Midterm Study Aid - Dr. Kim Noels Psyco 105

Chapter 2 – Ways and Means of Psychology

What is Psychology? (definition)

Fields of psychology:

Biological foundations (physiology, psychophysiology, comparitive, behaviour analysis, behaviour genetics, cognitive, experimental neuropsychology)

Individual and social behaviour (developmental, social, personality, cross-cultural, and clinical)

Applied psychology (organizational, educational, community, engineering psychology)

Goals of psychology (understand human behaviour by describing, explaining, predicting, and controlling)

Ways of knowing (tenacity, authority, consensus, reason, observation)

Scientific method (5 rules of scientific method that apply to experiments)

Research strategies:

Experimentation (independent and dependent variables, hypotheses, theory, manipulation, experimental group, control group, nominal fallacy, operational definition)

Correlational studies (correlation coefficient)

Research settings (lab and field studies)

Data collection methods (questionnaires, interviews, naturalistic observation, participant observation, tests)

Ethics:

Informed consent (detailed description of the study provided in advance)

Risks and benefits (researcher must minimize risks to all persons related to the research)

Deception (intentional withholding of information – debriefing process becomes especially important)

Privacy, confidentiality and anonymity (researches must take steps to ensure anonymity)

Vulnerable groups (e.g., prisoners, people with mental disabilities, other cultures, etc.)

Bias in psychological research:

Types of bias (divided into random and systematic errors)

Sample bias (random assignment)

Measurement bias (validity, reliability, interrater reliability, counterbalancing, replication, confounding variables)

Observer’s and subject’s biases (expectancy effects – single-blind, double-blind, placebo studies)

Descriptive statistics (measure of central tendency, mean, median, standard deviation, variability, range)

Assessing relations (correlation coefficient, scatterplot)

Statistics (statistical significance, inferential statistics, descriptive statistics)

Chapter 10 -- Language

What is language? (creates meaning, exchanges messages, symbol system, usage is governed by a set of rules)

Levels of language (semantic, syntactic, morphological, phonological)

Speech recognition (phoneme, voice-onset time, pure word deafness, isolation aphasia, semantic priming)

Meaning (syntactical rule, function word, content word, affix, semantics, prosody, deep structure)

Design features (arbitrary, conventional, discrete, displacement, productivity)

Animals, language and communication (studies with primates)

Language and the brain (speech production and comprehension centres and relation to stroke victims, surface structure, script, agrammatism, dyslexia)

Language acquisition (prespeech, inflection, overextension, under-extension, language universal)

Nature vs. Nurture:

Nature (acquired - LAD – speed, regularity and non-random mistakes)

Nurture (learned – child-directed speech, children raised with no language input)

Chapter 11 -- Intelligence and Thinking

What is intelligence? (definition)

Thinking:

Classifying and categorization (formal and natural concepts)

Deductive and inductive reasoning (inferring from a general to specific or specific to general)

Problem solving (algorithm, heuristic)

Theories of intelligence (differential approach, developmental approach, information processing approach)

Factor theories (Factor analysis, Spearman’s 2-factor theory, Thurstone’s 7-factor theory, Cattell’s 2-factor theory)

Information-processing theories (Sternberg – analytic, creative and practical intelligences)

Neuropsychological theories (Gardner – multiple intelligences – linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, naturalist, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal)

People in area of intelligence tests and testing (Binet, Terman, Stern, Yerkes, Wechler)

Intelligence tests (Binet-Simon, Stanford-Binet, military testing, WAIS-III, WAIS-R, WISC, WPPSI – reliability, validity, criterion variable, mental age, norm, ratio IQ, deviation IQ)

Intelligence scores in general population (gifted, high average, average, borderline, impaired ranges, mental retardation)

Bias in intelligence research (abuses in testing and tests - cultural bias in test items, norms, and testing situations)

Nature vs. nurture (heritability, heritability studies)

Chapter 12 -- Chapter Life-Span Development

What is developmental psychology? (study of processes and patterns over life’s course)

Research methods (cross-sectional and longitudinal research)

Prenatal development (prenatal, zygote, embryo, fetal, teratogens, androgens)

Motor development (milestones, maturation)

Perceptual development (perceptions of patterns and space, visual cliff, critical period)

Cognitive development:

Piaget’s stage theory: Sensorimotor (object permanence, deferred imitation); Preoperatioal (egocentricity, cannot master conservation, increased ability to think symbolically); Concrete operational (masters conservation tasks, cannot think abstractly); Formal operational (thinks abstractly and hypothetically)

Cognitive structures (schemata, assimilation, accommodation)

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (children develop in a sociocultural milieu - concepts of verbal thought, zone of proximal development, scaffolding)

Social development:

Attachment theory (affectional bond and attachment – stranger anxiety, separation anxiety - Ainsworth, Bolby)

Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Paradigm (securely attached, detached/avoidant, resistant/ambivalent, disorganized/disoriented

Parenting style (Baumrind – authoritarian, permissive, authoritative)

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development: Preconventional (punishment and obedience, naïve instrumental hedonism); Conventional (maintaining good relations, maintaining social order); Preconventional (social contracts, universal ethical principles, cosmic orientation)

Psychosocial development:

Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development: Childhood (trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. self-doubt, initiative vs. guilt, competence vs. inferiority); Adolescence (identity vs. role confusion); Adulthood (intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation. Integrity vs. despair)

Identity formation:

Marcia’s theory of identity formation (crisis vs. commitment - Identity achievement, foreclosure, moratorium, identity diffusion)

Gender (Identity, role, stereotypes)