Psychology

• Publisher: QuickStudy Reference Guides
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781423212331
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Best-selling reference for 20 years covering the essentials of psychology streamlined in our QuickStudy outline format to support students in their core college psych courses and beyond. In six laminated pages this succinct coverage is filled with the answers you need-to-know for studying and testing, while offering a big picture overview of the subject as a whole. With such a large mass of details to be processed as a student, stepping back to see a roadmap of the subject created by a professor is like having the professor's notes for the course in-hand, easy to read anywhere, and practically indestructible. At a cost lower than any study tool you can buy, this 20 year proven grade boosting reference is a must have.
6 page laminated guide includes:

• Learning
• Biological basis of psychology
• Stress & health
• Sensation & perception
• Memory
• Language, thinking, intelligence & creativity
• Development
• Social psychology
• Gender & sexuality
• Motivation & emotion
• Personality
• Consciousness
• Abnormal behavior
• Treatment & therapy
• Applied psychology
  

LANGUAGE, THINKING, INTELLIGENCE & CREATIVITY

• Language
  1. Language is the rule-governed system of symbols and sounds used to represent and communicate information
  2. Understanding language
     1. Phonology: Knowledge of speech sounds
     2. Semantics: Knowledge of word meanings
     3. Syntax: Knowledge of grammatical structure
        1. Deep structure: Underlying structure of grammatical conventions peculiar to a language
        2. Surface structure: Organization of words
     4. Psycholinguistics: The study of the cognitive and neurological processes that make the acquisition and use of language possible
  3. Acquiring language
     1. Rules and strategies are innate
        1. Basic timing and sequence of language developmental stages are similar across cultures
        2. Overgeneralization: The process by which children learn the rules of their native language and how to apply them, often resulting in ungrammatical constructions (e.g., if a word ending in -ed means “past,” then children may use that rule to make sentences such as “I sitted in the chair” or “I goed to Sally’s house”)
     2. The particular language one acquires is based on one’s experience
• Thinking
  1. Thinking is using concepts to apply past experiences to present thoughts
     1. Concept: A mental grouping of a set of objects or events on the basis of important common features
        1. Concepts must be learned through definition or example
        2. Concepts aid in predicting and interpreting events and organizing experiences
  2. Problem solving: The process by which a set of information is used to achieve a goal; after the problem is defined, strategies to solve it include:
     1. Using algorithms, or systematic methods guaranteed to produce a solution
     2. Using heuristics, or rules that may or may not produce a solution (i.e., simplification or reasoning by analogy)
     3. Using insight, which is the sudden understanding of a solution
• Intelligence
  1. Intelligence is the capacity to acquire and use knowledge
  2. Measuring intelligence is primarily done with IQ tests (Binet), which determine mental age relative to an individual’s chronological age
     1. Average score is 100; scores describe a bell-shaped (normal) distribution
     2. IQ (intelligence quotient) is computed by dividing a person’s mental age (MA) by his/her chronological age (CA) and multiplying by 100 (i.e., IQ = [MA/CA] × 100)
     3. Wechsler scales: Tests include verbal, mathematical, and nonverbal thinking skills
  3. Intelligence test issues
     1. Can be predictors of school success, GPA, and income potential
     2. Standardized IQ tests may not be entirely valid for testing populations whose cultural experience is different from mainstream U.S. culture (e.g., referencing “innings” in a baseball game may be unfamiliar to a child from a culture where baseball is not a popular sport)
  4. Nature of intelligence: There may be more than one type of intelligence; for instance, aptitude or talents in music, art, emotional skills, or social skills have been suggested as alternate forms of intelligence
  5. Environmental influence
     1. IQ is highly heritable; studies have revealed a 50%– 80% genetic component to IQ; consequently, the general conclusion seems to be that heredity has a substantial effect on IQ scores, with at least half the observed variation in IQ scores attributable to genetic differences
     2. Experience may modulate the range of intelligence development within a genetically predispositioned range
     3. Like an individual’s height, intelligence appears to be genetically predisposed (i.e., an individual’s height is mostly determined by the genetics of the individual’s parents, but the degree to which the individual realizes this potential is mediated by environmental factors)
  6. Extremes in intelligence
     1. Intellectually challenged: IQ below 70
        1. Biological factors include Down syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome
        2. Psychosocial factors include challenges due to the effects of disease, malnutrition, or lack of intellectual stimulation
     2. Intellectually gifted: Highly skilled in one or more intellectual domains
• Creativity
  1. Popular theories posit that creativity is:
     1. The production of something new from no previous foundation
     2. The novel (re)combination of previous concepts
     3. The contributing process for explaining how new concepts are developed
     4. A process that is fundamentally irreducible to scientific operationally defined procedures, as it is nonrational, intuitive, and mystical (a Romantic view)
  2. Modern scientific views of creativity
     1. The process of the emergence of novel ideas is nonrandom and may be studied using scientific methods and procedures; thus the creative process can be analyzed, investigated, and understood in mechanistic terms
     2. Even when new ideas seem to appear suddenly in a flash of insight, there will be a long chain of analyzable precursors
     3. Once the creative process is adequately understood, it can be taught; in effect, people could learn to be more creative
  3. Prominent theories of creativity
     1. Conceptual spaces theory (Boden)
        1. Creativity consists of the mapping and investigation of well-ordered conceptual spaces with determinate dimensional properties
        2. Occasionally, creative concepts emerge from the analysis of conceptual space
        3. Significantly creative concepts occasionally alter and profoundly affect conceptual spaces
        4. Includes two types of creativity:
           1. Psychological creativity: The production of a new idea that the individual never had before (although others may have)
           2. Historical creativity: The production of a new idea that no one else previously conceived
     2. Exploration and exploitation (March)
        1. Exploration: The process of researching, discovering, and producing new ideas
        2. Exploitation: The process of applying organizational principles to new ideas, thus refining and modifying them
     3. Tacit knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi)
        1. Formal knowledge is transformed by the process of education and thereby undergoes fundamental transformative changes, becoming tacit (informal) knowledge
        2. Utilizing metaphors, analogies, and insights may explain how new ideas and innovations are produced
        3. Tacit knowledge allows one to assess the potential usefulness of new ideas
     4. Flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi)
        1. Flow is a peak experience in which individuals are so immersed in concentrating on an activity that they become oblivious to surroundings, time, or circumstances
        2. Flow represents a state common to artistic creativity
        3. To experience flow, individuals typically need to be performing at the limit of their competence and extending their capabilities
     5. Productive thinking (Wertheimer)
        1. “What occurs when, now and then, thinking really works productively? What happens when, now and then, thinking forges ahead? What is really going on in such a process?”
        2. Productive thought is characterized by its adaptation to the situation it is applied to; it is the distillation of order and structure from chaos and apparent disorder
        3. Productive thought sees the interrelationship of developments in a structure that previously appeared discordant and unconnected, a process that involves deriving a crystallization of sense and order from confusion...