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The PsychSim5 Activities

Psychology’s Timeline

Purpose: to provide a more comprehensive synopsis of the origins of psychology, the early history of psychology as a discipline, and the major themes in twentieth-century psychology

Summary: This activity will take you on a tour through the history of psychology. You will learn how psychology grew out of philosophy and medical physiology, and you will become acquainted with some of the pioneers of psychology as a scientific discipline.

What’s Wrong With This Study?

Purpose: to review some of the major pitfalls in designing a research study

Summary: In this activity you will review the basic methodology used in psychological research, practice applying research methodology to new situations, and consider specific pitfalls that could reduce the value of the research findings.

Descriptive Statistics

Purpose: to describe the common measures of central tendency and variability and demonstrate their use in summarizing a data set

Summary: This activity introduces you to the basic statistics that researchers use to summarize their sets of data. You will learn how to produce a distribution of scores and how to graph the distribution. After descriptions of the measures of central tendency (mode, median, and mean) and variability (range and standard deviation), you will be able to manipulate the scores in a distribution to see how each score affects the descriptive statistics for that distribution.

Correlation

Purpose: to demonstrate the use of scatterplots and to clarify the meaning of the correlation coefficient computed from them

Summary: This activity demonstrates the use of scatterplots to visualize positive and negative relationships. After reviewing the interpretation of positive and negative correlations, we’ll test your skill at guessing the approximate value of correlation coefficients for various scatterplots. Then you’ll be able to alter the scores in a data set to see the effects on the value of the correlation coefficient.

Neural Messages

Purpose: to describe and simulate the basic principles of axonal conduction and synaptic transmission in the nervous system

Summary: This activity explains the way neurons communicate with each other. You will review the basic types of neurons and the parts of a neuron, and then learn how neurons “fire” (generate impulses) and send messages to neighboring neurons.

PsychSim5 Activities 1

Hemispheric Specialization

Purpose: to explain how research on split-brain patients has helped us understand the special abilities of the two halves of the brain

Summary: This activity describes what researchers have learned about the special abilities of the left and right sides of the brain. After a brief review of the way that information is carried from the main sensory channels to the brain, you will test the responses of a simulated “split-brain” patient to demonstrate that, for most right-handers, the main language center is located in the left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere is specialized for spatial tasks. Then you will carry out the same experiments with a simulated “normal” individual to explore the functioning of the hemispheres in an intact brain.

Brain and Behavior

Purpose: to review the major divisions of the brain (brainstem, cerebral cortex), the important structures within each region, and the chief functions of each brain structure or area

Summary: In this activity you will take a tour of the human brain, exploring the major brain regions to discover the functions of each region or area.

Dating and Mating

Purpose: to present evolutionary psychology’s explanation of sex differences in mate selection

Summary: In this activity you will explore your own preferences for an “ideal mate,” then consider the perspective of evolutionary psychology on this important issue.

Mind-Reading Monkeys

Purpose: to explain an important new research area that bridges the fields of evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology

Summary: In this activity you will explore one of the brain mechanisms believed to foster the evolution of human language and culture. The focus of the activity is a simulated experiment in which you will play the role of a researcher who is recording the activity of “mirror neurons” in the premotor cortex of monkeys as they perform various tasks or watch others perform those tasks. The results will demonstrate that mirror neurons are involved in observational learning, and may have played a major role in the evolution of language and culture.

Cognitive Development

Purpose: to describe Piaget’s theory on the growth of intelligence and simulate the performance of three children of different ages on some of Piaget’s tasks

Summary: After presenting background information on Jean Piaget, this activity explains some of the basic concepts of his theory, including schemas, operations, and assimilation/accommodation. Next, Piaget’s stages of cognitive development are described and illustrated with examples. In the last segment, you act as the experimenter, testing 4-, 7-, and 13-year-olds on Piaget’s conservation and seriation tasks.


Conception to Birth

Purpose: to review the three phases of prenatal development, from the germinal phase (fertilization to about 2 weeks) through the embryonic phase (3 weeks to about 8 weeks) and the fetal phase (9 weeks to birth)

Summary: This activity will help you understand the sequence of prenatal development. You will take a tour through the three phases of development between conception and birth—with illustrations and animations of each stage of the process.

Who Am I?

Purpose: to review Erikson’s perspective on identity formation and Marcia’s categories of identity status during adolescence

Summary: This activity will help you understand Erik Erikson’s perspective on identity formation, as well as James Marcia’s four steps or stages in the identity process. The activity will also help you reflect on your own progress toward achieving a secure and stable identity.

Signs of Aging

Purpose: to explain the physical changes that occur in middle age and late adulthood

Summary: In this activity you will explore the main aspects of physical aging.

The Auditory System

Purpose: to explain how we hear and how the physical nature of the sound wave determines the quality of the sound experience

Summary: This activity covers the characteristics of sound that are important for hearing, and describes the structure of the ear and auditory pathway. You will be asked to locate the parts of the ear on a drawing. The activity simulates the transmission of a sound wave through the outer, middle, and inner ear and shows how the cochlea converts the mechanical energy to neural impulses. Next, it explains the concepts of frequency, amplitude, and waveform and shows how these aspects of the sound wave are related to the experience of pitch, loudness, and timbre.

Colorful World

Purpose: to review the principles of color sensation; includes a comparison of the trichromatic and opponent-process theories of color vision

Summary: In this activity you will explore the principles of color vision, and will demonstrate some aspects of color sensation with your own eyes.

Visual Illusions

Purpose: to demonstrate and explain four well-known visual illusions

Summary: This activity offers the opportunity to test your susceptibility to four famous visual illusions. In the Müller-Lyer, Ponzo, horizontal-vertical, and Poggendorf illusions you will be


asked to adjust the length or position of one part of the stimulus to match the apparent length or position of another part. Your results will be displayed and interpreted.

Your Mind on Drugs

Purpose: to describe the basic types of psychoactive drugs and the neural mechanisms of drug action

Summary: In this activity you will explore the behavioral effects of some common drugs that influence the brain—producing changes in our arousal level, our mood, our perception of our environment, and our actions.

EEG and Sleep Stages

Purpose: to describe the five stages of the sleep cycle and the electroencephalograph (EEG)

Summary: This activity provides an explanation of physiological recording of electrical potentials from the scalp and their relationship to levels of consciousness and sleep, and is followed by a simulation of one night of recordings from a sleep laboratory, illustrating the normal sleep cycle, REM sleep, and the relationship between REM sleep and dream reports.

Maze Learning

Purpose: to demonstrate some principles of spatial learning and spatial memory in a way-finding task

Summary: This activity gives you a rat’s-eye view of maze learning by allowing you to move and control a simulated rat’s movements through a maze.

Classical Conditioning

Purpose: to simulate the acquisition and extinction of conditioned associations

Summary: This activity provides a review of Pavlov’s famous experiment on the salivary response in dogs, as well as the basic processes of classical conditioning: acquisition, generalization, discrimination training, and extinction. You will play the role of an experimenter attempting to produce a conditioned eye blink in a human subject.

Operant Conditioning

Purpose: to demonstrate some principles of behavior control through the manipulation of reinforcement

Summary: This activity describes a form of learning called operant conditioning—learning from the consequences that follow our actions. The concept of reinforcement is illustrated with examples from everyday life, while the value of controlled reinforcement schedules is demonstrated in a simulated experiment showing rat bar-pressing behavior under four different schedules of reinforcement.


Monkey See, Monkey Do

Purpose: to introduce Albert Bandura’s classic research on observational learning

Summary: In this activity you will learn about Albert Bandura’s classic experiment on observational learning, see some video clips of two children who participated in the experiment, and be able to practice your skills in observing and labeling specific behaviors performed by these children.

Iconic Memory

Purpose: to demonstrate some aspects of sensory register

Summary: This activity simulates Sperling’s classic experiments on the duration of visual sensory memory. You will see nine random letters flashed in a 3 x 3 matrix, and will attempt to recall the letters under three conditions: free-recall, cued-recall, and delayed cued-recall. Your results will be compared with Sperling’s finding of rapid decay of the visual “icon.”

Forgetting

Purpose: to demonstrate the effect of interference on memory

Summary: This activity will help you understand one of the reasons why we forget information—interference. After some introductory material, you will play the role of a subject in a simulated experiment on paired-associate learning.

Short-Term Memory

Purpose: to explain some basic aspects of short-term memory

Summary: In this activity you will learn about the common model of memory storage, and will be able to test your ability to hold information in short-term memory.

When Memory Fails

Purpose: to explain how memories are stored in the brain, and how damage to certain areas of the brain can impair memory

Summary: This activity explores severe memory loss—how it happens and what impact it has on behavior. In the process, you will learn about the different types of memories we store, as well as the areas of the brain that are involved in forming and retrieving memories.

Trusting Your Memory

Purpose: to explain research by Loftus, Schacter, Roediger, and others about memory errors based on gist memory, source confusion, and suggestibility

Summary: In this activity you’ll be able to test the reliability of your memory, and then learn what researchers have discovered about the way that memories are stored and modified by new information.


My Head Is Spinning

Purpose: to demonstrate thinking with verbal concepts and mental images, using the concept of mental rotation

Summary: This activity provides some background information about thinking with verbal concepts versus thinking with mental images. The issue of mental rotation is introduced and explained with reference to the classic studies by Shepard and colleagues. You will participate in a simulated experiment involving mental rotation of the letter “R” in the picture plane. Your results will be graphed and compared with the pattern of results from Cooper and Shepard (1973).

Dueling Brains

Purpose: to examine research on hemispheric specialization and word recognition

Summary: This activity opens with a brief review of research on left-hemisphere specialization for language, and then presents a simulation of a classic word recognition experiment that typically demonstrates a right visual field advantage in identifying words.

Get Smart

Purpose: to explain the multidimensional nature of intelligence and demonstrate some tasks used to measure intelligence

Summary: In this activity you will explore the concept of intelligence and some of the methods of measuring intelligence. Along the way, you will try your hand at performing a few of the tasks and answering some questions typically found on intelligence tests.

Hunger and the Fat Rat

Purpose: to demonstrate the role of the hypothalamus in the control of eating behavior in rats

Summary: This activity provides a simulated experiment on weight regulation in rats. After a brief review of the methods of brain research involving electrical stimulation and destructive surgery, you will examine the effects of stimulating or destroying two different regions of a rat’s hypothalamus. The results will be graphed in terms of the rat’s daily food intake and body weight, illustrating the role of the hypothalamus in the regulation of eating and weight control.

Expressing Emotion

Purpose: to examine facial expressions and the underlying nonverbal messages they may convey

Summary: In this activity you will learn about the role of facial expressions in the nonverbal communication of emotion. Then we’ll put you in control of a cartoon-type face and test your skill in manipulating its facial muscles to form particular emotional expressions. This will help you learn the facial cues associated with each primary emotion.


Catching Liars

Purpose: to explain the relationship between emotional states and physiological arousal, as revealed by nonverbal cues, facial expressions, and polygraph recordings

Summary: In this activity you will explore some of the methods used to detect deception.

All Stressed Out

Purpose: to provide an overview of the bio-psycho-social nature of stress, including its everyday sources, the psychological and physiological impact of stressors, and how cognitive appraisal influences the coping process

Summary: This activity will describe for you the sources of everyday stress. Next, you’ll read a description of the impact of stress on the mind and body, focused on the fight-or-flight response (and its possible variant, tend and befriend).Then, you will learn about the most influential model describing stress as a process—the transactional model. Finally, you will complete an interactive exercise exploring how differences in cognitive appraisal and coping style alter the stress experience.

Helplessly Hoping

Purpose: to explain the research basis for the concept of learned helplessness

Summary: In this activity you will explore the importance of a sense of personal control over the events in your life. You’ll participate in a simulated experiment on learned helplessness in dogs, and then consider how the results might apply to the behavior of people trapped in unpleasant situations.

Mystery Client

Purpose: to review and test understanding of the classification of behavioral disorders

Summary: This activity will be most useful to you after you have read the text material on psychological disorders. In this activity you’ll take the role of a consultant called in to provide a second opinion on several clients with disorders, based only on the information contained in the clients’ files. You will select the information to be examined for each client, then form a diagnosis according to what you know about the symptoms of the various disorders.

Losing Touch With Reality

Purpose: to explain the symptoms of schizophrenia and the brain changes that accompany schizophrenia

Summary: This activity explores schizophrenia, one of the most severe and bizarre psychological disorders. You will learn about the types of schizophrenia and the main symptoms, view video clips of individuals with schizophrenia, and be asked to identify the symptoms displayed by each individual.


Computer Therapist

Purpose: to demonstrate (in a limited way) some principles of active listening and artificial intelligence by having the computer simulate a Rogerian person-centered therapist

Summary: After learning about the famous ELIZA artificial intelligence program, you will engage in a conversation with a “computer therapist.” The “therapist” will respond in a more-or-less realistic fashion, by identifying key words or phrases in your conversation, and then generating a nonjudgmental reply that reflects your feelings, to simulate some principles of active listening from Carl Rogers’s client-centered therapy.

Mystery Therapist

Purpose: to help students understand the basic goals and techniques of the main forms of psychotherapy

Summary: The activity reviews the major perspectives on psychological disorders and therapy and presents an interactive exercise in which students read brief fragments of case studies and are asked to identify the type of therapy exemplified by each case.

Social Decision-Making

Purpose: to demonstrate the decision-making strategies of persons in zero-sum and non-zero-sum environments

Summary: This activity contains a simulation of two classic “social trap” games used in research on competition and cooperation. You will first play the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” game against the computer, and will quickly discover the difference between zero-sum and non-zero-sum environments. Next, you will play the “Trucking Game” against the computer to explore ways to maximize trust and cooperation in situations where people compete for limited resources.

Not My Type

Purpose: to examine the research on attribution and person perception

Summary: In this activity, after reviewing some of the research on the impact of “first impressions,” you will explore the process of forming attitudes about other people.

Everybody’s Doing It!

Purpose: to help students understand the pressure to conform to the behavior of others

Summary: In this activity you will explore the issue of social influence—how the behaviors of other people affects your behavior. We’ll take you through simulations of some of the classic experiments on conformity and apply the results to everyday situation


PsychSim 5: PSYCHOLOGY’S TIMELINE

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity will take you on a tour through the history of psychology. You will learn how psychology grew out of philosophy and medical physiology, and will become acquainted with some of the pioneers of psychology as a scientific discipline.

Famous Psychologists Can you think of any famous psychologists from psychology’s history?

Open Answer, but should include at least one of the following: Aristotle, Darwin, Descartes, Helmholz, Locke, or Plato.

The Early History: Philosophers and Scientists Match each of the philosophers and scientists with their descriptions AND write in the

approximate year of their contribution.

o __F__ Aristotle (_320__) 320 B.C. A. British philosopher, empiricist

o __C__ Darwin (_1860_) 360 B.C. B. Greek philosopher, nativist

o __E__ Descartes (_1600_) 1600 C. British biologist

o __D__ Helmholz (_1830_) 1700 D. German physiologist

o __A__ Locke (_1700_) 1830 E. French philosopher, nativist, and dualist

o __B__ Plato (_360__) 1860 F. Greek philosopher, empiricist

Pioneers of Psychology Match each of the pioneers of psychology with their descriptions AND write in the approximate

year of their main contribution.

o __G__ Calkins (_1895_) 1879 A. Studied memory

o __A__ Ebbinghaus (_1888_) 1882 B. First psychotherapy

o __B__ Freud (_1900_) 1885 C. First lab in USA

o __C__ Hall (_1882_) 1888 D. Used introspection

o __E__ James (_1890_) 1890 E. First comprehensive textbook

o __D__ Titchener (_1885_) 1895 F. First psychology laboratory

o __F__ Wundt (_1879_) 1900 G. First woman president of APA

Psychology’s Timeline 9

Twentieth-Century Psychology Match each of the key contributors with their descriptions AND write in the approximate year of

their main contribution.

o ___G__ Chomsky (_1960_) 1905 A. Studied learning in cats

o ___H__ Maslow (_1955_) 1910 B. First woman PhD

o ___C__ Pavlov (_1905_) 1915 C. Discovered conditioning

o ___F__ Piaget (_1950_) 1920 D. Founded behaviorism

o ___I__ Rogers (_1970_) 1940 E. Studied reinforcement

o ___E__ Skinner (_1940_) 1950 F. Studied children’s intelligence

o ___A__ Thorndike (_1910_) 1955 G. Studied language

o ___B__ Washburn (_1915_) 1960 H. Humanist approach

o ___D__ Watson (_1920_) 1970 I. Humanistic therapy

Psychology’s Timeline 10

PsychSim 5: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS STUDY?

Name: Section:

Date:

In this activity you will review the basic methodology used in psychological research, practice applying research methodology to new situations, and consider specific pitfalls that could reduce the value of the research findings.

Thinking About Psychological Research What are the three types of research methods and what are their goals?

1. Type: Descriptive approach

Goals: to describe or document a particular behavior

2. Type: Correlational approach

Goals: to predict the occurrence of a particular behavior

3. Type: Experimental approach

Goals: to explain a behavior or understand why it occurs

Experimental Control What is the benefit of conducting an experiment, rather than using a different type of study?

Only experiments enable the investigator to isolate cause-and-effect by controlling all relevant factors.

Study 1: Vocabulary Growth What is the broad goal of the study?

Descriptive—to describe typical behavior

What is wrong with the study?Biased or nonrepresentative sample

In your own words, describe the single most important flaw in this study’s design or interpretation.Student’s answers will vary, but an example could be: The major flaw in this study is the selection of participants. Professor Jones tested only the children of college professors. This limited group is an example of a biased or nonrepresentative sample. The genetic inheritance and environmental experiences of faculty children could differ from the general population in important ways that would influence the rate of language development.

In your own words, describe how the study could be improved to eliminate the weaknesses (or at least the major flaw).

Student’s answers will vary, but an appropriate example could be: The most important improvement Professor Jones could make would be to select a larger, more representative sample. He could also improve his study by using standard vocabulary measures rather than developing his own word lists.

What’s Wrong With This Study 11

Study 2: Learning to Share What is the broad goal of the study?

Experimental—to explain a particular aspect of behavior What is wrong with the study?

Experimenter bias (experimenter’s expectations could influence the results)

In your own words, describe the single most important flaw in this study’s design or interpretation.Student’s answers will vary but an appropriate example could be: The major flaw in this study is the fact that Professor Okamoto himself assigned the participants to groups AND rated their behavior. This is an example of a possible experimenter bias, because Professor Okamoto’s knowledge of the type of television each child had watched might influence her ratings of that child’s behavior.

In your own words, describe how the study could be improved to eliminate the weaknesses (or at least the major flaw).Student’s answers will vary, but an appropriate response could be: The most important improvement Professor Okamoto could make would be to use blind raters—that is, raters who do not know which children were assigned to the experimental condition.

Study 3: Sleep and Academic Performance What is the broad goal of the study?

Correlational—to predict a particular aspect of behavior

What is wrong with the study?Interpreting a correlation as indicating cause and effect

In your own words, describe the single most important flaw in this study’s design or interpretation.Student’s answers will vary, but an appropriate response could be: The major flaw in this study is interpreting a correlation as indicating cause and effect—that is, deciding that lack of sleep causes poor academic performance. Because Professor Rivera merely measured the two variables rather than manipulating one of them, he cannot say that one influenced the other.

In your own words, describe how the study could be improved to eliminate the weaknesses (or at least the major flaw).Student’s answers will vary, but an appropriate response could be: The simplest way of improving the study would be to change the interpretation of the results. Professor Rivera could safely report that he had found a positive correlation between amount of sleep and academic performance, rather than claiming that sleep influenced grades. If he wanted to make a cause-effect statement, he would need to do an experimental study, not a correlational study. He could randomly assign students to high-sleep and low-sleep conditions, and then measure the performance of all students on the same test (rather than allowing them to report their grades from different classes—which might have different levels of difficulty).

Study 4: Language Instruction What is the broad goal of the study?

Experimental—to explain a particular aspect of behavior

What is wrong with the study?No control group.


In your own words, describe the single most important flaw in this study’s design or interpretation.Student’s answers will vary, but an acceptable answer could be: The major flaw in this study is lack of a control group. Professor Knudsen administered the new teaching method to all her students, so there is absolutely no way to tell whether her method made any difference in her students’ acquisition of the second language. Without a comparison group, we don’t know whether a “B” average is better or worse than student performance under Professor Knudsen’s old teaching method, or under alternative teaching methods used by other instructors.

In your own words, describe how the study could be improved to eliminate the weaknesses (or at least the major flaw).Student’s answers will vary, but an example of an appropriate response could be: Professor Knudsen could improve this study by using the new teaching method in two of her classes, while using a traditional teaching method in the third class to provide a baseline comparison. She could also improve the study by using a standardized test of German language mastery, rather than course grades, to measure the outcome.


PsychSim 5: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

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Date:

This activity introduces you to the basic statistics that researchers use to summarize their sets of data.

The numbers below represent the scores of a group of students on a math test. Use them to perform the required calculations.

10, 13, 10, 12, 11, 7, 12, 11, 6, 11, 12, 11, 8, 10, 9

Distribution of Scores Sort the scores; that is, arrange them in order from lowest to highest.

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 11, 12, 12, 12, 13

Create a frequency histogram.

Measures of Central Tendency What is a mode?

The mode is the most frequent score in a distribution and is a measure of the central tendency.

What is the mode of your distribution? _________11__________

What is a median? The median is the middle score in a distribution and is the second measure of the central tendency.

What is the median of your distribution? _________11__________

What is a mean? The mean is the average of the distribution and the third measure of central tendency.

How is a mean calculated? The mean is calculated by adding up all the scores and dividing the total by the number of scores.

Descriptive Statistics 14

What is the mean of your distribution? ______10.2______ Show your calculations.678910101011 Number of scores = 15 153 / 15 = 10.211111112121213 +153

Skewed Distributions Which measure of central tendency would be the best “average” to describe a skewed

distribution? Why?In a distribution like this, the mean is pulled toward the extreme scores at the high end of the range. Since the median is not affected by these scores, it is probably a better measure of central tendency in this case.

Measures of Variability How is a range calculated?

Range is calculated by subtracting the low score from the high score.

What is the range of your distribution? __________7____________

What is standard deviation?Standard deviation is a more standard way to measure variation in a distribution. The standard deviation is the average of the differences between the individual scores and the mean.

How is standard deviation calculated?

The standard deviation is the average of the differences between the individual scores and the mean. It’s the average distance, or average deviation, from the mean.

(From PsychSim 5) To calculate the standard deviation, first calculate the difference between each score and the mean (raw score minus mean score). Next, square each difference result. After the differences are squared, add them together. Finally, divide that sum by the number of scores and take the square root.

or (From Hockenbury, Psychology 3/e) To calculate the standard deviation, add all the scores in a distribution and divide by the number of total scores to get the mean. Then subtract the mean from each score to get a list of deviations from the mean. Then square each deviation, add the squared deviations, divide by the total number of cases, and take the square root.

Descriptive Statistics 15

PsychSim 5: CORRELATION

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity demonstrates the use of scatterplots to visualize positive and negative relationships.

Positive Correlation What does it mean to say that two variables are positively correlated?

If two variables are positively correlated they go up and down together (their correlation coefficient is positive).

Negative Correlation What does it mean to say that two variables are negatively correlated?

Scores that are negatively correlated are associated in such a way that one score falls as the other rises (as in the relationship between self-esteem and depression); correlation coefficient is negative.

Uncorrelated Variables What does it mean to say that two variables are uncorrelated?

If two variables are uncorrelated (or not correlated) the correlation coefficient is near zero. Look at the example from screen 6 of the exercise: persons with high values on variable 1 are equally likely to have either high or low values on variable 2, and vice versa.

Correlation Coefficient What is a correlation coefficient?

The correlation coefficient is a statistic (a number) that indicates the strength of the association between the two variables. It can take values ranging from +1.0 (the strongest possible positive correlation) through 0.0 (no correlation at all) to -1.0 (the strongest negative correlation).

Why Use It? What value or benefit would a researcher gain by calculating a correlation coefficient rather than

simply describing the relationship as a positive correlation or a negative correlation?The correlation coefficient allows us to talk about the relationship with much more precision. Instead of saying simply that two variables are correlated or not correlated, we can say that the two variables have a correlation of 0.85, or 0.12, or -0.59, or whatever the exact degree of relationship happens to be.

Estimating the Relationship Look at the scatterplots and try to estimate the direction (positive or negative) and the strength of

the relationship. Write in your guess below.

Scatterplot 1 _.108__

Scatterplot 2 _-.252__

Scatterplot 3 __.816__

Scatterplot 4 _-.628__

Correlation 16



Causality and Predictability The presence of a correlation between two variables doesn’t prove that certain values on one

variable ____cause_______ high or low values on the other. It merely demonstrates that the two

variables are _____associated_____ in some way.

The relationship between two correlated variables has _________predictive value___________.

This means that if a strong correlation exists between variables, then knowing a person’s score on

one variable allows us to predict a person’s score on the other variable.

Correlation 17

PsychSim 5: NEURAL MESSAGES

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity explains the way that neurons communicate with each other.

Neuron Parts Match the part of the neuron identified with its description:

o _B_ Axon A. Contains the nucleus, which controls the function of the entire cell

o _D_ Axon terminals B. Carry signals to other nerve cells

o _A_ Cell body (soma) C. Receive signals from other nerve cells

o _C_ Dendrites D. Contain small sacs called synaptic vesicles that play an important role in transmitting signals from one cell to the next

A Tip Dendrites ______detect__________

Axons _______announce__________

A Closer Look What does it mean to say that an axon’s membrane is “selectively permeable”?

That means that some molecules can pass easily through the membrane, while others can only pass through special channels controlled by gates.

Given what you know about synaptic transmission, how do you think a message jumps across the synaptic gap and is passed to the next neuron?The process of synaptic transmission involves the release of neurotransmitter molecules that float across the synaptic gap and stimulate receptors in the next neuron. When the neural impulse reaches the axon terminal, the vesicles open up and release their neurotransmitter molecules into the synaptic cleft. The neurotransmitter molecules float across the gap, and find their way to special receptors on the surface of the other neuron’s membrane. Each neurotransmitter molecule is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

Each receptor (binding site) will accept only a certain type of neurotransmitter molecule.

If the puzzle piece fits and the neurotransmitter binds to the receptor, a gate opens to allow ions to flow through a channel in the membrane into the interior of the postsynaptic neuron.

Neural Messages 18

PsychSim 5: HEMISPHERIC SPECIALIZATION

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity describes what researchers have learned about the special abilities of the left and right sides of the brain. You will learn how information is transmitted to these two hemispheres and about the unique function of each.

Hemispheric Connections What is the name of the band of fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain?

What is its function?The two hemispheres are connected by a band of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. Its function is to carry messages between the two brain hemispheres.

Each hemisphere is primarily connected to the opposite side of the body. This means that a touch on the left hand would be registered in which hemisphere? The right.

When sound waves enter the right ear, which hemisphere receives the primary information?The left.

This crossover pattern is also true in part for the visual pathway. When light enters the left eye, which hemisphere receives the information?Both hemispheres.

How is the visual pathway from the eye different from that of the ear or hand?Each retina is divided into two parts. When you stare at any small object, the image of that object falls directly on the dividing line. But any object to the left of where you are staring will fall on the right half of each retina, and vice versa.

Split-Brain Research Briefly explain split-brain research.

Spilt-brain research is conducted on people whose corpus callosum has been severed (either surgically or naturally) to more accurately study hemispheric specialization.

If a split-brain research participant is blindfolded and a fork is placed in his or her right hand, how would you guess that the person would respond?The participant would be able to name the object.

If a split-brain research participant is blindfolded and a fork is placed in his or her left hand, how would you guess that the person would respond?The participant would not be able to name the object.

Split-Brain Research A split-brain patient can name an unseen object placed in the right hand, but cannot name objects

placed in the left hand. What does this suggest about the language abilities of the two hemispheres?The left hemisphere controls language.

Hemispheric Specialization 19

In an additional experiment, words are flashed briefly to the left or right visual field of the split-brain patient. Try to predict the results. For example, when the word appears in the left visual field, will the person be able to read the word?The participant will have difficulty reading the word.

In a different task, a split-brain patient has to look at a completed block pattern and assemble the blocks near his or her right hand to match the pattern, using only the right hand. Can the patient do it? Explain your thinking.No, the participant cannot complete this task because the left hemisphere cannot handle the spatial relationships.

Why is it that humans with an intact corpus callosum can name objects placed in either hand and easily read words flashed to either visual field?Because the intact corpus callosum can transmit the necessary information from one hemisphere to the other.

Hemispheric Specialization 20

PsychSim 5: BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR

Name: Section:

Date:

In this activity you will take a tour of the human brain and explore the major brain regions to discover the functions of each region or area.

Functional Specialization In terms of brain function, what is functional specialization?

Functional specialization means that each function or capability of the nervous system (such as hearing a sound or moving your thumb) is controlled by a specific cluster of neurons (a neural network) in a specific area of the brain.

Why is the principle of complex communication important to understand?It is important to understand because each neural network or functional area is interconnected with and influenced by other networks in other regions of the brain.

Test Yourself on Lower Brain Structures Match each brain part with its function:

o _C_ Pituitary gland A. Located above the midbrain at the top of the brainstem; routes incoming messages from all the senses (except smell) to the appropriate brain areas for processing

o _D_ Medulla B. Part of the limbic system; regulates hunger, thirst, and body temperature and contains the so-called pleasure centers of the brain

o _J_ Pons C. The master gland of the endocrine system

o _E_ Reticular formation D. Located in the brainstem; controls breathing and heartbeat

o _F_ Cerebellum E. A nerve network that runs up the center of the brainstem; plays an important role in controlling alertness and attention

o _I_ Midbrain F. Located at the back of the brainstem; assists in balance and the coordination of voluntary movement

o _A_ Thalamus G. Part of the limbic system; is involved in learning and in forming new memories

o _G_ Hippocampus H. Part of the limbic system; is involved in regulation of the emotions of fear and rage

o _H_ Amygdala I. Located near the top of the brainstem; integrates specific types of information from the eyes and the ears, and sends this on to other parts of the brain

Brain and Behavior 21

o _B_ Hypothalamus J. Located in the brainstem; controls breathing and heartbeat; connects the medulla to the two sides of the cerebellum to help coordinate and integrate movement on each side of the body; involved in sleep and dreaming

The Cerebral Cortex Each hemisphere of the cerebral cortex is divided into four regions called “lobes.” Name them.

Match each lobe to its associated cortex:

o _B_ __frontal lobes____ A. Somatosensory cortex

o _A_ __parietal lobes___ B. Motor cortex

o _D_ ___temporal lobes__ C. Visual cortex

o _C_ ___occipital lobes___ D. Auditory cortex

Name the three distinct areas of language cortex in the left hemisphere. Match them to their

related dysfunction.

o _B_ ___Broca’s area_____ A. Ability to read aloud

o _C_ ____Wernicke’s area__ B. Speaking

o _A_ _____Angular gyrus___ C. Language comprehension

Right Hemisphere AbilitiesIf the left hemisphere generally controls language, what special abilities does the right hemisphere have?Research with split-brain patients has demonstrated that in almost all right-handed individuals, the areas of the cortex devoted to the processing and control of spatial abilities—such as reading maps and solving three-dimensional puzzles—are located primarily in the right hemisphere.

Some aspects of musical ability, such as the ability to distinguish musical chords, seem to be controlled by the right hemisphere.

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PsychSim 5: DATING AND MATING

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In this activity you will explore your own preferences for an “ideal mate,” and then consider the perspective of evolutionary psychology on this important issue.

Why Do People Fall in Love? What three factors have social psychologists concluded most influence romantic attraction?

1. Proximity

2. Similarity

3. Physical attractiveness

Results From the Ideal Romantic Partner Survey Did any of the research results surprise you? If not, isn’t that fact surprising in itself?

Answers will vary depending on students’ answers to the survey.

Gender Differences in Mate Selection Across cultures, men consistently place more value than women do on a potential mate’s

___physical attractiveness_, ____youthfulness_____, and _______health_______.

Women consistently place more value than men do on attracting ____mature________,

____dominant_________, _______affluent________, _______powerful_______ mates;

women also want mates who will make a ______long-term investment_____ in their offspring.

Evolutionary Explanations of Mate Selection Does the evolutionary perspective on mate selection make sense to you, or do you see

weaknesses in these explanations? Students’ answers will vary

Making Up and Breaking Up: Jealousy What is the evolutionary explanation for gender differences in jealousy?

The evolutionary explanation for gender differences in jealousy goes like this: Males, always uncertain about who fathered their children, have evolved a greater concern for a mate’s sexual infidelity. Males who did not show sexual jealousy risked raising another man’s children, thus losing out in the genetic struggle. On the other hand, females clearly know who gave birth to their children. However, because a female’s reproductive success often depends on a male’s resources, females have evolved a greater concern that their mate will become emotionally attached to another woman. Females who didn’t show emotional-commitment jealousy risked having their mate’s resources diverted to raising another woman’s children.

Dating and Mating 23

Evaluating Evolutionary ExplanationsWhat are some of the weaknesses of the evolutionary perspective on mate selection?For one thing, critics contend that evolutionary psychologists make too many “hindsight” explanations. That is, they start with the behaviors of today’s men and women and reason backward to what must have happened in our evolutionary past, rather than making testable predictions about future events—the standard scientific approach.

Other critics point out that these evolutionary explanations reinforce the current male-female stereotypes and legitimize them by suggesting that nothing can be done about them—because “it’s in our genes.” Finally, these explanations have been challenged because they ignore other research showing that our culture or social environment influences sexual behavior and judgments of attractiveness.

Dating and Mating 24

PsychSim 5: MIND-READING MONKEYS

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This activity explores one of the brain mechanisms believed to foster the evolution of human language and culture. The focus of the activity is a simulated experiment in which you will play the role of a researcher who is recording the activity of “mirror neurons” in the premotor cortex of monkeys as they perform various tasks or watch others perform those tasks.

Brain Regions Briefly describe the premotor cortex of the brain, including its location and function.

The premotor cortex is located in the frontal lobe, directly in front of the primary motor cortex. The premotor cortex is involved in planning movements.

Neural Experiments In the first simulated experiment with Rizzo, a macaque monkey, a wooden block is placed in

front of him and the results of his neural activity are graphed. What does the graph tell you about the activity of this neuron while Rizzo performed the action of grasping a wooden block? Does it appear that this neuron is “tuned” to respond to this particular action? The graph tells us that the neuron did fire a few times during the action of grasping a wooden block, but the overall rate of activity is very low. It seems likely that this neuron is specialized for some other type of hand movement.

In the second simulated experiment with Rizzo, a small raisin is placed in front of him and the results of his neural activity are graphed. What does the graph tell you about the activity of this neuron while Rizzo performed the action of grasping a raisin? Does it appear that this neuron is “tuned” to respond to this particular action? The neuron fired much more rapidly and continuously while Rizzo grasped the raisin than it did while Rizzo was grasping a block. This pattern of activity suggests that this neuron is specialized for this particular type of hand movement.

In the final simulated experiment with Rizzo, the experimenter grasps a small raisin while Rizzo watches. The results of his neural activity are graphed. What does the graph tell you about the activity of this neuron while Rizzo watched the experimenter perform the action of grasping a raisin? What purpose could this neuron serve? The neuron got very excited while Rizzo watched the experimenter grasp the raisin, and the pattern of activity was very similar to the activity of the neuron when Rizzo was grasping the raisin. Researchers believe that this neuron is actually helping Rizzo understand the experimenter’s hand movement by relating it to his own hand movement.

Mirror Neurons What purpose or purposes could mirror neurons serve in human behavior?

Some researchers believe that the main function of mirror neurons is to promote observational learning—learning by imitation. Anytime you watch someone doing something, the corresponding mirror neurons fire in your brain, activating your system for planning to perform those movements in the future. Observing someone else bouncing a basketball prepares your brain for that action—making it easier for you to imitate that action later. Other researchers believe that mirror neurons provide the foundation for language and language learning.

Mind-Reading Monkeys 25

What is the theorized role of mirror neurons in relation to empathy?Researchers believe that mirror neurons play a central role in empathy, allowing us to feel what others are feeling because their facial expressions of pain or happiness activate our mirror neurons—the same neurons that fire when we make those same facial expressions.

Mind-Reading Monkeys 26

PsychSim 5: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

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This activity describes Piaget’s theory of the growth of intelligence and simulates the performance of three children of different ages on some of Piaget’s tasks.

Schemas What are schemas?

A schema is a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Explain the difference between assimilation and accommodation.Assimilation means incorporating new experiences into our existing framework of understanding, while accommodation means adjusting our old frameworks to new experiences.

Suppose that a 15-month-old toddler has learned to call the four-legged house pet a “doggie.” What do you think would happen if the child sees a horse for the first time? Is the child likely to call the horse a “horsie” or a “doggie” or a “doggie-horse” or some other term? Write your best guess in the space below, and add a sentence explaining why you think the child would use that term to refer to the horse. The child will probably assimilate the new animal into the existing schema for four-legged animals, and will call it a “doggie.”

Stages of Development What are some characteristics of a child in the sensorimotor stage of development? What is object

permanence?In the sensorimotor stage the infant’s thinking is limited to the here and now—to the sensations being experienced and the objects being acted upon. Object permanence is the notion that things continue to exist when they are out of sight.

What are some cognitive limitations of preschoolers? What is egocentrism?The preoperational child makes specific kinds of errors on problems that involve changes in the appearance of objects. For example, if a child is shown two identical balls of modeling clay, and then sees the experimenter roll one of the balls into a long rope, the child is likely to say that the rope has “more” clay than the ball.

Egocentrism is the inability to take another person’s point of view.

Measures of Mental Operations What are some differences in mental operations among the three children in the conservation of

number/checkers task?It appears that Lisa is distracted by the length of the rows and fails to consider the density or spacing of the checkers in each row. But Juan recognizes that the original equivalence of the two rows is retained even when the appearance of the rows changes. Keiko also maintains the original equivalence of the rows when the appearance changes.

What are some differences in mental operations among the three children in the conservation of liquid/water glass task?

Cognitive Development 27

Lisa is distracted by the height of the liquid and fails to consider the width of the glass. Both Juan and Keiko recognize that the original equivalence of the quantity of liquid in the two glasses is not changed when the liquid is poured into a wider or narrower glass—even if the height of the liquid changes.

What are some differences in mental operations among the three children in the seriation/sticks task?Lisa doesn’t seem to have the mental operations necessary to make simultaneous comparisons among all of the sticks—so she gives up. Both Juan and Keiko understand how to arrange a group of objects into a series along a particular dimension, such as length. Juan still appears to use a little of the “trial-and-error” approach, while Keiko works in a systematic way, making the mental comparisons before she picks up the next stick.

What are some differences in mental operations among the three children in the seriation without visible objects/word problem task?Lisa clearly can’t handle this type of problem. She falls back instead on what she has observed about average height. Juan tries to make the mental comparisons, but loses track of some of the relevant information. He doesn’t recognize that this problem is simply the “Sticks” task in verbal form. But Keiko is able to see that the form of this problem is really SALLY > BILL > MR. JONES and solves it easily.

Cognitive Development 28

PsychSim 5: CONCEPTION TO BIRTH

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This activity will help you understand the sequence of prenatal development.

Fertilization Of the 200 to 400 million sperm cells released in a typical ejaculation, approximately how many

do you think will reach the ovum?

__X__ 100 _____ 3000 _____ 100,000 _____ 1,000,000

Germinal Phase Briefly describe the main features of this phase of development.

The single cell zygote divides, producing two exact copies of the original cell. Each of the new cells divides again; as this doubling continues the mass of cells grows in size. The mass of cells is also moving down the fallopian tube toward the uterus. As the cell mass divides again and again, it grows larger and more complex. By about 4 days after fertilization, the cell mass develops a hollow center and is called a blastocyst. Four or five days after fertilization, the blastocyst enters the uterus. A few days later, if all goes well, it attaches itself to the wall of the uterus—a process known as implantation.

Embryonic Phase Briefly describe the main features of this phase of development.

The embryonic phase of prenatal development lasts from 2 weeks to 8 weeks after fertilization.

Now that it is safely implanted in the wall of the uterus, the embryo undergoes a series of rapid changes. The outer cell mass (surrounding the embryo) becomes the placenta, which will allow nourishment to flow from the mother’s body to the embryo through the umbilical cord. A tough membrane called the amniotic sac encloses the embryo, cushioning it in a protective fluid.

Because cells are undergoing differentiation into distinct organ systems and multiplying rapidly, the developing embryo is especially vulnerable to the effects of outside influences, such as disease and drugs.

During the next few weeks the developing organism assumes more and more of a human appearance. Every major organ system begins to develop, and the body itself is taking shape.

For example, by the end of week four the cardiovascular system is functioning. In the photo on the left, you can see that the primitive heart is beginning to pump blood through the embryo’s tissues. The brain and the spinal cord have appeared and are growing rapidly. The eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and arm and leg buds start to form. At this point the embryo is about six millimeters (1/4 inch) long. By week six the arm and leg buds are clearly distinguishable as immature arms and legs.

Conception to Birth 29

Fetal Phase Briefly describe the main features of this phase of development.

Continued development of organ systems—each system must mature and eventually begin functioning in preparation for birth.

Continued overall body growth—the overall size of the fetus will increase by twenty-fold during these few months, as shown in this illustration. Arms and legs will grow dramatically, and before long the head will no longer seem so disproportionate compared with the rest of the body.

At around 23 or 24 weeks (the end of the sixth month) most fetuses achieve viability—that is, their organ systems are sufficiently developed that they stand a chance of surviving outside the womb if they are born prematurely. Around the time the fetus becomes viable, the mother begins to be acutely aware of the fetus’s movements. The other sensory systems also become functional in the last months of prenatal development, but sounds and touches are the main forms of stimulation the fetus receives from the world outside the womb.

Summary Now that you have viewed the entire sequence of prenatal development, what do you think are

the most important themes of development during these 38 weeks? Students’ answers will vary, but should include at least two of these three main themes: (1) growth in body size, from a single cell to a full-size baby; (2) shift in proportions, as the lower portion of the body begins to catch up with the early development of the head; and (3) functional development of the various organ systems, as each system gradually begins working and then becomes more efficient as the fetus reaches viability and then prepares for birth.

Conception to Birth 30

PsychSim 5: WHO AM I?

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This activity will help you understand Erik Erikson’s perspective on identity formation, as well as James Marcia’s four steps or stages in the identity process.

Your Results What was your exploration score? Students’ answers will vary.

What was your commitment score? Students’ answers will vary.

Paths to Identity Achievement How did Erikson define identity achievement? What combinations of exploration and

commitment scores are seen? Erikson argued that the goal of the process was identity achievement. An adolescent who attains this status has: (1) struggled with questions of identity and purpose (the exploration component), and (2) formed a direction for the future, including a provisional career choice and a set of important values and beliefs about key lifestyle issues of young adulthood, such as religion, politics, family, friendships, dating, and sex roles (the commitment component).

So, a person who scored high on both exploration and commitment would be classified in the status of identity achievement. Researchers have found that individuals in this status tend to be mature, balanced thinkers. Although they have committed themselves to a particular identity, they remain willing to explore their identities further if the situation requires it.

What is diffusion? What combinations of exploration and commitment scores are seen? Diffusion is the relative absence of exploration and commitment. Diffused individuals are often apathetic and uninterested, and lack direction.

What is foreclosure? What combinations of exploration and commitment scores are seen? Foreclosure is an identity status in which a person has adopted a ready-made identity provided by others, usually the parents, without seriously considering alternatives.

What is moratorium? What combinations of exploration and commitment scores are seen? A moratorium is an identity status in which a person tries out different roles and experiments with different lifestyles, without making commitments to any of them. This identity status is signaled by a high score on exploration and a low score on commitment.

Marcia’s Identity Status Model After considering your identity status classification based on the initial questionnaire, do you

believe that your classification was accurate? Students’ answers will vary depending on their responses to the survey.

Which of Marcia’s four statuses best fits you right now? Students’ answers will vary.

Why wouldn’t you classify yourself as being in the other three statuses? Students’ answers will vary.

Who Am I? 31

PsychSim 5: SIGNS OF AGING

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In this activity you will explore the main aspects of physical aging.

Aging Begins in Early Adulthood What distinctions do researchers find between primary and secondary aging?

Researchers distinguish between the universal, normal, irreversible changes that occur with time (primary aging) and changes that are caused by disease or environmental damage (secondary aging).

Aging and Appearance List four changes in appearance experienced with aging:

Students’ answers will vary as there are many changes that occur, but they should include changes from the following three categories: changes in appearance, changes in sensory capabilities, and changes in physical functioning.

Sensory Changes List the two senses most significantly affected by aging:

1. Hearing

2. Vision

Physical Functioning Name two of the changes in physical functioning experienced during aging:

1. Muscle strength

2. Joint flexibility

Conclusion: Making the Most of Each Stage How will you feel about the changes that aging brings? Which of the changes will bother you the

most? Students’ answers will vary.

Signs of Aging 32

PsychSim 5: THE AUDITORY SYSTEM

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This activity explores how we hear and how the physical nature of the sound wave determines the quality of the sound experience.

The Auditory System What are the four tasks of the auditory system?

1. Pick up stimulus energy from the world around us.

2. Change that energy into a pattern of neural impulses.

3. Carry those impulses to the proper locations in the brain.

4. Process the information contained in the pattern of impulses so that the stimulus can be identified.

Structure of the Ear What are the three main regions of the ear and their associated parts?

1. The outer ear consists of the pina, the ear canal, and the eardrum.

2. The middle ear consists of the anvil, the hammer, and the stirrup.

3. The inner ear consists of the cochlea, the auditory nerve, and the semicircular canals.

The Sound Wave How are sound waves like ocean waves?

When a sound wave is drawn, it usually resembles an ocean wave with crests (peaks) and troughs (valleys).

What are the three aspects of sound waves?

1. frequency

2. amplitude

3. waveform

Frequency: The Rate of Vibration

The Auditory System 33

Which type of tuning fork would vibrate faster—a small, short one or a large, long one? Why? In general, small or short objects vibrate faster than similar objects that are larger or longer. If the longer fork produces a sound wave that looks like the top wave, then the shorter fork should produce a sound wave like the bottom wave (see illustration below).

How is frequency measured and calculated?The frequency of a sound wave is measured by counting the number of times the wave goes up and down each second.

Frequency, Amplitude, and Waveform The frequency of a sound wave determines the ______pitch________ of the sound we perceive.

The amplitude of a sound wave determines the _____loudness______ of the sound we perceive.

The waveform of a sound wave determines the ______timbre_______ of the sound we perceive.

Hearing Sounds What happens inside the cochlea?When the vibration passes through the middle ear to the cochlea, the oval window moves in and out, causing the pressure in the outer chamber to increase and decrease in a rapid sequence. The alternating high and low pressure in the outer chamber produces ripples in the basilar membrane. This movement bends the hair cells, causing them to generate neural impulses.

The Auditory System 34

PsychSim 5: COLORFUL WORLD

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In this activity you will explore the principles of color vision, and will demonstrate some aspects of color sensation with your own eyes.

The Sensation of Color Name and briefly describe the three sensations of color.

1. Hue—Hue is roughly the same as the name of the color, as in “blue,” “green,” or “yellow.” Hue is related to the wavelength of the light. Varying the wavelength of light changes the sensation of hue.

2. Brightness—Brightness is related to the intensity of the light (amount of light energy, as indicated by the amplitude of the light wave). Imagine putting a red lampshade on a lamp controlled by a rotary dimmer dial; as you turn the dial, the amount of light energy released by the lamp increases, and the sensation of red gets brighter or more intense.

3. Saturation—Saturation is the richness or purity of the light (as indicated by the waveform or complexity of the light wave). Simple, smooth light waves produce the sensation of pure, highly saturated colors, while complex waves (produced by combining several hues, or mixing with white, black, or gray) produce the sensation of muddy, faded colors.

Mixing Colored Lights: Additive Mixing What color appears when you combine all three lights?

The three colors combine to create white.

Mixing Colored Pigments: Subtractive Mixing What color appears when you combine all three pigments?

The result is a dark gray or black pigment, rather than the white you get when mixing red, green, and blue lights.

Altering Color Sensation If you stare at a red patch and then look at a red apple, will your experience of the “redness” of

the apple be stronger or weaker? Why? It will be weaker. Hering’s opponent-process model explains that staring at a color patch fatigues that color’s channel making our eyes less sensitive to that color. Of course, after a few seconds the effect will wear off and our color sensation will return to normal.

Conclusion Explain how the two main theories of color perception, initially appearing to contradict each

other, are, in fact, complementary perspectives.In this case, we now realize that Hering’s opponent-process theory doesn’t conflict with the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory, as was originally assumed (from about 1880 to 1970). The current unified theory of color vision combines these two theories, with the trichromatic theory explaining the first stage of color processing at the cones, and the opponent-process theory explaining the second stage of color processing further on in the visual system.

Colorful World 35

PsychSim 5: VISUAL ILLUSIONS

Name: Section:

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This activity offers the opportunity to test your susceptibility to four famous illusions by having you adjust the length or position of one part of the stimulus to match the apparent length or position of another part.

The Müller-Lyer Illusion What were your results on the Müller-Lyer Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.

How is this illusion related to depth perception?For people who have been raised in an environment of square-cornered houses, the angle of the arrowhead lines creates the illusion that one of the horizontal lines is nearer to the viewer than the other.

What were your results on the second Müller-Lyer Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.

Was your pattern of performance similar to the first set of trials, or did the explanation of the illusion affect your performance? Describe your performance on the two sets of trials, indicating whether you did anything on the second set of trials to compensate for the illusion. Students’ answers will vary.

The Ponzo Illusion What were your results on the Ponzo Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.

How is this illusion related to size constancy and depth perception?The converging lines (a depth cue called linear perspective) and gradually-changing texture (a depth cue called texture gradient) in the tunnel give us the impression that the red bar (toward the center) is more distant from us than the yellow outer bar. Size constancy means that our brain corrects the perceived size of an object to adjust for its apparent distance. Thus we tend to overestimate the length of the red bar, and overlengthen the yellow bar to match the red bar’s illusory length.

Considering the explanation for this illusion, would you expect this illusion to be affected by culture? Explain your answer. Students’ answers will vary.

What were your results on the second Ponzo Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.

Did knowing the cause of this illusion help you overcome your susceptibility to it on your second trial? Explain your thinking. Students’ answers will vary.

Visual Illusions 36

The Horizontal-Vertical Illusion What were your results on the Horizontal-Vertical Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.

What are the two factors related to this illusion?The first factor is that objects that are closer to the top of our visual field usually appear to be more distant (a depth cue called relative height). Our brain corrects the perceived size of objects to adjust for differences in depth, so more “distant” lines are perceptually lengthened. Thus a vertical line in the upper half of the visual field will appear longer than an equally long horizontal line that is lower in the visual field.

The second is that the vertical line bisects the other line. When we try to match the line lengths, we tend to focus on only half of the horizontal line, and thus we underestimate the length of the horizontal line.

What were your results on the second Horizontal-Vertical Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.


The Poggendorf Illusion

What were your results on the Poggendorf Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.

How is this illusion related to depth perception?The angle between the vertical side of the box and each line segment actually forms one half of the “arrowhead” angle from the Müller-Lyer illusion. As a result, the viewer tends to underestimate the distance between the segments (the width of the box). This leads the viewer to place the right segment too close to the left segment.

What were your results on the second Poggendorf Illusion test? Students’ answers will vary.


Visual Illusions 37

PsychSim 5: YOUR MIND ON DRUGS

Name: Section:

Date:

In this activity you will explore the behavioral effects of some common drugs that influence the brain—producing changes in our arousal level, our mood, our perception of our environment, and our actions.

How Do Psychoactive Drugs Work? What are the main ways drugs get into our bloodstream? What are the three phases of drug

effects?The main ways drugs get into our bloodstream are through ingestion (eating or drinking the substance), inhalation (heating or burning the substance and breathing the fumes), absorption through the mucous membranes of the mouth or nose, or injection with a hypodermic needle.

The three phases of drug effects are: administrative, active, and metabolic.

Drugs and Neurotransmitters How are psychoactive drugs categorized? Name one example of a drug in each of the three main

categories.Psychoactive drugs are generally categorized according to their effect on the central nervous system (CNS): stimulants enhance the activity of the CNS, depressants slow down or impair the activity of the CNS, and hallucinogens (also called psychedelic drugs) distort the brain’s processing of sensory experiences. An example of a stimulant is caffeine [Note: nicotine, amphetamines, and cocaine are also acceptable answers], An example of a depressant is opium [Note: morphine, heroin, alcohol, and barbiturates are also acceptable answers], and an example of a hallucinogens is LSD [Note: marijuana is also an acceptable answer].

Explain the difference between drug agonists and drug antagonists.Some drugs mimic the action of a particular neurotransmitter or facilitate the release of the neurotransmitter—thus the presence of the drug enhances the normal effect of the neurotransmitter. These drugs are called agonists. Other drugs oppose or block the action of a particular neurotransmitter. These drugs are called antagonists. A dopamine antagonist is shown here.

Drug Tolerance What is drug tolerance? What are the two reasons for the development of tolerance?

Tolerance is the decreasing effectiveness of a psychoactive drug that occurs with repeated use. Functional tolerance develops as a result of changes that occur in the synaptic receptors for that drug. Neurons adapt to the presence of the drug by altering the number of receptors, or by reducing the receptors’ sensitivity to the drug. Metabolic tolerance occurs because the liver also adapts to the repeated use of a particular drug by speeding up the production of enzymes to metabolize the drug. This means that the drug remains active for a shorter period, so larger doses are required to have the same effect.

Your Mind on Drugs 38

Addiction Experiment After experimenting with the injection of various solutions into specific areas of a rat’s brain and

observing the subsequent bar-pressing behavior, what conclusions did you draw from the rat’s behavior? What type of injection seemed to be more pleasurable for the rat? Did the location of the injection make a difference?The experiment showed that, for this rat, microinjections of morphine into the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens were apparently highly rewarding, while morphine injected into the cerebellum did not appear to motivate the rat to press the lever. The high rate of pressing was not simply the result of having something injected into those areas, because salt water did not produce the effect.

This rat’s behavior suggests that the dopamine-releasing neurons in the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens play a central role in morphine addiction. These areas also appear to be involved in every other addicting drug that produces a feeling of euphoria.

Your Mind on Drugs 39

PsychSim 5: EEG AND SLEEP STAGES

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity provides an explanation of the measurement of brain activity, as well as the presence of different sleep patterns and their respective functions.

EEG How is the brain’s electrical activity recorded?

The electrical activity recorded at the reference location (usually on the ear lobe or just behind the ear) is generally subtracted from the electrical activity recorded at the target location(s). This means that, at a minimum, two electrodes are required to measure EEG. Typically the EEG includes recordings from three to eight locations so that the activity of various regions of the brain can be compared.

Stages of Sleep Complete the following table:

Characteristic EEG Pattern

Stage 1a transition from wakefulness into sleep

Stage 2brief bursts of rapid brain activity in the midst of the overall slowing of the EEG waves; at this point the person is truly asleep

Stage 3low-frequency (3 peaks/second), high-amplitude waves called delta waves, which make up 10% to 50% of the tracings at this stage

Stage 4deepest stage of sleep, the tracings consist almost entirely of delta waves

REM Sleep

almost complete muscle relaxation except for the eye muscles, which are very active

EEG and Sleep Stages 40

Sleep Thoughts Versus True Dreams If people have vivid, realistic dreams during REM sleep, why don’t they act out those dreams,

perhaps injuring themselves or others? Fortunately, during REM sleep most motor neurons are inhibited, producing a kind of paralysis that keeps people from hurting themselves during a dream.

Purpose of Sleep What are the two main purposes of sleep?

It reduces our energy expenditures so that the body’s resources can be mobilized for tissue repairs and growth. Sleep also seems to be important for the brain’s work of organizing and consolidating the memories of the day’s events. Although the overall level of neural activation drops by only about 10% during sleep, the processing of external information through the senses (especially vision) is dramatically reduced, allowing the brain to do its internal housekeeping without distractions.

EEG and Sleep Stages 41

PsychSim 5: MAZE LEARNING

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity gives you a rat’s-eye view of maze learning by allowing you to move and control a simulated rat’s movements through a maze.

Which Model Fits Your Behavior? Take a moment to think about what approach you would use to find your way across campus,

perhaps from your psychology class to some other building. Put your way-finding strategy into words. Students’ answers will vary.

Does your model fit better with the chained associations model or the cognitive map model? Students’ answers will vary.

___ Chained associations

___ Cognitive map

Results for Maze A Did you feel that you were memorizing a sequence of turns, or that you were forming a cognitive

map of the maze? Students’ answers will vary.

___ Sequence of turns

___ Cognitive map

Results for Maze B Compare the number of moves and the path you took in the first run with your performance in the

second run. Did you get better with practice? Did you use the same strategy that you used on the Maze A, or did you try a different approach? Students’ answers will vary.

How Does Maze Learning Occur? What brain structure controls all types of spatial learning?

the hippocampus

Maze Learning 42

PsychSim 5: CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

Name: Section:

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This activity provides a review of Pavlov’s famous experiment on the salivary response in dogs, as well as the basic processes of classical conditioning: acquisition, generalization, discrimination training, and extinction.

Salivary Response In Pavlov’s famous experiment, what did he call the:

o unconditioned stimulus (UCS)? _____meat powder______________

o unconditioned response (UCR)? _____saliva flow after meat powder_

o conditioned stimulus (CS)? __________the bell___________________

o conditioned response (CR)? ________saliva flow after the bell______

A New Salivary Response Pavlov demonstrated that the dog had formed a conditioned association between two events.

What were those events? What did the dog actually learn? The dog formed a conditioned association between the bell (CS) and the meat powder (UCS). The dog learned that the bell predicted the arrival of the food, so the dog began to salivate in anticipation of being fed.

Acquisition In the example of a child who fears doctors, what label would you give to the painful injection?

_____ UCS __X__ UCR _____ CS _____ C

In the example of a child who fears doctors, what label would you give to the presence of the doctor?

_____ UCS _____ UCR __X__ CS _____ CR

Demonstrating Acquisition How could we demonstrate that acquisition had occurred; that is, demonstrate that the child had

learned the link between the doctor and the injection? We could demonstrate that acquisition had occurred by presenting the CS (the doctor) without the UCS (the injection). If the child shows a fear response (the CR) to the doctor’s presence alone, we say that conditioning has taken place. How many conditioning trials (that is, paired presentations of the CS and the UCS) are necessary to acquire a conditioned association? It’s difficult to make an exact prediction. In cases where the UCS is a very powerful stimulus, or where the person or animal is biologically prepared to form a particular link, a single trial may be sufficient to acquire the conditioned association. In other cases, the CS and the UCS must be presented together dozens of times before the link is formed.

Classical Conditioning 43

Extinction What is extinction?

Extinction is the diminishing of a response when, in classical conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS); or when, in operant conditioning, a response is no longer reinforced.

What is spontaneous recovery?Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished conditioned response.

Generalization What is generalization?

Generalization is the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to evoke similar responses.

Discrimination What is discrimination?

In classical conditioning, it is the ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning, it is responding differently to stimuli that signal whether behavior will be reinforced or nonreinforced.

Conditioning an Eye Blink What is the CR in this example? ____eye blink________________

What is the CS in this example? _____the tone________________

What is the UCS in this example? ____puff of air______________

What is the UCR in this example? ____eye blink because of air____

Experiment Simulation Why are we interested only in the blinks that occur before the puff of air?

Because any blinks that occur after the puff of air are considered UCRs (automatic responses caused by the puff). But blinks that occur before the puff are considered CRs (learned responses to the tone, in anticipation that the puff will follow).

Discrimination Trials How would you interpret these graphs? Did your subject show evidence of stimulus

generalization, or stimulus discrimination, or both? In the first block of trials, the subject clearly showed generalization. She responded to almost all the tones. But by the end of the second block she began to show discrimination—that is, she could discriminate the CS from other tones, and responded most strongly to 500 Hz tones, or other very similar tones.


Extinction Trials How would you interpret these results? Has the conditioned response been extinguished in your

subject? What would happen if we continued immediately with more trials? What would happen if we brought her back to the laboratory tomorrow for more trials?Clearly, your subject is no longer responding as readily to the tone. If we went on with more trials, her response rate would fall to near zero. But if we brought her back to the laboratory after a rest period, her eye blink response would probably return; that is, show spontaneous recovery.


PsychSim 5: OPERANT CONDITIONING

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This activity describes a form of learning called operant conditioning—learning from the consequences that follow our actions.

Classical Versus Operant Conditioning What is the distinction between classical and operant conditioning?

Classical conditioning (also called Pavlovian conditioning) generally concerns an involuntary, automatic response, such as blinking, salivating, or becoming anxious. In contrast, operant conditioning (also called instrumental conditioning) generally concerns more voluntary behaviors, such as pressing a button, turning a key, or raising your hand. Another way of thinking about the difference is to look at what controls the subject’s behavior in each of these forms of conditioning. In classical conditioning the subject’s behavior is determined primarily by what precedes it (the stimulus). We call it respondent behavior because it is an involuntary response to a particular stimulus event. With operant conditioning the subject’s behavior is determined primarily by what follows it (the consequences). We call it operant behavior because the subject operates in some way on the environment to gain rewards or to avoid punishments.

Reinforcement and Punishment What effect does reinforcement have on behavior?

If a consequence is favorable or pleasant, Skinner called this a reinforcer (or reinforcement), because it tended to reinforce or strengthen the behavior that it follows—raising the probability that the behavior will occur again. He called unfavorable consequences punishers (or punishment), because they tend to weaken the behavior they follow or decrease its frequency.

Give an example of positive reinforcement.Repeatedly praising a boy for making his bed.

Give an example of negative reinforcement.Continually nagging a boy about making the bed, and then stopping as soon as he makes it. The termination of our nagging would be negative reinforcement for the desirable behavior.

What effect does punishment have on behavior?Punishment tends to weaken the behavior it follows or decreases its frequency.

Give an example of punishment.Where reinforces are used to increase a behavior, punishment is used to decrease behavior — either by administering an undesirable consequence or withdrawing a desirable one. For example, in positive punishment an authority administers an aversive stimulus, like a spanking or a speeding ticket. In negative punishment an authority takes away a desirable stimulus, by reducing TV privileges or a revoking driver’s license.

Operant Conditioning 46

Continuous Versus Partial Reinforcement If a subject comes to expect a reward after every response, what will happen if the reinforcement

stops?If a behavior has been continuously reinforced, when the reinforcement stops we should expect extinction to occur. The subject will quickly “unlearn” the conditioned association and will stop making the desired response. Researchers have found that continuous reinforcement produces fast learning and fast extinction. If we want the desired behavior to be resistant to extinction, we need to use a different technique called partial reinforcement (also called intermittent reinforcement)—reinforcers are given after some responses, but not after every one.

Schedules of Reinforcement Define the following schedules of reinforcement and give an everyday example of each:

o Fixed ratio — reinforcement is given after a set number of responses. Example: A child gets one gold star for every 50 math problems completed.

o Fixed interval — reinforcement is given for the first response that occurs after a set time has elapsed. Example: If you put food in your pet’s dish twice a day, your pet won’t get rewarded for walking over to the dish during the rest of the day. But the first response after the dish is filled will bring reinforcement.

o Variable ratio — reinforcement is given after a varying number of responses. Example: A mediocre golfer may have to endure a dozen bad shots before she finally hits a beautiful drive.

o Variable interval — a reinforcer is given for the first response after a varying period of time has elapsed. Example: When pop quizzes are given at unpredictable intervals, students are not rewarded for every night of studying, but the payoff does come eventually to those who study.

Simulated Experiment: Schedules of Reinforcement

Which schedule of reinforcement is MOST resistant to extinction? Why do you think this is so?Partial reinforcement—reinforcing a response only part of the time—results in slower learning but much greater resistance to extinction. The second part of this question is open ended and students’ answers will vary.

Operant Conditioning 47

PsychSim 5: MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

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In this activity you will learn about Albert Bandura’s classic experiment on observational learning.

Results from Bandura’s Experiment What did Bandura’s results show about the relationship between direct reward and punishment

and learning? What is this process called?Bandura’s results showed that direct rewards and punishments are not necessary for learning. Children can learn from modeling—that is, they learn to act aggressively just by watching another person’s behavior, and can even learn specific novel behaviors from the model.

A Closer Look at Bandura’s Experiment List the specific behaviors seen in the movie clip:

punching the doll with handskicking the dollthrowing the doll into the airhitting the doll with a hammersitting astride the doll while punching it

Observing the Children Who Observed the Model List the specific behaviors of the boy seen in the movie clip:

punching the doll with a fistpushing the doll with both handskicking the dollthrowing the doll into the airhitting the doll with a hammersitting astride the doll while hitting it with a hammer

Observing the Children Who Observed the Model List the specific behaviors of the girl seen in the movie clip:

punching the doll with a fistpushing the doll with one or both handsthrowing the doll into the airhitting the doll with a hammerhitting the doll with a small dollpushing doll down and jumping on it

Inventing Novel Behaviors What two things did Bandura conclude that children learn from observing an aggressive model?

1. how to perform the specific actions demonstrated by the model

2. the general point that aggression is an acceptable (and perhaps even enjoyable) form of behavior

Monkey See, Monkey Do 48

PsychSim 5: ICONIC MEMORY

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This activity simulates Sperling’s classic experiments on the duration of visual sensory memory.

Free Recall Test What was your score on the free recall test? Students’ answers will vary.

Iconic Memory What is Sperling’s theory of iconic memory? What is an “icon”?

Sperling believed that all nine letters were stored in the viewer’s memory for a short time, but that the memory faded so rapidly that only a handful of the letters could be moved into short-term memory and named before the information disappeared. Sperling called this brief type of memory iconic memory, and called the individual memory traces icons.

What is Sperling’s partial report task? How does it test his theory of iconic memory?Rather than asking his subjects to recall all of the letters, he simply asked them to recall one row of letters from the screen. He prompted them with one of three tones (high, medium, and low) to signal the target row. But there was one catch: Sperling sounded the tone after the letters had disappeared from the screen. In this way, if the subject could report the target row correctly, he could prove that the letters were actually in the subject’s memory.

Partial Report Test What was your score on the partial report test? Students’ answers will vary.

Are your results consistent or inconsistent with typical results? What do typical results suggest?The first part of this question is open ended and will vary between students. However, an example of an acceptable answer for the second part of the answer is: Most people recall a significantly higher percentage of letters in the cued recall task than in the free recall task. This improvement demonstrates that the viewers actually store considerably more visual information for a brief time than they are able to report a few seconds later.

Delayed Partial Report Test What was your score on the delayed partial report test? Students’ answers will vary.

What does the typical drop in performance tells us about the duration of iconic memory?This drop in performance suggests that the iconic memory store has an effective duration of less than 500 milliseconds. Sperling’s research indicated that the typical duration of iconic memory is about 250 milliseconds, and later research has generally supported this estimate. This means that any visual information that is not transferred to more permanent memory within 250 milliseconds will be lost.

Iconic Memory 49

PsychSim 5: FORGETTING

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This activity will help you understand one of the reasons why we forget information – interference.

Encoding Failure What does an encoding failure mean in terms of memory?

It means that an individual failed to register the information and therefore cannot remember it.

Encoding Example Did you remember the duplicate letter? Students’ answers will vary.

Why do most people have difficulty with this task?Because the letters appeared on the screen faster than most people could attend to them and register them in memory.

Other Failures What other explanations are there for our failure to recall information at a later time?

One possibility is that our memory decays or fades with time. This could be called storage failure. This type of explanation is appealing because it fits with our typical experience: The more time that has passed since we encoded the information, the harder it seems to be to remember it. It is quite possible that some decay occurs as time passes, but it is almost impossible to prove it. The reason is that sometimes information that we thought had been lost forever suddenly comes back to us. This suggests that a more common cause of forgetting is retrieval failure; the information may still exist in our memory store, but is not readily available to us.

Comparing the Results How did your results differ on Trial 1 versus Trial 2? Students’ answers will vary.

Other Types of Interference Name and briefly describe two types of interference that affect memory during processing and

storage.

1. Proactive interference occurs when old information works forward to disrupt our memory for newer material.

2. Retroactive interference occurs when new information works backward to disrupt our memory for earlier information.

Paired-Associates Study Trials What was your score on Test 1? Students’ answers will vary. What was your score on Test 2? Students’ answers will vary. What was your score on Test 3? Students’ answers will vary. What did your results on the three trials indicate? Students’ answers will vary.

Forgetting 50

PsychSim 5: SHORT-TERM MEMORY

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In this activity you will learn about the common model of memory storage.

Capacity of Short-Term Memory What is the “magical number” in terms of short-term memory (STM)? What does this mean?

The magic number is 7 unrelated items, as George Miller noted when he combined the results of many different studies of short-term memory in a famous paper, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.” Although the actual number of items that a typical adult can hold in STM ranges from 5 to 9, for most people and for most tasks, things become unpredictable after about 7 unrelated items, when items tend to “get lost” or “drop out.”

Chunking Expands STM Capacity What is “chunking?”

The memory technique of organizing material into familiar, meaningful units.

Give an everyday example of chunking.Creating words or sentences from the first letter of a block of information (called acronyms) is a form of chunking. Example people use “HOMES” to remember the Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior).

STM Format or Code Can the auditory code used in STM help explain why people have a slightly better memory for

random lists of seven digits (0–9) than for random lists of seven letters (A–Z)? Many letters have the same vowel sounds (leading to more auditory confusion in memory), but only two of the digits from 0 to 9 share a vowel sound. The auditory code also helps explain why people have a slightly better memory for numbers or letters presented orally than for those presented visually.

Short-Term Memory 51

PsychSim 5: WHEN MEMORY FAILS

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This activity explores severe memory loss—how it happens and what impact it has on behavior.

Forms of Long-Term Memory Researchers believe that there are distinct forms of long-term memory, each designed to handle

specific types of information or experiences. Match the name of the form to its description below.

o _E_ explicit memory A. behaviors or emotions that occur automatically as reactions to outside events as a result of past associations

o _B_ implicit memory B. memory of skills or behaviors that can be retrieved without conscious awareness

o _D_ semantic memory C. knowledge of the specific events or episodes in your own life history

o _C_ episodic memory D. general knowledge about the world that isn’t identified with a particular event in your life

o _F_ procedural memory E. memory of facts and events that can be consciously retrieved

o _A_ conditioned response F. memory of highly practiced skills

Memory and the Brain Which two areas of the brain are believed to be most involved in long-term memory?

1. the hippocampus

2. the cerebellum

Damage to the Cerebellum and Implicit Memory If a person has damage to the cerebellum, but no damage to the hippocampus, what would you

predict about their memory loss?They will have problems with implicit memory. Patients whose cerebellum is not functioning do not form conditioned responses. They also have great difficulty learning new motor skills (procedural memory). However, but they won’t show memory loss for explicit memories (neither retrograde nor anterograde amnesia).

When Memory Fails 52

PsychSim 5: TRUSTING YOUR MEMORY

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In this activity you’ll be able to test the reliability of your memory, and then learn what researchers have discovered about the way that memories are stored and modified by new information.

Measuring Memory According to researchers, what are the three memory processes?

1. encoding

2. storage

3. retreival

How do recall tasks differ from recognition tasks?Recall tasks involve essay, short-answer, or fill-in-the-blank questions. The test questions provide cues that specify the information you must recall, but it’s up to you to generate the answers. In recognition tasks there are multiple choice, matching, or true/false questions that provide all the possible answers. You must check these answers against your memory to recognize the correct answer.

A Look at Your Performance What was your score on the Recall Test? Students’ answers will vary.

What was your score on the Recognition Test? Students’ answers will vary.

Examining Your Performance: Serial Position Effect What was your pattern of performance across the 15 words? Did your performance show a serial

position effect? Students’ answers will vary.

Examining Your Performance: Recall Versus Recognition Did your performance show an advantage for recognition over recall? Students’ answers will

vary.

Examining Your Performance: False Memory What is a “false memory”?

A false memory is a memory of something that didn’t actually happen.

Did you show false recall or false recognition for “sleep”? If so, why do you think this happened? If not, why do you think your performance was different from the Roediger and McDermott study? Students’ answers will vary due to their responses on the False Memory exercise. However, the student’s response should include discussion of the Roediger and McDermott study which states that we can predict that about half the people tested on this task will

Trusting Your Memory 53

incorrectly recall seeing “sleep,” and more than three-quarters will incorrectly recognize “sleep” as a word that had been presented.

Other Ways We Create False Memories List and briefly explain the two “sins of forgetting” especially relevant to the topic of false

memories:

1. misattribution—distortions based on confusing the source of the information

2. suggestibility—distortions introduced by misinformation from outside sources

Application: Eyewitness Testimony How might memory distortions affect eyewitness testimony?

Here are two specific memory problems that affect the reliability of testimony: Eyewitnesses sometimes show source confusion, attributing a statement or action to the wrong person. They also exhibit suggestibility, occasionally incorporating misleading information from the media or attorneys into their memories formed during the actual crime.

Trusting Your Memory 54

PsychSim 5: MY HEAD IS SPINNING

Name: Section:

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This activity provides some background information about thinking with verbal concepts versus thinking with mental images.

Conceptual Thinking What was your train of thought as you navigated the picture of the candle? Students’ answers

will vary.

Cooper and Shepard’s Results In the Cooper and Shepard’s experiment (1973), participants were asked to decide whether a

stimulus (a letter) was normal (simply rotated in the picture plane) or backwards (flipped to its mirror image before the rotation). Reaction times were graphed and increased as the letters were rotated away from 0 degrees. Interestingly, reaction time decreased after 180 degrees. Can you explain why this might occur?Rotations greater than 180 degrees are really the same as smaller rotations in the opposite direction. The fact that people respond faster to rotations of 300 degrees than 240 degrees suggests that a clockwise rotation of 360 degrees is treated as a counterclockwise rotation of 60 degrees.

Mental Rotation Experiment After completing the Mental Rotation experiment and viewing your data, how would you

describe the pattern of your results? Do you think that your results fit the pattern of results from the Shepard experiments? Students’ answers will vary.

After comparing the graphs of your results with the results of the Cooper and Shepard (1973) study, how similar are the two graphs? Did your results show a clear increase in reaction time as the orientation moved away from the vertical? Did your results show a decrease in reaction time as the orientation moved from 180 degrees back to the vertical? Students’ answers will vary.

My Head Is Spinning 55

PsychSim 5: DUELING BRAINS

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This activity examines the research on brain hemispheric specialization and word recognition.

Demonstrating Language Specialization What do you think will happen when the computer flashes a word to your left visual field? What

do you think will happen when the computer flashes a word to your right visual field? Do you think that one of your hemispheres will be better at reading words? If so, which one? Students’ answers will vary, but should include a discussion of the idea that if the student is right-handed the results of the Mishkin and Forgays study suggests that they will show a right visual field advantage on this task, because their left hemisphere is probably specialized for processing language.

Word Recognition Task: Your Results What were your results?

Left visual field: Students’ answers will vary. Right visual field: Students’ answers will vary.

How would you interpret these results? Did they match your prediction? Did you discover that you “aren’t in your right brain when you read”?Students’ answers will vary

Understanding the Right Visual Field Advantage Briefly explain why most people show a right visual field advantage on this task.

When a word is presented to the right visual field, the word goes directly to the left hemisphere, where it is processed and identified. But when the word is presented to the left visual field, it is first processed in the right hemisphere, and then passes across the corpus callosum to be identified in the left hemisphere. Researchers believe that transferring information from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere may lead to a loss of clarity, resulting in poorer identification of the words presented to the left visual field.

Dueling Brain 56

PsychSim 5: GET SMART

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This activity will explore the concept of intelligence and some of the methods of measuring intelligence.

Intelligence and Adaptability What does it mean to say that intelligence is a social construct?

This means that there can be no universally accepted definition of intelligence. Each culture defines intelligence in slightly different ways, emphasizing the characteristics that help people function effectively in that particular environment. In other words, a culture’s definition of intelligence is a reflection of what that culture values in a human being.

What do two children from dramatically different cultures (a boy working on an arrow and a girl working on a computer) have in common? Although their actions look as different as their clothing and setting, these children have much in common: They are working to perfect skills their societies deem important—to become “intelligent” in their culture’s terms.

Verbal Versus Nonverbal Abilities Describe one verbal and one performance subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

(WAIS).Students’ answers will vary, but should include at least one example from both columns of the following table:

VERBAL Subtests PERFORMANCE SubtestsInformation Answer general-knowledge

questionsPicture Completion Identify the missing part of a picture

Digit Span Repeat a list of numbers Picture Arrangement Organize pictures to tell a storyVocabulary Define words Block Design Arrange blocks to match a designArithmetic Solve math problems Object Assembly Arrange puzzle pieces to form a pictureComprehension Explain common proverbs or

situationsDigit Symbol Use a code to translate symbols into

numbersSimilarities Explain analogies

Multiple Intelligences Name and describe four of Gardner’s eight “intelligences.”

Students’ answers will vary, but should include 4 from the following list:linguistic intelligence – word smartslogical-mathematical intelligence – number smartsspatial intelligence – space smartsmusical intelligence – music smartsbodily-kinesthetic intelligence – body smartsinterpersonal intelligence – people smartsintrapersonal intelligence – self smartsnaturalist intelligence – nature smarts

Get Smart 57

Match Sternberg’s three “intelligences” with their descriptors:

o __C__ analytic A. problem-solving in everyday tasks

o __A__ practical B. problem-solving in novel tasks

o __B_ creative C. problem-solving in structured, well-defined tasks

Emotional Intelligence Define “emotional intelligence.”

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.

Get Smart 58

PsychSim 5: HUNGER AND THE FAT RAT

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This activity provides a simulated experiment on weight regulation in rats.

The Hypothalamus What are the two techniques used to study hypothalamic dysfunction? How do they differ?

Electrolytic surgery, involves inserting a thin electrode into a selected region of the brain. After the electrode is in place, an electrical current is passed through the uninsulated tip of the electrode. There are two different ways to study hypothalamic dysfunction using this technique.

Stimulation—If the electrical current passed through the electrode is weak, the target region of the brain is stimulated but not damaged. Generally, this stimulation crudely activates the type of behavior controlled by the target region; if the target region’s function was to inhibit a behavior, then that behavior will occur less frequently during the stimulation.

Destruction—If the electric current passed through the electrode is strong, the target region of the brain is damaged. This destruction is called a lesion. A lesion generally suppresses or disrupts the type of behavior associated with the target region; if the target region’s function was to inhibit a behavior, then that behavior will occur more frequently or in an uncontrolled fashion after the lesion.

Experimental SimulationWhat conclusions were you able to draw about the effects of the following procedures on the experimental rats:

Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus (LH)?

Causes overeating

Destruction of the LH?Causes undereating.

Stimulation of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH)?Causes undereating

Destruction of the VMH?Causes overeating

Hunger and the Fat Rat 59

What did you learn from this experiment about these two regions of the hypothalamus?That the LH is a “hunger center”: destroying it leads the rat to starve, while stimulating it will cause a rat to begin eating, even if it isn’t the least bit hungry. Also, that the VMH is a “satiety center”: destroying it leads to a rat that eats enormous quantities of food, while stimulating it causes a hungry rat to stop eating.

Some Cautions What are the two problems with a simple conclusion to this research question?

1. The rat with VMH destruction did not keep on gaining weight indefinitely; instead, the rat appeared to level off after about 40 days at a new, higher, but stable weight. Rats with LH destruction also reach a lower but stable weight level if they can be kept alive until they recover from the surgery. This suggests that damage to the VMH or LH may merely readjust the set-point for the system that maintains body weight, rather than destroying the rat’s ability to feel hungry or to feel satisfied.

2. Other research has found that similar disturbances in eating behavior can be produced by damage or stimulation to other regions of the rat’s brain. This strongly suggests that the VMH and LH may be merely links in a complicated chain of neural networks. If any one of the links is stimulated or damaged, the pattern of eating behavior will change.

Hunger and the Fat Rat 60

PsychSim 5: EXPRESSING EMOTION

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In this activity you will learn about the role of facial expressions in the nonverbal communication of emotion.

Primary Affects What emotions are generally considered primary affects? How do they relate to facial

expressions?Happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, and disgust are all primary affects. When an emotion is experienced, a neural program sends messages to the face, causing certain muscles to contract and others to relax. These movements produce a characteristic facial expression lasting anywhere from a fraction of a second to several seconds.

The Facial Code Using the table below, describe the characteristic positions of the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth for

each of the six primary affects.

Eyebrows Eyes Mouth

1. SurpriseThe eyebrows are raised and curved (producing or deepening long horizontal wrinkles across the forehead).

The eyes are opened wide (showing the white of the

sclera above the iris), with the upper eyelid raised and

the lower eyelid pulled down.

The jaw drops (parting the teeth and lips), but the lips are relaxed (not tight or pulled back at the corners).

2. FearThe eyebrows are raised with the inner corners of the brows drawn together, straightening the brows and producing short horizontal wrinkles on the forehead.

The eyes are opened wide, with the upper eyelid raised and the lower eyelid tense and slightly raised.

The mouth is opened but tense, with the corners of the lips drawn back slightly (often asymmetrically).

3. DisgustThe eyebrows are lowered.

The upper eyelid is lowered while the lower eyelid is raised slightly, reducing the amount of the eye that is visible.

The upper lip is raised, and the lower lip is also raised and pressed against the upper lip.

4. AngerThe brows are lowered (especially the inner corners) and drawn together so that vertical wrinkles often appear between the brows.

Both eyelids are tense, producing a hard stare.

The lips are pressed firmly together or are opened in a tense, square shape (as if shouting).

Expressing Emotion 61

5. HappinessThe brows and forehead are relaxed.

The cheeks are raised, producing small wrinkles below the lower eyelids.

The corners of the lips are drawn back and slightly up, and a wrinkle runs from each side of the nose to the corner of the lips. The intensity of the emotion is amplified if the lips are parted, exposing the teeth, or if the cheeks are raised substantially, producing large “crinkles” below the eyes.

6. SadnessThe inner corners of the eyebrows are raised (and may be drawn together), producing wavy horizontal wrinkles on the forehead.

The inner corners of the upper eyelids are raised, producing an inverted-V wrinkle in the upper eyelid.

The corners of the lips are often turned down and/or the lips may be trembling.

How does the expression of disgust differ from the other primary affects?Disgust, unlike the other primary affects, involves the nose, which is wrinkled.

Emotional Blends What are emotional blends? How do people generally express them?

An emotional blend is a combination of the facial codes associated with the experienced emotions. If the codes specify conflicting positions for the eyebrows and lips, usually people display one emotion in the upper region of the face and the other in the lower.

Masking Emotion How are people able to mask emotions?

Depending on the number of facial muscles involved in the facial expression and the complexity of their movements, it may take a second or more for the facial expression to be fully formed. This means that other signals could interrupt or “short-circuit” the facial expression, allowing some individuals to compose themselves and show a “poker face” even in the midst of powerful emotional experiences.

Older children and adults have also learned how to “put on” false facial expressions in social settings, such as an insincere smile when the individual doesn’t genuinely feel happy. However, the true emotion is often displayed on the face for an instant before the masking expression is composed.

Expressing Emotion 62

PsychSim 5: CATCHING LIARS

Name: Section:

Date:

In this activity you will explore some of the methods used to detect deception.

Nonverbal Cues After watching the two video clips, which version do you think is true? Students’ answers will

vary.

___ The first version (born in New York) is true.

___ The second version (born in England) is true.

Detecting Emotion from Facial Expression After examining the photos, which do you think show a genuinely happy person? Students’

answers will vary.

___ The left photo shows a genuine smile.

___ The right photo shows a genuine smile.

Using a Polygraph to Detect Deception Briefly explain how a polygraph is used to detect lies.

After the exam is over, the examiner analyzes the physiological responses and makes a judgment about whether the person has been deceptive. In general, if the examinee’s physiological responses show greater fluctuations during and after the relevant questions (indicating more arousal and thus more nervousness), this would be interpreted as indicating deception.

Results From the Simulated Polygraph Session After you have reviewed the pattern of physiological activity, indicate your best judgment about

the truthfulness of the suspect. Students’ answers will vary.

___ This person is telling the truth. He didn’t take the camera.

___ This person is lying. He probably took the camera, or knows where it is.

___ It’s impossible to tell whether this person is lying.

Differences Among the Physiological Measurements Why is respiration rate a less reliable indication of nervousness than perspiration or heart rate?

Breathing rate is somewhat under a person’s voluntary control, while perspiration and heart rate are almost impossible to control. That’s why polygraph examiners pay less attention to respiration than to the other measurements.

Concerns About the Use of Polygraphs

Catching Liars 63

Of those listed, which type of error is easiest to tolerate by the justice system? The error that occurs when guilty people are mistakenly judged innocent is the easiest to tolerate as most people would rather let guilty people go than put innocent people in jail.

Catching Liars 64

PsychSim 5: ALL STRESSED OUT

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This activity examines the way that psychologists conceptualize stress, emphasizing that stress is a bio-psycho-social process. You will explore the sources of stress in your own life, review your body’s response to stress, and then learn how cognitive appraisal dramatically affects how much stress you actually experience.

Checking the Level of Stress in Your Life What was your “Stress Test” score? Students’ answers will vary.

Do you think that such a test accurately captures your experience? What other stressors should be included? Students’ answers will vary.

Stress, Stressors, and Coping Psychologists differentiate stressors, strain, and stress. What does each of these terms mean?

A stressor is an external event, situation, or other demand that triggers coping adjustments in a person. Stress is the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors that we believe to be threatening or challenging, and coping is the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional ways that people manage stressful situations.

The General Adaptation Syndrome Describe Selye’s general adaptation syndrome.

Selye argued that every organism has a state of internal balance called homeostasis. External stressors disturb this balance, producing an immediate general physiological arousal. The organism adjusts to the stress in stages, first mobilizing its resources, then using them to cope with the stress, and eventually depleting its energy resources. Selye called this sequence of body reactions the general adaptation syndrome. When the stressor occurs—for example, when you hear footsteps behind you in a deserted alley—your body briefly goes into shock. It then mobilizes its resources to preserve homeostasis against your reaction to the stressor. If the stressor continues, those resources will be reduced and eventually exhausted.

The Biology of Stress Although both men and women experience the fight-or-flight syndrome, some scientists argue

that women also can experience stress differently (tend-and-befriend). Briefly explain this hypothesis.University of California psychologist Shelley Taylor and her colleagues have suggested that although fight-or-flight characterizes the primary physiological responses to stress for both men and women, behaviorally, women’s responses are more marked by a pattern of tend-and-befriend. Tending involves activities that are designed to protect the self and, especially, any offspring. Befriending involves the creation and maintenance of social networks.

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Can you think of why this alleged gender difference in fight-or-flight and tend-and-befriend may “make sense” from an evolutionary perspective?It is likely that our neuroendocrine and behavioral stress responses evolved from the ways in which our ancestors met serious, even life-threatening challenges. The idea that males and females have been selected for different responses under stress appears to make sense because, through this gender division of strategies, offspring may have the greatest chances of surviving dangerous situations.

Outline the body’s two-part endocrine response to stress.During a moment of stress, the hypothalamus secretes releasing factors that coordinate the endocrine response of the pituitary and adrenal glands. The sympathoadreno-medullary (SAM) system is the primary or first response to stress. Activation of the SAM complex leads to increased blood flow to the muscles, increased energy, and higher mental alertness. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) system reacts more slowly to stress and is activated by messages from the CNS. HPA activation functions to restore homeostasis to the body. Excessive cortisol production from the adrenal glands, however, may impair immune efficiency.

Stress Harms Your Body’s Organ Systems List the effects of stress on:

o the heart — Chronic stress raises blood pressure, which over time causes damage to the heart and blood vessels and increases the risk of stroke. Also, high levels of glucocorticoids cause fat cells to release fatty acids into the bloodstream for fuel. If we don’t need to burn the fat for energy, it builds up on the walls of our blood vessels (especially those damaged by high blood pressure), reducing blood flow to the brain and muscles and increasing the risk of heart attack.

o the digestive track — Stress causes a reduction in enzyme production and a reduction in blood flow to the stomach and intestines, making the lining of the stomach more vulnerable to damage from hydrochloric acid and ulcer-causing bacteria.

o the brain — Recent studies by Sapolsky (1996) and others have demonstrated that, in rats and monkeys, elevated levels of glucocorticoids cause permanent damage to neurons in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, a structure involved in learning and memory. Although these types of experiments have not been performed on humans, new evidence from brain scans suggests that the hippocampus is smaller than normal in chronically depressed patients (who tend to have elevated glucocorticoid levels in their bloodstreams) and military veterans with several years of combat exposure. The constant high levels of stress hormones in these individuals actually may have caused the hippocampus to shrink.

Cognitive Appraisal – The Filter Through Which Stressors Are Processed According to the transactional model, what triggers the process of stress?

Stress is triggered whenever the stressors we experience exceed the personal and social coping resources we are able to mobilize.

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PsychSim 5: HELPLESSLY HOPING

Name: Section:

Date:

In this activity you will explore the importance of a sense of personal control over the events in your life.

Learned Helplessness Briefly describe the animal experiments that lead Seligman to the theory of learned helplessness.

In the 1960s, Martin Seligman and his colleagues were studying how animals learn to escape shocks. In one of their experiments, they placed a dog in a shuttle box—a special cage that had a low barrier dividing the cage into two compartments. The floor of each half of the box had an electrical grid that could deliver a painful shock to the dog. The researchers could flip a switch to direct the electrical current to either compartment A or compartment B.

When the researchers turned the shock on in the dog’s compartment (A), the dog jumped around frantically until it accidentally jumped over the barrier into the other compartment (B), escaping the shock. When the researchers switched the shock to compartment B, once again the dog jumped around randomly until it accidentally crossed the barrier to safety.

After a few trials, the dog learned to expect the shock and would cross the barrier more quickly after the shock was turned on. This is called escape learning, because the dog was learning to get away from the shock. In terms of learning theory, the dog received negative reinforcement for crossing the barrier to escape the shock (ending the shock = reward).

In another variation of their experiments, the researchers turned on a light a few seconds before turning the shock on. They also used naive dogs that had not yet been tested in the box—that is, dogs that had not already learned how to escape the shock.

In the early trials, when the researchers turned on the light, then turned on the shock in the dog’s compartment (A), the dog jumped around frantically until it accidentally jumped over the barrier into the other compartment (B), escaping the shock. After a few trials, the dog learned to jump across the barrier to safety as soon as it felt the shock. But the dog was also learning something else: it was beginning to associate the light with the shock, realizing that the light was a warning that the shock was about to begin. Very quickly, the dog began paying attention to the light. As soon as the light came on, the dog jumped across the barrier, often jumping before the shock came on. After 50 trials, the dog simply stood by the barrier, waiting until the light came on and then calmly jumped across the barrier. This is called avoidance learning, because the dog was learning to anticipate the shock and to avoid it completely by responding to the warning signal.

He then strapped some of the dogs into a harness and gave them inescapable shocks at random intervals. The next day, when these dogs were tested in the shuttle box, their behavior was very different from that of the naive dogs. Although, like the naive dogs, the dog would jump around frantically as soon as it felt the shock, after a few seconds it would stop moving, lie down, and begin to whine. On trial after trial, the dog failed to escape; rather than jump across the barrier, the dog passively accepted the painful shock.

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Learned Helplessness and Depression What is seen as the conceptual link between learned helplessness in dogs and depression in

humans?Seligman noted that learned helplessness in dogs had some similarities to depression in humans. He then proposed that depression is a learned reaction to stressful events that seem inescapable. People who have developed this sense of learned helplessness give up trying to improve their situation, even if they actually have control over it.

Gender and Depression Researchers have found that, compared with men, women are twice as likely to develop serious

depression. Does the concept of learned helplessness/hopelessness help you understand the gender difference in depression rates? As researcher Susan Nolen-Hoeksema has pointed out, women often have less personal power and less control over their environment than men do. Thus women are more likely to develop learned helplessness or hopelessness, contributing to their greater risk of serious depression.

Personal Control in Everyday Life Briefly explain the findings on the importance of personal control in everyday life.

The ability to make even small decisions gave the experimental group a sense of personal control over their lives, while the normal nursing home routine experienced by the other residents seems to have produced a sense of helplessness and passivity. So no matter what age we are, we’ll probably have a better outcome if we feel optimistic and hopeful rather than helpless and hopeless.

Helplessly Hoping 68

PsychSim 5: MYSTERY CLIENT

Name: Section:

Date:

In this activity you’ll take the role of a consultant called in to provide a second opinion on several clients with disorders, based only on the information contained in the clients’ files.

This activity will be most useful to you after you have read the text material on psychological disorders.

Psychiatric Diagnosis As seen in these five cases, some of the information in a client’s files is more useful and relevant

than other types of information. Which categories of information did you find most helpful in making your diagnoses? Students’ answers will vary.

Which categories of information did you find least helpful in making your diagnoses? Students’ answers will vary.

Mystery Client 69

PsychSim 5: LOSING TOUCH WITH REALITY

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity explores schizophrenia, one of the most severe and bizarre psychological disorders.

Schizophrenia: A Serious Psychological Disorder What are the four behavioral criteria necessary for a person to be classified as having a

psychological disorder?

1. delusions 3. hallucinations

2. disorganized speech 4. disorganized or inappropriate behavior

Delusions What are delusions?

Delusions are false beliefs, not based on any external reality, and not subject to reason or contradictory evidence.

Hallucinations What are hallucinations?

Hallucinations are false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus

Negative Symptoms What are negative symptoms of schizophrenia?

Some patients may be apathetic and lack motivation to do much of anything. Patients may rarely speak, and have little to say when they do. This is sometimes called “poverty of speech” or “impoverished thought.” Patients may feel no pleasure at all, even from formerly pleasurable activities, and seem unable to have positive feelings about anything. Patients may show flat affect; that is, almost no emotional responsiveness in their speech, facial expressions, or gestures.

Types of Schizophrenia Name and briefly describe the three main types of schizophrenia.

1. Paranoid schizophrenia — People with paranoid schizophrenia are preoccupied with at least one delusion (such as “CIA agents are watching my every move.”) They also have frequent auditory hallucinations, often related to their delusions (such as “I can hear the clicking of the computer chip they implanted in my brain to scan my memories.”). Their delusions and hallucinations tend to have a unifying theme, most often persecution or grandiose self-importance. People with paranoid schizophrenia do not have difficulty with disorganized speech, behavior, or emotion, nor are their cognitive abilities impaired. Because they retain their abilities, and their main symptoms (the delusions and hallucinations) are responsive to medications, people with this type of schizophrenia are more likely than others to recover.

2. Catatonic schizophrenia — People with catatonic schizophrenia are characterized by unusual patterns of movement and bizarre postures (described earlier as catatonic behavior). Their behavior may show excessive, repetitive activity, not related to the events

Losing Touch with Reality 70

around them (and thus apparently purposeless). Or they may show almost no movement at all, remaining motionless and unresponsive for hours or days at a time. When they move about, they may walk like a “zombie,” as if they were in a trance.

3. Disorganized schizophrenia — People with disorganized schizophrenia have a broader range of disorganized symptoms (disorganized behavior, disorganized speech, and flat or inappropriate emotion) than those of catatonic schizophrenia, which is dominated by disturbed behaviors and motor movements. Disorganized schizophrenia also lacks the unifying theme of paranoid schizophrenia, so that any delusions or hallucinations that occur tend to be fragmented and have little meaning. People with disorganized schizophrenia are less likely to recover than those with other forms of the disorder.

Case 1: Identify the Symptom Which symptom did she display?

hallucination

Case 2: Identify the Type of Hallucination Can you identify the type of hallucination?

auditory

Case 3: Identify the Symptom Which symptom did she display?

delusions

Case 4-a: Identify the Symptom Which symptom did he display?

Negative symptoms: poverty of speech, flat affect, lack of motivation or pleasure

Case 5: Delusions of Grandeur Delusions of persecution or grandeur tend to occur most often in one of the three main types of

schizophrenia. Which type is most closely associated with the symptom of delusions?Delusions of persecution or grandeur are most closely associated with paranoid schizophrenia.

Case 4-b: Identify Another Symptom Which of the five major symptoms of schizophrenia did the young man display in this video

segment?disorganized speech

Case 6: Disorganized Speech With Loose Associations Loose associations can occur in any type of schizophrenia, but they tend to occur most often in

one of the three main types. Which type is most closely associated with the symptom of loose associations? Loose associations are one form of disorganized speech, and therefore are most closely associated with disorganized schizophrenia.

Case 4-c: Disorganized Speech With Inappropriate Affect In your own words, try to describe the symptoms this man is exhibiting in this conversation.

The man in this video clip displays unpredictable and fluctuating emotions—in this case anger and fear about imaginary threats—which is an example of inappropriate affect.

Case 7: Identify the Symptom


Can you identify which symptom this psychiatric patient displays?disorganized or inappropriate behavior


PsychSim 5: COMPUTER THERAPIST

Name: Section:

Date:

In this activity you will engage in a conversation with a “computer therapist,” to simulate some principles of active listening from Carl Roger’s client-centered therapy.

Computer Therapy Think about your “therapy session” with the computer. What limitations did you notice?

At best, the computer merely parrots selected phrases, using “keywords” chosen by the programmer as likely to have psychological relevance. At worst, the computer makes a fool of itself (and its programmer) by misinterpreting statements and stumbling over simple phrases that a 4-year-old child could handle easily.

Can you think of any value that a person could obtain from a “therapy session” like this one? Is it possible that a “computer therapist” might offer some benefits that a person may not get from a session with a human therapist?Some benefit is likely to occur any time that you express your feelings to a willing listener, whether that listener is a fellow student, a family member, a boyfriend/girlfriend, or even a mindless computer. What seems to count is the trust that you place in the listener. Amazingly, some people are willing to trust a computer therapist with secrets that they would never dream of telling their closest friend, let alone an actual therapist. The computer can’t help them with their problems, of course, any more than their toaster could. But the act of expressing their feelings to the computer sometimes helps people understand themselves better.

Computer Therapist 73

PsychSim 5: MYSTERY THERAPIST

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity will test your knowledge of the various types of psychotherapy.

The Specific Types of Therapies Complete the table below by filling in one main point about each of the eight types of therapy and

listing the case number and name of the client receiving that type of treatment.

Type of Therapy Brief DescriptionCase Number

and Client

Psychoanalysisa form of psychotherapy that attempts to give clients insight into their repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts stemming from early childhood; developed by Sigmund Freud

Case 7: Heather

Client-centered therapya type of humanistic therapy in which the therapist reflects the client’s feeling, and fosters personal growth and self-awareness in an environment that offers genuineness, acceptance, and empathy; also called person-centered therapy; developed by Carl Rogers

Case 3: Daniel

Systematic desensitizationa type of behavioral therapy in which a state of relaxation is classically conditioned to a hierarchy of gradually increasing anxiety-provoking stimuli

Case 4: Jenna

Aversive conditioninga type of behavioral therapy that attempts to reduce the frequency of a problem behavior by associating it with an unpleasant experience

Case 1: James

Cognitive therapy for depressiona type of cognitive therapy that helps people discover and change their habitually negative patterns of thinking; developed by Aaron Beck

Case 8: Rebecca

Family therapya form of psychotherapy that treats the family as a unit, focusing on relationships and problems among the various members of the family

Case 6: Rosa

Drug therapya biomedical therapy focused on prescribing medications that alter mental functions to alleviate psychological symptoms

Case 2: Shelia

Electroconvulsive therapya biomedical therapy used primarily in the treatment of depression; involves electrically inducing a brief brain seizure; also called shock therapy or electric shock therapy

Case 5: Randall

Mystery Therapist 74

Commonalities of Effective Therapies As you tried to identify the various types of therapies represented in this activity, did you notice

any common themes that ran through all of the therapies?Despite their differences, all effective therapies offer at least three benefits: (1) They all offer hope. The patient expects that things can and will get better. (2) Every therapy offers a fresh perspective, by providing a plausible explanation of clients’ symptoms, and an alternative way of looking at themselves and responding to their worlds. (3) Regardless of their therapeutic technique, all effective therapists provide an empathic, caring, and trustworthy relationship.

Mystery Therapist 75

PsychSim 5: SOCIAL DECISION-MAKING

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity contains a simulation of two classic “social trap” games used in research on competition and cooperation.

Social Decision-Making As you look back over the past several days, can you think of a decision you made that affected

the lives of other people, either in a small way or an important way? Describe it briefly.Students’ answers will vary.

Decision Environments What is the difference between zero-sum and non-zero-sum environments? Give an example of

each.Students’ examples will vary, but answers should include something similar to the following:

Zero-Sum Environment – Here the resources are strictly limited and the allocations based on any particular set of decisions cancel each other out, thus equaling zero. In effect, this means that if one person gains, others lose in direct proportion.

Non-Zero-Sum Environment – Here the resources are flexible, and the allocations do not necessarily sum to zero. This means that certain sets of decisions could lead to gains for all, while other sets of decisions could produce losses for everyone.

Zero-Sum Environments Explain minimax strategy. In a zero-sum game as demonstrated, a minimax strategy would lead

O (the other player) toward which choice? Explain your answer. The minimax strategy explains that a person will try to minimize their losses and maximize their gains under the worst situation that their opponent can produce for them. In the zero-sum game O choosing B would be an example of the minimax strategy.

What is a saddle point?In decision games based on a payoff matrix, the point at which the minimax strategies of the two players converge is the saddle point.

Non-Zero-Sum Environments How does trust influence the outcome in a non-zero-sum environment?

When participants find that they cannot trust the other person to work for the common good, they tend to fall back on a competitive strategy, even if it means that both of them lose.

Have you learned anything about your own decision strategies by playing the two trucking games? Explain. Students’ answers will vary.

Social Decision-Making 76

PsychSim 5: NOT MY TYPE

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity explores the process of forming attitudes about other people.

Attribution What is the process of attribution?

Social psychologists use the term attribution to refer to the process of inferring personality characteristics on the basis of behaviors. We watch what people do, and then we explain their behavior by attributing it either to personality characteristics (dispositional influences) or to external circumstances (situational influences).

What is the fundamental attribution error?The fundamental attribution error is that we tend to overestimate dispositional influences on the behavior of others, while underestimating the impact of situational influences.

Results of the Rating Exercise Do your results show that you formed equivalent attitudes toward the two groups? Or do your

results show a systematic bias against one of the groups? If you did show a bias against one group, how would you explain it? Students’ answers will vary.

Stereotyping in Everyday Life What are stereotypes?

Stereotypes are generalized beliefs about a group of people that distinguishes those people from others.

How are illusory correlations related to stereotyping?Negative stereotypes, which can lead to prejudice and discrimination, are sometimes formed on the basis of an illusory correlation. For example, Hamilton and Gifford found that, when members of a large group and a small group are described as exhibiting an equal proportion of undesirable behaviors, most people perceive an illusory correlation between minority group and bad behavior.

Not My Type 77

PsychSim 5: EVERYBODY’S DOING IT!

Name: Section:

Date:

This activity explores the issue of social influence—how the behavior of other people affects your behavior.

Social Influence What is conformity?

Conformity is adjusting our thinking or behavior to coincide with a group standard.

Explaining Sherif’s Results Why did Sherif’s participants change their estimates when they had to call out their answers in

the presence of other people? The apparent movement of the light was an illusion, so the correct judgment of distance moved was not clear and obvious. Since each participant was unsure of the correct answer, they listened and learned from the estimates of the other participants. That is, they accepted others’ opinions about reality. This is called informational social influence.

Explaining Asch’s Results Why did Asch’s real participants deny the evidence of their eyes and report the obviously

incorrect answer chosen by the other group members?Asch’s experiment was an unambiguous situation—one of the three lines was obviously the correct answer. Even though the real participants were confident about the correct answer, they conformed to the other participants because they didn’t want to “be different.” That is, they did not accept others’ opinions about reality, but conformed anyway in order to “fit in” with the group. This is called normative social influence.

Motives for Conformity Explain the difference between the two main motives for conformity: informational social

influence and normative social influence.In Sherif’s study of the autokinetic phenomenon, the correct judgment was not clear. People responded to informational social influence. That is, they accepted others’ opinions about reality. As one indication of this, when some of Sherif’s participants (who had conformed to a group standard in estimating the apparent motion of a light in a dark room) were later tested individually, they tended to give the same estimates that they had earlier given in the group setting. They really believed that they had learned something about the movement of the light from the other people in the group.

In contrast, in Asch’s study of visual discrimination the correct judgment was obvious. People did not need information about reality. Instead they responded to normative social influence. They conformed because of their desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval. When some of Asch’s participants (who had conformed in the group setting) were later tested individually, they made the correct judgment on each trial rather than the incorrect judgments they had given in the group.

Everybody’s Doing It! 78

Group Size and Conformity What do you think happened in the “Gawker’s” study? Can you predict the results?

Students’ answers will vary, but should include a description of which graph they chose and why.

Resisting Social Influence What is reactance?

Reactance is a motive to protect or restore one’s sense of freedom.

Everybody’s Doing It! 79

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