Contemporary Psychology Flashcards
A) What does biopsychology focus on?
B) What is neuroscience?
A) Immediate causes of behaviour based on physiology, relations between nervous system and brain/behaviour
B) interdisciplinary approach (e.g. chemists involved in research) where biopsychology is a component
A) What does evolutionary psychology focus on?
B) What are two problems with it?
A) Long-term (ultimate) biological causes of behaviour, adaptation, how social surroundings impact genetics that impact behaviour
B) It is hard to prove behaviours are genetic and not entirely cultural
We have limited understanding of social conditions far back in human history
What does sensation and perception study?
Studies physiological and psychological aspects of sensory systems, sensory information remains same but perception can dramatically vary based on person
A) What is cognitive psychology?
B) What is information processing model?
A) Focuses on cognitions (mental processes) and their relation to our experiences and actions (studies problem solving, language, memory, etc.
B) Used to understand flow of information, input to process to output
A) What is developmental psychology?
B) Terms for changes in neural functioning by age?
C) What did Jean Piaget demonstrate?
A) Scientific study of development in processes across a lifespan: changes in cognitive skills, moral reasoning, social behaviour, etc.
B) Neural blooming during childhood/blooming, neural decline during aging (but people use brain more efficiently)
C) Jean Piaget demonstrated very young children do not demonstrate object permanence (put a block behind a curtain, infant will act as if it no longer exists)
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What is personality psychology? What is the recent approach to it?
Focuses on patterns of thoughts and behaviours unique to each individual. Recently takes a more quantitative approach, focusing on identifying traits, measuring them, and determining how these traits interact to determine how one person will behave
What is the Five Factor Model (related to personality psychology)?
Five Factor model has been proposed as sufficient way to capture variations in personality, includes dimensions of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion
What did Freud believe formed personality?
Freud proposed personality arose as conflicts between conscious and unconscious parts of mind carried out, specifically surrounding the sexual-pleasure producing zones
A) What is Social Psychology?
B) What is example of social psychology?
A) Focuses on how we interact and relate to others
B) How perceived presence of others influences us (e.g. bystander effect
What are 5 applied areas of psychology?
Industrial-organizational psychology, health psychology, sport and exercise psychology, clinical psychology, and forensic psychology
Define clinical psychology. What are four things that influenced it. What are the three main types of clinical psychology?
Focuses on diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and other problematic patterns of behaviour. Influenced by Freud, Roger’s client-centered therapy, behaviourism, and cognitive revolution.
Psychoanalysis, humanistic, cognitive-behavioural approach
