls the size of the pupil's opening
■ Cornea- Protects the eye and bends light to provide focus
■ Lens- The transparent structure behind the pupil that changes
shape to help focus objects on the retina
■ Accomodation- Lens changes shape to focus near or far images on
the retina
■ Retina- Light sensitive inner surface of the eye containing the
receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the
processing of visual information
■ Optic Nerve- The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to
the brain
■ Blind Spot- The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye; No
receptor cells; Brain fills the "hole" without permission
■ Fovea- The central focal point in the retina
■ Acuity- Resolution
■ Nearsightedness- Too much curvature of the cornea/lens; Near
objects are more clear
■ Farsightedness- Not enough curvature of the cornea/lens; Far
objects are more clear
■ Rods- Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and grey;
Necessary for peripheral vision
■ Cones- Retinal receptors that are concentrated near the center of
the retina; Detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations
■ Feature Detectors- Nerve cells in the brain the respond to specific
features of the stimulus, such as shape, angles, or movement

● Approaches
○ Humanistic- The historically significant perspective that emphasized the
growth potential of healthy people and the individual's potential for
personal growth.
○ Biopsychosocial Approach- An integrated approach that incorporates
biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis.
○ Biological Psychology- A branch of psychology concerned with the links
between biology and behavior.
○ Evolutionary Psychology- The study of the roots of behavior and mental
processes using the principles of natural selection.
○ Psychodynamic Psychology- A branch of psychology that studies how
unconscious drives and conflicts influence behavior, and uses that
information to treat people with psychological disorders.
 ○ Behavioral Psychology- Method of changing abnormal behavior thru
systematic program based on the learning principles of CLASSICAL
conditioning, OPERANT Conditioning, or OBSERVATIONAL Learning.
○ Cognitive Psychology- The scientific study of all the mental activities
associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
○ Social-Cultural Psychology- The study of how situations and cultures
affect our behavior and thinking.
○ Experimental Design- The study of behavior and thinking using the
experimental method.
○ Double-blind
○ Correlation
○ Population vs. Sample
○ Random Sample
○ Random Assignment
○ IV / DV- the researcher is looking for the possible effect on the dependent
variable that might be caused by changing the independent variable. The
independent variable is the variable the experimenter manipulates (i.e.
changes) – assumed to have a direct effect on the dependent variable.

States of Consciousness
● Hypnosis
● Power of suggestion
○ the subject responds to the hypnotist’s suggestion that certain
perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviours will spontaneously
occur.
○ Posthypnotic suggestion- a suggestion that a hypnotized person act
a certain way after he/she is brought out of hypnosis; used by some
clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors
● Recovered memories = fact & fiction
○ Does not enhance recall of forgotten memories, may evoke false
memories affected by the suggestions of the hypnosis
● Effectiveness for pain relief
○ Can help relieve pain with posthypnotic suggestion. Not very
effective in treating addiction.
● Dissociation / Divided Consciousness Theory- hypnosis causes us to
divide our consciousness voluntarily. One part or level of our
consciousness responds to the suggestions of the hypnotist; another part
or level retains awareness of reality.
 ○ Hidden observer- presence of a level of consciousness that
monitors what is happening while another level obeys the
hypnotist’s suggestions.
● Social phenomenon / Social influence theory- hypnosis is not an alternate
state of consciousness, but a social phenomenon in which people act out
the role of a hypnotized person because that’s what’s expected of them.
Not consciously faking it-- the subjects feel and behave in the way a “good
hypnotic subject” would, like actors caught up in their roles. Only follow
suggestions if they feel the experiment is still underway, and stop when
the experimenter eliminates their motivator for being hypnotized by saying
hypnosis reveals gullibility. The more they like and trust the hypnosis, the
more they allow that person to control their attention and fantasies. An
authoritative person in legitimate context can induce people- hypnotized or
not- to perform some unlikely acts. Backed up by the fact that some
people are more easily hypnotized than others (hypnotic suggestibility)
and people with high hypnotic suggestibility tend to have richer fantasy
lives, follow directions well, and be able to focus intensely on a single task
for a period of time.
● Post hypnotic suggestion- a suggestion that a hypnotized person act a
certain way after he/she is brought out of hypnosis; used by some
clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors
● Stages of sleep
○ Sleep stages – 90 minute cycles
■ Relaxed but awake = alpha waves. Alert and awake= beta waves
■ Stage 1 = relaxation, feeling of falling – hypnagogic jerks (your
body thinks your falling and braces itself, you jerk up). Quick sleep
state with gradual loss of responsiveness to outside , drifting
thoughts, and images (the hypnagogic state- semi-wakeful state of
dreamlike awareness). Theta waves (higher in amplitude, lower in
frequency then alpha waves)
■ Stage 2 = About 50% of sleep time. 20 minutes of 90 minute cycle.
High frequency sleep spindles- bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain
activity- and K-complexes.
■ Stage 3 = beginning of deep sleep. 30 minutes of 90 minute cycle.
Large, slow delta waves and lack of muscle activity. Slowed heart
rate and respiration, lowered temperature and lowered blood flow to
the brain. Growth hormone is secreted. Where sleepwalking, sleep
talking, wetting the bed, and night terrors would occur.
■ REM = 80% dreaming, 5 to 6 times a night. About 20% of sleep
time. Called paradoxical sleep because EEGs show beta activity of
 wakefulness and theta activity of stage 1, but we are in a deep
sleep and are skeletal muscles are paralyzed.
■ During a normal night’s sleep, stage 3 shortens and REM and
stage 2 lengthens
● Manifest & Latent dream content
○ Manifest content- the remembered storyline of a dream
○ Latent content- the underlying meaning of a dream
● Dissociation
○ Dissociation / Divided Consciousness Theory- hypnosis causes us to
divide our consciousness voluntarily. One part or level of our
consciousness responds to the suggestions of the hypnotist; another part
or level retains awareness of reality.
■ Hidden observer- presence of a level of consciousness that
monitors what is happening while another level obeys the
hypnotist’s suggestions.
● Effects of: cocaine, caffeine,amphetamines, barbiturates, nicotine, alcohol
 ○
● Opiates & effect on endorphins
○
● Biological Bases of Behavior
● 4 lobes- frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Comprises cerebral
cortex
■ Frontal: motor cortex
■ Parietal: somatosensory (touch); all body parts
■ Temporal: hearing, wernicke’s area for meaningful sentences
■ Occipital:vision; left vision goes to right side of this lobe and vv
● Reticular formation- a diffuse network of nerve pathways in the brainstem
connecting the spinal cord, cerebrum, and cerebellum, and mediating the
overall level of consciousness.
 ● Split brain / Hemispheric-
● Specialization-

● Amygdala- emotins
● Cerebellum- coordinate and regulate muscular activity
● Myelin sheath- around the axon (end) of a nerve cell. It insulates neurons so they
can send electric signals faster and more efficiently.
● Action potential- the change in electrical potential associated with the passage of
an impulse along the membrane of a muscle cell or nerve cell
● Agonists & Antagonists
● Branches of the nervous system (peripheral & central; autonomic & skeletal;
sympathetic, parasympathetic)

○
● Neurotransmitters (dopamine, endorphins...)
○ https://quizlet.com/226660253/neurotransmitters-ap-psychology-flash-
cards/
● Hormones
○
● Brain imaging (EEG, MRI, PET, CT, fMRI)
○ https://quizlet.com/331125492/ap-psychology-brain-imaging-flash-cards/
● Plasticity
● All or None