Psychology Spider Diagram

Created by: kezza1
Created on: 19-10-15 10:07

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Psychology
- Attachment
  - Ainsworth's Strange Situation
    - 7 stage controlled observation. Assessed proximity seeking, exploration and secure base, stranger and separation anxiety and response to reunion.
    - Infants showed consistent patterns of attachment behaviour
    - Types of attachment shown: Secure; enthusiastic greeting, generally content. Avoidant; avoids reunion, generally reduced responses. Resistant; resists reunion, generally more distressed
    - Eval: Support for validity, good reliability, however test may be culture bound and there may be other attachment types.
  - Explanations: Learning Theory
    - Classical Conditioning
      - Caregiver (NS) associated with food (UCS). Caregiver becomes CS.
    - Operant Conditioning
      - Crying behaviour reinforced positively for infant and negatively for carer.
    - Hunger was seen as the primary drive, with attachment being secondary through association with hunger
    - Evaluation: Lorenz and Harlow found that feeding is not the key to attachment. Schaffer and Emerson found that most primary attachment figures were the mother's even when others did the feeding. Ignores other factors.
  - Cultural variations
    - Van Ijzendoorn
      - Secure attachment was most common everywhere.
      - Insecure-avoidant most common in Germany and least common in Japan.
      - Insecure-resistant overall least common, but was highest in Israel and Japan and least common was in Great Britain.
      - Eval: Large samples, but method of assessment is biased, and samples tend to be unrepresentative of culture.
  - Schaffer's stages
    - Asocial, indiscriminate, specific, multiple.
      - Eval: Problem studying asocial stage, problem measuring multiple attachments.
    - Study: Between 25 and 32 weeks of age, 50% of babies showed separation anxiety. Attachment tended to be the caregiver who was the most effective. By 40 weeks of age, 80% of babies had a specific attachment and almost 30% displayed multiple attachments.
      - Eval: Good external validity, longitudinal design, but limited sample charcteristics.
  - Animal studies
    - Harlow: In this study, Harlow reared rhesus monkeys, some of which had a wire mother and some had a soft cloth mother.
      - It was found that the monkeys preferred to touch the soft cloth mother over the wire one. Even if the wire one dispensed milk, the monkeys preferred the contact comfort gained from the soft cloth mother. Critical period of 90 days.
        Those monkeys who were maternally deprived as youths were very violent towards their own young when they were adults, some being so aggressive that they killed their children.
        Eval: Theoretical and practical value (helps understand factors in child abuse), but there are ethical issues.
    - Lorenz: In this study, Lorenz observed imprinting by dividing a clutch of goose eggs, half being hatched with their mother in the natural environment, and the other half hatched in an incubator where the first thing they saw was Lorenz.
      - It was found that the incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group followed their mother. This is imprinting, whereby bird species attach to and follow the first moving object they see. Critical period of a few hours.
        Eval: Not appropriate to generalise to humans, some of Lorenz's observations have been questioned.
  - Explanations: Bowlby's monotropy theory
    - This is the theory in which infants form an attachment to a primary caregiver that is more important than all other attachments.
      - Infants also emit social releasers such as smiling or crying, to which adults are biologically attuned. There is a critical period of 2 years in which an attachment must form.
        Infants also visualise the relationship they have with their primary caregiver. This is an internal working model, and can be used to apply to all other relationships.
        Evaluation: Mixed evidence, some babies form multiple, not primary attachments. Support for social releasers, Brazleton found when social releasers ignored, babies were upset. Support for internal working model, Bailey et al found quality of attachment is passed on through generations of families.
  - Maternal Deprivation
    - Bowlby believed that continuous emotional care from a mother is necessary for normal emotional and intellectual development.Physical separation only leads to deprivation when the child loses emotional care.
    - The first 30 months are critical and deprivation in that time causes damage.
    - Effects of deprivation include low IQ, and affectionless psychopathy. 44 thieves study showed many more APs than controls had a prolonged separation.
    - Maybe poor evidence: Orphans have experienced other traumas, Bowlby potential biased observer. Counter-evidence from Lewis, sample of 500, no link between early separation and later criminality. Bowlby exagerrated the importance of a critical period.
    - Bowlby 44 thieves study: It was found that of the 44 thieves, 14 were affectionless psychopathy, of this 14, 12 had been maternally deprived.
  - Romanian orphan studies
    - Rutter: Half of the orphans showed mental retardation, and the longer it takes to get adopted, the lower the IQ of the child. Children adopted after 6 months of age showed disinhibited attachment.
      - Eval: Good practical applications, but the children weren't randomly assigned to conditions and issues with generalisability.
    - Disinhibited attachment is a typical effect of spending time in an institution, showing no stranger anxiety.
  - Influence of early attachments on later relationships
    - Internal working model
      - Having a good/bad experience of attachment will lead the child to have good/bad expectations for future relationships. Secure infants form better friendships and are less likely to bully.
- Memory
  - Multi-store model
    - Sensory register
      - Consists of multiple stores for each of the senses e.g iconic for visual info
    - Short term memory
      - Temporary and limited capacity store. Mainly acoustic coding. Transfer to LTM by rehearsal.
    - Long term memory
      - Potentially permanent memory store for info rehearsed for a prolonged time. Unlimited capacity and duration, semantic coding.
    - Eval: More than one type of rehearsal. More than one type of STM, oversimplifies LTM.
  - Types of long-term memory
    - Episodic
      - Events from your life
    - Semantic
      - Knowledge of the world and facts
    - Procedural
      - Actions and skills
    - Eval: Clinical and neuroimaging evidence to support. Real life applications.
  - Working memory model
    - Central executive
      - Co-ordinates the operation of the 3 slave systems and allocation of resources
    - Episodic buffer (2nd slave)
      - Links working memory to LTM and wider cognitive processes
    - Visuo-spatial sketchpad (1st slave)
      - Manipulates visual images
      - Inner scribe
        Records the arrangement of objects in the visual field.
      - Visual cache
        Stores visual data.
    - LTM
    - Phonological Loop (3rd slave)
      - Articulatory control system
        Allows maintenance rehearsal
      - Phonological store
        Takes in words we hear
      - Takes in sound based information
    - Eval: Clinical evidence, dual task performance support it, however lack of clarity over central executive.
  - Explanations of forgetting
    - Interference theory
      - Proactive: When an old memory blocks a new one from being recalled.
      - Retroactive: When a new memory blocks and older one from being recalled.
      - Eval: Evidence from lab studies, but artificial materials.
    - Retrieval failure theory
      - Encoding specificity principle
        Cues most effective if present at coding and at retrieval
      - Context-dependent forgetting
        Recall is better when external contexts when encoding and retrieving are matched
      - State dependent forgetting
        Recall is better when internal states when encoding and retrieving are matched
      - Eval: Supporting evidence, but questioning context effects.
  - Cognitive interview
    - Report everything, reinstate the context, reverse the order, change perspective.
    - Eval: Some elements of the full CI are useful, but is time consuming and produces increase in inaccurate information.
  - Factors affecting EWT
    - Misleading information
      - Leading questions: Loftus and Palmer found that changing one word in a sentence changed the mean speed at which pps gave for a car moving in a video.
        Response-bias: Wording of question influences how pp decides to answer.
        
        Substitution: Wording of question directly changes the pps memory of clip.
        
        Eval: Artificial tasks, but does have real life applications
      - Post-event discussion: Witnesses to a crime discussing their testimonies with each other can make them combine their memories with other's information. Memory conformity.
    - Anxiety
      - Negative effect
        Less people could identify the man who held a knife. Tunnel theory.
        
        Eval: Lacks control of variables, may test surprise rather than anxiety.
      - Positive effect
        Gun store shooting, witnesses were very accurate in their accounts, with little change in accuracy after 5 months
  - Coding, capacity and duration of memory
    - Research on coding
      - Baddeley found that it's acoustic in STM and semantic in LTM
      - Eval: Artificial stimuli
    - Research on capacity
      - Jacobs digit span: 9.3 digits, 7.3 letters.
      - Miller: 7+-2.
      - Eval: Lacks validity.
    - Research on duration
      - STM: Petersons: Up to 18 secs without rehearsal
      - LTM: Bahrick found recog of faces dropped to 70% after 48 years
      - Eval: Meaningless stimuli in Peterson. High external validity in Bahrick.
- Approaches
  - Behaviourist
    - Only interested in studying observable behaviour. Uses lab studies.
    - Pavlov and CC (association) Skinner and OC (reinforcement and punishment)
    - Eval: Scientific credibilityand real life application, but is deterministic.
  - SLT
    - Observable behaviour
    - There are mediational processes (ARMM) in between stimulus and response
    - Vicarious reinforcement, imitation (including Bandura), modelling, identification
    - Eval: Emphasises cognitive factors in learning and less deterministic, but ignores biological influences and relies too much on lab studies.
  - Cognitive
    - Inferences can be made about internal mental processes through observation of behaviour
    - Theoretical and computer models, IP approach (info flowing in stages like input and retrieval), mind is likened to a computer (central processor is the brain).
    - Schema, building block of knowledge that can be applied to new experiences
    - Cognitive neuroscience, have found neurological basis of mental processing.
    - Eval: Uses scientific methods, is less deterministic and has applications but is reductionist
  - Biological
    - Mind lives in brain. Thoughts and feelings have physical basis. Biological structures must be studied
    - Genotype: genetic make-up. Phenotype: how genes are expressed.
    - Twin and family studies used to find a genetic basis of behaviour.
    - Natural selection of genes based on survival value
    - Eval: Uses scientific methods, has real life applications, but is deterministic.
  - Bio-psychology
    - Central nervous system, passes messages to and from the brain and connects nerves to the PNS
      - Brain, centre of all conscious awareness.
      - Spinal cord, extension of brain, responsible for reflex actions
    - Peripheral nervous system, transmits messages via millions of neurons to and from the CNS.
      - Somatic nervous system, carries sensory and motor info to and from the spinal cord
      - Autonomic nervous system, governs vital functions in body such as breathing, heart rate and digestion.
        Parasympathetic nervous system, rest and digest
        
        Sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight
        Fight or flight, when the body is physiologically aroused in order to defend ourselves or escape.
    - Endocrine system: Controls vital bodily processes that happen slowly.
      - Major gland is the pituitary, which controls the release of hormones from all other glands. Hormones are also secreted into the bloodstream, such as adrenaline from the adrenal gland.
    - Neurons and synaptic transmission: Sensory carries info from PNS to CNS, relay carries info from sensory to motor. Motor carries info from CNS to effectors.
      - Nucleus: Genetic material of cell. Dendrite: Branches protruding from cell body. Axon: Carries impulses away from cell body down neuron. Myelin sheath: Layer covering axon, speeds up message.
      - Nodes of Ranvier: Speed up impulse by forcing it to jump across it's gap. Terminal button: End of axon, communicates with next neuron across synapse.
  - Origins
    - Wundt and introspection
      - First psychology lab in Germany
      - Controlled methods
      - Philosophical roots in Descartes, Locke and Darwin
    - Psychology as a science
      - Watson and early behaviourists rejected introspection
      - Scientific approach, behaviourism, cognitive and biological approach, cognitive neuroscience
- Psycho-pathology
  - Definitions of abnormality
    - Statistical deviation
      - When an individual has a less common characteristic compared to the larger population
        Eval: Simple means of assessing patients. However, unusual characteristics can be positive.
    - Deviation from social norms
      - Anyone who deviates from socially created norms in a society is considered abnormal.
        Eval: Cultural relativism, and human rights abuse towards minority groups.
    - Failure to function adequately
      - Failure to cope with the demands of everyday life
        Eval: Does capture perspective of patient, but is it it different from DFSN?
    - Deviation from ideal mental health
      - If you deviate from 6 characteristics created by Marie Jahoda, you're abnormal
        Eval: Not many people can reach these high standards, and cultural relativism.
  - Depression
    - Mood disorder, can be gradual or sudden. Physical symptoms possible. Can be mild or intense. Affects thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
    - Characteristic
      - Behavioural: Low activity levels, disrupted sleep/eating, aggression, self harm
      - Emotional: Lowered mood and self esteem, anger
      - Cognitive: Poor concentration, dwelling on the negative, absolutist
    - Beck's approach to explaining depression.
      - Three parts to congitive vulnerability: Faulty IP, negative self schemas, negative triad.
        Eval: Supporting evidence, application in CBT, but doesn't explain all aspects.
    - Ellis' approach to explaining depression
      - Action: Negative life event that triggers a response. Beliefs lead us to over react to the activating event and depression results when we overreact to negative life events.
        Eval: Application in CBT, but it doesn't explain all aspects.
    - Cognitive treatments
      - Beck's CT: challenge negative triad through assessment of the patient. Patient made aware of their negative views, replaced with positive ones
      - Ellis' REBT: extends ABC by adding Dispute and Effect. Identify and dispute irrational beliefs. the effect is a more beneficial effect on thought and behaviour.
  - Phobias
    - Defined as an irrational fear of a particular object (specific), activity or situation (social).
    - Characteristics
      - Behavioural: Panic, avoidance, endurance
      - Emotional: Anxiety
      - Cognitive: Selective attention, irrational beliefs, cognitive distortions
    - Behavioural explanation of phobias
      - Two process model. Acquisition by classical (arachnophobic + spider = fear), maintained by operant (avoidance of phobia reinforced by anxiety reduction)
        Eval: Good explanatory power, however it is an incomplete explanation and it ignores cognitive aspects of phobias
    - Behavioural treatments
      - Systematic desensitisation: Anxiety hierarchy constructed, relaxation techniques taught, exposed to phobic stimulus whilst practising RT at each level of hierarchy.
        Eval: It's effective, acceptable to patients and for a diverse range of patients.
      - Flooding: Patient exposed to phobic stimulus immediately with no build up. Stops phobic responses quickly by extinguishing the phobis timulus.
        Eval: Cost-effective, but is traumatic and is less effective.
  - OCD
    - Characteristic
      - Behavioural: Compulsions decrease anxiety. Avoid situations that trigger anxiety
      - Emotional: Intense anxiety, deepression, guilt and disgust
      - Cognitive: Obsessive thoughts, cognitive strategies such as prayers, self-insight.
    - Genetic explanation
      - Candidate genes, may be involved in producing symptoms of OCD, is polygenic (many combinations of up to 230 genetic variations) and different combinations may cause different kinds of OCD.
        Eval: Supporting evidence, but too many candidate genes.
    - Neural explanation
      - Low levels of serotonin linked to OCD. Decision making systems such as the frontal lobes parahippocampal gyrus may be malfunctioning
        Eval: Supporting evidence, but the serotonin link may not be unique to OCD.
    - Treatment: Drug therapy
      - SSRIs, antidepressants that increase levels of serotonin at the synapse. Combined with CBT or other drugs. Also, other alternatives such as clomipramine or SSRIs.
        Eval: Effective at tackling symptoms, cost-effective, but there are side effects.
- Social Influence
  - Types and explanations of conformity
    - Identification: A moderate type of conformity where we act in the same way with the group because we value it and want to be a part of it, but we don't necessarily agree with everything the majority believes.
    - Compliance: A superficial and temporary form of conformity where we outwardly go along with the majority view but privately disagree with it.
    - Internalisation: A deep type of conformity where we take on the majority view because we accept it as correct. It leads to a far reaching and permanent change in behaviour even when the group is absent.
    - Conformity: A change in behavior or opinions as a result of a real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
    - Asch study: Confederates gave wrong answers to see if pp would conform on a line comparison test. Naive pps conformed on 36.8% of trials. 25% never conformed.
      - Conformity increased up to group size of four. Dissenter reduced conformity. Conformity increased when task was harder.
      - Artificial situation and task, limited application, child of it's time.
    - Informational social influence: We agree with the opinion of the majority because we believe it's correct. We accept it because we want to be correct as well.
      - Eval: Support for ISI
    - Normative social influence: We agree with the opinion of the majority because we want to be accepted, gain social approval and be liked.
      - Eval: Individual differences in NSI are ignored.
  - Conformity to social roles
    - Zimbardo: Mock prison with students randomly assigned to guard or prisoner. Guards became brutal, prisoners withdrawn and depressed. Pps conformed to their roles as guards or prisoners.
      - Random allocation, increased internal validity. Lack of realism due to stereotypes. Only one-third of guards were brutal, exaggerated. Ethical issues.
    - Defined as the conformity people put in to certain social roles in society such as teacher, student, adult, child, passenger etc.
  - Obedience
    - A change in behaviour in response to a demand from an authority figure.
    - Milgram: Pps gave fake electric shocks to a 'learner' in obedience to instructions from the 'experimenter. 65% gave highest shock of 450V. 100% gave shocks up to 300V. Many showed signs of anxiety.
      - Low internal validity as pps realised shocks were fake, but replication with real shocks got similar results. Findings generalise to other situations such as hospital wards. Ethical issues.
    - Milgram's situational variables
      - Proximity: Obedience decreased to 40% when teacher could hear learner, and to 30% in touch proximity condition.
      - Location: Obedience decreased to 47.5% when study moved to run-down office block.
      - Uniform: Obedience decreased to 20% when 'member of the public' was the experimenter.
      - Bickman showed power of uniform in his field experiment. Lack of internal validity, some of Milgram's pps knew the procedure was faked, pps could have play acted, so not genuine obedience. Has been replicated in other cultures. Good control of variables.
    - Social-psychological factors: The agentic state
      - Agentic state: Individuals allow someone else to direct their behaviour.
      - Autonomous state: Individuals direct their own behaviour and take responsibility for the consequences.
      - Switching between these two states is called the agentic shift.
      - Binding factors: Allows the individual to ignore the damaging effects of their obedient behaviour.
      - Eval: Limited explanation, doesn't explain many research findings. However, it does have research support from Blass and Schmidt.
    - Social-psychological factors: Legitimacy of authority
      - Legitimacy of the system
        Concerns the extent to which the body is a legitimate source of authority
      - Legitimacy of authority within the system
        The power individuals hold to give orders because of their position in the system.
      - Legitimacy of orders given
        Refers to the extent with which the order is perceived to be a legitimate area for the authority figure.
      - Destructive authority: People can obviously use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, such as Hitler.
      - Eval: Explains obedience in different cultures due to different hierarchies.
    - Dispositional explanations: Authoritarian personality
      - Adorno used F-scale to study unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. People with authoritarian personalities identify with the 'strong' and have fixed cognitive style. Extreme respect for authority and obedience to it.
      - Origin; Harsh parenting, creating hostility that can't be expressed against parents so is displaced.
        Eval: Support, some of Milgram's pps had authoritarian personality. Can't explain increase in obedience across a whole culture, so social identity theory is better AND has political bias.
      - A personality type in which individuals are submissive towards those who are superior to them within a hierarchy, but dismissive of those who lie beneath them. They are 'black and white' thinkers who believe in traditional values.
  - Resistance to social influence
    - Locus of control: The sense of what directs events in our lives.
      - Contiuum: High internal at one end and high external at the other. Internals believe they're responsible for what happens to them. Externals believe that things happen to them without their control.
      - Internals more likely to resist social pressure to conform or to obey.
      - Research support, but there is contradictory research.
    - Social support: Conformity reduced by presence of dissenters from the group. Obedience decreases in presence of disobedient peer who acts as a model to follow.
      - Research support for dissenting peers in resistance to conformity and obedience.
  - Minority influence
    - Consistency: If the minority is consistent this attracts the attention of the majority over time.
    - Commitment: MI more powerful if minority shows dedication such as by making personal sacrifices, shows minority not acting out of self-interest. Augmentation principle.
    - Flexibility: MI more effective if the minority show flexibility by accepting counter-arguments and comprimises.
    - Defined as a form of social influence in which a minority of people persuades others to adopt their beliefs or behaviours
    - Eval: Support from Moscovici and Wood et al's meta analysis. However, artificial tasks
      - Showed that a consistent minoirty opinion had a greater effect on other people than an inconsistent one.
    - Snowball effect: When increasing numbers of people switch from the majority to the minority and the faster this happens, the faster the rate of conversion.
    - Moscovici study: 3 conditions, confederates said they were green, confederates were inconsistent and a control of no confederates. Consistent: pps gave same wrong answer on 8.42% of trials, 32% conformed on at least one trial. Inconsistent: 1.25%, control: pps wrongly identified 0.25% of time
      - Eval: Artificial tasks, applications of research is limited, but support for internalisation
  - Social influence and social change
    - Drawing attention, consistency, deeper processing, augmentation principle, snowball effect, social cryptomnesia.
    - Conformity research: NSI can lead to social change by drawing attention to what majority is doing.
      - Research support, BUT only indirectly effective and role of deeper processing is challenged.
    - Obedience research: Disobedient role models, gradual commitment can lead to change.

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Psychology Spider Diagram

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