PSY141 Murdoch University

(1) What is psychology?

The scientific investigation of mental processes (such as thinking, remembering and feeling), behaviours and the interaction between them.

(1) How do the free-will and determinism perspectives differ?

(1) What are the key perspectives of psychology?

Psychodynamic, Humanistic, Behaviourist, Cognitive, Evolutionary

(1) What are some of the sub-disciplines of psychology?

(2) What is motivation?

(2) Describe the major perspectives of motivation.

(2) Describe drive reduction theory

(2) Describe Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

(2) What are emotions?

(2) What are some of the major theories of emotion?

(2) What are the components of emotion?

(2) Which facial expressions are identified cross-culturally?

(3) What is an attitude?

(3) What is the link between attitudes and behaviour? (Behaviour-outcome expectancy)

(3) What is a stereotype?

(3) What is the link between stereotypes and prejudice?

(3) What are some of the main causes of inter-group conflict?

(3) What information is employed when making attributions?

(3) What is social identity theory, and how is it related to self-identity?

(3) What are some of the most common attribution errors?

(3) What is meant by the term cognitive dissonance?

(4) To what extent is our behaviour and decision-making determined by group membership?

(4) What factors predict violence?

(4) What do Asch's line judgement studies tell us about conformity and frames of reference?

(4) What do the Milgram and Stanford prison experiment tell us about obedience to authority?

(4) What is the bystander effect?

(4) Why do we seek out relationships with others?

(4) What factors attract us to others?

(5) How does a neuron work?

(5) What are the different parts of the neural system?

(5) What can the firing of a neuron tell us about cognition?

(5) How does injury to particular areas of the brain effect functioning?

(5) What is the role of neurotransmitters?

(5) What do we mean by absolute threshold?

(5) How does sensation differ from perception?

(5) How do we organise sensory stimuli?

(6) Is the hard drive of a computer an appropriate model for memory?

(6) What are the characteristics of short-term, long-term, and working memory?

(6) What is the difference between declarative and procedural memory?

(6) What are the primary causes of memory failure?

Major types of amnesia, decay over time and interference

(6) Major types of amnesia

(6) Decay

(6) Interference

(6) What are some ways we can improve the way we encode and retrieve information?

(6) How can eyewitness testimonies fail?

(7) What roles do nature and nurture play in development?

(7) What are the characteristics of the major theories of development?

(7) Piaget's theory of cognitive development

(7) Kohlberg's theory of moral development

(7) Erikson's theory of psychosocial development

(7) Freud's psychosexual stages

(7) What is theory of mind (ToM)? How does it relate to perspective-taking?

(7) What is the difference between sensitive and critical periods in development? Why are they important?

(7) Describe the major attachment styles of infants. How are these proposed to relate to adult behaviours?

(7) Describe the development of gender roles

(8) Describe classical condition and its role in learning

(8) What is the UCS, CS, UCR and CR?

Unconditioned Stimulus, Conditioned Stimulus, Unconditioned Response, and Conditioned Response

(8) Describe operant conditioning and its role in learning

(8) What is the difference between positive and negative schedules of reinforcement? How do they influence behaviour?

(8) How are stimulus generalisation and stimulus discrimination relevant to learning in classical conditioning?

(8) What are the processes involved in extinction and spontaneous recovery in both classical and operant conditioning?

(8) Why is social learning important?

(9) What distinguishes normal from abnormal behaviour?

(9) What are the major classes of DSM-5 disorders?

(9) What are some of the major beliefs about the causes of psychopathology?

(9) What are the major classes of mood disorders?

(9) What are the major classes of anxiety disorders?

(9) What is schizophrenia and what are understood as its causes?

(10) What are some of the contemporary approaches to the treatment of psychopathology?

(10) What are the major types of therapy?

(10) CBT

(10) Exposure therapy

(10) Flooding

(10) Systematic desensitisation

(10) Medication

A biological approach to therapy

(10) Psychodynamic approaches

A biological approach to therapy

(10) How do we reduce relapse?

(11) What is intelligence and why is it important to study?

(11) How can we measure intelligence?

(11) Is intelligence a general trait or is it domain specific?

(11) Is intelligence attributable purely to genetics or foes the environment play a role in determining IQ?

(11) Major theories of IQ:

(11) Sternberg's Triarchic theory

(11) Spearman's two-factor theory

(11) Thurstone's seven primary factors

(11) Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences

(11) What are some of the key differences between fluid vs. crystallised intelligence?

(11) How do we distinguish between giftedness and intellectual impairment?

(12) How do we measure psychological constructs such as intelligence and personality?

(12) What are the major limitations of psychometric tests?

(12) How can we validate psychometric tests?

(12) To what extent is personality determined by innate vs. environmental factors?

(12) What are some of the major theories of personality?

(12) Big 5 personality traits

1. Openness to experience

2. Conscientiousness

3. Extraversion

4. Agreeableness

5. Neuroticism

(12) Myers-Briggs

(12) What is the Barnum effect?

(1) Different methods of psychological study

Experimental - perception and learning, manipulating variables

Correlational - social, developmental or individual differences. The variance among organisms.

(1) William James

founder of functionalism; studied how humans use perception to function in our environment

(1) Psychodynamic perspective

Created by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Three premises:

1. people's actions are determined by the way thoughts, feelings and wishes are connected in their mind.

2. many of these mental events occur outside of consciousness awareness.

3. these mental process may conflict with one another, leading to compromises among competing motives.

Criticisms of psychodynamic theory

Constructs are ambiguous, difficult to define or test, there is a lack of scientific and empirical evidence for its key ideas, its violation of the falsifiability criterion, its reliance on retrospective ammounts