Course Structure:

1. Introduction, History and Research Methods
2. Behavioural Neuroscience I
3. Behavioural Neuroscience II
4. Developmental Psychology I
5. Developmental Psychology II
6. Cognitive Psychology I
7. Cognitive Psychology II
8. Clinical Psychology I
9. Clinical Psychology II
10. Social Psychology I
11. Social Psychology II
12. Applications of Psychology

Cues:

• Lecture 01: Introduction, History, and Research Methods
  • What is Psychology?
  • History of Psychology
    • The Three Beginnings of Psychology
    • The Psychiatric Tradition
    • The Testing Tradition
    • The Academic Tradition
    • Three New Beginnings of Psychology
  • Research Methodology
    • Basic Philosophy of Science
    • Ways of Doing Research
    • Research Methods - Surveys & Establishing Representatives
    • Correlation Is Not Causation: How Do You Establish Causation?
• Lecture 02: Behavioural Neuroscience I
  • The Nervous System and the Brain - The Big Picture
  • Neuron
    • The Neuron
    • Neurotransmitters
    • How Drugs Affect Neurotransmitters
  • Divisions of the Nervous System
    • The Peripheral Nervous System
    • The Central Nervous System
    • How the Spinal Cord Controls Reflexes
    • The Brain
  • The Endocrine System
  • Putting It All Together - The Case of Hunger
  • Overarching Principles
• Lecture 03: Behavioural Neuroscience II
  • The Senses
    • Vision
    • Hearing
    • The Other Senses: Taste, Smell, Touch, Pain, and Balance
  • Focus on University of Waterloo Research – Synaesthesia
  • Coordination of Language in the Brain
  • Brain Coordination While We Sleep
• Lecture 04: Developmental Psychology I
  • What is Behaviourism?
  • Classical Conditioning
  • Operant Conditioning
  • Language Acquisition
  • Observational Learning
  • The Big Picture: The Fundamental Issues Being Addressed
• Lecture 05: Developmental Psychology II
  • Developmental Psychology II: The Big Picture
  • Physical Development
  • Cognitive Development
    • An Introduction to Piaget's Theory
    • Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
    • Extensions and Qualifications of Piaget's Theory
  • Social Development
    • Attachment Theory
    • Erikson's Theory
    • Gender Development
• Lecture 06: Cognitive Psychology I
  • Cognitive Psychology I - Memory: The Big Picture
  • Stages of Memory
  • Effortful Memory
    • How much do we retain?
    • Cues that Influence Memory
    • Interference in Memory
    • Strategies to Improve Memory
  • Memory Without Awareness
  • The Fragility of Memory
• Lecture 07: Cognitive Psychology II
  • Cognitive Psychology II: Perception, Preconceptions and Judgment
  • Perception
  • Our Knowledge and Preconceptions Shape Our Perceptions
  • Judgment Under Uncertainty
    • Schemas and Heuristics
    • Focus on University of Waterloo Research Priming & Time Judgments (Dr. Jennifer Stolz)
    • Artificial Intelligence - Do people think like computers?
• Lecture 08: Clinical Psychology I
  • Clinical Psychology I: Psychological Disorders
  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Mood Disorders
  • Psychotic Disorders - Schizophrenia
  • Dissociative Disorders - Multiple Personalities
  • Personality Disorders
• Lecture 09: Clinical Psychology II
  • Clinical Psychology II: Therapies – The Big Picture
  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Mood Disorders
  • Schizophrenia
  • Evaluating Psychotherapies
    • Problems in Interpreting Effectiveness of Therapy
    • Focus on University of Waterloo Research on Therapy Effectiveness
    • Is Psychotherapy Effective?
• Lecture 10: Social Psychology I
• Lecture 11: Social Psychology II
• Lecture 12: Applications of Psychology

• 5 core courses of psychology (that the structure of this course):

  • Behavioral neuroscience
  • Developmental psychology
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Clinical psychology
  • Social psychology

• What psychology isn't?

  • Psychoanalysis: within clinical psychology, virtually no one is doing psychoanalysis anymore
  • Common Sense:
    • example: same people or opposite people attract
  • Torture of animals or people:
    • Some animals were sacrificed, but this is still consider ethical

• Psychology is hard to define, because people are hard to define

  • A way to think about psychology:
    • it has to do with what people think; it's about the thoughts that are in our heads
      • Historically, "thoughts" should not be part of psychology
    • our emotions, motivations, (or feeling) are not always the same as our thoughts, are not always captured by our thoughts
      • you can have reactions without thoughts that correspond with them
    • Psychology is also about behavior - how you act
    • They don't usually go together

• First psychologist: Freud

  • the psychiatric tradition in psychology
  • started psychoanalysis
    • nowadays represented more in medicine than in psychology
  • psychiatrists really have no training in psychology
  • he didn't write his first major work "The Interpretation of Dreams" until 1898

• Testing tradition

  • seen most heavily in the study of intelligence Testing
  • developed in England
  • one of the key players was Sir Francis Galton, a first cousin of Charles Darwin
  • heavy biological influence on much of the test tradition still somewhat represented particularly in the evolutionary side of psychology
  • narrowest of the three traditions
  • Galton started his work in the 1870s

• Academic Approach (Laboratory Psychology)

  • Wilhelm Wundt
    • set up the first psychology laboratory
    • Wundt is interesting partly for his failure
    • he wanted to have a clearly scientific approach
    • he believed that thoughts could be divided into mental atoms
  • 3 reactions to Wundt
    • William James
      • a student of Wundt's and a contemporary of Freud's
      • made a log of progress and in many ways made a very important contribution
      • brought psychology to North America
    • John B. Watson
      • one of the early proponents of behaviourism
    • Gestalt psychologists in Europe

• Major Theorists of Psychiatric Tradition

  • Freud
    • psychiatric tradition is dominated by Freud
    • had a very complex theory about the way the psyche worked
    • two primary motives that drive people: sex and aggression
    • much of what drives our behaviour is unconscious
    • huge inner mental life that we are unaware of which is very complex and very devious
    • (some are wacky, like the following)
    • Oedipus complex
      • Freud believed that this is what influenced much of adult development
      • was the central problem to the human psyche
      • as children boys want to have sex with their mothers, and in realizing that this is not possible, vicariously live this through their father's sex life with the mother
      • this did not help to explain how women developed
  • Carl Jung (Freud's student)
    • Jung was an incredibly brilliant man
    • more important for his literature in terms of its interpretation of the world - Steppenwolf
    • his theories are not taken very seriously by psychology
  • Carl Adler (Freud's student)
    • had totally different ideas from Freud
    • believed that people wanted to be powerful (not sex and aggression), wanted to be in control
    • in some ways you see echoes of Adler's thoughts in modern psychology with the concern for self-esteem
    • Ego Psychologists
      • followed in the Freudian tradition and have made an important impact on modern psychology
      • Erik Erickson - model of Social Development
      • Karen Horney and Henry Stack Sullivan - focused on the importance of relationships in developing the self-concept

• The major assumptions of the Psychiatric Tradition

  1. cannot rely on what people say or do to indicate what kind of problems they are experiencing because everything is thought to be unconscious
     • the emphasis is not on what people tell you, but on the interpretation of what is said
  2. emphasis on understanding each individual person comprehensively
     • the emphasis is on studying one person at a time and knowing all the details about that person
     • most of the research done in the psychiatric tradition has been through therapy over a number of years
     • understanding the individual comprehensively as a dynamic whole
  3. the best approach is a clinical approach
     • more is learned by studying people who are sick, than through those who are healthy
     • tells you more about what is hidden beneath the psyche, what is really going on

• The major Theorists of the Testing Tradition

  • Charles Darwin
  • Sir Francis Galton (Darwin's cousin)
    • had a naive idea of how to study what makes people fit and the most likely to survive
    • wanted to figure out what makes someone a genius, what makes somebody superior
    • in the testing tradition there is an underlying element of elitism; aristocracy
    • connected his ideas with Darwin's theory of evolution
    • assumed that those who would be the smartest were also the ones who were most physically capable
    • first measure of intelligence was to do physical tests
    • very intelligent mathematician; came up many new statistical and mathematical techniques
  • Spearman (Galton's student)
    • along with Galton, developed many new important statistical techniques and ways of studying things
    • factor analysis: way of figuring out what goes together
  • Cattel & Eysenek
    • very famous in the Trait Tradition
    • from very different points of view came up with similar models on what it is that makes up a person
    • what are the important personality dimensions
      • Two major components to personally:
        1. Introversion vs Extroversion (if it is outgoing)
        2. Neuroticism (if get worried easily)
  • Binet
    • was the first to figure out how to actually perform an intelligence test
    • first intelligence test that was given covered topics one would learn in school
    • was basically trying to figure out what age level a child was at, instead of their grade level
    • very similar to what we now think of as school testing

• The major assumptions of the Testing Tradition

  1. Psychology is primarily a product of biology
     • emphasis on nature over nurture and evolution
     • if you want to know what people are about, the most important thing to understand is the evolutionary basis of behaviour
  2. There are only a few ways in which people differ
     • there are only a small number of traits which can explain the important differences between people
  3. People's traits can be understood through simple tests
     • almost all the research is done with questionnairs and paper and pencil tests

• This is like 75-80% of the course

• The major theorists of the Academic Tradition

  • Wilhelm Wundt
    • psychological atomism
    • would have people come in and tell him about a thought that they had had; introspect
    • thought that he would get a nice periodic table of psychological atoms, and instead he got thousands, which didn't make any sense, and were not organized in any sort of pattern
    • several other approaches followed
  • William James
    • pragmatism
    • believed Wundt was wrong for not studying what people really cared about
    • pragmatic approach 0 to study things that are meaningful to people
    • still important to North American psychology
    • "what does it matter?" is an important question
  • Watson & Skinner
    • took the approach of Behaviourism which dominated for about 40 years in North American psychology
    • believed that Wundt was not scientific enough; trying to study "thought" which cannot be observed
    • behaviourists felt that "thought" should not be studied
    • rationale was that if it is to be studied scientifically, it must be observable, i.e. behaviour
    • defined psychology as the scientific study of behaviour
    • made progress in a number of different domains
  • Kurt Lewin
    • Gestalt psychology
    • argued that Wundt made a wrong assumption, that the whole does not equal the sum of the parts
    • this was a powerful perspective
    • many times the parts don't add up to the wholes that we see and come to know and understand

• The Major Assumptions of the Academic Tradition

  1. Psychology is best understood when the causes are understood
     • we need to understand what causes a behaviour
     • the "why" is more important than the "how" or the "when"
     • if you understand the "why", you will know the "how" and the "when"
  2. People's thoughts and actions can be understood
     • thoughts and actions are not outside of the individual, are not irrelevant
     • by observing people, we can understand them
  3. Systematic study produces the fullest understanding
     • set up labs and experiments
       • Wundt's Lab - studies questions like "how long does one take to press a button"
       • William James' Lab

• in the 1960s and 70s, each of these traditions had a significant rebirth (new beginning)

• The Psychiatric Tradition

  • Humanistic Approach - The Third Wave
    • Carl Rogers
      • what Rogers tried to do in his therapy was very different from the Psychoanalytic Tradition
      • he reflected back to the individual what they were feeling
      • belief that people are basically good, and if you can let them get in touch with themselves, let them understand themselves, they will get better
      • they need to get in touch with this good inner part of who they are

• The Trait Tradition

  • developed and expanded from only two personality traits, Neuroticism and Extroversion, to big five important personality traits
    • The Big Five Model of Personality (OCEAN)
      1. Openness = intelligence
         • open to new experiences
         • more flexible in their thinking
         • more intelligent and have more education
      2. Conscientiousness
         • people who really stick to their goals
         • work hard and get things done
      3. Extroversion
      4. Agreeableness
         • how positive or negative of a person are you
      5. Neuroticism

• The Academic Tradition

  • The Cognitive Revolution
    • in the 60s and 70s there was huge growth and changes in the field from Behaviourism to Cognitive psychology
    • study of thought is one of the primary and important things about people
    • Albert Bandura - Observational Learning
    • it became clear that with Behaviourism there was much that could not be explained
    • we can learn by observing people rather than just being reinforced
    • cognitive revolution changed the face of psychology

• there are actually some big questions behind research methodology
• focus on the Academic Tradition
• keep in mind that the other traditions may not feel the same way
• our ideas can often be wrong
• we set out to demonstrate that our ideas are wrong
  • only draw firm conclusions when we have shown that the idea is wrong
• we accept an idea when we can't prove that it is wrong
  • this does not mean that someone else won't prove that the idea is wrong
  • good to have a healthy skepticism
• we might well prove them wrong later
• a number of things influence these ideas
  • what is accepted is often what is popular
  • what is accepted is shaped by political forces and social influences

• Tension between Discovery and Explanation

  • When something is discovered and is brand new, does it really mean anything?
  • some sciences are mostly about explanation; how things work, how things unfold
  • psychology is in the middle of these two extremes; always new discoveries, but explanations are crucial
  • different traditions have a different emphasis on discovery and explanation, and they do different types of research because of this
  • Psychiatric tradition uses mostly case studies in its research
    • One of Freud's famous case studies: Anna O.
      • Freud was Anna's therapist for many years
      • developed an unusual illness after a couple years of caring for her sick father
      • was blind even though there was nothing physically wrong with her
      • also had Glove Paralysis - paralysis of the hand
      • Freud believed that Anna was having fantasies about sex with her father, and that this was the cause of her problems
      • many modern psychologists feel that Anna was being sexually abused by her father
      • Freud thought that the tales of sexual abuse were all part of her fantasy

• Naturalistic Observation

  • similar to a case study but usually broader
  • observe, watch and see what happens
  • Jane Goodall's research with chimps
  • not very often done with people

• Survey Research

  • get a sample of populations, ask them questions, and see them how to answer it
  • goal is often to find out what the whole population is like, from surveying a sample portion of that population
  • problem of representativeness
    • e.g. political polling
  • establishes generality
  • sets up correlations between variables
  • when one thing happens, another thing tends to happen
  • Example of Correlation established by Survey Research
    • correlation between children watching violent television, and being violent
    • can randomly sample children throughout all of Canada to find out how much violent television they watch
    • then find out how often they use violent behaviour
    • what you find is a nice reliable correlation between children watching violence, and children acting the violence out
  • Correlation doesn't mean causation
    • just because children who watch too much violent television tend to be violent, doesn't necessarily mean that the television caused the violent behaviour

• Experiments

  • usually about establishing causation
  • Example of Correlation established by Survey Research
    • one possibility is that the violent television causes the violent behaviour, but is that really what is going on? maybe it is violent kids like to watch violent television
    • whenever you have a correlation, you have to think about in which direction does it go; does A cause B, or does B cause A, or other reason causes A and B, like following
    • perhaps the child is being abused by the parent(s), or is hyperactive
    • maybe it is education
    • there is always the possibility of having many variables when you have a correlation
    • causation establishes which one it is, which pattern is right

• Representative group of people

  • you want the people filling out the survey to correspond to the larger group that you want to generalize, to represent, so we do Random Sampling (different from Random Assignment):
    • have a large group of people and take a small subset to do the survey on

• Need to ask unbiased questions

  • Anchoring Effects
    • give people something that you know is wrong, but it still influences the way they interpret the question, and then try to explain it
    • Is the Mississippi river longer or shorter than 500 miles? How long is it?
    • will actually give a short estimate because they are still influenced by the 500, even though everybody knows it's wrong
    • get 'anchored' by the other idea
  • Framing Effects
  • these are ways of asking questions in which the first part of the question, ends up influencing how the question will be answered

• don't want to have anchoring or framing effects because you will not get an accurate representation of the population

• surveys do a good job of establishing correlation among variables

• Correlation

  • when one variable changes, the other variable changes as well

• Time Order

  • need to know which comes first
  • Did the children watch the violent television and then become aggressive later on, or were they aggressive before viewing violence on television?
  • this is why many like to do longitudinal research

• Elimination of all other possible causes

  • Examples
    • Were the parents more aggressive?
    • Did they come from poor families?
    • Were the children who were more aggressive likely to be hyperactive?
  • Experiments do this through random assignment
    • randomly assign people to various conditions
    • take a small group in an experiment, and randomly have one half do one assignment, and the other half do another
  • Independent variable
    • what we think is going to be the cause
    • Experimental group - watches television
      • Control group - doesn't watch television
  • Dependent variable
    • behaviour that you are concerned with in the end; the effect
    • have children play together to see if they will fight
    • we want the dependent variable to be:
      • valid - measures what is supposed to measure
      • reliable - get the same outcome every time
      • example:
        • reliable, but not valid:
        • valid, but not reliable:

• How experiments try to establish causation

  • time order is built in independent variable leads to the dependent variable
  • eliminating other causes
  • randomly assigned

• Neuron
  • the basic cells that make up the nervous system
• Peripheral Nervous System
  • all the other nerves that run through the body which are not the brain or the spinal cord
• The Central Nervous System and the Brain
  • it is probably one of the frontiers that we understand the least of in psychology
• The Endocrine System
  • hormones
  • the different chemicals that float through the blood and also influence us
• Putting it all together - The Example of Hunger
  • not completely separate systems, all work together and influence each other
  • we can look at hunger as an example of how all these systems work together

]

• A neuron looks like above, structure includes:

  • Myelin Sheath:
    • globular part of the neuron which are not found in the neurons of the brain
    • lets the electric current bounce from node to node, so that the impulse can travel quickly
    • neurons which are part of the Peripheral System and part of the spinal cord, actually work faster than in the brain
  • Dendrites
    • are found at the back end of the neuron (Terminal Branches of axon is the front end of a neuron)
  • Cell Body
    • the cell's life-support centre

• How do you take a piece of tissue, like a cell or a neuron, and have it conduct electricity?

  • Study of Sea Slugs

• How impulses travel down the Neuron
  • movement of ions in and out of the cell membrane is what creates the electricity and causes it to flow down the neuron (toward axon terminals)

• Synapse:
  • to simplify the process:
    • the action potential breaks down the vesicle containing neurotransmitters in axon terminal
    • then the neurotransmitters go through the synaptic gap
    • and it changes the ions in the next neuron
    • after it goes through, the neuron has to reuptake, in order for the transmitter can be used again, in a really short period of time
  • but it is not that simple because:
    • each neuron is connected from and to multiple other neurons
    • it's a very complex combination of a whole bunch of synapses coming together at once to determine whether the next one fires
    • i.e. some makes the next neuron firing, some makes the next neuron stop firing

• Dopamine

  • very common especially in the brain
  • Parkinson's Disease
    • part of the cause is a deficiency of dopamine
    • marked by tremors
    • very important in the coordination of movement
  • also important in attention and emotion
  • Schizophrenia
    • marked by an excess of dopamine in various parts of the brain

• Serotonin

  • involved in mood, hunger, sleep and arousal
  • it affects things widely in the brain
  • a deficiency of serotonin is a cause for insomnia
  • deficiencies are also associated with depression

• Norepinephrine

  • more related to alertness and arousal
  • also associated with depression

• Acetylcholine

  • the most common neurotransmitter
  • involved in muscle movement
  • Alzheimer's Disease
    • the neurons that work through acetylcholine get ruined with Alzheimer's
  • also involved in learning and memory

• Endorphins

  • involved in pain regulation
  • when injured, the body naturally releases these endorphins which allow you to handle a lot more pain
  • heroine and morphine mimic this neurotransmitter

• Here is a picture showing the synapse:
  • at the synapse gap, neurotransmitters come across have complex shapes
  • on the other side of dendrites, receptor sites with complex shape that neurotransmitters fitting in
  • when it fits in, it changes the receiving cell membrane, and starts/stops the impulse depends on the type of neurotransmitter
• Drugs mimics the shape of neurotransmitter, 2 ways for drugs to work:
  1. Agonist: by acting just like the neurotransmitter, and in effect making It think that there is more of it; good if there is a deficiency of neurotransmitters
  2. Antagonist: others act like blockers and keep the neurotransmitter from having as much of an effect; good if there is too much of a neurotransmitter

• Nervous System
  • Peripheral
    • Autonomic (controls self-regulated action of internal organs and glands)
      • Sympathetic (arousing): gets you ready for fight or flight
      • Parasympathetic (calming): lets you build up all your energy
    • Somatic (controls voluntary movements of skeletal muscles)
  • Central (brain and spinal cord)

• Somatic Nervous System

  • controls voluntary muscles and their movement

• Autonomic Nervous System

  • controls the glands
  • controls the muscles related to our organs
  • although possible to override by conscious thought, for the most part these reactions occur spontaneously

• The Spinal Cord
  • carries information from the Peripheral Nervous system up to the brain
  • does some 'thinking', in that it controls some responses
  • these responses are typically referred to as reflexes
  • type of neurons that cannot only transmit things, but can route things different ways; almost makes some primitive types of decisions
• The Brain
  • does almost all the processing other than the simple reflexes
• Three areas of the brain you need to know about

1. Brainstem
   • it is injury to the brainstem that usually kills
   • controls all the vital functions
   • very crucial even though it is only a small part of the brain
2. Lymbic system
   • controls motivation and emotion
   • very important for memory
3. Cerebral Cortex
   • separates us from animals

A Simple Reflex:

1. In this simple hand-withdrawal reflex, information is carried from skin receptors along a sensory neuron to the spinal cord (shown by the red arrows). From here it is passed via interneurons to motor neurons that lead to muscles in the hand and arm (blue arrows).
2. Because this reflex involves only the spinal cord, the hand jerks away from the candle flame even before information about the event has reached the brain, causing the experience of pain.

• The Four Parts of the Brain Stem

  • Medulla
    • absolutely critical in keeping us alive
    • controls the heartbeat and breathing
    • when someone break their neck, the Medulla get damaged and he's probably dead
  • Reticular formation
    • controls attention, alertness, and reactivity
    • can be thought of as the accelerator of the brain
    • basic function that regulates the overall amount of brain activity
  • Thalamus
    • sensory switching point
    • crucial for vision and other senses
    • beginning processes of our senses come about

• Cerebellum

  • crucial for movement and coordination of movement
  • crucial for balance

• The Lymbic System

  • Pituitary gland
    • important in the production of many necessary hormones
  • Hypothalamus
    • crucial for hunger
    • controls the hormones of the Pituitary gland
    • some influence on other emotions as well, particularly pleasure
  • Amygdala
    • important for a number of things, including anger
  • Hippocampus
    • crucial for memory and for laying down the functions of memory
    • damage can cause severe types of memory disorders

• The Cerebral Cortex - Basic Divisions

  • Occipital lobe
    • heavily involved in vision
  • Parietal lobe
    • involved in language and spacial recognition
  • Temporal lobe
    • involved in hearing, memory and mood
    • important in some of the functions of the Hippocampus and the Lymbic system
  • Frontal lobe
    • important in reasoning and thinking
    • involved in the complex processing of information

• The Cerebral Cortex Functional Divisions - Movement and Sense of Touch
  • Output: Motor Cortex
  • Input: Sensory Cortex
  • Note that the left hemisphere section receives/controls right side of body
  • the brain has no actual sensors for pain
  • there is a lot of specificity with the sensory and motor cortex
  • seizures occur when there is too much electrical activity in the motor cortex
  • motor cortex sends off charges to make movement throughout the body
  • in the case of a stroke, the motor cortex is damaged, and whatever is damaged is what will be paralyzed
  • often the stroke is only on one side of the brain, causing only one side of the body to be paralyzed
  • some people cannot move a part of their body, but can feel it
  • other people can move a part of their body, but cannot feel it as a result of damage in the Sensory cortex, which did not affect the corresponding part of the Motor cortex

• The Cerebral Cortex Functional Divisions - Hearing and Visions
  • Vision cortex
    • initially the sensory information comes in through the eyes, but it is processed by the Visual cortex at the back of the brain
  • Hearing cortex
    • processed near the sensor (ear)
    • damage to this area can cause deafness with no possibility of correction

• The Cerebral Cortex Functional Divisions - Left and Right Sides of the Brain: thick area between the two brains for exchanging information

  • Corpus Callosum
    • think area between the two brains for exchanging information
  • Epileptic Study:
    • in the 1950s there was not much that they could do to help epileptics with their seizures
    • in order to stop the seizures they severed the corpus callosum; they cut the two sides of the brain apart
    • helps to reduce the number of seizures dramatically because the electrical impulses do not spread to the other side
    • this led to a new understanding of the brain
    • what was discovered was that the two sides of the brain actually perform different functions
    • left side in particular is more verbal; able to produce language in most people
    • right side is better at visual processing and coordinating; can understand simple language
    • some left-handed people have a brain structured like a right-hander, others have it reversed

• Mike Gazanaga Study

  • helps to explain the 'executive' function of the left brain, the ability to explain and interpret what is going on
  • brain is able to do this even when it is wrong
  • right brain can process visual stimuli, and can process commands
  • when he would flash "Get up" to the right side of the brain, a number of people would get up
  • their left brain was unaware of why they were getting up because it has no access to that information
  • everyone of them could instantaneously come up with an explanation as to why they stood up
  • left side of the brain is very good at rationalizing your own behaviour
  • Would the right side of the brain be better at picking up what emotion is being shown on a face?
    • still works to be done, no one knows...

• Pituitary gland: secretes many different hormones, some of Which affect other glands
• Hypothalamus: brain region controlling the pituitary gland
• Testes: secrets male sex hormones
• Ovaries: secretes female sex hormones
• Adrenal glands: inner part, called the medulla helps trigger the "fight or flight" response
• Pancreas: regulates the level of sugar in the blood
• Parathyroids: help regulate the level of calcium In the blood
• Thyroid gland: affects metabolism, among other things

• When we don't eat for a while, what makes us feel hungry?
  • stomach contractions carry hunger signal through the peripheral nervous system to the hypothalamus
  • blood sugar levels as interpreted and controlled by the liver and pancreas send message to the hypothalamus
  • lateral hypothalamus is stimulated and releases the hormone orexin which heightens hunger, like the following picture

• When we eat, what makes us no longer feel hungry?

  • stomach expands and this message is transmitted to the hypothalamus
  • blood sugar levels as interpreted and controlled by the liver and pancreas send message of higher levels to the hypothalamus
  • insulin is also released
  • ventromedial hypothalamus is stimulated and which leads to the feeling of satiation and helps stop the eating

• Damage to the Hypothalamus

  • if there is a lesion to the lateral hypothalamus then rats basically starve themselves to death and virtually eat nothing
  • also seem lethargic and depressed
  • if the ventromedial hypothalamus is damaged, then rats basically will never stop eating and they get very fat

• Structures of the brain and the various systems work together in coordinated, overlapping, and redundant systems
• It incorrect to say one part is completely controlling something - that is way too simplistic
• Despite all this specificity and complexity the brain has quite a bit of plasticity
  • if an area is damaged other areas can take over
  • particularly true for young children

• Structure of eye
  • Iris: how much the light gets in
  • Pupil: just a hole
  • Cornea: protective surface
  • Lens: right behind the pupil, focuses the light race on the Retina(it revert the image)
  • Retina: flashed on it upside down
  • Fovea: actual spot on Retina, right behind the pupil, center of our vision, sensitive to colour
  • Optic nerve (to brain's visual cortex): take signal from retina and transmit it to brain

• Retina
  • How Retina processes the light:
    1. Light entering eye triggers photochemical reaction in rods and cones at back of retina
    2. Chemical reaction in turn activates bipolar cells
    3. Bipolar cells then active the ganglion cells, the axons of which converge to form the optic nerve. This nerve transmits information to the visual cortex in the brain's occipital lobe.
  • 3 types of cells involves in the procedure:
    1. Ganglion cell
    2. Bipolar cell
    3. Sensors
       • Rod: responsible for black and white vision
       • Cone: responsible for colour vision

• From the Eye to the Cortex

  • the part of the brain that helps to understand things is the cortex
  • visual cortex takes the light that is coming in, and turns it into shapes

• Feature Detection

  • How can you tell that a table is square?
  • in the cortex individual cells respond to lines at various angles
  • take the symbols of lines and create a pattern
  • cells converge to create our perception of what we see
  • higher level cells provide even more perception
  • all of this happens virtually instantaneously
  • this all is done with massive parallel processing of information
  • it is still not completely understood as to how the visual cortex organizes all this information

• Colour Vision

  • Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory
    • theory comes primarily from studying the retina
    • three types of cones in the retina, which respond to three types of light
    • primary colors: red, green, blue
    • all other colours can be made from these three
    • could just the specificity of the cones produce these different colours?
    • consistent with this theory are colour-blind individuals
      • red and green - problem with either green or red cones
      • blue and green - no distinction between blue and green cones
    • theory works well untill we talk about the colour yellow
      • brain responds to yellow as a primary colour
  • Opponent-Process Theory
    • there are actually three sets of opposing pairs of colours
    • 3 opponent color pairs
      • black/white
      • red/green
      • blue/yellow
    • explains afterimage effect
      • Why do you get those opposing colours?
      • when staring at the colours, the neurons associated with those colours will fire, but they will eventually wear out
      • the lack of firing is now interpreted as if the red, blue and white are firing thus creating the afterimage effect
      • after image effect is when the brain thinks that the reverse colours are firing
  • Both theory are probably true
    • at the retinal level, you have the three types of cones which work together to produce all the different colours
    • true in the thalamus, higher up in the brain as it is processing things

• The Parts of the ear
  • Outer ear: Pinna and part of auditory canal
  • Auditory canal
  • Eardrum: begin of actual signal, it vibrates
  • Bones of the middle ear: 3 bones, transmitted mechanically
  • Oval window: where stirrup attaches
  • Cochlea: like seashell, turns physical stimulus into neural impulses
  • Semicircular canals: important to balance
  • Vestibular sacs: have nothing to do with hearing
  • Auditory nerve

• A Closer Look at the Cochlea

  • sound comes in and make eardrum vibrate
  • the vibrations move the hammer, anvil and stirrup which push against fluid inside the cochlea
  • wave get flushing in the cochlea
  • cochlear membrane (basilar) with protruding hair cells, the waves bend the hairs
  • the bending of the hairs starts the nerve impulse that really allows you to hear

• How does this cochlear fluid get turned in to a neural impulse? Pitch perception

  • Place theory
    • the particular hairs in the cochlear membrane which get bent over by the wave, will determine what type of pitch there will be
    • big waves are going to hit back a lot further creating one pitch which will be low sounds; low sounds make bigger waves
    • higher sounds are going to make littler waves, which lands closer in, creating high pitch sound
    • this theory can't explain the high sounds that we are capable of hearing
  • Frequency Theory
    • it is the speed of the waves in the cochlea that determines the pitch
    • big waves go slower, and little waves go faster
  • Both theories seem to be true
    • Place theory works well for high sounds, and it is the particular hairs that matter
    • Frequency theory explains low sounds, it is the frequency of the waves

• Taste

  • four basic tastes - sweet, sour, salty and bitter
  • tongue has tastebuds that respond to these different tastes
  • taste sensations are created by chemical reactions on the tastebuds
  • heavily influenced by smell
  • together they respond to much of the same stimuli - this is called sensory interaction
  • often what enhances the flavour of food is the smell rather than the particular combination of sweet, salty, sour and bitter

• Smell

  • occurs due to a chemical reaction in the olfactory membrane that creates smell
  • we still do not understand exactly how receptors in the olfactory membrane work
  • chemical that is in the air gets picked up by these receptors in the olfactory membrane which creates a neural impulse to the brain
  • odors can powerfully evoke memories and emotions

• Structure of smell sensor:

  • Nasal passage: sense smell
  • Receptor cells in the olfactory membrane: some chemical reactions occurs here
  • Olfactory nerve: set up impulse to the brain
  • Olfactory bulb: pick up impulse situated, where occur in lymbic system, actually closely related with it, and that's maybe why order cause strong memories, because it is close to Hippocampus, which is crucial to memory, also lymbic system is also crucial to emotional reactions (Amygdala)

• Touch

  • organ for touch is skin
  • there are specialized nerve endings in the skin, but these do not seem to have a relationship with what we feel
  • our skin is sensitive to pressure, warmth (not hot), cold, and pain
  • these four sensitivities give rise to quite varied sensations
  • it is interesting that with that the brain has such an influence on that sense of touch when it doesn't on so many other sensations
  • hot = warm + cold, an interesting physical illusion
  • wet = cold + pressure
  • feeling itchy comes from overstimulated pain receptors

• Pain

  • more is known about pain, but the more that is known, the more difficult it is to understand
  • there is no definable area of the brain that is related to pain
  • what we tend to remember about the pain is the height of the pain, not the duration
  • Gate Control Theory
    • suggests that the spinal cord has a neurological gate that either blocks pain signals or allows them to travel to the brain
    • distractions can close the gate
    • brain is blocking out the pain response with lots of other responses
    • endorphins, which are the body's natural pain killers, may shut the gate right at the spinal cord so that pain can't travel to the brain

• Balance

  • feeling of be disoriented or dizzy - kinesthetic sense
  • seems to occur through two very different sense organs
  • the joints and muscles tell us the position of our body
  • also the semi-circular canals in the ears tell us the vestibular sense or the position of our head
  • it is those grains hitting the hairs that gives us this sense of balance and orientation, particularly for the head

• Synaesthesia
  • blending of sensory perception; blending of sensations
  • Digit-colour synaesthesia
    • a particular colour is projected onto a number
    • individuals have different colour ranges for the numbers
  • nobody really knows how this develops, in fact it is a very rare condition
  • researchers at the University of Waterloo have only identified 80-90 people in the world

• How do we read out load?
  • Visual cortex: receives written words as visual stimulation
  • Angular gyrus: transforms visual representations into an auditory code
  • Wernicke's area: interprets auditory code
    • stroke on this area: can produce speech but none of it makes any sense; affects the interpretation of speech
  • Broca's area: controls speech muscles via the motor cortex
    • stroke on this area: can understand speech, but have a hard time producing speech
  • Motor cortex: word is pronounced

• The Active Sleeping Brain
  • activity in our brain is remarkably varied while we sleep
  • five stages of sleep defined by brain activity that occur when we sleep
    • Awake, relaxed: Alpha waves
    • Stage 1 sleep: lightly sleep
    • Stage 2 sleep: little peaks, called Spindle (burst of activity)
    • Stage 3 sleep: bigger waves and higher amplitude
    • Stage 4 sleep: really high amplitude (waves are called Delta waves)
    • REM sleep: REM stands for rapid eye movement, happens when dreaming

• The Sleep Cycle

  • Awake to deeper and deeper stages of sleep
  • Then REM sleep
  • more Stage 4 in first 2-3 hours, more REM afterwards

• Why do we sleep

  • when we don't sleep we feel terrible
  • why do we spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping?
  • when people don't sleep they are not alert and are more likely to get into accidents
  • but this doesn't answer why we need to sleep

• Why do we dream?

  • Freud
    • believed that dreams produced wish fulfillment
    • thought that we worked out all of our fantasies through our dreams
    • interpreted sex and violence into any type of dream
  • Modern Theory
    • Activation-synthesis
    • dreams result from random neural activity in the head which the brain attempts to make sense of
    • whatever pathways or connections that have been activated during the day, the more likely to be activated again at night, particularly when dreaming
    • need dreams for memory consolidation and cognitive development

• Sleep Throughout the Lifetime
  • as you get old, you spend most of your time awake
  • when you are younger, you spend more time to sleep, especially when you are a baby, you take lot of time dreaming, why?
    • the connections that are developing need to be reinforced, dreams foster this sort of cognitive development
    • dreaming facilitates learning

• Classical Conditioning
  • Pavlov and his dogs
• Operant Conditioning
  • Skinner and his pigeons
• Language Acquisition
  • How is it that we learn to speak?
• Observational Learning
  • the Bobo Doll

• Pavlov and his dogs
  • had test tubes hocked up to saliva glands of dogs to collect the spit
  • noticed after a few days of giving them food, that every time he walked up to the dogs to give them food, the saliva would start to flow
  • the question became, Why were they salivating before the food was given to them?

• Procedure:

  • An unconditioned stimulus (UCS) produces an unconditioned response: Introduce food, and dog starts salivation
  • A neutral stimulus produces no salivation response: use metronome, no salivation
  • The UCS is repeatedly presented just after neutral stimulus. The UCS to produce an unconditioned response: let the dog think the food is associate with metronome by repeatedly let the dog hear metronome when show it the food
  • The neutral stimulus alone now produces a conditioned response (CR), thereby becoming a conditioned stimulus (CS): now let the dog hear metronome again then the dog starts salivation

• What is learning and unlearning?

  • In Classical conditioning, learning is the association of a conditioned stimulus or neutral stimulus With an unconditioned stimulus to the extent that the conditioned stimulus produces the unconditioned response
  • Pavlov didn't understand the implications of this very well: he did not realize what learning could come from this
  • John Watson
    • one of the early American behaviourists
    • not going to study thoughts, but will study what is observable
    • uses Pavlovian principles to teach
    • "You give me twenty children, and I can turn them into anything!"
    • Little Albert was taught to be terrified of anything that is soft and furry
    • the idea was that you could teach something to someone which did not make any sense, and they could learn to be afraid of it
    • in some ways this is a model for phobia

• Process of Generalization

  • occurs when the conditioned stimulus is changed slightly, and the conditioned response still happens
  • screaming and crying is the conditioned response, it is something that can be observed

• Discrimination

  • occurs when the conditioned stimulus is changed, and the conditioned response doesn't happen
  • starting to get unlearning
  • this would happen if Little Albert was afraid of rats, but not bunnies, and could make the distinction between them
  • can teach this process by only presenting the unconditioned stimulus with the rat and never with the bunny

• Extinction

  • occurs when the conditioned stimulus, now the unconditioned response, no longer produces the response
  • according to the theory, extinction should happen eventually if the unconditioned stimuli is no longer paired with the conditioned stimuli

• Problems with Classical Conditioning

  • the only behaviour that can be affected is one that the organism, the dog or Little Albert, would normally do
  • you cannot get the organism to do new behaviours

• what operant conditioning allows for, and allows to happen, is behaviours that would not naturally occur

• Skinner proposed that any behaviour that anyone engages in has been learnt through operant conditioning

• What is Operant Conditioning? How does an organism learn to do this it doesn't normally do? How do you ever get behaviour that doesn't occur as an unconditional response (UCR)?

  • Skinner proposed that behaviour that is rewarded will occur more often in the future
  • behaviour that is not rewarded will occur less often
  • according to Skinner, almost all behaviour is shaped in this way
  • what Skinner argued, and very conclusively demonstrated, was that complex behaviours can be shaped through rewards

• What is Operant Conditioning?

  • Skinner and his pigeons
    • by rewarding pigeons with food for doing behaviours which he wanted them to do, he could teach them to do miraculous things
    • playing Beethoven is a very complex behaviour and is not something that pigeons do naturally
    • learning is the acquisition of new behaviours

• Types of Reinforcers

  • Positive reinforcer: getting good things
  • Negative reinforcer: removing bad things (also a good thing)
  • both positive and negative reinforcers actually promote behaviours, make them more likely to occur
  • note that a negative reinforcer is not a punishment
    • Skinner thought punishment was a bad way to teach
    • when things happen that are perceived as bad, or when good things are removed, you don't know what to do
    • punishment often leads to inaction rather than action; learning should be about producing actions
    • rather than acquiring new behaviours, it lead to the shutting down of behaviour
  • Primary reinforcers: pleasant in their own right
  • Conditioned (secondary) reinforcers: pleasant through association (like money)
    • note here that this builds on classical conditioning
    • associated the conditioned stimuli (money) with the unconditioned stimuli (what the money can buy that is pleasant in its own right)

• One thing in common with classical conditioning and operant conditioning

  • both argue that to understand behaviour and where it comes from, you don't need to know anything about what is inside the head (the big black box)
  • thoughts are epiphenomenon; things that are there but which have no importance or influence
  • all you need to know is what can be observed
  • any behaviour can be explained without looking at though

• Was language something that was learned through behaviourism?

  • Skinner argued that language was learnt through reinforcement
  • basic idea is that children receive all kinds of reinforcement and affection from their parents when they first begin to "babble", which carries on as the child begins to use words and sentences

• Chomsky

  • believed that language learning was innate, that there is an inborn ability to learn language
  • there is a critical period early on in which everyone learns language
  • Chomsky was a linguist, not a psychologist
  • argued that Skinner was naive in thinking that parents could teach their children to talk simply through the use of reinforcement

• The Bottom Line

  • behaviourism is clearly wrong in this debate
  • children learn language incredibly fast
  • babies can actually hear all the different ranges of sound that people make
  • after about a year, children's brains become used to the language that they hear, and can no longer hear certain sounds
  • children can learn thousands of words a day and can pick up a foreign language without any effort
  • all of this suggests that they are not learning by reinforcement but that there is a built-in ability to learn language

• Bandura

  • believed that people did not have to learn through rewards or punishments, but could learn by watching others
  • in order for this to happen one must have thoughts to intervene between what is going on
  • it is not just a matter of being rewarded, one must make an inference that the same thing could happen to themselves

• The Bobo Doll Study

  • the adult proceeded to "beat" the bobo doll up
  • what would the children play with? in particular, would they beat up the bobo doll?
    • the child who did not see the adult with the bobo doll, hit it an average of 2 times
    • those who did watch hit the doll an average of 62 times

• What did these children learn?

  • according to Sandura, they learned how to be violent
  • Bandura felt that this had some implications for the effects of violence on television, and in the movies, on children
  • argued that children learn that it is good to be violent by watching people being rewarded for violent behaviour
  • what it did was say to behaviourism that do matter

• Big Difference between Nature vs Nurture

  • behaviourists focused most on nurture
  • Watson believed that he could take twenty children and turn them into anything
  • Skinner believed that he could create a utopian society through behaviourist principles
  • nature side of things, children have this inborn ability to learn language

• Could Behaviourism explain what was really important?

  • How applicable is the science of psychology to everyday life?
  • Can it explain what really goes on?
  • behaviourism could not explain how we learn by watching, nor could it explain how we learn language.

• Is there still a role for behaviourism?

  • behaviourism can still be used to control some behaviours

• Physical Development
  • We will focus on big changes early and late
• Cognitive Development
  • Piaget's Theory
  • Recent evidence extending and qualifying this theory
• Social Development
  • Attachment Theory
  • Erikson's Theory
  • Gender Development

• Physical Development in Infancy
  • Rolling over
  • Grasping rattle
  • Sitting without support
  • Standing while holding on
  • Walking well
  • Building towers of two blocks
  • Walking up steps

• Physical Development in Old Age - Declines the Senses
  • Vision: Proportions of normal (20/20) vision when identifying letters on an eye chart
  • Smell: Percent correct when identifying smells
  • Hearing: Percent correct when identifying spoken words
  • Dramatic decline at the end of lives (years 70s to 90s)

• Physical Development in Old Age - Fatal Car Accidents

  • The accident rate jumps over 65, especially when measured per miles driven

• Physical Development in Old Age - The changes you expect

  • skin starts to wrinkle
  • hair gets grey
  • many other changes

• Piaget's Theory

  • early psychologist who started his work in the early 1900s and was still active in the 1950s
  • rather than doing experiments, Piaget developed his theory by actually playing with children
  • based on what they did, he would design theories about how they develop
  • proposed that there were stages of development, which is one of the controversial aspects of his theory

• Do you think of development as being in stages in which one thing must happen before the next, or do you think of development as being continuous?

• Schema

  • a way to think about the world, to understand the world
  • Piaget argued that in each of the stages, there is one type of way of thinking about the world that is the dominate schema; the way to think about the world at that point in time

• When you have schemas, two different processes can happen:

  1. Assimilation
     • happens within a stage, which means that you add more information to your schema
     • you assimilate information to your schema, the way you think about the world
  2. Accomodation
     • the schema is changed when new information comes in, you change the way you think about the world

• Example of Schemas - The Classroom

  • At the beginning, you come to classroom, start to study and take notes, that becomes the impression of the classroom, and this is assimilation
  • Sometime later, you get into the same room again, but in the room it starts plays, then it becomes a theatre and your mind will change too, this is accommodation (to the new experience)

• Piaget's Stages of Development

• Some notes:
  • Object permanence:
    • developed at about eight months
    • Piaget believes that early on a child will only recognize an object if they are currently sensing it
    • if it is not in their sensory field it is gone, it does not exist
    • object permanence is the idea that an object retains its form and is there even when it cannot be sensed
  • Stranger anxiety:
    • intense fear of people the child does not know
    • the child learns the permanency of the mother and protests their absence
    • stranger anxiety develops once the child has object permanence
  • Lacking logical reasoning:
    • Lack of conservation: even with same count, child in this age will usually choose the ones that takes more space (looks more)
  • Egocentrism:
    • can't see someone else's perspective
    • can only see things from their perspective
  • Conservation and Mathematical transformation:
    • according to Piaget, in order to get these problems right, they must have objects in front of them
  • Formal operation:
    • this distinction between concrete operations and formal operations is the most controversial aspect of Piaget's theory

• Does object permanence really emerge at or around 8 months of age?

  • No. We are going to see that children actually understand object permanence in a more general way much earlier on, and learn bits and pieces of it at a time.

• Focus on University of Waterloo Research - Infant Cognition (Dr. Andrea Aguiar)

  • demonstrates that children do understand object permanence earlier than 8 months and that it happens in two week intervals
  • 90% of the babies in the research project showed this response
  • at 2.5 months there seems to be a simple rule, if it is behind something you won't see it
    • Please note: in this research two dolls were used. This is why the dolls are not seen in the gaps.
  • at 2.5 to 3.0 months they learn about seeing things in gaps
  • between 3.0 to 3.5 months they learn about heights

• Egocentrism and Research on Theory of Mind

  • the notion that you can understand what someone else is thinking
  • remember that Piaget believed that egocentrism went on until children reached about seven
  • theory of mind makes a parallel point to the research on object permanence
  • gradually children begin to gain more and more of a theory of mind with age
  • there are different aspects that they understand about what the other person is thinking
  • as adults we may understand that we all think differently, but we don't have a complete grasp of what the other person is actually thinking
  • A puzzle:
    • This is Sally. This is Anne.
    • Sally puts her ball in the red cupboard
    • Sally goes away
    • Anne moves the ball to the blue cupboard
    • Where will Sally look for her ball?
  • Children's response:
    • have children consistently say that Sally would look in the blue cupboard where they know it is
    • they think the other person knows what they know
    • begin to see children solving this puzzle much earlier than seven

• Development is more continuous and happens earlier than Piaget proposed

  • children begin to learn the tasks that Piaget set out much earlier than he recognized
  • methodology was great for figuring out what children do, but not fine grained enough to explain when they begin the various phases, nor that it is a gradual process
  • Dr. Andrea Aguiar's research is a great example of the modern trend in developmental psychology, noting some important extensions and qualifications of Piaget's theory

• Harlow's Monkey Studies

  • what Harlow did was separate baby monkeys from their mothers to be raised by two different types of mothers
  • Which surrogate mother will the monkey like better?
  • the monkey chooses the soft terryclothed mother, and reaches across only to get food
  • Harlow believed that these studies demonstrated the importance of care and nurturing of the young, and that contact is crucial in the early development

• The theory behind attachment theory

  • we have an inborn need to bond with our caregiver
  • this bonding is crucial for the social development of the child
  • that relationship will be the basis for all other relationships that that individual will have

• The strange situation

  • developed by Mary Ainsworth
  • have mothers have infant about 12 months old
  • make mother going into a room with lots of toys, lots of things to do
  • then make mother leave
  • What happens to the child? How does the child respond when the mother leaves?
  • How did the child respond when the mother came back?
  • Secure attachment pattern: child is somewhat upset to see mother leave, but very happy when mother returns
  • Anxious attachment pattern: the child would scream and be very upset when mother left, and would be overly clingy when she returned
  • Avoidant attachment pattern: child is either upset or not when mother leaves, but does not want to have anything to do with her when she comes back
  • These patterns can be divided into secure and insecure patterns:
    • Secure attachment: a child who misses the mother seeks reunion, but is able to deal with time on their own
    • Insecure attachment: either doesn't miss their mother or isn't able to deal with being on their own
  • What different does this make?

• What attachment predicts

  • can predict the number of friends children will make when going to school
    • securely attached infants between 1 and 1.5 are better at making friends and have more friends when in school
    • sense of social competence when being securely attached
  • there is evidence that suggests that people who are good with having secure attachments are the ones who develop good adult relationships
  • this would suggest that trust can be taught through a stable, loving relationship with the primary caregiver

• theory goes from infancy to old age

• Erikson's ideas have some Freudian roots to them

• believed that there were certain challenges that needed to be dealt with at certain points in one's life

• whether you succeed in accomplishing those challenges is the primary social issue at each stage in life

• Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development

• Note:

  • From research it is quite clear that this theory isn't quite right

• Criticisms of Erikson's theory

  • one of the big criticisms of Erikson's theory is that it is culture bound
  • the average age that people are getting married is much later than in the 30s when Erikson developed this theory
  • How many individuals actually figure out their sense of identity while in their adolescence?
  • autonomy, the idea that we are separate individuals living our lives our own way, is a fairly western idea and not nearly as true for many other cultures
  • theory doesn't do a very good job of explaining who is likely to have problems and who isn't
  • example of Bill Clinton
  • example of premature babies
  • theory is more of a framework rather than any type of serious stage model

• A common observation is that children's behaviour, and particularly their play, is gender stereotyped.

  • Is it the way their parents treat them?
  • we see in attachment theory and in Erikson's theory that parents shape their children and determine what they will be like
  • a number of studies have shown that parents do not really have that much influence over their children, especially in gender stereotyped behaviour
  • there is no relationship between the way in which parents treat their children, what values the parents have, and how the children tum out
  • learning gender Stereotypes is almost like learning an accent
  • we pick it up more from the society at large, and those that are around us, than from our parents as a whole

• Social Learning Theory

  • this is the bobo doll version of gender development
  • basically you watch others to see what gets rewarded and what gets punished
  • by the way boys and girls are punished and rewarded due to their gender, one can learn from that observation and imitation of models, and can develop this gender type behaviour
  • parents are implicated somewhat under the assumption that they would be the primary models, but it is suggested that one can observe this behaviour from a wide array of people

• Gender Schema Theory

  • argues that from the beginning you have a cultural learning of gender which gives you a gender schema, a way of looking at the self in the world through the gender lens
  • think of self as male or female, and the culture tells you what that is supposed to be
  • gender organized thinking, and gender-typed behaviour model explains why boys and girls tend to have same sex friends
  • both the social earning theory and the gender schema theory probably occur and work together to produce this gender behaviour

• Memory as information processing
  • stages and events of memory
• Effortful memory
  • when we are trying to learn and remember
• Memory without awareness
  • when we remember things we do not realize we remember
• The fragility of memory
  • our memories are often a distorted view of reality

• The different timings of memory

  • External events
    • Sensory input: Sensory memory registers incoming information, allowing your brain to capture for a fleeting moment a sea of faces.
  • Sensory memory: the immediate, initial recording of sensory information in the memory system
    • Attention to important or novel information: We pay attention to and encode important or novel stimuli - in this case an angry face in the crowd; or we can say, sensory memory encode to short-term memory.
  • Short-term memory: activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten
    • Encoding: If we stare at the face long enough (rehearsal), or if we're sufficiently disturbed by it (it's deemed "important"), we will encode it for long-term storage, and we will, an hour later, be able to call up an image of the face.
    • Retrieval: When we back long-term memory out to short-term memory
  • Long-term memory: the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system.

• Think of it in terms of the process that occurs in making memory happen

  • process of encoding, storage and retrieval
  • we can have problems when we don't remember things:
    • the information may not have been encoded properly
    • could have trouble remembering information if it has gotten lost in storage
    • can have trouble retrieving the information

• How long do you retain information in short-term memory?
  • remember these three letters but while you are doing that, count backwards from 100
  • short-term memory is limited not only in terms of the length, but also in how much we can hold there
  • the basic rule is the short term memory can only hold seven plus or minus two objects
  • this rule was discovered by Bell labs, the telephone company

• How long do you retain information in long-term memory?
  • we forget much of what we learn
    • note that this is recall, not recognition

• We can relearn information fairly quickly from Ebbinghaus' Retention Curve above (or called Relearning Curve)
  • as rehearsal increases, relearning time decreases
  • suggests that the information is being retained somewhere, and should be available for later use
  • repetition does seem to aid memory

• Ebbinghaus' basic ideas can be dramatically influenced by cues

• there are all kinds of different cues that can influence memory

• Semantic cues are helpful for memory

  • These semantic cues greatly improved the memory for whichever diagram the subjects were given the semantic cue for.

• Type of encoding

  • Semantic: the meaning, type of...
  • Acoustic: rhymes with...
  • Visual: written in capitals...
  • Seems like sematic are best

• Cues related to the self-concept are even better

  • the best cues for memory are those that can be processed by, and are relevant to, the individual
  • if you understand how it matters to you, you will remember it better
  • Self-reference effect: seeing how something refers to the self helps one to remember it better than anything else could
  • self-centredness to memory

• Context effects

  • other cues can happen through the environment, or situation, that you are in

• State dependent memory

  • we are better at remembering things if we are in the same state we were in when the information was learnt
  • alcohol and memory studies

• Mood

  • we tend to remember things that are consistent with the mood that we are in
  • those who are depressed tend to remember only the sad things that they have dealt with in their lives
  • this is not a very good prescription for getting out of the depressive state that they are in

• The Scuba Divers Study
  • Learn/remember of words in water/on land
  • showed that: greater recall when learning and testing contexts are the same

• there is interference that occurs between the new that we are learning and the old information that we already know
• learning one language can actually facilitate learning another, but it can also cause interference

• Proactive interference: happens when what you have learnt previously screws up what you are trying to learn now
• Retroactive interference: what you know learn screws up what you used to know

• Mnemonics

  • sayings or patterns that can be developed to help to remember things
  • mnemonics will only assist in remembering lists of items, not their meanings
  • musical scales - every good boy does fine
  • OCEAN - Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
  • often just knowing a list of things is not useful

• Chunking

  • groups items together into different groups
  • particularly helpful for short-term memory, in that it allows you to keep more information
  • chunking also allows for a smaller number of things to remember at one time

• So that's it for effortful memory

  • we know that our memories are not as good as most of us would like
  • we know that our memory is sensitive to lots of different cues
  • we know that the more we learn, the more we can get confused with knowledge we have already retained
  • we know that there are various strategies that can help improve memory

• we can be influenced by a number of things outside our awareness that can affect our memory

• Priming - audio taken from in class demonstration: remember words including "ocean", "sand", "moon", when request to prompt a brand of detergent, most people come up with "Tide"

• very subtly priming the concept without the subject realizing that it is influencing them

• this is very closely related to the of memory without awareness

• Study of amnesiacs

  • there are many different types of amnesia
  • head injuries can cause an individual to forget what happened shortly before the accident as a result of the jarring of the brain
  • persons who have epileptic seizures will experience a period of time in which they don't remember
  • what is different about amnesiacs is that they have suffered brain damage so they can never remember anything that happens in the future because it does not make it into their long-term memory

• Study of amnesiacs

  • University of Toronto - Dan Schacter and the story of the golfer
  • someone who play golf really well but can't remember he has play golf before
  • Procedural memory
    • able to do something even though the individual is not aware that they can do it
    • see a difference between what they hold in consciousness, what they are able to consciously know about, and what they are able to do

• Despite having no knowledge people can learn various tasks

  • through various tasks developed by cognitive psychologists, it can be shown that people can learn even though they are not aware that they have
  • Study at McMaster University - the famous name study
    • Week 1 - the subjects were given a list of names to learn
    • Week 2 - pick out from the list of names all the people who were famous
    • Result - picked out the names from the list from week 1 as the famous people
    • basic task shows that the group has learned something, but that they are not aware that they have learned something
  • Another way of doing this:
    • Week 1 - give subjects a long list of words to learn
    • Week 2 - give them word stems, and have them complete the first three letters with whatever comes to mind
    • Result - complete the word stem with the words that they learned in week 1

• Learning without awareness is something that happens to all of us

  • affects all of us and guides much of our behaviour even though we have never been consciously aware that we have learned it

• Memory Construction - The Construction of Automobile Destruction (Elizabeth Loftus)

  • showed subjects automobile accidents and asked them how fast the automobiles were going when the made contact with each other, or when they crashed into each other
  • Results - 30 kph for bump, 45 kph for crash
  • study is important for many reasons, one of which is trials
  • the whole legal system is based on the supposition that eyewitnesses know What really happened

• We tend to remember what we want to remember

  • Study on the Study Skills course at U of Waterloo
    • what people remember is how much they have learned and how much their studying has improved
    • what is really true is that they exaggerate how bad they were before they started
    • we often paint ourselves in a positive light in our memory, and as we project for the future

• We remember what we want to remember. Do we also forget what we want to forget?

  • it is not so easy to forget What we want to forget
  • the more thoughts are surpressed, the more often they back into mind
  • post-traumatic stress disorder
  • although memories can be constructed very well, it is more difficult to control or block things out

• Recovered memories

  • Psychodynamic orientation - repressed memories from traumatic events in childhood
  • others believe that memories from childhood are just constructions
  • when people recover memories later on in life it can often be a result of hypnosis, guided imagery and other techniques
  • the question is whether these are false memories or are they a memory of what really happened
  • memories can be constructed through the retelling of stories from our childhood by others

• Cautions

  • research has been able to show that some memories that children have could be constructions of things that never happened
  • it is a lot easier to show that something is false than to show that something is true
  • Some of the things that lead to inaccuracy
    • younger children have less accurate memories
    • memories that occurred under hypnosis or guided imagery are less likely to be accurate
    • as are certain drugs like sodium pentathol
  • Other memories are more likely to be accurate
    • memories that people have always had some recollection of
  • research also suggests that in these cases it is very important to do more investigative work
  • dramatic demonstration of the fragility of our memories

Chapter 7 scratch

Machine generated alternative text: Perception - the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts Figure and ground in perception Gestalt principles Our knowledge and preconceptions shape our perceptions Illusions Perceptual set Judgment under uncertainty Heuristics in judgment Artificial intelligence Gestalt Psychologists The whole is not equal to the sum of its parts our thoughts and preconceptions shape what we perceive we don't perceive reality; reality may be out there in the abstract, but our perceptions are our take on reality we do not see exactly what is out there, our perceptions are shaped by our thoughts see through the lens of our thoughts and preconceptions Depending on what you Similarity Connectedness focus on you can see either an old lady or a young lady. One of them is figure, one of them is ground. The whole can't be equal to the sum of it's parts because you cannot get two different answers from the same part. Figure/ground perceptions tell us that we taking the stimuli and adding our preconceptions and understandings to it, thus influencing what we see. Gestalt Grouping Principles Proximity Continuity Gestalt Grouping Principles How many groups of lines are there here? Everybody does tend to see three. Group things that are close together as being part Of the same group. There is meaning being supplied, which in this case, is physically not there at all. Gestalt psychologists' contribution to cognitive psychology • able to show that thoughts and preconceptions, our beliefs, influence what we see in the world MülIer-Lyer Illusion Müller-Lyer Illusion Angles are cues to Which direction the corner is going. With parallel lines, something that is on the bottom looks much smaller than something on the top. These two red swatches are exactly the same size. Most people in western society will believe that B/C is longer than AB. DO I perceive things as they really are or not? Ponzo Illusion We are supplying meaning from our surroundings as we are perceiving things. Shepard Illusion When we think about things, that influences our perceptions of the world as it is around us. Another example of the context, the situation you are in, gets you thinking about the picture in a certain way, which in turn influences perception. The earlier preconception, the earlier picture, gets people ready to perceive the ambiguous one in a different way. Which stands out as figure and which stands out as ground can be influenced by which picture you saw first. Thoughts are influenced by the way we think about the world in particular, our judgments that we make are influenced by how we typically view the world Schemas the ways in which we think about the world how we come to understand what the world is like shortcut summaries of what the world is like Heuristics simple ways to think about things • shortcut strategies we use when we are making decisions Why do we need schemas? there is so much information that we are exposed to that we cannot possibly remember it all we have to decide what we pay attention to and what we do not pay attention to we need to summarize all the information that is coming in from all five senses and decide what is most important if we are going to convey information to other people we need schemas and heuristics to help us with effective communication schemas allow us to go beyond the information given Schema allow us to go beyond the information given The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient, depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one can never tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. Like illusions, heuristics tell us about how we process information Two important heuristics that influence our thinking

1. Representativeness heuristic Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which of the following is more probable? A. Linda is a bank teller B. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement in the original study 97% Of the people said B in the original study 97% of the people said B if B is true, A is also true making the judgment on representativeness Like illusions, heuristics tell us about how we process information Two important heuristics that influence our thinking 'k" as the

Availablity heuristic Are there more words in the English language with first letter or "k" as the third letter? A. "k" as the first letter B. "k" as the third letter about 70% say "k" is the first letter there are actually three times as many words in the English language with "k" as the third letter it is much easier to think of words that begin with "k" and because of this we overestimate how many there are Like illusions, heuristics tell us about how we process information Two important heuristics that influence our thinking 2. Availablity heuristic If you go to the Middle East, should you be more concerned about traffic accidents, or terrorist attacks? A. traffic accidents B. terrorist attacks what you think about when thinking of the Middle East is terrorist attacks By priming a concept, judgments about timing can be affected. for half of the participants each trial begins with a very brief prime (example, bacon) for the other participants there are no primes next two different words come on the screen at almost the same time tone word is related to the prime (example, eggs) the other word is unrelated to the prime (example, water)) the subject is expected to push a key for the word which is presented first Does the fact that you have been primed with the word bacon influence the judgment about which word came first? when people are not primed they are equally likely to judge that eggs and water appear first when they are primed however, they are more likely to think that eggs appeared before water because that concept has been primed, it appears to be presented quicker than it actually was just the fact that bacon and eggs go together, changes how quickly we think the two words are appearing on a screen Computers and the development of computers had a big impact on cognitive psychology when it was realized that computers could think about things, could generate answers, a whole model of cognitive psychology was generated of how people could process information information processing - computer metaphor artificial intelligence was one of the areas of psychology that grew in the 1970s and 80s Do people think like computers? • early on, cognitive psychology used the computer as a metaphor for how people think • when cognitive psychology really took off, the emphasis was on trying to get computers to think like people the idea was that it would give insight into the way that people think about things • when we discussed memory we talked about encoding, storage and retrieval, all terms related to the computer A couple of other things to keep in mind people have found it quite useful to try to model theoretical though processes on the computer one of the big lessons it has taught is how complex thought is and that people do not always think about things with the same analytical strategies remember that heuristics dont always make logical sense the way a computer would, but it would be very hard to get a computer to use the same sorts of heuristics that we do

Machine generated alternative text: Five Different Classes of Disorders Anxiety Disorders Phobias Mood Disorders Depression, Bipolar Disorder Psychotic Disorders Schizophrenia Dissociative Disorders Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Personality Disorders Antisocial/Sociopath Phobias • irrational fear • fairly common condition phobias are quite treatable Generalized Anxiety Disorder - Panic Disorder • overwhelming sense of anxiety • not localized as being caused by any particular thing • can become quite debilitating Generalized Anxiety Disorder - Panic Disorder Associated with panic attacks feel like their heart is going to stop get very sweaty feel like they cant breathe overcome by panic attack and can't do anything else while experiencing one Generalized Anxiety Disorder - Panic Disorder Agoraphobia • fear of open places, of being out in the world • fear Of having a panic attack while outside of their home • cases where individuals have not left their homes for twenty years Obsessive Compulsive Disorder • can vary from mildy obsessive to extremely obsessive and completely debilitating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder • Two things that characterize obsessive compulsive disorder I. repetitive thoughts 2. repetitive behaviours Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Common Obsessions and Compulsions Among Children and Adolexcentes with Obsessive- Compulsive Disorder Thought or Behaviour Obsessions (repetitive thoughts) Concern with dirt, germs, or toxins Something terrible happening (fire, death, illness) Symmetry, order, or exactness Compulsions (repetitive behaviours) Excessive hand washing, bathing, tooth brushing, or grooming Repeating rituals (in/out of a door, up/down from a chair) Checking doors, locks, appliances, car brake, homework Seventy children and adolescents reported their symptoms. Source:Adapted from Rapoport, 1989. Explaining Anxiety Disorders Psychoanalytic perspective need therapy to solve some deep lying problem which is causing the disorder Example of Little Hans case study that Freud used to develop his ideas about the Oedipus Complex Little Hans was incredibly frightened of horses Freud believed that Little Hans had anxiety arising from the Oedipus Complex which was being transfe onto horses terrified that his father will castrate him due to his sexual desire for his mother Explaining Anxiety Disorders Learning Perspective thinks people develop anxieties like Little Albert we gain anxiety by associating whatever the stimuli is with something that is aversive it can generalize from one thing to another treatment would be to uncondition it - Virtual Reality Training Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - reward people for not doing the compulsion Explaining Anxiety Disorders Social Cognitive Perspective • observational learning develop certain phobias by watching others and observing what they are afraid of this would suggest that you could use models who are doing non-fearful behaviour to try to overcome the fear Explaining Anxiety Disorders Biological Perspective • Obsessive Compulsive disorder in some cases can be treated with drugs • inborn biological fear for certain things that would make sense for us to be afraid of Major Affective Disorder • sometimes referred to as Unipolar Depression profoundly depressed and lasting for over six months • can interfere dramatically with an individual's life • fairly common disorder and is treatable Major Affective Disorder Some of the symptoms for Major Affective Disorder poor appetite insomnia feelings of worthlessness loss of interest in others sleeping 14 - 15 hours a day can gain weight often due to lack of activity what makes depression different in terms of a psychological disorder is when it is persistant clear thoughts of suicide Bipolar Depression Percentage Reporting Symptom 40 24 17 85 51 46 in particular, • some believe that Unipolar and Bipolar are two different disorders, others believe that it is a continuum with Bipolar being the more extreme form Bipolar Depression Characterized by extreme highs and lows used to be called Manic Depressive low side is Major Affective Disorder or Unipolar Depression high side is euphoric, grandiose, think they can do anything negative side to this high is that they can become easily agitated, and possibly violent often are reckless in behaviour believing that nothing will happen to them can waste huge amounts of money number of famous people who have been manic depressives Bipolar Depression Pressured speech speech is comin so rapidly that the words are not even fully form individuals with pressured speech typically have super high energy major symptom is they haven't slept for weeks Bipolar Depression How quickly do the moods change? rapidly cycling - moods can change within hours, and certainly within days what is more common is that moods change in a matter of months, sometimes it can go in three month cycles seems to vary within the individual, and between individuals as well Bipolar Depression Gender differences in depression women suffer from depression far more than men Explanation of Mood Disorders Psychoanalytic perspective • depression is anger turned inward • part of the therapy is to get the anger expressed at the appropriate target Explanation of Mood Disorders Biological perspective strong genetic influences - both Unipolar and Bipolar disorders run in the same family • with certain brain neurotransmitters there seems to be a depletion in depressed individuals - noradrenalin and seratonin • drugs that elevate the levels of noradrenalin and seratonin are effective anti-depressants Explanation of Mood Disorders Biological perspective • Do the highs and lows of bipolar disorder eventually balance out? biological models of bipolar depression suggest "no" the problem may be in the way in which the neuro- transmitters are regulated in the synapse one biological explanation is that the neurotransmitters are not regulated properly in the synapse, so that the individual may at times get too much, and at other times, get too little Explanation of Mood Disorders Social Cognitive perspective treatments that combine drugs wth the Social Cognitive approach are the most effective attributions for failure as internal, stable or global internal - it's my fault stable - it is always going to be that way global - it will affect my whole life vicious cycle of negative moods and thoughts Explanation of Mood Disorders Social Cognitive perspective Stressful experiences Cognitive and behavioural changes Depressed Explanation of Mood Disorders Social Cognitive perspective treatments that combine drugs wth the social cognitive approach are the most effective attributions for failure as stable, global or internal internal - it's my fault stable - it is always going to be that way global - it will affect my whole life vicious cycle of negative moods and thoughts therapy can break this cycle at a number of different stages Characteristics of Schizophrenia Disorganized thinking Negative explanatory style • can't be understood because there is no sense to what they are saying • don't see the connections in what they are talking about • particularly characterized by delusions • often they experience delusions of persecution Characteristics of Schizophrenia Disturbed perceptions Characteristics of Schizophrenia Inappropriate emotions and actions • Catatonia - can often be posturing • emotions don't match the content of what is being said Characteristics of Schizophrenia Social withdrawal • do not like spending time with people or having anything to do with others Characteristics of Schizophrenia Flat affect • no emotion or responsiveness to anything • talking in a monotone voice Types of Schizophrenia Paranoid: Disorganized: Catatonic: Undifferentiated: Residual: Two types of symptoms that seem to stand out positive and negative symptoms biological theory behind this is that different types Of drugs deal with these symptoms in different ways different neurotransmtiters may be involved in the two types of symptoms positive symptoms - delusions, hallucinations negative symptoms - social withdrawal, inappropriate emotions and affect Preoccupation with delusions or hallucinations Disorganized speech or behaviour, or flat or inappropriate emotion Immobility (or excessive, purposeless movement), extreme negativism, and/or parrotlike repeating of another's speech or movements Many and varied symptoms Withdrawal, after hallucinations and delusions have disappeared Explanations for schizophrenia Psychoanalytic perspective • focus on the unconscious • Freud believed that the unconscious was irrational • from his perspective, schizophrenia was the overflowing of the irrational unconscious Explanations for schizophrenia Biological perspective • genetic influences • brain neurotransmitters are involved - dopamine • if one twin is schizophrenic, the other has a 50% chance of also having it Explanations for schizophrenia Social Cognitive perspective • Stress Diathesis Model • suggests that schizophrenia is a combination of two things • whatever the genetic predisposition is combined with whatever stress is experienced The difference between Schizophrenia and Dissociative Disorders • consciousness can be divided, can lose sense of who they are and what they are like Fugue State • person disappears and becomes someone totally different • skeptics believe that the individual did not like their old life and is using this as their reason for leaving it all behind them • never the same person at the same time Dissociative Identity Disorder • sense that one body can share several different identities, or several distinct 'persons' within that one body Explanations of Dissociative Disorders Is this real? • question is answered differently by people from different camps Explanations of Dissociative Disorders This is a real disorder and there are consistencies • distinct patterns of brain activity with the different personalities • it is a way to cope with anxiety which can be explained by both the psychoanalytic perspective, and the learning perspective • suggested that this may be the result of severe abuse or trauma as a child Explanations of Dissociative Disorders This is not real • argue that it is a social phenomena perhaps created by hypnosis in therapy • between 1930-1960 there were two cases per decade • in the 1980s there were 20,000 cases that were diagnosed Classifications of Personality Disorders Antisocial Personality Disorder • typically carry out brutal, horrific acts, without seeming to have a conscience • can be very charming and charismatic • in studies, persons with Antisocial Personality Disorders do not tend to get aroused by vicious aggression . many of the most famous mass murderers have Antisocial Personality Disorders • they have coherent thinking Classifications of Personality Disorders Histrionic, Narcissistic and Borderline Personality • Histrionic - about 95% diagnosed are women Narcissistic- about 80% diagnosed are men • Borderline personality - mostly women Classifications of Personality Disorders Histrionic, Narcissistic and Borderline Personality • all of these disorders have similar characteristics tend to be impulsive dramatic defensive style of relating to others • can't get along with other people other people tend to strongly dislike them

Machine generated alternative text: Anxiety Disorders Cognitive Behaviour Therapies and Phobias Mood Disorders Medication and Therapy Schizophrenia Medication Therapy Evaluating Therapies Is therapy effective? If so, what makes it effective? Phobias very successful in therapy usually treated with cognitive therapy Behavioural in that a behaviour is being done. Cognitive in that thoughts are trying to be controlled by thinking peaceful, calming thoughts. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: trying to get people to engage in behaviours that will help them out, while at the same time utilizing their thoughts as a way to encourage and develop those behaviours. More serious Anxiety Disorders • Agoraphobia, Social phobia, Obsessive Compulsive disorder usually treated with a combination of drug therapy and Cognitive therapy Mood disorders and Major Depressive disorders are usually treated with both medication and Cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy for depressions • remember that the critical issue for depressed people in their thinking is that they tend to make a catastrophe of all the events in their lives • focuses on the thoughts that depressed people have 15% to 20% of the people seeking therapy are experiencing major depression they don't respond to drugs or therapy often become suicidal Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) in the 40s and 50s this type of therapy was used as punishment; as a way to control patients in the mental hospitals they discovered that depressed people sometimes got better from it put the individual under anesthesia, and using only one half of the brain, will apply electric currents to one side of the brain or the other this form of therapy is still very controversial since it is still unclear as to how it actually works how often the treatments must be carried out will vary depending on the individual 9 months About 30% - 40% will get better without any treatment in 6 - Bipolar Disorder • treated primarily with medication • Lithium is the medication used Treatments for Schizophrenia • treated primarily with medication • it would not be easy to do therapy with someone who is not making any sense Both Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorder often include group therapy • allows people to deal with the stigma of having a mental illness; that others will see them as crazy, or mentally ill • this stigma can control peoples' expectations of what the individual with the illness is like, and the type of person that they are . can even affect the way that people are treated in mental hospitals On Being Sane in Insane Places - Study by Rosenhan participant observation study had a group of graduate students go to a mental institution claiming that they were hearing voices of the 15 graduate students, 14 were admitted as having a mental disorder Il of them were diagnosed as schizophrenic it took the mental health professionals weeks to figure out that these individuals were not suffering from schizophrenia - 9 out of the 15 had to tell them the truth first the writing of notes was interpreted as paranoid behaviour the staff, read into their behaviour, the diagnosis On Being Sane in Insane Places - Study by Rosenhan • shows how strong these expectations of what it means to be schizophrenic, or crazy, can colour how other people view the individual • also shows that even the best of intentions can lead to difficulties • the therapies and treatments that people have may not always be of benefit to the individual, and that there is much room for improvement • memory and hypnosis - suggested that hypnosis could actually create false memories, bad things that did not really happen • one of the things that is beginning to be understood in clinical psychology is that therapies must be evaluated to make sure that they are going be of benefit to people • Do psychotherapies really help people? Are they good for people? What does it mean for therapy to be effective? • Does the person get better? How do you decide if the person is better? • Should the patient decide if the therapy is effective or not? • when people want to get better they will say they are better even when they are not example of study skills How about the word of the therapist? the therapist has all kinds of motivations in wanting to see improvement in the patient care about the patient and want them to get better they also want to be seen as a good therapist Have a pre-test and a post-test; measure something at the beginning and at the end • this is not so easily accomplished either • notion of spontaneous remission - some people will get better with time with no assistance from a therapist • most people will come in for therapy when they are extremely distressed and at their worst Regression to the mean statistical problems any score that you have is partly based on real measurement of what you are trying to measure and partly based on chance in the beginning individuals will score high on a depression scale due to their distress their scores would tend to come down later even if there is no change in the depression that underlies the score as a group the scores will move making it appear that therapyO"ffective What does this mean? How do we fix it? • what is more common in evaluative therapy is that a standardized treatment is provided that has been shown to be effective, and then a new treatment is introduced that is thought to be more effective often there will be a particular setup with the behaviour that thefll be concerned with • that behaviour is the indicator as to whether the therapy has been effective Research by Johnathan Oakman on Social Phobias • social phobics are afraid of interactions with other people • all the clients received medication therapy Research by Johnathan Oakman on Social Phobias Three conditions 1. 2. 3. controlled condition was the guided self-help - used self-help book along with meeting with a therapist once a week for 16 weeks Standard Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - done in group Cognitive Behaviour Therapy with technology - use of videotaping of the group interacting and doing role-play Research by Johnathan Oakman on Social Phobias What did they do to see if people were better? • at the beginning and at the end they introduced a new social interaction which none of them knew about • the results showed that all three of these conditions work to the same degree Research by Johnathan Oakman on Social Phobias What does this mean? • not only do you need to make the case that therapy is effective, you also need to show that it is cost effective If you look across the broad spectrum of all the different types of psychotherapy the answer would be yes, but not by a huge amount. Are some therapies better than others? outcome studies show that one therapy does not seem to be any better than the other a couple of studies have suggested that for certain types of disorders, certain types of therapies are better for example: Systematic Desensitization works better for phobias than Client-centred therapy Does training and experience matter? • research has shown that the educational background of an individual has no influence on their effectiveness as a therapist • as well there is no difference in the effectiveness of the therapist no matter how long they have been practicing What makes therapy effective? • what seems to make therapy effective in general is having that personal interaction with another, the personal relationship between therapist and client • giving people a sense of optimism and hope