Depression Theories

Julian B Rotter
"Behavior Potential (BP), Expectancy (E) and Reinforcement Value (RV) can be combined into a predictive formula for behavior: BP = f(E & RV)"

This formula can be read as follows: behavior potential is a function of expectancy and reinforcement value. Or, in other words, the likelihood of a person's exhibiting a particular behavior is a function of the probability that that behavior will lead to a given outcome and the desirability of that outcome. If expectancy and reinforcement value are both high, then behavior potential will be high. If either expectancy or reinforcement value is low, then behavior potential will be lower. Again, one can see the importance of conceiving of personality as the interaction of the person and the environment.

Albert Bandura
I just realized this guy was the same guy who carried out the Stanford jail experiment! the one cancelled before time becuase the subject could not handle it! its good to have a glympse to the past. Bandura pioneered the study of observational learning.He believed that, rather than operating in a mechanistic way, reinforcement provides information about future reinforcement. Such information can be gleaned by watching models' behavior rather than by behaving in a particular way and experiencing the consequences oneself.

Martin Selligman
The phenomenon of learned helplessness bears much in common with depression in humans. Such people are hypothesized to be more predisposed to depression than people with an optimistic explanatory style, who explain negative events as unstable, specific, and external.

Aaron Beck

Cognitive behavioral theorists suggest that depression results from maladaptive, faulty, or irrational cognitions taking the form of distorted thoughts and judgments. Depressive cognitions can be learned socially as is the case when children in a disfunctional family watch their parents fail to successfully cope with stressful experiences or traumatic events. Or, depressive cognitions can result from a lack of experiences that would facilitate the development of adaptive coping skills.

The Lobotomist

The theory of frontal lobotomy is to separate frontal lobe with the rest of your brain and to stop the emotional access for people suffering from mental disorders. The patients (retarded, manic…) were all kept in an asylum without any real treatment. Doctor Walter Freeman was disgusted; he saw them as people who did not require sympathy, but action. A neurologist without surgical training, he was called the Maverick Medical Genius. In 1930’s, they were trying shock therapies; the patients left the table subdued, proving to Freeman that mental disorders come from the brain. In 1936 he made a discovery. He picked up an obscure procedure done by a Portuguese doctor, Egas Moniz, which consisted of actually opening the skull, but with no real understanding of the source of outcome. It showed that the first patient to receive this procedure, after waking, had a placid expression. So Freeman, with the help of doctor James Watts, went on to perfect the technique so he operated on conscious patients to see their reaction. This was called by many as a medical turning point. Even the patients with the most favorable outcomes had problems pursuing actions in daily life. Despite the long side effects, Freeman still performed it on a large number of patients.

In 1954, a new drug called Thorazine produced results similar to those of lobotomy, except for the fact it does not directly operate on the brain. With the emergence of this pill, Freeman’s opportunities to operate vanished. This drug had effects similar to those of tranquilizers and antipsychotics. So Freeman then moved to Los Angeles and started to look for a new group of people on which to conduct lobotomy. He started to focus on kids with ADD, ADHD…etc. One of his first patients was a 12 years old boy, who according to his stepmom was disobedient. Freeman suggested a change of personality through lobotomy. From this, one can notice how his desperation to operate has altered his perception and now directs this procedure to any possible patient. He lobotomized 19 kids in total, all under the age of 18.

Walter Freeman died from cancer in 1972 at the age of 76. Lobotomy is still performed in extreme cases

Rosemary Kennedy became seriously disabled after her lobotomy. Things started going wrong when he was trying to take a picture while doing the operation and the ice pick slipped and killed the patient.

Boy Interrupted- Bipolar depression

Boy interrupted, a story about Evan Scott Perry, made me think about the severeness about bipolar depression across the globe. This also made me think about the dullness of the medicine they have to take in order to stay prevent their ups and downs. The mostly feel flat, dull, no joy nor sadness. This causes that the subject taking the medicine will miss the manic stage of the mental disorder which in a way is good because it makes them feel alive and better. But on the other hand, when the fall into the depression stage, they feel so bad they end up killing themselves. This is a sad thought, thinking that these people cannot live a normal life with or without the medicine.

Are All Memories Alike?

The question is: Does the gender or culture affect memory? Several studies have been done and scientists came to the conclusion "Specific results indicated that women excelled in verbal episodic memory tasks, such as remembering words, objects, pictures or everyday events, and men outperformed women in remembering symbolic, non-linguistic information, known as visuospatial processing." This indicates that there is no superiority, memory wise, between males and females.
 
On the other hand, culture does afffect memory. Dr.Leichtman and the other researchers say that Caucasians dont have "better" memory than asians. Instead,  people have the types of memories that they need to get along well in the world they inhabit. In the United States, she says, it's adaptive to have detailed narratives of childhood to relate.


In conclusion, we could say that a great memory is not something you are born with, it is something you have to expand throughout experience. Women excel in verbal episodic memory tasks mainly because most women are usually housewives, and throughout experience their memory has adapted to that environment.

Alzheimer's Disease- Video Response

It is fascinating to see how the disease was gradually changing as the time passed by, watching how sad it is for a person to have such disease. The first interview didn't seem that bad, the lady seemed to have a little trouble remembering names of people and minor details. The second case was more sadder, knowing that the old woman was stripped from her freedom to be able to drive. She also seemed to be frustrated easily and didn't seem as the person who would forget it right away, I guess this is what our teacher meant by a mild case. The next case seemed to be very sad,  as seeing how one of the greatest minds of his time, grew up to have Alzheimer's. The man wrote blogs on how each day passed by. If I would guess on which stage he was, I would have guessed on the dangerous, critical stage, where this man started to get distracted easily for large periods of time. He keeps thinking on how he imagines to daydream again and never to wake up again.

Articles on memory

Article #1- New understanding of how we remember traumatic events
Basically this article explains how emotional events can lead to disturbing long term memories. Which means that having these traumatic events is necessary for us to survive. These events can be seen as being part of a major car accident, being in combat or abused repeatedly again and again for the rest of your life. Scientists have uncovered that a part of the brain known as the amygdala, a part associated with processing emotions, which scientists discovered the cell mechanics under the emotion formation process. The article also made a huge discovery about the noradrenaline, the brain's adrenaline, is capable of "affecting the amygdala by controlling chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for memory formation."

Article #2- Early scents really do get "etched" in the brain
  This article explains that our childhood has a repercussion on our adulthood. To prove this, your appetite, even your inspiration was able to affect the adulthood by simply liking or disliking a smell. The experiment was tested with several different subjects and with an MRI to study in a more deeper way.

Article #3- Some Short term memories die suddenly, no fading
As an experiment, scientists experimented on how accurate visual short term visual memory really is and if the memory actually existed. This was tested on 12 adults. The test consisted on memory based on repeating a fast paced test for 150 times. When the memory was fresh, the results were pretty accurate, but when the memory faded, the results started to appear as if they were picked randomly.

What is memory?

Explain the concept of sensory memory?

-This is known as the 1st level of memory. Sensory memory is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has ceased.

Give an example of sensory memory?

-You lose concentration in class during a lecture. Suddenly you hear a significant word and return your focus to the lecture. You should be able to remember what was said just before the key word since it is in your sensory register.

What is the capacity of our sensory memory?

-Your brain can take in a lot of information fairly accurately, but this information is not processed much at all, and it does not remain in sensory memory very long. There are 2 types of retaining this memory: Echoic and iconic meaning auditory and visual sensory memory. iconic lasts less than 1 second and echoic lasts less than 4 seconds.

Describe the concept of short term memory?

-Less than 99% of sensory information is passed on to short term memory. Two encoding processes by which we transfer information from sensory to short term memory are selective attention and future extraction. Selective attention occurs when we notice important information necessary to meet our basic needs or our own interests. Feature extraction would be observing things as unusual or out of the ordinary.

 What is the "magic number" as it relates to short-term memory and who conducted the experiment which established this measurement?

-Short Term Memory contains information that we are actively using. For example: remembering a friend's number in your mind, using short term memory by constant repetition for a short period of time and then  forgetting it. Loftus conducted an experiment related to this theory.

What is chunking? 

-Chunking refers to joining bits of information and turning them into a larger piece of information. 

What has been determined to be the ideal size of "chunks" for both letters and numbers?
  -about 7letter or 7 numbers.

Which mode of encoding does short-term memory mostly rely on, acoustic or visual?

- Acoustic

Explain the duration and capacity of long-term memory.

- In order for information to be stored in long term information, it must be encoded, which means processed or manipulated.

Explain in detail the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory.

-Memory starts as stimuli, that we sense some of it goes into short term, if hold on to it,  then we can move it to long term, so once it gets there that information stays.

 Identify three criticisms or limitations of the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory.
-The sensory stores are sensory systems, not memory systems as most people think of the term "memory." 
 Memories can be "warmed up" but outside of attention. In other words, intermediate levels of activation are possible.
The three-box model implies that there is just one short-term system and just one long-term system. In reality, there are many memory systems operating in parallel (for example, different systems for vision, language, and odor memory). 
Each has short-term and long-term operations.
The Atkinson-Shiffrin model does not give enough emphasis to unconscious processes. Unconscious activation is shown with a tentative, dotted arrow. Modern researchers find that unconscious and implicit forms of memory are more common than consciously directed memory processes.

Explain the Levels of Processing Model of memory.

 -According to a "levels of processing" theory, the more meaningful the rehearsal makes the material, the better the material will be remembered.

What is maintenance rehearsal - give an example.

-Keeps info in short-term, long enough to evaluate content. Examples: reading, repeating phone number.

What is elaborative rehearsal - give an example.

-Required for transferring information from short-term to long term memory.

Who developed the Levels of Processing Model and the concepts of maintenance and elaborative rehearsal? 

-F. Craig and R. Lockhart.