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Summary Experimental Psychology
CHAPTER 1 PSYCHOLOGY; THE EVOLUTION OF A

SCIENCE
Psychology today
 Charles Darwin  evolution theory
 William James  developed functionalism
 Wilhelm Wundt  developed structuralism
 Psychology = the scientific study of mind and behaviour
 Mind = our private inner experience of perceptions, thoughts, memories
and feelings.
 Behaviour = observable actions of humans and nonhuman animals
Psychology divided in areas:

 Biological psychology  how bodies influence and respond to events.
 Cognitive psychology  studies mental processes.
 Developmental psychology  how psychological processes change over a
lifetime.
 Individual differences  how psychological processes vary between people.
 Social psychology  studies the psychological processes that operate when
we interact with others and how we behave in a group.
 Mind bugs = occasional malfunctions n our otherwise efficient mental

processing.
Because most things we do on the automatic pilot.
Psychology’s roots
Two ‘schools of thoughts’ of psychologists;
- Structualists = psychologists who tried to analyse the mind by breaking it
down into basic components.
- Functionalists = who focused on how mental abilities allow people to
adapt to their environments.
 Plato  nativism (= philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge are

innate or inborn)
 Aristotle  philosophical empiricism (= view that all knowledge is acquired
through experience)
 Epistemology = study of how knowledge is acquired. (started during the
Enlightment in the 17th and 18th century)
o Rationalists  innate knowledge (say; Décartes, Spinoza, Leibniz)
o Empiricists  knowledge derives from experience (Locke, Berkeley
and Hume)
 Metaphysics = branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality.

 Thomas Hobbes; the mind is what de brain does.
 Francis Gall  phrenology = specific mental abilities and characteristics,
ranging from memory to the capacity for happiness, are localized in
specific regions of the brain.
1
 Physiology = the study of biological processes, especially in the human

body.
 Hermann von Helmholtz
Measures speed of responses  participants respond when he applied
stimulus (=sensory input from the environment) then recorded reaction
time (= the amount of time taken to respond to a specific stimulus)
 Sensory perception (= the way that we interpret and process signals
received via our senses.
 Wilhelm Wundt opened first laboratory. He thought scientific psychology
should focus on analysing consciousness (= a person’s subjective
experience of the world and the mind). Wundt created structuralism (= the
analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind)
 Wundt tried to analyse a consciousness by using introspection (= the
subjective observation of one’s own experience)
Exporting European psychology

 William James  functionalism (= the study of the purpose mental
processes serves in enabling people to adapt to their environment).
Functionalism set out to understand the functions those mental processes
served, while structuralism examined the structure of the mental
processes.
 James thinking was inspired by Darwin’s natural selection theory = the
features of an organism that help it survive and reproduce are more likely
than other features to be passed on.
 James reasoned that mental abilities must have evolved because they
were adaptive, because they helped people to solve problems and thus
survive.
Errors and illusions reveal psychology

 Illusions = errors of perception, memory or judgement in which subjective
experience differs from objective reality.
 Max Wertheimer founded Gestalt psychology = a psychological approach
that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of
the parts.
 Hysteria = a temporary loss of cognitive or motor functions, usually as a
result of emotionally upsetting experiences.
Sigmund Freud:
 Unconscious = the part of the mind that operates outside conscious
awareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings and actions.
 Psychoanalytic theory = an approach that emphasizes the importance of
unconscious mental processes in shaping feelings, thoughts and
behaviours.
 Psychoanalysis = therapeutic approach that focuses on bringing
unconscious material into conscious awareness to better understand
psychological disorders.
 Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers founded humanistic psychology = an

approach to understanding human nature that emphasizes the positive
potential of human beings.
Psychology in the 20th century
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 Behaviourism = approach that advocates that psychologists should

restrict themselves to the scientific study of objectively observable
behaviour.
 John Watson  focus on what people do, this can be measured. Not on
what they experience, can’t be measured.
 John Watson launched behaviourism.
 Ivan Pavlov  classic conditioning  response = an action or physiological

change elicited by a stimulus.
 Frederic Skinner  operant conditioning  reinforcement = the

consequences of a behaviour determine whether it will be more or less
likely to occur again.
 Free will (= the ability to choose or decide what to do) is, according to
Skinner, an illusion and that when we think we are exercising free will, we
are actually responding to present and past patterns of reinforcement.
 Europe had greater interest in the patterns of natural behaviours =
instinctual response that were not learned.
 Ethology = the scientific study of animal behaviour in the natural habitat.
Beyond behaviourism: psychology expands

 Behaviourism ignored:
o The mental processes of Wundt and James
o Evolutionary history
 The emerge of the computer led to the re-emerge of interest in mental
processes across the discipline of psychology, it spawned a new approach
called cognitive psychology = the scientific study of mental process,
including perception, thought, memory and reasoning.
 Frederic Barlett learned that memory is not a photographic reproduction of
past experience and that our attempts to recall the past are powerfully
influenced by our knowledge, beliefs, hopes, aspirations and desires.
 Pedagogical approach = the scaffolding of learning by instruction
 Around 1950 the field of psychology was turning away from behaviourism
towards cognitive psychology.
 Karl Lashley hoped to find the precise spot in the brain where learning
occurred. (by removing parts of the brains of rats) He found out that every
area was equipotential = equally responsible for enabling learning to
occur. The more brain was removed, the more poorly the rat ran the maze.
Effect  law of mass action = performance is determined by the quantity
of nervous tissue removed and is independent of any particular area).
 Other scientists picked up where Lashley left off.  physiological

psychology became behavioural neuroscience = links psychological
processes to activities in the nervous system and other bodily processes.
Humans have more localized learning functions than rats.
 Cognitive neuroscience = the field that attempts to understand the links
between cognitive processes and brain activity.
 Cognitive neuroscience attempts to link the brain with the mind through
studies of brain-damaged and healthy patients using neuroimaging
techniques.
Three developments that lead away from behaviourism:
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 Renewed interest in mental processes

 Growing interest in the brain
 Evolutionary psychology
= explains mind and behaviour in terms of natural selection, where minor
variations in the way we think and behave mean that some individuals are
more suited to their environments.
Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviours or traits that occur
universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary
adaptations. They should also increase reproductive success.
Beyond the individual: social and cultural perspectives

 Social psychology = the study of the causes and consequences of
interpersonal behaviour. Social psychologists today study a wider variety
of topics (from social memory to social relationships) and use a wider
variety of techniques (from opinion polls to neuroimaging), but this field of
psychology remains dedicated to understanding the brain as a social
organ, the mind as a social adaptation, and the individual as a social
creature.
 Social psychology was pioneered by Germans such as Kurt Lewin.
 Culture refers to the values, traditions and beliefs that are shared by a
particular group of people. Culture can be defined by nationality or ethnic
groups, but also by age, sexual orientation, religion or occupation.
 Cultural psychology = the study of how cultures reflect and shape the
psychological processes of their members.
 Absolutism = holds that culture makes little or no difference for most
psychological phenomena.
 Relativism = holds that psychological phenomena are likely to vary
considerably across the cultures and should be viewed only in the context
of a specific culture.
The profession of psychology: it’s not just common sense

Main fields of professional psychology:
 Clinical psychology; aims to reduce the psychological distress from
difficulties arising in mental health.
 Counselling psychology; similar to clinical psychology in terms of
addressing mental health issues but is more concerned with therapeutic
practice and requires high levels of interpersonal skills in relating to others
in a therapeutic context.
 Educational psychologists; concerned with applying psychological
techniques and approaches to help children and young people with
difficulties in learning and social adjustment.
 Forensic psychology; addresses psychological aspects of the legal process
including criminal investigations, criminal behaviour and the treatment of
criminals.
 Health psychology; a field that applies psychological research and
methods to promote a good health and prevent illness.
 Neuropsychology; deals with the psychological consequences of brain
damage arising from disease, disorder or trauma.
 Occupational psychology; aims to improve job satisfaction and productivity
of the workforce by the application of psychological principles and
techniques.
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 Sports and exercise psychology; applies psychological techniques to sport

at the individual and team level to improve performance in training and
competition.
CHAPTER 2: THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Empiricism: how to know things
 Dogmatism = describes the tendency for people to cling to their
assumptions.
 Empiricism = acquire knowledge by observing objects or events.
 Empiricism is the essential element of the scientific method (= a set of
rules and techniques that allow researchers to avoid the illusions, mistakes
and erroneous conclusions that simple observations can produce)
 Theory = a hypothetical explanation of how and why a phenomenon
occurs, usually in the form of a statement about the causal relationship
between two or more properties.
 Rule of parsimony = keep it simple. Start with the simplest theory possible
and then make the theory more complicated only if we must.
 Hypothesis = a falsifiable prediction made by a theory.
 Verifiable = something that can be checked by objective measures.
 Reasons to establish verification;
o Deduction = drawing inferences where the conclusion must be true
if the premises (previous statements) are true.
Premise; all swans are white
Premise; Sam is a swan
Conclusion; therefore, Sam is white.
o Induction
Induction = the processes of establishing general truths based on a
limited set of observations.
 Scientists must generate and pursue theories not with the emphasis on
proving them true with more and more observations, but with the view to
falsification. If a theory is falsifiable in principle, then it’s a scientific
theory, but it can never be proven.
 Empiricism requires empirical method = a set of rules and techniques for
observations.
 Three things that make people difficult to study;
o Complexity; 500 million interconnections between neurons that
constitute the brain give rise to thoughts, feelings and actions.
o Variability; no individuals do exactly the same in the exact same
situation.
o Reactivity; people react different in every situation, also when
they’re being studied.
Observation: discovering what people do

 Observe = using your senses to learn about its properties.
 First define property we want to measure, then find a way to detect it.
 Operational definition = a description of an abstract property in terms of a
concrete condition that can be measured.
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 Measure = a device that can detect the events to which an operational

definition refers.
 Electromyography (EMG) = a device that measures muscle contractions
under the surface of a person’s skin.
 Measurement consists of two tasks;
o Defining; process by which properties are linked to operational
definitions
o Detecting; process by which operational definitions are linked to
measures.
 Validity = the characteristic of an observation that allows one to draw
accurate inferences from it.
o Construct validity = when an operational definition and a property
share meaning (wealth and money, happiness and smiling  go well
together)
o Predictive validity = when an operational definition is related to
other operational definitions of the same property (if smiling is
linked to happiness then it should also be linked to a person’s report
of happiness)
 Reliability = when a measure produces the same result whenever it is
used to measure the same thing.
 Power = when a measure produces different results when it is used to
measure different things.
 Case method = a method gathering scientific knowledge by studying a
single individual.
 Population = the complete collection of people, objects or events that
might be measured.
 Sample = the partial collection of people, objects or events that are
measured in a study.
 Law of large numbers = a statistical law stating that as sample size
increases, the attributes of the sample will more closely reflect the
attributes of the population from which the sample was drawn.
 Frequency distributions = graphic representations of the measurements of

a sample that are arranged by the number of times each measurement
was observed.
 Normal distribution = a frequency distribution in which most
measurements are concentrated around the mean and fall off towards the
tails, and the two sides of the distribution are symmetrical.
 Descriptive statistics = brief summary statements that capture the
essential information from a frequency distribution.
o Descriptions of central tendency are summary statements about the
value of the observations that lie near the centre of a frequency
distribution.
 Mode = the value of the most frequently observed
observation
 Mean = average value of the observation, calculated as the
sum of all the observations divided by the number of
observations
 Median = the value that is greater than or equal to the values
of half the observations and less than or equal to half the
values of the observations.
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o Descriptions of variability are statements about the extent to which

the observations in a frequency distribution differ from each other.
 Range = the numerical difference between the smallest and
the largest measurement in a frequency distribution.
 Standard deviation = a measure that estimates the average
difference between each observation and the mean in the
population.
 Variance = the average deviation of each observation from
the mean.
 When a probability is less than 0.05, then we say that the difference is
statistically significant = the observed effect is not due to chance. (when
there is really no effect, we will make an error less than 5% of the time)
 Effect size = an objective and standardized measure of the magnitude of
an observed effect.
 Cohen’s d is the effect size for the differences between group means.
 Type I error = where you think you found something when it was not
really there.
 Type II error = where you think you found nothing while there really was
an effect.
 Demand characteristics = aspects of an observational setting that cause

people to behave as they think an observer wants or expects them to
behave
 Naturalistic observation = technique for gathering scientific knowledge by
unobtrusively observing people in their natural environments.
 Avoiding demand characteristics;
o When people fill out questionnaires anonymously
o When people are not under voluntary control
o When people don’t know the demand and the behaviour are linked
 Psychologists may use cover stories and filler items to hide what they are
really observing and testing so that the participants don’t know what they
are observed for.
 Observers tend to see what they expect to see;
1. Expectations can influence observations.
2. Expectations can influence reality
 Technique to avoid influences is double-blind observation = an observation
whose true purpose is hidden from the researcher and the participants.
Explanation: discovering why people do what they do

 Ultimate goal is to discover the causal relationships between properties
 Learn about the relationships between objects and events by comparing
the patterns of variation in a series of measurements.
 Variables = properties whose values can vary across individuals or over
time.
o Categorical
o Continuous
 T-test  used when testing whether two means are significantly different.
 X2 statistic can be used to test associations between two categorical
variables.
 Correlation coefficient is used when testing associations between two
continuous variables.
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 Correlation = the co-relationship or pattern of covariation between two

variables occurs when variations in the value of one variable are
synchronized with variations in the value of the other.
 Correlations are fundamental building blocks of knowledge.
 Positive correlation  more-more, less-less
 Negative correlation  more-less, less-more
 Correlation coefficient = a statistical measure of the direction and strength
of a correlation symbolized by the letter r.
o r=1  is perfect positive correlation, meaning that as the value of
one variable increases by a certain amount, the value of the second
variable increases by a certain amount.
o r=0  un-correlation, meaning there is no relationship between the
variables.
o r=-1  perfect negative correlation, meaning that if the value of one
variable decreases by a certain amount the value of the second
variable decreases by a certain amount.
READ BLUE BOX ON PAGE 65 ABOUT CALCULATING r.
 covariance = a measure of how much two variables change together.
 Natural correlations = the correlations observed between naturally
occurring variables.
 All variables that are causally related are correlated, but not all variables
that are correlated are causally related.  causality is one of the many
relationships that correlated variables may have.
 X Y (X causes Y)
 Y  X (Y causes X)
 Z  X and Y (Z causes X and Y but X and Y may not be causally related.
 Third-variable correlation = two variables are correlated only because
each is causally related to a third variable.
 Matched samples = a technique whereby the participants in two samples
are identical in terms of a third variable.
 Matched pairs = a technique whereby each participant in one sample is
identical to one other participant in another sample in terms of a third
variable.
 We can’t dismiss all third variables. If we remove one, there might occur a
new one.
 Third-variable problem = the fact that a causal relationship between two
variables cannot be inferred from the natural correlation between them
because of the ever-present possibility of third-variable correlation.
 Experiment = a technique for establishing the causal relationship between
variables.
 Manipulation = systematically alter a variable in order to determine its
causal relationship to an outcome of interest.
 When you manipulate the variable instead of measuring the other
variable, you never have to wonder if a third variable might have caused
it. Because we were the cause of the changes in the second variable.
 Three critical steps in doing an experiment;
1. Perform manipulation  independent variable = the variable that
is manipulated in an experiment. There are two groups of
participants. The experimental group = the group of people who
are exposed to an experimental condition under investigation
8
and the control group = the group of people matched to an

experimental group =but not exposed to the condition under
investigation.
2. Then we measure the pattern of variation in the dependent
variable = the variable that is measured.
3. We check to see whether the patterns of variation in the
dependent and independent variables are synchronized.
 Randomization = a procedure that uses random events to ensure that a
participant’s assignment to the experimental or control group is not
determined by the third variable.
 Self-selection = a problem that occurs when a participant’s inclusion in the
experimental or control group is determined by the participant.
 Internal validity = the characteristic of an experiment that allows one to
drew accurate inferences about the causal relationship between an
independent and dependent variable. (meaning that everything in the
experiment is working exactly as it must in order for us to draw
conclusions)
 ‘as we defined them’  we are acknowledging the fact that operational
definitions are never perfectly linked to their properties.
 Experiments do not allow us to draw conclusions about abstractions. They
allow us to draw very particular conclusions.
 External validity = a characteristic of an experiment in which the
independent and dependent variables are operationally defined in a
normal, typical or realistic way.
 Experiments are not meant to be miniature versions of everyday life, and
thus external invalidity is not necessarily a problem.
 Random sampling = a technique for choosing participants that ensures
that every member of a population has an equal chance of being included
in the sample.
 We can’t randomly sample for an experiment. But this is not a lethal
problem because;
1. Sometimes generality does not matter. It doesn’t always matter
if everyone does something as long as someone does it. An
experimental result can be illuminating even when its generality
is severely limited.
2. Sometimes generality can be determined. When the generality
of an experimental result is important, psychologists often
perform a new experiment that uses the same procedures on a
different sample.
3. Sometimes generality can be assumed.
Qualitative research: forget the size, feel the quality

 Quantitative research = uses systematic, scientific investigation in order
to measure and quantify phenomena.
 Qualitative research = interested in gaining an in-depth understanding of
the human experience and behaviour.
 Qualitative researches collect data. This can be in the forms of interview,
group discussions, naturally occurring data (newspapers, magazines etc.)
 Qualitative researches then analyse their founded data. E.g. thematic
analysis, grounded theory, discourse analysis etc.
READ PAGES 78-79 FOR THE METHODS
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 Qualitative research projects often begin without a theory while

quantitative research always does.
 Qualitative research can be very flexible. During an interview, the
participant can cover many topics.
 In qualitative research the researcher can become really involved.
 Quantitative  aspires to the goal of objectivity. Qualitative does not
 Means of safeguarding the reliability and validity of qualitative research;
o Data triangulation  involves verifying one account with another
e.g. an interview may be verified against a written report, or
multiple researchers might analyse the same data.
o Mixed methods  research that combines qualitative and
quantitative methods. E.g. using a questionnaire.
 Ethical principles;
o Informed consent; participants may not take part in a psychological
study unless they have given informed consent = an agreement to
participate in a study made by an adult who has been informed of
all the risks that participation may entail.
o Freedom from coercion; psychologists may not force participation.
Not physical, nor psychological nor monetary.
o Protection from harm; psychologists must take every possible
precaution to protect their research participants from physical or
psychological harm.
o Debriefing; if a participant is deceived in any way before or during a
study, the psychologist must provide a debriefing = a verbal
description of the true nature and purpose of a study. If the
participant was changed in any way, like feeling sad, the
psychologist must attempt to undo the change. Make the
participant feel happy again.
CHAPTER 3: NEUROSCIENCE AND BEHAVIOUR

The organization of the nervous system
 Central nervous system (CNS) = brain + spinal cord
 Peripheral nervous system (PNS) = connects the central nervous system
to the body’s organs and muscles.
 PNS is made up of
o Somatic nervous system = set of nerves that convey information
into and out of the central nervous system.
o Autonomic nervous system (ANS) = set of nerves that carry
involuntary and automatic commands that control blood vessels,
body organs and glands.
 Sympathetic nervous system = prepares body for action in
threatening situations.
 Parasympathetic nervous system = helps the body return to a
normal resting state.
 Spinal reflexes = simple pathways in the nervous system that rapidly
generate muscle contractions.
 Hindbrain = area of the brain that coordinates information coming into
and out of the spinal cord.
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o Medulla = extension of spinal cord into skull  coordinates heart

rate, circulation and respiration. Inside the medulla is the reticular
formation = regulates sleep, wakefulness and levels of arousal.
o Cerebellum/small brain = a large part of the hindbrain  controls
fine motor skills.
o Pons = relays information from the cerebellum tot the rest of the
brain.
 Midbrain
o Tectum = orients an organism in the environment.
o Tegmentum = involved in movement and arousal.
 Forebrain = highest level of the brain  controls complex cognitive,
emotional, sensory and motor functions.
o Cerebral cortex = outer layer of the brain, visible to the naked eye,
divided into two hemispheres
 Corpus callosum = thick band of nerve fibres that connects
large areas of the cerebral cortex on each side of the brain
and supports communication of information across the
hemispheres.
o Subcortical structures = areas of the forebrain housed under the
cerebral cortex.
 Thalamus = relays and filters information from the senses
and transmits the information to the cerebral cortex.
 Hypothalamus = regulates body temperature, hunger, thirst
and sexual behaviour.
 Pituitary gland = the ‘master gland’ of the body’s hormone
producing system, releases hormones that direct the
functions of other glands.
 Limbic system = group of forebrain structures, which are
involved in motivation, emotion, learning and memory.
 Hippocampus = critical for creating new memories and
integrating them into a network of knowledge so that they
Parts of the can be stored.
limbic system  Amygdala = plays a role in many emotional processes,
particularly the formation of emotional memories.
 Basal ganglia = set of subcortical structures that direct
intentional movements.
 Contralateral control = cerebral cortex is divided into two hemispheres.
Each hemisphere controls the functions of the opposite site of the body.
 Each hemisphere is divided in four lobes (areas).
o Occipital lobe = processes visual information.
o Parietal lobe = processes information about touch.
 Somatosensory lobe = contains a representation of the body
map. (homunculus  little man)
o Temporal lobe = responsible for hearing and language.
o Frontal lobe = specialized areas for movement, abstract thinking,
planning, memory and judgement.
 Mirror neurons = cells that are active when performing an action, oneself
or when observing the same action performed by another.
 Hierarchy of processing stages;
o Primary areas  handle fine details of information. (e.g. primary
visual cortex and primary auditory cortex)
o Association areas  composed of neurons that help provide sense
and meaning to information registered.
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 Plasticity = the brain can be moulded  functions that were assigned to

certain areas of the brain may be capable of being reassigned.
Investigating the brain

 Three main methods to understand how the brain effects behaviour:
o Testing people with brain damage and observing their deficits.
o Studying electrical activity in the brain during behaviour.
o Conducting brain scans while people perform various tasks.
 The case of Phineas Cage (men who got a pole through his head) showed
that the frontal lobe is involved in emotion, regulation, planning and
decision making. Because after the accident, Cage became irritable,
irresponsible and indecisive.
 Broca’s area  produce speech
 Wernicke’s area  comprehend speech.
 Split-brain operation = when the corpus callosum is split so information
can’t travel to the other hemisphere.
 Electroencephalogram (EEG) = device used to record electrical activity in
the brain.
 David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel found out during an experiment that
neurons in the primary visual cortex represent particular features of visual
stimuli, such as contrast, shape and colour.
 Computerized axial tomography scan (CT-scan) = technique that
recombines multiple X-rays into a single image  one of the first
neuroimaging techniques.
o CT scan show different densities of tissue in the brain. Skull looks
white, cortex looks grey, ventricles look dark. The higher the density
the lighter the colour.
o CT scans are used to locate lesions or tumours.
 Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) = technique that uses a powerful
magnet to cause charged molecules in soft tissue to realign to produce
measureable field distortions.
o Give a clearer picture of the brain and can help localize brain
damage.
 Positron emission tomography (PET) = technique that uses radioactive
markers to measure blood flow in the brain.
o Harmless radioactive fluid is injected in a person’s bloodstream and
then the brain is scanned by radiation detectors.
o Brain activity is visible.
 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) = a technique that uses a
powerful magnet to cause haemoglobin in molecules to realign to measure
blood flow in the brain.
o fMRI and PET scan both can very accurately localize changes in the
brain. But fMRI doesn’t use radioactive fluids.
CHAPTER 4: SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

 Synaesthesia = the perceptual experience of one sense that is evoked by
another sense. (e.g. always seeing digit 2 as pink) synaesthesia arises
because separate modalities are initially all interconnected during the
early postnatal months.
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 Modalities = sensory brain regions that process different components of

the perceptual world.
our senses encode the information our brains perceive

 sensation = simple awareness due to the stimulation of a sense organ.
 Perception = the organization, identification and interpretation of a
sensation in order to form a mental representation.
 Transduction = what takes place when many sensors in the body convert
physical signals from the environment into neural signals sent to the
central nervous system.
 Psychophysics = methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the
observer’s sensitivity to that stimulus.  Gustav Fechner
 Absolute threshold = the minimal intensity needed to just barely detect
the stimulus.
 Just noticeable difference (JND) = the minimal change in a stimulus that
can just barely be detected.  think of guilder example.
 Weber’s law = the just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant
proportion despite variations in intensity.
o Standard = 100 gr
o Following = 110 gr.
o JND is 10%
 apply Weber’s law l / l = constant
standard = 1000 gr.
JND is 10%
Following = 1100
 Memories, moods, motives intertwine with what you are seeing, hearing
and smelling at any given time. This internal ‘noise’ competes with your
ability to detect a stimulus with perfect attention. As a consequence of
noise, you may not perceive everything that you sense, and you may
perceive things that you don’t sense.
 A spontaneous action potential  when a neuron fires while there was no
stimulus.
 Signal detection theory (SDT) = assumes that the response to a stimulus
depends on a person’s sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise
and on a person’s response criterion.
 In an SDT experiment you can get 4 possible outcomes.
o Hit  when a stimulus was shown and the participant responded
o Miss  when a stimulus was shown and the participant didn’t
respond.
o False alarm  when there was no stimulus shown but the participant
responded.
o Correct rejection  when there was no stimulus shown and the
participant didn’t respond.
 d’ = d-prime = a statistic that gives a relatively pure measure of the
observer’s sensitivity or ability to detect signals.
 Signal detection theory proposes a way to measure perceptual sensitivity
=how effectively the perceptual system represents sensory events. This is
separate from the observer’s decision-making theory.
 Sensory adaption = sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline

over time as an organism adapts to current conditions.
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Vision
 Visual acuity = the ability to see fine detail.
 Light = waves
o Wavelength  determines the hue (colour)
o Amplitude/intensity  brightness of light
o Purity  number of wavelengths that make up the light, we perceive
this as saturation.
Anatomy of the human eye
 Retina = light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball.

 Accommodation = the eye muscles adjusting the lens so the image that
falls on the retina stays clear.
 Near-sightedness (myopia) = the eyeball is too long; the image falls for
the retina. The person sees objects far away as blurred.
 Farsightedness (hyperopia) = the eyeball is too short; the image falls
behind the retina. The person sees objects from close by a s blurred.
 Presbyopia = the eye cannot accommodate well so the lens isn’t the right
thickness at some moments. Everyone gets this when they get older.
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 Two types of light-detectors

o Cones  see colour + fine-lines. Are mostly packed in the fovea.
 Blue  short wavelength
 Green  medium wavelength
 Red  long wavelength
o Rods  are sensitive to low-intensity light, are colour-blind, perceive
movement, peripheral vision and night-vision. Lie around the fovea.
 Fovea = an area of the retina where vision is the clearest and there are no
rods at all.
 Macula = fovea + surrounding areas
 There are about 6 million cones densely packed in the fovea. And about
120 million rods distributed over the retina, except in the fovea.
 Peripheral vision = everything that falls outside the field of the fovea.
 Retina has 3 layers
1. Photoreceptor cells (rods + cones)
2. Bipolar cells  collect neural signals from the rods and cones and
transmit them to the outer layer of the retina.
3. Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs)  organize the signals and send
them to the brain.
 The bundled RGCs form the optic nerve.
 Blind spot = a hole in the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye.
There are no rods and cones. You’ re literally blind there.
 Receptive field = the region of the sensory surface that, when stimulated,
causes a change in the firing rate of that neuron.
 Lateral inhibition = within the receptor field, some photoreceptors will fire
more when light falls on them, others will fire less.
o On-centre ganglion cell
 Light falls on centre  high firing rate
 Light falls off centre  low firing rate
 Light fills whole centre  maximum firing rate
 Light spills over centre  decreased firing rate
o Off-centre ganglion cell
 Light falls on centre  low firing rate
 Light falls off centre  high firing rate
 Light fills whole centre  no firing rate
 Light spills over centre  decreased firing rate
 Mach bands = light intensity is different from perceiving lightness. can be
explained by the donut-like cells.  Hermann grid
 Mach bands and black and white tv actually white and green tv. But the
green was so dark compared to the white that it looked black.
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 Optic chiasm = place where the optic nerves cross. If you would have a
tumour here, you would see in tunnel vision.
 Subtractive colour mixing = mixing paints  blue + yellow gives green

 Additive colour mixing = mixing light with different wavelengths.
 Trichromatic colour representation = all colours can be obtained by mixing
3 primary colours. Red-Green-Blue.
 Colour deficiency = when one of the cone types is missing, sometimes two
or three.
 Colour deficiency is X-chromosome linked.
 Staring too long at one colour fatigues the cones that respond to that
colour, producing a form of sensory adaption called colour afterimage.
 Colour-opponent system = pairs of visual neurons that work in the
opposition.  red-sensitive against green-sensitive and blue-sensitive
against yellow-sensitive.
 When you stare at a red circle for a while and then look at a white circle,
the white circle looks green. The cells that respond to red light are tired
and respond less. This imbalance makes that netto, the green sensitive
cells respond more. So, you see a white circle as green.
Red red red
10 s
white
ite red White
10 20 8
green green green
 A great deal of visual processing takes place within the retina; encoding of
simple features such as spots of light, edges and colour. More complex
aspects of vision enlist in the brain.
 Thalamus receives inputs from all the senses except for smell.
 The first relay station in the thalamus is the lateral geniculate nucleus
(LGN). Most neurons from the LGN project to V1.
 Area V1 is comprised in 6 layers. The information from the LGN enters in
layer 4.
 Cortical magnification: 80% of the cells in V1 receive input from the

macula.
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 Area V1 = the initial processing region of the primary visual cortex. This
area is located in the occipital lobe.
 V1 has topographic visual organization = neighbour cells on the retina are

neighbour cells in area V1
 Area V1 contains populations of neurons, each respond to a different line,

or angle.
 Two visual streams in the brain:

o Ventral (below) stream  travels across the occipital lobe into the
lower levels of the temporal lobes.  present object’s shape and
identity = recognition
o Dorsal (above) steam  travels up from the occipital lobe to the
parietal lobes  identify location and motion of an object = locating.
 Visual form agnosia = the inability to recognize objects by sight.

o Optic ataxia = difficulty using vison to guide their reaching and
grasping movements.
 Binding problem = how features are linked together so that we see unified
objects in our visual world.
 Illusory conjunction = a perceptual mistake where features from multiple
objects are incorrectly combined.
 Feature integration theory = a theory that proposes that attention binds
individual features together to comprise a composite stimulus. (saying
that illusory conjunctions easily occur when the participant has difficulty
paying attention to the features that need to be glued together.)
 The binding process makes use of feature information processed by
structures within the ventral stream (recognition pathway) and within the
dorsal stream (locating pathway).
 Parietal activity is related to attentional processes needed for binding,
synaesthetic bindings such as seeing a particular digit in a particular
colour depend on attention.
 How does the visual system get from an array of light hitting your eye to
the accurate perception of an object?
o Modular view; that specialized brain areas, or modules, detect and
represent faces or houses or even body parts.  modularization =
the process of relatively enclosed function (e.g. some perceptual
categories such as faces may have their own region in the brain
where they’re recognized)
o Distributed representation; there is a specific part of the brain
dedicated to recognizing faces, but there are more parts of the
brain involved.
 Perceptual constancy = even as aspects of sensory signals change,
perception remains consistent.
 Gestalt perceptual grouping rules (Gestalt psychology = we often perceive
the whole rather than the sum of its parts;
 How features and regions of things fit together;
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o Simplicity: simplest explanation is usually the best.  idea behind

the perceptual grouping rule Pragnanz.
o Closure: we tend to fill in missing elements of a visual scene to
complete objects.
o Continuity: edges or contours that have the same orientation have
what the Gestaltists called ‘good continuation’ and we tend to group
them together.
o Similarity: regions that are similar in colour, lightness, shape or
texture are perceived as belonging to the same object.
o Proximity: objects that are close together tend to be grouped
together.
o Common fate: elements of a visual image that move together are
perceived as parts of a single moving object.
 Grouping involves visually separating an object from its surroundings  in
Gestalt psychology this means identifying a figure apart from its
background.
o Sight
o Movement all are clues to distinguish figure from
background
o Edge assignment
 Reversible figure-ground relationship (e.g.) Rubin vase = ambiguity in the
edges.
 Two broad explanations of object recognition:
o Image-based object recognition = an object you have seen before is
stored in memory as a template (= a mental representation that
can be directly compared to a viewed shape in the retinal image)
o Part-based object recognition = theory proposes that instead the
brain deconstructs viewed objects into a collection of parts. The
parts’ inventory acts as a sort of alphabet of geometrical parts
(geons) that can be combined to make objects.
o  both theories have strengths and weaknesses.
 Gyrus is really active in face recognition
 Structural encoding = how the pattern is represented
 Bruce and Young model of face recognition = need to work out that a
pattern is a face so you have to be sensitive to features. Then you need to
look at how they are arranged in terms of spacing.
 Monocular or pictorial depth cues = aspects of a scene that yield
information about depth when viewed with only one eye.
o Our brains use retinal image size/ relative size to perceive distance
(an object looks smaller when it is further away.
o Familiar size  adults fall within a familiar range of heights.
o Linear perspective = parallel lines seem to converge as they fade
away in the distance
o Texture gradient = the lines of a tiled floor are very clear and
further apart from each other from close by and become vaguer and
closer together when they’re further away
o Interposition = when one object partly blocks another object.
o Relative height in the image = objects that are closer to you are
lower in your visual field, while faraway objects are higher.
 Binocular depth cues = exists because we have stereoscopic vison: having
space between our eyes means that each eye registers a slightly different
view of the world.
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 Binocular disparity = the difference in the retinal images of the two eyes
that provides information about depth.
 Motion parallax = a depth cue based on the movement of the head over
time.  also done by comparing retinal images.
 Optic flow = the pattern of motion that accompanies an observer’s
forward movement through a scene.
 Illusions = errors of perception
 Apparent motion = the perception of movement as a result of alternating

signals appearing in rapid succession in different locations.
 Phi phenomenon  illusions where the brain integrates successive images

or flashes of light into a single moving object.
 Gestalt grouping rule of common fate: people perceive a series of flashing

light as a whole, moving object (= apparent motion).
Audition
 Sense of hearing is all about sound waves.
 Pure tone = a simple sound wave that first increases air pressure and then
creates a relative vacuum.
 Frequency or wavelength in Hz depends on how often the peak in air
pressure passes the ear.
 Changes in the physical frequency are perceived as a change in pitch =
how high or low a sound is.
 Amplitude of a sound wave refers to its height, relative to the threshold of
human hearing. Amplitude corresponds to loudness = a sound’s intensity.
 Differences in complexity  mix of frequencies, correspond to timbre = a
listener’s experience of sound quality or resonance.
 The ear is built up of three parts;
o Outer ear (pinna + eardrum)  collects sound waves.
o Middle ear (ossicles; hammer, anvil, stirrup)  transmits the
vibrations to the inner ear.
o Inner ear (cochlea)  vibrations are transduced into neural impulses.
 Cochlea = a fluid-filled tube that is the organ of auditory
transduction.
 Basilar membrane = a structure in the inner ear that moves
up and down when vibrations from the ossicles reach the
cochlear fluid.
 Hair cells = specialized auditory receptor neurons embedded
in the basilar membrane.
 From the inner ear, action potentials in the auditory nerve travel to the
thalamus and then to the opposite hemisphere of the cerebral cortex 
area A1 = a portion of the temporal lobe that contains the primary
auditory cortex.
 Place code = the cochlea encodes different frequencies at different
locations along the basilar membrane.  works best for higher frequencies
 Low frequency  the wide, floppy tip (apex) of the basilar membrane
moves.
 High frequency  the narrow stiff end (base) of the membrane moves the
most.
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 Temporal code = the cochlea registers low frequencies via the firing rate
of action potentials entering the auditory nerve  handles low frequencies.
 Visual orienting = a behavioural response to move the eyes towards a
target.
 Interaural intensity difference (IID) = to localize high frequency tones. A
tone coming from the left sounds louder in the left ear than in the right
ear.
 Interaural time difference (ITD) = to localize low frequency tones. A tone
coming from the left is detected earlier in the left ear than in the right ear.
 For every IID and ITD combination there is a cone of confusion.
 Ventriloquism effect = when a sound is synchronized with a visual event
from a different location.
The body senses:

Touch
 Haptic perception = exploration of the environment by touching and
grasping objects with our hands.
 Four types of receptors under the skin’s surface;
o Texture and pattern receptors
o Pain receptors
o Pressure receptors
o thermoreceptors
Pain
 pain receptors  free nerve endings
o A-delta fibres  transmit the initial sharp pain right away
o C fibres  transmit longer lasting, duller pain
 Pain withdrawal reflex is coordinated by the spinal cord. But neural signals
for pain travel to two distinct areas in the brain and evoke two distinct
psychological experiences
o One pathway sends signals to the somatosensory cortex, identifying
where the pain is occurring and what sort of pain it is (sharp,
burning, dull)
o Second pathway sends signals to the motivational and emotional
centres of the brain, such as the thalamus, amygdala and frontal
lobe. This is the aspect of pain that is unpleasant.
 Referred pain = the feeling of pain when sensory information from internal
and external areas converge on the same nerve cells in the spinal cord. 
when an internal organ hurts, we feel it on the surface of the body
 Gate-control theory = signals arriving from pain receptors in the body can
be stopped, or gated, by interneurons in the spinal cord via feedback from
two directions.  pain can be gated by skin receptors, by rubbing affected
area.  pain can also be gated from the brain by modulating the activity of
pain-transmission neurons.
 The neural feedback comes from a region in the midbrain called the
periaqueductal grey (PAG)
 When stimulated PAG can send inhibitory signals to supress pain or send
signals to increase pain sensation.
 Gate-control theory shows that perception is two-way street;
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o Bottom-up control = the senses feed information to the brain, then

the brain processes these data into perceptual information.
o Top-down control = brain exerts plenty of control over what we
sense as well. Think of visual illusion and Gestalt principals of filling
in.
 Part of sensation and perception is knowing where parts of your body are
at any given moment
 Receptors in the muscles, tendons and joints signal the position of the
body in space.
 Information about balance and head movement originates in the inner ear.
 Maintaining balance depends primarily on the vestibular system = the
three fluid-filled semi-circular canals and adjacent organs located next to
the cochlea in each inner ear.
The chemical senses:

 Somatosensation is all about psychical changes in or on the body  vision,
audition, touch
 Chemical senses respond to the molecular structure of substances 
olfaction (smell) and gustation (taste) = together flavour
Smell
 Olfactory epithelium = a mucous membrane along the top of the nasal
cavity, which contains olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) = receptor cells
that initiate the sense of smell.
 Each ORN bind to some odorants while others don’t
 The axons of all ORNs of a particular type converge at a site called a
glomerulus.
 Humans and other animals can detect odours from pheromones =
biochemical odourants emitted by other members of their species that can
affect the animals’ behaviour or physiology.
Taste
 Responsibility of taste is to identify things that are poisonous and lethal for
you.
 The tongue is covered with papillae. In each papillae are hundreds of taste
buds = the organ of taste transduction.
 Five main taste receptors
o Salt
o Sour
o Bitter
o Sweet
o Umami (=savoury)
CHAPTER 5: MEMORY
 Memory = the ability to store and retrieve information over time.
The structure of memory

 the ‘modal’ model by Atkinson and Shiffrin, proposed that memory consist
of a flow of information that passes through three stages; sensory
memory, a short-term memory and a long-term memory.
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o Information enters a temporary sensory memory = a place where

sensory information is kept for a few seconds or less.
o Information is processed into a nonsensory format and it enters the
short-term memory= a place where nonsensory information is kept
for more than a few seconds but less than a minute. Mostly the
information is discarded unless the individual puts in effort to keep
the memory active.
o Finally, the information enters the long-term memory = a place
where information is stored for hours, days, weeks or years.
 We have more kinds of sensory memories.

 Iconic memory = is a fast-decaying store of visual information.
 Echoic memory = is a fast-decaying store of auditory information.
o There is a primacy effect and a recency effect  the first and last
numbers of a serial recall are better remembered than the ones in
the middle.
o Modality effect = the recency effect is bigger for auditory items
than for visual items.
o The auditory recency advantage vanishes when an uninformative
speech suffix is presented at the end of the list. This stimulus suffix
effect occurs because echoic memory is automatically overwritten
by the irrelevant speech sound.
 Results from an experiment suggest that we can hold information in the
short-term memory for about 15-20 seconds.
 Rehearsal = the process of keeping information in short-term memory by
mentally repeating it.  every time you rehearse the number you put it
back in the short-term memory, thus giving you another 15-20 seconds.
 Short-term memory is limited in how long and how much information you
can remember.
 Short-term memory can hold about 7 meaningful items
 Chunking = combining small pieces of information into larger chunks that
are more easily held in short-term memory.
 Working memory = active maintenance and manipulation of information in
short-term storage.
o Visuospatial sketchpad = briefly stores visual and spatial
information.
o Phonological loop = briefly encodes mental representations of
sounds and is made up of a short-term store and an articulatory
rehearsal system.  stores verbal info which can be maintained via
rehearsal.
o Central executive = an attentional system that coordinates and
controls plans of action and output.
o Episodic buffer = a temporary storage space where information
from long-term memory can be integrated into the working-memory.
 The strongest evidence of the existence of the working memory’s
subsystems comes from studies that look at what happens when two tasks
are completed simultaneously.  performances can be weakened or stay
unaffected.
 When two different tasks use the same subsystem, the overall
performance is impaired due to interference.
 Interference = drop in accuracy and response time performance when two
tasks tap into the same system.
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 Long-term memory is distinct from short-term memory in two important

ways:
o Duration  short-term about a minute, long-term for years
o Capacity  long-term memory has no know capacity limits
 Cases with patients such as Clive Wearing and H.M. support that the short-
term memory and long-term memory are divided. They both suffered from
amnesia. H.M. had surgery where parts of his temporal lopes including the
hippocampus were removed. H.M. wasn’t able to remember after the
surgery but memories from before were still active.
 Information held in temporary short-term memory is lost if they don’t
make it into the more permanent storage of long-term memory.
 Consolidation = the process whereby information must pass from short-
term memory into long-term memory in order for it to be remembered.
Remembering
 In order to remember, three processes must be executed successfully;
o Encoding = the process by which we transform what we perceive,
think or feel into an enduring memory.
o Storage = the process of maintaining information in memory over
time.
o Retrieval = the process of bringing to mind information that has
been previously encoded and stored.
 People encode and reconstruct memories via schemas = mental models of
the world that contain knowledge that helps us to encode new information
into a meaningful context. ( Sir Frederic Barlett discovered this)
 Based on Barlett’s findings we can say that memories are made by
combining information we already have in our brains with new information
that comes in through our senses.
 Memories are constructed not recorded.
 Three types of encoding processes;
o Elaborative encoding = the process of actively relating new
information to knowledge that is already in memory.  we can easily
remember 20 experiences but not 20 random numbers because
most of the time we think of the meaning behind our experiences,
and so we elaborately encode them.  elaborative encoding takes
mostly part in the left temporal lobe and the lower left part of the
frontal lobe.
o Visual imagery encoding = the process of storing new information
by converting it into mental pictures.  method of loci = a memory
aid that associates information with mental images of locations.
This works because 1) by creating a visual image you relate
incoming information to knowledge already in memory. 2) you end
up with two ‘placeholders’ for the items; a visual one and a verbal
one, so you have more ways to remember.
o Organizational encoding = the act of categorizing information by
noticing the relationships between a series of items. Organizational
encoding is a type of mnemonic = a device for reorganizing
information into more meaningful patterns to remember. The
relationship between things – how they fit together and how they
differ – can help us remember.
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o Encoding of survival-related information  memory mechanisms

that help us to survive and reproduce should be preserved by
natural selection, and our memory systems should be built in a way
that allows us to remember especially well-encoded information
that is relevant to survival. To test this, three different encoding
tasks:
 Survival encoding condition; people were stranded in
grasslands in a foreign country. Were shown three objects and
participants had to rate them what was more important.
 Moving encoding condition; people were moving to a foreign
country, also had to rate subjects.
 Pleasantness encoding condition; same objects were shown
and participants had to rate them what was the most
pleasant.
 conclusion; people from the survival encoding group
remembered best probably because they used elements of
elaborative, imagery and organizational encoding. But also,
because how to survive arouses emotions and is a more
interesting type of encoding.
 Memory storage = the process of maintaining information in memory over

time.
 When a neuron sends a neurotransmitter to the synapse of another
neuron, the connectivity of the communication is strengthened.
 Long-term potentiation (LTP) = improved quality of neural processing that
results from the strengthening of synaptic connections. LTP has a number
of properties that indicate to researchers that it plays an important role in
long-term memory storage;
o It occurs in several pathways within the hippocampus
o It can be induced rapidly
o It can last for a long time
 NMDA receptor = influences the flow of information from one neuron to
another across the synapse by controlling the beginning of LTP in most
hippocampal pathways.
 How LTP works; presynaptic neuron releases the neurotransmitter
glutamate. The postsynaptic neuron has the NMDA receptors where the
glutamate binds.
 The hippocampus is a structure in each temporal lobe that is critically
responsible for memory consolidation.
 We have two hippocampi and they’re not fully grown at birth, this is
probably you can remember your first years.
 Hippocampi are important in learning tasks that measure route finding and
navigation.
 Spatial memory = representation that encodes where something is.
 Retrieval, the bringing to mind of previously encoded and stored

information, is perhaps the most important of all memorial processes. It
can occur in two ways;
o Recall = the capacity to spontaneously retrieve information from
memory.
o Recognition = the capacity to correctly match information
presented with the contents of memory.
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 Retrieval cue = external information that is associated with stored

information and helps bring it to mind. Information is sometimes available
in memory even when it is momentarily inaccessible and that retrieval
cues help us bring inaccessible information to mind.
 Encoding specificity principle = the thoughts or feelings we had at the
time we encoded the information are associated with the information we
encoded, and those can also help us retrieve it.
 State-dependent retrieval = the tendency for information to be better
recalled when the person is in the same state during encoding and
retrieval.
 Retrieval cues can be environment, familiar places, feelings, thoughts etc.
 a diver learns words on land and words under water. The divers recalled
the words he learned underwater best in a wet environment.
 Transfer-appropriate processing = the idea that memory is likely to
transfer from one situation to another when we process information in a
way that is appropriate to the retrieval cues that will be available later.
 There must be two kinds of memory because patients who suffer from
amnesia ‘learn’ how to make themselves a cup of tea in their new home
but can’t tell where to find the tea or a mug in their kitchen.
o Explicit memory = when people consciously or intentionally retrieve
past experiences.
o Implicit memory = when past experiences influence later behaviour
and performance, even though people are not trying to recollect
them and are not aware that they are remembering them.
 Procedural memory = the gradual acquisition of skills as a
result of practice or ‘knowing’  e.g. remember how to ride a
bike. So, hippocampal structures are not necessarily needed
for explicit memory.
 Priming = an enhanced ability to think of a stimulus, such as
a word or object, as a result of a recent exposure to the
stimulus.
 Semantic memory = a network of associated facts and concepts that
make up our general knowledge of the world.
 Episodic memory = the collection of past personal experiences that
occurred at a particular time and place.
 Autobiographical memory = the personal record of significant events of
one’s life.
 Flashbulb memories = detailed recollections of when and where we heard
about shocking events.
 The hippocampus is not necessary for acquiring new semantic memories.
Forgetting
 Transience = forgetting what occurs with the passage of time. This occurs
during the storing phase of memory, after an experience has been
encoded and before it is retrieved.
 Memories don’t fade at a constant rate as time passes; most forgetting
happens soon after an event occurs, with increasingly less forgetting as
more time passes.
 Serial position effect = the enhanced memory for events presented at the
beginning and at the end of a learning episode. It involves two separate
processes:
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o The primacy effect = for items remembered better at the beginning.

o The recency effect = for items remembered better at the end.
 Two forms of interference;
o Retroactive interference = occurs when later learning impairs
memory for information acquired earlier.
o Proactive interference = refers to situations in which earlier learning
impairs memory for information acquired later.
 Tip-of-the-tongue experience = the temporary inability to retrieve

information that is stored in memory, accompanied by the feeling that you
are on the verge of recovering the information.
 Blocking = a failure to retrieve information that is available in the memory
even though you are trying to produce it. Blocking often happens for
names of people and places because their links to related concepts and
knowledge are weaker than for common names.
 Absentmindedness = a lapse in attention that results in memory failure.
 Attention plays a vital role in encoding information into long-term memory
and in divided attention.
 Divided attention = situations where individuals have to simultaneously
monitor more than one source of information.
 Prospective memory; forgetting the future
o Forgetting as a loss of retrospective memory = information learned
in the past.
o Forget to act out plans made for the future, it is failure in
prospective memory = remembering to do things in the future.
 There are a number of important differences between retrospective and
prospective memory:
o Retrospective; what should be remembered
o Prospective; when something should be remembered  has two
components: remembering what to do in the future and
remembering to do it.
 Event based  requires an action when an event occurs (post
letter when passing letter box)
 Time based  requires an action when a certain time or
interval is reached (remember to call your friend after an
exam)
 Anterograde amnesia = the inability to transfer new information from the

short-term store into the long-term store.
 Retrograde amnesia = the inability to retrieve information that was
acquired before a particular date usually the date of an injury or operation.
 Different parts of a memory are stored in different parts of the brain. A
memory of the performer’s appearance is stored in your visual cortex
while the sound of the music is probably stored in your auditory cortex.
 Psychologists believe that the hippocampi have the function of gathering
the pieces of a memory that are distributed over your brain.
 Concussion = a loss of consciousness that can range from moments to
weeks (often associated with memory loss)
 Fugue state = an amnesia of one’s previous life and identity. For whatever
reason, individuals appear to lose or want to lose, their sense of self-
identity due to effects of distressing life crises.
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 Childhood amnesia = an inability to remember events from the early years

of life.  maybe because early memories are procedural and that
autobiographical memories depend on maturation of the hippocampus. 
maybe because children can’t from schemas that make sense of
experiences and help to encode memories.
Metamemory
 Metamemory (= the subjective awareness of one’s own memory), is how
we know that our memories are correct. This is the important difference
between remembering you turned off your iron and knowing that you did
so.
 When you remember, you have a vivid recollection of encoding the
information and can access that information in consciousness.
 When you know something, you do not necessarily remember how and
where you learned the information.
 Feeling of knowing (FOK) = the subjective awareness of information that
cannot be retrieved from memory.
 Strong FOK judgements (when people strongly feel they know) are related
to increasing amounts of partial information.
 As partial information mounts up, individuals switch from initially knowing
to remembering.
 Different memory processes are operating when remembering instead of
knowing.
 Source monitoring = recall of when, where and how information was
acquired.
 Memory misattributions = assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong
source.  can contribute to the formation of false memories.
 Three basic types of source monitoring;
o Internal; distinguishing between events that an individual thought
about doing versus events they actually did.  perceptual details
such as remembering seeing to switch of the light, are critical for
establishing the validity of the memory.
o External; distinguishing between two external sources  contextual
information helps to decide the likely source of the memory.
o Reality; distinguishing between an actual event and an imagined
one.  reality can usually be checked against corroborating
evidence, such as the presence of other witnesses.
 Déjà vu experience = where you suddenly feel that you have been in a
situation before even though you can’t recall any details.
 Déjà vécu = a confabulated (made up) memory where the individual is
certain that the new experience is old.
 An explanation might be that the familiar associated recollections from
long-term memory are normally inhibited, but in these cases this inhibition
partly fails. You experience the ‘familiarity’ signal but not the associated
memory.
 False memories = recollection of events that never happened.
 False recognition = a feeling of familiarity about something that hasn’t
been encountered before.
 Bias = the distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs and feelings
on recollection of previous experiences.
 Bias can influence memory in three ways;
o Consistency bias; altering the past to fit the present.
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o Change bias; exaggerating differences between past and present.

o Egocentric bias; distorting the past to make us look better.
 Suggestibility = the tendency to incorporate misleading information from
external sources into personal recollections.  asking about the film of the
plane crash and asking detailed questions about it. But there was no film
of the crash. The question was suggestive.
 Suggestibility is closely related to misattribution but misattribution often
occurs with the absence of specific suggestions.
 Misleading suggestions do not eliminate the original memory. Instead,
they cause participants to make source memory errors = recall of when,
where and how information was acquired.
 Persistence = the intrusive recollection of events that we wish to forget. 

emotional experiences tend to be better remembered than unemotional
ones.
 The amygdala plays an important role in the brain’s response to emotional
events.
 The amygdala releases stress-related hormones that mobilizes the brain
and these hormones enhance memory for the experience.
 It seems that the amygdala influences memory storage by turning on the
hormones that allow us to respond to and vividly remember emotionally
arousing events.
CHAPTER 6: LEARNING
Defining learning: experience that causes a permanent change
 Learning = a relatively permanent change in the state of the learner due
to experience.
 Habituation = a general process in which repeated or prolonged exposure
to a stimulus results in a gradual reduction in responding.  simple form of
learning
Classical conditioning: one thing leads to another

 Ivan Pavlov  classical conditioning = when a stimulus evokes a response
because of being paired with a stimulus that naturally evokes the
response.
 Four basic elements of classical conditioning:
o Unconditioned stimulus (US) = something that reliably produces a
naturally occurring reaction in an organism  dogs start to salivate
when food is presented.
o Unconditioned response (UR) = a reflexive reaction that is reliably
elicited by an unconditioned stimulus.  the salivation of the dogs.
o Conditioned stimulus (CS) = a stimulus that at first does not
produce the response that is eventually conditioned; its capacity to
do so depends on pairing it with the unconditioned stimulus. 
pairing the presentation of food with a buzzer, dog starts to
salivate. Later only the buzzer was heard, dog started to salivate.
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o Conditioned response (CR) = a response produced by a conditioned

stimulus because of its association with an unconditioned stimulus.
 the salivation of the dog when hearing the buzzer.
 Acquisition = the phase of classical conditioning when the CS and the US
are presented.
 Second-order conditioning = conditioning where the US is a stimulus that
acquired its ability to produce learning from an earlier procedure in which
it was used as a CS.  after the classical conditioning process, the dogs
started to salivate hearing a buzzer but not seeing food. When the
classical conditioning process was repeated and the buzzer was used as a
US and a black screen was used as a CS, after a while the dogs started to
salivate seeing a black screen. Although the black screen was never
directly associated with food.
 Extinction = the gradual elimination of a learned response that occurs
when the CS is no longer followed by the US.  if you continued to present
the buzzer (CS) but stopped presenting food (US) the salivation of the dog
will decline and eventually stop.
 Spontaneous recovery = the tendency of a learned behaviour to recover
from extinction after a rest period.  Pavlov extinguished the classically
conditioned salivation response and then gave the dogs a rest period.
When the dogs were presented with the CS again, they salivated again.
 Pavlov proposed that learning involves two fundamentally different kinds
of association;
o Excitatory association = a process that increases the likelihood of a
response.
o Inhibitory association = a process that decreases the likelihood of a
response.
 What people new about the brain; every stimulus activates its own specific
cortical centre, what Pavlov added: ‘whenever activity in one centre of the
brain is closely followed by activity in another, the neural connection
between the two centres will be strengthened.’
 What about extinction? Pavlov said that the CS-US was not weakened but
that an inhibitory connection was formed that led to reduction in activity.
As extinction trials continued, the inhibitory connection would become
stronger. Eventually the inhibitory connection would become as strong as
the excitatory connection. The two would cancel each other out and
extinction was completed.
 Pavlov thought that the inhibitory connection was more sensitive than the
excitatory one. This could explain the spontaneous recovery. This research
has not been supported, but the two connections were.
 Generalization = an increase in responding to a stimulus because of its
similarity to a CS that was paired with a US.  sound of different tin-
openers for the dog’s food doesn’t make a difference for the salivation
response of the dog. The sounds are almost the same.
 Discrimination = the capacity to distinguish between similar but distinct
stimuli.
 Watson thought that it was possible to develop general explanations of
pretty much any behaviour of any organism based on classical
conditioning principals. Therefore, he set up the experiment with ‘Little
Albert’ Albert was a well-developed, stolid and unemotional nine-month-
old child. Watson wanted to provoke the strong emotional reaction, fear,
by classical conditioning.
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 Little Albert got upset from hearing a loud noise (US) and then was
presented a white rat (CS). Later Albert started to cry by only seeing a
white rat. Generalization also occurred. Albert started crying by seeing a
white rabbit, seal fur and Santa Claus’ mask.
 Watsons goal:
o Show that relatively complex reactions could be conditioned using
Pavlovian techniques.
o Show that emotional responses such as fear and anxiety could be
produced by classical conditioning and don’t need to be the product
of deeper unconscious processes. Fears could be learned.
o Confirm that conditioning could be applied to humans as well as to
other animals.
 Neural elements of classical conditioning;
o Amygdala is critical for emotional conditioning.
 Cognitive elements of classical conditioning;
o Behaviourists viewed conditioning as something that happens to the
animal apart from what the organism thinks about the conditioning
situation. Zener provided evidence that show otherwise  when
dogs heard the buzzer, they approached the food tray, expecting
the food. (some thinking after all?)
o Contingency = the organism has an expectation about how well the
CS signals the appearance of the US.  dogs formed an expectation
that the buzzer was going to be followed by food, the expectation
started them to salivate.
o Blocking = when a stimulus (tone) has been paired with a shock to
produce a conditioned fear response, this experience blocks the
capacity to learn other association when the tone is present.
 Evolutionary elements of classical conditioning.
o Adaptive value =
 Psychologist Martin Seligman got sick after eating steak with sauce
Bearnaise and couldn’t eat it anymore. He found it disgusting. But this was
not classical conditioning because it didn’t follow all the Pavlovian rules. It
could be because of evolutionary factors; adaptive value.
 To have adaptive value, the mechanism should have several properties;
o Rapid learning that occurs in perhaps one or two trials.  if learning
process takes too long, animal could die from eating toxics.
o Conditioning should be able to take place over long intervals, e.g.
several hours.  toxics often don’t cause illness immediately,
animals need to be able to associate illness with eaten foods after
several hours.
o Development of aversion to the smell or taste of the food.  more
adaptive to reject food beforehand by its smell than when they ate
it.
o Learned aversions should occur more often with novel foods than
familiar ones.
o Biological preparedness = a propensity for learning particular kinds
of associations over others.  so that some behaviours are relatively
easy to condition in some species but not others.
 Conditioning works best with stimuli that are biologically relevant to the
organism.
Operant conditioning: reinforcements of the environment
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 Classical conditioning occurs beyond the voluntary control of the

organism.
 Classical conditioning studies behaviours that are reactive.
 Operant conditioning = a type of learning in which the consequences of an
organism’s behaviour determine whether it will be repeated.
 Operant conditioning studies behaviours that are active.
 Operant conditioning are behaviours that we voluntary perform and
change the environment around us.
 Edward Thorndike started examining active behaviour, even before Pavlov
published his research.
 Thorndike focused on instrumental behaviours = behaviour that required
an organism to do something, solve a problem or manipulate elements of
its environment.
 Law of effect = behaviours that are followed by a ‘satisfying state of
affairs’ tend to be repeated and those that produce and ‘unpleasant sate
of affairs’ is less likely to be repeated.  cat in a box has to press a latch to
escape and get access to food. This is the instrumental behaviour that
leads to the satisfying outcome.
 B.F. Skinner  operant behaviour = behaviour that an organism produces
that has some impact on the environment, which in turn changes because
of that impact.
 Skinner’s approach to the study of learning focuses on reinforcement and
punishment.
 Reinforcer = stimulus that functions to increase the likelihood of the
behaviour that led to it.
 Punisher = stimulus that functions to decrease the likelihood of the
behaviour that led to it.
 Positive  used for situations in which a stimulus was presented
Negative  used for situations in which a stimulus was taken away
Increases the Decreases the

likelihood of likelihood of
behaviour behaviour
Stimulus is presented Positive reinforcement Positive punishment
Stimulus is removed Negative reinforcement Negative punishment
 Primary reinforcers = reinforcers that are effective from birth to all

members of a species. (food, comfort, shelter, warmth)
 Secondary reinforcers = reinforcers that are learned. They acquire their
effectiveness through experience.
 Premack principle = when a preferred activity can be used to reinforce a
non-preferred activity. (First do your homework, then you may watch TV)
 Sometimes rewards can cause an opposite effect. Most behaviours come
from intrinsic rewards, but they can be undermined by an extrinsic reward.
 Overjustification effect = circumstances when external rewards can
undermine the intrinsic satisfaction of performing a behaviour.
 Learning takes place in context.
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 Most behaviour is under stimulus control  a particular response only

occurs when the appropriate stimulus is presented.
 Discriminative stimulus  a stimulus that is associated with reinforcement
for e.g. (a pigeon) pecking a key.
 At first extinction in operant conditioning looks like extinction in classical
conditioning; when the reinforcements stop, the response rate drops off
fairly quickly and, if a rest period is provided, spontaneous recovery is
seen. But there is an important difference:
o In classical conditioning the US occurs every trial, no matter what
the organism does.
o In operant conditioning the reinforcements only occur when the
proper response has been made, they don’t always occur even
then.
o The effect of reinforcement depends on how often a behaviour is
reinforced.
 In classical conditioning the number of learning trails was important.
 In operant conditioning the pattern in which the reinforcements appeared
was crucial.
 Schedules of reinforcement;
o Interval schedules  reinforcement is based on how much time has
elapsed since the previous reinforcement.
 Fixed interval (FI) schedule = reinforcement will become
available when a fixed time period has elapsed following the
previous reinforcement. The first response after this interval
will produce the reinforce.
 Variable interval (VI) schedule = reinforcement will become
available when a time period has elapsed following the
previous reinforcement, but unlike the FI schedule, the length
of the waiting period varies.
o Ratio schedules  reinforcement is based on how many responses
have been made.
 Fixed ratio (FR) schedule = reinforcement will be delivered
after a specific number of responses have been made.
 Variable ratio (VR) schedule = reinforcement will be delivered
after a specified average number of response have been
made.
o Intermittent reinforcement = only some of the responses made are
followed by reinforcement. (this is true for both types of schedules)
 Intermittent reinforcement effect = operant behaviours that are
maintained under intermittent reinforcement schedules resist extinction
better than those maintained under continuous reinforcement.
 Most of our behaviours are the result of shaping = learning that results
from the reinforcement of successive approximations to a final desired
behaviour.
 Neural elements of operant conditioning
o Pleasure centres  neurons in the medial forebrain bundle, pathway
that goes from the midbrain through the hypothalamus into the
nucleus accumbens. Neurons along this pathway are dopaminergic;
they secrete dopamine.
 Cognitive elements of operant conditioning
o Edward Tolman proposed that an animal established a means-ends
relationship.
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o Latent learning = something is learned but it is not manifested as a

behavioural change until sometime in the future.
o Cognitive map = a mental representation of the physical features of
the environment.
 Evolutionary elements of operant conditioning
o Spatial representations = the capacity to encode, process and store
information about the shape and layout of the physical
environment.  rats go to the right arm of a T-maze and find food,
the second time they go to the left arm because they ‘know’ they
just ate the food in the right arm so there is nothing left. This has to
do with survival instinct.
o The Brelands (Skinners’ students) work shows that each species,
including humans, is biologically predisposed to learn some things
more readily than others and to respond to stimuli in ways that are
consistent with its evolutionary history.
Observational learning: look at me

 Observational learning = learning takes place by watching the actions of
others.
 Observational learning challenge behaviourism’s reinforcement-based
explanations of classical and operant conditioning.
 Mirror neurons fire when an animal performs an action, such as when a
monkey reaches for food, but they also fire when an animal watches
someone else doing the same task.
 Learning a language is far more difficult and can’t be done by just
conditioning.  behaviourism cannot account for this kind of abstract
learning process.
Implicit learning
 Implicit learning = learning that takes place largely independent of
awareness of the process and the products of information acquisition (e.g.
learning to speak when you’re really young)  knowledge that sneaks in
‘under the wires’
 Studying implicit learning
o Artificial grammar task  letter strings, one grammatical the other
nongrammatical. Participants developed a vague sense of
correctness. (we can very easily see a grammar mistake in a
sentence and correct it, but we often don’t know what grammar
mistake it was.
o Serial reaction time task  participants had to press the box that lit
up. There was a sort of pattern. The participants didn’t know the
goal of the research so were learning without awareness.
 Differences between explicit and implicit learning;
o Implicit learning  people differ little from each other
o Explicit learning  people show large individual-to-individual
differences.
o Implicit learning  unrelated to IQ
o Implicit learning  changes little across the life span (age doesn’t
matter)
o Implicit learning  extend well into old age and they decline more
slowly than explicit learning.
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o Implicit learning  resistant to various disorders that are known to

affect explicit learning.
 Different parts in the brain are activated when people approach a learning
task in either an implicit or an explicit manner.
 Participants who were given explicit instructions showed increased brain
activity in the prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, hippocampus and others.
 Participants who were given implicit instructions showed decreased brain
activation primarily in the occipital region, which is involved in visual
processing.
CHAPTER 7: LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

Language and communication: nothing’s more personal
 Language = a form of communication using sounds and symbols to
convey meaning and are combined according to grammar.
 Three striking differences to distinguish human language from simpler
signalling systems;
1. The complex structure. Humans can express a wide range of
ideas and concepts.
2. Humans use words to refer to intangible things (democracy,
unicorn).
3. We use language to name, categorize and describe things to
ourselves when we think, which influences how knowledge is
organized in our brains.
 Speech involves at least three separate processes;
o Conceptualization (what are you going to say). This depends on who
you’re talking to
o Formulation (how are you going to say it so that others will
understand). This requires lexicalization = process whereby
thoughts are turned into sounds.
o Articulation (how to speak the message you want to communicate).
 Phoneme = smallest difference between two sounds that indicates a
difference in meaning.
 Phonological rules = tells us which combinations of sounds produce
speech.
o Plural = stem + s
o Past tense = verb + ed
 Morphemes = the smallest word component with its own meaning.
 Grammar = a set of rules of how sounds and words are linked to create
meaningful messages.
o morphological rules = how morphemes can be combined to form
words.
o Syntactical rules = indicate how words can be combined to form
phrases and sentences
 Content morphemes can stand alone as words and refer to things or
events (cat, dog).
 Function morphemes can stand alone as words and serve a grammatical
function like tying sentences together (and, but, or).
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 Speech act  we try to get things done with language. Speech acts can fall
into five communication categories:
o Representative; asserting a fact or conveying a belief that a
statement is true – ‘I am a psychology student.’
o Directive; trying to get someone to do something, e.g. answering a
question – ‘are you a student too?’
o Commissive; an assertion of a future goal – ‘I want to graduate.’
o Expressive; revealing an internal psychological state – ‘I am not sure
that…’
o Declarative; announcing a new or previously unattended state of
affairs – ‘This is the first time that I told this.’
 Success of conversations also depend on alignment = speakers share a
reciprocal arrangement to exchange information. Achieved by 4 automatic
mechanisms;
o Priming = to think of something because of a recent exposure to a
stimulus.
o Inference = speakers generate deeper conceptual understanding
based on what has been said.
o Routine expressions = unambiguous conventions that facilitate
language.
o Speech monitoring and repair = speakers interact to understand
what others are saying. They seek clarification.
 Three characteristics of language development;

o Children learn language really fast.
o Children make few errors while learning how to speak, which are
mostly grammatical mistakes.
o Children’s passive mastery (understanding) of language develops
faster than their active mastery (speaking).
 At birth infants can distinguish between all the sounds that occur in all
human languages. But this ability is lost within the first 6 months. This
could explain why it is hard to learn a new language when you’re an adult
 you may not even hear all new sounds.
 Early exposure to language as a child can leave some residual memory for
phonetic structures of the other language.
 Babies start babbling around 6 months. This is not an early form of
speech. Its rather the practice of learning to uses their tongue.
 Fast mapping = children map a word onto an underlying concept after only
a single exposure.  children assume that the word applies to the whole
object rather than a part of it, or to a whole category (everything that
looks like a car is a car, even trucks and vans).
 Telegraphic speech = ‘more milk’, ‘throw ball’  speech that is only made
up of content morphemes.
 Children tend to overgeneralize the grammatical rules they heard. They
will start saying ‘I runned’ while they always said ‘I ran’.
 Skinner used principles of reinforcement to argue that we learn language

the way he thought we learn everything – through imitation, instruction
and trial-and-error. (behaviourism)
 Chomsky thought that language learning capacities are built in the brain
which are specialized to rapidly acquire language through exposure to
speech. (nativism)
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 Behaviourist explanations
o Children learn language through operant conditioning (so through,
reinforcement, punishment, shaping and extinction).
o The behavioural explanation is attractive because of its simplicity
but the theory cannot account for many fundamental characteristics
of language development;
 Parents don’t spend much time teaching their children to
speak grammatically. Parents respond more to the truth
content than to the grammar.
 Children generate more grammatical sentences then they
ever hear.
 Children wouldn’t make overgeneralizations if they only
learned language through trial-and-error.
 Nativists explanations;
o Nativist theory = language development is best explained as an
innate, biological capacity.
o Chomsky  human brain has a language acquisition device (LAD) =
a collection of processes that facilitate language learning.
o Genetic dysphasia = a syndrome characterized by an inability to
learn the grammatical structure of language despite having
otherwise normal intelligence.
o Nativist theory of the LAD explains why new-born babies can make
contrasts between phonemes that occur in all languages. And why
deaf babies babble speech sounds. Furthermore, language can only
be acquired during the first period of life.  once puberty is reached,
learning a language is extremely hard.
 Interactionist explanations;
o Natitvists merely explain why language developes, not how.
o Interactionists address ‘language learning’ by the complete theory
of the processes by which the innate biological capacity for
language combines with environmental experiences.
o Language development also depends on social interaction. So,
adults speaking directly to the child.
 Broca’s area  located in the left frontal cortex  production of sequential

patterns in vocal and sing languages.
 Wernicke’s area  located in the left temporal cortex  language
comprehension, spoken or sign.
 Aphasia = difficulty in producing or comprehending language.
o Broca’s aphasia  people might say; ah, Monday, uh, Casey park.
(speech in short, phrases that mostly contain content morphemes)
o Wernicke’s aphasia  can produce grammatical speech, but it tends
to be meaningless and have difficulty comprehending language.
 Apes can’t speak a human language because their vocal tracts cannot
accommodate the sounds used in human languages.
 Sign language had more success.
 Washoe was the first ape that learned the signs. Her adopted infant
learned signs from her.
 The ability to produce grammatically complex sentences appears to
depend on having particular neural circuitry. This circuitry seems to be
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lacking in chimps, takes time to develop in humans and can be disrupted

by extreme environmental deprivation during the first years of one’s life.
 Bonobo chimps were taught to communicate via a keyboard system. Kanzi
learned this by watching researchers trying to learn his mother the
system. He was younger and thus picked it up, his mother never did.
 There are limitations to the systems for the apes;
o The size of the vocabularies they acquire.
o The type of words they can master are primarily names for concrete
objects and simple actions.
o The complexity of grammar that apes can use and comprehend.
 Unlike spoken language, reading and writing are skills that need to be
learned through education.
 Lexicon = our mental dictionary
 Graphemes = units of written language that correspond to phonemes.
 ‘have’ has an irregular grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence. It is not
pronounced the same as ‘rave’, ‘save’ and ‘wave’.
 Reading requires a system that can cope with regular and irregular words.
 Dual-route models = propose that there are essentially two pathways to
the lexicon.
o Irregular words; direct lexical route = one where the grapheme
maps directly onto the phoneme, based on the info stored in the
lexicon.
o Pronunciation is accessed via an indirect sublexical route = one that
does not involve the lexicon at all, but maps the grapheme directly
onto the pronunciation.
 Dyslexia = a disorder involving difficulty with reading and writing.
o Surface dyslexia = unable to read irregular words (they’re impaired
in the direct lexical route).
o Phonological dyslexia = unable to read pronounceable non-words
(they can only use the direct lexical pathway and are impaired on
the indirect sublexical route).
o Deep dyslexia = readers cannot retrieve the meaning of words. In
this case the word is daughter but the person would say sister. 
suggests that grapheme-to-phoneme mapping is only part of the
process.
 Semantics = meaning of a word.
 Semantic priming = the meaning of a word influences the processing of
other words that are conceptually related.
 Linguistic determinism hypothesis maintains that language shapes the

nature of thought (Benjamin Whorf)
 Whorf believed that because the Inuit have so many terms for snow, they
perceive and think about snow different than English speakers.  this is
not true. The English have many more words for different forms of snow
and the Inuit’s have also just one.
 Linguistic relativity hypothesis = the proposal that language may influence
the way we think and perceive.
Concepts and categories: how we think

 concept = mental representation that groups or categorizes shared
features of related objects, events or other stimuli.
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 Category-specific deficit = an inability to recognize objects that belong to

a particular category while leaving the ability to recognize objects outside
the category undisturbed.
 The brain is prewired to organize perceptual and sensory inputs into
broad-based categories, such as living and non-living things.
 The type of category-specific deficit suffered depends on where the brain
is damaged. Usually in the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex.
 Psychological theory of concepts and categories  concepts are rules that
specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a
particular category. E.g. you see an animal and you want to know whether
it is a dog. The necessary condition is, that the creature must be a
mammal, because all dogs are mammals. If someone told you the dog is a
German Shepherd, and you know that’s a kind of dog, then this is the
sufficient condition to categorize the creature as a dog.
 Another theory is the family resemblance = where members of a category
have features that appear to be characteristic of category members but
may not be possessed by every member.
 Prototype theory = our psychological categorizations is organized around
the properties of the most typical member of the category. It depends on
where you’re from what for instance your prototype bird is. For people
from Europe it might be a wren, while for people from Antarctica it might
be a penguin.
 People make category judgments by comparing new instances to the
category’s prototype.
 According to prototype theory our concepts are organized in terms of
typicality and shared features and not simply in terms of rules defining
necessary and sufficient conditions.
 Exemplar theory = we make category judgements by comparing a new
instance with stored memories of other instances of the category.
Judging, valuing and deciding: sometimes we’re logical, sometimes not

 Base rates = the actual likelihood of events occurring.
 Rational choice theory = we make decisions by determining how likely
something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then
multiplying the two.
 Adults judge frequency accurately and nearly automatically. This suggests
that this type of processing is ‘natural’ and easy to accomplish.
 Availability bias = items that are more readily available in memory are
judged as having occurred more frequently.  this affects our estimates
because memory strength and frequency of occurrence are directly
related.
 Heuristics = fast and efficient strategies that may facilitate decision
making but do not guarantee that a solution will be reached.  heuristics
are mental shortcuts that are often effective when approaching a problem.
 Algorithm = a well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that
guarantees a solution to a problem.
 The combined probability of events is always less than the independent
probability of each event  mind bug called conjunction fallacy = people
think that two events are more likely to occur together than either
individual event.
 Representativeness heuristic = a mental shortcut that involves making a
probability judgment by comparing an object or event to a prototype of
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the object or event.  probabilities were skewed towards the participant’s

prototypes of lawyers and engineers.
 Mind bugs such as availability, representativeness and conjunction fallacy
highlight the strengths and weakness of the way we think.
 Framing effects = people give different answers to the same problem
depending on how the problem is phrased. E.g.  a drug with 70%
effectiveness sounds good to many people. A drug with a 30% failure rate
sounds very bad to many people. But they’re the same thing. So, the way
information is framed, leads to different conclusions.
o Sunk-cost fallacy = a framing effect in which people make decisions
about a current situation based on what they have previously
invested in the situation. E.g.  you invested time and money to get
a concert ticket, but it’s raining on the day of the concert. The time
and money is gone anyway, but you feel obligated to go.
 Prospect theory = proposes that people choose to take on risk when

evaluating potential losses and avoid risks when evaluating potential
gains. This takes place in two phases.
o People simplify the available information. When buying a flat people
tend to ignore differences between flats such as the closeness of
restaurants, presence of garden.
o People choose the prospect they believe offers the best value. This
value is personal and may differ from an objective measure of ‘best
value’.
 Certainty effect  when making decisions, people give greater weight to
outcomes that are a sure thing.
 We are willing to take on risk if we think it will ward off a loss, but we’re
risk averse if we expect to lose some benefits.
 Frequency format hypothesis = our minds evolved to notice how
frequently things occur, not how likely they are to occur.
 The difference in decision making is captured by the division in reasoning

known as System 1 and System 2.
o System 1 = operates automatically and quickly, with little or no
effort and no sense of voluntary control
o System 2 = allocates attention to more taxing and mental activities
and is often associated with a subjective experience of making
choices.
Problem solving: working it out

 Two major types of problems;
o Ill-defined problem = one that does not have a clear goal or well-
defined solution paths.  you want to be able to get focused to
study (goal), but there are many ways to do so (solution paths).
Both are unclear.
o Well-defined problem = one with clearly specified goals and clearly
defined solution paths.  solving simple algebra problems.
 Means-ends-analysis = a process of searching for the means or steps to
reduce the differences between the current situation and the desired goal.
This process usually took the following steps;
o Analyse the goal state  the desired outcome you want.
o Analyse the current state  your starting point/current situation.
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o List the differences between the current state and the goal state.
o Reduce the list of differences by;
 Direct means  procedure that solves the problem without
intermediate steps.
 Generating a sub goal  an intermediate step on the way to
solving the problem.
 Finding a similar problem that has a known solution.
 Analogical problem solving = solving a problem by finding a similar
problem with a known solution and applying that solution to the current
problem.
 Creative and insightful solutions often rely on restructuring a problem so
that it turns into a problem you already know how to solve.
 Findings suggest that even insightful problem solving is an incremental
process  one that occurs outside conscious awareness.
 Different parts in the brain are active when solving problems by insight
than by analysis. The front part of the right temporal lobe is more active
for insight solutions than other parts of the brain.
 Moments before a problem was solved with insight solutions, there was
increased activity in a part deep in the frontal lobes, known as anterior
cingulate. Researchers suggested that this increased activity allowed
participants to attend to and detect associations that were only weakly
activated and that facilitate sudden insight.
 Insight is rare because problem solving (like decision making) suffers from
framing effects.
 Functional fixedness = the tendency to perceive the functions of objects
as fixed.  we don’t think more of objects than they’re usually used for. I
didn’t think to use an empty box of matches as a candle holder, because
you normally wouldn’t use it in that way.
Transforming information: how we reach conclusions

 Reasoning = mental activity that consists of organizing information or
beliefs into a series of steps to reach conclusions.
 Logic is a system of rules that specifies which conclusions follow from a
set of statements. Logic is a tool for evaluating reasoning, but it should not
be confused with the process of reasoning itself.
 Practical reasoning = working out what to do, or reasoning directed
towards action.  means-ends-analysis is a form of practical reasoning.
 Theoretical reasoning = reasoning directed towards arriving at a belief. 
we use this when we try to determine which beliefs follow logically from
other beliefs.
 Belief bias = people’s judgements about whether to accept conclusions
depend more on how believable the conclusions are than on whether the
arguments are logically valid.
 Syllogistic reasoning = determining whether a conclusion follows from two
statements that are assumed to be true.
 Deductive reasoning = from general to specific.
 Inductive reasoning = from specific to general.
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CHAPTER 8: CONSCIOUSNESS
Conscious and unconscious: the mind’s eye, open and closed.
 Cartesian theatre = a mental screen or stage on which things appear to be
presented for viewing by your mind’s eye.
 Hard problem of consciousness = the difficulty of explaining how
subjective experience could ever arise.
 Phenomenology = how things seem to the conscious person, in terms of
the quality of experience.
 Homunculus problem = the difficulty of explaining the experience of
consciousness by advocating another internal self.  we feel like we live
inside our head. As if we are a machine driver that drives the machine (our
body).
 The case for the existence of free will being responsible for decisions may
be scientifically weak (Skinner said that there is no free will, all behaviour
can be learned and explained by environmental factors), the personal
experience of free will is extremely strong.
 Problem of other minds = the fundamental difficulty we heave in
perceiving the consciousness of others.  there is no clear way to
distinguish a conscious person from someone who might do and say all
the same things as a conscious person but who is not conscious.
 Qualia =mental states  subjective experiences we have as part of our
mental life.
 Materialism = the philosophical position that mental states are a product
of physical systems alone (the brain).
 Anthropomorphism = the tendency to attribute human qualities to
nonhuman things.
 How do people perceive other minds? People judge minds according to the
capacity for experience (feeling pain) and the capacity for agency (ability
for self-control and thought).
 Mind-body problem = the issue of how the mind is related to the brain and
body.
 René Descartes  human body is a machine made of physical matter,
human mind is a made of ‘thinking substance’. He proposed that the mind
has its effects on the brain and body through he pineal gland. This was not
true.
 Research showed that the brain is activated 500 ms before voluntary
action.
 The brain also starts to show activity before a person’s conscious decision
to move. Although your personal intuition is that you think of an action
and then dot it, experiments suggest that your brain is getting started
before either thinking or doing.
 Personal experience of consciousness feels like someone is in charge of
decision making, but in fact, consciousness may simply be making sense
of our thoughts and actions after they have already been activated.
 Choice blindness = when people are unaware of their decision-making
process and justify a choice as if it were already decided.
 Suggestion that consciousness has four basic properties;
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o Intentionality  quality of being directed towards an object.

Conscious attention is limited. Change blindness = unawareness of
significant evens changing in full view.
o Unity  resistance to division
o Selectivity  capacity to include some objects and not others.
Dichotic listening = in which people wearing headphones are
presented with different messages in each ear. Consciousness filters
out some info. Cocktail party phenomenon = people tune in to one
message even while they filter out others nearby.
o Transience  tendency to change.
 The levels of consciousness are not a degree of brain activity but are
different qualities of awareness of the world and the self.
 Minimal consciousness = a low level of awareness that occurs when the
mind inputs sensations and may output behaviour. (kind of like sensory of
stimuli and the responses to them, can also happen during sleep).
 Full consciousness = you now and are able to report your mental state.
 Self-consciousness = a distinct level of consciousness in which the
person’s attention is drawn to the self as an object. It brings with it a
tendency to evaluate yourself and notice your shortcomings.
 Chronically self-consciousness can be associated with depression.
 The experience of self-consciousness is, as measured by recognition in
mirrors, limited to a few animals and to humans only after a certain stage
of life.
 Most of consciousness, besides the orientation to the environment, turns
to a person’s current concerns. This can be thinking about gaining better
relations with family, make new friends or clean your room.
 Daydreaming = a state of consciousness in which a seemingly purposeless
flow of thoughts comes to min.  psychologists have long suspected that
daydreams reflect the mind’s attempts to deal with problems.
 Thoughts that return again and again can come to dominate
consciousness. When this happens, people may exert mind control = the
attempt to change conscious states of mind.
o Thought suppression = the conscious avoidance of a thought.
o Rebound effect of suppression = the tendency of a thought to return
to consciousness with greater frequency than before the
suppression.
o Ironic processes of mental control = ironic errors occur because the
mental process that monitors error can itself produce them. (don’t
think about a white polar bear, ironically a small part of the mind
starts ‘searching’ of a white polar bear).  this process is not
present in consciousness.
 Decartes began to question everything he had previously held to be true
and realized that nothing about personal experience was logically certain.
He wrote; ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (I think, therefore I am).
 Freudian unconscious
o Dynamic unconscious = an active system encompassing a lifetime
of hidden memories, the person’s deepest instincts and desires, and
the person’s inner struggle to control these forces.
o Repression = a mental process that removes unacceptable thoughts
and memories from consciousness and keeps them in the
unconscious.
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o Freudian slips  speech errors and lapses of consciousness that

might be created by an intelligent unconscious mind and weren’t
supposed to come out.
 Cognitive unconscious
o The current study views the unconscious as a factory that builds the
products of conscious thoughts and behaviours.
o Cognitive unconscious = all mental processes that are not
experienced by the person but give rise to the person’s thoughts,
choices, emotions and behaviour.
o Subliminal perception = a thought or behaviour that is influenced
by stimuli that a person cannot consciously report perceiving.
Attention
 Selective attention = the process whereby we focus mental processing on
a limited range of events. Without selective attention, we would be
swamped with sensory overload and unable to concentrate.
 Information bottleneck = where the channel of information processing has
a limited capacity.
 Early filter model = (Donald Broadbent proposed that) selective attention
is a filtering mechanism that operates early in the stream of processing,
allowing only important information through.
 But information not selected for attention is still processed.
 Attenuation model = information is not entirely discarded in the stream of
processing but is suppressed relative to other important signals.
 Response selection model = argued that there was indeed an information
bottleneck but the limited capacity occurred after the signals were
processed but before a response could be made.
 Load model = where task difficulty determines whether selection is early
or late.  when tasks are typically difficult in terms of ‘perceptual load’ the
participant showed early selection. When tasks were lighter of load, there
is a late selection.
 Overt attention shift = when we want to attend to something, we orient
towards the source.
 Covert attention shift = look in one direction but pay attention to another
location.
 Unilateral visual neglect = where patients fail to notice or attend to stimuli

that appear on the side of space opposite the site of a hemispheric lesion.
 lesions of the right parietal lobe produces a loss of attention to events
and objects in their left visual field. These patients may eat food only off
the right side of the plate, fail to notice someone standing on their left
side.
 People with unilateral visual neglect can’t report objects on the
congressional side of their mental image. They also make incomplete
drawings of objects that have two sides.
 Balint’s syndrome = an attentional disorder where the patient loses the
ability to voluntarily shift visual attention to new locations, which is
associated with damage to both sides of the brain. E.g. these people can’t
see overlapping figures.
 Blindsight = residual vison in the absence of cortical processing.  there
are multiple visual processing areas in addition to area V1 that could
support unconscious vision.
 Why do we have a consciousness; possibilities might be
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o Our brains generate the experience of consciousness to keep track

of the outcome of all the unconscious processes by giving us a
sense of ownership.
o That our consciousness is an interface between the world of
multiple mental processes and the sequential demands of the world.
Sleep and dreaming; good night, mind

 Dream consciousness involves an altered state of consciousness = a form
of experience that departs significantly from the normal subjective
experience of the world and the mind.
 The presleep consciousness is called the hypnagogic state. Sometimes
you experience a hypnic jerk, a sudden sensation of dropping or falling.
 Postsleep consciousness is called hypnopompic state.
 Circadian rhythm = a naturally occurring 24-hour cycle.
 EEG recordings revealed a regular pattern of changes in electrical activity
in the brain accompanying the circadian cycle. The brain shows high-
frequency (beta waves) during alertness and low frequency (alpha waves)
during relaxation.
 The largest changes in brain activity happen when we’re sleeping.
 Five sleep stages
o Stage 1; EEG moves to frequency patterns lower than alpha waves 
theta waves.
o Stage 2; patterns are interrupted by short bursts of activity  sleep
spindles and K complexes. In this stage, the sleeper becomes more
difficult to awaken.
o Stages 3 and 4; deepest stages of sleep, slow-wave sleep  delta
waves.
o Stage 5: REM (rapid eye movement) sleep = a stage of sleep
characterized by rapid eye movements and a high level of brain
activity. Sometimes referred to as paradoxical sleep. The brain is as
active as when you’re awake.
 Electrooculograph (EOG) = a device that measures eye movements
(during sleep).
 Most dreams occur during the REM sleep stage.
 Sleep following after learning appears to be essential for memory
consolidation.
 Sleep is a necessity. When rats were forced to stay awake, they had
trouble regulating their body temperature and lost weight even though
they ate more than normal. Their bodily systems break down and they die.
 Sleep is necessary for at least three vital bodily functions;
o thermoregulation = biological thermostatic process that maintains
optimal body temperature during different states of wakefulness.
o Immune system = body’s defence mechanism for combatting
potential disease from both internal and external invaders.
o Metabolism = process whereby our bodies convert stored resources
into energy.
 Sleep disorders
o Insomnia = difficulty in falling asleep or staying asleep. The desire
to sleep initiates an ironic process of mental control – a heightened
sensitivity to signs of sleeplessness – this sensitivity interferes with
sleep.
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 Sedatives (sleeping pills) can be a solution for a short amount

of time. But the pills are addictive and often the dose needs
to be increased in order to get the same effect. They can
interfere with the normal sleep cycle. Furthermore, the
quality of sleep is worse because you won’t spend enough
time in the REM sleep phase. Finally, stopping suddenly can
produce insomnia that is even worse.
o Sleep apnea = a disorder in which the person stops breathing for
brief periods while asleep. A person usually snores and often wakes
up during the night.
o Somnambulism (sleepwalking) = when a person arises and walks
around while asleep. Sleepwalking is more common in children
around 11 or 12 years of age. Is mostly happens in the early night in
slow-wave sleep stage.
o Narcolepsy = disorder in which sudden sleep attacks occur in the
middle of waking activities. Can be treated with medication.
o Sleep paralysis = the experience of waking up unable to move.
o Night terrors = abrupt awakenings with panic and intense emotional
arousal.
 Five major characteristics of dream consciousness that distinguish it from

the waking state.
o We feel emotion intensely
o Dream thought is illogical
o Sensation is fully formed and meaningful
o We experience uncritical acceptance, as though the images and
events were perfectly normal rather than bizarre.
o Difficulty of remembering the dream when it is over.
 The contents of dreams take snapshots from the day rather than retelling
stories of what you have done or seen. This is why dreams often come
without storylines and plots and thus make now sense.
 Freud proposed that dreams are confusing and obscure because they have
to be, that dreams represent wishes that could be unacceptable or taboo
so the mind can only express them in a disguised form.
 Freud said; the manifest content of a dream = a dream’s apparent topic or
superficial meaning, is a smokescreen for its latent content, a dream’s true
underlying meaning.
 Activation-synthesis model = a theory that dreams are produced when the
mind attempts to make sense of random neural activity that occurs in the
brain during sleep.
 Studies show that the brain changes that occur during REM sleep
correspond with certain alterations of consciousness that occur in
dreaming.
 The amygdala is activated while dreaming as this brain structure is
involved in fear and anxiety. However, the areas of the brain for visual
perception are not activated, although you ‘see’ a lot of images in your
dream. The part of the occipital lobe that is involved in visual imagery
does who activity.
 The motor cortex is activated while dreaming but spinal neurons running
through the brainstem inhibit the expression of this motor activation.
 Lucid dreaming = the awareness of dreaming during the dream.
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 Vegetative state = a state of wakefulness without awareness and overt

communication.
Drugs and consciousness: artificial inspiration

 Psychoactive drugs = chemicals that influence consciousness or behaviour
by altering the brain’s chemical message system.
 Different drugs can intensify or dull transmission patterns, creating
changes in brain electrical activity that mimic the natural processes of the
brain.
 Harm reduction approach = a response to high-risk behaviours that
focuses on reducing the harm such behaviours have on people’s lives.
 Hallucinogens = drugs that alter sensation and perception, often causing
hallucinations (e.g. LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, PCP and ketamine)
 Hallucinogens are not addictive.
 Leaves, buds and resin of the hemp plant contain THC, the active
ingredient in cannabis (= drug from hemp plant). This drug produces an
intoxication that is mildly hallucinogenic. Cannabis affects judgement and
short-term memory and impairs motor skills and coordination.
Hypnosis: open to suggestion

 Hypnosis = a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) makes
suggestions that lead to a change in o another person’s (the subject’s)
subjective experience of the world.
 during hypnosis people feel that their actions are things that are
happening to them rather than things they are doing.
 Hypnosis is an extreme form of behavioural compliance = doing what you
are told or expected to do.
 An early form of hypnotic induction is credited to Frans Mesmer. The
essence of his technique was persuading people that his actions would
influence them.
 Induction of hypnosis usually involves a number of different ‘suggestions’
the hypnotist mentions to the volunteer about what the volunteer will do.
 Susceptibility varies per person. Some are not affected by hypnosis.
 Hypnosis can cure for lost memory. But often people make up memories to
satisfy the hypnotist.
 Hypnosis can also undermine memory. Posthypnotic amnesia = the failure
to retrieve memories following hypnotic suggestions to forget.
 Hypnotic analgesia = the reduction of pain through hypnosis in people
who are hypnotically susceptible.
Meditation and religious experiences: higher consciousness

 Meditation = the practice of intentional contemplation. Meditation comes
in many forms; clearing the mind of thoughts, focusing on only one
thought, concentrating on breathing or on a mantra.
 Meditation can give short-term relaxation but has no measured long-term
effects.
 Religious experiences are sometimes associated with brain regions that
are also affected by epilepsy.
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CHAPTER 10: EMOTION AND MOTIVATION

Emotional experience: the feeling machine
 The essential feeling of all emotions is the experience.
 Emotion = positive or negative experiences that are associated with a
particular pattern of physiological activity. (short duration)
 Feelings = private conscious thoughts that accompany emotions.
 Moods = generalized, diffuse states or dispositions that are less intense
but last longer than emotional responses.
 Emotions have an evolutionary origin. Core emotional responses may be
evolved, their expression can be shaped by culture and learning.
 Disgust = an intense negative response that triggers feelings of nausea.
 Multidimensional scaling is a technique used to make a map of emotional
experiences. The map reveals that emotional experiences differ on two
dimensions;
o Valence = how positive or negative the experience is.
o Arousal = how active or passive the experience is.
 James-Lange theory = states that stimuli trigger activity in the autonomic
nervous system, which in turn produces an emotional experience in the
brain.
 James saw emotional experience as the consequence of our physiological
reaction to objects and events. James; when there’s no physiological
response, there is no experience of emotion.
 Cannon-Bard theory = states that a stimulus simultaneously triggers
activity in the autonomic nervous system and emotional experience in the
brain.
 Reasons for the Cannon-Bard theory;
o Autonomic nervous system reacts too slowly to account for the
rapid onset of emotional experience.
o People often have difficulty accurately detecting physiological
changes. If they can’t detect these, how can they experience the
emotion?
o If non-emotional stimuli can cause the same physiological change,
then why don’t people feel fear during the flu?
o There aren’t enough unique patterns of autonomic activity to
account for all the emotions.
 Two-factor theory = states that emotions are inferences about the causes
of undifferentiated physiological arousal.  when people are physiologically
aroused in the presence of something they think should scare them, they
label their arousal as fear.
 Our bodily activity and our mental activity are both the causes and the
consequences of our emotional experiences.
 The limbic system plays an important part in the generation of emotions.

 The amygdala plays a key role in the production of emotion.
 Wiliam James  some part of the brain decides which facts are exciting.
The decisions are called an appraisal.
 Appraisal = an evaluation of the emotion-relevant aspects of a stimulus.
 The amygdala’s job is to make a rapid appraisal of a stimulus.
 Info about a stimulus can take 2 routes through the brain;
o Fast pathway; from the thalamus, directly to the amygdala.
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o Slow pathway; from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the
amygdala.
 Emotional car metaphor  the amygdala presses the emotional accelerator
pedal and the cortex then hits the brakes.
 Emotion is a primitive system that prepares us to react rapidly and on the
basis of little information to things that are relevant to our survival or
wellbeing.
 Emotion regulation = the cognitive and behavioural strategies people use

to influence their own emotional experience.
 One of the most effective strategies for emotion regulation is reappraisal
= changing one’s emotional experience by changing the meaning of the
emotion-eliciting stimulus.
Emotional communication: msgs w/o wrds

 Emotional expression = any observable sign of an emotional state.
 Darwin  universality hypothesis = emotional expressions have the same
meaning for everyone.
o People in New Guinea who had little contact with the outside world
recognised the emotional expressions of Americans about as
accurately as Americans.
o People who have never seen a human face make the same facial
expressions as those who have.
 Facial expressions are signs of emotions, and signs are caused by the
things they signify.
 There are instances in which the causal path of emotional expressions
runs in the other direction.  facial feedback hypothesis = emotional
expressions can cause the emotional experiences they signify. (people feel
happy when they hold a pencil between their teeth. This stimulates the
zygomatic major, laugh muscle.
 Facial feedback hypothesis could be an explanation why people are so
good at recognizing the emotional expressions of others.
 Display rules = are norms for the control of emotional expression.

Following them requires several techniques;
o Intensification: exaggerating the expressions of one’s emotion.
o Deintensification: muting the expression of one’s emotion.
o Masking: expressing one emotion while feeling another.
o Neutralizing: feeling an emotion but displaying no expression.
 Different cultures have different display rules.
 Our voices, bodies and faces are ‘leaky’ instruments that may betray our
emotional states. Four sets of features can allow a careful observer to tell
whether our emotional expression is sincere;
o Morphology: certain facial muscles tend to resist conscious control.
E.g. your eyes only wrinkle when your smile is genuine.
o Symmetry: sincere expressions are a bit more symmetrical than
insincere expressions.
o Duration: sincere expressions tend to last between half a second
and five seconds, insincere expressions last shorter or longer.
o Temporal patterning: sincere expressions appear and disappear
smoothly over a few seconds; insincere expressions have abrupt on-
and offsets.
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 Liars speak more slowly, take longer to respond to questions and respond
in less detail than those who are telling the truth. Most people think that a
liar speaks quickly or averts their gaze but that is not true.
 Polygraph is a lie detector. It detects lies better than change, but still has a
high error rate.
Motivation: getting moved

 Emotions motivate behaviour. Motivation = the purpose for or cause of an
action.
 Emotions provide us with information about the world, and emotions are
the objectives towards which we strive.
 People with Capgras syndrome typically believe that one or more of their
family members are imposters. This is due to damage of the neural
connections between the temporal lobe and the limbic system. They
recognize the faces of their family members but don’t feel the warm
emotions that these faces once produced. So, their family members
‘looked right’ but didn’t ‘feel right’.
 Because the world influences our emotions, our emotions provide
information about the world.
 Hedonic principle = the notion that all people are motivated to experience
pleasure and avoid pain.  our emotional experience can be thought of as
a measure ranging from good to bad, and our primary motivation – maybe
our sole motivation – is to be as close as possible to good.
 Nature gives us certain motivations and experience gives us others.

 William James  instinct = the inherited tendency to seek a particular goal.
 Concept of instinct was rejected by behaviourists on two grounds;
o They believed that behaviour could be best explained by the
external stimuli that evoke it.
o Behaviourists were not concerned with the notion of inherited
behaviour because for them all complex behaviour was learned.
 the ‘new behaviourists’  a rat starts wandering in his cage around noon.
His behaviour changed but there changed nothing in his environment, so
his behaviour must come from his internal state.
 Homeostasis = the tendency for a system to take action to keep itself in a
particular state.
 Drive = an internal state generated to redress an imbalance in vitally
important functions.
 Incentives = external rewards that act to motivate behaviour.
 Abraham Maslow organized the

list of human urges, or needs as
he called them. The noted that
some need, such as eating, must
be satisfied before others, such as
mating. He built a hierarchy of
needs that had the strongest and
most immediate needs at the
bottom and the weakest and most
deferrable needs at the top.
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 At every moment, your body sends signals to your brain about its energy
state.
o Orexigenic signal  when your body needs energy (appetite is
stimulated. E.g. by ghrelin)
o Anorexigenic signal  when your body has sufficient energy
(appetite is suppressed e.g. by leptin)
 Lateral hypothalamus receives orexigenic signals.
 Tromedial hypothalamus receives anorexigenic signals.
 Obesity  BMI >30
 Overweight  BMI >25
 Obesity can result from biochemical abnormalities, and It seems to have a
strong genetic component, but overeating is often a part of its cause.
 People overeat because;
o Whether people eat depends on their knowledge when they last eat.
o Emotional eating.
o Eating out of habit.
 Our bodies developed two strategies to avoid starvation.
o A strong attraction to high calorie foods.
o An ability to store excess food energy in the form of fat, which
enables us to eat more when there is plenty of food and live of our
reserves when food is scarce.
 Human body resists weight loss in two ways;
o When we gain weight, the number of fat cells and the size of them
grows. But when we lose weight, the fat cells won’t die. They only
become smaller in size.
o Our bodies respond to dieting by decreasing our metabolism.
 Bulimia nervosa = a disorder characterized by binge eating followed by
activities intended to compensate for the food intake.
 Bulimics eat out of negative emotions such as sadness and anxiety, but
are then concerned about weight gain. They feel guilty and try to
compensate to lose weight.
 Anorexia nervosa = a disorder characterized by an intense fear of being
fat and severe restriction of food intake.
 Anorexics tend to have a distorted body image, and tend to be high-
achieving perfectionists. The amount of ghrelin in their blood is really high
but they suppress their hunger signal.
 Reproduction is another biological need in Maslow’s hierarchical model.

 A hormone DHEA seems to be involved in the initial onset of sexual desire.
 Female human beings can be interested in sex at any point of their
monthly cycle. Although their level of oestrogen changes a lot during the
cycle, their level of interest in sex does hardly change.
 Testosterone is probably the hormonal basis of women’s sex drives
o When women were given testosterone, their sex drive increases.
o Men naturally have more testosterone than women, and have a
stronger sex drive.
 Human sexual response cycle = the stages of physiological arousal during
sexual activity.
 Human sexual response has four phases;
50
o Excitement phase: muscle tensions and blood flow increases in and

around the sexual organ, heart and respiration rates increase and
blood pressure rises.
o Plateau phase: heart rate and muscle tension increase further.
o Orgasm phase: breathing becomes extremely rapid. More muscle
contractions etc. men and women can get an orgasm.
o Resolution phase: muscles relax, blood pressure drops and the body
returns to its resting state. Most men and women experience a
refractory period  during which further stimulation does not
produce excitement.
 Extrinsic motivation = a motivation to take actions that are not

themselves rewarding but lead to a reward. (taking an exam to get a
university degree)
 Intrinsic motivation = a motivation to take actions that are themselves
rewarding. (eat chips because it tastes good, exercise because it feels
good)
 Our ability to engage in behaviours that are unrewarding in the present
but will bring greater rewards in the future is quite a talent compared to
other species.
 Rewards can get people to lose their intrinsic motivation.
 Threats can suggest that a forbidden activity is desirable, and so they can
promote the very behaviours they are meant to discourage.
 Self-determination theory = emphasizes the need to understand human
motivation in terms of competence, autonomy and relatedness.  for us
goals are only worth pursuing if others also think they are worthwhile.
 Internalization = where extrinsic influences are incorporated into intrinsic
motivations.  part of socialization.
 Conscious motivation = a motivation of which one is aware.
 Unconscious motivation = a motivation of which is not aware.
 People vary in their need for achievement = the motivation to solve
worthwhile problems.
 People tend to be aware of their general motivations unless the
complexities of executing an action force them to become aware of their
specific motivations.  person changes light bulb, general motivation =
helping dad out. But light bulb gets stuck, specific motivation gets
awareness and = trying to get the threads wired.
 Daydreaming can be useful, it enables us to mentally process goals and
develop plans, it facilitates creative problem solving. Individuals given the
opportunity to daydream are better at coming up with solutions after an
undemanding task and we make better decisions after a bit of
daydreaming.
 Ego depletion explains willpower like a mental muscle that can be
fatigued. Yours willpower is limited, when it becomes depleted, you
become vulnerable to the temptations and drives of impulsive thoughts
and behaviours.
 The hedonic principle describes two conceptually distinct motivations:
o Approach motivation = a motivation to experience a positive
outcome.
o Avoidance motivation = a motivation not to experience a negative
outcome.
51
 People expect losses to have more powerful emotional consequences than

equal-size gains, they will take more risks to avoid a loss than to achieve a
gain.
 Affective forecasting = the process by which people predict their
emotional reactions to future events.
 We’re not particularly good at predicting our feelings after a positive or
negative event.  Because most people have a poor understanding of how
their emotions work.
 People have stronger emotional reactions to events whose causes they
don’t understand.
52
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Summary Experimental Psychology

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Summary Experimental Psychology

CHAPTER 1 PSYCHOLOGY; THE EVOLUTION OF A

Psychology divided in areas:

 Mind bugs = occasional malfunctions n our otherwise efficient mental

 Plato  nativism (= philosophical view that certain kinds of knowledge are

 Metaphysics = branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality.

 Physiology = the study of biological processes, especially in the human

Exporting European psychology

Errors and illusions reveal psychology

 Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers founded humanistic psychology = an

Psychology in the 20th century

 Behaviourism = approach that advocates that psychologists should

 Ivan Pavlov  classic conditioning  response = an action or physiological

 Frederic Skinner  operant conditioning  reinforcement = the

Beyond behaviourism: psychology expands

 Other scientists picked up where Lashley left off.  physiological

Three developments that lead away from behaviourism:

 Renewed interest in mental processes

Beyond the individual: social and cultural perspectives

The profession of psychology: it’s not just common sense

 Sports and exercise psychology; applies psychological techniques to sport

CHAPTER 2: THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Observation: discovering what people do

 Measure = a device that can detect the events to which an operational

 Frequency distributions = graphic representations of the measurements of

o Descriptions of variability are statements about the extent to which

 Demand characteristics = aspects of an observational setting that cause

Explanation: discovering why people do what they do

 Correlation = the co-relationship or pattern of covariation between two

and the control group = the group of people matched to an

Qualitative research: forget the size, feel the quality

 Qualitative research projects often begin without a theory while

CHAPTER 3: NEUROSCIENCE AND BEHAVIOUR

o Medulla = extension of spinal cord into skull  coordinates heart

 Plasticity = the brain can be moulded  functions that were assigned to

Investigating the brain

CHAPTER 4: SENSATION AND PERCEPTION

 Modalities = sensory brain regions that process different components of

our senses encode the information our brains perceive

 Sensory adaption = sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline

Anatomy of the human eye

 Retina = light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball.

 Two types of light-detectors

 Subtractive colour mixing = mixing paints  blue + yellow gives green

Red red red

green green green

 Cortical magnification: 80% of the cells in V1 receive input from the

 V1 has topographic visual organization = neighbour cells on the retina are

 Area V1 contains populations of neurons, each respond to a different line,

 Two visual streams in the brain:

 Visual form agnosia = the inability to recognize objects by sight.

o Simplicity: simplest explanation is usually the best.  idea behind

 Apparent motion = the perception of movement as a result of alternating

 Phi phenomenon  illusions where the brain integrates successive images

 Gestalt grouping rule of common fate: people perceive a series of flashing

The body senses:

o Bottom-up control = the senses feed information to the brain, then

The chemical senses:

The structure of memory

o Information enters a temporary sensory memory = a place where