PsychologyChapter 2Methods of psychologyIn psychology, the data are usually measures or descriptions of some form of behaviour produces by humans or other animals.A fact (or observation) is an objective statement, usually based on direct observation, that reasonable observers agree is true. In psychology, facts are usually particular behaviours, or reliable patterns of behaviours, for persons or animals.A theory is an idea, or conceptual model, that is designed to explain existing facts and make predictions about new facts that might be discovered.Any prediction about new facts that is made from a theory is called a hypothesis.Facts lead to theories, which leads to hypothesis, which are tested by experiments, which leads to new fact. It is a cycle of science. The value of scepticism.It makes you notice what others missed and think of an alternative explanation.Occam’s razor: when there are two or more explanations that are equally able to account for a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is usually preferred.The value of careful observations under controlled conditions.Careful observation under controlled conditions is a hallmark of the scientific method.The problem of observer-expectancy effects.In studies of humans or other animals, the observers may unintentionally communicate to the subjects their expectations of how they should behave. The subjects, intentionally or not, may respond by doing what the researcher expect. ...

PsychologyChapter 4Basic processes of learning To survive, animals must adapt to their environments.Evolution by natural selection, is the slow long-term adaptive process that equips each species for life within a certain range of environmental conditions.Environments changes and individuals must adapt to these changes over their lifetimes. Animals must learn.Learning: any process through which experience at one time can alter an individual’s behavior at a future time.Experience refers to any effects of the environment that are mediated by the individual’s sensory systems.Behavior at a future time refers to any subsequent behavior that is not part of the individual’s immediate response to the sensory stimulation during the learning experience.Classical conditioningClassical conditioning is a learning processes that creates new reflexes.A reflex is a simple, relatively automatic stimulus-response sequence mediated by the nervous system.A stimulus results in a response.To be considered a reflex, the response to a stimulus must be mediated by the nervous system. Because reflexes are mediated by the nervous system, they can be modified by experience.Habituation: a decline in the magnitude of a reflexive response when the stimulus is repeated several times in succession. Not all reflexes undergo habituation.Habituation is one of the simplest forms of learning. It does not produce a new stimulus-response sequence, but only weakens an already existing one....

Introduction to psychologyChapter 6Mechanisms of motivation and emotion Motivation: the entire constellation of factors, some inside the organism and some outside, that cause an individual to behave in a particular way at a particular time.Motivational state, or drive.An internal condition that orients an individual toward a specific category of goals that can change over time in a reversible way. (The drive an increase and decrease).Different drives direct a person toward different goals.Those are hypothetical constructs! We infer the existence from the animal’s behavior.Motivated behavior is directed toward incentives, the sought-after objects or ends that exist in the external environment.Incentives are also called reinforces.Drives and incentives complement one another in the control of behavior. If one is weak, the other must be strong to motivate the goal-directed action.They also influence each other’s strength. A strong drive can enhance the attractiveness of a particular object.A strong incentive can strengthen a drive.Varieties of drivesIn general, drives motivate us toward goals that promote our survival and reproduction. Some drives promote survival by helping us maintain the internal bodily conditions that are essential for life.Drives that help preserve homeostasis.Homeostasis: the constancy of internal conditions that the body must actively maintain.Maintaining homeostasis involves the organism’s outward behavior as well as its internal processes.The...

PsychologyChapter 9Memory and attention Information-processing theories are built on a set of assumptions concerning how humans acquire, store and retrieve information.Key assumptions:An individual has limited mental resources in processing information.Information moves through a system of stores. Information this brought into the mind by way of the sensory systems, and then it can be manipulated in various ways, placed into long-term storage, and retrieved when needed to solve a problem.The model we use to portray the mind as containing three types of memory stores.Sensory memoryShort-term (or working) memoryLong-term memoryEach store is characterized by its function, its capacity and its duration.In addition to the stores, the model specifies a set of control processes.AttentionRehearsalEncodingRetrievalThose govern the processing of information within stores and the movement of information from one store to another.Sensory memory: the brief prolongation of sensory experienceThis trace is called sensory memory.A separate sensory-memory store is believed to exist for each sensory system (like vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste), but only those for vision and hearing have been studied extensively.Each sensory store is presumed to hold, very briefly, all the sensory input that enters that sensory system, whether or not the person is paying attention to that input.The function of the...

PsychologyChapter 11The development of body, thought and language Prenatal developmentZygotic, embryonic and fetal phasesThe prenatal period is conventionally divided into three phases:The zygotic phaseWhen sperms join egg, combining the genes, the zygote begins its journey to the uterus.During this time (2 weeks) the zygote divides many times, eventually implanting in the uterine wall. This ends the zygotic phase and beginning the embryonic phase. (40 percent of zygotes do not survive this earliest phase. And one third of those who do are lost in later phases by miscarriages).The embryonic phaseFrom the third to about the eight week after conception. During this time, all major organ systems develop.The embryo receives nutrition from the mother’s bloodstream via the umbilical cord through the placenta (which develops inside the uterus during pregnancy). The placenta also exchanges oxygen, antibodies and wastes between the mother and embryo.The fetal phaseThe final phase of the prenatal period. It extends from about 9 weeks until birth.The most prominent feature is growth and refinement of organs and body structure.The fetus changes in proportion. The head of the fetus at 9 weeks is proportionally large relative to the rest of the body, and this decreases, with the body catching up by the time the baby is born.Cephalocaudal development: the change in proportions.By the end of the 12th week after conception, all the organs...

PsychologyChapter 13Social psychology Humans are naturally interested in assessing the personality characteristics and attitudes of other humans they encounter.This drive has clear adaptive functions. Other people can help us or hurt us in our life endeavors. Understanding others helps us predict their behavior and decide how to interact with them.The accuracy of judgments of others sometimes suffers from certain consistent mistakes, or biases.These biases occur most often when we are not using our full mental recourses, or have only limited information with which to reason, or have unconscious motives for reaching particular conclusions.They provide clues about the mental processes that contribute to accurate as well as inaccurate perceptions and judgments.An understanding of biases can promote social justice.Making attributions from observed behaviorActions are directly observable, and thoughts are not. Judgments about the personalities of people we encounter are based largely on what we observe of their actions.Any judgment about another person is, in essence, a claim about causation. It is an implicit claim that the person is caused in part by some more or less permanent characteristic of the person.Any claim about causation is an attribution. A claim about the cause of someone’s behavior.The logic of attributing behavior to the person or the situation.To build a useful picture of a person on the basis of his or her actions, you must decide which actions imply something unique about the person...

PsychologyChapter 15PersonalityPersonality refers to a person’s general style of interacting with the world, especially with other people.The development during childhood of chronic patterns of behavior that differ from one individual to another. The most central concept in personality psychology is the trait. This is a relatively stable predisposition to behave in a certain way.This is considered to be part of the person, not the environment.States (other than traits) of motivation and emotion are, defined as inner entities than can be inferred from observed behavior. Traits are enduring, but states are temporary.A trait might be defined as an enduring attribute that describes one’s likelihood of entering temporarily into a particular state.Traits are dimensions along which people differ by degree.Trait theories: efficient systems for describing personalitiesThe goal of any trait theory of personality is to specify a manageable set of distinct personality dimensions that can be used to summarize the fundamental psychological differences among individuals.Factor analyses as a tool for identifying an efficient set of traitsFactor analyses: a method of analyzing patterns of correlations in order to extract mathematically defined factors, which underlie and help make sense of those patterns.Steps:Collect data in the form of a set of personality measures taken across a large sampling of people.Once the data is collected, the researcher...

PsychologyChapter 17Treatment What to do with individuals with severe mental disorders? A brief historyA major chance in the treatment of people with severe mental disorders occurred in the 1950s, inspired by several factors;Increase in the number of Ph.D. programs in clinical psychology to train psychologist to treat the mental health problems of World War II veterans.Disenchantment with large state institutionsThe development of antipsychotic drugsA positive development: assertive community treatmentSince the 1970s, an increasing number of communities have developed outreach programs, often referred to as assertive community treatment (ACT) programs, and aimed at helping individuals with severe mental illness wherever they are in the community.Each person with mental illness in need is assigned to a multidisciplinary treatment team. Someone on the team is available at any time of the day to respond to crises.Each patient is visited at least twice a week by a team member, who checks on his or her health, sees if any services are needed, and offers counseling when that seems appropriate.The team meets frequently with family members who are involved with the patient, to support them in their care for the patient.Structure of the mental health systemMental health professionalsMental health professionals are those who have received special training and certification to work with people who have psychological problems or mental disorders.The primary categories;PsychiatristsClinical psychologistsCounseling...