The Science of Psychology
The scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Through observation, researchers aim to describe, predict, and explain behavior.
What is Psychology?
One is the brain and the spinal cord, the other connects the brain and spinal cord to other parts of the body.
What are the major divisions of the nervous system (central & peripheral)?
One is receiving stimulus energies from the external environment and transforming those energies into neural energy, while the other is organizing and interpreting sensory information so that it makes sense. The brain gives meaning to one through the other.
What's the difference between sensation and perception?
Awareness of external events and internal sensations under a condition of arousal.
What is consciousness?
One is the process of thinking deeply and actively, asking questions, and evaluating the evidence; the other is a systematic, relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs through experience.
What is the difference between learning and critical thinking?
The shared beliefs, values, traditions, and behaviors of a group of people, passed down through generations.
Examples: Día de los Muertos, Kwanzaa, Ramadan & Eid, Easter & Christmas.
Provide a definition/description of culture, as well as some examples of culture.
1.) (In order): stores memories; determines objects necessary for survival; nerve cells that process information; chemical substances within the neuron involved in transmitting information across a synaptic gap.
2.) (In order): The body’s response to stressors (threatening circumstances and events); regulation of sleep, mood, attention, and learning; natural opiates that mainly stimulate the firing of neurons; control of voluntary movement
1.) What are: amygdala, hippocampus, neurons, and neurotransmitters?
2.) What are: stress & stressors, serotonin, endorphins, & dopamine?
The minimum amount of stimulus energy that a person can detect. In psychology, the point at which the individual detects the stimulus is 50% of the time.
What is the Absolute Threshold? What's the minimum?
One is the term used by William James for the mind as a continuous flow of changing sensations, images, thoughts, and feelings. The other is the processes by which we think about thinking.
What is the Stream of Consciousness and metacognition?
-A theory of learning that focuses solely on observable behaviors.
-When an organism makes a connection, or an association, between two events.
What is behaviorism?
What is associative learning?
In order: An in-depth look at a single individual; This type of research describes some phenomenon; examines the relationships between variables.
Somatic & Autonomic; It takes messages to and from the body’s internal organs and monitors body processes; Sympathetic: arouses the body to mobilize it for action, is involved in the experience of stress; Parasympathetic: calms the body.
What are the two divisions of the peripheral nervous system? What is the autonomic nervous system? Lastly, what are the two subdivisions of the autonomic system and what do they do?
1.) Sensory receptors register information about the external environment and send the information up to the brain for interpretation (scared because running).
2.) Launched by cognitive processing in the brain’s
higher levels and allows the organism to sense what is happening and to apply that framework to information from the world (running because scared).
What is bottom-up processing? What is top-down processing? Give an example of both.
Insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy are all ____. They can be managed with medication, but because of ____, this may not work for some. On the other hand, a person's _____ and ____ dependency can lead to ____/_____. _____ is another option for those who don't want medication.
(In order): Sleep disorders; tolerance; physical; psychological; addiction; substance abuse disorder; Meditation
Leaning through observing and imitating another’s behavior. An example would be children learning violence and aggression after watching an adult do the same.
What does observational learning mean? Provide an example of observational learning.
Founded the first psychology lab, coined Structuralism (the basic elements, or structures, of mental processes); argued the key question is not so much what the mind is, as what it is for (Functionalism); founder of the Psychodynamic approach, called his therapeutic technique psychoanalysis.
Who are (in order): Wilhelm Wundt, William James, Sigmund Freud?
1.) The tape/glue-like fiber nerves that hold the two brain hemispheres together & allow them to communicate information between each other.
2.) The extensive, wrinkly outer layer of the forebrain that is responsible for the most complex mental functions, such as thinking and planning.
What are the corpus callosum and the cerebral cortex? What do they do?
1.) Focusing on a specific aspect of experience while ignoring others (note that attention is both selective and shiftable). An example is the "cocktail party effect."
2.) A change in the responsiveness of the sensory system based on the average level of surrounding stimulation (note that adaptation takes time). An example is your eyes adjusting in the dark.
What is selective attention? What is sensory adaptation? Give an example of both.
Match the drug to the purpose:
1.) Drugs that act on the nervous system to alter consciousness, modify perception, and change moods.
2.) Psychoactive drugs that modify a person’s perceptual experiences and produce visual images that are not real.
3.) Psychoactive drugs that slow down mental and physical activity.
4.) Act on the brain’s endorphin receptors.
5.) Psychoactive drugs that increase the central nervous system’s activity.
Match the drug to the purpose:
Hallucinogens; Stimulants; Depressants; Psychoactive Drugs; Opioids
One is the process by which a stimulus or an event following a particular behavior increases the probability that the behavior will happen again, while the other is a consequence that decreases the likelihood that a behavior will occur. Regardless of which, ____ is to encourage the continuation/stop of something, while ____ is the discourage the continuation.
Rewarding successive approximations of a desired behavior.
What's the difference between reinforcement and punishment? What's the difference between the positive and negative of both? Lastly, what is shaping? Give an example.
Body, brain, & nervous system; visible behaviors & environment; unconscious thought; positive qualities, growth potential, & freedom; knowing & thinking; evolutionary ideas; society & culture; all three are considered.
What are the seven contemporary approaches of psychology (try to answer in order)?
1.) Structures at the back of the head that respond to visual stimuli; involved in hearing, language processing, and memory; involved in personality, intelligence, and the control of voluntary muscles; involved in registering special location, attention, and motor control.
2.) Processes information about body sensations; located at the front of the parietal lobes; processes information about voluntary movement; located just behind the frontal lobes.
1.) Describe the main functions of the 4 lobes, including the frontal lobes, parietal lobes, temporal lobes, and occipital lobes.
2.) What are the somatosensory cortex and motor cortex?
The recognition that objects are constant and unchanging, even though sensory input about them is changing. Think optical illusions.
What does the term perceptual constancy mean? Give examples of size constancy, shape constancy, and color constancy.
1.) Stage N1: When people are just falling asleep, characterized by theta waves; Stage N2: Theta waves continue, interspersed with sleep spindles; Stage N3: Characterized by delta waves, the slowest and highest-amplitude brain waves during sleep.
2.) Stage R (REM) sleep: After going through stages N1 to N3, characterized by rapid eye movement;
When most vivid dreams occur.
What are the stages of non-REM sleep? What happens in each stage? Speaking of REM sleep, what is it? What happens during REM?
When a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an innately meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response; When the consequences of a behavior change the probability of the behavior’s occurrence.
(US): produces a response without prior learning; (UR):an unlearned reaction that is automatically elicited by the unconditioned stimulus; (CS): a previously neutral stimulus that elicits a conditioned response after being paired with the unconditioned stimulus; (CR): the learned response to the conditioned stimulus.
1.) Operant vs. Classical Conditioning: What does each do?
2.)Explain the following concepts and be able to apply these concepts to a real-life example of classical conditioning: unconditioned stimulus (US), unconditioned response (UR), neutral stimulus (NS), conditioned stimulus (CS), conditioned response (CR)