ALHT106 Study Guide - Final Guide: Empiricism, Confirmation Bias, Sexual Maturity
Intro to Psychology
Folk VS Scientific Psychology
•Folk Psychology
-Everyday tendency to form intuitive theories about ourselves and those around us, to
predict or explain the things they do
-Intuitive/Innate
-Culturally informed
-Prone to biases
•Scientific Psychology
-Systematic and formalized study of thought and behaviour employing the methods of
empirical science
Perspectives of Psychology
•Psychodynamics
-Sigmund Freud
-Mind is comprised of functional parts that sometimes come into conflict with each other
-People experience contradictory desires and impulses, which can cause behavioural conflict
-Much of psychological activity occurs outside of conscious awareness, but still influences
what we think and feel
-Minds must develop mechanisms to cope with internal conflict, while preserving function &
self-esteem
-Method: Interpretation of dreams, slips of the tongue etc
•Behaviourism
-Only references observable behaviours
-Classical/Operant Conditioning
-Stimulus generalisation; learning can extend to new contexts
-Method: Experimentation
•Cognitive Psychology
-Scientific approach to mental activity
-Computational model of the mind; views the brain as information processing device.
-Focus on steps of information processing
-Method: Person-centred therapeutic approach
•Humanistic Psychology
-Sought to apply scientific insights to mental healing/flourishing
-Rogers and Maslow
-‘Self actualisation’ is one’s highest goal
-Method: Experimentation
•Evolutionary Psychology
-What is currently known about psychological functioning in the evolutionary context of
how mechanisms such as these historically develop
-Features of human psychology are heritable, adaptive responses to the recurring survival &
reproductive challenges of our ancestors
-Method: Cross-species and cross-cultural experimentation
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Learning
-Adapting to the past within your lifetime
-Nervous system changed by your experiences, in such a way as to change how you’ll react
to similar experiences in the future
Classical Conditioning
-Pavlov
-Non-voluntary actions
-Pairing the presentation of an unconditioned stimulus with a perceptual signal (conditioned
stimulus) so that the two become associated within the nervous system.
-Through this association, with training it becomes possible to elicit the unconditioned
response (now a conditioned response) with just the conditioned stimulus.
-Most effective when the conditioned stimulus is presented 0.5-1 second before the
unconditioned stimulus.
-Conditioned associations decay with time
-Extinction; CS presented repeatedly without the UCS until conditioned association is rapidly
unlearned.
-Spontaneous recovery; Neural traces remain because re-training the same pattern later is
extremely fast.
-Stimulus generalisation; Wide range of stimuli similar to the original CS trigger the CR
-Stimulus discrimination; Subject only reacts to the CS
-Blocking; A new CS will fail to be paired if presented alongside another CS that is already
paired
-Latent inhibition; Familiar stimuli takes longer to acquire meaning than a new one.
Operant Conditioning
-Thorndike and Skinner
-Voluntary actions
-Subject is more likely to repeat actions with good consequences, & less likely to repeat actions with
bad consequences
-Antecedent; Trigger for a behaviour: prompts, cues, stimuli, events or interactions that come before
a behaviour.
-Behaviour
-Consequence: what happens after the behaviour has occurred
-Reinforcement; Any consequence that makes the preceding behaviour more likely to reoccur in the
future
-Punishment; Any consequence that makes the preceding behaviour less likely to reoccur in the
future
-Positive responses; Adding something to the subject
-Negative responses; Removing something from the subject
Shaping
-Cultivation of a complex, unnatural, or counterintuitive behavioural response, by means of
reinforcing a succession of closer and closer intermediate approximations
Chaining
-Linking behaviours together to achieve a final result
1. Conduct a task analysis.
2. Write down the steps of the task. Start to finish for forward chaining, last step written first for
backward chaining.
3. Practice one link in the chain. Teach and reinforce first link.
4. When one link is achieved practice the second link and join them together. Teach and reinforce
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both steps as one.
5. Keep practicing and joining links until the learning is completed.
Schedules of Reinforcement
-Reinforcement is more effective than punishment
-Positive reinforcement is best.
-Fixed Interval Schedules; Target response is reinforced after a fixed amount of time has passed
since the last reinforcement
-Variable Interval Schedules; similar to fixed interval schedules, but the amount of time that must
pass between reinforcement varies unpredictably
-Fixed Ratio Schedules; fixed number of correct responses must occur before reinforcement may
recur
-Variable Ratio Schedules; number of correct repetitions of the correct response for reinforcement
varies
Observational Learning
-Bandura
-Relies on witnessing others
-Imitation; acquiring a new set of behaviours by copying the movements of another
-Emulation; learning to attend to features of the environment that seem to correlate with goal-
seeking in others
-Vicarious Conditioning; acquiring a conditioned response based on seeing the pairings &
consequences play out for someone else
-Due to ‘mirror neurons’. Fire in the same patterns when an action is performed OR witnessed in
another
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Document Summary
Everyday tendency to form intuitive theories about ourselves and those around us, to predict or explain the things they do. Systematic and formalized study of thought and behaviour employing the methods of empirical science. Mind is comprised of functional parts that sometimes come into conflict with each other. People experience contradictory desires and impulses, which can cause behavioural conflict. Much of psychological activity occurs outside of conscious awareness, but still influences what we think and feel. Minds must develop mechanisms to cope with internal conflict, while preserving function & self-esteem. Method: interpretation of dreams, slips of the tongue etc: behaviourism. Stimulus generalisation; learning can extend to new contexts. Computational model of the mind; views the brain as information processing device. Sought to apply scientific insights to mental healing/flourishing. What is currently known about psychological functioning in the evolutionary context of how mechanisms such as these historically develop.
