Introduction to Psychology

Psychology Introduction

• Behavioral sciences study human behavior in society. Medical students traditionally focus on biochemistry, physiology, histology, and human anatomy rather than behavior.
• Behavioral sciences include Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology.
• Sociology and Anthropology study groups, while Psychology studies individual activities within their environment.

Definition and Approaches of Psychology

• Psychology is the study of behavior, describing what behavior is and explaining why it occurs.
• Human behavior can be viewed through biological, behavioral, cognitive, psychoanalytic, or other approaches.

Perception

• Sensation is receiving stimuli through sense organs.
• Perception is interpreting and understanding the meaning of stimuli.
• Perception depends on past experiences, future expectations, and stimulation.

Factors that Affect Perception

• Figural factors (objective): Similarity, symmetry, closure, continuity, proximity, background.
• Personal factors (subjective): Mood, previous experiences, mental set/expectancy, aesthetic value, needs, interests, physical condition.
• Social factors: Culture, beliefs, traditions.

Personal Factors Affecting Perception

• Previous experience or habit makes familiar figures easier to perceive.
• Physical condition influences perception, e.g., a hungry person perceiving food smells from far away.
• Emotional state affects perception, potentially disturbing it in states like anger or depression.
• Set expectancy leads people to accept inadequate stimuli as signs of an expected fact, altering perception.

Social Factors Affecting Perception

• Perception is influenced by culture, beliefs, and traditions.

Figural Factors Affecting Perception

• Similarity: similar stimuli are grouped together.
• Symmetry: symmetric objects are perceived as belonging together.
• Closure: incomplete stimuli are grouped to be perceived together.
• Continuity: the elements perceived as straight lines rather than separate dots, as two continuing lines rather than four short lines.
• Proximity: objects close together are perceived as a group.
• Background: the relationship between figures and their backgrounds affects perception.

Disorders of Perception

• Illusion: A false perception of an external stimulus; caused by physical factors, habit, expectation, or psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia.
• Hallucination: False sensory perception without external stimuli; can be auditory, olfactory, visual, or tactile, linked to psychiatric illness, or normal phenomena like hypnagogic/hypnapompic hallucinations.
• Déjà vu: Illusion of familiarity.

Attention

• Attention is focusing on certain aspects of a situation.
• The cerebral cortex and reticular system of the brain stem are vital for attention.

External Factors that Stimulate Attention

• Type of stimulus: pictures attract attention better than words.
• Position of stimulus: Upper portion of newspaper attracts the reader better than lower portion.
• Intensity of stimulus: bright colors, loud sounds, fragrant perfumes gain more attention.
• Changeability: flickering light attracts more attention compared to a steady one.
• Repetition of stimulus: A repeated stimulus is more likely to be noticed.
• Unfamiliarity: strange, unfamiliar objects attract more attention.
• Contrast: a black spot on a white field is more attention-grabbing.
• Clarity: clear stimuli are more attractive.
• Combination of sensory stimuli: stimuli involving multiple senses are more attractive than single-sense stimuli.
• Combination of factors: stimuli with more of the above factors are most attractive.

Internal Factors that Stimulate Attention

• Internal factors make the person attentive to certain objects, which can be temporary or permanent.

Permanent Factors that Stimulate Attention

• Sensory fitness: sensory handicaps interfere with efficient attention.
• Intelligence: those with higher intelligence can attend more easily.

Temporary Factors that Stimulate Attention

• Physical state: feverish people are less attentive.
• Mental state/Interest: the things you want to buy will catch your attention while shopping.
• Emotional state: depressed people are less attentive.
• Biological needs: the smell of food attracts the attention of a hungry individual.

Types of Attention

• Involuntary attention: forced attention toward stimuli, like gunshots or flashes.
• Voluntary attention: intentional listening or watching, like an uninteresting lecture.
• Spontaneous attention: effortless attention because the stimulus is interesting.

Factors That Stimulate Distraction

• Physical factors: fatigue, exhaustion, lack of sleep, poor diet, and endocrine issues.
• Psychological factors: lack of interest, daydreaming, obsessive thoughts.
• Mental factors: schizophrenia (lack of association) or manic-depressive states (fast or slow thinking).
• Social factors: family problems.
• External factors: poor lighting, temperature, ventilation, or excessive noise.

Memory

• Memory is the ability to code, store and retrieve information consisting of distinct systems that interact.
• Memory includes dimensions of memory systems, memory processes, knowledge representation, mnemonics, and memory strategies.

Memory Systems

• There are three memory systems that involve three time frames: sensory, short-term, and long-term.

Sensory Memory

• Sensory memory holds information from the world in its original sensory form very briefly during the sensory system processing (0.5 seconds for visual, 2-3 seconds for auditory).
• If not processed, info is lost.

Short-Term Memory

• Short-term memory is also called working memory, used for mental tasks.
• Short-term memory is a limited capacity system where information is retained for up to 30 seconds unless rehearsed.

Chunking

• Chunking involves grouping information into higher-order units for easy recall using single units and expanding short-term memory capacity.

Maintenance Rehearsal

• Maintenance rehearsal involves conscious repetition to prolong information retention in short-term memory.

Working Memory

• Working memory describes short-term memory as a workspace for mental tasks allowing manipulation and assembly during decision-making, problem-solving, and comprehending tasks.

Long-Term Memory

• Long-term memory is a permanent system holding vast information for an extended amount of time.

Interaction Between Memory Systems

• The working memory model describes how sensory, short-term, and long-term memories interact.
• Data from sensory and retrieved from long-term memory work together.

Memory Processes

• Memory processes relate to encoding new information into memory and retrieving stored information.

Encoding

• Encoding is the transformation/transfer of information into a memory system.

Methods of Encoding

• Grouping: group items which similar in parts or as a whole.
• Looking for relationships between different items
• Location: memorizing something as it relates to a specific point on a page.

Factors Affecting Encoding

• Attention
• Meaning: Understanding the subject.
• Recitation: reciting to oneself also weak points.
• Physical and psychological excitement.
• Using more than one sense organ

Storage

• Retention is the persisting aftereffect of learned subjects, enabling recall/recognition.

Factors Affecting Retention

• Sleep: good sleep ensures good retention of information, especially REM sleep.
• Extremes of age: reduced retention abilities.
• Selection: retain significant and necessary information.
• Interference.

Retrieval

• Retrieval is remembering the process by which information is recovered from memory, which is either Recall (remembering something that is not present) or Recognition (remembering something that is present).

Factors Affecting Retrieval

• Proper remembering depends on proper encoding and proper retention.
• Must have desire to bring out retained material.
• Training for remembering.
• Physiological and psychological state during remembering.

Forgetting

• Forgetting is the negative aspect of retention, involving the gradual loss of retained details that's usually most rapid after learning.

Theories Explaining Forgetting

• Passage of time (information decays): forgetting is due to the processes that occur during that time
• Interference theory: recent learning interferes with recall.
• Disuse atrophy theory: unused memory traces can't recall. However, some memories can be recalled
• Change of set theory: recall is difficult if circumstance changes.
• Repression theory: painful memories are unconsciously pushed beyond awareness.

How to Improve Your Memory

• Memorizing tips includes to concentrate your effort over it and study by whole learning.
• Retention tips includes avoid interference and sleep after learning
• Remembering to make a good, leave for a while and try again.

Disorders of Memory

• Memory disturbance is either quantitative or qualitative.

Quantitative Disorders of Memory

• Hyper-amnesia: events are registered with heightened intensity (hypomania, paranoia).
• Loss of memory (Amnesia): antero-grade (recent events in senility and cerebral atherosclerosis), retrograde (remote events in normal forgetting), global (recent/remote events in senility), circumscribed/focal (specific time period after event in hysteria and concussion).

Qualitative Disorders of Memory

• Falsification: adding false details to a true memory.
• Confabulation: creating fabricated memories that never happened.
• Déjà vu : illusion of memory, which feels like previous experience.

Learning

• Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior from experience.

Methods of Learning

• Imitation: copying others, typical in children.
• Trial and error: learning through repeated attempts, typical in animals.
• Insight learning: problem-solving through mental planning.
• Conditioning is classical and operant.
• The approaches to learning in the behavioral and cognitive.

Behavioral Approach to Learning

• Learning comes from associations where certain events occur together; associative learning has classical and operant conditioning.

Classical Conditioning

• Classical conditioning is when an organism learns that one event follows another. e.g., babies know breasts and milk.

Operant Conditioning

• Operant conditioning is when an organism learns that a response it makes will be followed by a particular result
• Jerking away from fire, tranquil relaxing scenes.

Phobias

• Phobias are the irrational fears Classical conditioning explains how people obtain fears

Observational Learning

• Observational learning (imitation or modeling) is learning through observing and imitating. Eliminates trial-and-error learning
• No reinforcement or punishment is needed; just presence. Psychologists focus on attention, retention, motor reproduction, reinforcement.

Insight Learning

• Insight learning is a form of problem solving involving a sudden understanding and solution.

Cognitive Learning

• Cognitive learning is the acquisition of knowledge need not be directly reflected in behavior where changes occur within one's mental representations and include our ideas, beliefs, understanding and knowledge.

Cognitive Concepts of Learning

• Learning sets/learning to learn: Previous experiences can affect present/future learning
• Latent learning: When one acquires a cognitive map, one develops a mental representation (or picture) of one's surroundings and appreciation of general location.
• One is learning information that may not be demonstrated in performance. This is also linked to social learning and modeling.
• Learning by observing the consequences of someone else’s behavior is vicarious reinforcement.

Combination of Learning Methods

• Methods will share an insight learning.

Learning Curves

• Learning curves that can either be Rapid, Slow or Irregular.

Factors Affecting Learning

• Personal and Objective factors, is key to remember.

Personal Factors

• Permanent and Tempory factors are key to remember.

A- Permanent Factors involved Includes

• Intelligence, Previous learning, Acquired habits, Physical factors.

B - Tempory Factors involved includes

• General health, Emotional state, Motivation.

Objective Factors Involved Includes

• The learning of the object, Method of learning, External factors (the surrounding circumstances), Trainer's role.

Objective Factors affect learning

• Learned object, Method of learning, External factors, Trainer role all affect learning.