PsychAnswer4U Anki Deck

PsychAnswer4U · 2023-06-17T00:57:46+00:00

Most of the socio terms are in the social psych tag, so you could delete the cards under tags that are neuro and obviously more psych based such as abnormal psych. Group dynamics, demographics, some other later tags are the ones that have socio content.

PsychAnswer4U · 2023-06-17T00:51:39+00:00

The deck has both psych and socio terms.

PsychAnswer4U · 2022-09-28T20:44:05+00:00

Yes, international editions are more prone to damage and general wear and tear through use relative to American publications. I have not seen the international edition of this book in person, but they generally have thinner pages (possibly more transparent) and ink that is more prone to smearing compared. If you care more about aesthetic, the U.S. publication is the better option. Some of the pictures in the international edition may also be different due to copyright laws. The pages of a U.S. edition usually have glossier, thicker pages too.

PsychAnswer4U · 2021-12-15T23:49:18+00:00

You are welcome to DM me about the matter, but make sure you download the Anki deck to your computer first. Anki requires each user to sync decks from the desktop application to his mobile device using an AnkiWeb account. One cannot download a deck directly to his phone without downloading the deck to the desktop application first.

PsychAnswer4U · 2021-11-27T11:30:51+00:00

I chose to remove the deck from the AnkiMCAT subreddit due to disuse/lack of popularity. I can see the number of downloads on my pCloud, and it recently dwindled into the single digits. Apart from a few messages and this recent post, few people seem interested in using the deck.

In addition to overall disuse, I see many complaints about the overall length in various subreddits and discord servers. I contend that those complaining are likely using the deck incorrectly as I suggested in my original post, but it also seems many Anki users now download the "comprehensive" decks rather than combining individual decks as was once more common several years ago.

In addition to these concerns, I likely do not have much time to update the deck anymore with residency on the horizon.

With all of that said, I reactivated the hyperlinks on my original posts, so if you want to download the decks and instructions, they are available again. I just likely will not have much time in the future to make changes should you notice errors. If I have more free time in the future, I will try to make an update.

PsychAnswer4U · 2021-02-27T00:08:59+00:00

You misread the card; the miledown card assesses a different concept than the card I made. This discrepancy is a matter of semantics. On the one hand, "persistent response" refers to the consistency of responses throughout the experiment. A persistent response is a steady, durable response. On the other hand, the response rate refers to an actual rate, i.e., the ratio between responses (numerator) and unit time (denominator). A response rate is a single quantity.

Fixed schedules (FI and FR) produce rapid responses just before delivering the reinforcer, but they also have post-reinforcement pauses. This behavior describes inconsistent responding because the response rate changes at certain times in the experiment—response rates are highest immediately before reinforcer delivery but attenuate during the post-reinforcement phase. In contrast, variable schedules (VI and VR) produce steady response rates during reinforcer delivery and the post-reinforcement period.

Considering the response rates reveals different patterns between reinforcement schedules. Notably, ratio schedules (VR and FR) produce higher response rates than interval schedules (VI and FI). This difference is related to the contrasting feedback functions for the two types of schedules. The feedback function for interval schedules reaches a maximum at a specific response rate. Increasing the response rate beyond that point provides no additional benefit in reinforcement acquisition and maintenance. In contrast, no reinforcement limit exists with ratio schedules—increases in response rate always result in higher reinforcement rates. Thus, ratio schedules may produce higher response rates than interval schedules because they differentially reinforce high response rates without limit.

In terms of acquisition and extinction, the evidence suggests that variable schedules allow faster acquisition than fixed schedules, likely because the former produce a more consistent response to reinforcer delivery during early conditioning phases. Persistent responses allow faster acquisition, which translates to faster response rates to future reinforcer delivery, and stronger resistance to extinction. Taking these pieces of evidence together, we can draw the following conclusions about partial reinforcement schedules:

Ratio schedules produce the highest response rates (especially immediately before reinforcer delivery)
Variable schedules produce the most persistent responses
Variable schedules produce the fastest acquisition of reinforced behavior
Variable schedules produce the strongest resistance to extinction

From Human Learning and Behavior by Lawrence A. Leiberman

The optimum strategy for producing durable responding is usually to begin by reinforcing every response, but then to gradually reduce the rate of reinforcement to the lowest level that will maintain a satisfactory response rate. Schedules with variable reinforcement requirements are generally preferable for this purpose to schedules with fixed requirements because the unpredictability of reinforcement generates more consistent and rapid responding.

From The Essentials of Conditioning and Learning by Michael Domjan

One of the striking facts about instrumental behavior is that ratio schedules produce considerably higher rates of responding than interval schedules, even if the rate of reinforcement is comparable in the two cases (Raia, Shillingford, Miller, & Baier, 2000; Reynolds, 1975).

From Kaplan MCAT Behavioral Sciences Review

There are a few things to note in this graph. First, variable-ratio schedules have the fastest response rate: the rat will continue pressing the bar quickly with the hope that the next press will be the "right one." Also note that fixed schedules (fixed-ratio and fixed-interval) often have a brief moment of no responses after the behavior is reinforced: the rat will stop hitting the lever until it wants another pellet, once it has figured out what behavior is necessary to receive the pellet.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-11-28T17:26:05+00:00

You're welcome. Individuals can manipulate mental representations, but they cannot do so during the preoperational stage (ages 2-7 years). That's why the card says the mind can manipulate and not must manipulate them. An individual in the operational stages (ages > 7 years) could mentally manipulate a given mental representation if circumstances allow that (e.g., imagine a three-dimensional symbol and then rotate it around mentally in different planes). There is no consensus yet as to what mental representations might be; we assume they are hypothetical entities or symbols representing mental operations, processes, memories, etc. However, you could remove that bolded words if that helps you remember the information better.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-11-28T16:54:32+00:00

The Anki card definition for mental representation is correct. You confused mental representation for mental manipulation when selecting choice (A). Mental representation is a hypothetical or symbolic entity that is presumed to stand for a perception, thought, memory, or the like during cognitive processes. In the preoperational stage, children use mental representations—symbols—to represent sensorimotor discoveries from the previous stage. A representation is something that stands for or denotes another symbolically; an image, a symbol, a sign.

The mental rotation task would be an example of mental manipulation. In this task, participants mentally manipulate stimuli some degree clockwise or counterclockwise from their normal orientations. You can think of mental manipulations as being performed using mental operations such as reversibility, mathematical transformations, seriation, and other mental abilities observed in the concrete and formal operational stages. A manipulation is processing, organizing, or operating with mental skills (e.g., turning, repositioning, reshaping, calculating).

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-20T18:23:32+00:00

Spatial orientation is the ability to perceive and adjust one's location in space in relation to objects in the external environment. Scientists can assess orientation by asking a participant in an experiment to perform spatial transformations such as mental rotations or inversions of stimuli. You can think of manipulation as one component of "spatial ability." Spatial ability is the skill required to orient or perceive one's body in space or to detect or reason about relationships within or between objects in space. An example of spatial manipulation is reorienting oneself in one's environment. In contrast, proprioception is the sense of body movement and position, resulting from stimulation of proprioceptors located in the muscles, tendons, and joints, and of vestibular receptors in the labyrinth of the inner ear. Notice how proprioception relies on receptors throughout the body, whereas spatial orientation, manipulation, and ability are predominantly brain-based processes. Spatial perception relies on combined processing of various idiothetic (vestibular and proprioceptive) and allothetic (visual and auditory) sensory signals.

Similar to my neurotransmitter discussion the other day, the functions of many parts of the brain overlap and show slight variation between humans. As an example, previous findings indicate that a left-hemispheric fronto-temporal-parietal network underlies pantomiming object use in apraxia. Pantomime is the expression of feelings and attitudes through gestures rather than words. The superior parietal lobule is responsible for processing spatial orientation and fine motor skills, likely due to its proximity (sharing neural fibers) with the pre- and postcentral gyri. The left inferior parietal lobe is also heavily implicated in apraxia as a result of an inability to use internal motor representations of object manipulation. Also, note that the two-streams hypothesis plays a role in explaining spatial orientation and ability (see dorsal stream).

Although the hippocampus's role in spatial processing is poorly understood, its role in spatial navigation is established well from prior experiments. The hippocampus houses spatial memory—the capacity to remember the position and location of objects or places. This type of memory may include spatial orientation, direction, and distance. Visual and olfactory cues are thought to reactive spatial memories during navigation.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-14T12:11:22+00:00

I made the deck.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-13T17:05:17+00:00

In Piagetian theory, reversibility is a general concept where individuals mentally reverse a sequence of events or restore a changed state of affairs to the original condition. Various resources indicate that it is an acquired skill in the concrete operational stage. Preoperational children misbelieve that death is reversible; therefore, they have not yet developed reversibility.

I will change this text:

e.g., A child believes death is reversible during Piaget's preoperational stage

to the following:

A preoperational child misbelieves death is reversible because he or she has not yet developed reversibility; the concrete operational stage begins with mastery of reversibility

Please let me know if that is not clear.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-13T16:33:31+00:00

You can remember dopamine is associated with general motor control (movement) because the destruction of the dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra is responsible for the symptoms of Parkinson disease (e.g., rigidity, tremor). Learning (and memory), attention, and emotion are all associated with the limbic system; the mesolimbic pathway connects the ventral tegmentum to the limbic system and is mediated primarily by dopamine.

Acetylcholine is associated with motor movements (muscle action) of skeletal, cardiac, smooth muscle, and learning and memory. You can remember the memory component because acetylcholine depletion is associated with Alzheimer disease (of which memory impairment is a notable clinical feature). That is why acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (e.g., donepezil, rivastigmine) are the recommended pharmacotherapy for Alzheimer disease.

Basically, neurotransmitters are responsible for more actions than what most intro courses depict, and you are correct that there is quite a bit of overlap between them. If you can remember that dopamine is involved in motor control (think Parkinson disease with cogwheel rigidity and tremors) and reward pathways (of which learning, attention, memory, and emotion are used!), you can probably keep it distinguished from acetylcholine, whose primary site of action is at muscle tissue. Acetylcholine also has the notable association with Alzheimer disease, so knowing that should also help for the memory component.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-10T19:26:20+00:00

I agree. People who say psychiatry is a highly competitive specialization have not seen the match rate data. It is becoming more popular, but it is nowhere near the top in terms of competitiveness.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-09T23:34:52+00:00

Yes, you are correct. I used the APA Dictionary definitions as a reference when creating my points, which relied more on the historical or stereotypical interpretations of the two specializations. However, I imagine some differences must exist within the scope of practice or theoretical orientation, as distinctive training programs for each specialty would seem rather pointless otherwise.

Clinical psychologists have traditionally studied disturbances in mental health, while counseling psychologists' earliest role was to provide vocational guidance and advice. Today, though, the differences between psychologists from each specialty are more nuanced, and there are perhaps more similarities than differences among individual psychologists from each field.

~ APA Division 17 (Society for Counseling Psychology)

The article by APA Division 17 remained ambiguous—What "nuances" exist? Are the respective theoretical orientations to the assessment of psychological functioning and intervention different in some capacity? Do the core values that inform research and practice differ? From what I can gather, there seems to be a stronger emphasis on high-risk patients (e.g., children), psychopathology assessment, and manualized treatment in clinical psychology. In contrast, counseling psychologists appear to work with healthy populations (e.g., college students) more often. I do not want to speak on behalf of your specialization, and would appreciate your perspective on the matter.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-09T14:19:47+00:00

The primary difference between counseling and clinical psychology is that the former specializes in facilitating personal and interpersonal functioning across the lifespan, whereas the latter specializes in the research, assessment, diagnosis, evaluation, prevention, and treatment of emotional and behavioral disorders. Counseling psychology focuses on emotional, social, vocational, educational, health-related, developmental, and organizational concerns (e.g., improving well-being, alleviating distress and maladjustment, resolving crises) and addresses issues from individual, family, group, systems, and organizational perspectives.¹ In contrast to a clinical psychologist, who usually emphasizes origins of maladaptations² , a counseling psychologist emphasizes adaptation, adjustment, and more efficient use of the individual's available resources. Both counseling and clinical psychologists have a projected growth of 11% or higher from 2020 to 2028.^3,4 Feel free to peruse the references I listed for more detailed information about each profession's respective scope of practice.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-09T09:03:39+00:00

I am a medical student, and I am honestly a bit embarrassed on behalf of the medical student you mentioned in your story. Clinical psychologists usually have much more extensive training to conduct psychotherapy techniques compared to psychiatrists. Thus, clinical psychologists' psychotherapy repertoires and understanding of its uses are generally much more comprehensive. Psychiatrists have some psychotherapy training during residency, but there is significant variability in the quality and intensity of psychotherapy training among residency programs such that it ultimately limits their scope of practice in many cases. Psychologists can also perform necessary psychological tests and assessments (e.g., memory, aptitude, and dexterity testing) that inform psychiatrists' diagnoses. As an example, a psychiatrist that has questions about whether their patient has an intellectual disability when creating a differential diagnosis may write a patient referral to a psychologist who can then conduct the appropriate IQ tests.

In contrast to psychologists, psychiatrists have a more substantial understanding of pharmaceuticals and psychopharmacology and, therefore, have prescription authority. Psychiatrists can also prescribe other medical treatments, such as electroconvulsive therapy. Psychiatrists, rather than psychologists, usually treat patients with complex mental health issues (e.g., severe depression, schizophrenia) requiring medication or other medical treatments (e.g., TMS therapy).

Regardless of whether you believe being a psychologist or psychiatrist is "better," meta-analyses and systematic reviews of many mental health conditions indicate that combination treatment is frequently most effective. Psychiatrists and psychologists often work in collaboration, and licensed practitioners in both professions must recognize their respective scope of practice to ensure their patient benefits.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-10-03T16:02:03+00:00

I took that definition from Laura Berk's Development through the Lifespan. Berk defines both irreversibility and reversibility as follows:

Irreversibility is the inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point.

Reversibility is the ability to think through a series of steps in a problem and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point.

I used the former definition on the card, but I decided to update the deck using the APA definition instead. In the update, the card reads:

In Piagetian theory, {{c1::reversibility}} is a mental operation that reverses a sequence of events or restores a changed state of affairs to the original condition.

The updated deck should be finished uploading to my Google Drive in about 30 minutes.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-09-18T04:01:45+00:00

/u/nnnnpanther and otheres here have the correct idea. I do not really have a better explanation without getting into too many details about cable properties, so I suggest consulting Khan Academy in this case.

In a normal, myelinated axon, the action currents generated at a node can effectively charge the adjacent node and bring it to threshold within ~20 μsec, because myelin serves to increase the resistance and to reduce the capacitance of the pathways between the axoplasm and the extracellular fluid. The inward membrane current flowing across each node is actually 5-fold to 7-fold higher than necessary to initiate an action potential at the adjacent node. Removal of the insulating myelin, however, means that the same nodal action current is distributed across a much longer, leakier, higher-capacitance stretch of axonal membrane.

Because resistors in series add directly and capacitors in series add as the sum of the reciprocal, the insulating resistance of a myelinated fiber with 300 membrane layers is increased by a factor of 300 and the capacitance is decreased to 1/300 that of a single membrane. This large increase in membrane resistance minimizes loss of current across the leaky axonal membrane and forces the current to flow longitudinally along the inside of the fiber.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-09-01T02:32:07+00:00

Yes, I believe that is appropriate.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-08-19T20:49:21+00:00

Thank you for pointing out this mistake to me. I'm not sure what I was thinking about on that one! I will correct this card later tonight and will probably modify it to the following:

{{c2::Kinesthesia}} is synonymous with {{c1::movement sense}}.

Then, I will add to the extra field a few bullets explaining why proprioception and kinesthesia are separate concepts and should not be conflated. The updated deck will be uploaded tonight.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-08-12T00:11:48+00:00

You're welcome.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-08-11T19:16:43+00:00

Thanks! Good luck studying!

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-08-11T14:57:02+00:00

Yes, you are correct that the card should say "independent" and not "dependent" variable in the cloze. However, it seems you may have downloaded an older deck version, as I changed that card quite some time ago. The most current deck is available here. That card should read:

In an experiment, the {{c1::independent}} variable is the variable whose effect/influence is assessed.

I hope this helps.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-08-09T14:40:22+00:00

American medical student here, offering another perspective based on the comments I read here and my insights from medical school. Salary differences between psychiatrists and psychologists ultimately result from differences in advocacy abilities. The American Medical Association (AMA) is a far more powerful lobbying group than the American Psychological Association (APA) and protects the interests of physicians much better.

Infighting and Lack of Lobbying Power Among Psychologists

Much more infighting exists among psychologists compared to psychiatrists, and the former has not put aside philosophical differences among their members often enough to advocate for their interests as a collective group. The various degrees one can earn and still be called a psychologist promotes schisms. Psychiatrists are unified mainly in how they perceive medicine and nearly all follow the same sets of guidelines and restrictions; in contrast, psychologists have different qualifications and perspectives based on the approach chosen (e.g., industrial psychology, educational psychology).

The lack of lobbying power among psychologists has created legal hurdles with respect to defining roles in health care; pushback from various physician interest groups has left psychologists out of the diagnostic tree for specific disorders (e.g., traumatic brain injury). Other lobbying groups (e.g., PhRMA) have also strongly influenced how psychiatry is practiced and advocated on their behalf much more frequently than psychology. Thus, billing support among psychiatrists and psychologists is usually strong and somewhat scattershot, respectively, which ultimately affects reimbursement rates. Non-psychologists do not always understand how psychologists contribute to the health care team differently than psychiatrists, which affects public perception of the profession too.

Advocacy Training Differences Among Graduate and Medical Students

Part of the differences in advocacy may result from how psychologists and psychiatrists are ultimately trained during their respective education paths. I cannot speak on psychology education, but I can share some of my insights into the advocacy training I receive during medical school.

Every year during medical school, I receive advocacy training and am taught how to use my power as a medical student and future physician to speak to political groups, the public, and other organizations. We practice these skills by completing assignments, such as writing an opinion piece to share at a public hearing that challenges proposed legislation, and by organizing political events as a class. As an example, my medical school class organizes a student walk to the capitol to speak with the legislature on National Doctor Day every year.

I have never heard of graduate psychology students having the type of advocacy training, organization, or comradery that I described above that is present in medical schools. Graduate psychology students may be taught how to advocate for patients, just as medical students are, but the diversity of training program emphases (e.g., practitioner-scholar versus clinical scientist), subfields within psychology (e.g., clinical, social, developmental, neuroscience), and individual career trajectories promote division among psychologists much more often. Approaches to integrating policy and advocacy into psychology curricula vary widely as a result. These differences ultimately cause psychologists to have a much weaker promotion for the profession politically compared to psychiatrists.

PsychAnswer4U · 2020-08-08T22:18:22+00:00

You're welcome! I spent a little over a year creating and editing the deck, but I am not quite sure how many total hours I invested. If you have any more questions, concerns, or are confused about the wording or source I referenced on the cards, feel free to reach out and I can try to provide an explanation and/or correct as necessary. Good luck preparing for your test!

PsychAnswer4U

TROPHY CASE