- As a truly general science, psychology addresses all sides of human  
experiences -- positive and negative, strengths and weaknesses. 

Descriptive statistics are used to describe and summarize samples of data in a meanigful way. 

Decision making in the nervous system occurs in specialized pathways of nerve cells.
Nervous system is divided into 2 main parts: Central and Peripheral. 

Myelin sheath encases and insulates most axons and speeds up the transmission of neural impulses. 

2 Important concepts in the study of genetics are: the genotype and phenotype.
Genotype is an individuals actual genetic material. Phenotype is the observable characteristics of the person. 

Both genes and environment play a role in determining phenotype of an individual.

·        Sensation is the process of receiving stimulus energies from the environment. 

·        Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to give it meaning.

·        All sensation begins with sensory receptors, specialized cells that detect and and transmit information about a stimulus to sensory neurons and the brain. Sensory receptors are selective and have different neural pathways. 

·        Absolute thresholds refers to the minimum amount energy that people can detect. The difference threshold is the smallest difference in stimulation required to discriminate one stimulus from another 50% of the time. 

·        Signal detection theory focuses on decision making about stimuli in the presence of uncertainty. In this theory detection of sensory stimuli depends on many factors other than the physical properties of the stimuli. 

·        Differences in these other factors lead different people to make different decisions about identical stimuli. 

·        Perception is influenced by attention, beliefs, and expectations.

·        Sensory adaption is change in the responsiveness of the sensory system based on the average level of surrounding stimulation.

·        The ways that our senses start to ignore a particular stimulus once it is around long enough.

 

2.  The visual system 

·        Light is the stimulus that is sensed by the visual system.

·        Light can be described in the terms of wavelengths 

·        3 characteristics of light waves determine our experience: wavelength, amplitude, and purity.

·        In sensation light passes through the cornea and lens to the retina. 

·        The light sensitive surface in the back of the eye that houses light receptors called rods and cones. 

·        The forvea of the retina contains only cones and sharpens detail in an image. 

·        The optic nerve transmits neural impulses to the brain. There it diverges at the optic chiasm, so that what we see in the left visual field is registered in the right side of the brain and vice versa. 

·        In the optical lobes of the cerebral cortex the information is integrated. 

·        The triochromatic theory of color theory of color perception holds that three types of color receptors in the retina allow us to perceive three colors (green, red, and blue)

·        The opponent-process states that cells in the visual system respond red-green and blue-yellow colors.

·        The eye and the brain use both methods to code colors. 

·        Shape perception is the ability to distinguish objects from their background. 

·        Depth perception is the ability to perceive objects 3 dimensionally and depends on binocular cues and monocular.

·        Motion perception by humans depends on specialized neurons, feedback from the body, and the environmental cues. 

·        Perceptual constancy is the recognition that objects are stable despite changes in the way we see them. 

3.  The auditory system 

·        Sounds or sound waves are vibrations in the air that are processed by the auditory system. These waves vary in important ways that influence what we hear. 

·        Pitch is the perceptual interpretation of wavelength frequency. 

·        Amplitude of wavelengths, measured in decibels is perceived as loudness.

·        Complex sounds involve a blending of frequencies.

·        Timbre is the tone saturation or perceptual quality of a sound. 

·        The outer ear consist of the pinna and external auditory canal and acts to funnel sound to the middle ear. 

·        The movement of hair cells between the basilar membrane the tectorial membrane generates nerve impulses.

·        Place theory states that each frequency produces vibrations at a particular spot on the basilar membrane. Place theory sufficiently explains high frequency sounds but not low frequency sounds.

·        Frequency theory holds that perception of a sounds frequency depends on how often the auditory nerve fires. 

·        The volley principle states that a cluster of neurons can fire impulses in rapid succession, producing a volley of impulses. 

·        Information about sound moves from the hair cells to the auditory nerve, which carries information to the brains auditory nerve.

·        The cortical destination of most fibers is the temporal lobes of the cerebral cortex. 

·        Localizing sound involves both the timing of the sound and intensity of sound arriving at each ear.  

·        Development is the pattern of change in human capabilities that begins at birth and continues throughout the life span. 

·        Research on human development can be cross-sectional, which demonstrates age differences, or longitudinal, which demonstrates age-related change. To make strong conclusions about development, longitudinal data are necessary.

·        Both nature (biological inheritance) and nurture (environmental experience) extensively influence development. People are not at the mercy of either their genes or their environment when they actively construct optimal experiences. 

·        Resilience refers to the capacity of individuals to thrive during difficulties at every stage of development. 

 

2.  Child development 

·        Prenatal development progresses through the germinal, embryonic, and fetal periods.

·        Drugs, such as alcohol and nicotine, as well as certain illness, can adversely affect the fetus. These environmental threats are called teratogens.

·        Preterm birth is another potential problem, especially if the infant is very small or grows up in an adverse environment.

·        Th infants’ physical development is dramatic in the first year, and several motor milestones are reached in infancy. Extensive changes in the brain, including denser connections between synapses, take place in infancy and childhood. 

·        Children use schemas to actively construct their world, either assimilating new information into existing schemas is adjusting schemas to accommodate that information. 

·        Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage.

·        Socioemotional development in childhood includes consideration of Erickson’s psychological stages also with moral development. 

·        Erickson presented a major eight stage psychological view of life span development; the first four stages happen in childhood. In each stage, the individual seeks to resolve a socioemotional conflict.

 

3.  Adolescence

·        Puberty is a period of rapid of skeletal maturation that occurs mainly in early adolescence. Its onset happens about two years early earlier in girls than boys. Hormonal changes trigger pubertal development.

·        Piaget thought that cognitive development in adolescence is characterized by the appearance of formal operational thought which is the final stage in his theory. This stage involves abstract, logical, idealistic thought.

·        One of the most important aspects of socioemotional development in adolescence is identity.

·        Erickson’s fifth stage of psychological development is identity versus identity confusion.

·        Marcia proposed four statuses of identity based on crisis and commitment. 

·        A special concern is the development of ethnic identity. Despite great differences among adolescents, most them develop competently. 

4.  Adult development and aging 

·        Psychologist refer to the period between adolescence and adulthood as emerging adulthood. This period is characterized by the exploration of identity through work and relationships, instability, and self-focus.

·        Most adults reach their peak psychical performance during their 20s and are healthiest then. Psychical skills begin to decline during the 30s. 

·        The cellular-clock, free-radical, and hormonal stress theories are three important biological explanations for aging. In late adulthood the brain has remarkable repair capacity and plasticity. 

·        Psychologist have proposed that idealistic thinking of adolescents is replaced by more realistic, pragmatic thinking of young adults. 

·        Longitudinal research on intelligence shows that many cognitive skills peak in middle age. Older adults do not do as well on memory and other cognitive tasks and are slower to process information than younger adults. Still older adults may have greater wisdom than younger adults. 

·        Erickson’s three stages of socioemotional development in adulthood are intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, and integrity versus despair. 

·        A special concern, beginning when individuals are in their 50s, is the challenge of understandings life’s meaning.

·        Researchers have found that remaining active increases the likelihood that older adults will be happy and healthy. They also found that older adults reduce their general social affiliations and instead are motivated to spend more time with close friends and family members. Older adults also experience more positive emotion, are happier, and more satisfied with their lives than younger adults. 

·        The positive dimensions of aging were largely ignored. Developmentalists now recognize that manly adults can sustain or even improve their functioning as they age. 

·        Researchers today widely view adult development as a self-motivated process limited only by the individual’s imagination. 

 

5.  Human development and health and wellness 

·        Psychological development can continue throughout life. 

·        Psychologist have suggested that coping with life’s difficulties is one way in which adults may be an important motivator in development. 

·        Piaget’s concepts of assimilation and and accommodation have been applied to the process of developing through difficult times. 

·        An individual may experience meaning in life by applying his or her current understanding of the world. In contrast, the individual may find that some experiences require a revision of understanding. 

·        In adulthood people can pursue new goals that represent important life themes. 

 

 

2. Thinking 

3. Intelligence 

4. Language 

​​Classical Conditioning

​​​Operant Conditioning

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​​​Levels of Processing Model of Memory

​​Retrieval

​​Constructive Memory

​​Forgetting

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·        Abnormal behavior can be defined in many ways. A statistical criterion specifies that abnormality is any substantial deviation from the average.

·         A social norms standard defines abnormal behavior as that which differs significantly from the norms of society. Another definition suggests that abnormality can be defined by adding some widely accepted standards of what is psychologically unhealthy.

·         These standards would include emotional pain and suffering, behavior that is disturbing to others, failure to perform daily activities, and irrationality. 

·        All these definitions have advantages and disadvantages, and none is enough in itself. 

·        The more criteria that can be applied, the less confident we become of our diagnosis.  

·        Mental health can be best viewed as a continuum with extremes at the normal and abnormal ends, and with an unclear area in between.

2.  Anxiety disorders 

·        The anxiety disorders are characterized by emotional distress caused by feelings of vulnerability, apprehension, or fear.

·        The anxiety disorders include panic disorder, phobic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

·        Panic disorder involves attacks of inexplicable, intense fear, and it occurs in about 1% of both men and women. 

·        Often panic disorder is attended by agoraphobia, an intense fear of being in a place from which one cannot escape without embarrassment. Panic disorder is sometimes attended by depression, and tends to run in families.

·        A phobia is an extreme and irrational fear focused on a particular object. 

·        Social phobias involve a fear of doing something in public that could be embarrassing. 

·        Specific phobias involve the fear of nonsocial things, such as enclosed places. 

·        About 13% of the population experiences phobias. 

·        Phobics know their fears are unreasonable, yet they are unable to control them. 

·        Freudians explain phobias as the result of a defense mechanism to protect the ego from the id. 

·        Learning theories see phobias as the effect of conditioning and some evidence suggests we are naturally prepared to develop certain phobias.

·        Generalized anxiety is a state of persistent apprehension without good cause often go with tension.

·        The psychoanalytic view is that generalized anxiety disorder.

·        Consequences from the ego’s fear that the id’s impulses will be punished a condition Freud called “free-floating anxiety.” 

·        The cognitive perspective advises this disorder is the result of one’s inability to control negative life events.

·        An obsession is a frequent irrational thought that intrudes continuously, even though the person tries to avoid thinking about it. 

·        A compulsion is an uncontrollable repetitive behavior such as excessive handwashing. 

·        Obsessions and compulsions often happen together they each happen separately as well. 

·        The psychoanalytic view sees these disorders as the result of ego defenses. 

·        The learning view suggests compulsions are reinforced by reducing anxiety but cannot reason for obsessions.

·        The biological perspective sees these disorders as the effect of brain abnormalities and points out that they have an inherited component.

·        Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a state of anxiety and depression that follows severe trauma, like warfare, rape, or natural disaster, and may show long after that difficult time is over and last for years. Symptoms include tension, insomnia, trouble concentrating, a feeling of remoteness, and flashbacks.

·        The major determinant of who experiences PTSD is the severity of the trauma.

3.  Mood disorders

·        Mood disorders involve intense moods which last for longer than normal periods of time. 

·        There are two major categories: depressive disorders and bipolar disorders.

·        Major depressive disorder is characterized by one or more episodes of deep sadness and despair which last all day long for two or more weeks. Symptoms are loss of energy, slowing down of behavior, agitation, difficulty thinking, eating disturbances, problems in sleeping, an exaggerated sense of worthlessness, and recurring thoughts of death and suicide. 

·        Depressive occurrences typically last three to six months, and relapses happen in about 50% of the cases. 

·        Dysthymic disorder is like major depression except it undergoes for years at a time with only short cutbacks.

·        The psychoanalytic perspective suggests that depression is the result of self-loathing owed to the rage one feels when abandoned by a loved one.

·        Peter Lewinsohn, a learning theorist offers that depression happens because a person is no longer receiving any pleasurable reinforcement from life. Without rewards a person gives up trying and becomes depressed and withdrawn.

·        Depression is also influenced by biological factors. Studies comparing identical twins to fraternal twins and studies studying rates of depression in adopted infants demonstrate the incidence of a genetic tendency to depression. 

·        Other biological theories have said that depression rises from troubles in the number of neurotransmitters such as serotonin or norepinephrine. 

·        In addition to neurotransmitters, hormones may be implicated in depression.

·        Seasonal affective disorder is a form of depression that happens in response to lack of sunlight most often in winter. This type of depression is more common in higher latitudes where the winters are longer and darker. 

·        Seasonal affective disorder can be effectively treated with artificial light therapy.

·        The interpersonal approach agrees that depression comes to from disturbed interactions among family members.

·         Depressed people have also been found to have more negative conversation styles, smile less, and are less animated and pleasant. These negative responses are usually met by negative reactions which causes depression to become more severe.

·        A combination of perspectives helps us understand this disorder.

·        Mania is also involved coming in a syndrome called manic-depressive (bipolar) disorder.

·         Mania is a state of exaggerated elation characterized by irritability, hyperactivity, decreased need for sleep, constant talkativeness. 

·        Mild manic episodes produce a feeling of power and competence but more severe forms produce severe impairments. 

·        Manic-depressive (bipolar) disorder appears to differ from unipolar depression in that it starts earlier in life, runs more in families, and responds favorably to the drug lithium carbonate. 

·        Cyclothymia is a chronic but milder form of manic-depressive disorder.

·        Manic-depression has been linked to certain genes, and a biological explanation is strongly implicated. The exact cause probably involves a complex interaction between genetic, neurochemical, cognitive, and developmental factors.

4.  Dissociative disorders

·        The dissociative disorders have the splitting of the personality into component parts so that memory or identity is disrupted.

·        Dissociative amnesia the forgetting of past experiences has the dissociation of present memories from certain memories of the past. 

·        In a dissociative fugue people leave their identities and take up new lives having entirely forgotten their pasts.

·        Dissociative identity disorder or sometimes called multiple personality disorder is the dissociation of the mind into several people each with different characteristics. These personalities tend to form three clusters which are those which are demure, shy, and withdrawn; those which are aggressive and promiscuous; and those which are level or rational.

·        The personality which goes for help does not know about the other personalities but is troubled by memory lapses or unsolved events. 

·        Multiple personality usually begins in childhood, often coincides with severe sexual abuse.

5.  Schizophrenia 

·        Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder which is responsible for about half of all people committed to mental hospitals. It is very resistant to treatment of schizophrenics recovering. 

·        Schizophrenia is usually characterized by a deterioration of behavior which results in an active phase which might improve to a residual phase only to become more active phase-residual phase cycles. 

·        Symptoms of schizophrenia include are like disturbances in the content of thought, including delusions, disturbances of emotion, disturbances in volition, disturbances in interpersonal relationships; and disturbances in motor behavior, and which the person stays in one position for hours. 

·        Most schizophrenics show a split between various ideas and emotions. 

·        Sometimes their language indicates an inappropriate shifting from one thought to the next while they wander through meaningless and unrelated phrases.

·        Schizophrenics also have a distorted view of reality. They see, feel, and hear things that aren’t real. 

·        They may also show bizarre and weird behaviors.

·        Sometimes a schizophrenic shows no behavior at all just staying still for long periods of time. 

·        They get a tendency to avoid social interaction.

·        Schizophrenia is organized into subtypes which have a disorganized type, a catatonic type, a paranoid type, and an undifferentiated type. 

·        A newer study divides schizophrenics into three categories: those that have positive or active symptoms, those that have negative or passive symptoms, and those that have mixed symptoms.

·        Interpersonal, or family-systems, theorists believe that schizophrenia is related to inappropriate family functioning.

6.  Personality disorders

·        Personality disorders are deep-seated patterns of maladaptive behaviors that cause distress to others.

·        Personality disorders produce little or no guilt or anxiety.

·        Sociopaths are people who follow their impulses without guilt and without thinkin the consequences of their behaviors for others. Psychoanalytic theorists explain sociopathy as the result of rejecting parents. 

·        Learning theorists suggest that the sociopath get reinforcement when the person commits sociopathic acts. 

·        Biological theorists say someone like this may suffer from autonomic under arousal and commit crimes to get a thrill.

·        People with narcissistic personality disorder have an overblown sense of their own importance but they have very fragile self-esteem. 

·        Borderline personality disorder is characterized by instability in self-image, interpersonal relations, and mood. 

·        People with borderline personality disorder are very erratic in their behavior by extreme highs and lows.

Sex refers to biological aspects of the person that are used to classify him or her as male or female. 

Biological features that serve in this capacity includes genes gonads hormones genitals and secondary sex characteristics.

Disorders of sexual development are conditions in which a person genetics or gonadal sex is atypical.

Perspectives on gender development include biological evolutionary psychology social cognitive and social theories.

Darwinian natural selection and states that human beings have evolved through a process of sexual selection in which males compete for mates and females choose.

Sexuality refers to the ways people experience and express themselves as sexual beings.

Refers to the direction of a persons erotic interest includes heterosexuality homosexuality and bisexuality. 

Sexual orientation is generally measured using questionnaires'.

Possible explanations for sexual orientation include genetic factors brain difference and prenatal hormone exposure.

Gay men and lesbian women are similar to their heterosexual counterparts in many ways.

Sexual desire is also a key element in sexual behavior sensations, perception and cognition are all important components of sexual activity.

A fetish is an object that a person finds sexually arousing.

Paraphilia are disorders in which a person experiences strong sexual interest in certain object or activities. 

Sexually transmitted infections are infections that can be spread through sexual contact. 

The relationship between sexual behavior and psychological wellness depends on the reasons people have sex.