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• Psychology studies behavior, physiology, and cognitive processes underlying behavior and applies accumulated knowledge to practical problems

Pre-19th Century: The Mind-Body Problem

• The mind and soul are considered a single entity
• Mind is a material thing that interacts with the body

19th Century and Beyond: Wilhelm Wundt and the Founding of Psychology

• Founding of psychology combined areas of philosophy and research
• Psychology's birthday is designated as 1879, the year Wundt built a lab
• The first definition of psychology: "Scientific study of conscious experience," also known as consciousness

Consciousness

• The state/quality of awareness of an external object or something within oneself

The First Debate: Structuralism vs. Functionalism

• Structuralism (Edward Titchener) studies elements of consciousness
• Functionalism (William James) defines consciousness as a stream, not something to be broken into pieces

Psychodynamic Approach

• Associated With Sigmund Freud

Behaviorism

• Associated with Skinner & Watson
• Psychological research should study behavior
• Behavior is the focus -What humans do

Humanism

• Associated with Rogers & Maslow
• Believe in the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and potential for personal growth
• Disagree with psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories
• It Also has an Optimistic view of human nature Modern History
• Modern history includes clinical psychology and Cognitive Revolution
• Clinical psychology was born and serves as defined

Cognitive Revolution

• Defines cognition

Themes in psychology

• Psychology has core themes: Empirical, theoretically diverse, and socio-historical context
• Behavior has multiple causes
• Culture and heritage shape behavior

Scientific Method

• Formulate a testable question and hypothesis which is a tentative prediction about the relationship between 2+ variables
• Identify variables with factors/characteristics that are manipulated and measured
• Identify with an operational definition that describes actions/operations to measure/control a variable

Research Method and Study Design

• Select a primary method: experiments, descriptive (does not manipulate variables), or correlational research
• Case studies analyze special individuals
• Surveys ask people questions
• Naturalistic observations observe natural behavior
• Collect the data, analyze, and draw conclusions

Reporting Research Findings

• Findings/experiments are published in journals and peer reviewed

Experiments

• Define Cause-and-effect relationships by manipulating variables to observe changes in a subsequent variable
• Variables include independent (manipulated by experimenter) and dependent (affected by this manipulation)
• Distinguish between experimental group (treated with independent variable) and control group (no treatment/placebo)
• Placebo is a substance/treatment with no therapeutic effect (a sham)
• Extraneous variables are other variables that influence the dependent variable also known as safeguards

Examples of Variables

• Caffeine IV affects Mario Kart performance DV
• Extraneous variable could be gaming skills
• Random assignment gives each participant equal chance of being assigned to any condition in the study Distributes extraneous variables evenly and is essential for experimental research

Descriptive/Correlational Methods: Naturalistic Observation

• Carefull observation directly of behavior without intervening that allows behavior to unfold naturally in its environment
• Less artificial than experiments
• Advantage Allows researchers to study behavior under conditions that are less artificial than experiments. Another is that engaging in naturalistic observation can be a good starting point when little is known about the behavior under study. Can be used to study many aspects of animal behavior
• Good starting point if little is known about a behavior
• Disadvantage often hard to be unobtrusive so behavior is authentic If subjects become aware of being observed, it is called reactivity where altered behavior occurs due to the observer's presence Hard to transform observations into usable data

Case Study

• Definition: Is an in-depth investigation of an individual subject and Data collection can be used

Survey

• Questionnaires/interviews gathering data on participants' background, attitudes, beliefs, or behavior
• Used to obtain information on aspects of behavior that are difficult to observe directly
• Make it ebay to collect data on attitudes and opinions from large samples of participants

Correlations

• Identify the Relationships Between two variables
• Direction: Positive variables covary in same direction
• When there are high scores on variable X are associated with high scores on variable Y
• Direction : Negative variables covary in opposite direction -High scores on variable X tend to equate to low score on variable Y
• Magnitude Strength of relationship is independent of its strength -Stronger correlations equate to more predictive power from 0 to 1 or 0 to -1
• Correlation doesn't equal causation so can't determine the Cause-and-effect between the two Third variable issues can affect variable relationships

Evaluating Research:

Sampling Bias

• Sampling Bias happens when sampling in not representative of the population
• Sample is a portion of an identified group
• Population: is larger collection of people that researchers want to generalize to

Placebo Effects

• Participant's expectations lead them to experience some change even though they receive fake treatment
• Thinking you're getting a treatment can change your behavior

Distortions in Self-Report

• Distorted perception by people
• Social desirability- tendency to give socially approved answers to oneself
• Experimenter Bias: Unintentional researcher bias
• Rat study: Rosenthal's study about Maze Bright and Maze dull rats

Chapter 3: The Nervous System

• Nervous system: the body's massive, complex communication network, handles information
• CNS (central nervous system): brain and spinal cord
• PNS (Peripheral nervous system): everything but the brain and spinal cord
• Somatic: (voluntary) muscle movements
• Autonomic: (involuntary) muscle movements (heart rate, digestion system)
• Sympathetic (fight or flight)- increases heart rate, decrease digestion
• Parasympathetic (rest and digest)- decreases heart rate, increases digestion Vagus Nerve: a cranial nerve that plays a key role in signaling the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system that Helps one reduce some systems

Brain

• Hindbrain: Basic biological essentials like breathing and heartbeat
• Pons: sleep and arousal Medulla: heart rate, digestion, breathing (if hurt or damaged, person could pass away). Essential life functions
• Cerebellum: motor function & fine motor skills(writing), smoothe motor movements Damaged cerebellum
• Midbrain: Sleep and arousal
• Aware and consciousness
• reticular formation: runs through the hindbrain and midbrain up to the forebrain important for many vital functions like arousal(sleep and wakefulness)
• Forebrain= largest part of the brain
• Thalamus: sensory relay station
• Limbic system
• Thalamus: sensory relay station Hypothalamus: Four F's (feeding, fleeing, fighting, f******) o Damaged: cant modulate the hypothalamus behaviors and can lead to loss of different sensory
• Amygdala: Where we learn knew fears responses and basic emotions responses o S.M. Case study of a woman who had her Amygdala damaged who can't learn new fears or display fears anymore
• Hippocampus: creates and stores new memories o H.M: patient had an experimental surgery to attempt to get rid of seizures: seizure stopped with severe memory impairment that made them unable to form memories
• Cerebrum Left and right hemisphere= connected by The corpus callosum: (the nerve fibers within the longitudinal fissure which allows the neurons and cells to communicate with each other. If damaged leads to coordination issues)

Cerebral Cortes

• Occipital: (behind parietal lobe)= vision Parietal: touch and knowing where your body is Temporal: Auditory information(understanding language) When we hear something it goes here. (right next to or above the ear) o Fusiform gyrus (FFA)
• Allows us to recognize faces
• Damage to this area can result in (prosopagnosia) Face blindness Frontal • primary motor cortex, and important for controlling our behaviors
• The size corresponds to the amount of cortex dedicated to control meaning a significant portion of your cortex is responsible for sensing and moving your face involved in motor function (primiary motor cortex), problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language initiation, judgement, impulse control, and social and sexual behavior o Phineas Gage: Damage to his frontal lobe that made him irritable, drunkard, a brawler, swearer, and resulted in loss of job
• Prefrontal cortex: has executive functions that slowly develop
• Has attentional control of what to pay attention to
• Has Inhibitory control by overridding habits or dominance
• Neuroplasticity: brain forming/reorganizing synaptic connections after learning, experience, or injury
• When learning results in new skills the brain changes

Neurons

• Neurons: cells in our brains and are the building blocks and are the one of the main types of cells in the CNS and PNS Every thought and behavior are determined by how neurons communicate
• Neuron: (receive, process, and transmit information to other cells) Vs Glia: (helper cells for the neurons. They support, insulate, and get rid of waste materials in the CNS and PNS)
• Neuronal Anatomy (Soma, Dendrites, Axon, Terminal button, Synapse) Soma: The Cell nucleus containing the cell's control center integrates info from all the other cells Dendrites: neuron receives info from other neurons Axon: long thick fiber where the info is being sent travels along Terminal Buttons: terminals that activate the neurotransmitters to other cells dendrites

Synapse

• Neuronal structure: dendrites, cell body, axon, and terminal buttons • Information transfers from one neuron to another through neurotransmitters • Thousands of Interconnected neurons
• Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that have large impacts on behavior