Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
77 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
What is perceptual bias?
|
The way in which ambiguous figures such as the vase or the picture of the rat/man are perceived depends on what was seen just before.
|
|
What do electrically triggered images and brain imaging show?
|
A clear relation between physiological mechanisms and psychological phenomena.
|
|
Describe Gibson and Walk's visual cliff experiment and the results.
|
Babies were placed on a plank. One side had a checkered pattern right under glass. One side had a checkered pattern on the floor under the glass. Babies would not crawl to their mother if they were on the "drop off" side.
|
|
What are displays in social interaction?
|
Courtship/mating displays, threat display, appeasement display, emotional expression.
|
|
What is behaviour? (objective)
|
Observable actions of an individual or animal. ex. gaze, answers to questions, heart rate, reaction time, path in a maze
|
|
What are mental processes? (subjective)
|
An individual's perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, motives, emotions and other subjective experiences.
|
|
Rene Descartes
|
Dualist; believed that a lot of behaviour involved only the body and was a reflexive response; believed reasoning had no physical basis
|
|
Thomas Hobbes
|
Materialist; spirit, soul, and consciousness are meaningless; everything is the product of physical machinery
|
|
John Locke
|
Empiricist; at birth the mind is tabula rasa (blank slate); nature vs. nurture
|
|
Darwin
|
Origin of Species - humans are part of nature
|
|
Hermann Helmholtz
|
Studied physiological mechanisms underlying sensation and action. Measured speed/rate of neural impulses.
|
|
Wilhelm Wundt
|
Founder of scientific psychology; speed of simple mental processes; studied simple and complex reaction time.
|
|
What is important to remember in sampling?
|
Representative, chance, random sampling, biases.
|
|
What is selection bias?
|
A selection procedure is biased ex. only sending questionnaires to people in clubs.
|
|
What is non-response bias?
|
Non-respondents can be different than people who do respond. Look out for it if there is a large amount of people who don't respond.
|
|
What is response bias?
|
Respondents give faulty information - lying, leading question, forget
|
|
What is experimenter bias?
|
Experimenter influenced behaviour of participants or gives a biased interpretation of data.
|
|
What is a controlled experiment?
|
The experimenter decides/controls who gets into what group.
|
|
What is a correlation study?
|
Subjects "assign" themselves to a group by virtue of their attributes prior to the study.
|
|
What is a double-blind study?
|
Neither the participants nor the person measuring their response should know if they are in the control or treatment group.
|
|
What is confounding?
|
A difference between the treatment and control groups other than the treatment which affects the responses being studied.
|
|
What is natural selection?
|
Some individuals reproduce and pass on their traits; depends on whether they can have sex (willingness, available mates) and environmental pressure (climate, food, predators); inherited traits or characteristics
|
|
What is random variation?
|
Genetic mutation provides different inherited characteristics.
|
|
What is William's Syndrome?
|
Strong language skills, impaired visual-spatial skills
|
|
What is motherese?
|
High pitched, musical; infants prefer it; the same in all cultures
|
|
What are examples of adaptations?
|
Fats, sweets, salts; sexual jealousy; facial expressions
|
|
What is the selfish gene?
|
Personal survival is the survival of your genes ex. ground squirrels altruistic? or selfish?
|
|
What is an ultimate explanation?
|
Functional explanation at the level of evolution (survival, reproduction)
|
|
What is a proximal explanation?
|
Deal with mechanism - statements of the intermediate conditions that bring on the behaviour
|
|
What is genetic drift?
|
When two populations from the same species have different inheritable characteristics; usually when changes are not maladaptive
|
|
What is ethology?
|
Study of animal behaviour in the natural environment which uses evolutionary adaptation as its primary explanatory principle
|
|
What are fixed action patterns?
|
Motor responses to specific types of stimuli that are relatively unchangeable by experience
|
|
Explain the behaviour of the male stickleback fish.
|
Does a zig-zag dance to attract mates(fixed action pattern) when it sees swollen belly; attacks when it sees red belly
|
|
Explain imprinting.
|
Babies exhibit a following response to the first object they see moving in their environment.
|
|
What are homologies?
|
Similarity b/t species due to common ancestry
|
|
What are analogies?
|
convergent/similar evolutions
|
|
What is sociobiology?
|
Study of how mating, aggression, and cooperation in society has evolved because it increases the likelihood of survival.
|
|
What is social dominance and how does it affect the genetic makeup of a species?
|
Hierarchies established by social aggression. Dominant males reproduce more.
|
|
Polygyny
|
High female, low male investment
|
|
Polyandry
|
High male, low female (egg laying species)
|
|
Monogamy
|
Equal investment (too much work for one parent)
|
|
Polygynandry
|
Group investment
|
|
Why are step-fathers more likely to kill their step-children?
|
Sexual jealousy ex. lions kill off children of previously dominant male (but they don't always b/c they're not lions)
|
|
Define learning.
|
A more or less permanent change in behaviour or behavioural potential due to experience
|
|
What is habituation?
|
The decline in tendency to respond to stimuli that have become familiar due to repeated exposure
|
|
Unconditioned reflex
|
occurs naturally
|
|
conditioned reflex
|
reflex is acquired
|
|
unconditioned stimulus
|
stimulus that produces the response in the unconditioned reflex
|
|
unconditioned response
|
response in the unconditioned reflex
|
|
conditioned stimulus
|
stimulus in the conditioned reflex
|
|
conditioned response
|
response in the conditioned reflex
|
|
Extinction
|
conditioned reflex becomes weaker when the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus aren't presented together
|
|
spontaneous recovery
|
sudden reappearance of conditioned response after extinction
|
|
generalization
|
stimuli similar to conditioned stimulus also evoke conditioned response
|
|
discrimination
|
ability to discriminate between conditioned stimulus and other unimportant stimuli
|
|
instrumental response
|
response acts like an instrument or tool to achieve the desired effect
|
|
What was Thorndike's puzzle box?
|
He placed a hungry cat inside a box with food outside. It would accidentally press a paddle that opened the door. After much trial and error, they learned to press the paddle right away.
|
|
Law of Effect
|
consequences of a response determine whether tendency to perform it is strengthened or weakened
|
|
operant conditioning
|
instrumental response (consequences of a response affect likelihood that they will be repeated)
|
|
reinforcer
|
reward that tends to make a response more likely to occur in the future
|
|
Skinner box/operant chambers
|
a cage with a lever that the animal can operate to produce an effect like the delivery of juice
|
|
positive reinforcement
|
a stimulus that will increase probability of a behaviour
|
|
negative reinforcement
|
any stimulus whose removal increases likelihood of a behaviour (pressing a bar to turn off electric shock)
|
|
punishment
|
any stimulus whose presence reduces probability of behaviour
|
|
shaping
|
rewarding behaviours that are increasingly similar to the desired behaviour
|
|
discriminative stimuli
|
external stimuli that exert control over behaviour (red/green light when getting food)
|
|
continuous reinforcement
|
every response is reinforced
|
|
partial/intermittent reinforcement
|
only some responses are reinforced
|
|
ratio schedule
|
reinforcer given after some number of responses
|
|
interval schedule
|
reinforcer given after some time period
|
|
fixed
|
the number of responses/time period is held constant
|
|
variable
|
the number of responses/time period is variable
|
|
what is a typical response for fixed-ratio?
|
bursts of responses
|
|
what is a typical response for variable ratio?
|
high steady rate of responding
|
|
what is a typical response for fixed interval?
|
pauses with accelerating responses as the time approaches
|
|
what is a typical response for variable interval?
|
slow, steady pattern of responses
|
|
explain how Tolman's maze rats argued for cognitive maps
|
they would find the quickest route and switch to the next shortest when that was blocked
|