1. How are Modern-day Psychologists different from Pseudo-psychologists? What do they believe?
Modern psychology majors on the different areas of application of psychology. For example, the industrial psychology, social, behavioral, etc. and they belief that each of these fields have different models of behavior and mental processes. The modern psychologist believes in scientific research and evidence. On the other hand, pseudo-psychologist emphasizes on the sections of psychology without a scientific backing or any logical explanation. Pseudo psychologists overly rely on machines to explain occurrences rather than scientific research.
2. List and describe the four Goals of Psychology.
- Describe involving giving details on how certain behavior and mental processes occur
- Explaining, giving reason as to why certain behaviors and mental processes occur
- Predict, giving the future trend on behavior and mental process
- Control i.e. attempting to manipulate the course of behavioral trends and mental processes.
3. What are the 7 different Major Perspectives of Psychology and what are their different contributions. List the different psychologist and their contributions as they relate to the different perspectives discussed in your textbook.
- Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic mainly assumes humans act unconsciously from process of thoughts. Major contributor, Sigmund Freud on human unconsciousness
- Behaviorist majoring on behavioral control such as operant and classical conditioning. Major contributor, B.F Skinner on operant conditioning.
- Humanism majoring on the motivation of the people, major contributor, Carl Rodgers.
- Cognitive focusing on the process of acquiring and processes of information. Major contributor, Noam Chomsky
- Neuroscience majoring on motivation and stress as postulated by Aristotle
- Evolutionary advance Charles Darwin theory
- Sociocultural on the cultural aspects in behavior. Lev Vygotsky
4. Which Psychology Perspective dramatically shaped the course of Modern Psychology?
5. Which Psychology Perspective is considered the most influential Modern Approach?
6. When it comes to Research Strategies, identify and describe the two different categories?
Research design describing the how the research is carried out, e.g. experimentation
Research setup describing the setting on which the research designs works. For example, in a laboratory
7. What are the six different Steps of the Scientific Method? Of the six, which is the most important first step?
- Identification and statement of the problem
- Literature review
- Construction of hypotheses
- Test the hypotheses
- Analyze the results
- Discussion and conclusion
Identification of the problem is very important
8. What are the four Guidelines when it comes to doing Research using human subjects? Based on the four Guidelines, what are the main ethical concerns of Psychologists?
- Informed consent
- Freedom from harm
- Confidentiality
- Ethics consideration
Main ethical concerns include
- Breach of confidentiality
- Causing harm like death
- Uninformed consent
- Freedom to withdrawal
9. Which is the most powerful research method and why?
Experimentation is the most powerful research method. It gives results that are authentic if it is founded on the right foundation with all scientific methods followed.
10. Identify and Describe the three different types of Descriptive Research.
- Observation involves a field event where the researcher observes particular events as they occur in their natural environment
- Survey uses questionnaires to research and gather data that is analyzed to establish trends.
11. Every human body has approximately how many neurons. Are any two neutrons alike?
About 1000 billion
No, two neurons cannot be the same
12. Identify and describe the three basic features of a neuron?
The nucleolus enclosed within the nucleolus membrane
The perikaryon containing organelles axons, dentist, synaptic and glial cells
The terminal bouton where a response is triggered
13. How do Neurons communicate information throughout the central nervous system? How do they communicate differently within the cell compared to communicating outside the cell?
A nerve impulse is created which is an electrical and chemical impulse that is transported through the neurons from the sensory ends to the brain for interpretation and response.
When a nerve signal reaches the end of its axon, it is transfer though through an electric impulse to the other cell or axon without a continuation of cells. At times an interaction with the receptor protein occur allowing transfer of information within and outside a cell.
14. Give examples of how our Spinal Cord transmits information back and forth to our brains and how our Spinal Cord has the ability to initiate some automatic behaviors on its own.
The spinal cord has a network of neurons that transfer information and responses to and from the brain to various part of the body. For example, when one hurts the leg, the information is send to the brain, interpreted and a response triggered, such as withdrawal from the hurting object. The spinal cord has a homeostatic capability of manipulating itself in finding out some survival mechanism during its function.
15. The Peripheral Nervous System is what carries information to and from the central nervous system, linking the brain and spinal cord to all the body’s sense receptors, muscles, and glands. What are the two different subdivisions of the Peripheral Nervous System and what functions do they perform?
- The automatic nervous system that trigger involuntary response such as flight or fight
- The somatic nervous system that triggers voluntary actions
16. The Autonomic Nervous System is further divided into two branches. What are they and what functions do they perform?:
- The sympathetic nervous system that actives stress and flight or fight responses
- Parasympathetic nervous system that reacts to rest or digest after stress.
17. Your brain has a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere with four lobes, identify and describe the functions of the four different lobes of the brain?
- Frontal lobe that is located in the front part of the brain and is associated with motor skills, high levels of cognition, reasoning, and language expression.
- The parietal lobe found in the middle section associated with interpretation of pressure, pain, and touch.
- The temporal lobe found on the bottom section of the brain. It interprets sound and languages.
- The occipital lobe interprets vision and associated information.
18. What does the term Split-Brain refer to?
Split-brain refer to severing of the corpus callosum and hence separating the left and the right hemispheres of the brain.
19. What is the difference between Sensation and Perception?
Sensation is the process of stimulating a sensory receptor while perception involves the interpretation of sensed information in the brain.
20. When it comes to measuring our experiences of sensory stimuli, what is the difference between Absolute Threshold, Terminal Threshold, and Difference Threshold?
- Absolute threshold refers to the lowest levels that a stimulus can be detected
- Deferential threshold is the smallest differences in two perceived stimuli
- Terminal threshold is the change if exceeded the stimuli is no longer detectable.
21. What is the natural pain killers that our bodies release in order for us to endure playing through painful injuries? What are the two other outside factors that do the same thing?
The brain interests and prepares the body to undergo the full painful experiences. The body then adapts to the pain making one go through a painful experience. Withdrawal from the pain-causing stimuli and environmental adaptation involving physiological changes or simply evolution
22. What is Olfaction and what is Gustation?
Olfaction is the sense of smell while gustation is the sense of taste
23. How many different types of olfactory receptors do we possess, and how many distinct smells are we therefore able to detect?
We have 1000 olfactory receptors and can distinguish up to 10, 000 odorants
24. Identify and describe the three different body senses? (I am not referring to the five senses: taste, smell, sight, sound, touch).
- Thermal perception that is the perception of heat
- The Nociception the pain due to nerve damage
- Equilibrioception that is the sense of balance as determined by the cavities counting fluid found in the inner year.
25. What is the difference between Bottom-up-Processing and Top-down-Processing?
Bottom-up processing is whereby an interpretation emerges from data obtained while top-down processing is construction perception from experiences as recorded in the brain.
