Psychology
By Lea Gonzalez
Infancy and Childhood
Many infants are born with reflexes such as the grasping reflex. The grasping reflex: when an object is placed in the infant's hand and is stroked in their palm, the fingers will close and they will grasp it. It can appear as early as 16 weeks and if it persists beyond 2-4 months, it delays or affects functions like grasping a rattle, releasing objects from hand and also hand manipulation skills.
Adolescence
Puberty is the end of childhood and beginning of sexual maturation. Adolescents experience changes in and outside of their bodies such as growth spurts and the menstruation cycle (for girls).
Body and Behavior
The brain and the spinal cord make up the central nervous system.
Altered States of Consciousness
Transcendental meditation involves the mental repetition of a mantra. You meditate twice a day, with your eyes closed, for 15-20 minutes.
Sensation and Perception
Perception: organization of sensory information in meaningful experiences.
Learning
Classical conditioning was made famous by Ivan Pavlov and his experiments conducted with dogs.
Memory
Confabulation is defined as the spontaneous production of false memories: either memories for events which never occurred, or memories of actual events which are displaced in space or time. These memories may be elaborate and detailed. Some may be obviously bizarre, as a memory of a ride in an alien spaceship; others are quite mundane, as a memory of having eggs for breakfast, so that only a close family member can confirm that the memory is in fact false.
Thinking
Prototype: a first, typical or preliminary model of something, especially a machine, from which other forms are developed or copied.
Personality
Sigmund Freud believed that every personality has an unconscious component and that childhood experiences, even if not consciously recalled, continue to influence people's behaviors.
The id, ego, and superego explain how the mind functions and how instinctual energies are regulated
Disorders
- Depression is a condition that affects 1 in 10 Americans.
- Over 80% of patients that have symptoms of clinical depression are not receiving any specific treatment for their depression
Therapy
Psychoanalysis is the analysis of the conscious and unconscious mind based on the theories of Sigmund Freud.