General Psychology

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What is Psychology?

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the scientific study of behavior (what we do) and mental processes(inner thoughts and feelings).

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Nature

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heredity

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Nuture

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environmental influences

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Psychiatry

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is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. The term was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808.

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Case study

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A technique in which one person is studied in depth to reveal underlying behavioral principles.

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Survey

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A technical for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes, opinions or behaviors of people usually done by questioning a representative, random sample of people.

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Naturalistic Observation

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observing and recording the behavior of animals in the wild and recording self-seating patterns in a multiracial school lunch room constitute naturalistic observation.Is a method of observation, commonly used by psychologists, behavioral scientists and social scientists, that involves observing subjects in their natural habitats. Researchers take great care in avoiding making interferences with the behaviour they are observing by using unobtrusive methods. Objectively, studying events as they occur naturally, without intervention.

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Biological Psychology

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Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology. is the application of the principles of biology, in particular neurobiology, to the study of mental processes and behavior in human and non-human animals.

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Neuron

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A nerve cell, or a neuron.is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrochemical signaling, via connections with other cells called synapses. Neurons are the core components of the nervous system, which includes the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral ganglia.

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Dendrite

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Branching extensions at the cell body. Receive messages from other neurons.

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Axon

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Long single extension of a neuron, covered with myelin sheath to insulated and speed up messages through neurons

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Myelin Sheath

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Myelin is an insulating layer that forms around nerves, including those in the brain and spinal cord. It is made up of protein and fatty substances. The purpose of the myelin sheath is to allow rapid and efficient transmission of impulses along the nerve cells. If the myelin is damaged, the impulses slow down. This can cause diseases like multiple sclerosis.

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Synapse

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a junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron.

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Neurotransmitters

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A chemical substance located in synapse. (chemicals) released from the sending neuron travel across the synapse and bind to receptor sites on teh receiving neuron, thereby influencing it to generate an action potential.

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Autonomic Nervous System

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The autonomic nervous system (ANS or visceral nervous systemiklom) is the part of the peripheral nervous system that acts as a control system functioning largely below the level of consciousness, and controls visceral functions.[1] The ANS affects heart rate, digestion, respiration rate, salivation, perspiration, diameter of the pupils, micturition (urination), and sexual arousal. Whereas most of its actions are involuntary, some, such as breathing, work in tandem with the conscious mind. It is classically divided into two subsystems: the parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system.

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Sympathetic

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the division of ANS that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations.

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Parasympathetic

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division of the ANS that calms the body, conserving its energy.

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Hypothlalmus

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lies below (hypo) teh thalamas. It directs several maintenance activities like eating, drinking, body temperature, and control of emotions. It helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland.

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Phineas Gage

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Phineas Gage (1823-1860) is one of the earliest documented cases of severe brain injury. Gage is the index case of an individual who suffered major personality changes after brain trauma. As such, he is a legend in the annals of neurology, which is largely based on the study of brain-damaged patients.

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Genes

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biochemical units of heredity that makes up chromosomes

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Identical twins

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develop from a single fertilized egg

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Fraternal twins

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develop from separate fertilized eggs

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Personal Space

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is the region surrounding a person which they regard as psychologically theirs.

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Piaget's Stages of Development

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1. Sensorimotor Stage(birth to about age 2): babies take in the world by looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. 2.Preoperational(begins about the time the child starts to talk to about age 7): children are too young to perform certain mental operations. 3. Concrete(about first grade to early adolescence):The child develops an ability to think abstractly and to make rational judgements about concrete or observable phenomena, which in the past he needed to manipulate physically to understand. In teaching this child, giving him the opportunity to ask questions and to explain things back to you allows him to mentally manipulate information. 4.Formal Operations(adolescence): This stage brings cognition to its final form. This person no longer requires concrete objects to make rational judgements. At his point, he is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. Teaching for the adolescent may be wideranging because he'll be able to consider many possibilities from several perspectives.

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Object Permanence

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is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. Jean Piaget argued that object permanence is one of an infant's most important accomplishments, as without this concept, objects would have no separate, permanent existence.

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Conservation

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is an ethic of resource use, allocation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world: its, fisheries, habitats, and biological diversity.

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Harlow's Study

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was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which demonstrated the importance of care-giving and companionship in social and cognitive development.Some researchers cited the experiments as a factor in the rise of the animal liberation movement in the United States.

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Puberty

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the term puberty (derived from the Latin word puberatum (age of maturity, manhood)) refers to the bodily changes of sexual maturation rather than the psychosocial and cultural aspects of adolescent development.

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Social Clock

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Have you ever heard someone say (or said yourself) "my clock is ticking." This is an example of a social clock which is a cultural specific timetable for events to occur. Events include marriage, having children, etc. For example, in some cultures it is expected that people be married in their teens. This is an example of a social clock - in that cutlture they have an accepted timetable for when events are to occur.

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Sensation

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Technically, sensation can be defined as the neural synaptic firing of our receptors and our brain's interpretation of these firings. But how about an example to make this a little more clear.when you touch something, receptors send impulses that travel to the spinal cord and then into the brain for interpretation. Without both parts (the signal being sent or the interpretation), there is no sensation. The signals being sent and interpreted are what we call sensation. (Note: nothing is done with the "interpretation" at this stage, but once the interpretation is made use of and taken to the next stage, you have perception.)

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Perception

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The process in which we understand sensory information. Illusions are powerful examples of how we misinterpret sensory information and perceive information incorrectly.

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Rods

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rods are the receptors in the eye which detect movement. Rods are also used in night vision.

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Cones

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The cones are receptor cells that help us see fine details of things and tend to help us see in situations where there is light or daylight. The majority of cones are in the center of the retina (we have approximately 6 million cones in each eye). When you squint to try to read or see something more clearly, what you are actually doing is focusing the image on this grouping of the cones in order to see the fine details. Cones also help us with color perception.

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Pinna

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(also called the auricle) the visible part of the outer ear. It collects sound and directs it into the outer ear canal

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External Auditory Canal

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is a tube running from the outer ear to the middle ear.

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Middle Ear (hammer, anvil, stirrup)

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The middle ear is the portion of the ear internal to the eardrum, and external to the oval window of the cochlea. hammer:(also called the malleus) a tiny bone that passes vibrations from the eardrum to the anvil. anvil:also called the incus) a tiny bone that passes vibrations from the hammer to the stirrup. stirrup: (also called the stapes) a tiny, U-shaped bone that passes vibrations from the stirrup to the cochlea. This is the smallest bone in the human body (it is 0.25 to 0.33 cm long).

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Cochlea

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a spiral-shaped, fluid-filled inner ear structure; it is lined with cilia (tiny hairs) that move when vibrated and cause a nerve impulse to form.

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Basilar Membrane

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This is a long membrane that is part of the auditory system. The membrane runs the length of the cochlea (inside the ear) and contains those tiny hairs that act as sound receptors.

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Sense of Taste

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the faculty of distinguishing sweet, sour, bitter, and salty properties in the mouth

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Sensory Receptor Cells for Smelling-Located in Olfactory Membrane

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A given olfactory receptor can bind to a variety of odor molecules with varying affinities.

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Proximity

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closeness: closeness in space or time

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Similarity

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likeness: the possession of one or more qualities or features in common

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Figure-Ground

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there are two main visual components necessary for a person to see an object properly; a figure (the object) and the ground (the background or surroundings in which the object occurs). Thus, when you look at a picture on a wall, the picture is the figure and you can distinguish it clearly from its surroundings, the wall (ground).

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Consciousness

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Consciousness refers to our awareness of our own mental processes, such as our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. It is possible that we are the only beings on this planet that have this type of self awareness or level of consciousness and the ability to introspect, or look inward and examine these processes.

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Selective Attention

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Selective attention is purposely focusing your conscious awareness onto a specific stimulus. This means that if you are in a noisy place with lots of people and you purposely pay attention to the person you are speaking with, you are engaging in selective attention.

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REM Sleep

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REM, which is also known as paradoxical sleep, stands for Rapid Eye Movement and occurs in cycles every 60-90 minutes througout your sleep period. This means that every 60-90 minutes you enter a REM stage during which you have rapid eye movements and your muscles become almost paralyzed (this is why it's called paradoxical sleep - the rest of your body is active but your muscles are inactive). The majority of dreams occur in REM sleep, but not all of them.

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Hallucinations

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Hallucinations can be defined as false sensory (visual, auditory, etc.) experiences, such as seeing something a person although nobody is really there, hearing a voice although nobody is speaking, feeling someone touch who despite being alone, etc.

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Narcolepsy

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Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder where the affected individual falls asleep without warning. A person with narcolepsy can fall asleep while driving or while filming their family on vacation. The inability to control their sleep obviously causes challenges in their everyday lives.

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Sleep Apnea

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Sleep Apnea is a sleep disorder in which the person's muscles become so relaxed that the airways become blocked and the person has trouble breathing and actually stops breathing momentarily). These people tend to snore a lot. The big problem here is that the person is not getting enough oxygen. Each time they stop breathing their blood oxygen level drops until it gets so low it wakes them mometarily (usually not noticed by the sleeper). This cycle (stop breathing and then waking) can happen hundreds of times a night. In addition to dangerously low blood oxygen level, the person can't get enough slow-wave sleep so they usually feel tired and complain of poor sleep.

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Night Terrors

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A disorder that interrupts your sleep. Individuals wake overcome by fear and an increased heart and respiratory rate. Unlike nightmares, night terrors do not occur in REM and there is no recollection of a bad dream.

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Nightmares

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are a type of sleep disruption, or parasomnia, characterized by frightening psychological content.

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Manifest Content

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Manifest content is all the parts of the dream that we remember (the actual content). It's not the stuff we associate with our dreams, but the actual story lines of the dreams.

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Latent Content

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latent content was somehow censored by the subconscious which was a way to protect us from the real meanings of the dreams. This was necessary because the dream content may be difficult for people to deal with, so people disguise the real meaning.

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Psychoactive Drugs: Alter Behavior or Perceptions

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is a chemical substance that acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it alters brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness and behavior. These drugs may be used recreationally to purposefully alter one's consciousness, as entheogens for ritual or spiritual purposes, as a tool for studying or augmenting the mind, or therapeutically as medication.

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Behaviorism

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This perspective was first suggested and propagated by John Watson in 1913, who wanted psychology to study only observable behaviors and get away from the study of the conscious mind completely. Watson's primary rationale was that only observable events are verifiable and thus, are the only events that can be proven false. This is an extremely important concept for science; without it, how can you ever find out what is true, false, real, or fake.

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Pavlov Classical Conditioning

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Learning by association

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Unconditioned Stimulus and Response

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Unconditioned Stimulus: In classical conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus (US or UCS) is any stimulus that can evoke a response without the organism going through any previous learning; the response to the US (the unconditioned response) occurs naturally. For example, if you smell a lemon, it might get a sour taste in your mouth and you may salivate. This may occur from the time you are born and can occur without you ever having tasted a lemon before. The lemon, therefore, is a US since it produced the salivation and sour taste (the UR) naturally, without you having any previous experience with lemons. Unconditioned Response: In classical conditioning, there are stimuli that can produce responses all by themselves and without any prior learning. These types of stimuli are called unconditioned stimuli (US or UCS) and they evoke unconditioned responses (UR or UCR), or responses that are completely natural and occur without an organism going through any prior learning. For example, if you smell a lemon, it might get a sour taste in your mouth and you may salivate. This may occur from the time you are born and can occur without you ever having tasted a lemon before. The salivation and sour taste would be unconditioned responses.

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Condtioned Stimulus and Response

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Conditioned Stimulus: In classical conditioning, a formerly neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to produce a conditioned response. For example, a dog salivates (UR) from the smell of a bone (US) naturally, without any conditioning. Once some neutral stimulus (for example, a "beep" that the dog would not naturally or normally cause the dog to salivate) has been paired with the bone for some time, the dog will salivate (CR) when the "beep" occurs. Once the beep has the capacity to elicit the salivation, it is now considered a conditioned stimulus (CS). Conditioned Response: In classical conditioning, the conditioned response (CR) is the learned response (reflexive behavior) to a conditioned stimulus (CS). This response is almost identical to the Unconditioned Stimulus except that now the reflexive behavior occurs in response to a conditioned stimulus as opposed to an unconditioned stimulus. For example, a dog salivates (UR) from the smell of a bone (US) naturally, without any conditioning. Once some neutral stimulus (CS) (for example, a "beep" that the dog would not naturally or normally cause the dog to salivate) has been paired with the bone for some time, the dog will salivate (CS) when the "beep" occurs.

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Extinction

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Extinction is from conditioning and refers to the reduction of some response that the organism currently or previously produced. In classical conditioning this results from the unconditioned stimulus NOT occurring after the conditioned stimulus is presented over time. In operant conditioning it results from some response by the organism no longer being reinforced (for example, you keep getting your dog to sit on command, but you stop giving it a treat or any other type of reinforcement. Over time, the dog may not sit every time you give the command).

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Spontaneous Recovery

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Spontaneous recovery is a term associated with learning and conditioning. Specifically, spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of a response (a Conditioned Response; CR) that had been extinguished. The recovery can occur after a period of non-exposure to the Conditioned Stimulus (CS). It is called spontaneous because the response seems to reappear out of nowhere. Let's look at an example. Let's say I condition (teach/train) a rat to press a lever whenever I ring a bell. Then I teach the rat to press the lever when I flash a light and not when I ring the bell. Once I've accomplished this, we can say that the first conditioned response (pressing the lever when I ring the bell) has been extinguished. But then one day, the rat starts to press the lever when I ring the bell and not when I flash the light. In this situation, there was spontaneous recovery of the response that was previously extinguished.

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Generalization

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Generalization refers to a process within operant and classical conditioning, where a conditioned response (CR) starts occurring in response to the presentation of other, similar stimuli, not just the conditioned stimulus (CS). For example, a dog is trained to sit (CR) when you give the command, "sit" (CS). Soon after that, the dog might sit when you say "hit", "bit", and "kick". In this case, the CR (sitting) is not only done to the CS (the command, "sit") but also to commands that are similar.

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Watson (Little Albert experiment)

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The Little Albert experiment was an experiment showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning. This study was also an example of stimulus generalisation. It was conducted in 1920 by John B. Watson. The study was done at Johns Hopkins University.

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Skinner Box

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The Skinner Box was created by Behaviorist B.F. Skinner who used it to study animals such as rats and pigeons. The chamber (in the shape of a box) contains either a lever or key that can be pressed in order to receive reinforcements such as food and water. There was also a mechanism that recorded all the behaviors of the animals, the schedules of reinforcement the animals were on, etc. It was a very controlled environment that Skinner used to meticulously study behavior. The Skinner Box created what is known as Free Operant Procedure - responses can be made and recorded continuously without the need to stop the experiment for the experimenter to record the responses made by the animal.

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Operating Conditioning (Positive & Negative Reinforcent, Punishment)

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Operant Conditioning: Operant Conditioning is a type of learning in which a behavior is strengthened (meaning, it will occur more frequently) when it's followed by reinforcement, and weakened (will happen less frequently) when followed by punishment. Operant conditioning is based on a simple premise - that behavior is influenced by the consequences that follow. When you are reinforced for doing something, you're more likely to do it again. When you are punished for doing something, you are less likely to do it again.Positive Reinforcement: A stimulus which increases the frequency of a particular behavior using pleasant rewards. A doggy treat can pleasantly coerce your new puppy to sit (positive reinforcement) just as a pull to the choke collar can achieve the same affect (negative reinforcement). The difference is that the positive reinforcer is pleasant, but make sure you understand that both increase the frequency of the behavior!Negative Reinforcement: With negative reinforcement the occurrence of a behavior is increased by removing an unpleasant stimulus. For example, your dog can avoid being spanked when it sits in response to your command. If the dog has been getting spanked, not getting spanked is rewarding (removal of unpleasant stimulus) so the frequency of the behavior will increase. People confuse negative reinforcement with punishment--just remember that with reinforcement you increase the occurrence of the behavior but punishment extinguishes a behavior. Punishment: Any stimulus that represses a behavior. It is important to note that punishment is not the same as negative reinforcement. Is failing a test negative reinforcement or punishment? If it motivates you to study more it is negative reinforcement (i.e., it increases the behavior of studying). However, if you feel that studying is actually hurting your performance (due to, for example, test anxiety) you will perceive that failing the test was due to studying too hard. Next time, you will not study (i.e., decrease your behavior) so that you will not be punished for it.

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Bandura(Observational Learning)

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is a psychologist specializing in social cognitive theory and self-efficacy. He is most famous for his social learning theory.Observational Learning: The process of acquiring information by observing others. Learning to tie your shoe by observing another individual perform the task would be an example of observational learning.

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Short-term memory

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Short-Term Memory: Short Term Memory is the part of the memory system where information is stored for roughly 30 seconds. Information can be maintained longer with the use of such techniques as rehearsal. To retain the information for extended periods of time; it must be consolidated into long-term memory where it can then be retrieved. Short-term memory allows you to retain phone numbers from an operator before and while you are dialing the number of interest. The capacity of short-term memory is also limited. Most people can only store roughly 7 chunks of information plus or minus 2.

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Long-term memory

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Long-Term Memory: The term long-term memory refers to the unlimited capacity memory store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time. By saying "lengthy periods of time" we mean that it is possible for memories in LTM to remain there for an entire lifetime. In addition, there are three types of memories that can be stored in LTM: procedural memory, semantic memory, and episodic memory.

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Rehearsal

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rehearsal -- consciously repeating the information over and over so that I can keep it in temporary memory. Rehearsal can also be used to encode it for long-term memory storage

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Amnesia

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Amnesia is the inability to recall past events. Amnesia can result from physical trauma (such as being in an accident and getting a blow to the head) or from psychological problems. One type of amnesia, dissociative amnesia, is the inability to recall events that results from psychological problems, specifically from too much stress. This is sometimes seen in victims of horrible events such as violent crimes, murder, war, etc. It is not a typical situation, but sometimes when an event is simply too difficult for a person to handle, they protect themselves by blocking the memory of the event. In these cases the problem is usually temporary.

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Repression

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When explaining repression, Freud compared the process to "condemnation" and stated the following: "Let us take a model, an impulse, a mental process seeking to convert itself into action: we know that it can suffer rejection, by virtue of what we call 'repudiation' or 'condemnation'; whereupon the energy at its disposal is withdrawn, it becomes powerless, but it can continue to exist as a memory. The whole process of decision on the point takes place with the full cognizance of the ego. It is very different when we imagine the same impulse subject to repression: it would then retain its energy and no memory of it would be left behind; the process of repression, too, would be accomplished without the cognizance of the ego."