Comprehensive Notes on Sensation, Perception, Psychodynamics, Sleep/Dreaming, & Behavioral Psychology

Sensation and Perception

  • Mental processes are divided into two stages:
    • Sensation: The process that activates our senses, enabling them to send signals to the brain.
    • Perception: The process that allows us to select, organize, and interpret sensory signals to the brain.
  • Humans can interpret information from all senses simultaneously to understand reality.

Perception Process

  • During perception, the brain performs three functions:
    1. Selection: Selects which sensations to pay attention to.
    2. Organization: Shapes gathered information into a coherent interpretation.
    3. Interpretation/Evaluation: Decides what the sensation means.
  • Factors influencing perception:
    • Influenced by the object itself.
    • Influenced by background/surroundings.
    • Influenced by individual experiences and point of view.

Psychodynamic Theorists

  • Focuses on resolving a patient's conflicted conscious and unconscious feelings.
  • Based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory:
    • All human behavior is influenced by early childhood experiences, which influence the unconscious mind.

Conscious vs. Unconscious

  • Unconscious: Part of the mind we aren't aware of.
  • Conscious: Part of the mind we are always aware of.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

  • Human Consciousness:
    1. Ego: The rational part of the mind (\"reality principle\").
    2. Id: Instinctual (\"pleasure principle\").
    3. Superego: The conscience.

Karen Horney (1885-1952)

  • Acts of the unconscious mind include defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, displacement, and projection.
  • A feminist non-Freudian who agreed with Freud about basic concepts but disagreed on:
    • Personality not being influenced by sexual conflicts in childhood.
    • Freud's theories not accurately representing females.
    • Believed women were pushed by society and culture to depend on men.
  • Made significant contributions to the study of neurotic disorders (anxiety/fear).

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

  • Founded Analytical Psychology:
    • Balancing a person's psyche would allow full potential.
  • Believed in two parts of the unconscious:
    • Collective unconscious.
  • Contributed much to the understanding of personality.
  • People are either extroverted or introverted.
  • Created four functional types: thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition.

Collective Unconscious

  • Collective and shared ancestral memories.
  • Not obvious but seen in art and literature.
  • Expressed through archetypes.

Archetypes

  • Symbols or patterns of thinking/behaving inherited from our ancestors.
  • Examples: the Trickster, the Hero, the Anima, the Wise Old Man.

Freud's Defense Mechanisms

  • Freud described the mind as an iceberg: conscious mind above water, unconscious below.
  • The Id is totally unconscious (fully underwater).
  • The superego is half under and half above water.
  • The ego is a bit more above the water.
  • Ego uses defense mechanisms to distort reality in order to deal with anxiety.
  • The ego represses unacceptable feelings/memories from consciousness, so they remain below the surface.
  • Ego may use denial to deal with loss and painful experiences.

Id

  • Contains primitive impulses (thirst, anger, hunger).
  • We are born with our Id (according to Freud).
  • Based on the pleasure principle: wants whatever feels good/no considerations.
  • Represented by a devil on the shoulder.

Superego

  • Represents the conscience, the moral part of us.
  • Dictates belief of right or wrong - angel sitting on shoulder.

Ego

  • Maintains balance between impulses (Id) and conscience (Superego).
  • Considers both devil and angel and considers both situations.
  • Operates based on the reality principle.

Sleep and Dreaming

  • About 1/3 of our lives is spent sleeping.

Necessity of Sleep

  • To replenish chemicals used by our body.
  • To grow.

Sleep Deprivation Results

  • Decreased immunity.
  • Hand tremors.
  • Irritability.
  • Inattention.
  • Decreased reflex time.
  • Going too long without sleep leads to:
    • Visual illusions.
    • Delusions.
    • Hallucinations.
  • Sleep occurs in 4 repetitive stages (90-minute cycle).

Psychology of Dreams - Original Two Theories

  • Mainly of interest to Freud and Jung.
  • Gained momentum within the scientific community when a relationship between dreaming and REM was found.
  • Both theorists believed analyzing dreams was a way of understanding the unconscious.
    • Freud: People, situations, and images in dreams represented suppressed sexual desires of dreamers.
    • Jung: Dreams are a way for the unconscious mind to communicate with the conscious mind.
  • Now, other theories have emerged.

Behavioral Psychologists

  • Based on the belief that psychologists need empirical evidence to understand and change human behavior.

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

  • Nobel Prize-winning Russian scientist who began his work studying the human digestive system

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

  • Was only concerned with observable behaviors (not the mental processes) - rewards and punishments.
  • Learning is a \"change in one's knowledge or behavior as a result of experience.\"

Two Major Types of Learning

  • Conditioned Learning:
    • Conditioning is learning to respond to certain stimuli in a specific way.
    • Classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
  • Observational Learning:
    • Discovered by Albert Bandura.
    • Explains 'other' kinds of learning (e.g., playing piano).
    • Huge implications with respect to children as they learn from adults.

Classical Conditioning

  • "Learning by association."
  • Discovered by Pavlov.
  • Noticed dogs would salivate first at the sight of food and then at the sound of the experimenter approaching.
  • UR = unconditioned response - unlearned, automatic response.
  • CR = conditioned response - a learned response.
  • US = unconditioned stimulus - not manipulated.
  • CS = conditioned stimulus - manipulated by the experimenter.