PSYC 1100 sec 35-47, Fall 2019: EXAM 1 STUDY GUIDE

EXAM 1: FRIDAY 10/11/19 3:35PM, SCHN 151; #2 LEAD PENCIL REQUIRED!

REVIEW SESSION: Wednesday 10/9/19 6:15-7:30-ish PM, MCHU 102; bring questions to have answered, etc.

NOTE: Although the topic of split-brain patients IS included in the review information below, it will NOT appear on the first exam. Don't study it -- it's only there in case we get to it, and also so it's available for the second exam.

The first exam will have 50 multiple choice questions drawn from lecture and textbook material and will be do-able in one hour (or less). Don't expect the multiple choice format to mean you'll just be looking through a list of alternatives trying to recognize some familiar information. The emphasis throughout will not be merely on rote memory for facts and definitions, but rather on conceptual understanding of the material. For example, unfamiliar questions related to the lecture content may be included, requiring an application of the knowledge you have gained so far. But not in a scary way. You will benefit from studying as if this were partly an essay exam, even though there will be only multiple choice questions on it!

Check the web page for PSYC 1100 sec 35-47 at http://media.pluto.psy.uconn.edu/psyc1100.html, and from there you can get to a rough outline of the course material. The outline is just the text of my PowerPoint slides -- it's by no means an exhaustive account of all the course material, and it doesn't contain all the detail you will need, but it does serve as an outline of the material and a reminder of some key concepts to know. You can also find my study tips page (quite long, pretty useful).

Sample exams: Practice exam-taking using old exam questions!
PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS: Here are some questions from the exams of another professor who taught this course similarly to the way I do. I've taken questions from two of his exams and arranged them by topic for my class, so ignore the numbering of the items (and the chapter numbers, for that matter -- older edition of the textbook!). I strongly recommend not looking at the answer key until you've tried to discover the answers for yourself first.
ONLY the NEUROPSYCHOLOGY QUESTIONS are relevant for Exam 1! Note that many, if not most, of the neuropsychology questions are about topics covered in the reading but not yet covered in lecture, due to that professor's different emphasis on brain region topics and lack of coverage of neurons, action potentials, neurotransmitters, etc. So don't be discouraged if they're as yet unfamiliar; maybe hold off on them till after they've been addressed in lecture. Though you can probably find answers in the textbook if you look.
ANSWERS TO THE PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS. This will only help you if you first make every effort to answer the questions on your own, using the text and your notes. Ignore the advice to "look at the other exams too," because those exams are no longer available!

Lecture vs. text:
The lecture material is primary; use the text as a resource to support and elaborate the lecture topics.

If something is covered in lecture, you will be responsible for the lecture coverage and ALL of the required text coverage of that topic as listed on the syllabus, unless I specifically tell you to omit certain pages (see below).

If something is NOT covered in lecture, you will NOT be responsible for the text coverage of that topic, unless I specifically tell you to study certain pages (see below).

Page numbers for all required reading are listed on the syllabus.

The Gleitman text isn't just a really long story that you read straight through repeatedly. You should read all the assigned material, probably at least twice. But then also use the index to find answers to particular questions that come up in your notes, your reading, or the old exams. Use the summary points at the end of the chapters, and the contents at the beginning of chapters, to help you identify what's there and how it's organized.


What to study:
Start with the readings listed on the syllabus, and then here are my comments:

Introductory material not found in the textbook is in a few links on the web page. One ("Some Introductory notes") lists the three major dates in psychology's history and the four definitions of what psychology is about (you can skip the parts about epistemology for this exam, though they mauy come up later in the course). Another is the "Brief overview of psychology's history", providing an outline of the field's history and the reasons for some of the changes it has undergone (start with Wundt on p. 9). Finally there are the PowerPoint slides elaborating on the third and fourth definitions.

NERVOUS SYSTEM OUTLINE: an outline of what to know about the nervous system for this course. Here's a pdf version, in case the formatting is messed up in the Word version. And here's a web page version.

Summary of the experiment on patients with either a damaged amygdala or hippocampus that was mentioned in class, but is not in the textbook.

Basic terms in classical conditioning (US, UR, CS, CR), also included as part of the text of the PowerPoint slides to go with the reading at the beginning of the Learning chapter (pp. 195-201).

Basic description of what phrenology was and what other legitimate discoveries can be attributed to Franz Joseph Gall.

Neural Bases of Behavior. Here's what the syllabus says:
SEVENTH EDITION: read all of Ch.3, except you can SKIP pp. 83-85, 97-99, and 112. Then also READ pp. 46-49 and 56-57 as well as figure 2.1 on p. 48 to cover the hypothalamus and autonomic nervous system; and finally pp. 302-308 on the pre-frontal cortex and consciousness, including the phenomenon of "blindsight".
EIGHTH EDITION: read all of Ch. 3 (note figure 3.26 on p. 114 on the autonomic nervous system), except you can SKIP pp. 103-105 ("Communication Through The Bloodstream") and 108-112 (from "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Studies" through "The Power of Combining Techniques" -- good material but it won't be on the exam). Then also READ these pages from other chapters: for more on the ANS read pp. 464-466 ("Thermoregulation") and 469 ("Hypothalamic Control Centers") and 474-475 ("The Fight Or Flight Response"); and finally pp. 223-224 on the phenomenon of "blindsight".

Topics in the text not explicitly covered in lecture -- be sure to read: "Plasticity" pp. 113-115 in SEVENTH edition; pp. 125-127 in EIGHTH edition.

Brief outline:

Structure of the neuron
Communication between neurons (the action potential and neurotransmitters)
Divisions of the nervous system (see handout)
The brain from bottom to top (hindbrain, midbrain, forebrain - see handout)
The cortex lobe by lobe (frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal)
Primary projection areas (know motor, somatosensory, visual, auditory locations and functions)
Non-primary (or "association") areas (know locations and functions of pre-frontal cortex, Broca's and Wernicke's areas)
Front-Back and Left-Right distinctions in the brain
Disorders resulting from lesions to non-primary areas:
- pre-frontal lesions, apraxia, agnosia, neglect, expressive/Broca's/non-fluent aphasia, receptive/Wernicke's/fluent aphasia (Gleitman uses the "non-fluent" and "fluent" terminology.)
- know name of syndrome, symptoms, and probable location of damage (what lobe and/or hemisphere)
Split-brain studies: corpus callosum, abilities of each hemisphere, contralateral connections from visual field to each hemisphere, contralateral control of hands
- to understand and interpret experiments, know: which side of visual field info is shown to; which hemisphere gets the info; what abilities does that hemisphere have; which hand does it control

Learning: The Changing Organism's Adaptation to the Changing World. Just read Ch.6 pp. 195-201 in the SEVENTH edition (pp. 259-265 in the EIGHTH edition), stopping before the section titled "Extinction". But "second order conditioning" will not be on this first exam.

Names to know (roughly in order of appearance in this course):
Wilhelm Wundt (founder of psychology as an experimental science, 1879), John Watson (proposed psychology should be the science of behavior, 1913), Ulric Neisser (coined the term "cognitive psychology", 1967), Rene Descartes, Charles Sherrington, Franz Joseph Gall, Wilder Penfield, Ivan Pavlov


Brief note on the processes of inhibition and excitation:

Inhibition and Excitation are "opponent processes", like opposing forces (inhibition is the negative force, and excitation is the positive force), appearing in many guises throughout the nervous system and in behavior. Think of them as nature's general approach to solving a host of different problems of nervous system design. We've encountered them a few times already (and there will be more!):

in neural communication --
An excitatory connection means the neurotransmitter makes the postsynaptic cell more likely to fire, by activating receptor molecules that allow more positive Na+ ions inside (i.e., the -70mV inside becomes more positive, and therefore closer to the -55 mV threshold for the action potential). An inhibitory connection means the neurotransmitter makes the postsynaptic cell less likely to fire (i.e., the -70mV inside becomes more negative, and therefore farther from the -55 mV threshold for the action potential), by activating receptor molecules that allow more negative Cl- ions inside (technically, they also push positive K+ ions outside). Whether a particular neuron sends out an action potential depends on how all the excitatory and inhibitory connections add up; if all the inhibition cancels out all the excitation there is no action potential, but if the excitation is strong enough, there is one.

in the autonomic nervous system --
Excitation of the sympathetic nervous system serves an activating function, arousing the organism as in preparedness for emergency (e.g., heart rate is accelerated, digestion and sexual functioning are inhibited). Excitation of the parasympathetic nervous system serves vegetative or resting functions (e.g., heart beats at a relaxed pace, stomach secretes digestive enzymes, sexual functions are performable). These two systems act against each other, in an inhibitory relationship -- that is, functions that are excited by one system are inhibited by the other, as demonstrated in the preceding examples. In this case you don't say that one division (say, the sympathetic) is inhibitory and the other excitatory -- you simply note that their effects work in opposite directions, or that they inhibit each other. There is a brief discussion of these processes on pp. 46-49 and 56-57, with an excellent diagram (Fig. 2.1) on p. 48 in Gleitman.

in cases of disinhibition --
Disinhibition refers to the fact that we can sometimes observe the effects of inhibition by seeing what happens when that inhibition is removed (hence "disinhibition"). It's been addressed in lecture in the case of the praying mantis's copulatory reflex : the male praying mantis performs copulatory movements reflexively and even more vigorously after the higher nerve centers responsible for inhibiting that reflex are removed, if the female bites the male's head off. And in the text, there is Sherrington's work (p. 107) on spinal reflexes in dogs, which depended on severing the spinal cord from the brain in order to remove the brain's inhibitory effects on the reflexes being studied, so that the dog's "will" wouldn't exert an influence. (Along those lines, remember we mentioned how a human's withdrawal reflex might be inhibited by the higher-level knowledge that although a heated dish of food feels painfully hot while we carry it, we should avoid letting go of it -- as long as it's not causing injury -- until we reach the table.) Disinhibition also comes up indirectly: for instance, one effect of alcohol is to temporarily damage the higher brain areas, resulting in a loss of inhibition of impulsive behaviors; and one way of interpreting the behavior of Phineas Gage after his accident is as a loss of inhibition of impulsive behaviors due to the lack of social constraints normally imposed through the action of his missing pre-frontal brain areas.

in the case of split-brain patients --
Anecdotally, for a brief period of time after surgical severing of the corpus callosum, odd effects of apparent competition between the two hemispheres arise in a few cases. One hand may reach for a dress while the other picks out a different one; one hand may stock cans on a shelf while the other takes them down. Though there is no real theory to explain this and the effects are rare, one interpretation is that even normal behavior (i.e., of non-split-brain subjects like us) depends on the outcome of opposing actions of the two hemispheres, such that one inhibits the other and the outcome in observable behavior is the result of the opposing forces.



General recommendations about studying:
I would make two recommendations about studying for all the exams in this class (and possibly in other classes):

1) First, a common experience is for students to have read the textbook, web links, and their notes, and feel quite secure that they understand everything -- but then not see that understanding reflected in their exam scores. Consider why that might be: looking at the material and having a feeling of understanding is a rather passive way to confirm your knowledge. I too can look at the text, web links, and notes, and feel like I understand them all, yet let's be honest, my understanding is probably quite a bit deeper than yours despite the similarity of the feeling. What you should aim for is not just recognition and sensibleness, but real familiarity and comfort, where you feel like you could actually explain the topic clearly to a fellow student who had a question about it, or even to someone who had no knowledge of it (e.g. a parent or roommate). Not that you literally need to deliver practice lectures to an audience, but maybe that's something to try to imagine, to see where your gaps and shortcomings might be.

2) Second, the multiple choice format often leads students to expect a kind of recognition test where terms are matched up with definition a, b, c, or d, or maybe a concept is described as being about a, b, c, or d. But multiple choice questions (mine included) can require you to think hard about comparisons or contrasts between perspectives, or ways that one idea implies or is linked to another, or applications of the topics to particular situations. For this reason, I find flashcards and the like to be of limited use, maybe good for memorizing what "myelin" is for or what the threshold for an action potential is, but flashcards tend to focus on isolated pieces of information rather than how concepts are related to one another. It makes sense, for example, to know not just what "inhibition" means but also what forms it might take (disinhibition, reciprocal inhibition), various ways the concept appears in the nervous system and in behavior, examples, etc. These are all things that are addressed explicitly in class, so I'm not implying that you need to creatively come up with these explanations; just don't assume that a superficial memory of a term and what it means will suffice. Sometimes students ask me if they just need to know the major points of what we covered, and unfortunately the answer is, no, that's not enough: you need to know the details too.

For these two reasons I usually suggest that the way to think about my exams is to pretend you're studying for an essay exam rather than a multiple choice exam. That way you realize you don't only need to know what the concepts mean, but you also have to be able to link them together and understand why and how they're connected. And you want to know this at a level where you'd be able to produce such an explanation in an essay, because even though you don't have to actually write it, that type of preparation will allow you to make the connections that the questions ask you to make. Students have sometimes said they don't think my questions are too difficult, really -- just that they make you think through them to figure them out instead of instantly answering or not answering correctly. That's exactly my intention.