PSYCH 2450 PRELIM #1 EXAM QUESTIONS ANSWERED CORRECTLY LATEST UPDATE 2026

PSYCH 2450 PRELIM #1 EXAM QUESTIONS ANSWERED CORRECTLY LATEST UPDATE 2026 When does happiness start - Answers First smile: social smile -Important milestone in development -Attunement Social smile - Answers -First smile: important milestone in development - indication of ability to copy emotion and recognize caretaker Attunement - Answers A baby has to feel connected to the caregiver for the laughter to take place - no social expectation of babies' laughing Mood vs feeling - Answers Mood can just be variations in the human brain What is pleasure for? - Answers -Pleasure is a behavioral reinforcement -Nerds and Cheezits (sugar and fat) - we have evolved to feel pleasure when we eat sugar and fat -So happiness is a way of saying keep doing what you're doing What is pain for? - Answers Pain is a warning signal - evolved to warn us of damage Biological imperatives - Answers Here are the tasks of the brain for all animals -Eating and drinking -Fighting -Courting -Mating -Caring for Offspring Medulla - Answers it sits right on top of the spine and regulates our heart rate, blood pressure, rate of respiration - basic, essential functions Pons - Answers a switch for sleep and wakefulness Midbrain - Answers -sitting right on top of the Pons, controls body movement in fighting, sex, and lowers pain when doing both -Carries out orders from the cortex and in lower mammals essentially calls the shots Cerebellum - Answers -for us, takes sensory information from the nervous system but also communicates with the frontal lobes, so that physical motion can be precise and nuanced -When cerebellum is damaged by stroke, the patient's motions become jerky and gross Basal ganglia - Answers yet higher level of motor control that is involved with the control of slow movements Thalamus - Answers another component of the brain which evolved to process more deeply and with more detail sensory information before sending it on to the frontal lobes. It has two parts, one for each hemisphere Hypothalamus - Answers -Takes information from sensory organs, yet also seems to regulate pituitary gland which has powerful influence on the body through the release of hormones -Involved with eating, drinking, sexual behavior Limbic system - Answers it's found on the border of the cerebral hemispheres and the brain stem, bringing information from the cerebellum, routing it to the centers of the brain generating conscious thought, while also contributing to awareness, emotion, aggression and memory Hippocampus - Answers is responsible for episodic memory, presumably directing its storage and retrieval. Also encodes spatial memories at least for rats whose hippocampi have been shown responsible for their remembering their way through mazes Amygdala - Answers perhaps the center for instinctive aggression, it controls fight or flight in lower mammals and plays a role in our response to threats or trauma. Patients with PTSD often show increased activation of amygdala Cerebral cortex - Answers structure is two hemispheres connected by Corpus Callosum. Each hemisphere has four areas or lobes Occipital Lobe - Answers this includes the visual cortex, which generates images from the information sent up through the brain stem, and the visual association cortex, where visual memories, categories and focus are generated Temporal lobe - Answers primary auditory cortex and its association area Parietal lobe - Answers including the primarily somatosensory cortex and the somatosensory association area Frontal lobes - Answers -although this region controls fine movement, it also seems to be where language, thought, and judgment are generated -Prefrontal cortex in particular, that space behind our newly evolved extended forehead, "rewires" during adolescence, resulting in abstract thinking and higher orders of analysis and creativity Functioning system - Answers -You learn a complex action by first learning separate actions which compose -Once you've mastered pressing gas pedal, looking in the mirror, turning the steering wheel, your brain writes a "macro" for the whole action and stores it in a different part of the brain Evidence for functioning systems - Answers -Stoke victims show that when you make a macro representation it gets stored in a different part of the brain -fMRIs show us that different parts of the brain light up when you perceive, think, say or react to something -Some parts of the brain process raw data, others draw meaning from those data -The limbic system certainly includes memory and emotions but -Functioning systems tell us that our doing complicated actions involve many parts of our brain - but where is the self As you like it act 1 scene 1 - Answers The duke projecting murderous rage on Orlando - I know not why my soul hates him so The contemporary belief/fantasy about the afterlife - Answers -In this Hollywood genre, our spirits can be trapped on earth until we work out the psychological issues or conflicts left unresolved in our lives. A living person, with the ability to speak to ghosts, ends up playing psychotherapist, holding sessions with the departed and the ones they left behind -What a perfect combination of modern American culture - psychotherapy, the wish to understand, the need to resolve personal issues The brain and the self - Answers -Proposal that the self is whatever we're associated to at any given moment -The act of associating is extremely complicated, rich in emotion, ideas, fantasy and desire -And it happens very fast and it's anchored in memory -Example: association to creator (Harry) and Sting's creative process From one self to another: a day in the life of first year Cornell student Jan - Answers -Waking up: text from mom -Science lab - bio - pre-med rumination -Text from friend back home, then phone call -Dinner on north campus with friends Running into the idealized person -Cracking the books, finally mastering a chapter -Mother calls, you take it, brother call later In bed, knowing you should sleep Sensory motor stage (Piaget) - Answers (0-2) -Intelligence in action: child interacts with environment by manipulating objects -Brain development: the first neural networks Pre-operational stage (Piaget) - Answers (2-7) -Thinking dominated by perception, but child becomes more and more capable of symbolic functioning: language development occurs; child still unduly influenced by own perception of environment -Brain development: neural networks of memory in the "first software" Concrete operational stage (Piaget) - Answers (7-11) -Logical reasoning can only be applied to objects that are real and can be seen -Brain development: the brain pares down synapses, creates "second software" for memory, loses the ability to pronounce all languages Formal operational stage - Answers 11- -Individual can think logically about potential events or abstract ideas Brain development: with puberty, the brain expands the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex -marks fundamental divide between childhood and adolescence Oral psychosexual stage (0-1) - Answers -Sexual sensation centered on the mouth: pleasure derived from sucking, chewing, biting -Brain development: early neural network development Anal psychosexual stage (1-3) - Answers -Sexual sensations centered on anus - high interest in feces, pleasure derived from elimination -Neural network memory for language and rules develops Phallic psychosexual stage (3-5) - Answers -Sexual sensations move to genitals -Early self concepts around power Oedipal psychosexual stage (4-6) - Answers -Sexual desire for other sex parent and fear of same-sex parent -Brain generates experience of conflict and mixed loyalties in concrete ways Latency psychosexual stage - Answers -Sexual desires repressed; focus on developing social and cognitive skills -Brain pares down synapses, reloads memory retrieval software losing vivid memories before 5-6 years old; now is capable of basic symbolic thinking Genital psychosexual stage - Answers Reemergence of sexual desire, now directed outside the family Trust vs mistrust psychosocial stage (birth to 18 months) - Answers earliest experience of the world, expectations of caregiving Autonomy vs shame and doubt (18 months - 3) psychosocial stage - Answers toilet training is a challenge, but it feels good to know you're "being good" Initiative vs guilt psychosocial stage (3-5) - Answers epic first experience of going out into the world, leaving caregivers Industry vs inferiority psychosocial stage (6-11) - Answers social comparison, learning in school, after school intimacy vs isolation psychosocial stage (12-18) - Answers so much projection! So much maturity Connectivism - Answers connectivist models assume the self is generated by hidden layers of node activity Cognitive model - Answers The socially constructed self -Open self: known to self and others -Blind self: unnoticed by self, but known to others -Hidden self: known to self, but not to others -Unknown self: unknown to both self and others David Hume on "there is no self" - Answers -Hume completely undercuts Descartes and Locke's view of self-identity -He believed that any idea must be derived from an impression. Hume argues that when we are self-conscious we are only aware of fleeting thoughts, feelings and perceptions; we do not have an impression of the self or a thinking substance -He concludes that the idea of the self is simply a fiction -We are never aware of any enduring self, we are never justified in claiming we are the same person we were a year ago or a minute ago Start with the brain - goldfish - Answers -A goldfish hears the sound of food flakes hitting the water. The goldfish turns, recognizes the contour of the flake and goes for it -The next time the goldfish feels the flakes hit the water, rudimentary memory will be triggered, increasing the speed of its response -Let's try a more complicated example: you hear a song playing down the hall. At first you don't recognize it, but then suddenly you do - and a memory of when you last heard it comes to mind along with an emotional echo More complicated example of self in contemporary neuro terms - Answers -Your ear as sensory input organ registered the sound and conveyed first through basic processing - locating the notes in space, recognizing the tones and intervals -Then, higher levels of your brain instantly brought the perception to stored memory, matching it to the song you heard years ago -This match triggers memories stored as emotionally-driven experiences which then come to mind -These memories may trigger thoughts of regret or yearning, or perhaps nostalgia -All of these steps are electro-chemical events happening at lightning speeds through neural networks in your brain, from the basic sensory data to the more sophisticated processing of you prefrontal cortex There is no self in the brain, but - Answers -We each have a style of thinking, created by the innate capacities of our brains and our cultures and our families and our individual histories -This style of thinking and feeling has been involved in continuous growth of our brains which, as Barbara Finlay has said, constructs itself from experience