Psychology 1
PREVIOUS: Psychological Development
I only have like an hour before I have to return this textbook so I’m going to quickly summarize consciousness lol
Consciousness
Consciousness: If a cooperative person reports being aware/conscious of one stimulus and not of another, then he or she was conscious of the first and not the second. Brain Death: The brain shows no activity and no response to any stimulus. Coma: Caused by traumatic brain damage, the brain shows a steady, but low level of activity and no response to any stimulus. Vegetative state: Limited responsiveness, such as increased heart rate in response to pain. Minimally conscious state: People have brief periods of purposeful actions and speech comprehension.
Libet Experiment: Measured the time when people made a conscious decision to act, the time when brain activity preparing for the movement started, and the time of the act itself. They found that your brain starts producing a voluntary movement before you are conscious of a decision to move (your consciousness does not cause your action).
We are controlled by a circadian rhythm, rhythm of activity and inactivity lasting about a day. Morning people on average do better with cognitive ability and motivation as opposed to evening people. By shifting your sleep schedule, you get jet lag/what happens after daylight savings (spring forward).
Sleep is great. We do it to save energy, it strengthens learning and memory.
-image of sleep cycles-
But some people can’t sleep.
- Insomnia: not enough sleep for the person to feel rested the next day.
- Sleep apnea: Failure to breathe for a minute or more and then wake up gasping for breath
- Narcolepsy: alternate between brief waking and sleeping periods throughout the day. They lose brain cells that produce orexin and return to sleeping like infants.
Freud’s theory of dreams: Manifest content (literal dream) and latent content (figurative dream).
Hypnosis is just ordinary suggestibility, an altered state of consciousness. Hypnosis can not enhance memory, but it probably makes it worse.
Meditation is also a procedure to induce an altered state of consciousness.
Abnormal Behavior
Biopsychosocial model: Biological, psychological, and sociological aspects of abnormal behavior. It considers all the genetic factors, infectious diseases, inadequate sleep, etc. of your biology; the stress, conditioning, or circumstances of your past of your psychology; and the culture of your current social context.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) sets specific criteria that determines pscyhological diagnosis. It has lists of common disorders and maps them to the behaviors that people with that disorder have. If you exhibit enough behaviors to meet the criterion for a certain disorder, you will be diagnosed. It makes everything empirical, but people fit partially in a couple of diagnoses. Some disorders may overlap and over-diagnose people, as nearly normal conditions can be called mental illnesses.
Anxiety is primarily a psychology problem. Most treatments are behavioral rather than pharmeceutical.
It is pretty common in so many disorders, so we often consider generalized anxiety disorder as more of a symptom instead of a disorder. But if you begin having panic attacks (frequent periods of anxiety and occasional attacks of panic), it gets more serious. There are some genetic factors, but nothing too clear People display hyperventilation, joint laxity, experience more fears, increased heart rate. People with panic disorder also develop agoraphobia, the fear of open or public places or social phobia an avoidance of other people or doing anything in public.
Phobias are fears that interferes with normal living. You learn phobias (conditioning, learning). Albert showed little fear of animals until he was conditioned with white rats and loud noises.
People unable to quit a self-destructive habit have dependence or are addicted to the habit. Alcohol, sex, food, etc. Cigarette smokers experience unplesantness when they abstain and have withdrawl symptoms (physical dependence). Cravings and having a strong desire for something without withrawl symptoms are instead determined as psychological dependence, think of gamblers. There are pharmaceutical drugs that help addictions, as well as psycho-social treatments.
Major depression is extended discouragement, disapointment, where people experience little interest pleasure, or motivation. There are environmental (stress, sudden events) and genetic influences (heredibility, relatives). Treating depression can come with medication, where drugs tend to interact with the process of releasing dopamine and all that jazz, but can also be cured through cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy focuses on changing people’s thoughts into a more encouraging and active position. Both methods are effective, but neither are reliable..
Schizophrenia is prolonged deterioration of the daily activities (work, social relationships, self-care, hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech or thought, …) Again, there are genetic factors (study of identical twins), a possible neurodevelopment factor (originates from nervous system before or in early childhood), brain abnormalities. There are also medications that can also relieve it, but when stopped, people usually see the symptoms again. Some side effects are tremors/involuntary movements.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a treatment of psychological disorder by methods that include a personal relationship between a trained therapist and a client. Types of psychotherapy:
- Psychodynamic Therapies: attempt to understand conflicting impulses, included some that the individual does not consciously recognize.
- Psychoanalysis: bring unconscious thoughts and emotions to Consciousness
- Free Association: client says everything that comes to Mind
- Dream Analysis: Interpreting dreams
- Behavior Therapy: Starting with a clear, well-defined goal, and then eliminating anxiety through learning.
- Toilet training for older kids
- Cognitive Therapies: Improve psychological well-being by changing people’s interpretation of events.
- Cognitive behavior therapy: set explicit behavioral goals, but also try to change people’s interpretation of situations
- Humanistic Therapy
- person-centered therapy: nondirective, where therapist listens to client with total acceptance and unconditional positive regard.
- Family Systems Therapy: the guiding assumption is that most people’s problems develop in a fmaily setting and that is the best way to deal with them–improve family relationships and communication.
- Group therapies: administer to several people at once (support group).
People want to deinstitutionalize and remove patients from mental hospitals because they suck and lack funding, but there aren’t any good alternatives.