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PSYC 1000- Psychology 10 th^ Edition in Modules Summary Notes
MODULE ONE:
• Wundt’s student, Edward Titchener aimed to discover the mind’s structure. He engaged
people in introspection, although it was unreliable. It waned along with structuralism.
• William James considered functions of our thoughts and feelings. He often asked “why?”
He assumed that thinking, like smelling. Was adaptive. James is a functionalist.
• In 1920, two behavioralists, Watson and Skinner dismissed introspection and defined
psychology as “the scientific study of observable behavior.”
• Another force was Freudian psychology, which emphasized how our unconscious thought
process & emotional responses to childhood experiences affect our behavior.
• In 1960 Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (both humanistic psychologists) found the
above too limiting. They drew attention to ways that current environmental influences can nurture or limit growth potential and having our needs for love and acceptance satisfied.
• Today, we define psychology as: “The science of behavior and mental processes.”
• Nature vs. Nurture: Plato assumed that we inherit character and intelligence, and certain
ideas are inborn. Aristotle countered that nothing in the mind does not come from the external world through the senses.
• In the 1600’s, John Locke argued that the mind is a blank slate on which experience
writes. Rene Descartes disagreed, believing that the same ideas are innate. He gained support from Charles Darwin 2 centuries later.
• Darwin explained diversity through the process of natural selection. Evolution has
become an important principle for 21 st^ century psychology.
• “Nature works on what nature endows.” Every psychological event is simultaneously a
biological event. Thus, depression can be both a brain and a though disorder.
• The tribe of psychology is united by a common quest: describing and explaining behavior
and the mind underlying it.
♦ Biological psychologists: study the links between brain and mind.
♦ Developmental psychologists: study the changing abilities from womb to tomb.
♦ Cognitive psychologist: experiment with how we perceive, think, and solve problems.
♦ Personality psychologists : investigate our persistent traits.
♦ Social psychologists : explore how we view and affect each other.
• Basic Research: pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base.
• Applied Research: scientific study that aims to solve practical problems.
▲ Counseling psychology: a branch of psychology that assists people with problems in
living (ex. School, work, marriage issues)
▲ Clinical Psychology: Studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders.
▲ Positive psychology: the scientific study of human functioning.
▲ Community Psychology: studies how people interact with their social environments, and
how institutions affect individuals and groups.
MODULE TWO:
• Three phenomena;^ hindsight bias, judgmental overconfidence, and our tendency to
perceive patterns in random events illustrate why we cannot solely rely on intuition and common sense.
▲ Hindsight Bias (I knew it all along!)
• This phenomenon makes the history of the world seem like a chain of
inevitable events.
• Errors in our recollections and explanations show why we need
psychological research.
• Good ideas are like good inventions- once created, they seem obvious.
▲ Overconfidence
- We tend to think we know more than we actually do. We tend to be more confident than correct.
▲ Perceiving Order In Random Events
• We are prone to perceive patterns
• Random sequences often don’t look random (Falk et. Al 2009)
The points to remember… those 3 phenomena often lead us to overestimate our intuition. But scientific evidence inquiry can help us sift reality from illusion.
MODULE THREE:
• Theory: an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations
and predicts behaviors or events.
• Hypothesis: a testable prediction, often implied by a theory.
• Operational definition: A statement of the procedures used to define research variables.
• Replication: Repeating the essence of a research study, usually with the different
participants in different situations to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and principles.
• Case Study: An observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hope
of revealing universal principles.
• Naturalistic Observation: Observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring
situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation. Does not explain behavior- it merely describes it.
• Some naturalistic findings...
▲ Humans laugh 30 times more in social situations than solitary situations.
▲ Life is fastest paced in Japan and Europe and slower in economically less-
developed countries.
• Surveys can have hindered results due to wording of the survey, and sampling bias.
• Each neuron consists of a cell body and its branching fibers. The bushy
dendrite fibers receive information and conduct it toward the cell body.
• From there, the cell’s lengthy axon fiber passes the message through its
terminal branches to other neurons or to muscles or glands. (Dendrites listen; axons speak).
• Unlike short dendrites, axons may be very long.
• Some axons are encased in a myelin sheath, a layer of fatty tissue that
insulates them and speeds their impulses. If the myelin sheath degenerates, multiple sclerosis results.
• The gap between two neurons is called a synapse.
• Neuron Functioning:
• Neurons transmit messages when stimulated by signals from our senses or
when triggered by chemical signals from other neurons.
• In response, a neuron fires an impulse called an action potential.
• An action potential is a brief electrical charge that travels down its axon.
• A neural impulse can travel from 2 to 180 miles per hour.
• Neuron Chemical Explanations:
• Neurons generate electricity from chemical events.
• Ions (electrically charged atoms) are exchanged.
• The fluid outside an axon’s membrane has mostly positively charged ions; a
resting axon’s fluid interior has mostly negatively charged ions.
• This positive-outside/negative-inside state is called the resting potential.
• The axon’s surface is very selective about what it allows through its gates.
The axon’s surface is selectively permeable.
• The Process:
• When a neuron fires, the first section of the axon opens its gates, and
positively charged sodium ions flood through the cell membrane.
• This depolarizes that axon section, causing another axon channel to open,
and then another, etc.
• During a resting pause (the refractory period) the neuron pumps the
positively charged sodium ions back outside. Then it can catch fire again.
• Most signals are excitatory (like pushing an neurons accelerator), but some
are inhibitory (like pushing on the break).
• If excitatory signals minus inhibitory signals exceed a minimum intensity, or
threshold, the combined signals trigger an action potential.
• Increasing the level of stimulation above the threshold will not increase the
neural impulse’s intensity. They neuron’s reaction is an all-or-nothing response: the neuron will either fire or not.
• When an action potential reaches the knob-like terminals at an axon’s end, it
triggers the release of chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.
• Neurotransmitters cross the synaptic gap and bind to receptor sites on the
receiving neuron. Then, electrically charged atoms flow in, exciting or inhibiting the receiving neurons readiness to fire. Then, in a process called reuptake, the sending neuron reabsorbs the excess neurotransmitters.
How Do Drugs And Other Chemicals Alter Neurotransmission?
• When flooded with opiate drugs such as heroin and morphine, the brain may stop
producing its own natural opiates.
• When the drug is withdrawn, the brain may then be deprived of any form of opiate,
causing intense discomfort.
• Drugs and other chemicals affect brain chemistry at synapses, often by either exciting or
inhibiting neurons’ firing.
• Agonist molecules may be similar enough to a neurotransmitter to bind to its receptor
and mimic its effects. Some opiate drugs are agonists and produce a temporary “high” by amplifying normal sensations of arousal or pleasure.
• Antagonists also bind to receptors but their effect is to block a neurotransmitter’s
functioning- neurotransmitter can no longer bind to site. Ex. Botulin, causes paralysis by blocking ACh release, botox.
The Nervous System
• The nervous system is the body’s speedy, electrochemical communication network,
consisting of all the nerve cells of the peripheral and the central nervous systems.
• The brain and the spinal cord form the central nervous system (CNS ), the body’s
decision maker.
• The peripheral nervous system is the sensory and motor neurons that connect the
central nervous system to the rest of the body. Responsible for gathering information and transmitting CNS decisions to other body parts.
• Nerves, electrical cables formed of bundles of axons, link the CNS with the body’s
sensory receptors, muscles, and glands.
• Information travels through the nervous system through three types of neurons:
1. Sensory Neurons: carry messages from the body’s tissues and sensory receptors
inward to the brain and spinal cord for processing.
2. Motor Neurons: carry instructions from the CNS out to the body’s muscles.
3. Interneurons: neurons within the brain and spinal cord that communicate
internally and intervene between the sensory inputs and motor outputs.
The Peripheral Nervous System :
• Has two components: somatic and autonomic.
• Our somatic nervous system enables voluntary control of our skeletal muscles.
• Our autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls our glands and the muscles of our
internal organs, influencing such functions as glandular activity, heartbeat, and digestion. Usually operates autonomously.
• Our ANS serves two important, basic functions.
▲ The sympathetic nervous system: arouses and expands energy. If something
alarms or challenges you, your sympathetic nervous system will accelerate your heartbeat. Arouses the body.
▲ When the stress subsides, your parasympathetic nervous system will produce
opposite effects, conserving energy, decreasing your heartbeat, etc. Calms the body
The Central Nervous System:
• The human body has 40 billion neurons, each containing roughly 10,000 other neurons;
we end up with some 400 trillion synapses.
• The brain’s neurons cluster into groups called neural networks.
• Neurons network with nearby neurons with which they can have short, fast connections.
MODULE FIVE:
• A century ago, scientists used early clinical observations to reveal some brain-mind
connections.
• Damage to one side of the brain often caused numbness or paralysis on the body’s
opposite side, suggesting that the body’s right side is wired to the brain’s left side, and vice versa.
• Damage to the back of the brain disrupted vision, and to the left-front part of the brain
produced speech difficulties.
• Now, scientists can selectively lesion (tissue destruction. A brain lesion is naturally
experimentally caused destruction of brain tissue) tiny clusters of brain cells, leaving the surrounding tissue unharmed.
• Today, neuroscientists can stimulate various parts of the brain and note the effects.
• Depending on the stimulated brain part, people may giggle, hear voices, turn their head,
feel themselves falling, or have an out of body experience.
• An electroencephalogram (EEG) is an amplified recording of the waves of electrical
activity that sweep across the brain’s surface. Electrodes placed on the scalp measure these waves.
• Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Scan: a visual display of brain activity that detects
where a radioactive form of glucose goes while the brain performs a given task.
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): A technique that uses magnetic fields and radio
waves to produce computer-generated images of soft tissue. MRI scans show brain anatomy.
• Ventricles: fluid-filled brain areas.
• Functional MRI (fMRI): a technique for revealing blood flow and, therefore, brain
activity by comparing successive MRI scans. fMRI scans show brain function.
The Older Brain Structure:
• The Brainstem:
• The oldest part and central core of the brain, beginning where the spinal cord
swells as it enters the skull; the brainstem is responsible for automatic survival functions.
• The brainstem handles heartbeat and breathing.
• It begins where the spinal cord swells slightly after entering the skull.
• This slight swelling is the medulla.
• Just above the medulla sits the pons , which helps coordinate movements.
• The brainstem is a crossover point, where most nerves to and from each side
of the brain connect with the body’s opposite side.
• The Thalamus:
• Sitting atop the brainstem is the thalamus.
• The thalamus is a pair of egg-shape structures that act as the brain’s sensory
switchboard.
• Receives information from all the senses except smell and routes it to the
higher brain regions that deal with seeing, hearing, tasting, and touching.
• Also receives some of the higher brain’s replies, which it then directs to the
medulla and the cerebellum.
• The brain’s sensory switchboard, located on top of the brainstem; it directs
messages to the sensory receiving areas in the cortex and transmits replies to the cerebellum and medulla.
• The Reticular Formation:
• Located inside the brainstem, between your ears.
• A finger-shaped network of neurons that extends from the spinal cord right
up through the thalamus.
• As the spinal cord’s sensory input flows up to the thalamus, some of it travels
through the reticular formation, which filters incoming stimuli and relays important information to other areas of the brain.
• In 1949, Giuseppe Moruzzi and Horace Magoun discovered that electrically
stimulating the reticular formation of a sleeping cat almost instantly produced and awake, alert animal.
• When Magoun severed a cats reticular formation without damaging the
nearby sensory pathways, the effect was equally dramatic: the cat lapsed into a permanent coma.
• The reticular formation enables arousal.
• A nerve network that travels through the brainstem and plays an important
role in controlling arousal.
• The Cerebellum:
• The “little brain” at the rear of the brain-stem; functions include processing
sensory input and coordinating movement output and balance.
• It enables nonverbal learning and memory.
• Also helps us judge time, modulate our emotions, and discriminate sounds
and textures. And it coordinates voluntary movement.
• If you injured your cerebellum, you would have difficulty walking, keeping
your balance, or shaking hands. Note: all of these occur without any conscious effort.
The Limbic System
• A neural system composed of the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus.
• Located below the cerebral hemispheres; associated with emotions and drives.
• The hippocampus processes conscious memories. People who lose their hippocampus to
surgery lose their ability to form new memories of facts and events.
• The Amygdala:
• Two-lima bean sized neural clusters in the limbic system; linked to emotion
(aggression and fear).
• When removed by a neurosurgeon, ill-tempered animals turned into mellow
creatures. (Kluver and Bucy)
• These and other experiments have confirmed the amygdala’s role in rage and
fear, including the perception of these emotions and the processing of emotional memories.
• The Hypothalamus:
• A neural structure lying below (hypo) the thalamus; it directs several
maintenance activities (eating, drinking, body temperature), helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland, and is linked to emotion and reward.
• Some neural clusters in the hypothalamus influence hunger; others regulate
thirst, body temperature, and sexual behavior.
▲ Frontal lobes: a portion of the cerebral cortex lying just behind the forehead;
involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making plans and judgments.
▲ Parietal Lobes: portion of the cerebral cortex lying at the top of the head and
toward the rear; receives sensory input for touch and body position.
▲ Occipital lobes: portion of the cerebral cortex lying at the back of the head;
includes areas that receive information from the visual fields.
• Reversing direction and moving forward, just above your ears you find the temporal
lobes.
▲ Temporal lobes: portion of the cerebral cortex lying roughly above
the ears; includes the auditory areas, each receiving information primarily from the opposite ear.
Functions of the Cortex:
• Motor Functions:
• Mild electrical stimulation to parts of an animal’s cortex made parts of its
body move. (Fritsch and Hitzig).
• Stimulating parts of this region in the left or right hemisphere caused
movements of specific body parts on the opposite side of the body.
• They discovered what is now called the motor cortex.
• Motor Cortex: an area at the rear of the frontal lobes that controls voluntary
movements.
• Body areas requiring precise control, such as the fingers and mouth, require
the greatest amount if cortical space.
• Sensory Functions:
• The sensory cortex is an area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers
and processes body touch and movement sensations.
• The more sensitive the body region, the larger the sensory cortex area
devoted to it.
• Association Areas:
• Areas of the cerebral cortex that are not involved in primary motor or sensory
functions; rather, they are involved in higher mental functions such as learning, remembering, thinking, and speaking.
• Electronically probing an association area won’t trigger and observable
response. So, these functions cannot be neatly mapped.
• Association areas are not dormant. Rather, these areas interpret, integrate,
and act on sensory information and link it with stored memories.
• Association areas are found in all four lobes.
• In the frontal lobes , they enable judgment, planning, and processing of new
memories. Frontal lobe damage can alter personality and remove a person’s inhibitions.
• In parietal lobes, mathematical and spatial reasoning are enabled.
• Another association area, on the underside of the right temporal lobe, enables
us to recognize faces.
The Brain’s Plasticity
• Plasticity: the brain’s ability to change, especially during childhood, by reorganizing
after damage or by building new pathways based on experience.
• The brain has the ability to modify itself after damage.
• Some of the effects of brain damage can be traced to two hard facts:
1. Severed neurons, unlike cut skin, usually do not regenerate. (If your spinal cord
were severed, you would probably be permanently paralyzed).
2. Some brain functions seem pre-assigned to specific areas.
• Some neural tissue can reorganize in response to damage. Our brains are constantly
changing, building new pathways as it adjusts to little mishaps and new experiences.
• Plasticity may also occur after serious damage, especially in young children.
• Constraint-induced therapy aims to rewire brains and improve the dexterity of a brain-
damaged child or even an adult stroke victim.
• Although the brain often attempts self-repair by reorganizing existing tissue, it sometimes
attempts to mend itself by producing new brain cells. This process is known as neurogenesis. This has been found in adult mice, birds, monkeys, and humans.
Our Divided Brain
• Our brain’s look-alike left and right hemispheres serve differing functions. This
lateralization is apparent after brain damage.
• Accidents, strokes, and tumors in the left hemisphere can impair reading, writing,
speaking, arithmetic reasoning, and understanding. Similar lesions in the right hemisphere seldom have such dramatic effects.
• Splitting the brain:
• In 1961, Vogel and Bogen speculated that major epileptic seizures were
caused by an amplification of abnormal brain activity bouncing back and forth between the two cerebral hemispheres. They wondered if they could put an end to this by severing the corpus callosum.
▲ Corpus callosum: the large brand of neural fibers connecting the two
brain hemispheres and carrying messages between them
• The seizures all but disappeared. The patients with these split brains
where surprisingly normal, their personality and intellect hardly affected.
▲ Split brain: a condition resulting from surgery that isolates the brain’s
two hemispheres by cutting the fibers (mainly those of the corpus callosum) connecting them.
• Information from the left half of your field of vision goes to your right
hemisphere, which usually controls speech.
• Data received by either hemisphere are quickly transmitted to the other
across the corpus callosum. In a person with a severed corpus callosum, this information sharing does not take place.
• Right-Left Differences in the Intact Brain
• When a person performs a perceptual task, brain waves, blood flow and
glucose consumption reveal increased activity in the right hemisphere.
• When the person speaks or calculates, activity increases in the left
hemisphere.
• To the brain, language is language, whether spoken or signed. Just as hearing
people usually use the left hemisphere to process speech, deaf people use the left hemisphere to process sign language.
• Although the left hemisphere is adept at making quick, literal interpretations
of language, the right hemisphere:
▲ Excels in making inferences
▲ Helps us modulate our speech to make meaning clear.
▲ Helps orchestrate our sense of self.
• Our genetic predispositions –our genetically influenced traits- help explain both our
shared human nature and our human diversity.
Twin and Adoption Studies
• Identical Vs. Fraternal Twins
▲ Identical
• Identical twins develop from a single (monozygotic) fertilized egg that splits
in two, thus are genetically identical.
• Although identical twins have the same genes, they don’t always have the
same number of copies of these genes. (Explaining why one twin might be more at risk for a certain illness).
• Most identical twins share a placenta during prenatal development, but one
of every 3 sets has 2 separate placentas. One placenta may have better nourishment, contributing to differences.
▲ Fraternal
• Develop from separate (dizygotic) fertilized eggs. They share a fetal
environment, but are genetically no more similar that ordinary brothers and sisters.
• Shares genes can translate into shared experiences. A person whose identical twin has
Alzheimer’s disease has a 60 % risk of getting the disease; if the affected twin is fraternal, the risk is 30%.
• Identical twins are much more similar than fraternal twins.
• McGue and Lykken noted that if you have a fraternal twin who has divorced, the odds of
your divorcing are 1.6 times greater than if you have a non-divorced twin. If your identical twin is divorced, the odds are now 5.5 times greater.
• Identical twins, more than fraternal twins, also report being treated alike.
• In explaining individual differences, genes matter.
• Biological Versus Adoptive Relatives:
• The stunning finding from studies of hundreds of adoptive families is that
people who grow up together, whether biologically related or not, do not much resemble one another in personality.
• In traits such as extraversion and agreeableness, adoptees are more similar to
their biological parents than to their caregiving adoptive parents.
• The environment shared by a family’s children has virtually no discernable
impact on their personalities.
• Most adopted children thrive, especially when adopted as infants (child
neglect and abuse and even divorce are rareadoptive parents are carefully screened).
• Regardless of personality differences between parents and their adoptees,
most children benefit from adoption.
Temperament and Heredity
• Temperament: a person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
• Heredity predisposes one quickly apparent aspect of personality- temperament, or
emotional excitability.
• From their first weeks of life, some infants are reactive, intense, and fidgety. Others are
easygoing, quiet, and placid.
• Difficult babies are more irritable, intense and unpredictable. Easy babies are cheerful,
relaxed, and predictable in sleeping and eating. Slow-to-warm-up infants tend to resist or withdraw from new people and situations (Chess and Thomas).
• Temperament differences typically persist. Consider:
▲ The most emotionally reactive newborns tend to also be the most reactive 9-
month olds.
▲ Exceptionally inhibited and fearful 2 year olds are still relatively shy as 8 year
olds; about half will become introverted adolescents.
▲ The most emotionally intense preschoolers tend to be relatively intense young
adults.
• The genetic effect appears in physiological differences. Anxious, inhibited infants have
high and variable heart rates and a reactive nervous system. One form of a gene that regulate the neurotransmitter serotonin predisposes a fearful temperament and, in combination with unsupportive caregiving, and inhibited child.
Molecular Genetics
• The subfield of biology that studies the molecular structure and function of genes. Seeks
to identify specific genes influencing behavior.
• Given that genes are typically not solo players, a goal of molecular behavior genetics is
to find some of the many genes that together orchestrate traits such as body weight, sexual orientation, and extraversion.
• Prenatal screening poses ethical dilemmas. In China and India, testing for an offspring’s
sex has enabled selective abortions.
Heritability
• The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The
heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.
• Using twin and adoption studies, behavior geneticists can mathematically estimate the
heritability of a trait.
• If the heritability of intelligence is 50%, meaning the genetic influence explains 50% of
the observed variation among people.
• We can never say what percentage of an individuals personality or intelligence is
inherited. Heritability refers to the extent to which differences among people are attributable to genes.
Gene-Environment Interaction
• Genes are self-regulating; rather than acting as blue prints that lead to the same results no
matter the context, genes react.
• People with identical genes but differing experiences will have similar but not identical
minds.
• Genes and experience are both important- they interact. Environments trigger gene
activity.
• Our genetically influenced traits evoke significant responses in others.
• Genes can either be active (expressed) or inactive.
• A new field called epigenetics is studying the molecular mechanisms by which
environments trigger genetic expression.
▲ Epigenetics: the study of influences on gene expression that occur without
DNA change.
• Culture: The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group
of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
• Human nature seemed designed for culture. We are social animals and culture provides
a good way of being social.
• Capacity for culture is similar across the world.
• Culture transmits the customs and beliefs that enable us to communicate, to exchange
money for things, to play, to eat, and to drive with agreed-upon rules and without crashing into each other.
• Variation Across Cultures:
• Human nature manifests human diversity. We see our adaptability in cultural
variations among our beliefs and values.
• Face to face with a different culture, we become aware of the cultural winds.
• Humans in varied cultures share some basic moral ideas – even before they
can walk, babies display a moral sense by showing disapproval of what’s wrong or naughty.
• Each cultural group evolves its own norms- rules for accepted and expected
behavior.
• When cultures collide, their differing norms befuddle.
• When we don’t understand what’s expected or accepted, we may experience
culture shock.
• Variation Over Time:
• Cultures vary and compete for resources, and thus evolve over time.
• Minority groups enjoy expanded human rights, today’s women marry for
love and less often endure abusive relationships.
• However, today we live in a culture with more divorce and depression.
• Culture and the Self
• Individualism: giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and
defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.
• Individualists share the human need to belong- they join groups. But they
easily move in and out of social groups.
• Collectivism: giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s
extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly.
• Value Contrasts Between Individualism and Collectivism
Concept: Individualism Collectivism
Self Independent (identity from individual traits)
Interdependent (identity from belonging)
Life task Discover and express one’s uniqueness
Maintain connections, fit in, perform role
What matters Me- personal achievement and fulfillment; rights and liberties; self-esteem
Us- group goals and solidarity; social responsibilities and relationships; family duty
Coping method Change reality. Accommodate to reality
Morality Defined by individuals (self- based)
Defined by social networks (duty-based)
Relationships Many, often temporary or casual; confrontation acceptable
Few, close and enduring; harmony valued
Attributing Behavior Behavior reflects one’s personality and attitudes
Behavior reflects social norms and roles
• Individualism benefits can come at the cost of more loneliness, higher
divorce and homicide rates, and more stress-related disease.
Gender Development
• Gender: In psychology, the biologically and socially influenced characteristics by which
people define male and female.
• Gender Differences and Similarities
• Among your 46 chromosomes, 45 are unisex.
• Although men tend to feel better about their appearance and women about
their behavior and ethics, there is little gender difference in overall self- esteem scores.
• The average woman enters puberty two years sooner, lives 5 years longer,
carries 70% more fat, has 40% less muscle, and is 5 inches shorter.
• Women can become sexually re-aroused immediately after orgasm.
• In surveys, men admit more to aggression than do women.
• The male to female arrest ratio for murder is 9 to 1 in the US and 8 to 1 in
Canada.
• In most societies men are socially dominant, leadership tends to go to males.
• Small boys typically play in large groups with an activity focus and little
intimate discussion. Girls usually play in smaller groups, often with one friend. Females are more open and responsive to feedback than males.
• Females are more interdependent than males.
• The Nature of Gender; Our Biology
• Gender differences may be influenced genetically, by our differing sex
chromosomes and physiologically from our differing concentrations of sex hormones.
• From your mother, you receive an X Chromosome.
• From your father, you receive either another X chromosome, making you a
girl, or a Y chromosome , making you a boy.
▲ X Chromosome: the sex chromosome found in both men and women.
Females have two, males have one.
▲ Y Chromosome: The sex chromosome found only in males.
▲ Testosterone: the most important of the male sex hormones; both males
and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty.
• The Y chromosome includes a single gene that throws a master switch
triggering the testes to develop and produce testosterone.
• Parts of the frontal lobes, an area involved in verbal fluency, are reportedly
thicker in women. Part of the parietal cortex, a key area for space perception, is thicker in en.
• Brain Maturation and Infant Memory:
• Our earliest memories seldom predate our third birthday.
• Other studies confirm that the average age of earliest conscious memory is
3.5 years.
• As children mature, from 4 to 6 to 8 years, childhood amnesia is giving way,
and they become increasingly capable of remembering experiences, even for a year or more.
• The brain areas underlying memory, such as the hippocampus and frontal
lobes, continue to mature into adolescence.
• Although we consciously recall little from before age 4, our brain was
processing and storing information during those early years.
• Traces of forgotten childhood languages may persist.
• What the conscious mind does not know and cannot express in words, the
nervous system somehow remembers
Cognitive Development.
• Cognition refers to all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing,
remembering, and communicating.
• Piaget’s studies led him to believe that a child’s mind develops through a series of stages,
in an upward march from the newborn’s simple reflexes to the adult’s abstract reasoning power.
• Piaget’s core idea is that the driving force behind out intellectual progression is an
unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences.
• To this end, the maturing brain builds schemas, a concept or framework that organizes
and interprets information.
• By adulthood, we have built countless schemas.
• To explain how we adjust our schemas, Piaget proposed to more concepts: first, we
assimilate new experiences- we interpret our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas. We also have to accommodate our schemas by adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
• Piaget’s 5 Stages of Development:
1. Sensorimotor Stage
• The stage from birth to about 2 years of age during which infants know the
world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.
• Very young babies seem to live in the present: out of sight, out of mind.
Young infants lack object permanence.
• Object permanence: the awareness that things continue to exist even when
not perceived.
• By 8 months, infants began exhibiting memory for things no longer seen.
2. Preoperational Stage
• The stage from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age, during which a child learns to
use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
• Before age 6, children lack the concept of conservation: the principle that
quantity remains the same despite changes in shape.
▲ Egocentrism: in Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking
another’s point of view.
▲ Theory of mind: people’s ideas about their own and other’s mental states-
about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.
3. Concrete Operational Stage
• The stage of cognitive development from ages 6 or 7 to 11 years of age
during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
• Piaget believed that during the concrete operational stage, children become
able to comprehend mathematical transformations and conservation.
4. Formal Operational Stage
• The stage of cognitive development, usually around age 12, during which
people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
Social Development
• From birth, babies in all cultures are social creatures, developing an intense bond with
their caregivers.
• At about 8 months, soon after object permanence emerges and children become mobile,
a curious thing happens: they develop stranger anxiety.
• Stranger anxiety: the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about
8 months of age.
• The brain, the mind, and social-emotional behavior develop together.
• Origins of Attachment
• No social behavior is more striking than the intense and mutual infant-parent
bond.
• This attachment bond is a powerful survival impulse that keeps infants close
to their caregivers.
• Infants become attached to those who are comfortable and familiar.
• Contact is one key to attachment. Another is familiarity.
• In many animals, attachments based on familiarity form during a critical
period – an optimal period when certain events must take place to facilitate proper development.
• Imprinting: the process by which certain animals form attachments during a
critical period very early in life.
• Attachment Differences
• Sensitive, responsive mothers- those who noticed what their babies were
doing and responded appropriately- had infants who exhibited secure attachment.
• Insensitive, unresponsive mothers often had infants who were insecurely
attached.
• Some babies are born difficult- irritable, intense and unpredictable.
