Psychology
The science of behavior and mental processes
Experimental Psychology
lots of research (Publish)
Neuropsychology
How the brain effects our behavior
Rehabilitation (walk and talk again after injury)
personality psychology
nature vs nurture debate
how does personality develop
social psychology
how do we behave differently in different social places with different people
developmental psychology
how we develop from birth to death
longitudinal and cross sectional
longitudinal
study a group of people over a period of time
cross sectional
look at the same thing with different people and different age groups
industrial/organizational psychology
go to businesses to help employee morale and earn businesses money
educational psychology
how kids learn and understand
cuter kids get better grades in elementary school
clinical and counseling psychology
assess and treat; therapist
health psychology
help people get healthy.
focus on health of America.
connection between mental and physical health
sports psychology
the identity of athletes after sports.
how do you get them to perform better.
Psychology careers
A=art S=Science
BA/BS
MA/MS
PhD/PsyD
Ph-Philosophy Psy-Psychology
4 things psychologists study
Overt Actions
Mental Processes
Emotional Responses
Physiological reactions
Research Sequence
Theory
Hypothesis
Collect data
Analyze data
Summarize and confirm or modify theory
Theory
Ideas that propose an explaination
hypothesis
testable prediction that gives direction to research
Goals of Modern psychology
description
explanation
prediction (Hypothesis)
Independent variable
controlled by experimenter
Dependent variable
experimenter measures to determine effect of IV
Correlation
Positive and negative
positive- move in same direction (height up, weight up)
negative- move in opposite direction (economy up, Unemployment down)
_______ doesnt imply causation
True experiments
controlled environments
needs two things
comparison group
random assignment
Operational definition
how the researchers define the area of interest
ex: crows feet around eyes to see if they smiled a lot as a kid
case study
studying one person or group in great detail because it is hard to get people together with what you’re studying.
ex: multi personality disorder is rare. so they study it in great detail
Central nervous system
brain and spinal cord
sensation
how we sense and receive information from the world
5 senses
visual-seeing
auditorial- hearing
olfaction- smell
tactile- touch
gustation- taste
perception
how we mentally organize and interpret that information
absolute thresholds
bare minimum intensity to detect 50% of the time
difference threshold
bare minimum increase you would detect 50% of the time
subliminal threshold
below threshold, can’t detect
sound waves
frequency
measured in hertz
humans can hear between 20 and 20,000
amplitude
perceptual dimensions
loudness
pitch
localization
timbre-different frequencies of vibrations
Outer ear
pinna and auditory canal
middle ear
ossicles
hammer, anvil, stirrup
inner ear
cochlea
the chemical senses
molecule detectors
gatekeepers
olfaction (macro somatic, microsmatic)
Anosmia-sense of smell
Gustation
taste
perceiving depth and size
oculomotor cues-one eye
convergence
accommodation
binocular/retinal disparity
right eye sees different than left eye
pictorial cues
overlap
size and height in field of view
familiar size
atmospheric perspective
looking through the atmosphere, things further away are harder to see
motion paradox
when in motion things that move fast are close, things that move slow are far away.