The philosophical position that every behavior has a cause is known as

1. The philosophical position that every behavior has a cause is known as 0 • free will. • determinism. • hereditarianism. • environmentalism.

2. Neurons: How the brain communicates 0 • Neurons – billions used to convey info. Throughout the body • Dendrites – take in neurochemical info • Axon – sends messages to next neuron • Sends message faster if mylenated • Damage can occur from injury or disease • Most common for young adults?

6. Divisions of the brain • The lobes: 1. Frontal (higher cognitive & motor functioning), 2.Occipital (visual processing), 3. Temporal (auditory processing), & 4. Parietal (sensations of the skin and muscles) • Right hemisphere • visual-spatial processing • Left hemisphere • language production (Brocha’s area) • comprehension (Wernicke’s area)

7. How the brain works • Corpus callosum – connects the two hemispheres of the brain and allows them to communicate • Severed (surgically) in some patients with severe forms of epilepsy to prevent grand mal seizures from spreading to both hemispheres • Roger Sperry’s work on split brain patients • Each hemisphere has unique functions and can be autonomous • Hemispheric isolation creates potential for errors • Migration of functioning – transfer of functioning that can occur when part of the brain is damaged (more likely if patient is young)

8. 0

9. 0

11. Neurons in Hippocampus

14. Making Memories

17. Neuronal Stem Cells

18. Conditioning in everyday life • Cancer patients receiving trials of chemotherapy show a weakening of their immune system when exposed to the hospital room where they received chemotherapy • Can we condition increases in immune system? • Placebo effects with drugs – If a pill has worked for you before a similar pill (even an inert substance) can not only cure a headache, but actually result in neurochemical changes in your body • Behavioral change: A Clockwork orange, reconditioning prisoners, buzzer pants, etc. • Salivating to the golden arches, etc.

19. Classical Conditioning • Watson & Raynor (1920) trained a young infant (Little Albert) so that he would be afraid of a rat. • Before conditioning • Present white rat – no fear (neutral stimulus) • Loud noise – fear (unconditioned response) • Conditioning • Pair the white rat (neutral stimulus) with the loud noise (unconditioned stimulus) • After conditioning • White rat = fear (conditioned response) • The white rat is now a conditioned stimulus

20. Key concepts • What happens if we keep exposing Albert to the rat with no loud sound? Eventually… • Extinction - CS (rat) no longer produces the CR (fear) • Spontaneous recovery - after a break, the previously extinct CS produces the CR • Higher order conditioning - a CS is paired with another CS to get the CR • What happens if we use something similar to a white rat? (a Santa’s beard?)

21. Key concepts - continued • Generalization - producing the same CR for a similar CS (e.g., anything like a white rat) • Discrimination - produces a CR for only a very specific CS (e.g. only the specific white rat) • One time conditioning (Garcia effect) - learning occurs after a single pairing (e.g., sheep and wolves)

22. Operant conditioning • To explain most of your day-to-day behavior (non-reflexive actions no required temporal association) • Law of effect – every behavior has a consequence, and the consequence determines if the behavior will re-occur (temporal association is no longer required) - Thorndike • Reinforcement - anything that increase the incidence of the behavior to which it is linked • Punishment - anything that decreases the incidence of the behavior to which it is linked

23. Possible examples of reinforcers and punishers Reinforcer Punisher Positive Negative

24. Delivery (Schedules) of reinforcement & punishment • Continuous - best way to acquire a new behavior (or extinguish an existing behavior) • Why not ideal to maintain the new learning? • Ratio - number of responses for the reinforcement • Interval – there is an interval of time before the next response is reinforced/punished • Variable - changing schedule • Fixed - stable schedule

25. Other schedules Fixed Variable Interval Ratio

26. Behavioral Applications Treatment of OCD & Simple phobias – Phobias are intense fears (or non-normative fears) that lead to dysfunction • Systematic desensitization – developed by J. Wolpe • Establish a fear hierarchy – from least feared to most feared • Systematically expose the individual to each stimulus on the fear hierarchy beginning with the lowest (up to several months) • Must be in a relaxed state while exposed to the stimulus • Must NOT remove the feared stimulus until fear is diminished otherwise the fear is reinforced • For OCD – have obsession with response prevention

27. Personality: A stable pattern of behaviors, cognitions, and affect What determined your personality? (explanation) Some examples.. • Internal and unknown conflicts? • Freud and the psychodynamic movement (ID, Ego, Superego) • Defense mechanisms of denial, intellectualization, displacement, sublimation, projection, and reaction formation • Research by Adams, Wright & Lore, 1986 on arousal in homophobic and non-homophobic males

28. Personality Theory and Research • Biological processes • Eysenck’s research on arousal in the Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS) • Extraverts show less responsiveness to stimulation • Introverts show heightened response to stimulation • Implications for socialization frequency and interpersonal distance Measuring personality (description) - Early examples were decidedly non-scientific

29. Early Assessment

30. Roots of Assessment Early attempts.. • Palm reading • Astrology - stars as gods vs. planets All of these (non-standardized, unreliable and non-validated) techniques rely on… Barnum effect - broad and slightly positive statements; • Stock statements - true in all circumstances • Fishing statements – general statements that can be interpreted in many ways (e.g., “you’ve experienced a loss”) • Research (Glick, 1985) suggests that people are more likely to believe Barnum-type false feedback vs. real personality assessments.

31. Phrenology

32. Body Morphology

33. Morphological assessments: From the head to the body • Phrenology (Gall, early 1800s) – skull shape = personality • Sheldon’s body types (1950) • Based on photographs of all incoming freshmen at Ivy league schools in the 1930s • Endomorph – jolly/happy, lazy • Mesomorph – dominant, athletic • Ectomorph – smart, shy • Body type and criminality (Lombroso)

35. Current Assessment Clinical settings: • Psychodynamic methods: word association, TAT, Rorschach (2nd most common test), etc. • MMPI - developed in 1940 using an empirical approach, revised in 1989 (MMPI-2) and has 567 T/F items • Most widely used inventory in clinical settings • items generally lack face validity (not obvious) • 3 validity scales (lying, defensiveness, infrequency) • Assesses m/f, Si, Hs, Pa, etc. (psychopathology= personality)

36. Assessment - continued Non-clinical settings • NEO-PI – developed for use in the non-clinical population • Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to new experience, Agreeableness, & Conscientiousness • Neuroticism is associated with psychological problems (depression, anxiety), but also success in school and work. • Internal control beliefs result in better adaptation and health (studies in old age home; Rodin, 1977)

37. Intelligence - what is it? • Cognitive abilities such as memory, vocabulary, reasoning, general knowledge, speed of responding, etc. • Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III) • Verbal and Performance IQ • Mean IQ = 100, SD = 15 • Like all IQ measures, it is considered to be culturally biased (no such thing as a culture free test)

38. Alternatives to traditional intelligence • Gould: Intelligence does not = IQ; does not reflect innate skills, nor is intelligence unchangeable (video) • Broader definitions of intelligence: Gardner’s multiple intelligences (abilities in music, art, language, social skills, coordination, etc.) • Creativity - a way to assess alternative forms of intelligence (flexibility in how one thinks about a problem- allows for novel responses and divergent thinking –the consequences test)

39. Stunted intellectual development Associated with several developmental disorders including • Autism: extremely low IQ, minimal verbalizations, isolative, repetitious (rocking) and sometimes self-damaging (head banging) behavior (Overall: 1 in 10,000) • More common in males, but females are more severe cases Savant syndrome • Very rare (only 1% of all autistic individuals: Overall: 1 in a million) • An extraordinary ability (either in absolute or relative to daily functioning), severe cognitive deficits, over attention Stimulus over-selectivity – over attention to only one aspect of a stimulus (can explain both autism and savant syndrome)

40. Biases - cont • The representative heuristic (ignores base rates) • Over 1 million truck drivers vs. 1 chair • 10% are quiet, 1% like cognac, classical music (1%) = 10 • What is your chance of getting skin cancer in the next two years? What is the chance of someone of the same age/gender as you getting skin cancer in the next 2 years? • Overconfidence bias

41. Biases and heuristics in judgment – cont. • What are the next three numbers (2,4,6, _,_,_)? • Confirmation bias • The odds of winning at black jack are 50%. Assuming you have just lost 10 hands in a row, what are your odds of winning the next one? • Gambler’s fallacy (luck will change) – in reality, these are random and unrelated events. Luck doesn’t change. • All-star team vs. a regular team, who should win? • Fallacy of composition (the whole is= sum of its parts) • Buying beef with 25% fat or 75% fat free? • Error from framing effects – context provides information that results in different conclusions