• We understand consciousness because ww breakdown consciousness to smaller parts to comprehend
• William Wundt is the founder of this form of psychology

Functionalists proposed that the mind was shaped by natural selection; modern evolutionary psychology is one descendant of this idea.

William James founder of this form of psychology

• Max Wertheimer is founder of this form of psychology
• "The whole is more than the sum of it's parts"

• Sigmund Freud emphasized that many important mental processes happen outside conscious awareness

• Humanistic approaches proposed that human nature is inherently good, and people seek to improve

1. Biological (can be explained biologically)
2. Evolutionary (why are certain behaviors adaptive)
3. Cognitive
4. Social (how we influence one another)
5. Developmental (how different behaviors and characteristics form)
6. Clinical (whats going on with you)
7. Personality (what about you makes you do what you do)

• Specific factors or characteristics that are manipulates and measures in research

• Independent Variables- the variable that is manipulated by the researcher
• Dependent Variables- the variable that is observed and measured by the researcher
• Confounding Variables- any variable that might have affected the dependent variable instead of the independent variable
• Random Variable- variables that are uncontrollable

• Every member of a population of interest has the same chance of being included in the research.
• Represents equivalence, representativeness, and generalizablility.

• An educated guess
• a specific testable proposition about something of interest of the researcher

• watching without interfering with a phenomenon as it occurs in its natural environment
• Pros: provides an understanding of behavior in its natural surroundings
• Cons: no control and if people realize they are being observed they may change their behavior

• An intensive examination/observation of a single person usually suffering from neurological impairments
• Pros: detailed data about a single person and can investigate the effects of brain damage in human populations
• Cons: sampling bias (difficult to generalize to the larger population) and results may be skewed by the researcher performing the case study

• Researchers ask people to report their attitudes, beliefs, opinions or intentions
• Pros: Gathers data from a large number of people and helps ensue a representative sample
• Cons: people may refuse to answer certain questions, may answer in a self-serving way, and the wording and order of questions can change the answers provided to the questions

• Control of a standard experiment
• Participants are not randomly assigned conditions

• Researcher manipulates one or more variables (IV)
• Then observes the effect of the manipulation on another variable (DV)
• while holding all other variables constant

• improvement created by participants knowledge or expectations
• Can cause changes in experimental group that are not actually caused by the intervention/treatment

• Both participants and those given treatment are unaware or "blind" as to who is receiving the placebo or the actual treatment and the expected results from various treatments

• Provides limited information
• mean is skewed by outliers
• must carefully choose which one to use

• Range- is the difference between the highest and lowest scores
• Standard Deviation- lets a person know how different a group of scores are from the mean score.

• A correlation refers to the likelihood that one variable will co-occur with another variable
• Correlation coefficients range: -1 to +1
• Number = strength of relationship (closer to 1 = stronger)
• Valence (sign) = direction of relationship (+= increase of decrease together)(- as one increases the other decreases)
• A correlation is not causation

• Determines if our results are due to chance
• Statistical significance: difference between groups that is larger than what would be expected by chance
• For p-value generally .05 or .01 is used in psychology

• Basic building blocks of nervous system
• Receiving, process, and transmit information electrochemically

Dedrites: receive information from environment, organs in the body, and other neurons

Soma: in charge of all vital functions

Axon: carries information from cell body down to the terminal buttons

Terminal Buttons: transmit information where needed

• Myelinated- the length of the axon is wrapped in a myelin sheath. (allows conduction to occur very quickly)
• Unmyelinated- relatively slow transmission of information (No sheath of myelin surrounding axon)

• Neurons- electrochemical communication. Message travels electronically within a neuron. Message travels chemically between neurons.
• Glia Cells- provide structural support, nutrients, protection from toxins, debris removal, and insulation for some neurons.

• A neuron's cell body oscillates between being negatively and positively charges in relation to its surroundings.
• Resting Potential: not sending a signal, "at rest"
• Action Potential: signal sent down the axon

• the length of pause between action potentials
• determine the rate of action potentials within a given unit of time
• Remember- messages in the nervouse systed are coded by the speed and rate of action potential

• an action potential is an all or nothing process
• this allows the message to reach the brain at full strength

• the chemical messengers in the nervous system
• stored in little vesicles at the terminal buttons
• Neurotransmitters can be excitatory (receiving cells to fire) or inhibitory (receiving cells not to fire)
• Attach at receptors on dendrites

• Involved in Schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease

• Inhibitory Neurotransmitter
• located in the same areas that dopamine is produced
• When GABA neurons are activated, neural activity decrease...the effects of alcohol happen because alcohol can act like GABA and bind at receptor sites

• organized by neural networks and peripheral nervous system (Somatic and Autonomic)
• Central Nervous System (Brain and Spinal Cord)

• Afferent: from periphery to the Central Nervous System
• Efferent: from Central Nervous System to the periphery

Two major systems

• Somatic: transmits info about sensation from the body to the brain (communicates movements from the brain to voluntary muscles in the body)
• Autonomic: centrals involuntary muscles of the body, such as the diaphragm, heart, and digestive tract.

• Two Divisions: sympathetic and parasympathetic
• Sympathetic: takes over when we are threatened by something ("Flight or Fight")
• Parasympathetic: "regulation" or relaxation response

• Medulla- controls vitals/essential functions
• Cerebellum- movement, balance, motor control
• Pons- involved in sleep and arousal. "The bridge" from spinal cord to Brain
• Reticular Formation-  muscle reflexes, attention, arousal, breathing and pain perception

• Automatic behaviors that integrate simple movements with sensory input are controlled in the midbrain
• Reticular Formation
• Substantia Nigra is connected to the stratium (in the forebrain) and allows for smooth initiation of movement

• Hippocampus- crucial for memory consolidation
• Hypothalamus- drives the endocrine system and regulates hunger, thirst, and sexual desire
• Amygdala- important for generating emotional and motivated behaviors
• Thalamus-relays pain signals from spinal cord to upper levels of the brain. relays signals from the eyes and most other sense organs to upper levels of the brain. Important in processing of info.

• Occipital
• Parietal
• Temporal
• Frontal

• Two seperate hemispheres: Left and Right
• Each hemisphere controls sensation and motor functioning on the opposite side of the body
• The hemispheres of the brain communicate through a thick bundle of axons called corpus colossum
• Left Hemisphere controls reading, speaking, and writing
• Right Hemisphere controls artistic and spacial

• The outer covering of the forebrain
• gray matter- the cell bodies of the cortical neurons
• The interior of the forebrain is made up of white matter or myelinated axons of cortical neurons

• At the rear of the brain, contains many specialized areas for interpreting visual sensory information

• Front of the occipital, contains the primary somatosensory cortex (the area of the brain that is specialized for body senses and awareness of the location of body parts)

• Sides of the head, main processing areas for hearing and complex aspects of vision, hippocampus and amygdala inside, left temporal lobe has language processing areas

• Primary motor cortex (used in fine movements), prefrontal cortex (organization, planning of action, and aspects of memory)

• Wernicke's Area: handles speech comprehension
• Broca's Area: handles the production of speech

• Under the control of the Nervous System (Hypothalamus)
• A system of glands that release hormones into the blood stream
• Hormones are chemicals that affect mood, behavior and even anatomy (Chemical Messengers)

• Sensation: detection of environmental or bodily stimuli and taking it to the brain
• Perception: selection, organization, and interpretation of sensory input (translation of information from  the enviroment into neural signals)

• The reduction in response to an unchanging stimulus ex. bad smells

• The idea that a stimulus can influence behavior even when it is so weak or brief that we do not perceive it consciously
• The effects are overall much smaller than people hope or fear

• study of people's tendencies to identify the presence or absence of a stimuli
• Absolute Threshold- the minimal amount of stimulus that needs to be present that an organism can detect
• Just Difference Threshold- smallest difference between two stimuli that can be detected
• Criterion Shift- change when someone will accept/reject presence of a stimuli

• Curvature of lens of the eye that help the eyes adjust to focus

• Cornea: where light enters the eye
• Pupil: permits light to pass into rear chamber of the eye
• Iris: colored ring of muscle, constricts or dilates- regulates how much light comes in
• Lens: focuses the light rays on the retina
• Retina: layers of cells-rods, cones, other visual neurons
• Optic Nerve: leaves eye at the optic disk
• Optic Disk: where the retinal axons leave the eye/blind spot

• Rods: processes black and white/ Used for low light vision
• Cones: processes color/ Used for daylight vision

• Trichromatic Theory: receptors for red, green, and blue
• Opponent Process Theory: 3 pairs of antagonistic colors- red/green, blue/yellow, black/white

• Top-down: utilizes previous knowledge to perceive the stimulus, without considering its elemental parts
• Bottom-Up: the process of perception that creates the whole from elemental parts

• Proximity
• Closure
• Similarity
• Simplicity
• Continuity

• A whole may have qualities that dont exist in its parts

• Binocular Cues: clues from both eyes (Convergence: feeling of eye turning towards one another) (Retinal Disparity: within 25ft images are different)
• Monocular Cues: clues from one eye (Pictoral Depth cues- linear perspective, texture gradient, occlusion, relative size, height in a plane, light and shadow)