Abnormal psychology and life: a dimensional approach pdf download

Shaping Complex Behavior: Complex behavior exists in the form of a chain of small behavior. Control is required for such kind of behavior. This extended form of learning is shaping technique. What do you do to become one? What do you feel if you manage to become like your model?. According to psychologist Albert Bandura, a major part of human learning consists of observational learning, which is learning by watching the behavior of another person, or model.

Because of its reliance on observation of others—a social phenomenon—the perspective taken by Bandura is often referred to as a social cognitive approach to learning Bandura, , Bandura identifies three forms of reinforcement that can encourage observational learning. First, of course, the observer may reproduce the behaviors of the model and receive direct reinforcement.

The reinforcement need not be direct - it may be vicarious reinforcement as well. As mentioned earlier, the observer may simply see others reinforced for a particular behavior and then increase his or her production of that behavior. The final form of reinforcement is self-reinforcement, or controlling your reinforcers. This sort of reinforcement is important for both students and teachers.

We want our students to improve not because it leads to external rewards but because the students value and enjoy their growing competence. But social cognitive theorists believe that in human beings, observational learning cannot be fully understood without taking into account the thought processes of the learner. They emphasize the knowledge that results when a person sees a model- behaving in certain ways and experiencing the consequences.

Many years ago, Albert Bandura and his colleagues showed just how important observational learning is, especially for children who are learning the rules of social behavior.

Bandura mentions four conditions that are necessary before an individual can successfully model the behavior of someone else: 1. Attention: the person must first pay attention to the model. Retention: the observer must be able to remember the behavior that has been observed. One way of increasing this is using the technique of rehearsal.

Motor reproduction: the third condition is the ability to replicate the behavior that the model has just demonstrated. This means that the observer has to be able to replicate the action, which could be a problem with a learner who is not ready developmentally to replicate the action. For example, little children have difficulty doing complex physical motion.

Motivation: the final necessary ingredient for modeling to occur is motivation; learners must want to demonstrate what they have learned. Remember that since these four conditions vary among individuals, different people will reproduce the same behavior differently. Social learning theory has numerous implications for classroom use. Students often learn a great deal simply by observing other people.

Describing the consequences of behavior can effectively increase the appropriate behaviors and decrease inappropriate ones. This can involve discussing with learners about the rewards and consequences of various behaviors.

Modeling provides an alternative to shaping for teaching new behaviors. Instead of using shaping, which is operant conditioning; modeling can provide a faster, more efficient means for teaching new behavior. To promote effective modeling a teacher must make sure that the four essential conditions exist; attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation. Teachers and parents must model appropriate behaviors and take care that they do not model inappropriate behaviors.

Teachers should expose students to a variety of other models. This technique is especially important to break down traditional stereotypes. Students must believe that they are capable of accomplishing school tasks. Thus it is very important to develop a sense of self-efficacy for students. Teachers can promote such self- efficacy by having students receive confidence-building messages, watch others be successful, and experience success on their own.

Teachers should help students set realistic expectations for their academic accomplishments. In general, in my class, that means making sure that expectations are not set too low. I want to realistically challenge my students. However, sometimes the task is beyond a student's ability, example would be the cancer group. Self-regulation techniques provide an effective method for improving student behavior.

Cognitive Learning Theory Both classical and operant conditionings have traditionally been explained by the principle of contiguity i. Contiguity has been used to explain the association of a conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus in classical conditioning and the association of a behavior and its consequences in operant conditioning.

Cognitive learning may take two forms: 1. Latent learning 2. In the s, two social scientists proposed a modification they called social learning theory. Most human learning, they argued, is acquired by observing other people in social context, rather than through standard conditioning procedures.

By s and s, social learning theory was full bloom, and a new element had been added: the human capacity for higher level of cognitive processing. Its proponents agreed with behaviorists that human beings, along with the rat and the rabbit, are subject to the laws of operant and classical conditioning.

But, they opposed that human beings, unlike the rat and the rabbit, are full of attitudes, beliefs and expectations that affect the way they acquire information, make decisions, reason, and solve problems.

These mental processes affect what individuals will do at any given moment and also, more generally the personality traits they develop. It is said to occur without reinforcement of particular responses and seems to involve changes in the way information is processed.

In a classic experiment, Tolman and Honzic placed three groups of rats in mazes and observed their behavior each day for more than two weeks. Group 2 never found food. Group 3 found no food for ten days but then received food on the eleventh. The Group 1 rats quickly learned to head straight the end of the maze without going blind alleys, whereas Group 2 rats did not learn to go to the end.

But, Group 3 rats were different. For ten days they appeared to follow no particular route. Then, on the eleventh day they quickly learned to run to the end of the maze. By the next day, they were doing, as well as group one, which had been rewarded from the beginning. Group three rats had demonstrated latent learning, learning that is not immediately expressed.

A great deal of human learning also remains latent until circumstances allow or require it to be expressed. Insight Learning It is a cognitive process whereby we reorganize our perception of a problem. Sometimes, for example, people even wake up from sleep with a solution to a problem that they had not been able to solve during the day. In a typical insight situation where a problem is posed, a period follows during which no apparent progress is made, and then the solution comes suddenly.

What has been learned in insight learning can also be applied easily to other similar situations. Human beings who solve a problem insightfully usually experience a good feeling called an 'aha' experience. The two terms often describe roughly the same processes. The term learning is often used to refer to processes involved in the initial acquisition or encoding of information, whereas the term memory more often refers to later storage and retrieval of information.

After all, information is learned so that it can be retrieved later, and retrieval cannot occur unless information was learned. In this regard, this chapter will mainly focus in two sections. In the first part, you will learn about memory and in the subsequent part you will focus on forgetting, theories of forgetting, and on how to improve memory. Learner Appetizer Comment on the following points in groups before you start learning the lesson of the chapter.

Other memories, however, are lost or distorted. Describe this memory in your own words. The last friend you instant messaged? Or what happened on September 11, ? Of course you do. But how is it possible for us to so easily travel back in time? Intelligent life does not exist without memory. Imagine what life could mean to a person who is unable to recall things that are already seen, tested, heard before. Your memory provides the function that your life to have continuity in place and time, adapt to the new situations by using previous skills and information, enriches your emotional life by recoiling your positive and negative life experiences.

It is the way in which we record the past for later use in the present. Memory is a blanket label for a large number of processes that form the bridges between our past and our present.

To learn about the nature of memory, it is useful to separate the process from the structure. Memory processes are the mental activities we perform to put information into memory, to keep it there, and to make use of it later. This involves three basic steps: a Encoding: Taken from computer science, the term encoding refers to the form i. It is the process by which information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory.

In encoding we transform a sensory input into a form or a memory code that can be further processed. This is what memory specialists mean when they speak of placing information in storage. It is the location in memory system in which material is saved. Storage is the persistence of information in memory. In retrieval, material in memory storage is located, brought into awareness and used. Failure to remember can result from problems during any of the three phases of the memory process see Figure.

If, for example, you encode a new item of information only as a sound pattern, there would be no memory trace of its meaning. If both the sound and the meaning were encoded and held for the length of the retention interval, the item might have been misfiled in memory. If so, the item might be impossible to retrieve even though it is still stored in memory. Memory is the process by which information is encoded phase1 , stored phase 2 and later retrieved phase 3. Although people usually refer to memory as a single faculty, the term memory actually covers a complex collection of abilities and processes.

Many cognitive psychologists relate the mind to an information processor, along the lines of a digital computer that takes items of information in; processes them in steps or stages, and then produces an output.

Consider how the computer works; First, it takes in information for instance via keystrokes and translates the information into an electronic language, then the computer permanently stores the information on a disc, and finally it retrieves the information file stored on a disc on to a working memory which also receives new information from the keyboard and the information is put on to the screen as part of the working memory.

Like computer, we also store vast amounts of information in our memory storehouse. From this storehouse, we can retrieve some information onto a limited capacity of working memory, which also receives information from our current experience. A number of such models of memory have been proposed. One of the most important and influential of these is the one developed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin It is the first information storage area.

Sensory memory acts as a holding bin, retaining information until we can select items for attention from the stream of stimuli bombarding our senses. It gives us a brief time to decide whether information is extraneous or important. Sensory memory includes a number of separate subsystems, as many as there are senses. It can hold virtually all the information reaching our senses for a brief time. For instance, visual images Iconic memory remain in the visual system for a maximum of one second.

Auditory images Echoic memory remain in the auditory system for a slightly longer time, by most estimates up to two second or so. The information stored sensory in memory is a fairly accurate representation of the environmental information but unprocessed.

Most information briefly held in the sensory memory simply decays from the register. However, some of the information that has got attention and recognition pass on short-term memory for further processing. Unlike sensory memories, short-term memories are not brief replicas of the environmental message.

Instead, they consist of the by-products or end results of perceptual analysis. STM is important in a variety of tasks such as thinking, reading, speaking, and problem solving. There are various terms used to refer to this stage of memory, including working memory, immediate memory, active memory, and primary memory.

Rapid accessibility - Information in STM is readily available for use. In this respect, the difference between STM and LTM is the difference between pulling a file from the top of a desk versus searching for it in a file drawer, or between searching for information in an open computer file versus file stored on the hard drive.

Preserves the temporal sequence of information- STM usually helps us to maintain the information in sequential manner for a temporary period of time. It keeps the information fresh until it goes to further analysis and stored in LTM in meaningful way. That is, on the average, people can hold about seven pieces of information in STM at a time; with a normal range from five to nine items.

Everyone agrees, however, that the number of items that short-term memory can handle at any one time is small. According to most models of memory, we overcome this problem, by grouping small groups of information into larger units or chunks.

Chunking expands working memory by making large amounts of information more manageable. The real capacity of short-term memory, therefore, is not a few bits of information but a few chunks. A chunk may be a word, a phrase, a sentence, or even a visual image, and it depends on previous experience.

STM memory holds information sounds, visual images, words, and sentences and so on received from SM for up to about 30 seconds by most estimates. It is possible to prolong STM indefinitely by rehearsal- the conscious repetition of information. Material in STM is easily displaced unless we do something to keep it there. Long Term Memory It is a memory system used for the relatively permanent storage of meaningful information.

The capacity of LTM seems to have no practical limits. LTM stores information for indefinite periods. It may last for days, months, years, or even a lifetime.

Type of memory Type of Capacity Characteristics Duration information 1. Sensory Memory 2. Short- term Memory 3. It is further subdivided into semantic and episodic memories. Semantic memory- factual knowledge like the meaning of words, concepts and our ability to do math. They are internal representations of the world, independent of any particular context.

Episodic memory- memories for events and situations from personal experience. They are internal representations of personally experienced events. One of the most important kinds of implicit memory is procedural memory. Serial Position Effect The three-box model of memory is often invoked to explain interesting phenomenon called the serial position effect.

If you are shown a list of items and are then asked immediately to recall them, your retention of any particular item will depend on its position in the list. That is, recall will be best for items at the beginning of the list the primacy effect and at the end of the list the recency effect. When retention of all the items is plotted, the result will be a U-shaped curve.

They were thoroughly processed, so they remain memorable. The last few items are remembered for a different reason: At the time of recall, they are still sitting in STM. The items in the middle of the list, however, are not so well retained because by the time they get into short-term memory, it is already crowded.

As a result many of these items drop out of short-term memory before they can be stored in long-term memory. As such all the three processes are important for good memory.

Ability to retain: This depends upon good memory traces left in the brain by past experiences. Good health: A person with good health can retain the learnt material better than a person with poor health. Age of the learner: Youngsters can remember better than the aged. Maturity: Very young children cannot retain and remember complex material.

Will to remember: Willingness to remember helps for better retention. Intelligence: More intelligent person will have better memory than a dull person, g. Interest: If a person has more interest, he will learn and retain better. Over learning: Experiments have proved that over learning will lead to better memory.

Speed of learning: Quicker learning leads to better retention, j. Sleep or rest: Sleep or rest immediately after learning strengthens connections in the brain and helps for clear memory. How forgetting occur or what causes forgetting?

In what way and how do we forgot that information? Is forgetting bad or good for us? In our daily living, we encounter so much information. Hence, we are selective in storing and forgetting information. Sometimes we are motivated to forgot something and recall what we want to remember. Psychologists call this phenomenon as motivated forgetting? Psychologists generally use the term forgetting to refer to the apparent loss of information already encoded and stored in the long-term memory.

Using himself as his only subject, he memorized lists of three letter non-sense syllables- meaningless sets of two consonants with a vowel in between, such as FIW and BOZ. By measuring how easy it was to relearn a given list of words after varying periods of time from initial learning had passed, he found that forgetting occurred systematically. The most rapid forgetting occurs in the first hours, and particularly in the first hour. After nine hours, the rate of forgetting slows and declines little, even after the passage of many days.

There is almost always a strong initial decline in memory, followed by a more gradual drop over time. Theories of Forgetting Psychologists have proposed five mechanisms to account for forgetting: decay, replacement of old memories by new ones, interference, motivated forgetting, and cue dependent forgetting.

This explanation assumes that when new material is learned a memory trace or engram- an actual physical change in the brain- occurs. In decay, the trace simply fades away with nothing left behind, because of the passage of time. We have already seen that decay occurs in sensory memory and that it occurs in short term memory as well, unless we rehearse the material.

However, the mere passage of time does not account so well for forgetting in long-term memory. People commonly forget things that happened only yesterday while remembering events from many years ago. Although there is evidence that decay does occur, it does not seem to be the complete explanation for forgetting. Memory specialists have proposed an additional mechanism: Interference. Interference Interference theory holds that forgetting occurs because similar items of information interfere with one another in either storage or retrieval.

The information may get into memory, but it becomes confused with other information. There are two kinds of interference that influence forgetting: proactive and retroactive.

In Proactive Interference, information learned earlier interferes with recall of newer material. If new information interferes with the ability to remember old information the interference is called Retroactive Interference.

This theory is mostly associated with the STM, where the capacity for information is limited to seven plus or minus chunks. It cannot be associated with the LTM because of its virtually unlimited capacity. Motivated Forgetting Sigmund Freud maintained that people forget because they block from consciousness those memories that are two threatening or painful to live with, and he called this self-protective process Repression. Today many psychologists prefer to use a more general term, motivated forgetting.

In long-term memory, this type of memory failure may be the most common type of all. Cues that were present when you learned a new fact or had an experience are apt to be especially useful later as retrieval aids. That may explain why remembering is often easier when you are in the same physical environment as you were when an event occurred: Cues in the present context match from the past.

Cues present during the initial stage of learning help us to recall the content of the specific learning materials in an easy manner. Your mental or physical state may also act as a retrieval cue, evoking a state dependent memory. For example if you are intoxicated when something happens, you may remember it better when you once again have had a few drinks than when you are sober.

Likewise, if your emotional arousal is specially high or low at the time of an event, you may remember that event best when you are once again in the same emotional state. What are the major memory impairments? Someday in the near future, drugs may be available to help people with memory deficiencies to increase normal memory performance. For the time being, however, those of us who hope to improve our memories must rely on mental strategies. Some simple mnemonics can be useful, but complicated ones are often more bothersome than they are worth.

A better approach is to follow some general guidelines. Pay Attention: It seems obvious, but often we fail to remember because we never encoded the information in the first place. When you do have something to remember, you will do better if you encode it.

Encode information in more than one way: The more elaborate the encoding of information, the more memorable it will be Add meaning: The more meaningful the material, the more likely it is to link up with information already in long-term memory. Take your time: If possible, minimize interference by using study breaks for rest or recreation.

Sleep is the ultimate way to reduce interference. Accordingly, some theories of forgetting that have been attempted to describe the causes of memory failure or forgetting have been discussed. In so doing, the chapter focuses on the definition and types of motivation, theories of motivation, conflict of motives, definition,and elements of emotion, and theories of emotion.

What do you think are behind your actions? In most cases, what makes you unable to start doing things? Have you ever faced with conflicts among your ideas, interests and challenge to decide? Motivation 5. Have you tried to answer the questions? For example, when a person is relaxing in front of a television and begins to feel hungry, the physical need for food may cause the person to get up, go into the kitchen, and search for something to eat. If hunger is great enough, the person may even cook something.

The physical need for hunger causes the action getting up , directs it going to the kitchen , and sustain the search finding or preparing something to eat. There are different types of motivation. But, it is possible to categorize them into two: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is a type of motivation in which a person acts because the act itself is rewarding or satisfying in some internal manner. Extrinsic motivation is a type of motivation in which individuals act because the action leads to an outcome that is external to a person. Can you mention some sources for different types of your behavior, please? The sources of motivation are different according to the different theories of motivation. Some of these theories are instinct, drive-reduction, arousal, incentive, cognitive, and humanistic.

Just as animals are governed by their instincts to do things such as migrating, nest building, mating and protecting their territory, early researchers proposed that human beings may also be governed by similar instincts. The early theorists and psychologists listed thousands of instincts in humans including curiosity, flight running away , pugnacity aggressiveness , and acquisition gathering possessions.

However, none of these theorists did more than give names to these instincts. But these approaches accomplished one important thing by forcing psychologists to realize that some human behavior is controlled by hereditary factors. Dear student, what do you think is the relationship between need and drive?

A need is a requirement of some material such as food or water that is essential for the survival of the organism. When an organism has a need, it leads to a psychological tension as well as physical arousal to fulfill the need and reduce the tension. This tension is called drive. Drive-reduction theory proposes just this connection between internal psychological states and outward behavior. In this theory, there are two kinds of drives; primary and secondary. Primary drives are those that involve survival needs of the body such as hunger and thirst, whereas acquired secondary drives are those that are learned through experience or conditioning, such as the need for money, social approval.

This theory also includes the concept of homeostasis, or the tendency of the body to maintain a steady-state. When there is a primary drive need, the body is in a state of imbalance. This stimulates behavior that brings the body back into balance or homeostasis. He will seek to restore his homeostasis by eating something which is the behavior stimulated to reduce the hunger drive.

Personally, we love living here. Pittsburgh is an amazing city that offers a quality of life rivaled by few other places in the world. Psychology Ph. A Mural of Stories. Tooby, J. The psychological foundations of culture. Barkow, L. Tooby Eds. New York: Oxford University Press. Toggle navigation. Key Features. Experimental Method Twin Research. Basic Assumptions.

Psychology should be seen as a science, to be studied in a scientific manner. Behavior can be largely explained in terms of biology e. Human genes have evolved over millions of years to adapt behavior to the environment. Areas of Application. The biological approach provides clear predictions that can. This means that explanations can be scientifically tested and support with evidence. Bio psychological theories often over-simplify the huge complexity of physical systems and their interaction with the environment.

Download this article as a PDF. How to reference this article: How to reference this article: McLeod, S. Nature vs. Connect for Abnormal Psychology includes the only adaptive reading experience on the market as well as new Interactive Case Studies and the Faces of Abnormal Psychology video program. Experimental Abnormal Psychology Author : B. This orientation toward experimental abnormal psy chology has been closely tied to the practical tasks of psychiatry: differential diagnosis, establishment of the structure and extent of impairment, and the dynamics of mental disorders as affected by treatment, etc.

Experimental abnormal psychology has been no less important for the theoretical problems of psychology and psychiatry. The study of pathological changes in mental processes helps in dealing with questions about the structure and formation of mental activity. The research findings of abnormal psychology also have important implications for overcoming biologizing tendencies in the interpre tation of human psychology.

The present book does not try to provide an exhaustive expo sition of all divisions of abnormal psychology. It introduces the reader only to those problems which at the present time seem to be best worked out experimentally: the breakdown of intellectual capacity, thought disorders, the methodology of setting up an ex periment in the psychiatric clinic, and certain questions relating to motivational disturbances and psychological growth and decay.

Some rewritten sections from the author's earlier book, "The Pathology of Thinking," have been included. The new sixth edition continues to place an emphasis on an integrated approach to abnormal psychology, on making biological information clear to students, and on providing a strong focus on empirical research and diversity.

New to this edition is Connect Abnormal Psychology, which includes the groundbreaking adaptive study tool, LearnSmart, and Faces Interactive, a unique digital learning environment which provides students with an opportunity to observe real people through a series of case studies on 12 different psychological disorders.