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Dick's Guide to Psychology a college level introduction to basic Psychology and psychological basics.
Material in quotation marks, unless otherwise attributed, is from Exploring Psychology by David G. Meyers
If you want a 2002 edition of this book, well marked with information and question answers, send $25 to Dick Amann, 1348 Eisenhower Drive, Box 16811, Savannah, GA 31416-16811
Introduction to Psychology
Guide to Psychology and its originating fields of science.
William Wundt, the worlds first psychological experimenter with his own university laboratory.
Guide to Psychology. Introspection and psychology and William Wundt
John Watson redefines psychology as the science of behavior
What is behavior and its role in psychology?
Comparison of psychology and psychiatry
Clinical and counseling psychologists
Psychology uses the scientific method
Guide to Psychology. Neurotransmitters include dopamine which "influences movement, learning, attention and emotion." Too much has been linked to schizophrenia. Serotonin affect mood, hunger, sleep and arousal. Norepinephrine helps control alertness and arousal. Cocaine aids arousal, too. Endorphins are natural opiates and pain killers.
The autonomic nervous system is involved in keeping your body on auto pilot, especially with respect to your glands and internal organ muscles. Its sympathetic nervous system arouses the body during stressful situations by mobilizing needed energy. The autonomic system's parasympathetic nervous system calms the body to conserve energy.
The human brain weighs two to three pounds. In the development of the brain an evolutionary path is followed, starting with the brainstem beginning where the spinal cord enters the skull. From its rear extends the cerebellum (little brain). It coordinates voluntary movement.
The limbic system, between the cerebellum and the cerebral hemispheres includes the hippocampus (memory system processing) the amygdala (aggression and fear) and the hypothalamus (hunger, thirst, body temperature, pleasure, sexual behavior).
The pons relays the cerebellum to the cerebral cortex, a "fabric of interconnected neural cells that cover the cerebral hemisphere's frontal lobe" (voluntary muscle control, thought, plans, judgments); parietal lobe (sensory cortex, spatial reasoning, mental manipulations); occipital lobe (visual areas); temporal lobe (auditory information) and association areas.
Broca's area and Wernicke's area are both in the left area of the brain which controls language. Broca's, in the frontal lobe is needed for speech muscle movements; Wernicke's in the parietal, occipital region is needed for language comprehension. Damage here can lead to the word salad effect.
The left side of the brain is superior in logical thinking, language ability, writing, science and math skills. The right side of the brain is superior in musical and artistic ability, perception of space, imagination, fantasizing, body control and awareness. The corpus callosum connects these two sides.
The endocrine system is the body's "slow chemical communication system; a set of glands that secrete chemical messengers" (hormones) into the blood stream. Glands include the adrenal (for the flight or fight response), pituitary (growth), thyroid (metabolic balance), pineal (sleep or awake), pancreas (regulates blood sugar) and gonads (sex).
Each human cell has 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent. Genetically humans and chimps share 98.4% of the same chromosomes. Every human has 99.9% of other human's chromosomes.
Evolutionary psychology looks at why behaviors are what they are over a period of time. Natural selection favors helpful genetic mutations and combinations, especially those that aid reproduction and survival. The easy availability of sperm, compared to the lesser availability of eggs, helps to explain gender difference towards intercourse.
Developmental psychology studies physical, cognitive and social changes during life. Life begins with fertilization of an egg by a sperm in the fallopian tube. This results in a zygote which attaches itself to the uterine wall about 2 days later. Blastocyte forms (placenta, umbilical cord, amniotic sac) develop during this zygote stage. Once attached to the uterine wall the embryonic stage lasts from the second to the eighth day, and the fetal stage is entered about the ninth day.
Pregnancy risk factors include age (mom under 16 or over 40), nutrition, stress (affects hormones), disease (like aids or taxoplasmosis), substance abuse (even of aspirin), paternal influences (sperm cell damage), the environment and non obvious experiences like grandma's cocaine addiction or the mother's previous lifestyle.
During labor contractions oxytocin is released. The first stage of delivery can be 12 to 24 hours when the water breaks. The second stage takes 20 to 60 minutes while the baby's head emerges. The third stage, which lasts 5 to ten minutes, is when the placenta and umbilical cord exit.
The new baby's brain grows to 1/2 its final size in the first year and 90% of its size by the age of six. The baby's first reflexes are sucking (touch lips) rooting (touch cheek) breathing and grasping. The baby's development occurs from the head down (cephalocaudal), inside out (proximodistal) and from simple to complex.
Rovee-Collier experiments showed babies could learn at one month (to control mobile). Piaget saw 4 stages of childhood cognitive development, sensorimotor (birth to two years), preoperational (2 to 6 years marked by language development and egocentrism), concrete operational (7 to 11 years, when conversational and mathematical abilities develop) and formal operational (from 12 through adulthood where abstract logic and moral reasoning can be done).
Life expectancy in 1900 was 47.3 years. In 1995 life expectancy had increased to 75.2 years. Gerontology is the study of the aged. Levinson's stages of life are 17-22 for exploration and modification, 22-28 for more exploration but the start of settling down, 28-33 when a change of life's path can still be achieved, 33-44 is the settling down phase where individuals make an investment in their life structure and 40-45 is the time for evaluating life and perhaps making a mid-life transition.
Sensation involves the nervous system's collecting information from the environment's energies. The absolute threshold is the minimum stimulation required to detect stimulus about 50% of the time. This is 30 miles for a candle light, 20 feet for a watch tick, 3 rooms for a perfume drop, 2 gallons of water for a teaspoon of sugar, a the touch of a fly wing on a cheek from one centimeter. Perception is the organizing and representing of sensory information to make sense.
The eye is covered by the transparent CORNEA, behind this is the black PUPIL, an adjustable opening regulated by the colored IRIS muscle. The LENS, behind the iris, focuses light onto the RETINA at the base of the eyeball. The retina's multilayered reflective coating has RODS (black and white detectors useful for peripheral and twilight vision) and CONE (color and fine detail receptors). The FOVEA is the central focus. Behind the fovea is the BLIND SPOT where the optic nerve exits the eye to connect to the visual cortex.
Hubel and Weisel discovered the eye also has FEATURE DETECTORS which react individually to shape, angle or movement. The Young-Helmoltz TRICHROMATIC theory says the eye has color detector individually responsive to red, green or blue. COLOR CONSTANCY is the ability of humans to perceive a fixed color, despite different illuminations of wave lengths.
The ear's parts include an outer ear, with its pin, the shape that collects sound and sends it to the inner ear, where the ear drum's large surface creates bone conduction through the hammer, anvil and stirrup to the inner ear's oval window that sends fluidic vibrations through the cochlea activating the organ of corti's sensory hair cells that send the sound sensation to the auditory nerve for perception.
The sense of touch responds to pressure, pain and temperature (warm and cold but NOT hot), with the most sensitive parts of the body being the fingers, lips and genitals. Our sense of taste is based on about ten thousand taste bumps that respond to tastes that are sweet, sour, salty and bitter, and -- as we age -- the threshold for taste doubles every 20 years. Taste is also aided by the olfactory epithelium which conducts nasal receptor cells through axon fibers of the olfactory nerve to the olfactory bulb.
Consciousness is when we are aware of ourselves and our environment and are capable of mental behavior. William James defined psychology as, "the science of mental behavior." Our state of consciousness can vary. Selective attention allows us to focus conscious awareness, for example at a cocktail party where we can focus on the conversation with just one person.
Sleep has five stages in a 90 to 100 minute cycle between REM sleep, starting with a phase where we would deny we are asleep, but have mild hallucinations and no dreams. The middle stage yields 13hz waves interspersed with spindles (bursts of energy), stage 3 has very deep sleep, but the sleeper will respond to sounds without awakening, stage 4 has very deep sleep and delta waves while REM sleep has dreams, paralyzation and sexual arousal. Circadian rhythm refers to our 24 hour biological clock, which would reach 25 hours if we lived in a cave. We need sleep to avoid grogginess, have better moods, consolidate memories and perform better. Sleep is restorative and needed for growth and protection processes.
Sleeping problems include insomnia, which is trouble falling asleep or not staying awake, and can be helped -- NOT by alcohol or sleeping pills that destroy REM sleep -- by relaxing before bed, avoiding caffeine and rich food, drinking some milk, sleeping on a schedule, and exercise -- as long as it is over by late afternoon. Also avoid agonizing over sleep loss, if your not on a schedule then just get up earlier or stay up later. Narcolepsy is an overwhelming need to sleep, even at inopportune times. As many as 1 in 25 people have sleep apnea, which is marked by failure to breathe while sleeping and is associated with overweight men, high blood pressure, tiredness and irritability. Night terrors occur during the fourth stage of sleep. Heart and breathing rates double. There is a look of fear and sleep walking and incomprehensible talking that the sleeper will not remember upon awakening. Delayed sleep syndrome is thought to be related to an inability to get onto a 24 hour circadian clock.
Hypnosis is another state of consciousness resulting from a social interaction where suggesters get others to perceive, feel, think and behave in certain ways, by focusing the attention of the subject -- if the subject is willing. All can be hypnotized to some extent by swaying towards what is suggested to them and 20% of the population is very susceptible to hypnosis. Hypnosis can -- in rare cases -- focus people's attention on forgotten events. Hypnosis can not force a person to act against there will. It can be therapeutic, if a subject wants it to be, and can totally alleviate pain in some 10% of the population.
Altered states of consciousness are the result of alcohol -- which is a depressant that prevents REM sleep -- nicotine -- which is a stimulant that kills 50% of its users (12 minutes of life lost per cigarette), marijuana -- which is a hallucinogenic that impairs coordination (motor and perceptual) fine motor skills and time perception.
Learning is defined as a permanent change in behavior due to experience. The ability to learn is important for biological survival. Associative learning is linking two events and occurs in both classical conditioning (Pavlov and dogs) and operant conditioning (Skinner and Skinner box, Thorndike and law of effect). Pavlov took an unconditioned response (UCR of salivation) and its unconditioned stimuli (UCS of food) and turned the salivation into a conditioned response (CR) to a conditioned stimuli (CS of tone sound) by first coupling the UCS (food) with the CS (tone). Unconditioned stimuli are most likely to become conditioned stimuli if they are needed for survival or novelties that tend to make you sick, like the smell of Tequila. Little Albert demonstrated stimulus generalization. He was afraid of rats. When a loud sound was associated with the rats and then rabbits, Albert became afraid of all furry things. Stimulus discrimination is the ability to ignore similar stimuli. Extinction of a CR occurs after its acquisition. After awhile there will be a spontaneous recovery of the extinct CR.
Habituation is learning to live with something. Biological constraints on learning can be sights, sounds or tastes. rats have aversions to bad food. Garcia and Koelling radiated rats to create an aversion to water. Fear conditioning and taste aversion in humans is most likely to occur with things that could hurt survival. Classical conditioning like this can improve health or result in more humane ways to get rid of pests.
Operant conditioning consists of rewards to reinforce behavior and punishment to weaken behavior. Either can be positive, by adding something like a reward or a spanking. Either can be negative by taking away tasks or taking away freedom, as in "time out." Primary reinforcers provide for biological needs, as opposed to secondary reinforcers like money or pats on the back. Continuous reinforcement, partial reinforcement, fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval and variable interval are all types of schedules for reinforcement. Shaping is a series of awards to get successive approximations of a wanted behavior. Observational learning occurs the observation as it did in the Bandura Bobo doll experiment where children modeled adult behavior and beat the hell out of little dolls.
Memory is defined as the persistence of learning over time. Atkinson and Shriffin's basic model of memory shows external events going into sensory memory where it is encoded into short term memory and either output or forgotten or further encoded into long term memory (limitless) and -- when needed -- retrieved back into short term memory. Effortful processing requires an effort to remember, but automatic processing does not. Memory is helped by rehearsal and spacing out what you wish to remember. The serial position effect (primacy and recency) shows you will remember what you first learned and last learned, although in the long run what you first learned will be better retained. Encoding strategies include encoding meaning (rephrasing), encoding images (mnemonic and mental pictures) and mental organization like chunking (HOMES, ROY).
Iconic memory is a fleeting (300ms) photographic memory, as shown by Sperling and Averbach & Coriel. Echoic storage is a 3 to 4 second audible memory as shown by Darwin, Turvey and Crowder. Short term memory is good for the magic 7 (+/- 2) items and decreases to nothing at the end of 12 seconds. Impulses to create memory occur in the synapses. Stress aids arousal and memory. Implicit memory applies to procedures like walking while explicit memories are declarative, things you have learned. Ebbinghaus produced the forgetting curve and Loftus showed that eye witnesses were not always reliable, often due to priming.
Introduction to Psychology
also see General Psychology Index
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