PSY 101 1st Edition Exam 1 Study Guide Lectures 1 9 Lecture 1 January 21 What is hindsight bias After learning the outcome of an event people say they could have foreseen the outcome or that they knew it all along What is overconfidence People tend to be more confident in their answers than correct When wrong they maintain confidence by saying they were almost right Coincidence Error or Mistakenly perceiving order in random events Random order usually seems odd to people patterns of streak happen more often than people expect I E Rolling a dice six times and getting a three all six times most people would think or say the di is fixed Or a woman having six girls and her seventh is a boy and someone says it s mother nature god etc telling her it s time for a boy now when in reality each pregnancy there was a fifty fifty chance for a boy or girl it s really not that strange What is the scientific attitude composed of Curiosity Skepticism and Humility How do you ask and answer questions Use theories make a testable hypothesis make a study and see if it works Lecture 2 January 23 What are the three research types and define them Case Study examining one individual in depth I E Phineas Gage Naturalistic Observation Observing natural behavior means just watching and taking notes on a variety of people and not interfering in any way I E watching monkeys in the wild or people in a food court The Survey A method of gathering information about many peoples thoughts or behaviors through self report rather than observation I E The census family feud What is random sampling A technique for making sure that every individual in a population has an equal chance of being in the sample Anyone can be chosen not designated for people who meeting specific criteria What is correlation and a correlation coefficient A correlation is an observation that two traits or attributes are related to each other A measure of how closely two factors vary together A correlation coefficient is a number representing the strength and direction positive or negative of correlation The strength of the relationship refers to how close the dots on a scatterplot are to a straight line one variable changes as the other one does When looking for the strongest magnitude strength look at the number that is closest to 1 regardless of it being negative or positive Correlation coefficient example which correlation coefficient is the strongest 75 2 03 or 3 the answer is 75 because if we ignore the sign 75 is closer to 1 than all the other numbers Lecture 3 January 26 What s the difference between Random Assignment and Random Sampling Random Assignment of participants is randomly placing participants in the control group or experimental group putting people into these groups is totally random While random sampling is the random sampling of the population What is the control group used for The control group is used to see if a change would have happened without the changing of a variable in the experimental group the group where we manipulate a variable What is the placebo effect and how might researchers try to avoid it The placebo effect is when experimental effects are caused by expectations about the intervention a control group may be given a sugar pill instead of the real drug scientists are studying The control group is ideally blind to whether they are getting real or fake treatment Many researchers do double blind studies where neither participants nor research staff knows which participants are in the experimental or control groups This prevents any bias in researchers What is an Independent variable and a dependent variable The variable we are able to manipulate independently of what the other variables are doing is called the Independent Variable giving the drug pill The variable we expect to experience a change which depends on the manipulation we re doing is the Dependent Variable participants predicted reaction to pill The independent variable is what the researcher manipulates and a dependent variable is the expected reaction to the independent variable Lecture 4 January 28 What was often studied in the early 1800 s that we now know has no relation to brain size Phrenology which is the study of bumps on the skull and their relationship to mental abilities and character traits What is the structure of a neuron from top to bottom left to right dendrites cell body Axon with myelin sheath covering it Axon Terminals How do neurons receive chemical input from other cells The dendrites they are the receivers How does each neuron send messages to the next dendrites Through the axon What is the fatty tissue around an axon that helps move messages faster The myelin sheath What is a neural impulse that travels down an axon giving an all or none response that maintains constant magnitude Action Potential which is only made up of ion exchanges moving in and out What s the synapse A junction between the atom tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the next receiving neuron What is reuptake After the neurotransmitters stimulate the receptors on the receiving neuron the chemicals are taken back up into the sending neuron to be used again Think recycling Neurotransmitters activate receptors by fitting together perfectly like a lock and a key but what molecule can fill the lock so the neurotransmitter cannot get in and activate the receptor site and what molecule activates the receptor site like a neurotransmitter The molecule that fills the lock preventing the neurotransmitter from activating the receptor site is called the antagonist The molecule that activates the receptor site is called the agonist Lecture 5 January 30 What does the Central Nervous System consist of and do The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord and makes decisions for the body List three types of neurons and their functions Sensory Neurons carry messages IN from the body s tissues and sensory receptors to the CNS for processing Motor Neurons carry instructions OUT from the CNS out to the body s tissues Interneurons Located in the brain and spinal cord Therefor they are largely in the CNS and sometimes have a mind of their own like when the doctor taps your knee and it jerks out it s a reflex action caused by interneurons just as pulling your hand away from something hot is and process information between the sensory input between the sensory input and motor input What does the Peripheral Nervous System do and consist of The PNS gathers