Psychology Chapter 1: Welcome to Psychology

Chapter 1: Welcome to Psychology

• Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior.
• Psychology developed along two paths: basic science and clinical approach.
• Basic science involves intellectual work and scientific experimentation at universities, emphasizing the study of perception, thought, and behavior.
• Clinical approach focuses on therapeutic interventions for psychological disorders in medical settings, including psychotherapy, psychiatry, and clinical practice.

How Psychologists Study Phenomena

• Psychologists use summative thinking, considering multiple sources of evidence without absolute conclusions.
• Understanding grows over time as new information becomes available.

How Biases Affect Perception

• The overconfidence effect is the tendency to be overly sure of what one knows.
• Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, pay attention to, and believe only evidence that supports existing beliefs.
• A study explored confirmation bias where people chose questions to confirm a profile rather than disconfirm it.
• Biased questions can influence the outcome of interviews.
• Open science practices emphasize research transparency to facilitate the sharing and testing of findings.

Pop Psychology and Pseudoscience

• Popular psychology makes claims about phenomena through social media, magazines, TV shows, which may lack validity.
• Pop psychology, pseudoscience, and misperceptions about psychological science can be dangerous.
• Pseudoscience is a collection of beliefs/practices mistakenly thought to be based on valid science.

Critical Thinking

• Critical thinking involves purposeful, reasoned, and goal-directed exploration of a situation/problem.
• Critical thinking is essential for psychological literacy.

Chapter 2: Research Methods

• Experience and intuition have limitations, as we experience only one version of a situation.
• Patterns may have multiple explanations.
• Intuitions are not always correct because people often focus on confirming evidence and disregard disconfirming evidence.

Scientific Process

• The scientific method bases confidence in an idea on systematic, direct observations, usually through research studies.
• The theory-data cycle involves scientists collecting data to confirm or disconfirm a theory.
• A theory is a set of propositions explaining how/why people act, think, or feel.
• A hypothesis is a prediction stating what will happen in a study if the theory is correct.
• Data are a set of empirical observations that scientists have gathered.
• Replication involves conducting a study more than once with a new participant sample to obtain the same basic results.

Operationalization

• Testing a theory requires converting variability concepts into concrete, quantifiable, measurable variables.
• An operational definition is a specific way of measuring/manipulating an abstract variable in a particular study.
• Operationalizing a variable usually involves turning it into a number.
• Variables can be operationalized through self-reporting (surveys, interviews) or direct observation.
• Direct observation can involve technology to record physiological measures.

Naturalistic Observation and Case Studies

• Naturalistic observation involves psychologists observing animals/people in their normal environments.
• A case study is an observational method where researchers study one or two individuals in depth, often with a unique condition.
• Case study findings may not generalize to a larger population but can offer theoretical insights and research inspiration.

Descriptive Research

• Descriptive research measures one variable at a time.
• Survey research is descriptive research based on self-report, providing concise summaries of many people.
• Key terms in descriptive survey research include sample and population of interest.
• Sample is a group who participates in research that belong to a larger group (population of interest).
• Population of interest is the full set of cases the researcher is interested in.
• Random sampling selects participants without bias.
• External validity is especially important in descriptive research.

Experimental Research

• Experimental research manipulates one variable and measures another.
• Experimental research can provide evidence that one variable causes another.
• The independent variable is the manipulated variable.
• The dependent variable is the measured variable.
• Experiments reduce third-variable problems to meet the criteria for causation.
• Random assignment is used in experimental research where participants are randomly assigned to levels of the independent variable.
• The experimental or treatment group receives the proposed cause.
• The control or comparison group does not receive the proposed cause.
• A placebo condition is where people expect to receive a treatment but are exposed to an inert version.

Generalizability of Research

• Two levels of generalizability concern the sample to the population of interest and the population of interest to other populations of interest.
• To determine generalizability, a study must be replicated on new groups.
• Psychology studies are often conducted on samples from WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) cultures, which limits generalizability.

Chapter 3: Brain, Mind, and Behavior

• Neurons are the cellular building blocks of the brain.
• Neuroscience studies how nerves and cells send and receive information from the brain, body, and spinal cord.
• Processing information in the brain uses bottom-up (from senses) and top-down (influences lower order regions) processing.
• The spinal cord connects the body and the brain.
• The spinal cord transmits signals to and from the body and brain.
• Motor neurons send signals to make the body take action.
• Sensory neurons carry information from the outside world and within the body to the brain.
• Interneurons interpret, store, and retrieve information, allowing informed decisions.
• The Central Nervous System (CNS) includes the brain and spinal cord.
• The Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) includes nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord, connecting body parts to the brain.
• The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) prepares the body for action, especially in life-threatening situations, providing resources for the fight-or-flight response.
• The Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) returns the body to a resting state, counteracting the SNS and performing restorative functions.
• All neurons have dendrites (receive chemical messages), a cell body (collects neural impulse and sustains function), and an axon (transports electrical impulses).
• Terminal branches convert electrical signals into chemical messages (also called terminal buttons).
• Myelin sheath (fatty tissue) covers and insulates the axon, ensuring fast, resistance for electrical messages.
• The myelin sheath gives white matter its appearance and is critical for brain development.
• Glia cells make up the myelin sheath, insulating, supporting, nourishing neurons, modulating neuronal function.
• Glia are responsible for vacuuming up neuronal debris and give the brain its jelly-like consistency.
• Synapse: the gap where the sending neuron communicates with the receiving neuron
• Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers released at the terminal branch to allow neuron communication.
• Neurotransmitters are removed through diffusion, degradation (enzymes break them down), and reuptake (reabsorbed into the presynaptic terminal).
• Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) treat anxiety and depression.
• SSRIs prevent serotonin from being taken up into the presynaptic neuron, extending its presence and stimulation of target neurons.
• The brain is divided into two hemispheres.
• The occipital lobe is located at the back of the head and contains the primary visual cortex, largely devoted to vision.
• The temporal lobe runs alongside the ears and contains the primary auditory cortex; responsible for hearing and understanding language.
• The parietal lobe runs alongside the head above and behind ears; it contains the primary somatosensory complex, mapping the body's skin surface for touch, attention and locating objects.
• The frontal lobe is located in the front of the head, containing the primary motor cortex and map of the body's muscles; essential for movement, planning decision making and self-control.
• The neocortex is the outermost layer and largest part of the human brain, supporting complex functions such as language and imagination.
• The limbic system is associated with emotion, bridging lower brain regions (regulating the body) with higher brain structures (complex mental functions).
• The limbic system is often described as the "emotional brain" and plays a role in smell, learning, memory, and motivation.
• The hippocampus is crucial for memory and navigation, located in the inner part of the temporal lobe.
• The amygdala is important for registering the emotional significance of events, located just to the inside of the end of the hippocampus
• Basal ganglia are a group of interconnected structures for planning and executing movement
• The hypothalamus is the master controller of the brain and body; integrates bodily signals with feelings/behaviors and regulates specific functions (hunger, body rhythms).
• Thalamus communicates information and from all sensory systems (except olfactory) and regulates a wide variety of impairments and alertness and consciousness
• Hormones are chemicals carried by the blood that travel through the circulatory system enabling the brain to regulate the body's activities (endocrine system)
• Executive functions are cognitive processes that allow planning, attention, task organizing to complete goals and associates with the function of the prefrontal cortex
• Phineas Gage (1848) was a railroad worker who suffered an accident damaging his frontal lobe.
• Cerebellum is a hindbrain structure located behind the pons and medulla and supports a variety of functions including: Coordination, Precision, Balance, Accurate timing
• The cerebellum adjusts head and eye movements and plays a role in cognition requiring coordination and timing

Chapter 4: Sensation and Perception

• Perception involves neural processing of electrical signals to form an internal mental representation of the outside world.
• Sensation converts stimulus energies from the environment into electrical energy.
• Transduction transforms sensory stimulus energy into neural impulses.
• Transduction process energy to set of neural impulses, interpretation by brain.
• Visual transduction converts light into neural signals.
• Nearsightedness involves faraway objects being projected in front of the fovea.
• Farsightedness involves near objects overshooting the back of the eye.
• Weber's Law states that the likelihood of perceiving a stimulus change is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli.
• The Weber fraction is the ratio of the minimum change in a stimulus to the overall magnitude of the stimulus.
• Adaptation is a phenomenon when an individual stops noticing a stimulus that remains constant over time, resulting in enhanced detection of stimulus changes.
• Sensory adaptation occurs at the level of the sensory receptors.
• Perceptual adaptation occurs in the perceptual centers of the brain.
• Aftereffects are opposing sensory or perceptual distortions that occur after adaptation.
• If one does not adapt to a repeated stimulation in the environment, it may be signs of of autism.
• Sensory adaptation occurs at the level of sensory receptors, whereas perceptual adaptation happens higher up in the brain.
• The major structures of the eye serve different functions and are organized to produce the sensation of sight: Cornea, Pupil, Iris, Lens, Accommodation, Retina.
• Cornea transperant covering at the front of the eye.
• Pupil, a hold where light enters the eye.
• Iris colored muscle circling the pupil, can increase of decrease for light.
• Lens, membrane thats focus light on retina.
• Accommodation, adjustments of lens's thicknesses by specialized muscles in order to change the degree to which it light bends.
• Retina, surface on contain photoreceptor cells, contain photopigments that are sensitive to light
• When light reach photorecptors, chemical reactions changes shap and generate elecrticty
• Rod, primarily nighttime vision
• Cone, reposnsible for high resolution color vision
• Optic nerve, transfers from retina and trasnmit action to brain
• Vision
• Blind spot, can't receive information
• N earsightedness and farsightedness
• Results in unforsed image
• Color is a psychological property made by the brain, rather than a physical property of the world.
• Higher level increase more compelte representation of whats sensed
• From the primary visual cortex to the visual association: where objects are reconstrued, prior knowlegd and detection
• Illision are a discrepancy
• Opponent process theory/ colors are oposties that make colors contracting
• More levels and examples
• Snesory systems.

Sensory Systems and Gestalt Principles:

• Sensory systems - Tactile sense, primary somatosensory cortex, Vestibular system: Sensory system primarily responsible for balance, kinesthesis, Receptors deep in the body, Olfaction: The sense of smell and olfactory components, Gustation: The sense of taste.
• Gestalt principles
• Two psychological approaches have been used to explain how to distinguish an object
• Structuralism and then Gestalt Psychology. identified principles that the visual system follows to organize incoming data and recognize objects
• Chapter 5: Consciousness
• Challenges of studying consciousness with no one structure
• Explored Metacognition with introspection tool
• Limitations of conscious awareness; Dichotic listening task to cognitive unconscious behaviors
• Subliminal perception to a form of perception without conscious awareness.