Intro to Psychology CH.1-5

Chapter 1

  • Psychology

    • the scientific study of mind and behavior

  • Psychology’s Central Questions

    • Nature versus nurture

    • Free will versus determination

    • Conscious versus unconscious processing

    • Difference versus similarities

History of Psychology

  • Structuralism

    • attempt to understand the structure or characteristics of the mind

  • Functionalism

    • study the function of behavior in the world

    • considers behavior in terms of active adaptations

      • how behavior helps/ hurts us

  • Gestalt Psychology

    • ..

7 major Psychology Perspective

  • Biological

    • Focuses on the role of biology on human behavior and mental processes

  • Cognitive

    • The study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgments

  • Evolutionary

    • focuses on adaptation and survival as the basis of behavior and mental processes

  • Humanistic

    • Emphasis is placed on the individual’s potential for personal growth

    • Belief that we choose most of our behaviors and these choices are guided by physiological, emotional or spiritual needs.

  • Psychodynamic (Psychoanalysis)

    • Unconscious determinants of behavior

    • Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts

  • Social (sociocultural)

    • Effects of social and cultural issues on behavior

    • The study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence thinking and behavior

  • .

Chapter 2 - Psychological Research

  • Goals of Psychology

    1. Describe: naming or classifying

      • What is the Nature of this behavior?

    2. Understand/ Explain: Stating cause of behavior

      • why does this behavior occur?

    3. Predict: Ability to accurately forecast behavior

      • Can we forecast when the behavior will occur?

    4. Control/ Change:

      • ..

Inductive and Deductive reasoning

  • Deductive Reasoning- results are predicted based on a general premise

  • Inductive Reasoning- conclusions are drawn from observations

Research Methods

  • Descriptive- measurement of behaviors and attributes through observation (rather than through experimental testing)

  • Correlation- used to determine if two variables are related and to make predictions based on the relationship (the likelihood of two variables occurring together)

  • Experimental- tests a hypothesis and establishes causation by using independent and dependent variables in a controlled environment

  • Case Studies- Focus on one individual

    • The studied individual is typically in an extreme or unique psychological circumstance that differentiates them for the general public

  • Naturalistic Observations- observation of behavior in its natural setting

    • Observer Bias- When observations may be skewed to align with observer expectations

  • Laboratory Observation- observation of the behavior of subjects in a controlled environment

  • Survey- A list of questions that can be delivered in many ways, used to gather a large amount of data from a sample (subset of individuals) from a larger population allowing better generalizability.

  • Psychological Tests- Standardized instruments used to measure behavior or mental attributes

  • Archival- uses past records or data sets to answer various research questions, or to search for interesting patterns or relationships

  • Cross-Sectional Research- Compares multiple segments of a population at a single time.

  • Longitudinal- Studies in which the same group of individuals is surveyed or measured repeatedly over an extended period of time

Experimental Variables

  • Independent- suspected cause for differences in behavior

    • can manipulated by researcher

  • Dependent- Measure any effect of manipulating the independent variable

    • Measured to see if affected by manipulation

  • Extraneous- Conditions or factor that researcher wants to prevent from affecting the outcome

    • Controlled to ensure dependent variable is not affected

Reliability & Validity

  • Reliability- consistency and reproducibility of a given result

    • would the same test give the same results every time?

    • do the tools used to collect data do so in consistent, reproducible ways?

    • Inter-rater reliability- measure of agreement among observers on how they record and classify a particular event

  • Validity- accuracy of a given result in measuring what it is designed to measure

    • does a test measure what it is meant to measure?

Potential Problems/ Bias

  • Research participant bias- Change in person’s behavior caused by the influence of expectaions

    • Participants consciously/ subconsciously act in a way they believe the researcher wants

  • Placebo effect- change in behavior due to expectations that a treatment will do something

  • Single-blind Study- Everyone gets a treament that looks the same; the only difference is the independent variable (real drug or placebo)

  • Researcher bias- Change in behavior caused by the influence of the researcher; finding what they expect to find

  • Self-fulfilling prophecy- a prediction that prompts people to act in a way that makes predictions come true

  • Double-blind study-research conducted so that neither the researcher nor the subjects know ………..

Ethics: Research involving Human Participants

  • Ethical guidelines in psychological research serve to minimize harm to participants’ mental and physical well-being

  • Institutional Review Board (IRB)- Committee of administrators, scientists, and community members that reviews proposals for research involving human participants

    • As a result of various unethical experiments, several organizations were put in place to help monitor clinical research involving humans

Must Adhere to Strict Guidelines

  1. Protect (participants) from harm

  2. Right to Withdraw (from study at anytime)

  3. Confidentiality

  4. Informed Consent

    • process of informing a research participant about what to expect during an experiment and then obtaining the person’s consent to participate

  5. Deception

    • purposely misleading experiment participants in order to maintain the integrity of the experiment

  6. Debriefing

    • When and experiment involved deception, participants are told complete and truthful information about the experiment at its conclusion

Chapter 3 - Biopsychology

  • Biopsychology- explores the biological mechanisms that underlie behavior

    • Believes that behavior is a consequence of our genetics and psychology

    • Examines thoughts, feelings, and behavior from a biological view

  • The

  • Biopsychology studies:

    • Genetics

    • The structure and function of the nervous system

    • How the nervous system interacts with the endocrine system

Theory of Evolution

  • Charles Darwin explored the concept of inheritance of traits throughout generations in his theory of evolution

    • The organisms that are better suited for their environment will survive

      and reproduce, while those that are poorly suited for their environment

      will die off.

    • '“Not the strongest nor the most intelligent that survives, it is the one most adaptable to change” -Charles Darwin

Genotype vs. Phenotype

  • Genotype- refers to the genetic make up of an individual based on the genetic material (DNA) inherited from one’s parents

    • a person’s genetic material

  • Phenotype- an individual’s observable characteristics

Neurons

  • Four basic parts:

    • Dendrites - Neuron fibers that receive. . .

    • Cell body (soma)

    • Axon

    • Axon terminals

Neurotransmitters

  • Chemical messenger of the nervous system

  • Biological perspective- view that psychological disorders like depression and schizophrenia are associated w/ imbalances in one or more neurotransmitter systems

  • ….

Parts of the Nervous System

  • Two main branches:

    • Central Nervous System- consists of the brain, which contains

    • Peripheral Nervous System

Autonomic Nervous System

  • Sympathetic

  • Parasympathetic

The Brain

  • Comprised of billions interconnected neurons and glia

  • Left Hemisphere

    • controls the right side of the body

    • about 95% use for language, math, judging time and rhythm, order

Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex

  • Frontal

  • Parietal

  • Occipital

  • Cerebellum

  • Temporal

Spinal cord

  • delivers messages to and from the brain

  • has its own system of reflexes

  • The top merges w/ the brain stem and the bottom ends just below the ribs

Chapter 4 - States of Consciousness

Chapter 5 - Sensation and Perception

  • Sensory Systems

    • Responsible for providing info about our surroundings which allow us to successfully navigate and interact w/ our environments

Sensation

  • Occurs when sensory receptors detect sensory stimuli

Sensory receptors - Specialized neurons that respond to specific types of stimuli

  • When sensory receptors detect a specific stimuli, they convert that energy into an action potential which is sent to the central nervous system. This is called
    transduction

Sensory Systems:

  • Vision

  • Hearing (audition)

  • Smell (olfaction)

  • Taste (gustation)

  • Touch (somatosensation)

  • Balance (vestibular sense)

  • Body Position (Movement)

  • Movement (kinesthesia)

  • Pain (nociception)

  • Temperature (thermoception)

Perception

  • Way that sensory information is interpreted, organized, and consciously experienced

  • Two Forms:

    • Bottom-up processing - system in which perceptions are built from sensory input

    • Top-down processing - interpretation of sensations is influenced by available knowledge, experiences and thoughts

Factors Affecting Perception

  1. Sensory Adaptation- not perceiving stimuli that remain relatively constant over prolonged periods of time

  2. Attention

  3. Motivation

  4. Beliefs, values, prejudices, and expectations

  5. Life/ Cultural experiences

Sensation vs. Perception

  • Stimulus

    • anything that can be received by a receptor

  • Sensation

    • Awareness of a stimuli

    • a simple mental process

  • Perception

    • Sensation + inter……

Vision

  1. Light waves are transmitted across the cornea and enter through the pupil

    • Pupil size controlled by muscles that are connected to the iris

  2. The light crosses the lens and is focused on the fovea, which is part of the retina

    • the fovea contains photoreceptors

  3. Photoreceptors are connected to retinal ganglion

Opponent-Process theory

  • Vision analyzes colors into “either-or”

  • Messages for either red or green, yellow or blue, black or white

  • Fatigue by cone response to color procedures afterimage of opposite color

When staring at a colored stimulus, the color-pairings of the opponent-process theory lead to a negative afterimage

Afterimage

  • continuation of a visual sensation after the removal of the stimulus

Human Ear: Structure and Working

The ear is divided into 3 divisions:

  • Outer - pinna and tympanic

  • Middle - the three ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes

  • Inner - cochlea and basilar membrane

Chemical and Somesthetic

Chemical Senses-

Taste (Gustation)

  • Research demontrastes that we have about 6 groupings of taste

    • Sweet, salty, sour, bitter

    • Umami- associated w/ a taste for monosodium glutamate (MSG)

    • Some research sugests we posses a taste for fatty content of food

  • Taste Buds

  • groupings of taste receptor cells w/ hair-like extensions that protrude into the central pore of the taste bud

  • Life cycle of 10 days to 2 weeks

Smell (Olfaction)

  • Olfactory receptor cells:

    • Contain small hair-like extensions which serve as the site for odor molecules to interact w/ chemical receptors located on these extensions

  • Transduction:

    • Odor molecules bind to receptors

    • Chemical changes cause signals to be sent to the olfactory bulb

    • Info is sent to the limbic system and primary olfactory cortex

  • Pheromones:

    • Chemical

Touch

Skin has about 200,000 nerve endings for temperature, 500,000 for touch and pressure, 3 million for pain

  • Merkel’s disks- respond to light pressure

  • Meissner’s corpuscles- respond to pressure and lower-frequency vibrations

    • Just beneath the epidermis of the fingers, palms,

  • Pacinian corpuscles-

  • Ruffini corpuscles-

The Kinesthetic and Vestibular Systems

Primarily Concerned

Gestalt Principles of Perception

Gestalt psychology

  • Field of psychology based on the idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts

  • The brain….

Figure-Ground Relationship