Psychology

Psychology - Foundation #

“Everything is the way it is because it got that way.” – D’Arcy Thompson

Dualism #

Descartes (1596-1650) Animals as reflex machines, robots We also have material bodies But our minds are immaterial and non-physical

Current view: Dualism is wrong Mind = Brain

Freud #

Many of the core ideas have been rejected - But many remain

Some interesting and influential ideas

  • Unconscious reasons for feelings and actions
  • Unconscious dynamics (conflict) *leading to dreams, speech errors, jokes, madness

Falsifiability (Karl Popper) Scientific predictions need to make strong claims about the world, and run the risk of being proven false.

The core Freudian insight – the importance of the unconscious – remains intact.

Psychoanalysis #

Psychoanalytic Divisions of the Mind

  • Id - instinctual drives present at birth
    • does not distinguish between
    • reality and fantasy – operates according to the pleasure principle
  • Ego - develops out of the id in infancy
    • understands reality and logic
    • mediator between id and superego
  • Superego
    • internalization of society’s moral standards
    • responsible for guilt

Behaviourism #

B.F. Skinner

Learning #

Is it true that everything is learned? No, there is considerable evidence for innate (unlearned) knowledge

Is it true that talking about mental states is unscientific? No * other sciences (e.g., physics) talk about unobservable * it makes sense to explain a complex and intelligent mechanism in terms of internal representations

Is it true that animals need reinforcement and punishment to learn? No

Is it true that there are no special constraints on learning? No, * Natural responses * Food aversion (Garcia effect) taste & nausea vs. taste & electric shock • Phobias

Chomsky’s critique: When it comes to humans, behaviorist notions are so vague as to pure story-telling, not science. Unfalsifiable

Habituation #

What is it? A decline in the tendency to respond to stimuli that are familiar due to repeated exposure e.g., clock ticking, traffic noise, trains

Classical conditioning #

What is it? The learning of an association between one stimulus and another stimulus

Instrumental conditioning #

What is it? Learning the relationships between actions and rewards/punishments What’s it for? Learning what works and what doesn’t (classical: passive; instrumental: voluntary)

LAW OF EFFECT: The tendency to perform an action is increased if rewarded; weakened if it is not.

Skinner: Extending operant conditioning

Cognitive Development #

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) • Genetic epistemology

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

  • Piaget believed that “children are active thinkers, constantly trying to construct more advanced understandings of the world”
  • Little scientists
  • These “understandings” are in the form of structures he called schemas

Sensorimotor Stage (birth - 2) #

Information is gained through the senses and motor actions In this stage child perceives and manipulates but does not reason Object permanence is acquired

Object Permanence *The understanding that objects exist independent of one’s actions or perceptions of them

  • Before 6 months infants act as if objects removed from sight cease to exist
    • Can be surprised by disappearance / reappearance of a face (peek-a-boo)
  • Then, failure at A-not-B task

Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) #

Emergence of symbolic thought Egocentrism Lack the concept of conservation

Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years) #

Understanding of mental operations leading to increasingly logical thought Less egocentric But .. inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically

Formal Operational Stage (age 12 - adulthood) #

Abstract and scientific reasoning

Language #

https://nobaproject.com/modules/language-and-language-use

Language Development - Timetable #

Birth - 4 months

  • Preference for melody of own language
  • Sensitive to all phonemes

About 7 months

  • Babbling

About 12 months

  • First words –
  • Objects, actions, properties
  • Some sensitivity to word order

About 18 months

  • Learning words faster 2 word sentences
  • Function morphemes {“in”, “of”, “a”, “the”) gradually appear

What do all languages share?

SYNTAX #

Willhelm Von Humboldt: “infinite use of finite media” – a combinatorial system – not exclusive to language – music, DNA The infinity mechanism: Recursion

MORPHOLOGY #

Morphology Ferdinand de Saussure: “the arbitrariness of the sign” Morphemes: smallest meaningful unit, e.g., Single morphemes: Dog, complain Many morphemes: Dogs, complained dog + s, complain + ed How many morphemes does the average English speaker know? About 60,000

PHONOLOGY #

Basic sounds (and signs) Languages choose different subsets No real boundaries between words; children have to learn to segment speech as part of language learning

Perception & Attention & Memory #

Vision: https://nobaproject.com/modules/vision Attention: https://nobaproject.com/modules/attention

Perception #

We are often wrong about our experiences … … of the past and of right now

You need to infer a 3D world from 2D information (Mathematically impossible) How do we solve it? Unconscious assumptions about how the world works

  1. Color - A simple assumption

    • Shadows make surfaces darker
    • So when we see a surface in shadow, we automatically assume it is lighter than it looks
    • And we see it as lighter (remove cues to shadow, we see it as it is.)

  2. Objects - perpetual grouping / segmentation

    • proximity
    • similarity
    • closure
    • good continuation
    • good form

  3. Depth - One of our more important perceptual abilities involves seeing in three-dimensions

    • Depth perception is difficult because we only have access to two-dimensional images
    • How do we see a 3-D world using only the 2-D retinal images? Cue - stimulus characteristics that influence our perceptions
    • We are able to see in 3-D because the visual system can utilize depth cues that appear in the retinal images.

Memory #

short term memory size: Miller: 7 +/- 2

How to get information into LTM

  • Rehearsal not enough
  • Need structure/organization
      1. Depth-of-processing
      1. Mnemonics
      1. Understanding

How to retrieve information from LTM

  • Use of retrieval cues
  • The relationship between encoding and retrieval: compatibility principle – elaborative rehearsal and retrieval
  • searching strategies

Failure of memory: Normal forgetting #

  • Increases with retention interval .. but why?
    • Decay
    • Interference
    • Change of retrieval cues

The case of childhood amnesia

Failure of Memory, II: Brain damage #

Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory for some period prior to accident or stroke Antereograde amnesia: * Korsokoff’s syndrome * H.M.

Failure of memory, III: Implanted memories #

Expectations and leading questions

NO SUGGESTIONS; + STEREOTYPE

  • SUGGESTIONS; NO STEREOTYPE +SUGGESTION +STEREOTYPE +STEREOTYPE + SUGGESTION (6 suggestive sessions over 3 months)

False memories in adults • Filling in the blanks • Eyewitness testimony • Hypnosis • Repressed memories • Flashbulb memories

Attraction and Love #

Why do we love whom we love: The big Three:

  1. Proximity
  2. Similarity
  3. Familiarity

Evolution & Rationality #

the distinction between ultimate causation and proximate causation.

  • ultimate causation is, the reason why something has evolved, and that involves creature’s history and it’s the evolutionary course its taken through time.
  • Proximate causation is what a creature wants, and those are different.

Emotions #

Heuristics #

Framing effects (and loss aversion) #

Vulnerability to “Framing” effects Imagine the US is preparing for the outbreak of an disease which is expected to kill 600 people. Two programs to combat this disease have been proposed. Program A: 200 of these people will be saved 72% Program B: There is a 1/3 chance that 600 28% people will be saved and a 2/3 chance that nobody will be saved Program A: 400 of these people will die Program B: There is a 1/3 chance that nobody will die and a 2/3 chance that everyone will die

80% fat free vs 20% fat

Ignorance of base rates #

There are 70 engineers and 30 lawyers. John is chosen at random from this group. John is a 40-year-old married man with three children. He is conservative and cautious. He has no interest in politics, and is awkward around people. His hobbies include carpentry, sailing, and solving mathematical puzzles. What do you think John is? How confident are you?

There is a disease that strikes 1 in 1000 people • There is a test for a disease. • If you have the disease, the test will definitely say that you have it. There are no misses. • But the test is not perfect. • It has a false positive rate of 5% (Even if you don’t have the disease, 5% of the time the test will say that you have it.) You take the test. It says you have the disease. What are the odds that you actually have the disease?

Imagine 1000 people, all who take the test On average, 1 will have the disease. This person will test positive This leaves 999 people who do not have the disease. The test will mistakenly say that 5% of these have the disease – about 50 of them. So for every 51 people who test positive, only 1 will have the disease 1/51 = about 2%

Availability bias #

• Availability is an excellent cue to frequency. But it can sometimes go wrong …

Fill in the blanks: find word ending with the following: ___ NG ___ ING seems easier for ing.

Misled by the media …

Confirmation bias #

Imagine that you serve on the jury of an only- child sole custody case after a messy divorce.

  • Parent A has an average income, average health, average working hours, a reasonable rapport with the child, and a relatively stable social life
  • Parent B has an above-average income, minor health problems, lots of work-related travel, a very close relationship with the child, and an extremely active social life.

Which parent would you award custody to?

Personality #

  • O openness to experience - non openness
  • C conscientiousness - indirectness
  • E extrovertism - introversion
  • A extroagreeablness - antagonism
  • N neuroticism - stability

Clinical Psychology #

DSM-5 classifies them

Mental Illness #

Schizophrenia #

  • Afflicts about 1% of the world`s population
  • rejected by society
  • not multiple personality disorder
  • from the greek “split” and “mind”

Symptoms (min 2 required for diagnose)

  • hallucinations (typical audio) sense

  • delusion (aliens recruit you, you are Jesus)

  • disorganized speech

  • disorganized behaviors

  • absence of normal cognition

Paranoid

  • delusions of persecution
  • delusions of grandeur

Catatonic

  • unresponsive to surroundings
  • purposeless movement
  • parrot-like speech

… maybe too much dopamine - not that simple probably genetic (identical twin 40%)

Mood Disorders #

most common type, depression and bi-polar disorder

a severely depressed mood that last two or more weeks, which means that a couple of days of deep sadness doesn’t make you depressed, and is accompanied by feelings of worthlessness and lack of pleasure, lethargy and sleep and appetite disturbances

  • no “reasonable” cause
  • average episode is 12 weeks
  • affects women more than men
  • highly heritable
  • some role of norepinephrine and serotonin
  • patterns of negatively biased thoughts

Anxiety Disorders #

  • a diffuse, vague feeling of fear and apprehension
  • everyone experiences it
  • it is a problem when it is irrational, uncontrollable, and disruptive
  • primary disturbance is distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviourally that reduce anxiety

generalized anxiety disorder

  • More or less constant worry about many issues that seriously interferes with functioning
  • About 5% of people at some time in their lives
  • Physical symptoms:
    • headaches, stomachache, muscle tension, irritability
  • Has some genetic component, related genetically to major depression and childhood trauma

obsessive-compulsive-disorder

step on a crack break mothers neck washing cleaning

… drugs that reduce serotonin

Disassociation Disorder #

literally a dis-association of memory person suddenly becomes unaware of aspect of their identity or history unable to recall excepts under special circumstances some degree is normal

dissociative amnesia

  • memory loss is the only symptom *person still knows identity and most of their past

dissociative fugue

  • leaving home, develop a new identity
  • apparently no recollection

dissociative identity disorder

  • aka multiple personalty disorder
  • not really clear if really existing (cases in USA)

Personality Disorders #

paranoid narcissistic dependent histrionic borderline

Therapy #

Clinical Psychology #