TEST PREPARATION

This weekend I am expecting questions on what you need further guidance on in preparation for the test on monday. Please take this opportunity. Also remember to review our discussions on this blog.

Good weekend

REINFORCEMENT AND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

 John’s mother says that each time his bedroom is tidy at the end of the week; he will receive an extra dollar in his weekend spending money.

a) i.) What schedule of reinforcement is John’s mother using to encourage him to keep his room tidy?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    [1]

ii) Based on this schedule, when is John’s room likely to be most tidy? Explain.                                                                                                                             [2]

b) .Which reinforcement schedule could John’s mother use to encourage him to keep his room tidy all week? Explain why this schedule should result in more consistent tidiness.                                                                                                                                   [2]

Considering what you have learnt so far, lets debate on the topic  Human behaviour is solely controlled by our biological function, justifying our arguments.                      

JUST A LITTLE PRACTICE

 A parent with a child who is always stealing sweets from the nearby shop can take the following action

i) Buy the child sweets when possible

ii). Shout or beat the child

iii).Stop the child from going to the shops.

For each action above state whether it is positive /negative reinforcement or positive / negative punishment. Give reasons for your answers.

Based on Freud‘s defense mechanisms, indicate the mechanism being displayed in each of the examples given below 

1. A woman is unable to recall that she was raped.

2. A boss has a temper tantrum when an employee makes a mistake.

3. A brother yells at his younger sister after a teacher gives him a bad grade

4. A student who goes out drinking the night before a big test rationalises his behaviour by saying that the test isn’t all that important.

5. A student refuses to believe that he has flunked a course.

6. A man who is unfaithful to his wife and feels guilty suspects that his wife is unfaithful.

7. A person with strong feelings of aggression becomes a solider.
8. A mother who unconsciously resents her child acts in an overly loving way toward the child.                                                                                               

HOW DIFFERENT ARE WE

What do think is personality?

Write down three words to describe your personality and keep them a secret, bring that paper to our next lesson.

Where does personality come from?

TAKE THE FOLLOWING TEST AND KEEP THE ANSWERS IN YOUR NOTES

1. Favourite world: What do you prefer?

E. Go out, action oriented, seeks a lot of knowledge, frequent interaction and gets energy from spending time with people.

I. Reflective, thought oriented, seeks depth of knowledge, substantial interaction and gets energy from spending time alone.

2. Information: How do you take in information and what do you normally pay attention to? Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning? 

S. Live in the present, uses five senses for practical and real solutions, memory recall is rich in detail, improvises from past experiences, comfortable with clear and concrete information.

N. – Live in the future, look beyond the five senses for imagination and new solutions, memory recall emphasizes patterns and contexts (bigger picture), improvises from theoretical understanding, comfortable with unclear and fuzzy information.

3. Decisions: How do you make decisions and form judgments? When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances?

T– Instinctively search for facts and logic, naturally drawn to accomplishing tasks, able to provide objective analysis, accepts conflict as natural.

F – Instinctively look at personal feelings and empathy, naturally sensitive to people’s needs and reactions, able to seek consensus, unsettled by conflict structure.

4. In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options?

J – Plan details in advance, focus on task-related action, keeps ahead of deadlines; naturally use standard procedures and organization to manage life.

P – Comfortable without details to act, likes to multi-task and have variety, tolerant to deadlines and time pressure, naturally avoid commitments which interfere with flexibility and freedom.

Share your honest thoughts

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $400 for the radium and charged $4,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money and tried every legal means, but he could only get together about $2,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So, having tried every legal means, Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.

Should Heinz steal the drug? Why or why not?

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT LEARNING OUTCOMES

Outline the four stages of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development paying attention to:

Ø  Staging

Ø  Name of each stage

Ø  Major developments at each stage with examples

Ø  Age at which each stage develops

DEBATE: LANGUAGE AND THINKING

Some suggest that language (that is, words), plays an important role in thinking, but others suggests that language is the one that  determines the way we think.  Lets discuss this and support our reasoning with practical examples and facts.

Language Acquisition

Using examples from your own language describe how language develops in a growing child through the following periods

-Babbling period
-Single word period
-Telegraphic speech period
-Period of early grammar

-You are required to post your write up on this blog by friday 5th of February 2015.

SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEERS

1. At about age 2, children become less depend on their parents
2. Prefer playing with peers
3. Play is independent at first ,with focus on toys
4. Later, play becomes interactive, shaping each other’s behavior
5. At school going age ,interactions become more frequent
6. Playing elaborate games with rules
7. This allows them to be socially competent and to learn to get opinions from others

WHAT CONTROLS BEHAVIOUR- GENES OR ENVIRONMENT?

Read and answer the following scenario  questions and make a conclusion on- What controls human behaviour- genes or environment?

Identical twins have the same genetic make up who have always been together; is their behaviour completely the same? Explain your answer in terms of what makes their behaviour similar and what makes in different.

Identical twins who are separated at birth; is their behaviour going to be completely different? Explain your answer in terms of what makes it similar or different?

Give practical examples.

NEUROTRANSIMITTERS

Nervous system is made up of millions and millions of neurons which need to communicate to each other to execute body functions. In the diagram above two neurons are meeting, so where they meet they are not in direct contact, there is a space between them known as the synapse. for the neurons to communicate one of them releases a chemical known as a neurotransmitter to pass the message/ nerve impulse to the next neuron, hence messages are carried around.

There are several types of neurotransmitters, some of them makes it possible for the next neuron to transmit impulses (excitatory) while some terminates the impulse ( inhibitory).

Language of the brain

The brain has a language. What is that language and how does it speak?

Here is the answer: Language is used for communication. Only when people can speak the same language is communication effective. The brain is made up of different units which all work together to control human behaviour. For the units /parts of the brain to work together they communicate using the same language. This language is the nerve impulse which is generated by a stimuli and transmitted throughout the nervous system carrying various messages which in turn shape human behaviour.

NEUROTRANSMITTERS

Neurotransmitters and hormones play an important role in controlling human behaviour. For you to better understand human behaviour, you need to know the common neurotransmitters and their roles as well as the hormones found in the body and their functions. Therefore take time study the functions of the neurotransmitters and hormones.

NAMES OF NOTE IN PYSCHOLOGY

Which psychological perspectives are the following people known for?

1. S. Freud
2.C. Rogers
3.A. Maslow
4.W. James
5. M. Wertheimer
6. W. Wundt

FUNNY BEHAVIOUR

Thabo is at the verge of divorcing his wife Sipho, who seems to have forgotten everything about their past. Sipho suffered a serious head injury recently and is behaving in a way that the husband describe as funny, not even remembering their wedding.

How can you explain Sipho's behaviour and help save her marriage?

NEURON/ NERVE CELL

The neuron is the basic element of the nervous system. For one to understand the basic elements of behaviour one needs to understand the nervous system and the neuron in turn. Study the structure of the neuron in detail and describe the function of each structure.

DISCUSSION SCENARIOS

Tsepiso accidentally stepped on a sharp nail; she suddenly jumps into the sky away from the nail. Use your understanding of the Neuroscience psychology to explain Tselios’s behaviour.                 

Shortly after he was born, Jacob's arms and legs started jerking every 20 minutes. Weeks later; he could not focus on his mother's face. The diagnosis was uncontrollable epileptic seizures involving his entire brain. He underwent brain surgery at 5months in which 20% of his brain was removed.

Do you think the surgery was successful in treating the seizures and why?               

    

LECTURE 1

15/01/15

LECTURE 1- INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY- BSC 101

Learning outcomes

Ø  Define psychology

Ø  Discuss the importance of psychology in Nursing

Ø  Describe the historical development of Psychology as a science

Ø  Outline the three early perspectives of psychology

Ø  Outline the five modern perspectives of psychology

Overview

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

Thus it focuses on

ü  what people do

ü  their thinking

ü  emotions (feelings)

ü  reasoning processes

ü  memories

ü  perceptions

ü  biological processes

Psychologists describe, predict and explain human behavior and mental processes as well as help change and improve human lives as well as the world.

Historical development of psychology

Psychology can be traced back to the ancient Greek times through to the 18^th century.

Formal beginning of psychology as a scientific discipline developed in the late 19^th century with the following developments in sequence

1.Wilhelm Wundt set up the first experimental laboratory devoted to psychological phenomena in Germany in 1879 to study the building blocks of the mind. This led to the development of the psychological perspective known as structuralism.

2. William James set up his own laboratory in the USA in the early 1900s and developed the psychological perspective functionalism

3. Hermann Ebbinghaus and Max Wertheimer in Germany developed the perspective Gestalt psychology

Early psychological perspectives

There are three main psychological perspectives

1. Structuralism developed by Wundt

2. Functionalism developed by James

3. Gestalt psychology developed by H. Ebbinghaus and M. Wertheimer

Structuralism (focused on the structure of the mind)

It is defined as Wundt’s’ psychological approach which focuses on uncovering the fundamental mental components of consciousness, thinking and other kinds of mental states and activities.

This was developed using a procedure known as introspection which is:

A procedure used to study the structure of the mind in which subjects are asked to describe in detail what they are experiencing when they are exposed to a stimulus.

Due to lack of sufficient evidence to support these perspective, other approaches were developed to replace it.

Functionalism (focused on the function of the mind)

It is defined as an early approach to psychology that concentrated on what the mind does- the functions of mental activity and the role of behavior in allowing people to adapt to their environments.

-The focus was on what the mind does and how behavior functions

Gestalt (geh SHTALLT)

It is defined as an approach that focuses on the organization of perception and thinking in a whole sense rather than on the individual elements of perception.

-Looked at how people look at things as a whole rather than the individual parts that make up thinking.

Modern Psychological perspectives

There are five major perspectives emphasising different aspects of behavior and mental processes taking our understanding of behavior in different directions.

1. Neuroscience

2. Psychodynamic

3. Behavioural

4. Cognitive

5. Humanistic

These try to explain and predict human behavior based on certain scientific bases.

Neuroscience perspective

-The approach that views behavior from the perspective of the brain, the nervous system and other biological functions.

-It considers how humans functions physiologically that is how nerve cells are joined together, how the inheritance of certain characteristics from parents influence behavior

Psychodynamic perspective (Sigmund Freud)

-The approach based on the view that behavior is motivated by unconscious inner forces over which the individual has little control.

-The approach views dreams and slips of the tongue as indication of what a person is truly feeling within the unconscious.

Behavioral Perspective (John B. Watson and B.F.Skinner)

The approach that suggests that observable behavior, measurable behavior should be the focus of study.

The approach looks at behavior from the outside rather than the inside. Watson believed that it was possible to elicit any desired type of behavior by controlling the person’s environment. For example he said if given any offspring’s he could train them to be anything from a beggar to lawyers.

Cognitive perspective

The approach that focuses on how people think, understand and know about the world.

The emphasis is on learning how people comprehend and represent the world within themselves and how our ways of thinking about the world influence our behavior.

Humanistic perspective (Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow)

The approach that suggests that all individuals naturally strive to grow, develop and be in control of their lives and behavior.

People will always try to reach their potential if they are given the opportunity, in other words they have free will (the ability to freely make decisions about one’s behavior.

TUTORIAL 1 Psychological Issues and Controversies

As psychology is about human behavior and mental processes, debate on the extent to which human behavior is influenced by

a.     Nature  and nurture

b.     Conscious and Unconscious

c.      Observable behavior  and  internal mental processes

d.     Free will  and determinism

e.     Individual differences and Universal principles