Wilhelm Wundt: German Professor who made Psychology an independent study.

Stanley Hall: Established first American Psychology research lab and journal.

John B. Watson: founded the study of behaviorism

Sigmund Freud: created psychoanalysis procedure; "discovered" the unconscious
 

2. Correlation Research

3.Experimental Research

4. Longitudinal Design

             - Plasticity: refers to the                       brains's special capacity                   for change.

            -Afferent nerves: (sensory   
            nerves) nerves that carry   
            information about the
            external environment to the              brain and spinal cord via                    sensory receptors.
           -Efferent nerves: (motor  
           nerves) nerves that carry   
           information out of the brain   
           and spinal cord to other     
           areas of the body.

           - Central nervous system   
          (CNS): The brain and spinal 
          cord
           -Peripheral nervous System 
          (PNS): The network of
          nerves that connects the
          brain and spinal cord to other
          parts of the body.
          -Somatic nervous system:    
          The body system consisting 
          of the sensory nerves, whose
          function is to convey
          information from the skin
          and muscles to the CNS
          about sensations like pain
          and temperature, and the
          motor nerves, whose
          function is to tell muscles
          what to do. 
          -Autonomic nervous system:
          The body system that takes              messages to and from the                body's internal organs, 
          monitoring such processes 
          as breathing, heart rate, and
          digestion.
         -Sympathetic nervous
         system: The part of the 
         autonomic nervous system
         that arouses the body.
         -Parasympathetic nervous
         system: The part of the 
         autonomic nervous system    
         that calms the body.

Cell structure: 

To transmit information to other neurons, a neuron sends brief electrical impulses through it's axon- which is encased in a membrane (also semipermeable because fluids and ions can sometimes flow into and out of it). Negative charges are present in the cell membrane and on the outside, the charge is positive. This polarization creates a voltage between the inside and outside of the axon wall- and is called the resting potential (bewteen -60 and -75 millivolts).

Neurochemical Messengers: 

Drugs can mimic or increase the effects of a neurotransmitter, or they can block those effects.

Studying the nervous system: 

Bottom-up processing: sensory receptors register information about the external environment and send it up to the brain for interpretation.
Top-down processing: launched by cognitive processing at the brain's higher levels, that allows the organism to sense what is happening and to apply that framework to information from the world.

Sensory receptors: specialized cells that detect stimulus information and transmit it to sensory (afferent) nerves and the brain.

 -Confused senses:

Thresholds:

           -Weber's Law:  the             
           principle that two stimuli 
           must differ by a 
           constant minimum 
           percentage (rather than              a constant amount) to be 
          perceived as different

Attention: the process of focusing awareness on a narrowed aspect of the environment.

Sight:
Light

Shape
-Figure-ground relationship: the principle by which we organize the perceptual field into stimuli that stand out and those that are left over.
Depth
-Convergence: binocular cue to depth and distance in which the muscle movement in our two eyes provide information on how deep or far away something is.
-Monocular cues: powerful depth cues available from the image in one eye, either the right or the left.
-Apparent movement: perception that a statuary object is moving
-Perceptual Constancy: recognition that objects are constant and unchanging even though sensory input about them is changing.
Sound
-Outer Ear: outermost part of ear, consisting of the pinna and the external auditory canal.
-Middle ear: channels sound through the eardrum, hammer, anvil, and stirrup to the inner ear.
-Inner ear: includes the oval window, cochlea, and basilar membrane and whose function is to convert sound waves into neural impulses and send them to the brain.
Touch
-Thermoreceptors: sensory nerve endings under the skin that respond to changes in temperature at or near the skin and provide input to keep the body at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Taste
-Papillae: rounded bumps above the tongues surface that contain the taste buds, the receptors for taste.
Smell
-Olfactory epithelium: lining of the roof of the nasal cavity containing a sheet of receptor cells for smell. 

    2. Operant Conditioning:      
        Instrumental conditioning;          A form of associative 
        learning in which the 
        consequences of a 
        behavior change the 
        probability of the 
        behaviors occurrence. 
*Thorndike's law of effect states that behaviors followed by positive outcomes are strengthened and that behaviors by negative outcomes are weakened. 

Observational learning: learning that occurs when a person observed and imitates another's behavior.

*disorders of sexual development: congenital conditions in which the development of chromosomal , gonadal,or anatomical sex is atypical; formerly called intersex conditions or hermaphroditism.

Gender conflict 

* gender similarities hypothesis: hyde's proposition that men and women (and boys and girls) are much more similar than they are different.

Gender Differences in Aggression

*Sexual orientation: the direction of an individual's erotic interests.

*human sexual response pattern: masters and Johnson's model of human sexual response, consisting of four phases- excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Steps in problem solving:

Becoming fixated serves as an obstacle to problem solving. Functional fixedness occurs when individuals fail to solve a problem because they are fixated on a things usual function.

Reasoning and decision making:
These activities require rich connections among persons and the ability to apply judgement. End result is a decision or conclusion.

Two systems of reasoning: 

Intelligence: Performance in a variety of areas.
IQ Tests: Intelligence quotient; Individuals mental age divided by chronological age implied by 100----Alfred Binet

Robert J Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Intelligence:

Howard Gardener's "Frames of Mind":