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“The soul is not separable from the body, and the same holds good of particular parts of the soul.” Aristotle, De Anima, 350 B.C.

Descartes like Plato believed the immaterial mind and physical body were separate but communicated in the brain at the pineal gland. Animal spirits moved from the brain to act on the muscles and experiences lead the nerves to open up “pores” in the brain to form memories. Descartes was right about the nerves connecting the inside and the outside worlds but had no notion of how these nerves functioned.

OBJECTIVE 1-3| Explain how early psychologists sought to understand the mind’s structure and functions, and identify some of the leading psychologists who worked in these areas. Structuralism: Wundt and his student Titchner focused on the elements of mind, and studied it by using introspection (self-reflection). Wundt established the first laboratory of psychology in 1879 at Leipzig, Germany, and wrote the first textbook of psychology.

Functionalism: James suggested that it would be more fruitful to consider the evolved functions of our thoughts and feelings than simply studying the elements of mind. Based on the theory of evolution, he suggested that the function of these thoughts and feelings was adaptive. James admitted the first woman student Mary Calkins to Harvard and tutored her. Despite his efforts she was not able to attain her PhD from Harvard.

OBJECTIVE 1-4| Describe the evolution of psychology as defined from 1920s to through today. Ivan Pavlov the Russian Physiologist, James Watson and Skinner were all instrumental in developing the science of psychology and emphasized behavior instead of mind or mental thoughts. From 1920 to 1960, psychology in the US was heavily oriented towards behaviorism.

OBJECTIVE 1-5| Summarize the nature-nurture debate in psychology, and describe the principle of natural selection.

OBJECTIVE 1-6| Identify the three main levels of analysis in the biopsychosocial approach, and explain why psychology’s varied perspectives are complementary. Biopsychosocial approach considers the influence of biological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors on behavior. Each approach provides an incomplete explanation of behaviors.

Although debates arise among the psychologists working from differing perspectives, each point of view addresses important questions.

OBJECTIVE 2-1| Describe hindsight bias and explain how it can make research findings seem like mere common sense. “Anything seems commonplace, once explained.” Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes. Two phenomena – hindsight bias and judgmental overconfidence – illustrate why we cannot rely solely on intuition and common sense.

OBJECTIVE 2-3| Explain how the scientific attitude encourages critical thinking.

OBJECTIVE 2-4| Describe how psychological theories guide scientific research.

If we were to observe that depressed people talk about their past, present, and future in a gloomy manner, we may theorize that low-self-esteem contributes to depression.

OBJECTIVE 3-1| Identify the advantages and disadvantages of case studies in studying behavior and mental processes.

OBJECTIVE 3-2| Identify the advantages and disadvantages of surveys in studying behavior and mental processes, and explain the importance of wording effects and random sampling.

OBJECTIVE 3-3| Identify the advantages and disadvantages of naturalistic observation in studying behavior and mental processes.

OBJECTIVE 3-4| Describe positive and negative correlations and explain how correlational measures can aid the process of prediction.

OBJECTIVE 3-5| Explain why correlational research fails to provide evidence of cause-effect relationships.

OBJECTIVE 3-8| Explain how experiments help researchers isolate cause and effect.

OBJECTIVE 3-9| Explain the difference between an independent variable and a dependent variable.

OBJECTIVE 3-10| Explain why random assignment and double-blind procedure build confidence in research findings.

Sometime research participants out of enthusiasm or personal beliefs can affect the out come of an experiment. To control for such affects, a double-blind procedure is used, in which the participants and the experimenter’s assistants are not aware of which participants got real treatment and who got placebo.

OBJECTIVE 4-1| Explain why psychologists are concerned with human biology, and describe the ill-fated phrenology theory.

OBJECTIVE 4-2| Explain how viewing each person as a biopsychosocial system helps us understand human behavior, and discuss why researchers study other animals in search of clues to human neural processes.

OBJECTIVE 4-3| Describe parts of a neuron and explain how its impulses are generated.

OBJECTIVE 4-4| Describe how nerve cells communicate. Synapse was coined by Lord Sherrington (1857-1952) who inferred it through behavioral experiments. Cajal (1852-1934) described the synapse based on his anatomical studies of the brain.

OBJECTIVE 4-6| Explain how drugs and other chemicals affect neurotransmission, and describe the contrasting effects of agonists and antagonists.

OBJECTIVE 4-8| Identify the subdivisions of the peripheral nervous system, and describe their functions.

OBJECTIVE 4-10| Describe the nature and functions of the endocrine system and its interaction with the nervous system.

OBJECTIVE 5-2| Describe the components of the brainstem and summarize the functions of the brainstem, thalamus and cerebellum.

OBJECTIVE 5-3| Describe the structures and functions of the limbic system, and explain how one of these structures controls the pituitary gland.

OBJECTIVE 5-4| Define cerebral cortex and explain its importance fro the human brain.

OBJECTIVE 5-5| Identify the four lobes of the cerebral cortex.

OBJECTIVE 5-6| Summarize some of the findings on the functions of the motor cortex and the sensory cortex, and discuss the importance of the association areas.

OBJECTIVE 5-7| Describe the five brain areas that would be involved if you read this sentence aloud.

OBJECTIVE 5-8| Discuss brain’s plasticity following injury or illness.

OBJECTIVE 5-9| Describe split-brain research, and explain how it helps us to understand the functions of our left and right hemispheres.

OBJECTIVE 6-2| Describe the type of questions that interest behavior geneticists.

OBJECTIVE 6-6| Discuss how the relative stability of our temperament illustrates the influence of heredity on development.

OBJECTIVE 6-8| Give and example of a genetically influenced trait that can evoke responses in others, and give another example of an environment that can trigger gene activity.

OBJECTIVE 6-10| Describe the areas of psychology that interests evolutionary psychologists

OBJECTIVE 7-1| Describe some of the conditions that can affect development before birth.

OBJECTIVE 7-2| Describe how experience can modify the brain.

OBJECTIVE 7-3| Explain why we should be careful about attributing children’s successes and failure to their parents’ influence.

OBJECTIVE 7-4| Evaluate the importance of peer influence on development.

OBJECTIVE 7-5| Discuss the survival benefits of culture.

OBJECTIVE 7-6| Describe some ways that culture differ.

OBJECTIVE 7-9| Describe some ways that child-rearing differs in individualist and collectivist cultures.

OBJECTIVE 7-16| Discuss the relative importance of heredity and environment on gender development, and describe two theories of gender-typing.

OBJECTIVE 7-17| Describe the biopsychosocial perspective on development.

OBJECTIVE 8-1| State the three areas of change that developmental psychologists study, and identify the three major issues in developmental psychology.

OBJECTIVE 8-3| Define zygote, embryo and fetus, and explain how teratogens can affect development.

OBJECTIVE 8-4| Describe some of the abilities of the newborn, and explain how researchers use habituation to assess infant sensory and cognitive abilities.

OBJECTIVE 9-4| State Piaget’s understanding of how the mind develops, and discuss the importance of assimilation and accommodation in this process.

OBJECTIVE 9-5| Outline Piaget’s four main stages of cognitive development, and comment on how children’s thinking changes during these four stages.

OBJECTIVE 9-7| Define stranger anxiety.

OBJECTIVE 9-8| Discuss the effects of nourishment, body contact, and familiarity on infant social attachment.

OBJECTIVE 9-9| Contrast secure and insecure attachment, and discuss the roles of parents and infants in the development of attachment and an infant’s feelings of basic trust.

OBJECTIVE 9-12| Describe three parenting styles, and offer three potential explanations for the link between authoritative parenting and social competence.

OBJECTIVE 12-1| Contrast sensation and perception, and explain the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing.

OBJECTIVE 12-2| Distinguish between absolute and difference thresholds, and discuss whether we can sense stimuli below our absolute thresholds and be influenced by them.

OBJECTIVE 12-3| Describe sensory adaptation, and explain how we benefit from being unaware of changing stimuli.

OBJECTIVE 12-4| Describe the interplay between attention and perception.

OBJECTIVE 13-1| Define transduction, and specify the form of energy our visual system converts into neural messages our brain can interpret.

OBJECTIVE 13-2| Describe the major structure of the eye, and explain how they guide the incoming ray of light toward the eye’s receptor cells.

OBJECTIVE 13-3| Contrast the two types of receptor cells in the retina, and describe the retina’s reaction to light.

OBJECTIVE 13-4| Discuss the different levels of processing that occur as information travels from the retina to the brain’s cortex.

OBJECTIVE 13-5| Discuss parallel processing and discuss its role in visual processing.

OBJECTIVE 13-6| Explain how the Young-Helmholtz and opponent-process theories help us understand color vision.

OBJECTIVE 13-7| Explain the importance of color constancy.

OBJECTIVE 14-1| Describe the pressure waves we experience as sound.

OBJECTIVE 14-2| Describe the three regions of the ear, and outline the series of events that triggers the electrical impulses sent to the brain.

OBJECTIVE 14-4| Describe how we pinpoint sounds.

OBJECTIVE 16-2| Describe Gestalt psychology's contribution to our understanding of perception.

OBJECTIVE 16-3| Explain the figure-ground relationship and identify principles of perceptual grouping in form perception.

OBJECTIVE 16-5| Describe two binocular cues for perceiving depth, and explain how they help the brain to compute distance.

OBJECTIVE 16-6| Explain how monocular cues differ from binocular cues, and describe several monocular cues for perceiving depth.

OBJECTIVE 16-8| Explain the importance of perceptual constancy.

OBJECTIVE 16-9| Describe the shape and size constancy, and explain how our expectations about perceived size and distance to some visual illusions.

OBJECTIVE 16-10| Discuss lightness constancy and its similarity to color constancy.

What we perceive not only comes from the environment but also from our minds. Schemas or concepts develop through experience.

OBJECTIVE 17-6| Identify the three most testable forms of ESP, and explain why most research psychologists remain, skeptical of ESP.

OBJECTIVE 21-2| Explain how an unconditioned stimulus (US)

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that automatically and naturally triggers a response. Unconditioned Response (UCR): A unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus, like salivation in the dog when food is in the mouth. Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Originally a neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response. Conditioned Response (CR): A learned response to a previously neutral conditioned stimulus.

OBJECTIVE 21-3| Describe the timing requirements for the initial learning of a stimulus-response relationship.

OBJECTIVE 21-4| Summarize the processes of extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and discrimination.

OBJECTIVE 21-5| Discuss the survival value of extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization and discrimination.

OBJECTIVE 22-2| State Thorndike’s law of effect, and explain its connection to Skinner’s research on operant conditioning.

OBJECTIVE 22-3| Describe the shaping procedure, and how it can increase our understanding of what animals and babies can discriminate.

OBJECTIVE 22-4| Compare positive and negative reinforcement, and give one example each of a primary reinforcer, a conditioned, an immediate, and a delayed reinforcer.

OBJECTIVE 22-5| Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of continuous and partial reinforcement schedules, and identify four schedules of partial reinforcements.

OBJECTIVE 22-6| Discuss the ways negative punishment, positive punishment, and negative reinforcement differ, and list some drawbacks of punishment as a behavior-control technique.

OBJECTIVE 23-1| Describe the process of observational learning, and explain the importance of the discovery of mirror neurons.

OBJECTIVE 23-2| Describe Bandura's findings on what determines whether we will imitate a model.

OBJECTIVE 22-3| Discuss the impact of prosocial modeling.

OBJECTIVE 24-1| Define memory, and explain how flashbulb memories differ from other memories.

OBJECTIVE 24-2| Describe Atkinson-Schiffrin’s classic three-stage model of memory and explain how contemporary model of working memory differs.

OBJECTIVE 25-4| Explain how encoding imagery aids effortful processing, and describes some memory-enhancing strategies that use visual encoding.

OBJECTIVE 25-5| Discuss the use of chunking and hierarchies in effortful processing.

OBJECTIVE 26-6| Distinguish between implicit and explicit memory, and identify the main brain structure associated with each.

OBJECTIVE 27-3| Cite some ways that context can affect retrieval.

OBJECTIVE 27-4| Describe the effects of internal states on retrieval.

OBJECTIVE 28-1| Explain why we should value our ability to forget, and distinguish three general ways our memory fails us.

OBJECTIVE 28-2| Discuss the role of encoding failure in forgetting.

OBJECTIVE 28-3| Discuss the concept of storage decay, and describe Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve.

OBJECTIVE 28-4| Contrast proactive and retroactive interference, and explain how they can cause retrieval failure.

OBJECTIVE 28-5| Summarize Freud's concept of repression, and state whether this view is reflected in current memory research.

OBJECTIVE 28-6| Explain how misinformation and imagination can distort our memory of an event.

OBJECTIVE 28-7| Describe source amnesia’s contributions to false memories.

OBJECTIVE 28-9| Give arguments supporting and rejecting the position that very young children's reports are reliable.

OBJECTIVE 28-10| Discuss the controversy over reports of repressed and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.

OBJECTIVE 44-3| Discuss Freud’s view of the mind as an iceberg, and explain how he used this image to represent conscious and unconscious regions of the mind.

OBJECTIVE 44-4| Describe Freud’s view of personality structure, and discuss the interactions of the id, ego and the superego.

OBJECTIVE 44-6| Describe the function of defense mechanisms, and identify six of them.

OBJECTIVE 44-8| Describe two projective tests used to assess personality, and discuss some criticisms of them.

OBJECTIVE 44-9| Summarize psychology’s current assessment of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis.

OBJECTIVE 45-1| Summarize Abraham Maslow’s concept of self-actualization, and explain how his ideas illustrate the humanistic perspective.

OBJECTIVE 45-2| Discuss Carl Roger’s person-centered perspective, and explain the importance of unconditional positive regard.

OBJECTIVE 45-4| State the major criticism of the humanistic perspective on personality.

OBJECTIVE 46-1| Describe the trait and perspective’s contribution to personality research.

OBJECTIVE 46-4| Identify the Big Five personality factors, and discuss some of the strengths of this approach to studying personality.

OBJECTIVE 46-8| Discuss the effects of a perception of internal or external control, and describe the concept of learned helplessness.

OBJECTIVE 55-1| Describe the three main focuses of social psychology.

OBJECTIVE 55-2| Contrast dispositional and situational attributions, and explain how the fundamental attribution error can affect our analysis of behavior.

OBJECTIVE 55-3| Define attitude.

OBJECTIVE 55-5| Explain how the foot-in-the-door phenomenon, role-playing, and cognitive dissonance illustrate the influence of actions on attitudes.

OBJECTIVE 56-2| Discuss Asch’s experiments on conformity, and distinguish between normative and informational social influence.

OBJECTIVE56- 3| Describe Milgram’s experiments on obedience, and outline the conditions in which obedience was highest.

OBJECTIVE 56-5| Describe conditions in which the presence of others is likely to result in social facilitation, social loafing, or deindividuation.

OBJECTIVE 56-6| Discuss how group interaction can facilitate group polarization and groupthink.

OBJECTIVE 57-1| Identify three components of prejudice.

OBJECTIVE 57-3| Discuss the social factors that contribute to prejudice.

OBJECTIVE 57-4| Explain how Scapegoating illustrates the emotional component of prejudice.

OBJECTIVE 57-5| Cite four ways that cognitive processes help create and maintain prejudice.

OBJECTIVE 58-1| Describe the influence of proximity, physical attractiveness, and similarity on interpersonal attractions.

OBJECTIVE 58-2| Describe the effect of physical arousal on passionate love, and identify two predictors of enduring companionate love.

OBJECTIVE 58-3| Define altruism, and give an example.

OBJECTIVE 58-4| Describe the steps in the decision-making process involved in bystander intervention.

OBJECTIVE 58-6| Discuss effective ways of encouraging peaceful cooperation and reducing social conflict.

OBJECTIVE 47-1| Identify criteria for judging whether behavior is psychologically disordered.

OBJECTIVE 47-3| Describe the goals and content of the DSM-IV-TR.

OBJECTIVE 48-1| Define anxiety disorder, and explain how this condition differs from normal feelings of stress, tension, or uneasiness.

OBJECTIVE48-2| Contrast the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder.

OBJECTIVE 48-3| Explain how a phobia differs from fears we all experience.

OBJECTIVE 48-4| Describe the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

OBJECTIVE 48-5| Describe the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and discuss survivor resiliency.

OBJECTIVE 49-1| Describe the symptoms of dissociative disorders, and explain why some critics are skeptical about dissociative identity disorder.

OBJECTIVE 49-2| Contrast the three clusters of personality disorders, and describe the behaviors and brain activity associated with antisocial personality disorders.

OBJECTIVE 50-1| Define mood disorders, and contrast major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder.

OBJECTIVE 51-1| Describe the symptoms of schizophrenia, and differentiate delusion and hallucinations.

OBJECTIVE 29-3| Compare algorithms and heuristics as problem-solving strategies, and explain how insight differs from both of them.

OBJECTIVE 31-1| Discuss the difficulty of defining intelligence, and explain what it means to “reify intelligence.”.

OBJECTIVE 32-4| Explain what it means to say that a test is reliable.

OBJECTIVE 32-5| Explain what it means to say that a test is valid, and describe two types of validity.

OBJECTIVE 15| Discuss the evidence for the genetic contribution to individual intelligence, and explain what psychologists mean by the heritability of intelligence.