Chapter 2

William Wundt - set up first psychology laboratory in Leipzig,

Germany
Structuralists - believed that consciousness is made up of basic
elements that were combined in different ways to
produce different perceptions, like hydrogen and
oxygen form water
Introspection - technique favored by structuralists for examining
mental experience, involved reporting on one's
own thoughts and feelings
Edward Titchner - set up the first psych lab in the US
Functionalists - interested in how experiences were adaptive or
functional for people, believed that consciousness
and behavior in general help people and animals
adjust to their environments
William James - famous functionalist
biological approach - focus on how physiological and biochemical
processes might produce psychological
phenomena
psychodynamic approach - thoughts, feelings, and behaviors stem
from innate drives and society's restriction
on the expression of those drives...later
psychodynamic theorists focused on
attachment and interpersonal connection
as the primary drive instead of Freud's
belief that the primary drives were sex
and aggression
behaviorist approach - explains behavior in learned responses to
predictable patterns of environmental stimuli
(Pavlov): classical conditioning, (Skinner):
operant conditioning
cognitive approach - focus on behavior in terms of expectations,
feelings, and thoughts
humanistic approach - people motivated by desire for optimal
growth and development (i.e. self-actualization)
see people as basically good

experiments - where researchers establish the cause and effect of

at least two variables
independent variable - the "cause" always involves treating the
subjects in at least two different ways
experimental group - exposed to what the "cause" is
control group - not exposed to the "cause"
dependent variable - represents the "effect"
blind study - subject doesn't know if he is receiving the real drug
or placebo
correlational studies - involves assessing the relationship between
two variables
naturalistic observation - behavior studied in real life settings
inter-judge, inter-rater, inter-observer reliability - the measure of
agreement between observers
Chapter 3
behavioral neuroscience - concerned with how the parts of the
body communicate with each other and how behavior
is influenced by it
nervous system - organization of neurons, neurotransmitters and
brain structures that serves as the framework for
moving information thru out the body
sense receptors - parts of the body that detect light, heat or touch
and pass that stimuli info to the brain thereby
triggering behavioral responses
neurons - nerve cells
sensory (afferent) neurons - info from body transmitted to brain
and spine
motor (efferent) neurons - send info from brain to body senses,
organs
interneurons (association neurons) - neurons that communicate
with other neurons
neurons consist of:
cell body - contains structures that keep cell alive and functioning
dendrites - short bushy fibers that take info from outside the cell
axons - relatively long fibers that pass info to other nerve cells to
glands and muscles

myelin sheath - fatty tissue surrounding axon and accelerates

transmission of info
action potential - electrical impulse traveling down axon
ions - electrically charged atoms
resting potential - when axon's membrane won't let positive ions
into the cell unless receives info from dendrites
...inside cell has negative ions
refractory period - neuron pumps out sodium ions and then can
fire again
neurotransmitters - chemical molecules contained in vesicles or
sacs within the axon terminal (knob-like end of axon)
...when action potential arrives at the terminal
neurotransmitters are released into the synaptic cleft...
they bind to receptor site on the axon's
dendrites
enzymatic degradation - neurotransmitter breaking down
agonist - drugs that mimic a neurotransmitter or inhibit its
reuptake
antagonists - drugs block neurotransmitter receptor sites
neural networks - groups of neurons with similar functions
Parts of Brain:
brain stem - brain's oldest region, begins where spinal cord
ends...controls breathing and heart beat
thalamus - sits on top of brainstem... receives info on touch, taste,
sight, hearing (but not smell)
reticular formation - runs through brainstem and thalamus and
controls arousal and sleep, but also filters
incoming stimuli and sends incoming info to
parts of brain
cerebellum - at rear base of brain stem ...coordinates voluntary
movement
limbic system - sits between older parts of brain and more
advanced cerebral cortex comprises several structures
hippocampus - processes memory
amygdala - influence fear and anger
hypothalamus - influence hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior and

pituitary gland
pituitary gland - master gland that controls hormones from other
glands
hormones - chemicals messengers that are produced in one kind
of tissue, travel in bloodstream and
affect the functions of another tissue including brain
endocrine system - system with glands and the hormones they
produce
cerebral cortex - outer covering of brain...involved in motor,
cognitive, and sensory processes...has two
hemispheres and four regions (lobes)
frontal lobe - just behind forehead...coordinates movement,
involved in higher level thinking like planning or
predicting the consequences of behaviors
Broca's area - in frontal lobe, if damaged person can understand
speech but can only speak slowly
Wernicke's area - in frontal lobe, if damaged can speak but will
speak in nonsensical ways
parietal lobes - at top of head, behind frontal lobes...involved in
sense of touch...allow us to keep tabs of where
our hands and feet are
temporal lobes - involved in hearing
occipital lobes - at base of skull, involved in vision
Chapter 4
sensation - transforming energy from stimuli outside us into
neural energy for perception
perception - mentally creating an image of the outside world
psychophysics - area of psychology that addresses the topic of
sensation
feature detectors - neuron that might respond to a line tilted at a
certain angle
perceptual sets - predispositions to perceive one thing and not
another
bottom up - information processing that is from simple sensory
receptors to more complex neural
networks
top down - from expectations and motives down to raw sensory

data