1) (a) Mere exposure, even in great quantities, DOES NOT necessarily lead to substantial declarative knowledge that would allow us to remember seemingly obvious facts
(b) Brady et al suggests that when people pay close attention, even one exposure is sufficient to recognize, non obvious information.
2) a) Recall is coming up with information about a memory when given a cue to that memory, like imagining what a penny is like when someone asks you to imagine a penny.
b) Recognition is just identifying something as familiar, when cued with the training object. Usually this is the easier method
a) Learning DOES change your brain. Learning happens in the brain, therefore the brain changes when we learn.
b) Jenkins and Merzenich showed that repeated tasks altered the size of the cortical regions related to that task, enlarging the neural area responsible for sensing the fingertips relative to more proximal parts of the hand.
1) a) The knowledge is a corpus found in London cab drivers. c) London cab drivers are found to have significantly larger posterior hippocampi d) People with larger PH have better memories. e) Those who learned to juggle showed an increase in grey matter. f) There is a casual relationship between learning and neurological change.
2) A) Understand what you are trying to learn. g) Use recall based methods more than recognition based methods h) Use flash cards to implement recall-based learning
Spacing effect: Technique of spacing out your studying over time. Since memory is tied to context, it is helpful to learn separate chunks of info on separate days because the unique cues from those days will be an extra help when it is time to recall information
Massed exposure condition: Get the subjects to learn new words twice on day one and tested a few weeks later
Spaced exposure condition: Half studied on day one, one more time a week later, then tested a few weeks later
Those in the spaced exposure condition achieved higher score results on the tests. Therefore, it is the better option.
Threshold hypothesis: The idea that there is a correlation between IQ and success, but only up to a point. Once people reach an IQ of 120, for e.g., any more intelligence doesn’t have that much effect on success.
Deliberate practice:
Practice with: 1. Your full attention, and attention to feedback 2. Focused on specific goals 3. Fixing what went wrong in prior practice 4. Repetition of these steps
People who can perform amazing tasks do it through practice, and have IQs that are not that high.
10,000 hour rule
Lecture 12 notes:
Assimilation: The process of putting new experiences into existing knowledge and existing theory.
Accomodation: The process of changing existing schemes to fit new experiences.
* An infant can learn before birth. DeCasper and Spence says that pregnant mothers who read aloud to their unborn infants twice a day for the last 6 weeks of their pregnancy, etc. Babies had learned from the stories and had a preference.
Pruning: The fetus and infant produce far more neurons and synapses that needed by the mature person. Pruning is the process of losing the neurons that are not retained. Humans only keep 65% of the neurons as adults.
Intellectual stages in Piage’s stage theory: * Sensorimotor period (from birth to 2 years): child has not yet achieved object permanence; the child first fails to reach for hidden objects and later makes the A-not-B error. * Preoperational period (from 2 years to 7 years): The child fails conversation tasks * Concrete operational period (7-12 years): the child passes conversation takssa nad can focus on more than once dimension of a problem, but lacks formal operations * Formal operational period: (>12years): the child can reason about abstract and possible/hypothetical things
Teratogens: Environmental factors that can disrupt healthy neural development.
Children fail Piaget’s conservation of number test: * Asking the child the same question twice implies that the child made a mistake first time round * The adult is seemed to ‘give a second chance’ to answer it correctly. * The child may give a different answer second time round only if he is unsure of the answer * Piaget was correct in his observation that preschool children have a tentavie grasp of numberical concepts
Theory of mind: The set of interrelated concepts we use to make sense of our own thoughts, feelings and behaviours as well as those of others. E.g. As they grow older, children will understand that different people have different preferences and that they make choices based on that.
Conservation tasks: During Piaget’s preoperational stage, children fail the classic Piagetian conservation tasks. They believe that pouring water into a thinner glass creates more water, etc.
Piaget believed that in the preoperational stage, although children are free from sensorimotor thinking, they lack the capacity to compute operations, or aspects of logical thinking. He also believed that a particular obstacle to understanding these tasks is the child’s tendency to only focus on one thing at a time – e.g. in one dimension.
Piaget’s notion of constructivism – the idea that throughout life, we systematize our knowledge and learn to interpret phenomenon according to our structures of knowledge – is still widely accepted.
Domain-general stages – that children are in a certain stage regardless of the domain being considered – is NOT accepted. Because it is possible to change at least some of the Piagetian tasks in a way that should be irrelevant to the theory, and children go from failing to succeeding.
Lecture 13:
Logic of twin designs: Why does the distinction between monozgotic and dizygotic twins help understand heritability?
* Monozygotic (MZ) twins share 100% of their DNA * They share traits and behaviors b/c of their shared genetic information and their shared environment * They DIFFER in the unique environmental factors to which each twin is exposed * Dizygotic (DZ) twins share 50% of their DNA * Heritability: How much of the variation in a trait can be accounted for by genetic factors
Problematic assumption of twin studies: * Twin study designs assume that the major differences between MZ and DZ twins result from genetic factors, since the extent to which twins share environments is the same for MZ and DZ twins * This is a problematic assumption b/c we know that it isn’t true – MZ twins experience more similar environments than DZ twins. * Studies show that the similar treatment of MZ twins probably has more to do with their shared genetics rather other people’s perception of their similarity
Heritability is NOT an estimate of individual risk, it is a population estimate and does not give us information about the individual risk for particular disorders/traits
Attachment: The strong, enduring emotional bond between a child and its caregivers that some psycholigusts consider the basis for relationships later in life.
John Bowlby – he viewed attachment as also providing to the child the model that he or she will use in viewing all social relationships.
Strange situation: Researchers described four types of attachment styles. As revealed in the ‘strange situation’ method.
1. Secure attachment: A child who explores the environment, is mildly upset when the mother leaves the room and enthusiastic when she returns. 2. Anxious/resistant attachment: A child who does not explore the room, does not become upset when the mother leaves, and acts ambivalently to the mother when she returns 3. Anxious/avoidant attachment: A child who is distant when the mother is present and typically ignores her when she returns 4. Disorganized: A child who is confused and inconsistent and lacks an organized method for dealing with stress
There are 2 binary dimensions that describe parenting, yielding 4 possible styles. 1. The first dimension is how accepting parents are of children and how responsive they are to the child’s needs 2. The second dimension is how demanding they are of their child’s behavior
Authoritarian parents:
Who are high on demandingness but low on responsiveness, and have firm rules that they don’t explain to their children and who often punish them.
Permissive parents:
Low on demandingness but high on responsiveness and set few rules and restriction, have loose schedules, and rarely use punishment.
Authorative parents:
High on responsiveness and demandingness. These parents exercise power and have rules that they enforce, but they also respond to their children’s opinions and requests.
Disengaged parents:
Low on responsiveness and demandingness, and have few rules and are insensitive to their child’s needs.
Parents adopt a particular style because sometimes it is situational –
e.g. 1. poverty is associated with lower levels of involvement 2. the child’s characteristics
Childern elicit certain behaviors from parents.
Gene X environment interaction: * The effects of some aspect of the environment will vary as a function of genetic differences among people * E.g. the serotonin transporter is responsible for picking up excess seroton in the synapse allowing for serotonin to reuptake in the pre-synaptic cell. The efficiency of this transporter has been implicated in depression. * People who have different forms of the serotonin transporter are more or less susceptible to depression. * Research has shown that for individuals who were homozygous for the short form of the gene, stressful life events were associated with an increased risk for major depression * Individuals with the low MAOA activity allele (low enzyme activity), the more severe any maltreatment they suffer as children, the greater risk of conduct disorder. * Individuals with the high activity form of the gene were buffered substantially from the effects of severe maltreatment
3 types of gene-enviroment correlations: 1. Passive gene-environment correlation: a. Parents create a home environment that is partly determined by the parents genetics. And of course parents pass on their genes to their children. b. E.g. Parents who are aggressive are more likely to use more harsh physical discipline with their children. Additionally, aggressive parents transmit a genetic risk for aggressive behavior to their children as well c. The association beween physical discipline and aggressive behavior in children may be genetically condunded 2. Evocative gene-enrivonment correlation: d. When an individual’s behavior evokes a response from the environment e. E.g. children who are aggressive are those who elicit harsh physical discipline leading to an association between physical discipline and aggressive behavior 3. Active gene-environment correlation: f. When individuals seek out environments that are congruent with their genetic predispositions g. E.g. children who are aggressive may seek out aggressive peers leading to an association between peer group membership and aggressive behavior
Discordant monozygotic twin design:
Examines MZ twins who have had different experiences. If the twins differ in their outcomes, it is likely that the difference in experience caused the difference in outcome.
How are adoption studies useful in understanding heritability?
In adoption study designs, any association between the family environment and child behavior cannot be confuounded by genetic factors because the adoptees and their adoptive parents do not share their genes.
What cognitive capacities decline with age? What cognitive capacities appear to remain relatively stable over time? * Gradual decline with age: * Working memory * Episodic memory * Fluid intelligence * Remain relatively stable: * Implicit memory * Semantic memory * Crystallized intelligence (might even increase)
Erickson’s 8 stage model of life span development:
* Intimacy vs Isolation (20s through early 40s): * The moajor concern during this stage is developing an intimate relationship. The key accomplishment of this stage is building a partnership. According to Erickson, failure to develop an intimate relationship may lead to isolation * Generativity vs Stagnation (40s to 60s): * The goal of this stage is finding meaning in one’s work, which produces a sense of generativity or a concern about contributing to the next generation or to causes that one will outlive. According to Erickson, failure in this stage leads to a sense of stagnation. * Integrity vs Despair (60s to Death): * The major task of this stage is finding meaning in the life that one has led. Success in this stage leads to a sense of peace and satisfaction with one’s life whereas failure leads to feelings of regret and disappointment and ultimately despair
