Intro Psyche Study Guide --------------- FOUR STORIES(Thus far) And remember! Observe, Describe, Explain, Predict, and Intervene. O,D,E,P,I Biology: -Wiring Neurons, Axons, etc. Like a mile long hose connected to basketballs. Brains break just like a leg or arm or liver. Physical damage to the brain can't be fixed. We are born with a brain that works for us: that is to say, most people have similar attributes that have survival value. We are then 'brained' to do certain things that help us live. Arousal, four F's... those are all brained to help us keep on keeping on. Feed Flee Food Sexy time. These are four actions people take when aroused. You could say that people are brained to do these. Arousal is pretty general: juices start to get pumped through our bodies, our eyes dilate to be able to take in more light... these all help us to fight, to feed, to run away, to... mate, and as an extension, play sports, music, so on and so forth. It helps us to be better animals. Also, because arousal is the same for all four, this is why an animal who is scared might try to fight instead of run like they may want to... The frontal lobe has been found to play a part in impulse control, judgment, language production, working memory, motor function, problem solving, sexual behavior, socialization, and spontaneity. Basically, though, it's kind of the human part of our brain. Damage to it can result in visible damage to personality, emotion, and so on. The temporal lobe plays a large part in transferring short-term memory into long-term memory and therefore is very important to memory overall. Damage to it could potentially cause one to live in a sort of short-term memory world. The occipital lobe controls vision and color recognition. Damage to it, obviously, can lead to severe vision problems. -Juices Arousal is what affects your ability to take any of the big four actions. Too much arousal is bad: Your heart is beating too fast, palms too sweaty, too jumpy... too little means you're ill-equipped to act against threats, obtain food, and get down on it. It's best to try and get optimal arousal. Sometimes, it's hard... like standing in front of a lecture class and talking can make you over-aroused... it's hard to control sometimes. Excitatory and Inhibitory(Yes and No) Juices: Simply put, this is what makes you either want to eat a pizza or not eat a pizza. Yes juice shoots in, it transmits its message, then it gets sucked out. It's the same with No juice. However, just like broken brains there can be problems with the chemicals. For example, depression is when the Yes juice gets sucked out before it gets a chance to transmit its message. That makes life kinda like this... "Do you want to eat a pizza?" "Ye...! Er... eh... I dunno..." Stories and things from class that supplement this Bio story... might be on the test, too. Remember the video of the dog that kept trying to attack its leg? When you first entered the class, you could say it was being dumb... or it was being a bad dog. Now you can maybe say there was some damage to his brain's wiring or juices... that maybe he's paired chewing on something with constant danger... Deer whistle... there were two types of people. The, "I went into the woods and blew the whistle. It made an elk charge me." people, and the, "I don't need proof it works... I've never hit a deer, so I know it works!" Kind of like saying, "You need to just cheer up and quit being depressed." versus "You're really depressed... I wonder why." It's easier to do the first, but more productive for the second. Estimating the size of the moon... some of us thought the moon was quite small and some quite large. However, most people overestimated the size... this shows us something in biology: most people are kinda a like, whether they be white, black, yellow, short or tall. When someone says there's no such thing as normal, you should disagree because there definitely is. At any rate, how could anyone be unique if there wasn't a normal to compare unique to...? Remember, when you catch a cold... it has nothing to do with being cold. Can't tell that to deer whistle sellers though. Keep the video of Jon, Dr. Kunkel's nephew in mind... what he went through, the damage it did to him, the damage that could be done to anyone. Damage to the wiring of one's brain... Left side of the brain controls the right side of the body... right brain controls left side of body. Left handed doesn't make you right brained though... you are ALWAYS using all of your brain... if you didn't, it'd rot out. The left side tends to deal with language and logic... the right side with intuition and creativity. New Story! Behaviorism: Pairing Unconditioned Stimulus(UCS)-> Something we react to naturally... you could say we're brained to react to them. Loud noises, pain, smells... so on. Neutral Stimulus(NS)-> Something that don't react to naturally. The color green, doctor's offices, dogs... If you pair a UCS with a NS, the NS can eventually borrow the reaction from the UCS. As an example, you hear a loud noise while looking at the color green. Eventually after hearing the loud noise enough times while simultaneously being presented the green, you eventually learn to react to the green the same way you would a loud noise. If you get robbed in a convenience store, you may not be able to go in another one for awhile because you've paired it with being afraid. To properly pair a UCS with an NS, the UCS has to happen automatically after the NS and almost every time after the NS. While you can pair two things together, though, you can also eventually forget too... this can be good or bad. Habituation... this is when we get used to UCSes. For example, when you're in high school and you hear the bell for class and it startles you... eventually it won't startle you because it's a habitual thing that occurrs. Stimulus generalization... this is what happened to Little Albert. They played the loud gong behind him every time they showed him a white rat. Little Albert became afraid of white rats, BUT he also became afraid of other furry things as well. Extinction,spontaneous recovery... after awhile, if you don't pair the NS with the UCS for awhile, we forget about it... Little Albert can see furry animals without being scared it there is no gong for a long time. However, sometimes it pops back up... that's spontaneous recovery. It's kind of like returning from war. No gunshots to scare you, but sometimes you get scared just the same... Consequences B=f(c)... basically, the way you behave is directly related to the consequences of your behavior. If you touch a hot stove, it hurts. You're not going to want to touch it again. Therefore, it decreases stove-touching behavior. Positive reinforcement... I get candy whenever I'm quiet. Candy makes quiet behavior go up. Negative Reinforcement... I don't want a job and I don't like society... so jail is negatively reinforcing because it takes me out of society. Punishment decreases a behavior... it has to be Consistent (every time) Closely follow behavior Natural, not imposed consequence Aversive (in no way reinforcing… not “don’t make me come back there”) Dispassionate (if the punisher is not getting off on it) Public (available for vicarious learning) BF Skinner trained pigeons to guide missles... they did it because they got food out of it. PSA: The Unconscious NOT Subconscious. The unconscious is an older part of your brain that you're not consciously aware of. It works automatically, that is, without our input. Corey smokes a cigarette. Corey isn't smoking a cigarette, he's smoking cigarette-ness. What is the ness? For Corey, it's love and Mom and Dad and a lot of other things... Two kinds of energy: Loving and Aggressive. So now we have Energy and -Ness. For Corey, cigarettes got caught up in love... Love + Cigarette = Corey wants to smoke a cigarette. Sometimes it's not so easy though... Three ways to satisfy our unconscious desire: Dreams, insanity, and when we are infants. It usually happens with dreams, which is why they mean so much in PSA. Since we can't consciously fulfill these desires, sometimes we compromise... that's why I smoke the cigarette. I'm not getting my mom's love... just something like it. Sometimes we slip around... we want to say fuck, but we just say freak. Psychosexual stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital. Fixation is the first two in each explanation. Oral: Breastfeeding. Take too much, take too little, or just right. Needy people, closed-off, cold people, 'regular' people. Anal: Shit too soon and everywhere, don't shit at all, shit just right. Messy and unkempt, overly neat and orderly, 'regular' people. Phallic: Won't share, Shares too much, proper amount of sharing. Prick, Pussy, person. Latency... nothing's happening... genital... well, that's puberty.