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Psychology as Science
• Psychology is the study of human behavior and
application of the gained knowledge.
• Areas of Study:
• Basic Research: Try to acquire knowledge. Includes
neuroscience, developmental, social, cognitive, and
personality psychology.
• Applied Psychology: Uses acquired knowledge. Incudes
clinical and industrial/organizational psychology.
The scientific method
•Construct a theory: an explanation of a
phenomenon using an integrated set of
principles that organizes observations and
predicts behavior.
•A good theory should produce testable
predictions called hypotheses.
Hypotheses
• Hypothesis is a prediction of a particular outcome.
• Always hypothesize a difference.
• Hypothesis must be testable.
• You should include directionality in the hypothesis
• Viewing more TV will increase anxiety.
• A hypothesis is usually formulated after careful
observation.
To test a hypothesis, we conduct an experiment.
Research Methods
• Experiments: Researchers directly manipulate one variable (IV)
and measure the resulting affects on another variable (DV) while
keeping all other variables constant.
• Confounding Variables:
• Placebo effects- changes in state due to receiving a
treatment when the treatment itself has no biological
effects.
• Subject Variables- Variables that human subjects bring in
with them, such as age, sex, occupation, etc.
• Random assignment: participants are randomly assigned a
treatment condition. Solves Confounds.
Research Methods Cont.
• Correlational Research: Indicates the extent to which two
variables vary together. (Use scatterplots to see trends)
• Does NOT imply causation.
• These methods are used when experiments are either impractical or
ethically impossible.
• If you know one variable you can then predict the other.
• Positive Correlation: as one variable increases so does the other.
• Negative Correlation: As one variable increases, the other variable decreases.
Correlation coefficient:
Ranges from -1 to +1.
0 = zero correlation
Behavioral Neuroscience
Collect
Transform
Transmit
Layout of nervous system
Nervous system
Peripheral
Autonomic (selfregulated action
of internal organs
and glands)
Sympathetic
(arousal)
Somatic
(voluntary
movement of
skeletal muscles)
Parasympathetic
(relaxation)
Central
Brain (further
divisions coming!)
Spinal Cord
Neuron structure
Signal:
Action
Potential
The neuron in resting state (remember fries)
• INSIDE = pot(ato) - Potassium
• Inside is negative
• Surrounded by fat
• Layer surrounding neuron is fatty and won’t let ions in.
Ions can only go through special gates.
• OUTSIDE = lots of sodium & chloride
Neurotransmitters
• Neurons “talk” to each other using chemical
neurotransmitters.
• Fast acting:
• Glutamate (excitatory), GABA (inhibitory), &
Acetylcholine (movement)
• Slow acting:
• Dopamine (pleasure), Serotonin (mood), Substance
P (runners high)
• Signal Termination: To prevent over-excitation, NT is
either broken down in the synaptic cleft, or is
reabsorbed pre-synaptically (reuptake).
Major Structures
• Hindbrain:
• Medulla: respiration/BP, vomiting
• Cerebellum & Pons: coordinated movement
• Midbrain:
• Reticular Formation: arousal, alertness
• Inferior Colliculus: auditory localization
• Superior Colliculus: visual localization
• Forebrain:
• Hypothalamus: homeostasis
• Thalamus: relay station
• Limbic System: emotion & memory
• Amygdala: emotion
• Nucleus Accumbens: rewards
• Hippocampus: memory
• Cortex: higher order cognition
Pp. 64-68
What to remember
when making an
educated guess:
1. Older & lower brain
structures are for more
survival based
functions like
breathing, seeing and
moving.
2. Higher/newer
structures are for more
advanced functions
such as cognition and
language.
The Four Lobes of the Cortex
The Brain
Cortex & Specialization of Function
Human Development
Brain Plasticity
• Describes the brain’s capacity for remodeling itself,
brain is amazingly plastic in early life
• Case of hydrocephalus
• Limits of Plasticity
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome disrupts genetically
preprogrammed neuron birth and migration
Domains of Change During
Development
•Biological: physical development.
•Cognitive: development of thought and mind.
•Social: development of patterns of interaction
with others.
•Moral/Ethical: development of a sense of right
and wrong and personal responsibility.
Cognitive Development
• Thinking and reasoning develops in stages
• Each stage is genetically preprogrammed, so the
environment can only change the speed that we pass
through the stages.
• Schema: framework for understanding the world around
us.
• Assimilation: fitting new information into an existing
schema.
• Accommodation: modifying or creating a new schema to
represent new information.
Piaget’s Four Stage Theory
• Sensorimotor: Child understands through sensing and
acting.
• Limitations: Cannot distinguish past & future, no object
permanence, cannot think symbolically
• Milestone: object permanence, stranger anxiety
• Preoperational:
• Limitations: Poor reasoning (conservation tasks)
• Milestone: symbolic thought, language
• Concrete Operational:
• Limitations: Poor reasoning about the abstract
• Milestone: logical reasoning for observable things (can do
conservation tasks)
• Formal Operational:
• Milestone: logical reasoning for unobservable or abstract
events/things (calculus)
Social
Development:
Attachment
• Harlow’s Monkeys
• Preferred the “warm fuzzy” surrogate mother to
the food providing mother
• As adults, monkeys showed erratic behavior in
groups
• Effects of Daycare
• Attachment isn’t affected as long as you don’t
have an insensitive, unresponsive mother and
low quality daycare (NIH, 1996)