The Five Perspectives In Psychology

Psychology is one of many fundamental components within the field of allied health to address when treating patients. The definition of psychology provided from the Australian Psychological Society 2015 states that; “Psychology is the scientific investigation of mental processes (thinking, remembering and feeling) and behaviour. Understanding a person requires attention to the individual’s biology, psychological experience and cultural context.” There are five different perspectives in psychology; Psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive, evolutionary and humanistic. Although they are radically varied in regards to their approach of psychology, each has made distinctive and significant contributions. To successfully treat a patient, allied health …show more content…
Matlin has described memory as “the means by which we draw on our past experiences in order to use this information in the present.” Though in its most basic form memory can be described by saying that “memory is essentially the capacity for storing and retrieving information.” (SparkNotes Editors, 2005). You may be familiar with the phrases, short-term memory and long-term memory and may have also heard of conscious and unconscious memory but up until now have had no real desire to understand the terms meaning or significance. This thought process is very normal and completely understandable and so the following will provide a concise explanation on memory and what it may reveal about Joan’s wellbeing from a personal perspective. Human memory can be broken down into a categorized style order as depicted in the image to the right. Directly beneath the heading is short-term and long-term memory. Short term memory or otherwise known as primary or active memory involves a recall of limited information for a comparatively short time, usually up to 30 seconds. “Short-term memory is sometimes also referred to as working memory, but these two forms are actually slightly different. In short-term memory, the remembered information is not manipulated or organised, whereas this does occur in working memory. In addition, short-term and working memory also rely on distinct areas in the brain.” (Richardson …show more content…
An example of short term memory retrieval is memorizing a phone number when broken down into “chunks”, whereas an example for long term memory could be derived from a number of variables including “Visual (picture), Acoustic (sound) or Semantic (meaning)” (Scientific American 2007). Our final row in the image above is further divided into either explicit or implicit, or rather your conscious or unconscious