Abnormal Psychology Exam 1

• abnormal psychology 


  The scientific study of abnormal behavior in an effort to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning.

  Workers: clinical scientists, clinical practitioners
• Psychological Abnormality


  Many proposed definitions, but none accepted.

  Four D's: Deviance, Distress, Dysfunction, Danger. Useful starting point, but has key limitations
• Id (Frued's theory)


  guided by the pleasure principle

  instinctual needs, drives, and impulses

  fueled by libido (sexual energy)
• Sigmund Freud and his three unconscious forces

  ID

  ego

  superego

  
• who is the father of psychodynamic theory and psychoanalytic therapy

  sigmund freud
• psychodynamic model of abnormality

  abnormal behavior stems from repressed conflicts and urges that are fighting to become conscious

  
• what are two weaknesses of the biological models of abnormal behavior

  -can limit our understanding by being too simplistic

  -treatments can produce undesirable (negative) side effects
• what are the following:

  
  

  - considerable respect in the field

  - constantly produces valuable and new information

  -treatments can bring relief


  strengths to biological models of abnormal behavior
• Psychosurgery (lobotomy)


  Lobotomies cut the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain. It decreased the person's misery or tension but produced permanently lethargic, immature, uncreative person

  
  

  
  

  they believed the lower parts of your brain were more emotional than upper parts so they attempted to disconnect them

  
• electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)


  a biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient

  
  

  usually after drugs and other therapies have failed

  
• drug therapy

  began in the 1950s

  psychotropic medications used to treat mental disorders

  
  

  ex: antianxiety, antidepressant, anti-bipolar drugs
• Three types of biological treatment

  Drug therapy

  Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

  Psychosurgery
• what are three reasons genes contributing to mental disorders can occur

  mutations, inherited after mutation, evolutionary principles (survival of the fittest)
• true or false

  
  

  abnormalities in brain anatomy or chemistry are SOMETIMES genetic

  true
• what is the kind of "hormonal shift" approach in abnormal behavior

  chemical activity in the endocrine system

  
  

  endocrine glands release hormones which propel body organs into action; abnormal secretions lead to disorder
• how are some neurotransmitters different from others?

  some NT's tell receiving neurons to "fire;" other NTs tell receiving neurons to stop firing

  
  

  (tell each other to activate or stop activating; to fire or not to fire)
• Neurotransmitters


  chemical messengers that cross the synaptic gaps between neurons

  
  

  ex; serotonin, dopamine, GABA

  
  

  abnormal activity in NTs can lead to specific mental disorders
• true or false:

  
  

  clinical researchers have not yet discovered connections between certain psychological disorders and problems in specific brain areas

  false.

  
  

  there are ties to psychological disorders and issues in brain regions. For example, Huntingtons disease is tied to the basal ganglia and cortex
• How do biological theorists explain abnormal behavior?

  through brain anatomy and chemistry

  
  

  neurons and their support cells (glia) and how they interact within brain regions

  
  

  information is communicated through the brain in the form of electrical impulses that travel from one neurons dendrites, move down the axon, and transmitted through the nerve to other neurons

  
  

  ex: is disorder related to particular regions in the brain

  
• the biological model of abnormal behavior focuses more on


  symptoms

  
  

  (believe abnormality is caused by illness/malfunction)
• ABAB design

  An experimental design, often involving a single subject, wherein a baseline period (A) is followed by a treatment (B). To confirm that the treatment resulted in a change in behavior, the treatment is then withdrawn (A) and reinstated (B).

  
  

  
  

  measure smth---inroduce IV--- measure again-- remove IV---measure again--- introduce IV again---- measure

  
• single-subject experimental design


  a research method in which a single participant is observed and measured both before and after the manipulation of an independent variable

  
  

  PARTICIPANTS COMPARED AGAINST THEMSELVES

  
• analogue experiment


  induce laboratory participants to behave in ways that seem to resemble real-life abnormal behavior
• in natural experiments, ______________ manipulates the independent variable and the experimenter _______________ the effects

  manipulates, observes
• matched control groups

  These groups are "matched" to the experimental group based on demographic and other variables

  
  

  ex: children with history of child abuse
• quasi-experimental designs lack....

  random assignment

  
  

  -(generally for ethical/practical reasons)
• what removes the confound of bias

  masked design, double-masked design
• double-masked design (double-blind)


  experimenters AND participants are kept from knowing which condition the study participants are in

  
  

  -gets rid of the experimenters bias as well as participant (removes all bias)
• masked design


  participants are kept from knowing which assigned group (experimental or control) they are in

  
  

  ex: placebo pill, unaware of what one they are receiving

  
  

  -removes participant bias
• random assignment


  assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups
• control group


  group of research participants who are not exposed to the independent variable but whose experience is similar to that of the experimental group

  
  

  -by comparing we get a better understanding of the independent

  -rules of statistical significance applied

  
• confound


  variables other than the independent variable that may also be affecting the dependent variable

  
  

  -researchers must try to eliminate

  -eliminated by control group

  
  

  ex: flinstone vitamins and cocaine usage-confound was age

  
• the following are examples of what type of questions in clinical research:

  
  

  does factor X cause a disorder?

  is cause A more influential than cause B?

  how does a disorder affect the quality of a persons life?

  why does treatment X work?

  causal questions
• questions about causal relationships can only be answered by.....

  an experiment
• what method allows researchers to ask the following question:

  
  

  does a particular therapy relieve the symptoms of a particular disorder?

  experimental method

  
  

  it tests cause and effect while producing a statistical significance.
• variable being measured/observed is the

  dependent variable
• manipulated variable is the

  independent variable
• experimental method


  a variable is manipulated and the manipulations effect on another variable is observed
• longitudinal studies


  A research method that studies the same participants multiple times over a period of time

  
  

  -as age increases (times goes on) , what variables change?
• Prevelance


  total number of cases in a given period