Introduction to

Psychology
 LEARNINGS

CHAPTER 4. What is Consciousness?

Consciousness is expanded upon living the body. The

colors and sounds are more vivid. The purpose of our
soul's journey becomes more clear, our spiritual
nature is manifest, and in those moments we
undertsand we are immortal beings of wisdom,
infinite love and compassion. According to the book
“consciousness is sensory awareness of the
environment.” Sensory awareness is being aware
of our senses, we have 5th senses, first sense sense
of sight to be able us to see, next is sense of
hearing to allow us to hear, next is sense of smell
to be able us to smell things, next is sense of taste it
allow us to taste or to know like the sweet or salt in
foods. Selective attention is the ability to focus on a
particular task while ignoring distractions and other
surrounding factors. Like for example you are
reviewing to keep you in reviewing you must pay
more attention in in your review than holding your
phone or any other stuff that makes your attention
away. People with high selective attention do not get
easily distracted. Direct inner awareness is like
imagining of what we could be, it’s being escaping
of what is the reality like for example you imagine
that you are inlove you’ve been dating with a guy
or a girl, you are in a relationship and you are
both happy. Although this image may be vivid,
you did not see it literaly. Neither any of your
senses were involved. You were conscious of the
image through direct inner awareness.
Preconscious is being aware of something or aware
of being what is happening in your surroundings
like for example they asked you what did you eat
dinner last night, you can answer them what bits
of information by directing your attention on them.
Unconscious is a state of being not aware of
something, not intended or planed, not consciously
done. According to freud he believed that some
painful memories and sexual and aggressive
impulses are unacceptable to us, so we automaticaly
eject them from awareness. Who caused global
warming? It was unconscious or unaware actions of
millions of people in the years gone by. Now that we
know about it, we need to fix it. If not, it will be
conscious action and will carry a much bigger
burden on us all. Reprrssion occurs when a thought,
memory, or feeling is too painful for an individual, so
the person unconsiously pushes the information out
of consciousness and becomes unaware of its
existence. While suppression can be mistaken
someimes repression. Unlike repression,
suppression is when a person consiously forces
unwanted thoughts, memories, or feelings out of
conscious awareness. Example of repression is a
child suffers abuse by his parents, he represses the
memories and becomes completely unaware of
them as a young adult. The repressed memories of
his past abused by his parents may still affect this
person’s by causing difficulty in forming
relationship. Nonconscious is being aware of one’s
own existence or in your surrounding, you know
that they exist but you don’t know where they come
from or how they grow like for example we can see
that our hair is growing but we don’t know how it
actually the process of they’re growth. Sleep is our
important part of our daily routine, it is essential
survival as food and water. Without sleep you can’t
form maintain pathways of our brain that let you
learn and create new memories, and it’s harder to
concentrate and respond quickly. Dreams are
stories and images that our minds create while we
sleep. Sometimes we may not remember our
dreams. Circardian rhythms direct a wide variety
of functions from daily flucuations in wakefulness to
body temperature, metabolism, and the release of
hormones. They control your timing of sleep and
cause you to be sleepy at night and your tendency
to wake in the morning without an alarm. Usually
sleepers pass through five stages, 1, 2, 3, 4 and
REM sleep or rapid eye movement, stages 1 is light
sleep where you drift in and out of sleep and can be
awakened easily. In this stage, the eye move
slowly and muscle activity slows. During this stage,
many people experience sudden muscle
contractions preceded by a sensation of falling.
Staage 2 is eye movement stops and brain waves
become slower with only an occasional burst of
rapid brain waves. The body begins to prepare for
deep sleeps, as the body temperature begins to
drop and the heart rates slows. In stage 3 extremly
slow brain waves called delta waves are
interspersed with smaller, faster waves. This is
deep sleep. It is during this stage that a person
may experience sleepwalking, night terrors, talking
during one’s sleep, and bedwitting. These behaviors
are known as parasomnians and tend to occur
during the transitions between non-REM and REM
sleep, when a person enters stage 4, deep sleep
continous as the brain produces delta waves almost
exclusively. People roused from disoriented for a few
minutes. During REM sleep or rapid eye movement
sleep, brain waves mimic activity during the waking
state. The eyes remain closed but move rapidly from
side to side, perhaps related to the intense dream
and brain activity that occurs during this stage.
Sleep disorders are a group of conditions that affect
the ability to sleep well on a regular basis. Whether
they are caused by a health problem or by too much
stress, Most people occasionally experience sleeping
problems due to stress, hectic schedules, and other
outside influences. However, when these issues
begin to occur on a regular basis and interfere with
daily life, they may indicate a sleeping disorder.
Depending on the type of sleep disorder, people may
have a difficult time falling asleep and may feel
extremely tired throughout the day. The lack of sleep
can have a negative impact on energy, mood,
concentration, and overall health. Insomia is type of
sleep disorder that having a difficulty to sleep or
falling asleep or stay asleep, tying to get sleep is a
problem you will not get to sleep if you push yourself
to get asleep you need to be relaxed when you are
tired. Nercolepsy is one of the dangerous aand
upsetting sleep disorders because it’s “sleep
attacks”, if makes you feel overwhelmingly tired, and
in severe cases, have sudden uncontrollable sleep
attacks. It is dangerous because you can have
excessive sleepiness or a sleep attack at any time of
the day, in the middle of any activity including
eating, walking or driving. Sleep apnea is a
potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing
repeatedly stops and starts. If you snore loudly and
feel tired even after a full night's sleep, you might
have sleep apnea. Hypnosis can make it seem like
someone is "out of it" or asleep, when in reality their
consciousness is simply altered the same way it
might be if they were zoning out or daydreaming.
Today, hypnosis is recognised by the scientific
community as an effective healing tool, although
how it works is still something of a mystery. It is not
a treatment in its own right, but is used as a part of
medical, psychological and dental treatments.
Meditation can also help us to understand our own
mind. We can learn how to transform our mind from
negative to positive, from disturbed to peaceful,
from unhappy to happy. Overcoming negative minds
and cultivating constructive thoughts is the purpose
of the transforming meditations it can help us to
relaxed our mind, as you relax your body.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a technique for
avoiding distracting thoughts and promoting a state
of relaxed awareness. The late Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi derived TM from the ancient Vedic tradition of
India. According to supporters of TM, when
meditating, the ordinary thinking process is
“transcended.” It’s replaced by a state of pure
consciousness. In this state, the meditator achieves
perfect stillness, rest, stability, order, and a
complete absence of mental boundaries. Mindfulness
meditation is a mental training practice that involves
focusing your mind on your experiences like your
own emotions, thoughts, and sensations in the
present moment. It is simply the act of paying
attention to whatever you are experiencing, as you
experience it, Mindfulness meditation can involve
breathing practice, mental imagery, awareness of
body and mind, and muscle and body relaxation. A
psychoactive substance is any drug or food that
affects mental ability, activity or processes, or mood.
Psychoactive substances range from ordinary
everyday substances and over the counter drugs
such as caffeine, alcohol, chocolate and
antihistamines, to strong illegal drugs such as
heroin. Itcan lift your mood or make you depressed
they can make you feel more awake or lull you into a
stupor. Depressants are psychoactive drugs that
slow down the activity of the central nervous system
the brain and spinal cord, which reduces a person's
alertness, and also slows down functions such as
breathing and heart rate. Stimulants are a class of
psychoactive drug that increase activity in the brain.
These drugs can temporarily elevate alertness, mood
and awareness. Some stimulant drugs are legal and
widely used. Many stimulants can also be addicting.
Stimulants share many commonalities, but each has
unique properties and mechanisms of action.
Substance abuse is when you take drugs that are not
legal. It’s also when you use alcohol, prescription
medicine, and other legal substances too much or in
the wrong way. Substance abuse differs from
addiction. Many people with substance abuse
problems are able to quit or can change their
unhealthy behavior. Addiction, on the other hand, is
a disease. It means you can’t stop using even when
your condition causes you harm. Substance
dependence can be defined as continuing to use a
substance even though negative consequences result
from doing it. Tolerance is a behaviorism teaches
that the more times you do a behavior and receive a
reward; the more likely you are to try it again. Even
if the reward is eventually removed, you will still
continue doing the behavior hoping that the reward
will return. When someone uses alcohol or illegal
drugs, their body is rewarded, they get high. When
the reward begins to diminish, the substance abuser
increases the amount of alcohol or drugs they use to
achieve the same level of reward. Opiates are a
group of drugs known as ‘downers’ derived from the
sticky resin of the opium poppy seedpod. narcotic is
an addictive drug that reduces pain, induces sleep
and may alter mood or behaviour Opioids are a type
of narcotic pain medication. They can have serious
side effects if you don't use them correctly. For
people who have an opioid addiction, their problem
often started with a prescription. Cocaine is a
stimulant drug that speeds up messages sent to and
from your brain. It doesn't mix well with other drugs,
and it's possible to overdose if you take too much.
Nicotine is the addictive substance in tobacco
products. Cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco and
almost all e-cigarettes contain nicotine. People who
use tobacco products quickly become addicted to
nicotine and thus have a very hard time stopping
their use of those products Hallucinogenic drugs,
also known as ‘psychedelics’, are drugs that change
the way a person perceives the world. Hallucinogens
affect all the senses, altering a person's thinking,
sense of time and emotions. They can cause a
person to hallucinate seeing or hearing things that
do not exist or are distorted. Marijuana can cause
problems with memory, learning, and behavior.
Smoking it can cause some of the same coughing
and breathing problems as smoking cigarettes. Some
people get addicted to marijuana after using it for a
while. It is more likely to happen if they use
marijuana every day, or started using it when they
were teenagers.

APPLIED LEARNINGS

CHAPTER 4

Being conscious or aware of our thoughts can do

wonders in our daily life. We will be able to save
ourselves from all the unnecessary thoughts like
hatred, holding grudges against people, thinking ill
about others, backlashing and most importantly
dwelling on the past. If we are totally, fully,
absolutely aware of our thoughts and actions, the
awareness would go into the pre- frontal cortex of
the brain, thus bringing emotional self regulation.
When you use consciousness, you create for yourself
an opportunity to respond differently to your
experience, and to actually create your life with a
greater quotient of ease. Without the engagement of
consciousness, you usually react with the same old
responses, and tend to re-create situations which
you respond to in the same, reactive, victimized
manner. Applying consciousness brings you the
opportunity to allow yourself a different emotional,
mental, physical and spiritual experience. Application
of consciousness is not the same as the application
of understanding or knowingness. Consciousness is a
different energetic vibration than understanding,
knowingness or wisdom. Consciousness can and is
often used within the mind, but it is not restricted to
the mind only.

Many people confuse consciousness with logic. They

tend to believe that consciousness is simply logic
taken to a higher level meaning that you have more
understanding of the why of a particular situation or
experience. That is why many people, when they are
seeking to develop their consciousness, seek to
understand and seek out the answers to the why of
what they do. They seek the answers to the why of
other peoples actions, and the real reasons that lie
behind their experiences, actions and reactions. They
believe that this flow is the flow of consciousness
and they do not understand it is simply a more
sophisticated logic that seeks to feed the
unconscious pattern of i need to know, and if I know
then I am right here, or least I have a very good
reason so I can not be wrong now.
 LEARNINGS

CHAPTER 5. LEARNING

According to behaviorist, a relatively permanent

change in behavior that results from experience and
according to cognitive theorist, the process by which
organisms make relatively permanent changes in the
way they represent the environmentbecause of
experience. The way that we see it chaanges the
influence of our behavior like the generation now
ande before it change a lot of organisms behavior
now compared before because we are influences to
the others. We learn it from the others. Classical
conditioning is a simple learning that we may learn
to associate events with others events it is
automatic learning. For example we are driving on a
road we learn that the red light is for stop and the
green light is for go we learned it by our experiences
in crossing street or riding a car. Reflex is a simple
unlearned response to a stimulus A dog salivation in
a meat powder the unconditioned stimulus is the
meat powder and the unconditioned response is the
salivation of the dog in the meat powder the
unconditioned stimulus is the things that makes the
response of the learner the (ucr) or unconditioned
response is the unlearned response to unconditioned
Stimulus. If you toned a bell and the dog has.no
response or reaction to sound of a bell that’s
orienting reflex an unlearned response which an
organism attends to a stimulus. But if you ring a bell
with meat powder and the dog reacts he salivates
the tone of a bell is became a learned and it’s called
conditioned stimulus and the salivation response of
the dog in tone of a bell is the conditioned response.
Therefore, salivation can be either conditioned
response or unconditioned response, it’s depending
on the method that used to evoke the response.
Imagine you are relaxing after just finishing your
favorite meal, your uncle's homemade macaroni and
cheese, when suddenly you are overwhelmed by a
horrible stomachache. Later, when you have fully
recovered from your illness, you associate the taste
or smell of that favorite meal with the miserable
sickness you recently experienced. What was once
delicious now seems revolting. You never want to eat
your uncle's macaroni and cheese again. Taste
aversion is a learned response to eating spoiled or
toxic food. When taste aversion takes place, you
avoid eating the foods that make you ill. Taste
aversion can be so powerful that sometimes you also
avoid the foods that you associate with an illness,
even if the food did not cause the illness. Extinction
is a process by which cconditioned stinuli lose the
ability to elicit conditioned responses because the
conditioned stimuli are no longer associated with
unconditioned stimuli. Dannie tries to get mom's
attention by dropping her toy on the floor. Her mom
smiles at Dannie, picks up the toy and hands it back
to her. This series of actions reinforces Dannie's
negative behavior because she is getting the
attention that she is seeking. As a result, she will
continue to engage in this type of behavior in order
to receive the positive reinforcement that her mom
provides. To address this problem, Dannie’s mom
should ignore Dannie when she drops the toy; if she
consistently ignores this problem behavior, it is
highly likely that Dannie will reduce engaging in this
behavior as her actions no longer produce the effect
that she is seeking. Spontaneous recovery is the
reemergence of a response that had been previously
conditioned. Example of spontaneous recovery is a
baby learns to stop crying when her mother comes
into the room. Then, even when her mother does
come into the room, she continues to cry.
Eventually, the original response of stopping the
crying when the mother enters the room returns.
Generalization is the tendecy for a conditioned
response to be evoked by stimuli that are similar to
the stimulus to which the response was conditioned.
For example, imagine in school that children are
expected to line up for lunch when they hear the
ding of a bell. However, another similar sounding bell
also rings when the kids are expected to sit in their
desks for reading time. If stimulus generalization
occurs, the children will have trouble determining
which response they are supposed to give. For
example, the kids might all line up for lunch instead
of sitting in their desks when the reading time bell
sounds. Discrimination is a term that is used in both
classical and operant conditioning. In classical
conditioning, it refers to an ability to distinguish
between a conditioned stimulus and other, similar
stimuli that don't signal an unconditioned stimulus.
For example, a monkey can be trained to press a
plastic panel for bits of banana flavored food while
the panel has a red light on it. When the red light
goes off, pressing the panel no longer yields the
food. The monkey soon learns to press only when
the red light appears on the panel. Higher-Order
Conditioning is a type of conditioning emphasized by
Ivan Pavlov. It involves the modification of reaction
to a neutral stimulus associated with a conditioned
stimulus that was formerly neutral. Example is your
grandmother. This person is originally a neutral
stimulus. But over time you learn to like her because
she might give you money or bake a specific desert.
Say she also wears a distinct perfume. You smell the
perfume elsewhere you think of your grandma you
have your conditioned response to feel good ect. Its
like a chain of conditioning. The perfume never was
a conditioned stimulus but you associate it with your
grandma which creates a conditioned response. In
counterconditioning is an organisim learns to
respond to a stimulus in a way that is incompatible
with a response that was conditioned earlier. For
example a child might be given a food treat while the
feared object is gradually moved closer and closer to
the child. At the first sign of fear, the object is be
removed. The procedure is be repeated until the
child no longer shows a fear response. The child then
associates pleasure with the stimulus that previously
evoked fear. Flooding is the process of teaching
patients self-relaxation techniques first and then
exposing them abruptly and directly to the fear-
evoking stimulus itself. While systematic
desensitization is a behavioral technique commonly
used to treat fear, anxiety disorders and phobias.
Using this method, the person is engaged in some
type of relaxation exercise and gradually exposed to
an anxiety-producing stimulus, like an object or
place. Operant Conditioning is the type of learning in
which the organism learns by way of modification in
behaviour or pattern through reinforcement or
punishment. Classical conditioning is a process in
which learning is possible by forming association
between two stimuli. law of effect basically states
that responses that produce a satisfying effect in a
particular situation become more likely to occur
again in that situation, and responses that produce a
discomforting effect become less likely to occur again
in that situation. Reinforcements is to follow a
response witg a stimulus that increases the
frequency of the response. Positive reinforcement is
adding a pleasant stimulus to enhance a behavior
while Negative reinforcement is removing an
aversive stimulus to enhance a behavior. Example of
positive reinforcement A mother gives her daughter
a toy for doing homework. A pleasnt stimulus is a
toy and a desired behavior is doing homework. To
remove the bad smell from her body, Erin takes a
shower Is an example of negative reinforcements the
Aversive Stimulus is the bad smell while the desired
behavior is taking a shower. Primary reinforcement
fulfills a biological need; examples include food,
shelter, water and the like. Giving a dog a treat for
sitting down is an example of primary reinforcement.
While Secondary reinforcement is associated with the
fulfillment of a biological need. For example: If a dog
owner were to give his pet a treat for sitting down,
and the dog began to associate the sound of the bag
opening with the treat, the dog would be responding
to secondary reinforcement. The sound of the bag is
a reminder of the primary reinforce, thus just
hearing the bag open may cause the dog to sit. The
discriminative stimulus is a stimulus in the presence
of which the probability of a particular contingent
consequence for a behavior or class of behaviors is
greater than when it is not present Giving a dog a
treat every time he performs a trick. completion of
Tricks continually re-enforced with reward is a
example of continous reinforcement. Continuous
reinforcement is a type of Schedule of Reinforcement
that regularly affects behavior. In this form of
schedule, every correct response is reinforced every
single time. Partia reinforcement is one of several
reinforcements schedules in which not every correct
response is reinforced. In partial reinforcement, also
referred to as intermittent reinforcement, the person
or animal does not get reinforced every time they
perform the desired behavior. In a fixed interval
schedule of reinforcement the only responses to be
reinforced are those made when a certain time
interval has elapsed since the previous
reinforcement. June undergoes major surgery in a
hospital. During recovery, she is expected to
experience pain and will require prescription
medications for pain relief. June is given an IV drip
with a patient-controlled painkiller. Her doctor sets a
limit: one dose per hour. June pushes a button when
pain becomes difficult, and she receives a dose of
medication. Since the reward pain relief only occurs
on a fixed interval, there is no point in exhibiting the
behavior when it will not be rewarded. With a fixed
ratio reinforcement schedule, there are a set number
of responses that must occur before the behavior is
rewarded. Carla sells glasses at an eyeglass store,
and she earns a commission every time she sells a
pair of glasses. She always tries to sell people more
pairs of glasses, including prescription sunglasses or
a backup pair, so she can increase her commission.
She does not care if the person really needs the
prescription sunglasses, Carla just wants her bonus.
The quality of what Carla sells does not matter
because her commission is not based on quality; it’s
only based on the number of pairs sold. In a variable
ratio reinforcement schedule, the number of
responses needed for a reward varies. This is the
most powerful partial reinforcement schedule.
Shaping relates to the way in which a person is
operantly conditioned to respond. To be shaped a
person engages in a behavior repeatedly. Jill and
Lisa are two close friends who met in college. Since
they live in different cities, they don't get to visit
each other as often as they used to. After Jill gave
birth to her first daughter, Lisa decided to pay her a
visit. Once she arrived in town and picked up a gift
for the new baby, Lisa called Jill to get directions to
her house. Without putting in much effort, Jill was
able to tell Lisa exactly how to get to her house from
the boutique where she bought the gift. Jill did not
have to look at a map or use any other aids to give
directions; it was all done from memory. It’s called
cognitive map, A cognitive map is a mental picture or
image of the layout of one's physical environment.
The contingency theory emphasizes the importance
of both the leader's personality and the situation in
which that leader operates. Observational learning
occurs as a result of witnessing another person, but
is performed later and cannot be explained as having
been taught in any other way. This type of learning
also encompasses the concept of behavior avoidance
as a result of seeing another person behave in a
certain way and receive a negative consequence.
Examples of observational learning is After
witnessing an older sibling being punished for taking
a cookie without asking, the younger child does not
take cookies without permission

APPLIED LEARNINGS

CHAPTER 5

Fragmented attention is one of life’s challenges. You

are trying to have an important conversation and
you get a text. You are running to the store while
simultaneously listening the news, juggling the kids,
driving, and trying to remember a grocery list. You
walk in the woods while chatting on the phone. We
call it multi-tasking, but there's really no such thing.
What we're really doing is rapid task switching. It is
cognitively challenging to juggle multiple things.
Every time we switch, we experience a loss of
efficiency. When writing, for example, research
suggests that it will take me at least four minutes to
get back up to speed if I stop to check a text or e-
mail. It may take me a full half hour to recover my
full. Things may be even worse for children. Careful
time sampling studies of adolescents show that they
are more emotionally labile than adults. But the
reason they are more emotionally labile is not the off
blamed teen hormones. It's that their task demands
are constantly changing. Gym to math to a social
studies debate. Then lunch, science, and after school
volleyball practice. Homework! And all interrupted by
frequent social media updates. They are task
switching machines. It can be particularly hard for
them to settle down and focus for tasks like sleep or
homework that really require it. How can we help
children and teens concentrate when they need to?
Classical condition is an unconscious process by
which unrelated stimuli become paired. This may
seem pretty esoteric, but it can be REALLY useful
when trying to help your kids or yourself to sleep or
settle down for a focused task like homework. It is
also useful if you or your child tends to be anxious
and just needs to be able to calm down quickly. One
of the touchstones of parenting research is the idea
that rituals can help reduce anxiety and increase
security in children. Rituals build expectations and
associations that get us set up for the appropriate
emotional states we need. One foundational element
of those associations is classical conditioning.

LEARNINGS

CHAPTER 6 MEMORY

Explicit memory is that used when you consciously

try to remember something Explicit memories are
easily retrievable. Remembering topics learned in
school yesterday, remembering what you did
yesterday, remembering your aunt’s nick name,
would all be examples of explicit memory. Learning a
new dance step would be an example of implicit
learning because you can’t describe how you learned
it, you can show the outcome of that learning, your
new skill. Episodic memory is the memory of
personal experiences and specific events, including
location, time, and emotions. Learn about episodic
memory through examples, and test your knowledge
with a quiz. Imagine that you are having a
conversation with a friend about the concert that you
attended last week. You tell her the name of the
artist, the time of the concert, the location of the
concert, and how you enjoyed watching the singer
perform her latest hits. The information that you
have recalled to your friend is stored in episodic
memory. Semantic memory is the way we are able
to understand the meanings of different things such
as words as well as knowing facts about the world.
Imagine that you're sitting in your college
psychology class. Your professor asks the class to
define 'psychology.' You raise your hand and tell
your professor that psychology is the scientific study
of the human mind and behavior. Your professor tells
you that you're correct! How did you know the
answer? Maybe you'd read it in a book or studied it
online. You retained the information, waiting for the
moment it might be useful. The definition of
'psychology' is an example of the type of information
stored in semantic memory. Memory which is
improved by previous experiences, without one’s
conscious awareness of this fact. This type of
memory is automatic. People who have amnesia lose
their explicit memory as opposed to this type of
memory. For example, Remembering how to ride a
bicycle is effortless for most people, even after going
years without riding one. Priming is the process by
which perception or experience of an item or person
or event leads to an increase in its accessibility and
the accessibility of related material and behaviors.
Priming is a phenomenon that is enormously
influential in people’s everyday lives, yet people are
typically unaware of its operation and impact. For
example, if you pass a telephone and it reminds you
to call your mother, priming is at work. If middle
aged women make you feel nervous after watching
Desperate Housewives, once again priming can be
blamed. Retrospective memory is simply the ability
to recall past things experienced in the past.
Retrospective memory can be of word meanings,
people, places, objects and procedures that one has
learned over the life span. Some examples of
retrospective memory include the ability to
remember your trip to the beach last year. while
prospective memory concentrates on recalling
information that we were supposed to remember as
well as knowing we are supposed to perform some
sort of action in the future. Examples of prospective
memory include remembering how to keep our
balance, knowing that the car needs to be filled with
fuel every few days and remembering to call a friend
at an appointed time. Memory has the ability to
encode, store and recall information. Memories give
an organism the capability to learn and adapt from
previous experiences as well as build relationships.
Encoding allows the perceived item of use or interest
to be converted into a construct that can be stored
within the brain and recalled later from short term or
long term memory. Working memory stores
information for immediate use or manipulation which
is aided through hooking onto previously archived
items already present in the long-term memory of an
individual. You look at your professor's phone
number on the syllabus because you have a question
about an assignment. As you look at the number,
you are using visual coding. If you say the number
to yourself a couple times as you reach for the
phone, you are coding acoustically as well. You
might notice that the phone number is just one digit
off from an old number your parents used to have
when you were younger, and you think about how
slim the odds are of something like this happening.
The words that you use in your self-talk give
meaning to the number, so you have also used
semantic coding. The groundwork for remembering
your professor's phone number is in place. Storage
consists of retention of information over time. It is
believed that we can gather information in three
main storage areas: sensory memory, short-term
memory, and long-term memory. These areas vary
according to time frames. Retrieval is the process of
recalling stored information from memory. Basically,
it is getting information out of your long-term
memory and returning it to your conscious mind.
Memory is the processes that is used to acquire,
retain, and later retrieve information. The memory
process involves three domains: encoding, storage,
and retrieval. Sensory Memory allows an individual
to remember an input in great detail but for only a
few milliseconds. Iconic Memory sensory input to the
visual system goes into iconic memory, so named
because the mental representations of visual stimuli
are referred to as icons. Iconic memory has a
duration of about 100 ms. One of the times that
iconic memory is noticeable is when we see light
trails. This is the phenomenon when bright lights
move rapidly at night and you perceive them as
forming a trail; this is the image that is represented
in iconic memory. Eidetic imagery high fidelity
image, which may start off as vague, and is a vision
apart from molded or searching awareness having
the original life containing all possibilities and
solutions as well as ordinary reality. Echoic memory
is the branch of sensory memory used by the
auditory system. Echoic memory is capable of
holding a large amount of auditory information, but
only for 3-4 seconds. This echoic sound is replayed
in the mind for this brief amount of time immediately
after the presentation of the auditory stimulus.
Short-term memory is the capacity for holding a
small amount of information in an active, readily
available state for a brief period of time. It is
separate from our long-term memory, where lots of
information is stored for us to recall at a later time.
Unlike sensory memory, it is capable of temporary
storage. How long this storage lasts depends on
conscious effort from the individual; without
rehearsal or active maintenance, the duration of
short-term memory is believed to be on the order of
seconds. Working memory is often used
synonymously with short-term memory, working
memory is related to but actually distinct from short-
term memory. It holds temporary data in the mind
where it can be manipulated. A serial-position effect
is the tendency to recall more accurately the first
and last items in a series. Chunking is a stimulus or
grouo of stimuli that are perceived as a discrete
piece of information. Chunking is the process of
organizing parts of objects into meaningful wholes.
The whole is then remembered as a unit instead of
individual parts. Examples of chunking include
remembering phone numbers a series of individual
numbers separated by dashes or words a series of
individual letters. Long-term memory is used for the
storage of information over long periods of time,
ranging from a few hours to a lifetime. If we want to
remember something tomorrow, we have to
consolidate it into long-term memory today. Long-
term memory is the final, semi-permanent stage of
memory. Schema is a way of mentally representing
the world, such as a belief or an expectation, that
can influence perception or persons, objects and
situations. Flashbulb memory is a detailed and vivid
memory that is stored on one occasion and retained
for a lifetime. Usually, such memories are associated
with important historical or autobiographical events.
For example, I can still remember the sepia
afternoon, the smell of the elevator, my first thought
and concomitant response when I was stuck in the
elevator for the first time. The tip-of-the-tongue
phenomenon occurs when an individual can almost
recall a word but cannot directly identify it. This is a
type of retrieval failure; the memory cannot be
accessed, but certain aspects of it, such as the first
letter or similar words, can. Forgetting refers to
failure to either recall or retain information into
present consciousness. All experiences leave traces
or after-effects images in memory parts of the brain.
Failure to retain these traces from the parts of
memory is called Forgetting. Recognition is Commented [1]:

identifying something you learned previously and is

therefore stored in some manner in memory. For
example, taking a multiple choice test requires you
to identify material you learned and not necessarily
recall information learned previously. Recall is the
memory or perception placed in long-term storage,
requiring a higher depth of processing. Recall is the
buried deep facts that sometimes you don't even
remember how the information was put into your
head. Relearning sometimes, however, a memory
has been too neglected for the brain to retrieve it. It
can't be recalled, and even visual clues aren’t
eenough to spark recognition still, theres a chance
that the brain is aware of the existence of that
memory, even if it can’t find it. The mind knows that
the information was once there. Interference theory
refers to the occurrence of interaction between new
learned material and past behavior, memories or
thoughts that cause disturbance in retrieval of the
memory. Based on the disturbance caused in
attempts to retrieve past or latest memories,
interference have been classified into two different
kinds. Proactive interference occurs when old
memories hinder the ability to make new memories.
In this type of interference, old information inhibits
the ability to remember new information, such as
when outdated scientific facts interfere with the
ability to remember updated facts. This often occurs
when memories are learned in similar contexts, or
regarding similar things. It’s when we have
preconceived notions about situations and events,
and apply them to current situations and events.
Retroactive interference occurs when old memories
are changed by new ones, sometimes so much that
the original memory is forgotten. This is when newly
learned information interferes with and impedes the
recall of previously learned information. The ability
to recall previously learned information is greatly
reduced if that information is not utilized, and there
is substantial new information being presented. This
often occurs when hearing recent news figures, then
trying to remember earlier facts and figures. An
example of this would be learning a new way to
make a paper airplane, and then being unable to
remember the way you used to make them.
Retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall
memories made before the onset of amnesia.
Retrograde amnesia is usually caused by head
trauma or brain damage to parts of the brain other
than the hippocampus which is involved with the
encoding process of new memories. Brain damage
causing retrograde amnesia can be as varied as a
cerebrovascular accident, stroke, tumor, hypoxia,
encephalitis, or chronic alcoholism. Retrograde
amnesia is usually temporary, and can often be
treated by exposing the sufferer to cues for
memories of the period of time that has been
forgotten. Anterograde amnesia is the inability to
create new memories; long-term memories from
before the event typically remain intact. However,
memories that were not fully consolidated from
before the event may also be lost.
 APPLIED LEARNINGS

CHAPTER 6

Although it is useful to hold information in sensory

and short-term memory, we also rely on our long-
term memory. We want to remember the name of
the new boy in the class, the name of the movie we
saw last week, and the material for our upcoming
psychology test. One way to improve our memory is
to use better encoding strategies. Some ways of
studying are more effective than others. Research
has found that we are better able to remember
information if we encode it in a meaningful way.
When we engage in elaborative encoding we process
new information in ways that make it more relevant
or meaningful. Memories may serve as fond
reminders of the past, but they also allow us to
achieve learning goals and expand our educational
horizons in the here-and-now. It would be nice if our
minds functioned like cameras and we could access
our picture-like memories at any time we wanted.
Unfortunately, this is not how it works; everything
we see and hear is stored in different areas of our
brains and we can easily lose information it if we
don’t make a conscious effort to retain it. As we age,
our memory sometimes seems to get worse. But it
doesn’t have to. By following the tips, you can keep
your memory sharp at any age, and improve it any
time.
 LEARNINGS

CHAPTER 7. THINKING, LANGUAGE AND

INTELLIGENCE

Thinking means paying attention to inforrmation,

representing it mentally, reasoning about it. And
making judgments and decision about it. Thinking
refers to conscious, planned attempts to make
sense of and change the world. Concepts are mental
categories used together objects, relations, events,
abstractions, or qualities that have common
properties. prototype is the BEST example or
cognitive representation of something within a
certain category. Prototypes are used to enhance
memory and recall, since you can keep a prototype
of something and then match new, similar things to
the prototype in order to identify, categorize, or
store this new thing. For example, if I ask you to
imagine a dog, what do you imagine? You may
consider a German Shepard your prototype for a dog
by which you compare all other dogs. So if you see
another dog, you could say that other dog is small
compared to your prototype, heavy, ugly, beautiful,
etc. Problem Solving is a solving a problem is
reaching a goal state; there are many things that
can stand in the way of solving a problem, but many
strategies that can help. An algorithm is a series of
sets of steps for solving a problem. Unlike a
heuristic, you are guaranteed to get the correct
solution to the problem; however, an algorithm may
not necessarily be the most efficient way of solving
the problem. Systematic randon research is an
algoritm for solving problems in which each possible
solution is tested according to a particular set of
rules. heuristic is a rule of thumb, a strategy, or a
mental shortcut that generally works for solving a
problem particularly decision-making problems It is
a practical method, one that is not a hundred
percent guaranteed to be optimal or even successful,
but is sufficient for the immediate goal. The
advantage of heuristics is that they often reduce the
time and cognitive load required to solve a problem,
the disadvantage is that they cannot always be relied
on to solve the problem just most of the time.
Analogy is using a solution for a similar problem,
Means-ends analysis is choosing an action at each
step to move closer to the goal. refers to the
tendency to think about and try to solve problems in
a manner consistent with the way in which we have
interpreted and solved seemingly similar problems in
the past. There is a positive and a negative side to
mental sets. On the positive side, if the approach we
take to the problem is the correct one, it will help us
solve the new problem quickly and efficiently. Insight
is when the solution to a problem comes to you in an
all-of-a-sudden manner, it can be considered insight.
More specifically, insight can be defined as the
sudden and often novel realization of the solution to
a problem. This is the opposite type of solution to
trial-and-error solutions. For example, Watching a
pet's actions during the day on a hidden camera will
show you how they spend their days while you are
away. Incubation is a stage in the creative or
problem solving process in which attention,
consciousness, is diverted from the task at hand and
focuses on something else. After the incubation
period a flash of creative inspiration or the solution
to the problem comes to mind. Decision making
refers to the act of evaluating several alternatives
and choosing the one most likely to achieve one or
more goals. Common examples include deciding for
whom to vote, what to eat or buy, and which college
to attend. Decision making plays a key role in many
professions, such as public policy, medicine, and
management. The related concept of judgment
refers to the use of information, often from a variety
of sources, to form an evaluation or expectation. One
might imagine that people’s judgment determines
their choices, though it is not always the case
representativeness heuristic is a decision-making
shortcut that employs the use of past experiences to
guide the decision-making process. The word
'representativeness' is in reference to the notion that
when we are confronted with a new experience and
need to make a judgment or decision about that
situation, our brains automatically rely on past
experiences and mental representations seemingly
similar to this new situation in an effort to guide our
judgments and decisions. For example, Consider
Laura Smith. She is 31, single, outspoken and very
bright. She majored in philosophy at university, and
as a student, she was deeply concerned with issues
surrounding equality and discrimination. Is it more
likely that Laura works at a bank? Or is it more likely
that she works at a bank and is active in the feminist
movement? The availability heuristic is one of these
mental shortcuts often used by the brain. The
availability heuristic judges the probability of events
by how quickly and easily examples can come to
mind. We make decisions based on the knowledge
that is readily available in our minds rather than
examining all the alternatives. Anchoring and
adjustment is a phenomenon wherein an individual
basis their initial ideas and responses on one point of
information and the makes changes driven by that
starting point. The framing effect, sometimes called
framing bias or simply framing, is a type of cognitive
bias where a person's decision is affected by the way
the information about the decision is presented
framed. Overconfidence refers to a biased way of
looking at a situation. When you are overconfident,
you misjudge your value, opinion, beliefs or abilities
and you have more confidence than you should given
the objective parameters of the situation.
Overconfidence can cause a person to experience
problems because he may not prepare properly for a
situation or may get into a dangerous situation that
he is not equipped to handle. For example, A person
who thinks his sense of direction is much better than
it actually is. The person could show his
overconfidence by going on a long trip without a map
and refusing to ask for directions if he gets lost along
the way. Language is a communication system that
involves using words and systematic rules to
organize those words to transmit information from
one individual to another. While language is a form
of communication, not all communication is
language. Many species communicate with one
another through their postures, movements, odors,
or vocalizations. This communication is crucial for
species that need to interact and develop social
relationships with their conspecifics. Language, be it
spoken, signed, or written, has specific components:
a lexicon and grammar. Lexicon refers to the words
of a given language. Thus, lexicon is a language’s
vocabulary. Grammar refers to the set of rules that
are used to convey meaning through the use of the
lexicon. Semanticity the quality of language in which
words are used as symbols for objects, events or
ideas. Infinite creativity is the capacity to create
rather than imitate sentences displacement is the
quality of language that permits one to communicate
infromation about objects and events in another time
and place. Thr linguistic-relativity hypothesis holds
that the structure of human language effects the way
in which an individual conceptualizes their world.
Working from the position that every language
describes and conceptualizes the world in its own
unique way, it holds that a person's native language
limits their cross-cultural understanding. lophrasis is
the prelinguistic use of a single word to express a
complex idea. A holophrase may resemble an
interjection, but whereas an interjection is linguistic,
and has a specific grammatical function, a
holophrase is simply a vocalization memorized by
rote and used without grammatical intent.
Overregularization refers to grammatical errors that
usually start in the early stages of a child’s language
development where language rules are applied too
generally, rather than according to the idiosyncracies
(words that don't follow the usual rules of the
language) that all languages possess. For example, a
child might refer to more than one mouse as mouses
rather than mice. The study of psycholinguistics
examines how we develop, perceive, and produce
language. In this lesson, you will discover the field of
psycholinguistics and the most popular
psycholinguistic theories. For example, a
psycholinguist might choose to focus on how a baby
develops their specific language to the exclusion of
all others. If you were to study psycholinguistics,
you might study the process of language acquisition,
or how the human mind develops, perceives, and
produces both spoken and written communication.
Intelligence refers to intellectual functioning.
Intelligence quotients, or IQ tests, compare your
performance with other people your age who take
the same test. These tests don’t measure all kinds
of intelligence, however. For example, such tests
can’t identify differences in social intelligence, the
expertise people bring to their interactions with
others. There are also generational differences in the
population as a whole. Better nutrition, more
education and other factors have resulted in IQ
improvements for each generation. Convergent
Thinking is a cognitive process a mode of critical
thinking in which a person attempts to find a single,
correct answer to a problem. This is opposite from
divergent thinking in which a person generates many
unique, creative responses to a single question or
problem. Divergent thinking is the process of
thinking that explores multiple possible solutions in
order to generate creative ideas. Divergent thinking
generates its name from the idea that there are
limitless number of solutions for any given problem,
however unrelated they might be, which are then
spread on the table to pick out the best one.
Example a medical student doesn’t always have to
be either a doctor or nothing. She could very well
make a career switch in the future and be a writer,
or a painter, and varieties of other possibilities.
Mental age is a measure of an individual's mental
attainment based on the age in which it takes an
average individual to reach that same level of
attainment. Explore mental age, how it differs from
chronological age, and more. Intelligence qoutient is
an intelligence test score that is obtained by dividing
mental age, which reflects the age-graded level of
performance as derived from population norms, by
chronological age and multiplying by 100, a score of
100 thus indicates a performance at exactly the
normal level for that age group. Gender differences
are variances between males and females that are
based on biological adaptations that are the same
for both sexes. This differs from sex differences in
that sex differences are driven by actual biological
gender disparity such as distinct physical differences
rather than by differing environmental factors that
affect our cognition and behavior. Sex is typically
used to mean a biological difference like traits that
are sexually dimorphic different between males and
females whereas gender is more of a range and can
include many different attributes because of the
social and cultural influences on sexual behavior.
Sex differences therefore refer only to those
differences that can be attributed solely to biological
difference.