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Unit 1
History & Approaches

Myers Psychology 8e  |  Prologue

MAKE SURE YOU CAN:
1. Define psychology.
2. Trace psychology's pre-scientific roots, from early understandings of mind and body to the beginnings of modern science.
3.Explain how the early psychologists sought to understand the mind's structure and functions, and identify some of the leading psychologists who worked in theses areas.
4. Describe the evolution of psychology as defined from the 1920s through today.
5. Summarize the nature-nurture debate in psychology, and describe the priciple of natural selection.
6. Identify the three main levels of analysis in the biopsychosocial approach, and explain why psychology's varied perspectives are complementary.
7. Identify some of psychology's subfields, and explain the difference between clinical psychology and psychiatry.

Unit 2
Research

Myers Psychology 8e  |  Ch. 1

MAKE SURE YOU CAN:
1. Describe hindsight bias, and explain how it can make research findings seem like mere common sense.
2. Describe how overconfidence contaminates our everyday judgements.
3. Explain how the scientific attitude encourages critical thinking.
4. Describe how psychological theories guide scientific research.
5. Identify an advantage and disadvantage of using case studies to study behavior.
6. Identify the advantages and disadvantages of using surveys to study behavior and mental processes, and explain the importance of wording effects and random sampling.
7. Identify an advantage and a disadvantage of using naturalistic observation to study behavior.
8. Describe positive and negative correlations, and explain how correlational measures can aid the process of prediction.
9. Explain why correlational research fails to provide evidence of cause-effect relationships.
10. Explain how people form illusory correlations.
11. Explain the human tendency to perceive order in random events.
12. Explain how experiments help researchers isolate cause and effect.
13. Explain why the double-blind procedure and random assignment build confidence in research findings.
14. Explain the difference between an independent and dependent variable.
15. Explain the importance of statistical principles, and give an example of their use in everyday life.
16. Explain how bar graphs can misrepresent data.
17. Describe the three measures of central tendency, and tell which is most affected by extreme scores.
18. Describe two measures of variation.
19. Identify three priciples for making generalizations from samples.
20. Explain how psychologists decide whether differences are meaningful.
21. Explain the value of simplified labratory conditions in discovering general principles of behavior.
22. Discuss whether psychological research can be generalized across cultures and genders.
23. Explain why psychologists study animals, and discuss the ethics of experimentation with both humans and animals.
24. Describe how personal values can influence psychologists' research and its application, and discuss psychology's potential to manipulate people.

Unit 3
Biological Bases Of Behavior

Myers Psychology 8e  |  Ch. 2 & 3

MAKE SURE YOU CAN:
1. Explain why psychologists are concerned with human biology and describe the ill-fated phenology theory.
2. Explain how viewing each person as a biopsychosocial system helps us understand human behaviors and discuss why researchers study other animals in search of clues to human neaural processes.
3. Describe the parts of a neuron and explain how its impulses are generated.
4. Describe how nerve cells communicate.
5. Explain how neurotransmitters affect behavior and outline the effects of acetylcholine and endorphins.
6. Explain how drugs and other chemicals affect neurotransmission and describe the contrasting effects of agonists and antagonists.
7. Describe the nervous system's two major divisions and identify the three types of neurons that transmit information through the system.
8. Identify the subdivisions of the peripheral nervous system and descibe their functions.
9. Contrast the simplicity of the reflex pathways with the complexity of neural networks.
10. Describe the nature and functions of the endocrine system and its interaction with the nervous system.
11. Describe several techniques for studying the brain.
12. Describe the components of the brainstem and summarize the functions of the brainstem, thalamus, and cerebellum.
13. Describe the structures and functions of the limbic system and explain how one of these structures controls the pituitary gland.
14. Define cerebral cortex and explain its importance for the human brain.
15. Identify the four lobes of the cerebral cortex.
16. Summarize some of the findings on the functions of the motor cortex and the sensory cortex and discuss the impotance of the association areas.
17. Describe the five brain areas that would be involved if you read this sentence aloud.
18. Discuss the brain's plasticity following illnes or injury.
19. Describe split-brain research and explain how it helps us understand the functions of our left and right hemispheres.
20. Discuss the relationships among brain organization, handedness, and mortality.

1. Give examples of differences and similarities within the human family.
2. Describe the types of questions that interest behavior geneticits.
3. Describe chromosome, DNA, gene, and genome and describe their relationships.
4. Explain how identical and fraternal twins differ and cite ways that behavior geneticits use twin studies to understand the effects of environment and heredity.
5. Cite ways that behavior geneticists use adoption studies to understand the effects of environment and heredity.
6. Discuss how the relative stability of our temperment illustrates the influence of heredity on development.
7. Discuss heritability's application to individuals and groups and explain what we mean when we say genes are self-regulating.
8. Give an example of a genetically influenced trait that can evoke responses in others and give another example of an environment that can trigger gene activity.
9. Identify the potential promise and perils of molecular genetics research.
10. Describe the area of psychology that interests evolutionary psychologists.
11. State the principle of natural selection and point out some possible effects of natural selection in the development of human characteristics.
12. Identify some gender differences in sexuality.
13. Describe evolutionary explanations for gender differences in sexuality.
14. Summarize the criticisms of evolutionary explanations of human behaviors and describe the evolutionary psychologists' responses to those criticisms.
15. Describe some of the conditions that can affect development before birth.
16. Describe how experience can modify the brain.
17. Explain why we should be careful about attributing children's success and failures to their parents' influence.
18. Evaluate the importance of peer influence on development.
19. Discuss the survival benefits of culture.
20. Describe some ways that cultures differ.
21. Explain why changes in the human gene pool cannnot account for culture change over time.
22. Identify some ways a primarily individualistic culture differs from a primarily collectivist culture and compare their effects on personal identity.
23. Describe some ways that child rearing differs in individualist and collectivist cultures.
24. Describe some ways that humans are similar depite their cultural differences.
25. Identify some biological and psychological differences between males and females.
26. Summarize the gender gap in aggression.
27. Describe some gender differences in social power.
28. Discuss gender differences in connectedness or the ability to "tend and befriend."
29. Explain how biological sex is determined and describe the role of sex hormones in biological development and gender differences.
30. Discuss the importance of environment in the development of gender roles and describe two theories of gender typing.
​31. Describe the biopsychosocial approach to development.

Unit 4
Sensation & Perception

Myers Psychology 8e  |  Ch. 5 & 6

MAKE SURE YOU CAN:
1. Contrast sensation and perception and explain the difference between bottom-up processing and top-down processing.
2. Distinguish between absolute and difference thresholds and discuss whether we can sense stimuli below our absolute thresholds and be influenced by them.
3. Describe sensory adaptation and explain how we benefit from being unaware of unchanging stimuli.





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