belief, following principles, what we’ve been told

1. Evolution: genes make minds

2. Idealism: minds make reality

3.  Empiricism: reality is known by observation, possibly the most important

  experience, driving knowledge from it. Accurate knowledge of the world requires observation of it

people know they’re being watched and will behave differently

a testable prediction made by a theory

Selectivity

(reproduction lecture) 

good genes- looking to make a healthy baby

parental investment- type of person  who is going to contribute to the successful rearing of the child

differential costs of production- men have less of a cost than women do

   who we expect to have interactions with, naturally motivated to like people who we think we’re going to spend more time with; situational factor of attraction

physical factor of attraction;

women = hourglass shape

men = inverted triangle

Women tend to rule out men who are too young (alpha male, not enough resources) 

Men rule out women who are too old (fertility); physical factor of attraction

Major Histocompatability Complex

a set of chemicals that are compatible

T  -Shirt test: women tend to find symmetrical men’s t-shirts to smell better

 an experience involving feeling of euphoria, intimacy, and intense sexual attraction.With time passionate love has a rapid onset but fades with time

an experience involving affection, trust and concern for a partner’s well-being; has a slower onset but grows with time

brain and mind are independent and somehow (interactive): Rene Descartes

The brain causes the mind; mental events cause physical events

§  Belief (mental) à killer T-cell activation (physical) i.e. placebo activation

Thomas Hobbes 

Mind and brain are two descriptions of the same thing

Just as molecular motion doesn’t cause heat it is heat

   Benedict Spinoza

   give the person different activities to engage it, sensitive to increased brain flow in brain activity, in real time in scans, has good special resolution, can’t localize time as well 

Franz Gaul’s Phrenology

   Claim was that he could tell you a lot about the person simply by feeling their skull. Was only right about localization.

emotion, motivation, and simple judgement, fast, simple, evaluative judgment

vision

damage to this =blindness or selective blindness 

Broca’s Arphsia

agrammatic speech, there is content but struggling to put it together grammatically 

Wernicke’s Aphsia 

“jargon-aphasia”- grammar is right but content is meaningless 

prosopagnosia

Face Blindness

Somatosensory cortex

 different amounts of neural tissue go long with different parts of your body (if larger in one part hands with have great sensitivity)

Motor cortex

 ability to have motor control, based on amount of neural tissue 

Dissociation

 Centralized control, but really a bunch of different parts trying to implicate their particular action. Battles between regions

Function of the Prefrontal Cortex

slow, complex, conscious thought

logical: local analysis, sensory processing and motor control of right side, language, very literal

Global analysis, sensory processing and motor control of left side, special relations

a principle that has been developed to explain some kind of natural phenomenon. Theories are based on repeated observation and tests.

falsifiable, parsimonious, replicable

predicts an outcome or series of events in a particular experiment. A researcher’s hypothesis states what he or she believes will happen in a given situation, backed by some kind of evidence

specific to general

1. begin with a set of observations

2. find a pattern

3. Induce a general rule

general to specific

1.   Begin with a set of premises and facts

2.   Apply general rules of logic

3. Derive a conclusion

   The way scientists test hypotheses against data. 

Who do you want to study?

population- the whole group you're interested in

sample- limited number of cases taken from a population, who you do the experiment on

try to reflect the population’s demographics/characteristics

 all people have an equal likelihood of being in the study; less chance of sample results being different from population

observe individual or group behavior in its typical setting

often look at a unique or rare individuals or very small groups

does not require experimenter manipulation

conditions are manipulated by the experimenter

   organize and summarize data so they are easier to understand

Describes data in a sample (the group you tested)

  help researchers make inferences about a population based on date from a sample

try to characterize the center of the data you collect

mean, median, and mode

 Measures of Variability

range, standard deviation 

a part of descriptive statistics 

 linear association between to variables. Ranges from -1 to 1

doesn't mean causality 

 a group of participants isn’t given the independent variable

the process by which important changes in the state of the world create changes in the state of the brain

Vision- by far the most dominant 20-50% of the cerebral cortex is devoted to vision

Audition-hearing

Olfaction- smell

 different parts of the brain are simultaneous extracting different aspects from the sense, ie color, motion, form, and depth

   “What” through the temporal lobe, computes shape

 "Where” through occipital then parietal lobes, position of the object in space

  Percentage-of-Change Detection

Senses detect change:  Stop hearing the hum of the refrigerator

 Grey strip: appears as if it’s changing, but really it’s the colors around it

the senses detect the relative (not the absolute) magnitude of change

when you get gradual small changes we don’t know it.

Perceiving more than we can sense

don’t really hear the rest of the word but the brain fills it in

After you know what to expect you can hear it (Queen demonstration and Dalmatian demonstration) getting insufficient information and filling in the ambiguities 

inability to remember what happed before the inducing event

   inability to remember what happens after the inducing event

  visual sensory memory (6-7 sec)

 hearing sensory memory (1-2 sec)

an experience that influences your actions, although you may not be aware of it or able to put into words

1. Rehersal:going over and over again

2. Mnemonic:tool to help you remember

3.Chunking:organizing info into smaller pieces

free recall: produce a response

cued recall:  you receive significant things about martial

recognition:you’re offered serial choices and asked to select correct one

saving method:method four observing learning; compares the speed of original learning to the speed of relearning

 How easily we can retrieve a memory depends on the number and types of associations we form

The associations you form at the time of learning will be most effective retrieved, way it goes in it should come out

   Tendency to remember if in same condition during recall as it was during original memory

   Proactive interference (old stuff messes up new memories)

  Retroactive interference (new material messes with old memories)

self regulated action of internal organs and glands

Parasympathetic

calming you down from the fight or flight response 

 Brain and spinal chord

  A wave of electrical discharge that travels down the axon to the terminals, stimulates neurotransmitter release, "all-or-none" reaction

 Respond- Basic hardware

   Predict- Pavilion Software

 Operate- take action, Skinnerian Software  

hardwired stimulus-response circuit (blinking)

The circuit breakers; If we continue to maintain exposure to a certain reflex than response tenuates

 Pavlovian Software

  Need to acquire new routines in new situations

UCS (unconditioned stimulus/cheese) à UCR (unconditioned response/ salivate)

CS (conditioned stimulus/footsteps) à UCR

the fundamental form of prediction, and is a no-brainer 

 Skinnerian Software

 Edward Thorndike- put cats in a puzzle box

Suggests that there is behavioral selection, those with positive reinforcement will exist 

   if the response in the presence of a stimulus is followed by a satisfying event, the association between the stimulus and the response is strengthened. If the response is followed by an annoying even, the association is weakened

Stimulus à response à satisfaction (if yes than response continues) 

   Regression to the Mean

Like test taking: more likely to get a higher grade after you get an F or lower if you get an A+

 May cause an allusion of a benefit of punishment, but really just getting close to the average

 all behavior is a result of its reinforcement history

  Signs on the walls: write on them when it says do not write, compulsion to break what they’re not trying to do