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Sandra Nguyen January 24, 2011 Period 1

1. An experiment is a research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process. By random assignment of participants, the experiment controls other relevant factors. In this case, we will be the investigator and will manipulate the factor of giving alcoholic drinks to some people and not to others, and observe the effect of alcohol on their tendency to become aggressive. Random assignment is assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups. We will number off participants 1, 2, 1, 2, and give alcoholic drinks to all ones, and fake drinks that smell and taste like alcohol to group two. A hypothesis is a testable prediction, often implied by a theory, which is an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes and predicts observations. The theory is that alcohol influences people s tendency to become socially aggressive. The hypothesis is: Alcohol consumption will result in people with higher levels of behavior that is socially aggressive. A dependent variable is the experimental factor, the behavior or mental process that s being measured; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable. People s level of social aggressiveness is the dependent variable because it is being measured, and can change depending on change in the independent variable of alcoholic drink or not. The independent variable is the experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied. In this case, the independent variable that is being manipulated is giving people alcoholic drinks or fake alcoholic drinks. The effect that is being studied is whether they react aggressively or not. The control condition is the condition of an experiment that contrasts with experimental condition and serves as a

comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment. This will be group 2, because they are being given fake drinks and will be served as a comparison of normal aggression levels, compared to those who actually drank alcohol. The experimental condition is the condition of an experiment that exposes participants to the treatment; to one version of the independent variable. In this case, it s the people drinking the alcohol because they re exposed to the treatment. We will use the double blind procedure, which is an experimental procedure in which both researcher participants and research staff are blind about if the participants got the actual treatment or a placebo. The researchers will be giving everyone drinks, but neither knows if it s an actual alcohol drink or a fake one, this is to avoid the placebo effect. The placebo effect is an experimental result caused by expectations alone; any effect on behavior is caused by administration of an inert substance that s assumed to be an active agent. This way, we can test to see if alcohol actually produces aggressive tendencies, or if people only act aggressive because they expect to act more aggressive after drinking alcohol. The double blind procedure will ensure that the research is valid, because expectations will not interfere.

2. Aphasia is impairment of language usually caused by left hemisphere damage to either Broca s area (impaired speaking) or Wernicke s area (impaired understanding). The mild stroke probably had an effect on her left hemisphere in Broca s or Wernicke s area or the angular gyrus, therefore she shows signs of aphasia. Broca s area controls language

expression- an area of the frontal lobe in left hemisphere, directs muscle movements involved in speech. Symptoms such as struggling to form words, but being able to sing familiar songs and comprehend speech and disruption of speaking would suggest damage primarily to Broca s area. Wernicke s area controls language reception- a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; in left temporal lobe usually. Symptoms like speaking only meaningless words that doesn t make sense like mother is away her working and disruption of understanding would suggest damage to Wernicke s area. The angular gyrus receives visual information from the visual area and recodes it into auditory form, which Wernicke s area uses to derive meaning. Symptoms would be if Mr. McGeorge could speak and understand, but can t read.

3. Behavior genetics is the study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior. This would look at how much Mr. Firkin s environment of his mother that didn t give him attention and the resenting and conservative family and life style enforced by his father actually would influence Mr. Firkin s behavior. However, behavior geneticists have found that parental handling doesn t necessarily shape children s personalities. It s found that shared environmental influences accounts for less than 10% of children s personality differences. To Sandra Scarr, this implies that parents should be given less credit for kids who turn out great and blamed less for kids who don t. Parental influence on personality, such as Mr. Firkin shy (etc) traits, is limited. Nature, like

genetics and genes, does play a role in one s temperament, so Mr. Firkin can blame his parents for that if his parents had similar temperaments. However, his complaints all dealt with nurture, environmental problems, making it unfair and unhelpful to his parents because to excuse our failures by blaming our nature and nurture is what Jean Paul Satre called bad faithattributing responsibility for one s face to bad genes or influences. Environment is every nongenetic influence from prenatal nutrition to people around us. This would be his mother and father s life styles, discipline, and the way they treated him. Temperament is a person s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity. This would be Mr. Firkin s shy, reserved, but tense and nervous traits. Interaction is the dependence of the effect of a factor, like environment, on another, like heredity. His conservative family discipline and life style enforced by his father is the environment that interacts on his heredity, such as temperament. For example, his temperament of being tense, reserved, nervous, and shy could lead to his dad enforcing a conservative family discipline life style.

4. Kohlberg described the development of moral reasoning as the thinking that occurs as we consider right and wrong. This is Philip s thinking as he considered and challenges his parents values. Kohlberg proposed that moral reasoning helps guide judgment and behavior, like Phillip expressing his own set of idealistic standards. Kohlberg would argue that we develop intellectually and pass through different stages of moral thinking, moving from simplistic and concrete toward abstract and principled.Erikson and

Kohlberg both believed that people go through stages in life. Erikson says that an adolescent s task is to synthesize past, present, and future possibilities into a clearer sense of self. Erikson calls the quest the search for identity . Identity is one s sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent s task it so solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles. Philip doesn t want to take his parent s values as his own, and is solidifying his own sense of self by testing/challenging his parent s values. He s integrating various roles by finding his own standards and his own sets of highly idealistic standards.

5. Sensation is the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous systems receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment. How we see things from our environment can vary depending on our motives, expectations and psychological state of mind. Absolute threshold is the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time. You can detect signals below this level, but it also depends on your psychological state. This has to do with the signal detection theory predicts how/when we detect a signal amid background noise, assuming there s no single absolute threshold and detection depends partly on a person experience, expectations, motivations, and level of fatigue. Signal detection theorists observed that absolute thresholds may vary. If you re exhausted, you may fail to notice unimportant sounds, but may hear a baby s faint whimper. Or, it can be responsiveness in wartime situations, depending on your situation. Also, if you re expecting it, it s important that

you detct it, or if you are alert will help. Sensory adaptation is the diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulus. If we continue to experience a stimulus, we may have a lowered sensitivity, therefore missing details or perceiving our environment differently. The gate control theory is that the spinal cord contains neurological gates that blocks pain signals or passes them to the brain. It s opened by pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers, closed by activity in larger fibers or information from the brain. Our sensations of pain can vary. For instance, rubbing the area around your stubbed toe will create competing stimulation that blocks some of the pain message. This shows that sensations, like pain, can be influenced by our state of mind, like stimulating large neural fibers to distract from feeling pain.

6. John Locke believed that it is through our experiences that we learn to perceive the world. Writing to Locke, Molyneux wondered if a man born blind, taught by touch is distinguish a cube and sphere, could visually distinguish the two if made to see. Locke said no because the man would ve never learned to see the difference. Restored vision showed that people blind from birth had their cataracts removed, the patients could distinguish figure from ground and sense colors- suggesting some aspects of perception to be innate. But, they couldn t recognize by sight what was familiar by touch. Animals too who wore goggles like those with cataract could distinguish color and brightness, but not a circle from a square. Lacking stimulation, the cortical cells hadn t developed normal connections,

so animals remained functionally blind to shape. This supports Locke s emphasis on learning, because they couldn t distinguish sphere from cube because they never learned how to. Perceptual adaptation is: in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field. This also supports Locke s learning in perception because people learned to adapt to the distorted world, like seeing everything upside down. This could only be done after a few days/weeks, therefore showing that people learned from experience and applied it to their perceptions (throwing a ball more to the right if goggles shifted things to the left). Perceptual set is a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another. For example, if you re told that the picture shows the Loch Ness monster, you may see a monster. If told it s a log, you may see that there aren t rippled and it looks like it s not moving. This refutes Locke s idea because distinguishing figure from ground was shown to be innate, and did not have to be learned. Size constancy refers to the fact that our perceptions of the size of objects are relatively constant despite the fact that the size of objects on the retina vary greatly with distance. Because people could see figure from ground after having their cataracts removed, they could guess how far away it is, or which one is closer, refuting Locke s idea of learning in perception because it was innate.

7. Memory is the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information. It is our ability to store and retrieve information. Professor Markus may have difficulty learning names by inefficiently storing

and retrieving information. Encoding is getting information into the memory system, for example by extracting meaning. The professor could be having a hard time encoding by not putting a lot of thought into getting the names into her memory. Storage is the retention of encoded information over time. She could be not paying attention to the names or not using the student s names, therefore not retaining the information. Retrieval is getting information out of memory storage. The professor could be referring to the students by you there or not using their names, therefore never retrieving the information and making it hard to remember. Also, professor M may lack the neurotransmitter serotonin that is released at certain synapses, helping neural circuits/memory/learning. This prolonged strengthening of potential neural firing is called long term potentiation. LTP is an increase in a synapse s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. It s believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory. Professor Markus LTP and neural firing may be activating less than normal, making it harder for him to remember people s names, and harder to learn their names. Another reason could be proactive interference: the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information. Professor Markus may not remember her sixth period student s names because names from her first period class are disrupting recall of newly learned names (new information). It could also be retroactive interference: The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information. It could also be the opposite situation, where learning the names of her sixth period class makes her forget the names of students in her first period class (old information). It could also be amnesia: the loss of memory. A type of amnesia prevents people from forming new memories, which would explain why the professor is still a brilliant math teacher, but just can t remember names.

8. Intelligence tests are a method for assessing an individual s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores. Susa is a brilliant pianist and highly acclaimed ballet dancer, showing that her mental aptitudes towards things like music and dancing, are above average. However, her intelligence test scores were average. Reliability is the extent to which a test yields consistent results as assessed by the consistency of score on two halves of the test, or alternative forms of the test. Susan s experience does not suggest if it is reliable or not, because she only took one test, and her scores between two halves of the test is not reported. However, the validity: the extent, to which a test measures or predicts what it s supposed to, could be bad on this test. Because Susan is a highly acclaimed dancer, her mental aptitude is clearly above average, but her test scores showed her to be average. This means that the test could be not valid because it didn t measure her actual intelligence. Intelligence is a mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. The general nature of intelligence varies from more than just book smarts and depends on the culture. Susan is clearly intelligent in music and dancing, which could be a form of intelligence. Research on children gifted programs conclude that academic achievement scores of students tracked by aptitude are hardly higher than those of similar untracked students. Moreover, tracking by aptitude usually lowers students self-esteem and sometimes creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Susan experience could show that these gifted child programs are not desired because they don t help much.

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