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Summary Extensive notes intro to psychology readings book
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This is a detailed summary of the readings of all the chapters from the book Psychological science 8th edition.
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Consciousness is limited● There is a limit as to how many things the mind can be conscious of
● Change blindness → because we cannot attend to everything in the vast array of visual
information available, we are often “blind” to large changes in our environments
● How do the limits on consciousness contribute to change blindness?
● Major changes to the environment may go unnoticed when conscious awareness is
focused elsewhere
Unconscious processing can influence behavior
● Just because people fail to attend to or consciously perceive something in their
environment does not mean that they are unaffected by it
● Freudian slip → when an unconscious thought is suddenly expressed at an inappropriate
time or in an inappropriate social context
● Studies of selective listening show that unattended information is processed at least to
some extent
○ These studies found that even when participants could not repeat an unattended
message, they still had processed its contents
Priming
● Priming → this occurs when the response to a stimulus is influenced or facilitated by
recent experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus.
● For example if I mention a setting of a dinner table and then I ask which word comes to
Subliminal perception
● Subliminal perception → occurs when stimuli are processed by sensory systems but
because of their short duractions or subtlety do not reach consciousness
● Which type of subliminal messages are most likely to affect behavior?
○ Messages that evoke emotion or motivation may submit behavior but messages do
not affect complex behaviors like buying or self confidence
Automatic processing reduces demands on consciousness
● Automatic processing → a task is so well learned that we can do it without much
attention
● Controlled processing → it is slower than automatic processing but helps people perform
in complex or novel situations
What is altered consciousness?
● Meditation produces relaxation by guiding attention
1
, ● Concentrative meditation → you focus your attention on one thing such as a breathing
pattern
● Mindfulness meditation → you let your thoughts flow freely without paying attention to
them
● Does showing that long-term meditators have less age-related change in brain structure
prove meditation reduces neural aging and decline?
○ No, correlation does not equal causation. Those who practice meditation may also
have other lifestyle differences that affect brain aging
Drugs alter consciousness by changing brain neurochemistry
● Stimulants → increase behavior and mental activity. They stimulate or heighten activity
of the central nervous system
● Depressants → they have the opposite effect of stimulants. They reduce behavioral and
mental activity by depressing the central nervous system
● What is the definition of binge drinking?
○ Drinking five or more drinks in one sitting
Rem dreams and non-rem dreams
● There are two stages in which dreams occur and that is rem and non rem sleep
● The boring dreams occur in the non rem sleep stage and the bizarre ones in the rem sleep
phase
● During REM sleep the prefrontal cortex is switched off and the motor cortex, the visual
association area, the amygdala and the brain stem are active
What do dreams mean?
● Freud believed that dreams have a kind of hidden meaning
● Manifest content → the dream the way the dreamer remembers it
● Latent content → what the dream symbolizes
Activation-synthesis hypothesis
● This hypothesis states that random brain activity occurs during sleep and that this neural
firing can activate mechanisms that normally interpret sensory input
● The sleeping mind tries to make sense of the resulting sensory activity by synthesizing it
with stored memories
Sleep is an adaptive behavior
● There are 3 main reasons for why we sleep, I remember these with the abbreviation
“RAF” from giraffe
● 1. Restoration
2
, ● 2. Avoiding danger at certain times of the day
● 3. Facilitation of learning
● Sleep deprivation is also dangerous because it makes people prone to microsleeps in
which they fall asleep during the day for periods ranging from a few seconds to a minute
Sleep deprivation and depression
● For people with depression, it can actually help them to sleep less, because sleep
deprivation leads to increased activation of serotonin receptors which is the same that
drugs do that treat depression
● For people that do not sure rom depression however, sleep deprivation is more likely to
produce negative moods than positive ones
Circadian rhythm theory
● This theory has proposed that sleep has evolved to keep animals quiet and inactive during
times of days when there is the greatest danger, usually when it is dark
● Large animals that are vulnerable to attack such as cos sleep little
Facilitation of learning
● Neural connections made during the day are strengthened during sleep at night
● Both slow wave sleep and REM sleep appear to be important
● If you stay up the whole night to study then the next day there is reduced activity in the
hippocampus
Sleep disorders interfere with daily life
● Insomnia is the inability to fall asleep and stay asleep during the night
● Pseudoinsomnia is when you think you are awake but you are actually asleep
● The most effective way to treat insomnia is using drugs (sleeping pills) with CBT
Obstructive sleep apnea
● People with obstructive sleep apnea stop breathing for shorts period off time during sleep
because their throat closes
● This condition is most common in middle aged man that are also suffering from obesity
and in most extreme cases a CPAP device is given to them
Narcolepsy
● A rare sleeping disorder in which excessive sleepiness lasts from several seconds to
minutes occurs during normal waking hours
● During episodes of narcolepsy, people may experience the muscle paralysis that
accompanies REM sleep which causes their limbs to collapse
3
,REM behavior disorder
● This is roughly the opposite of narcolepsy in the sense that normal paralysis that
accompanies RE sleep is disabled
● This leads people to act out their dreams and sometimes strike their partner
● No treatment exists or this rare condition which is caused by a neurological deficit
Sleepwalking
● Also referred to as somnambulism mostly occurs in young children and occurs during
slow-wave sleep
How do brain injury and drugs affect consciousness?
Traumatic brain injury (TBI)
● This is impairment in mental functioning caused by a blow to or very sharp movement of
the head which is commonly caused by an accident or a sports injury
● TBI’s are responsible for about 30 percent of al injury deaths and are also a substantial
cause of disabilities that can last long
● A concussion is known as mild TBI, but concussions can have a cumulative effect in the
sense that with every new injury it adds to the symptoms
Drugs can alter consciousness by changing brain neurochemistry
● There are 4 types of drugs:
○ 1. Stimulants: increase behavioral and mental activity
○ 2. Depressants: decrease behavioral and mental activity
○ 3. Opioids: reduce pain and bring pleasure
○ 4. Hallucinogens/psychedelics: they alter the state of consciousness
● Cocaine in the short term can make someone feel motivated and confident but in the long
term it can lead to psychotic problems and paranoia
● Methamphetamine was first developed as a nasal decongestant but then it started being
used for recreational purposes
● Opioids are used or pain relieve but they are addictive
● Marijana is interesting because it can fall into all the categories of the drugs
Alcohol abuse is responsible for many societal problems
● So alcohol is the second most commonly used psychoactive drug in the world after
caffeine
● It is a depressant that inhibits neural activity by activating GABA receptors
● What is considered binge drinking?
○ Binge drinking is when women have more than 4 drinks within 2 hours
○ Binge drinking is when men have more than 5 drinks within 2 hours
○ Young males are much more likely to be binge drinkers
4
, Across the globe, men drink the most amount of alcohol
Early experiences can have lasting effects:
● When a child’s environment does not stimulate their brain, very few synaptic connections
wille made
Exposure to teratogens during prenatal development
● Teratogens are agents that harm the embryo or fetus (alcohol, cigarettes, etc)
● The extent of the damage depends on when the embryo or fetus is exposed, as well as the
length and amount of exposure
● The most common teratogen is alcohol
● Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders
Biology and environment influence motor development
● Babies are born with certain reflexes that they do not have to learn. These include:
grasping reflex, rooting reflex and the sucking reflex
●
An emotion is an immediate, specific negative or positive response to environment events of
internal thoughts
○ Emotions typically have some kind of triggering event, interrupt whatever is
happening and prompt changes in thoughts and behavior
● For psychologists, emotion (sometimes called AFFFECT) has 3 components:
○ 1. A psychological process
○ 2. A behavioral response
○ 3. A feeling that is based on cognitive appraisal of the situation and interpretation
of bodily states
○ A FEELING is the subjective experience of the emotion such as feeling scared
but not the emotion itself
○ Moods on the other hand are long-lasting and do not have specific triggers
Emotions vary in valence and arousal
● There is a distinction between the primary and secondary emotions
● Primary emotions → innate, evolutionary adaptive and universal across cultures
● Secondary emotions → there are blends of primary emotions, feelings about emotions or
emotions that relate to culturally specific values or concepts
Emotions have a physiological component
The insula and the amygdala
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