Drugs

•Our brain is protected by a layer of capillaries called the blood-brain barrier.

The drugs that are small enough to pass through are called psychoactive drugs

Drugs are either….

•Agonists

•Antagonists

•Reuptake inhibitors

If a drug is used often, a tolerance is created for the drug.

Thus you need more of the drug to feel the same effect.

If you stop using a drug you can develop withdrawal symptoms
Stimulants:

•Speed up body processes.

•More powerful ones (like cocaine) give people feelings of invincibility.

Depressants:

•Slows down body processes.

•Alcohol

•Anxiolytics (barbiturates and tranquilizers)

Alcohol:

•More than 86 billion dollars are spent annually on alcoholic beverages. 

•Alcohol is involved in 60% of ALL crimes. 

•Alcohol is involved in over 70% of sexually related crimes.  

Opiates:

•Has depressive and hallucinogenic qualities. 

•Agonist for endorphins. 

•Derived from poppy plant. 

•Morphine, heroin, methadone and codeine. 

•All these drugs cross the placental barrier….teratogens.  

States of Unconscious

Sleep

-sleep is a state of consciousness
-we are less aware of our surroundings

• conscious
• subconscious
• unconscious

Why do we daydream?

• can help us prepare for future events
• they can nourish our social development
• can substitute for impulsive behavior

Fantasy Prone Personalities: someone who imagines and recalls experiences with lifelike vividness and who spends considerable time fantasizing.

Biological Rhythms:
-Annual cycles: seasonal variations
-28 day cycles: menstrual cycle
-24 hour cycle: our circadian rhythm
-90 minute cycle: sleep cycles

Circadian Rhythm:
-24 hour biological clock
-body temperature and awareness changes throughout the day.

Sleep Stages:
-5 identified
-takes about 90-100 minutes to pass through 5 stages
-brain's waves will change according to the sleep stage
-first 4 known as NREM
-5th is known as REM sleep

Dreams: a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind.

Manifest Content: the remembered storyline of a dream.

Latent Content: the underlying meaning of a dream.

Why do we dream?

Freud's Wishful-Fulfillment Theory:
-dreams are the key to understanding our inner conflicts.
-ideas and thoughts tat are hidden in our unconscious

Information-Processing Theory:
-dreams act to sort out and understand the memories that you experience that day
-REM sleep does increase after stressful events.

Activation-Synthesis Theory:
-during the night, out brainstem releases random neural activity, dreams may be a way to make sense of that activity.

Hypnosis: 

•Altered state of consciousness?

•Posthypnotic suggestion

•Posthypnotic amnesia

Dissociation Theory:

•Theory by Ernest Hilgard.

•We voluntarily divide our consciousness up.

•Ice Water Experiment.

•We have a hidden observer, a level of us that is always aware.

 

Role Theory:

•Hypnosis is NOT an altered state of consciousness.

•Different people have various state of hypnotic suggestibility.

•A social phenomenon where people want to believe.

•Work better on people with richer fantasy lives.

   

State Theory:

•Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness.

•Dramatic health benefits

•It works for pain best.

 

 

 

 

Learning

Learning: Long lasting change in behavior due to experience.

Classical Conditioning: 

•Ivan Pavlov

•Studied Digestion of Dogs.

•Dogs would salivate before they were given food (triggered by sounds, lights etc…)

•Dogs must have LEARNED to salivate.

•This is passive learning (automatic…learner does NOT have to think).

•First thing you need is a unconditional relationship.

•Unconditional Stimulus (UCS)- something that elicits a natural, reflexive response.

•Unconditional Response (UCR)- response to the UCS.

•Next you find a neutral stimulus (something that by itself  elicits no response). 

•You present the stimulus with the UCS a whole bunch of times. 

•After a while, the body begins to link together the neutral stimulus with the UCS.

•We know learning takes places when the previously neutral stimulus elicits a response. 

•At this point the neutral stimulus is called the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditional response becomes the conditioned response (CR).

 Extinction: the diminishing of a conditioned response, will eventually happen when the UCS does not follow the CS.

Spontaneous Recovery: the reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished conditioned response.

Generalization: the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the CS to elicit similar responses.

Discrimination: ability to distinguish between a CS and other stimuli that does not signal UCS.

Operant Conditioning:
-the learner is not passive
-learning based on consequence
- a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by reinforcement or diminished if followed by punishment

Classical Vs. Operant
-they both use acquisition, discrimination, SR, generalization and extinction.
-Classical (respondent behavior)
-Operant: involves behavior where one can influence their environment with behaviors which have consequences. Who's in control?

The Law of Effect

• Edward Thorndike: instrumental learning

-Law of effect: rewarded behavior is likely to recur.

• B.F. Skinner

Shaping: a procedure in O.C. in which reinforces guide behavior closer and closer towards a goal.

Reinforces: event that strengthens the behavior it follows. 

 

Primary Reinforcer: an innately reinforcing stimulus

Conditioned (Secondary) reinforcer: a stimulus that gains it reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer.

Punishment: an event that decreases the behavior that it follows.  

 

 

Memory

Memory:
the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

Memory Process:

• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval

Encoding: the processing of information into the memory system.

Storage: the retention of encoded material over time.

Retrieval: the process of getting the information out of memory storage.

Recall Vs. Recognition:

• with recall- you must retrieve the information from your memory
• with recognition- you must identify the target from possible targets

Flashbulb Memory: a clear moment of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Types of Memory:

• Sensory: immediate, initial recording of sensory information stored just for an instant, must get unprocessed.
• Short-term: memory that holds only a few items (7 digits), the information will be stored into long-term or forgotten.
• Long-term: relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory syste

 

Encoding

Automatic Processing:
-unconscious encoding of incidental information
-you encode space, time, and word meaning
-things become automatic with practice

Effortful Processing:
-encoding that requires attention and conscious effort
-rehearsal is the most common effortful processing technique
-through enough rehearsal, what was effortful becomes automatic

the next-in-line effect: we seldom remember what the person has just said or done if we are next.

Spacing Effect:
-we encode better when we study or practice over time.

 Serial Positioning Effect: Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.

Types of Encoding:

• Semantic Encoding: the encoding of meaning, like the meaning of words.
• Acoustic Encoding: the encoding of sound, especially the sounds of words.
• Visual Encoding: the encoding of picture images.

Mnemonic Devices: use imagery, like my "peg word"
Chunking:
-organizing items into familiar, manageable units
-often it will occur automatically

Types of Retrieval Failure:

• Proactive Interference: the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information
• Retroactive Interference: the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information

Misinformation Effect: incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event.

Diagrams of the Sensations

Thinking, Language and Thought, and Intelligence

THINKING
concepts are like piaget's idea of schemas
prototypes: best mental image or example of category.
heuristics: rule of them allows to make judgement and solve problems efficiently. shortcut, prone to errors.
fixation: inability to see problems form new perspective.

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
phonemes: smallest distinct sound unit in language. ex. syllables
morphemes: smallest unit that carries meanings. ex. suffix

INTELLIGENCE
...

Perception

process of organizing and interpreting information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.

geslalt philosophy: whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

figure ground relationship: organization of visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surrounding (ground).

grouping: perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into groups that we understand. based on proximity, similarity, continuity, and connection.

depth perception: ability to see objects in 3D although the image that strike the retina are 2D allows to judge distance.

binocular cues - retinal disparity: a binocular cue for seeing depth.
closer an object comes to you the greater the disparity is between two image.

monocular cues:
interposition: if something is blocking our view, we perceive it as closer.
relative size: if we know that two objects are similar in size, the one that looks smaller is farther away.
relative clarity: we assume hazy objects are farther away.

texture gradient: the coaser it looks the closer it is.
relative height: things higher in our field of vision, they look farther away.
relative motion: things that are closer appear to move more quickly.
liner perspective: parallel lines seem to converge with distance.
light and shadow: dimmer objects appear farther away because they reflect less light.

motion perception: we perceive motion incredible well/ we judge mostly by the size of the object.

phi phenomenon: allusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in succession.

perceptual consistency: perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images changes.