Term
| Biological psychology is the study of |
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Definition
| physiological, evolutionary and development of mechanisms of behavior and experience |
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Term
| Biological explanations of behavior: Physiological |
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Definition
relates a behavior to the activity of the brain and other organs
Example: chemical reactions that enable hormones to influence brain activity and the routes by which bran activity ultimately controls muscle contractions |
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| Biological explanations of behavior: Ontogenetic |
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Definition
describes the development of a structure or a behavior
- Traces the influences of genes, nutrition, experiences, and their interactions in molding behavior
Example: the ability to inhibit an impulse develops gradually from infancy through the teenage years, reflecting gradual maturation of the frontal parts of the brain |
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Term
| Biological explanations of behavior: Evolutionary |
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Definition
Reconstructs the evolutionary history of a structure or behavior
Example: Goose bumps work for other animals because the hairs stand straight up making them look bigger and more intimidating. For humans, they really serve no purpose and this is just a behavior that evolved from our ancestors |
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| Biological explanations of behavior: Functional |
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Definition
Describes why a structure or behavior evolved as it did
Explanations of human behavior are often controversial because many behaviors alleged to be part of our evolutionary heritage could have been learned
Example: |
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Definition
| the belief that the mind and body are different kinds of substance – mental substance and physical substance – that exist independently |
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Term
| Monism (the alternative to dualism) |
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Definition
| the belief that the universe consists of only one kind of substance |
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Definition
1. Materialism
2. Mentalism
3. Identity position |
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Definition
- everything that exists is material, or physical
- primary claim, that people’s common sense understanding of the mind is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist *our mind is a figment or our imagination* |
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Definition
| The view that only the mind really exists and that the physical world could not exist unless some mind were aware of it |
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Definition
1. The view that mental processes are the same thing as certain kinds of brain processes but are described in different terms
2. Every mental experience is a brain activity, even though descriptions of thoughts sound very different from descriptions of brain activities
Example: the same fright you feel when someone threatens you is the same thing as a certain pattern of activity in your brain
a. the mind is brain activity, mental activity is what is happening to the brain |
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Definition
| The difficulty knowing whether other people (or animals) have conscious experiences |
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| Pertain to many phenomena that we call consciousness, such as the difference between wakefulness and sleep and the mechanisms that enable us to focus our attention |
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Definition
a.Concerns why and how any kind of brain activity is associated with consciousness
b.Why does brain activity feel like anything at all? |
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Term
| Researchers have assumed that even though you might be conscious of something and unable to report it in words, if you can... |
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Definition
| describe something you saw or heard, then you must have been conscious of it |
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