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Abnormal Psychology/Disorders
What is abnormal behavior? One way to answer this is to try and determine
what is normal and then identify behaviors that do not match these "normal"
behaviors. However, "normal" behavior is very much a function
of the society or culture in which the behavior and people exist; what
is considered normal in one culture may be considered completely abnormal
in another. Thus, we can say that abnormal behavior is any behavior that
falls beyond the boundaries of normal behavior for a specific culture.
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Consciousness
& Sleep
What separates humans from other animals? According to many people, it is
not just that we can walk upright or speak, but that we are aware of out
own mental processes, such as our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Plus,
we are able to introspect, or look inward and examine these processes. For
example, if you are angry, you can try to understand your anger, why you
are angry, what that angriness feels like, etc. But can a cat? As for sleep...to
most people, sleep is just something that occurs on a daily basis when they
close their eyes and fade out. However, sleep is defined according to specific
patterns and types of brain waves, and includes a variety of stages, categories,
and levels. In addition, there is often an immediate knee-jerk reaction
to associate dreams with sleep. In most Introductory Psychology classes,
dreams are discussed, but the concept of sleep is to grand to define only
in terms of dreams. There is much more to sleep than just dreaming.
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Development (developmental
psychology)
The branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change
of humans throughout their life cycle. Some argue that developmental psychologists
study changes over time which all psychologists study, not just developmentalists.
However, the difference is that the topics studied by developmental psychologists
revolve around the maturation and aging process; what affects it and what
it affects. For example, a developmental psychologist and myself may each
conduct a study addressing how children of different ages perform on a particular
test. The developmental Psychologist would be concerned with the differences
between the age groups, why they performed differently, what developmental
issues may be the causal factors in the differences, etc., while I may explain
the differences in terms of the test, not the developmental differences
of the children (i.e., the test is age appropriate, can we use it on people
of other ages, what does having an age difference mean on whatever the test
actually measured, etc.).
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History of Psychology
Well this one is pretty self explanatory, but here are some basics anyway.
Although the roots of psychology reach back thousands of years to ancient
philosophers, Psychology itself is a very young science; we can use the
creation of the first experimental psychological laboratory in 1879 as the
beginning of psychology as a science. In that short time, the science has
gone through several changes in focus, or "schools of thought",
and has had different key figures. The "schools of thought" refer
to the overall perspective of the field at a specific time in history. Some
of these include Structuralism, psychoanalytic (with Freud as the key figure),
and cognitive, just to name a few.
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Intelligence
there has often been debate about exactly what intelligence is. A few
years ago, a book called the Bell Curve was written about intelligence
and it stirred up so much controversy that one of the authors went into
hiding for fear of his safety. At its core, we can define intelligence
as the capacity for goal-directed, adaptive behavior. This type of behavior
is that which helps us achieve the goals we set and the challenges we
face. If we are stuck in a very bad situation, those with a lot of intelligence
should be more likely to find a solution or a way out of the bad situation
than those without a lot of intelligence. In addition, intelligence is
not just inborn, but increases with experience. Thus high intelligence
is both innate and socially influenced.
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Learning (also
known as conditioning)
We can use the following definition of learning to help us understand this
concept: learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge
that comes from experience or training. But what does this really mean?
We all "know" things and we can all perform lots of behaviors.
But where did they come from? Some things are innate - we are born with
the knowledge. But others must be acquired actively. Thus, any knowledge
or behavior that we now posses that we were not born with, was somehow "learned".
Psychologists have studied learning in a variety of ways, from examining
the salivation of dogs in response to meat powder, to how rats press a lever
in the pursuit of obtaining some kind of reward, to offering children rewards
for doing what is asked of them, to examining how people are able to tie
their shoe laces.
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Memory
We may define memory as a cognitive system that enables organisms to retain
information. The most accepted view about memory is the "stores"
model that suggests the human memory system is an information processing
system similar to a computer. The human memory system has sensory memory,
short-term memory, and long-term memory stores that maintain information
for different amounts of time. This information is retained so that it can
be retrieved at a later date.
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Motivation
& Emotion
Why do you eat? Why do you drink? What makes you do anything? The answer
is motivation; a process that acts, guides, and maintains behaviors. For
example, when you have not eaten for a period of time, you will eventually
start having the feeling of hunger, which motivates you to eat something,
and thus reduce the feelings of hunger. Emotion -- most people have little
problem recognizing and identifying when we are having an emotion. However,
emotion is one of the most difficult concepts in Psychology to define.
In fact, emotion is such a difficult concept to define adequately that
there are at least 90 different definitions of emotions in the scientific
literature. A simple definition of emotion is that it is a response by
a whole organism, involving (1) physical arousal, (2) expressive behaviors,
and (3) conscious experience. As you can see from this definition, emotions
contain both physical and mental components, and require conscious awareness.
I guess one can ask, "if a person is happy, but does not realize
that he or she is happy, is that person really happy?"
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Personality
Personality refers to a person's behavior and cognitive patterns. For
example, some peoples' personality tends to be shy and introspective while
others tend to be out going and extroverted. Personalities are stable
patterns which cannot be change easily. There are many, many theories
about personality and different opinions about the importance of personality
on human thought and behavior. For example, social psychologists downplay
the importance of personality in predicting human behavior, indicating
that it is the situation and not personality that is most influential
(not solely responsible for behavior, just most influential). Others however,
suggest that personality is the key aspect in understanding and predicting
human behavior, and that there are a fixed number of personality factors.
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Psychobiology
(or biopsychology)
The scientific field of study that examines the relationships between
biology and psychology, and how they influence behavior and cognition.
For example, biopsychology examines topics such as how your eyes are able
to inform your brain what you are reading, how the brain interprets this
information, and how your brain communicates with your hand to move the
mouse and click on different links.
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Research Methods
Psychology IS a science. As a science, there are specific procedures that
must be followed to produce unbiased, accurate, and truthful findings
about the topics of study. How is it that we know, for example, that certain
drugs help treat different psychological ailments, or that a person who
is in need of help is more likely to receive that help if there is only
one other person near by than if there were ten other people? We know
these things because studies have been done using specific rules. In particular,
Psychologists follow the "scientific method" to try and find
"cause and effect" relationships between different variables.
For example, in order to determine that one type of pain killer is more
effective at reducing headaches, a psychologist needs to conduct a study
using the scientific method. If the rules of the scientific method are
not followed properly, the results may not be as "true" as they
should be; thus we could not say that any one pain killer really is better
than any other because the study was not done properly. As you can see,
research methods are crucial for our understanding of psychological concepts.
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Sensation &
Perception
Defining each of these terms separately should help you understand what
each is as well as why they are often grouped together. Sensation can
be defined as the neural synaptic firing of our receptors and our brain's
interpretation of these firings. For example, when you touch something,
receptors send impulses that travel to the spinal cord and then into the
brain for interpretation. These signals are what we call sensation. As
you can see, this is basically a passive process on your part; you don't
have to think about it or try to make it happen. It is simply the process
of getting sensory information into the body and to the mind, without
conscious effort on your part. However, perception is an active process
in which we make interpret and attempt to understand the sensory information
that has been brought into the body through sensation. Thus, the two go
hand in hand. For example, illusions are powerful examples of how we misinterpret
sensory information and perceive information incorrectly.
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Social Psychology
People do not live in isolation (at least most don't), but come in contact
or interact with others on a regular basis. As a result, people are influenced
by other people. As the PsychGuy's advisor states, "We humans are
social species" (Forsyth, 1995, p.2), and as a social species, we
are influenced by other people at a variety of levels. Social Psychology
seeks to understand these interactions, and can thus be defined as the
scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
of people are influenced by the presence of others. It is important to
note that the presence of others does not have to be real; people only
have to perceive that others are there. The underlying premise of Social
Psychology is that people are not merely their personalities, not merely
a product of their environments, but are who they are as a result of the
interaction of the environment and personality. The following formula
was presented by Kurt Lewin and expresses the interaction between personality
and the environment: B=f(P, E): in this formula, B=behavior, P=person,
E=environment, and f=the function of.
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Stress &
Health
In a strict sense, stress can be defined as a physiological response by
the body to any psychological or physical demands. In addition, not all
stress is bad. In fact, there are two types of stress; 1) distress which
is a bad type of stress that occurs from negative events or demands that
can result in bodily harm and deterioration, and 2) eustress with is a
response to more positive demands that can enhance performance. unfortunately,
the body is unable to differentiate between good and bad stressors, but
relies on cognitive interpretation of a situation to determine if the
stress is bad or good. So, while one person may find competition to be
overwhelming and horrific, another may find it exhilarating and perform
better in such situations.
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Therapy
Although there are many different types, different styles, different methods,
and different perspectives, the basic premise of therapy is to help eliminate
or reduce some maladaptive behaviors or thoughts. Some therapies attempt
to resolve the problems by first identifying any and all root causes of
the maladaptive behavior, while others consider the cause unimportant.
For example, a strict behavioral therapist may state that the cause of
the behavior is meaningless, and that what is important is determining
a way to change the behavior, not analyze it.
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