Psychology
Chapter 16
Mental Disorders
Before clinicians can diagnose a psychological disorder, the must evaluate the behavior in terms of four themes, the four D’s.
The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM)
Specifies criteria for deciding what is officially a ‘disorder’ and what is not.
It is a work in process.
What is a mental disorder?
Mental disorder has no really satisfying definition.
Categorizing and diagnosing metal disorders
Diagnosis: the process of assigning a label to a person’s mental disorder.
To be of value, any system of diagnosis must be reliable and valid.
The quest for reliability
The reliability of a diagnostic system: the extent to which different diagnosticians, all trained in the use of the system, reach the same conclusion when they independently diagnose the same individual.
To test alternative ways of diagnosing each disorder, they conducted field studies in which people who might have a particular disorder were diagnosed independently by a number of clinicians or researchers using each of several alternative diagnostic systems.
The systems that produced the greatest reliability were retained.
All the criteria are based on observable characteristics or self-descriptions by the person being diagnosed.
The Question of validity
The validity of a diagnostic system is an index of the extent to which the categories it identifies are clinically meaningful.
This is based on extensive research. To conduct the research needed to determine whether or not a diagnosis is valid, one must fists form a tentative, reliable diagnostic system.
The results of such studies may lead to new means of defining and diagnosing the disorder or to new subcategories of the disorder, leading to increased diagnostic validity.
Systems for classifying mental disorders:
The DSM
The Word Health Organization (WHO) has developed the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10)
Possible dangers in Labeling
Diagnosing and labeling may be essential for the scientific study of metal disorders, but labels can be harmful.
To reduce the likelihood of such effects, the American Psychiatric Association recommends that clinicians apply diagnostic labels only to people’s disorders, not to people themselves.
Diagnostic systems are never completely reliable.
Medical students’ disease
The power of suggestion, which underlies the ability of labels to cause psychological harm, underlies the medical students’ disease.
This disease (also called the introductory psychology students disease) is a strong tendency to relate personality to, and to fund in oneself, the symptoms of any disease or disorder described in the textbook.
Cultural variations in disorders and diagnoses
Mental disorder is, to a considerable degree, a cultural product.
The kinds of distress that people experience, the ways in which they express that distress, and the ways in which other people respond to the distressed person vary from culture to culture and over time of any given
culture.
Cultural beliefs and values help determine whether syndromes are considered to be disorders or variations of normal behavior.
Culture-bound syndromes
Culture-bound syndromes: expressions of mental distress that are almost completely limited to specific cultural groups.
In some cases, such syndromes represent exaggerated from of behaviors that, in more moderate forms, are admired by the culture.
Role of cultural values in determining what is a disorders
Culture does not affect just the types of behaviors and syndromes that people manifest, it also affects clinicians’ decisions about what to label as disorders.
Cultural values and the diagnosis of ADHD
The American Psychiatric Association has added many more disorders to DSM over the past three or four decades than it has subtracted.
These additions have come partly from increased scientific understanding of mental disorders and partly from a general cultural shift toward seeing mental disorder where people previously saw a normal human variation.
The brain is involved in all mental disorders
All the factors that contribute to the causation of mental disorders do so by acting, in one way or another, on the brain.
The brain’s role in irreversible mental disorders
The role of the brain is most obvious in chronic mental disorders.
In this cases, the brain deficits are irreversible.
Like:
Role of the brain in episodic mental disorders
Many disorders are episodic, they are reversible.
Most mental disorders, including those that are episodic, are to some degree heritable.
In most cases it is not known just which genes are involved or how they influence the likelihood of developing the disorder, but it is reasonable to assume that such effects occur primarily through the genes’ roles in altering the biology of the brain.
A framework for thinking about multiple causes of mental disorders
Most mental disorders derive from the joint effects of more than one cause.
Most disorders are not present at birth, but first appear at some later point in life, often in early childhood.
The subsequent course of a disorder is influenced by experiences that one has after the disorder first appears.
Three categories of causes of mental disorders:
Possible causes of sex differences in the prevalence of specific disorders
Women are more diagnosed with anxiety disorders and depression.
Men are more diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder and antisocial personality disorder and substance-use disorders.
Causes:
Anxiety disorders: disorders in with fear or anxiety is the most prominent disturbance.
Genetic differences play a considerable role in the predisposition of all anxiety disorders. About 30 -50 percent of the individual variability in risk to develop any given anxiety disorder derives from genetic variability.
Generalized anxiety disorder
Generalized anxiety is called generalized because it is not focused on any one specific trait. It attached itself to various threats, real or imagined.
It manifests itself primarily as worry.
Sufferers of generalized anxiety disorder worry more or less continuously about multiple issues, and they experience muscle tension, irritability and difficulty sleeping.
To receive a DSM-5 diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder, such life-disrupting worry must occur on more days that not for at least 6 months and occur independently of other diagnosable mental disorders.
People that diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder are particularly attuned to threatening stimuli.
Such automatic attention to potential threat is referred to as hypervigilance. Such vigilance begins early in life and precedes the development of generalized anxiety disorder.
Hypervigilance may result, in part, from genetic influences on brain development. Inhibitory connections are less effective in people who are predisposed for generalized anxiety.
A lifelong tendency toward hypervigilance is also found in many individuals who experienced unpredictable traumatic experiences in early childhood.
Phobias
A phobia is an intense, irrational fear that is very clearly related to a particular category of object or event.
The fear is of some specific, nonsocial category of object or situation.
For a diagnosis to be given, the fear must be long-standing and sufficiently strong to disrupt everyday life in some way.
Usually a phobia sufferer is aware that his or her fear is irrational but still cannot control it.
People with phobias are hypervigilant specifically for the category of object that they fear.
They also suffer from the knowledge of the irrationality of their fear.
The relation of phobias to normal fears
The difference between normal fear and the disorder is one of degree.
Phobias are much more often diagnosed in women than in men.
Phobias explained in terms of evolution and learning
Learning plays some role in many, if not most, cases.
For example a traumatic event.
Such experiences may be understood in terms of classical conditioning.
People often develop phobias of objects that they have never inflicted damage or been a true threat to them.
People are genetically prepared to be wary of, and to learn easily fear, objects and situations that would have posed realistic dangers during most of our evolutionary history.
People can acquire strong fears of such evolutionarily significant objects and situations more easily than they can acquire fear of other sorts of objects.
Simply observing others respond fearfully to them, or reading or hearing fearful stories about them, can initiate or contribute to a phobia.
Children aren’t born with this fear, but rather they seem to possess perceptual biases to attend to certain types of stimuli and to associate them with fearful voices or reactions. In some people, such fears can develop into phobias.
The fact that some people acquire phobias and others don’t in the face of similar experiences probably stems from variety of predisposing factors, including genetic temperament and prior experiences.
People with phobias have a strong tendency to avoid looking at or being anywhere near the object they fear, and this behavior pattern tends to perpetuate the disorder.
Panic disorder and agoraphobia
Panic is a feeling of helpless terror.
In some people, this sense of terror comes at unpredictable times, unprovoked by any specific threat in the environment.
Because the panic is unrelated to any specific thought or situation, the panic victim cannot avoid it by avoiding certain situations or relieve it by engaging in certain rituals.
Panic attacks usually last several minutes and are accompanied by high physiological arousal and a fear of losing control and behaving in some frantic, desperate way.
To be diagnosed with panic disorder, by DSM-5 criteria, a person must have experienced recurrent unexpected attacks, at least one of which is followed by at least 1 month of debilitating worry about having another attack or by life-constraining changes in behavior motivated by fear of another attack.
Panic disorder often manifest itself shortly after some stressful event or life change.
Panic victims seem to be particularly attuned to, and afraid of, physiological changes that are similar to those involved in fearful arousal.
A perpetuating cause, and possibly also a predisposing cause, of the disorder is a learned tendency to interpret physiological arousal as catastrophic.
Agoraphobia: a fear of public places.
Develops at least partly because of the embarrassment and humiliation that might follow loss of control in front of others.
Posttraumatic Stress disorder
PTSD is necessarily brought on by stressful experiences. The symptoms of PTSD must be linked to one or more emotionally traumatic incidents that the affected person has experienced.
PTSD is characterized by three major symptoms:
People who are exposed repeatedly, or over long period of time, to distressing conditions are much more likely to develop PTSD than are those exposed to a single short-term, highly traumatic incident.
Most people can rebound reasonably well from a single horrific event, but the repeated experience of such events seems to wear that resilience down, perhaps partly through long-term debilitating effects of stress hormones on the brain.
Not everyone exposed to repeated highly stressful conditions develops PTSD. Social support, both before and after the stressful experiences, seems to play a role in reducing the likelihood of the disorder.
Genes also play a role.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
An obsession: a disturbing thought that intrudes repeatedly on a person’s consciousness even though the person recognizes it as irrational.
A compulsion: a repetitive action that is usually performed in response to the obsession.
Characteristics of the disorder
People diagnosed with OCD are those for whom such thoughts and actions are serve, prolonged and disruptive of normal life.
DSM-5: the obsessions and compulsions must consume more than an hour per day of the person’s time and seriously interfere with work or social relationships.
OCD involves a specific irrational fear.
The fear is of something that exists only as a thought and can be reduced only by performing some ritual.
People with OCD suffer also form their knowledge of the irrationality of their actions and often go to great lengths to hide them from other people.
The obsessions experiences by people with OCD are similar to, but stronger and more persistent than, the kinds of obsessions experiences by most people in the general population.
Brian abnormalities related to the disorder
In some cases, the disorder first appears after known brain damage.
Brian damage resulting from a difficult birth has also been known to be a predisposing cause.
The brain areas that seem to be particularly involved include portions of the frontal lobes of the cortex and parts of the underlying limbic system and basal ganglia. These normally work together in a circuit to control voluntary actions, controlled by thought.
One theory: damage in these areas may produce OCD by interfering with the brain’s ability to produce the psychological sense of closure or safety that normally occurs when a protective action is completed.
Depressive disorders
Depression is characterized primarily by prolonged sadness, self-blame, a sense of worthlessness and absence of pleasure. Other symptoms include decreased or increased sleep and appetite. And either retarded or agitated motor symptoms.
To warrant diagnosis of a depressive disorder, the symptoms must be either very severe or very prolonged and not attributable just to a specific life experience, though they may be triggered or exacerbated by such an experience.
Two main classes:
Comparisons between depression and generalized anxiety
The two are predisposed by the same genes.
The two often occur in the same individuals. Typically, generalized anxiety occurs before the onset of major depression.
Cognitively, anxious individuals worry about what might happen in the future, while depressed individuals feel that all is already lost.
Negative thought pattern as a cause of depression
Negative thoughts are characteristic of people who are depressed, and they may also characterize people who are not depressed but are vulnerable to becoming so.
Depression results from a pattern of thinking about negative events that has the following 3 characteristics:
This hopeless manner of thinking can also occur, to varying degrees, in people who by other measures are not depressed, and in those people it is predictive of future depression.
Stressful experiences plus genetic predisposition as cause of depression
People who have recently suffered a severely stressful experience are much more likely to become depressed than are those who have not.
The kinds of stressful events most strongly associated with depression are losses that alter the nature of one’s life. They can promote the kind of hopeless thinking that corresponds with and predicts depression.
Not everyone becomes depressed in response of such occurrences. The difference appears to reside largely in genes.
There is an interaction between genetic disposition and childhood experience in depression.
Possible brain mechanisms of depression
Depression is a product of the brain.
All the drugs that are used regularly to treat depression have the effect of increasing the amount of activity of one or both of two neurotransmitters in the brain: norepinephrine and serotonin.
Stress and worry are often associated with an increased release of cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands.
Cortisol can act on the brain to shut of certain grow-promoting processes.
Over period of weeks or months, a high level of cortisol can result in a small but measurable shrinkage in some portions of the brain, including portions of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. These brain changes are reversible. During periods of reduced stress, the shrunken brain areas may regain their former size. Increases in norepinephrine and serotonin over periods of weeks can stimulate growth in these brain areas. This may explain the delayed effects of drug treatments in relieving depression.
The theory is:
Depression in humans results at least partly from a stress-induced loss of neurons or neural connections in certain parts of the brain. Recovery from depression results from regrowth in those brain areas.
Possible evolutionary bases for depression
From an evolutionary perspective, depression may be an exaggerated form of a response to loss that in less extreme form is maladaptive.
A depressed mood slows us down, makes us think realistically rather than optimistically, leads us to turn away from goals that we can no longer hoop to achieve, and signals to others than we are no threat to them and need their help.
A depressed mood can also lead to a kind of soul-searching, the end result of which may be the establishment of new, more realistic goals and a new approach to life.
Depressed moods may come in a variety of different forms, each adapted for different survival purposes.
Bipolar disorders
Characterized by mood swings in both directions. Downward in depressive episodes and upward in manic episodes. Such episodes may last anywhere from a few days to several months, often separated by months or years of relatively normal mood.
DSM-5 identifies two main varieties:
The predisposition for bipolar disorder is strongly heritable.
Stressful life events may help bring on manic and depressive episodes in people who are predisposed.
Bipolar disorder can usually be controlled with regular doses of the element lithium, used as a drug.
The manic condition
Manic episodes are typically characterized by expansive, euphoric feelings.
During hypomania and the early stages of a manic episode, the high energy and confidence may lead to an increase in productive work, but, as manic episode progresses, judgment becomes increasingly poor and behavior increasingly maladaptive.
Full-blown mania may be accompanied by bizarre thoughts and dangerous behaviors.
Not all people with bipolar disorders experience the manic state as euphoric.
Possible relation of hypomania to enhanced creativity
There is a correlation between hypomania and creativity.
Diagnostic characteristics of schizophrenia
No two sufferers of schizophrenia have quite the same symptoms.
DSM-5 diagnosis: the person must manifest a serious decline in ability to work, care for him-or herself, and connect socially with others.
The person must also manifest, for at least one month, two or more of the following five categories of symptoms.
The symptoms are usually not continuously present.
Disorganized thought and speech
Many people with schizophrenia show speech patterns that reflect an underlying deficit in the ability to think in a logical, coherent manner.
In some cases, thought and speech are guided by loose word associations.
In all sorts of formal test of logic, people with schizophrenia do poorly when in an active phase of their disorder. They often encode the problem information incorrectly, fail to see meaningful connections, or base their reasoning on superficial connections having more to do with the sounds of words than with the meaning.
People may show disorganized speech or thoughts long before symptoms of schizophrenia are apparent.
Delusions
A delusion is a false belief held in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.
Delusions may result, in part, form a fundamental difficulty in identifying and remembering the original source of ideas or actions.
Hallucinations
Hallucinations are false sensory perceptions.
The most common hallucinations in schizophrenia are auditory.
Hallucinations and delusions typically work together to support one another.
Auditory hallucinations derive from the person’s own intrusive verbal thoughts.
Grossly disorganized or catatonic behaviors
People with schizophrenia often behave in much disorganized ways.
The inability to keep context in mind and to coordinate actions with it seems to among the basic deficits in schizophrenia.
Catatonic behavior: behavior that is unresponsive to the environment.
Negative symptoms.
Symptoms of schizophrenia that involve a lack of, or reduction in expected behaviors, thoughts, feelings and drives.
They include a general slowing down of bodily movements, poverty of speech, flattened affect, loss of basic drives such as hunger, loss of the pleasure that normally comes from fulfilling drives and social withdrawal.
Neurological factors associated with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is characterized primarily as a cognitive disorder, brought on by deleterious changes in the brain.
People with schizophrenia suffer from deficits in essentially all the basic processes of attention and memory.
Disruptions on brain chemistry
Schizophrenia may involve unusual patterns of dopamine activity.
Overactivity of dopamine in some part of the brain, especially in the basal ganglia, may promote the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.
Underactivity of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex may promote the negative symptoms.
The role of glutamate.
Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter at fast synapses throughout the brain.
One of the major receptor molecules for glutamate is defective in people who have schizophrenia, resulting in a decline in the effectiveness of glutamate neurotransmission.
Such a decline could account for the general cognitive debilitation that characterizes the disorder.
Alterations in brain structure
There are structural differences between the brains of people with schizophrenia and those of other people.
During adolescence, the brain normally undergoes certain structural changes.
Pruning: many neural cell bodies are lost.
An abnormality in pruning, which leads to the loss of too many cell bodies, may underlie at least some cases of schizophrenia.
Genetic and environmental causes of schizophrenia
Predisposing effects of genes
Genetic differences among individuals play a substantial role in the predisposition for schizophrenia.
The genetic similarity, not the environmental similarity, between relatives produces high concordance for schizophrenia.
Many different genes are involved, no single gene or small set of genes can account for most of the genetic influence in large samples of people with schizophrenia.
At least some of the identified genes are known to influence dopamine neurotranssion and some are known to influence glutamate neurotranssion.
Effects of the prenatal environment and early brain traumas
Genes are not the only determinants of the disorder.
There are specific prenatal variables that can contribute to the likelihood of developing schizophrenia.
Effects of life experiences
Stressful life events of many sorts can precipitate schizophrenia and exacerbate its symptoms.
High-risk children whose parents communicated in a relatively disorganized, hard-to-follow, or highly emotional manner were much more likely to develop schizophrenia or a milder disorder akin to schizophrenia than were high-risk children whose parents communicated in a calmer, more organized fashion.
This relationship is not found among low-risk children.
A degree of disordered communication at home that does not harm most children may have damaging effects on those who are genetically predisposed for schizophrenia.
Expressed emotion: criticisms and negative attitudes or feelings expressed about and toward a person with a mental disorder by family members with whom that person lives.
Other things being equal, the greater the expressed emotion, the greater the likelihood that the active symptoms will return or worsen and the person will require hospitalization.
A cross-cultural study of the course of schizophrenia
There is considerable cross-cultural consistency.
A developmental model of schizophrenia
The disorder has no simple, unitary cause.
A personality disorder: an enduring pattern of behavior, thoughts and emotions that impairs a person’s sense of self, goals, and capacity for empathy and/or intimacy and is associated with significant stress and disability.
Many patients meet criteria for more than one personality disorder, many have personality disorders that do not fall into one of the 10 categories and personality dysfunction may reflect maladaptive extremes of normal personality.
Cluster A: ‘Odd’ personality disorders
Paranoid personality disorder
People with paranoid personality disorder are deeply distrustful of other people and are suspicious of their motives.
Most of these attributions are inaccurate, but not so off base as to be considered delusional.
They frequently blame other for their failures and tend to bear grudges.
Schizoid personality disorder
Display little in the way of emotion, either positive or negative and tend to avoid social relationships.
They avoid others because they genuinely prefer to be alone.
They are self-centered and are not much influenced by either praise of criticism.
Schizotypal personality disorder
Show extreme discomfort in social situations, often bizarre patterns of thinking and perceiving, and behavioral eccentricities, such as wearing odd clothing or repeatedly organizing their kitchen shelves.
They tend to be anxious and distrustful.
They often see significance in unrelated events, especially as they relate to themselves, and some people with this disorder believe they have special abilities.
They have poor attentional focus, making conversations vague, often with loose associations.
Cluster B: ‘Dramatic’ personality disorders
Individuals with these disorders display highly emotional, dramatic, or erratic behavior that makes it difficult for them to have a stable, satisfying relationships.
Antisocial personality disorder
Consistently violate or disregard the rights of others and are sometimes referred to as sociopaths or psychopaths.
They frequently lie, seem to lack a moral conscience, and behave impulsively, seemingly disregarding the consequences of their actions.
As result of their reckless behavior and disregard for others, the frequently find themselves in trouble with the law.
Borderline personality disorder
Instability, including in emotions, and self-image, often showing dramatic changes in identity, goals, friends and sexual orientation.
They tend to be impulsive, often engaging reckless behavior, sometimes lashing out at others when things don’t go right, and other times turning their anger inward, engaging in self-injurious behavior.
Attempted suicide is common in people with borderline personality disorder.
The relationships of people with borderline personality disorder tend to be intense and stormy, and they often have fears of abandonment in frantic efforts to head off anticipated separations.
Histrionic personality disorder
People with histrionic personality disorder continually seek to be the center of attention (they behave as if they are always ‘on stage’) and are often described as vain, self-centered, and emotionally charged, displaying exaggerated moods and emotions.
People with this disorder constantly seek attention and approval from others and are concerned with how others will evaluate them, often wearing provocative clothing to attract attention.
Narcissistic personality disorder
People with this disorder are even more self-centered than people with borderline disorder.
They seek admiration from others, tend to lack empathy, and are grandiose and overconfident in their own exceptional talents or characteristics.
They exaggerate their abilities and achievements and expect others to see the same exceptional qualities in them that they see in themselves. So they are frequently perceived as arrogant.
They often make good first impressions, but these are rarely maintained.
This is due in part to their perceived arrogance, but also to their general lack of interest in other people.
Cluster C: ‘Anxious’ personality disorders
The common thread is fear and anxiety. The difference is in degree.
Avoidant personality disorder
People with this disorder are excessively shy. They are uncomfortable and inhibited in social situations.
They feel inadequate and are extremely sensitive to being evaluated, experiencing a dread of criticism.
Their extreme fear of rejection causes them to be timid and fearful in social settings and often results in their avoiding social contact, making it impossible for them to be accepted.
They rarely take risks or try out new activities, exaggerating the difficulty of tasks before them.
Dependent personality disorder
Show an extreme need to be cared for. They are clingy and fear separation from significant people in their lives, believing they cannot care for themselves.
They fear upsetting relationship partners and as a result tend to be obedient, rarely disagreeing with them and permitting them to make important decisions for them.
They often feel lonely, sad and distressed, putting them at high risk for anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
They are prone to suicidal thoughts, especially when a relationship is breaking up.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
Are preoccupied with order and control, and as a result are inflexible and resist change.
They are so highly focused on the details of a task that they often fail to understand to point of an activity.
They tend to set extremely high standards for themselves and others, exceeding any normal degree of conscientiousness.
They often have difficulty expressing affection, and as a result their relations are frequently shallow and superficial.
Origins of personality disorders
There are multiple causes of any single personality disorder. With genes, operating in interaction with the environment at all levels.
DMS-5
A person must be at least 18 years old to be diagnosed with a personality disorder, the roots of such disorders are in development, with features of all of these disorders being apparent to lesser degrees during childhood and adolescence.
Foundations for the study of psychology - a summary of chapter 1 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)
Psychology
Chapter 1
Foundations of the study of psychology
Psychology is the science of behaviour of the mind.
Behaviour is the observable action of a person or animal
Mind refers to an individual’s subjective experiences.
Dualism
René Descartes (1596-1650)
Important about him: the body is like a complicated machine, a machinal control of movements. Quite complex behaviours can occur trough purely machinal means.
Nonhuman animals have no souls.
Thought (Descartes defined as conscious deliberation and judgment) is ascribed to the soul.
Body and soul communicate through the pineal body.
Increased understanding of reflexes
The basic arrangement of the nervous system.
Some suggest that all human behaviour occurs through reflexes. → reflexology by I. M Sechenov (1863-1935) This inspired Pavlov.
The concept of localization of function in the brain
The idea that specific parts of the brain serve specific functions in the production of mental experience and behaviour.
Johannes Müller (1838-1965)
Different qualities of sensory experience come about because the nerves from different sense organs excite different parts of the brain. (We experience vison if this part of the brain is active).
Pierre Flourens (1824-1965)
Experiences on animals. Brain damage on different parts of the brain causes different deficits on animals abilities to move.
Paul Broca (1861-1965)
Publics effidence that people who suffer brain damage on specific parts of the brain lose the ability to speak, but do not lose other mental abilities
.....read more
Methods of psychology - a summary of chapter 2 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 2
Methods of psychology
In psychology, the data are usually measures or descriptions of some form of behaviour produces by humans or other animals.
A fact (or observation) is an objective statement, usually based on direct observation, that reasonable observers agree is true. In psychology, facts are usually particular behaviours, or reliable patterns of behaviours, for persons or animals.
A theory is an idea, or conceptual model, that is designed to explain existing facts and make predictions about new facts that might be discovered.
Any prediction about new facts that is made from a theory is called a hypothesis.
Facts lead to theories, which leads to hypothesis, which are tested by experiments, which leads to new fact. It is a cycle of science.
Each of this dimensions can vary form the others, resulting in any possible combination.
Research design
Researches design a study to test a hypothesis, choosing the design that best fits the conditions the researcher wants to control.
Also in three basic types.
Genetics and evolutionary foundations of behaviour - a summary of chapter 3 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 3
Genetics and evolutionary foundations of behaviour
Adaption refers to modifications as a result of changed life circumstances.
Evolution is a long-term adaptive process.
How genes affect behavior
Genes are associated with behavior (they never produce or control behavior directly).
All the effects that genes have on behavior occur through their role in building and modifying the physical structures of the body. Those structures, interacting with the environment, produce behavior.
All genes that contribute to the body’s development are “for” behavior. Since all parts of the body are involved in behavior.
Genes provide the codes for proteins
Genes affect the body’s development (only) through their influence on the production of protein molecules.
Structural proteins; forms the structure of every cell of the body.
Enzymes; controls the rate of every chemical reaction in every cell.
Genes are components of extremely long molecules of a substance called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).
These molecules exist in the egg and sperm cells that join to from a new individual. And they replicate themselves during each cell division in the course of the body’s growth and development.
A replica of your whole DNA molecules exists in the nucleus of each of your body’s cells, where it serves to code for and regulate the production of protein molecules.
Each protein molecule consists of a long chain of smaller molecules. Those are amino acids.
A single protein molecule may contain from several hundred to many thousand amino acids in its chain.
There are a total of 20 distinct amino acids in every from of life on earth (and they can be arranged in countless sequences to from different protein molecules).
Some DNA serve as templates (as molds or patterns) for producing RNA. RNA severs as a template for producing protein molecules.
A gene is segment of a DNA molecule that contains the code that dictates the particular sequence of amino acids for a single type of protein.
A human being has between 20.000 and 25.000 genes.
Most of the DNA in human cells does not code for proteins.
Genes work only through interaction with the environment
The effects of genes are entwined with the effects of the environment.
Environment; every
Basic processes of learning - a summary of chapter 4 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 4
Basic processes of learning
To survive, animals must adapt to their environments.
Evolution by natural selection, is the slow long-term adaptive process that equips each species for life within a certain range of environmental conditions.
Environments changes and individuals must adapt to these changes over their lifetimes. Animals must learn.
Learning: any process through which experience at one time can alter an individual’s behavior at a future time.
Experience refers to any effects of the environment that are mediated by the individual’s sensory systems.
Behavior at a future time refers to any subsequent behavior that is not part of the individual’s immediate response to the sensory stimulation during the learning experience.
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a learning processes that creates new reflexes.
A reflex is a simple, relatively automatic stimulus-response sequence mediated by the nervous system.
A stimulus results in a response.
To be considered a reflex, the response to a stimulus must be mediated by the nervous system. Because reflexes are mediated by the nervous system, they can be modified by experience.
Habituation: a decline in the magnitude of a reflexive response when the stimulus is repeated several times in succession. Not all reflexes undergo habituation.
Habituation is one of the simplest forms of learning. It does not produce a new stimulus-response sequence, but only weakens an already existing one.
Classical conditioning is a form of reflex learning that does produce a new stimulus-response sequence.
(First described by Ivan Pavlov)
Fundamentals of classical conditioning
The procedure and generality of classical conditioning
The stimulus (the bell sound by Pavlov) is a conditioned stimulus.
The response to the (condtionised stimulus, the bell) stimulus is a conditioned response.
The original stimulus (natural, before doing anything) is an unconditioned stimulus with an unconditioned response.
The procedure is called classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning
Pavlov concluded that, any environmental event that the animal could detect could become a conditioned stimulus of salivation. Of course classical conditioning is not limited to salivary responses.
Extinction of conditioned responses and recovery from extinction
Pavlov found that, without food, the bell elicited less and less salvation on each trial, and eventually none at all. This phenomenon is called extinction.
Extinction does not return the animal to the unconditioned state.
The mere passage of time following extinction can partially renew the conditioned response. This is called spontaneous recovery.
A single pairing of the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus can fully renew the conditioned response (with can be extinguished with a new trial
The neural control of behavior - a summary of chapter 5 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 5
The neural control of behavior
Behavior is a product of the body’s machinery, especially the nervous system.
Neurons, the building blocks of the brain
The brain contains roughly 80 to 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, and roughly 100 trillion synapses between neurons.
These are all more-or-less active, and their collective activity monitors our internal and external environments, creates all of our mental experiences, and controls all of our behavior.
The magic of this nervous system, lies in the organization of their multitudes.
Each neuron is itself a complex decision-making machine.
Each neuron receives information from multiple sources, integrates that information, and sends its response out to many other neurons or, in some cases, muscle cells or glands.
Three basic varieties of neurons, and structures common to them
The brain and spinal cord make up the central nervous system.
Extensions from the central nervous system, called nerves, make up the peripheral nervous system.
A neuron is a single cell of the nervous system
A nerve is a bundle of many neurons (or a bundle consisting of the axons of many neurons) within the peripheral nervous system.
Nerves connect the central nervous system to the body’s sensory organs, muscles and glands.
The central nervous system and peripheral nervous system are parts of an integrated whole.
Neurons come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and serve countless specific functions.
They can be grouped into three categories according to their functions and their locations in the overall layout of the nervous system.
All neurons contain the same basic parts.
Mechanisms of motivation and emotion - a summary of chapter 6 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Introduction to psychology
Chapter 6
Mechanisms of motivation and emotion
Motivation: the entire constellation of factors, some inside the organism and some outside, that cause an individual to behave in a particular way at a particular time.
Motivational state, or drive.
An internal condition that orients an individual toward a specific category of goals that can change over time in a reversible way. (The drive an increase and decrease).
Different drives direct a person toward different goals.
Those are hypothetical constructs! We infer the existence from the animal’s behavior.
Motivated behavior is directed toward incentives, the sought-after objects or ends that exist in the external environment.
Incentives are also called reinforces.
Drives and incentives complement one another in the control of behavior. If one is weak, the other must be strong to motivate the goal-directed action.
They also influence each other’s strength. A strong drive can enhance the attractiveness of a particular object.
A strong incentive can strengthen a drive.
Varieties of drives
In general, drives motivate us toward goals that promote our survival and reproduction. Some drives promote survival by helping us maintain the internal bodily conditions that are essential for life.
Drives that help preserve homeostasis.
Homeostasis: the constancy of internal conditions that the body must actively maintain.
Maintaining homeostasis involves the organism’s outward behavior as well as its internal processes.
The basic physiological underpinning for some drives is a loss of homeostasis, which acts on the nervous system to induce behavior designed to correct the imbalance.
Limitations of homeostasis: regulatory and nonregulatory drives
Homeostasis is not enough for understanding many drives.
Two general classes of drives:
A functional classification of mammalian drives
Five categories of mammalian drives:
Human drives that
.....read more The psychology of vision - a summary of chapter 8 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 8 (in part)
The psychology of vision
The purpose of human vision is to identify meaningful objects and actions.
Your visual system has sorted all the points and graduations that are present in the reflected light into useful renditions of the objects. It has provided you’re with all the information you need to reach out and touch, or pick up, whichever object you want to use next.
Vision researchers generally conceive of object perception as a type of unconscious problem solving, in which sensory information provides clues that are analyzed using information that is already stored in the person’s head.
The detection and integration of stimulus features
Any object that we see can be thought of as consisting of a set of elementary stimulus features, including the various straight and curved lines that form the object’s contours, the brightness and color of the light that the object reflects and the object’s movement or lack of movements with respect to the background.
Feature detection in the visual cortex
Ganglion cells of the optic nerve run to the thalamus and form synapses with other neurons that carry their output to the primary visual area of the cerebral cortex.
Within the primary visual area, millions of neurons are involved in analyzing the sensory input.
Different neurons respond to different patterns.
Edge detectors: neurons that respond best to stimuli that contains a straight contour separating a black patch from a white patch.
Bar detectors: respond best to a narrow white bar against a black background, or a narrow black bar against a
white background.
Any edge detector or bar detector responds best to a particular orientation of the edge or bar.
Neurons in the primary visual cortex are sensitive not just to the orientation of visual stimuli, but also to other visual features, including color and rate of movement. (One neuron might respond best to a yellow bar on a blue background, tilted 15 degrees clockwise and moving slowly from left to right).
Taken as a whole, the neurons of the primary visual cortex and nearby areas seem to keep track of all the bits and pieces of visual information that would be available in a scene.
Because of their sensitivity to the elementary features of a scene, these neurons are referred to as feature detectors.
Treisman’s two-stage feature-integration theory of perception
The feature-integration theory.
Any perceived stimulus (even a simple one such as an X) consist of a number of distinct primitive sensory features, like color and the slant of its individual lines.
To perceive the stimulus as a unified entity, the perceptual system must detect these individual
Memory and attention - a summary of chapter 9 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 9
Memory and attention
Information-processing theories are built on a set of assumptions concerning how humans acquire, store and retrieve information.
Key assumptions:
The model we use to portray the mind as containing three types of memory stores.
Each store is characterized by its function, its capacity and its duration.
In addition to the stores, the model specifies a set of control processes.
Those govern the processing of information within stores and the movement of information from one store to another.
Sensory memory: the brief prolongation of sensory experience
This trace is called sensory memory.
A separate sensory-memory store is believed to exist for each sensory system (like vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste), but only those for vision and hearing have been studied extensively.
Each sensory store is presumed to hold, very briefly, all the sensory input that enters that sensory system, whether or not the person is paying attention to that input.
The function of the store, presumably, is to hold on to sensory information, in its original sensory form, long enough for it to be analyzed by unconscious mental processes and for a decision to be made about whether or not to bring that information into the short-term store.
Most of the information in our sensory store does not enter into our consciousness.
We become conscious only of those items that are transformed, by the selective process of attention, into working memory.
The short-term store: conscious perception and thought
Information in the sensory store that is attended to moves into the short-term store.
Each item fades quickly and is lost within seconds when it is no longer actively attended to or thought about.
This is conceived of as the major workplace of the mind (working memory).
Working memory has been used to refer to the process of storing and transforming information being held in the short-term store. It is the seat of conscious thought.
Information can enter the short-term store form both the sensory-memory store and the long-term-memory store.
Both the sensory store and long-term
.....read more Reasoning and intelligence - a summary of chapter 10 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 10
Reasoning and intelligence
Reasoning: The process by which we use our memories in adaptive ways
Intelligence: our general capacity to reason
We reason by using our memories of previous experiences to make sense of present experiences or to plan the future.
To do so, we must perceive the similarities among various events we have experienced.
Fast and slow thinking
Cognitive processes could be placed on a continuum from automatic to effortful.
It is useful to think of any cognitive process as falling somewhere along this continuum.
When solving problems, people have two general ways of processing. (Dual-processing theories).
In many cases, when presented with a problem, you cannot shut of the ‘fast’ system, even if it may interfere with your arriving at the correct solution to a problem via the ‘slow’ system. (Like the stroop interference effect).
The ‘fast’ implicit system effortlessly produces impressions, feelings and intuitions that the ‘slow’ explicit system considers.
The effortful ‘slow’ system has potential control over the ‘fast’ system. (But when making routine decisions, the ‘fast’ system is in control. Like reading and making sense of language). The fast system even makes simple decisions, some of which are in contradiction to the correct solution that can only be derived by using the slow system.
Fast processing is not unique to humans. But no other species comes close to the effortful, explicit cognition displayed in Homo sapiens.
Analogies as foundation for reasoning
Two kinds of reasoning that depend quite explicitly on identifying similarities are:
Success
.....read more The development of body, thought and language - a summary of chapter 11 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 11
The development of body, thought and language
Prenatal development
Zygotic, embryonic and fetal phases
The prenatal period is conventionally divided into three phases:
By the end of the 12th week after conception, all the organs are formed, though not functioning well, and are in same proportion to each other as in a full-term newborn, just smaller.
The external genitalia begin to differentiate between males and females between the 9th weeks but are not fully formed until about the 12th week.
In the 8th week, the embryo begins to move and activity increases by 12 weeks.
Fetuses ‘behave’ and are able to perceive some stimuli.
By 6 months fetuses respond to their mothers’ heartbeat and sounds from outside the womb, including language.
The effects of experience during the prenatal period
Although embryos and fetuses are sheltered from the outside world they are nonetheless subject to the effects of experience.
Teratogens: environmental agents that cause harm during prenatal development.
Most teratogens are in the form of substances that get into the embryo’s or fetus’s system from the mother through the umbilical cord.
A teratogen’s potential effect on prenatal development depends on how early or late in pregnancy the exposure occurs. If an organ has been developed, exposure to a potential teratogen
Social development - a summary of chapter 12 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 12
Social development
The natural human environment is a social environment.
Social development: the changing nature of our relationships with others over the course of life.
Human infants are completely dependent on caregivers for survival. But they are not passively dependent.
They enter the world biologically prepared to learn who their caregivers are and to elicit from them the help they need. By the time they are born, babies already prefer the voices of their own mother over other voices (and the smell of their own mother). Newborns signal distress through fussing and crying.
By the time they are three months old, they express clearly and effectively their emotions through their facial expressions. And they respond differentially to such expressions in others.
Though such actions, infants help build emotional bonds between themselves and those on whom they most directly depend, and then they use those caregivers as a base from which to explore the world.
Attachment: such emotional bonds.
Attachment to caregivers
Harlow’s monkeys raised with surrogate mothers
Providing adequate nutrition and other physical necessities is not enough. Infants also need close contact with comforting caregivers.
The form and functions of human infants’ attachment
Bowlby observed attachment behaviors in young humans, from 8 months to 3 years of age.
Children show distress when their mothers left them. Especially in an unfamiliar environment. They showed pleasure when reunited with their mothers, showed distress when approached by a stranger unless reassured or comforted by their mothers and where likely to explore an unfamiliar environment when in the presence of their mothers than when alone.
Bowlby contended that attachment is a universal human phenomenon with a biological foundation that derives from natural selection. Infants are potentially in danger when out of sight of caregivers, especially in a novel environment.
Attachment is strengthen at about the age 6 to 8 months, when infants begin to move around on their own.
The strange-situation measure of attachment quality
Mary Ainsworth developed the strange-situation test.
Infants in this test are:
Social psychology - a summary of chapter 13 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 13
Social psychology
Humans are naturally interested in assessing the personality characteristics and attitudes of other humans they encounter.
This drive has clear adaptive functions. Other people can help us or hurt us in our life endeavors. Understanding others helps us predict their behavior and decide how to interact with them.
The accuracy of judgments of others sometimes suffers from certain consistent mistakes, or biases.
These biases occur most often when we are not using our full mental recourses, or have only limited information with which to reason, or have unconscious motives for reaching particular conclusions.
Making attributions from observed behavior
Actions are directly observable, and thoughts are not. Judgments about the personalities of people we encounter are based largely on what we observe of their actions.
Any judgment about another person is, in essence, a claim about causation. It is an implicit claim that the person is caused in part by some more or less permanent characteristic of the person.
Any claim about causation is an attribution. A claim about the cause of someone’s behavior.
The logic of attributing behavior to the person or the situation.
To build a useful picture of a person on the basis of his or her actions, you must decide which actions imply something unique about the person and which actions would be expected of anyone under similar situations.
When behavior is clearly appropriate to the environmental situation, people commonly attribute the behavior to the situation.
Three questions in making an attribution
Given the answer to questions 1 and 2, question
.....read more Social influences on behavior - a summary of chapter 14 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 14
Social influences on behavior
Human behavior is influenced powerful by the social environment in which it occurs.
We behave as we do not just because of who we are, but also because of the social situations in which we find ourselves.
Social pressure: the entire set of psychological forces that are exerted on us by others whether real or imagined.
We are most strongly influenced by those people who are physically or psychologically closed to us.
Social pressure arises from the ways we interpret and respond emotionally to the social situations around us.
It promotes our social acceptability and helps create order and predictability in social interactions.
Facilitating and interfering effects of an audience
Social facilitation: the enhancing effect of an audience on task performance.
Social interference: a decline in performance when observers are present.
Facilitation of ‘easy’ tasks, interference with ‘hard’ ones
The presence of others facilitates performance of dominant actions and interferes with performance of nondominant actions.
Dominant actions: actions that are so simple, speciestypical, or well learned that they can be produced automatically, with little consciously thought
Nondominant actins: actions that require considerable conscious thought or attention
The presence of an audience increases a person’s level of drive or arousal.
The arousal increases the person’s effort, which facilitates dominant tasks where the amount of effort determines the degree of success.
The arousal interferes with controlled, calm, conscious thought and attention and thereby worsens performance of nondominant actions.
Evaluation anxiety as a basis for social interference
The primary cause of social interference is evaluation anxiety.
Social interference increases when the observer are high in status or expertise and are present explicitly to evaluate. It also increases when subjects are made to feel unconfident and more anxious about their ability.
It decreases when subjects feel confident about their ability.
Choking under pressure: the working-memory explanation
‘Choking’ is especially likely to occur with tasks that make strong demands on working memory.
The worry takes space out of the memory span.
Choking on academic tests
Distracting and disturbing thoughts flood their minds and interfere with performance on tests.
With sufficient pressure, choking can even occur in students who normally do not suffer from tests anxiety. It occurs specifically with tests items that make the highest demands on working memory.
Stereotype threat as a special cause of choking
Stereotype threat: threat that test-takers experience when they are reminded of the stereotypical belief that the group to
.....read more Personality - a summary of chapter 15 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 15
Personality
Personality refers to a person’s general style of interacting with the world, especially with other people.
The development during childhood of chronic patterns of behavior that differ from one individual to another.
The most central concept in personality psychology is the trait. This is a relatively stable predisposition to behave in a certain way.
This is considered to be part of the person, not the environment.
States (other than traits) of motivation and emotion are, defined as inner entities than can be inferred from observed behavior. Traits are enduring, but states are temporary.
A trait might be defined as an enduring attribute that describes one’s likelihood of entering temporarily into a particular state.
Traits are dimensions along which people differ by degree.
Trait theories: efficient systems for describing personalities
The goal of any trait theory of personality is to specify a manageable set of distinct personality dimensions that can be used to summarize the fundamental psychological differences among individuals.
Factor analyses as a tool for identifying an efficient set of traits
Factor analyses: a method of analyzing patterns of correlations in order to extract mathematically defined factors, which underlie and help make sense of those patterns.
Steps:
Factor analyses tells us that two dimensions of personality are relatively independent of each other.
Cattell’s pioneering use of factor analysis to develop trait theory
Cattell:
An infinite number of different personalities can be formed from a finite number of traits.
He identified 16 basic trait dimensions and made a questionnaire called the 16 PF questionnaire to measure them.
The five-factor model of personality
The five-factor model (or big five theory)
A person’s personality is most efficiently described in terms of his or her score on each of five relatively independent global trait dimensions:
Mental Disorders - a summary of chapter 16 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 16
Mental Disorders
Before clinicians can diagnose a psychological disorder, the must evaluate the behavior in terms of four themes, the four D’s.
The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM)
Specifies criteria for deciding what is officially a ‘disorder’ and what is not.
It is a work in process.
What is a mental disorder?
Mental disorder has no really satisfying definition.
Categorizing and diagnosing metal disorders
Diagnosis: the process of assigning a label to a person’s mental disorder.
To be of value, any system of diagnosis must be reliable and valid.
The quest for reliability
The reliability of a diagnostic system: the extent to which different diagnosticians, all trained in the use of the system, reach the same conclusion when they independently diagnose the same individual.
To test alternative ways of diagnosing each disorder, they conducted field studies in which people who might have a particular disorder were diagnosed independently by a number of clinicians or researchers using each of several alternative diagnostic systems.
The systems that produced the greatest reliability were retained.
All the criteria are based on observable characteristics or self-descriptions by the person being diagnosed.
The Question of validity
The validity of a diagnostic system is an index of the extent to which the categories it identifies are clinically meaningful.
This is based on extensive research. To conduct the research needed to determine whether or not a diagnosis is valid, one must fists form a tentative, reliable diagnostic system.
The results of such studies may lead to new means of defining and diagnosing the disorder or to new subcategories of the disorder, leading to increased diagnostic validity.
Systems for classifying mental disorders:
The DSM
The Word Health Organization (WHO) has developed the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10)
Possible dangers in Labeling
Diagnosing and labeling may be essential for the scientific study of metal disorders, but labels can be harmful.
To reduce the likelihood of such
Treatment - a summary of chapter 17 of Psychology by Gray and Bjorklund (7th edition)Psychology
Chapter 17
Treatment
What to do with individuals with severe mental disorders? A brief history
A major chance in the treatment of people with severe mental disorders occurred in the 1950s, inspired by several factors;
A positive development: assertive community treatment
Since the 1970s, an increasing number of communities have developed outreach programs, often referred to as assertive community treatment (ACT) programs, and aimed at helping individuals with severe mental illness wherever they are in the community.
Each person with mental illness in need is assigned to a multidisciplinary treatment team. Someone on the team is available at any time of the day to respond to crises.
Each patient is visited at least twice a week by a team member, who checks on his or her health, sees if any services are needed, and offers counseling when that seems appropriate.
The team meets frequently with family members who are involved with the patient, to support them in their care for the patient.
Structure of the mental health system
Mental health professionals
Mental health professionals are those who have received special training and certification to work with people who have psychological problems or mental disorders.
The primary categories;
Relieve the disorder by directly altering bodily processes.
Drugs
Drugs for mental disorders are far from unmixed blessings.
They nearly always produce undesirable side effects.
Antipsychotic drugs
Used to treat schizophrenia and other disorders in which psychotic symptoms predominate.
Such drug reduce and in some cases abolish the hallucinations, delusions, and bizarre actions that characterize the active phase of schizophrenia and they reduce the need for hospitalization.
All antipsychotic drugs in use today decrease the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine at certain synapses in the brain, which is believed to be responsible for the reduction in psychotic symptoms.
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