Review for Exam 1.docx

Review for Exam 1: Psychology **Chapter 1: Introduction to Psychology** Structuralism: understanding conscious experience through introspection. Wilhelm Wundt - Introspection: Process by which someone examines their own conscious experience in an attempt to break it into its component parts...

Review for Exam 1: Psychology **Chapter 1: Introduction to Psychology** Structuralism: understanding conscious experience through introspection. Wilhelm Wundt - Introspection: Process by which someone examines their own conscious experience in an attempt to break it into its component parts Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalytic theory focuses on the role of a person's unconscious and early childhood experiences. Behaviorism: focused on observable behavior and ways to bring that behavior under control. -  Humanistic: Proposed a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior. Developmental Psychology: Developmental psychology studies the physical and mental attributes of aging and maturation. This can include various skills that are acquired throughout growth.  Cognitive Psychology:  study of internal mental processes. Social Psychology: How individuals interact and relate with others and how such interactions can affect behavior. Things such as: - Prejudice - Attraction - Interpersonal conflicts - Obedience Clinical Psychology: Focuses on diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and problematic patterns of behavior. Personality Psychology: Focuses on behaviors and thought patterns that are unique to each individual. - Five Factor Model: The provided description would describe someone who scored highly on that given dimension. Someone with a lower score on a given dimension could be described in opposite terms. - Predicts how the world will behave if the theory is correct. - Usually an "if-then" statement. - Is falsifiable (capable of being shown to be incorrect). - Correlation Design: - Difference between correlation and causation: changes in one variable cause the changes in the other variable; can be determined only through an experimental research design, NOT a correlational design\-\-\-\--Cause-and-effect.  **Chapter 3: Biopsychology** Biological Psychology: Biopsychology explores the biological mechanisms that underlie behavior. It studies genetics, the structure and functions of the nervous system and how it interreacts with the endocrine system. Neurons: Nerve cell; the basic building block of the nervous system Dendrites: Neuron extensions that receive messages and conduct them toward the cell body Axon: Other neurons or cells Synapse: Junction between the axon tip of a sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of a receiving neuron Neurotransmitters: - Types of Neurotransmitters: **Excitatory** (e.g., glutamate): Promotes the firing of neurons. **Inhibitory** (e.g., GABA): Prevent neurons from firing. Agonist: substance that mimics or strengthens the effects of a neurotransmitter. Antagonist: substance that blocks or impedes the normal activity of a given neurotransmitter. Endocrine system:  Central & Peripheral Nervous Systems: Figure 2.7 shows a hierarchical chart of the functional divisions of the human nervous system. The nervous system is comprised of a) the central nervous system which includes the brain and spinal cord and b) the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system is comprised of the autonomic and somatic nervous systems. The autonomic nervous system controls the self-regulated action of internal organs and glands. Within the autonomic system is the sympathetic (arousing) and parasympathetic (calming) nervous systems. The somatic nervous system controls the process of sensory input and motor input of skeletal muscles. Brain Structures & Behavioral Associations: - Cerebellum: part of your brain that helps coordinate and regulate a wide range of functions and processes in both your brain and body. While it's very small compared to your brain overall, it holds more than half of the neurons (cells that make up your nervous system) in your whole body. - Limbic System: involved in mediating emotional response and memory. (It's between the brain's older parts and its cerebral hemispheres) Amygdala: involved in our experience of emotion, including tying emotional meaning to our memories. Involved in processing fear. - Cortex: surface of the brain that is associated with out highest mental capabilities such as consciousness, thought, emotion, reasoning, language and memory. a. Frontal Lobe: Involved in executive functioning (planning, organization, judgement, attention, reasoning), motor control, emotion, and language. It contains: 1. Motor Cortex 2. Prefrontal Cortex 3. Broca's area b. Parietal Lobe: Involved in processing various sensory and perceptual information. Contains the primary somatosensory cortex: processing sensory information from across the body, such as touch, temperature, and pain. c. Temporal Lobe: Associated with hearing, memory, emotion and some aspects of language d. Occipital Lobe: One association is with visual processing. Contains the primary visual cortex which is responsible for interpreting incoming visual information.