How Human Beings Perceive the World - Essay Example

PSYCHOLOGY affiliation Question Describe the different perspectives from which psychologists examine behavior and mental processes and explain their complementarily (relationship with one another). Psychologists strive to examine how human beings perceive the world they live in, acquire new information, how human interact with each other, how we retrieve memories as well as communicate and solving problems among other things. Nowadays psychology can be defined to be more of scientific study that involves examination of mental process and behavior. This explanation of psychology incorporates a number of different approaches. Since psychology as a discipline is science and uses scientific methods like other scientific discipline, for instance, chemistry, biology, and physics, there are experiments that are carried out, test theories and formulate hypotheses. In psychology experiments can be carried out in a several ways under different settings, for example, under controlled laboratories while others in the open fields in daily settings. Neuroscience This is a type of scientific study that focus on the nerve system, for a long period of time Neuroscience has been considered to be a branch of biology but in the modern days is an interdisciplinary science that incorporates many fields like medicine, chemistry, genetics, and linguistics among others. Through experiments, psychologist uses Neuroscience to examine behavior and mental processes of an individual. Evolutionary This is a social approach and natural science that study the psychological structure from the angle of modern evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary approach tries to examine human psychological traits responsible for adaptations or natural selection such as immune system, lungs, and heart. Some evolutionary psychologist believes strongly that human mind has similar modular structure as the body which is able to serve different functions with different modular adaptations Behavior Genetics This is a study that focuses on the role of genetics in general whether animals and human beings behaviors. Mostly linked to nature versus nurture dialog. It is highly interdisciplinary whereby encompassing statistics, genetics, biology, epigenetic, psychology, and ethnology. The study looks at the inheritance especially behavioral traits. Twin study is commonly used in human beings (Benjamini, Y., Drai, D., Elmer, G., Kafkafi, N., & Golani, I. 2001). Psychodynamic In other words is called dynamic psychology, it can be defined as the approach to psychology with the aim of looking at systematic examination of possible psychological forces responsible for human behavior, emotions as well as feelings with the possible connections to early experience in life Behavioral This can be manners of acting or observable activities that are easily noticed in human beings as well as animals, this illustrates their behaviors. Cognitive Can be thinking, knowing or perceiving, etc. it takes many forms such as application of reason, guiding physical actions and through interpretation of sensory inputs. Mental process at play Social-cultural Question #2: Continues studies show clearly that indeed violence on television with time do have serious effect on children especially the way they think as well as act. This happens always not only to small children but also grownups as recent studies shows, as we all understand that children learn well from both role modeling, experiences and social learning, therefore, when children keeps on watching extreme violence they find it difficult to differentiate between real thing or what to believe and this lead them to copy or emulate whatever they have seen practically. Furthermore, chemical change occurs in their brain at that tender age similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. Therefore, the concerned by the police chief of New City about teenage arrests in New City for violent crimes to be related to violent television programs is absolutely correct Question 3: Describe, compare and contrast the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the limbic system. The nerve system comprises of brain, sensory organs, spinal cords as well as all other nerves that are linked to these organs and the whole body, these organs coordinates all communications that the body goes through while spinal cord and brain act as the control center of the body known as central nerve system (CNS). The nerve system seems to be the center where the whole body gets instructions from and communicate to others, the same thing happens with the endocrine system although not complex as nerve system. The endocrine system comprises of all the glands that are found in the body as well as hormones which are produced by the same glands. These glands are controlled through direct stimulation from the nerve system and the chemical receptors found in the blood together with the hormones produces from other glands. Through regulating the activities of the organs within the body, they play a big role in maintaining body heart rate, reproduction, sexual development, cellular metabolism and homeostasis among other functions. Mostly endocrine system concentrates on the glands which are controlled by stimulation from the nerve system. Here endocrine system works in coordination with the nerve system entirely but not on its own. Therefore, the nerve system acts as the mother of all the process. Limbic system is a structure that appear to be very complex on its own, found on both sides of thalamus under cerebrum, comprises of hippocampus, amygdale, and others. It happens to be responsible for human beings emotional life and formation of memories. Limbic system also works hand in hand with the nerve system to pass on the information to other members of the body. Question #4: Five-year-old Jessie went to a fire station with her kindergarten class. When she got home, Jessie, who is in the preoperational stage of cognitive development, eagerly told the story of her adventure to her older brother. Describe how the following factors might have influenced the story she told. Be sure to define and provide an appropriate example of EACH factor. Egocentrism This means that an individual is not able to differentiate between himself or herself with others, it has to be noted that egocentrism and narcissism in most cases appear to be similar but they are not. An individual who is egocentric believes that they are the center of attention yet not, for instance, narcissism, although they don’t get gratification by their own admiration. Therefore, j Jessie’s story might have been influenced by the egocentrism factors Observational Learning Sometimes called social learning is associated with the efforts of Albert Bandura’s social learning theory, this type of learning can take place anytime in life although is crucial during child stage, to pay attention to any action in order for the observation learning to occur is very important so as the observed behavior can be replicated to a behavior, therefore it has to be remembered that observed behavior can increase or decrease its frequency as well as encourage behaviors previously forbidden. The story narrated by Jessie is just a good example of attention and retention of a behavior (Dawson, B. V., & Foss, B. M. 1965). Overgeneralization in language This is a feature mostly in language development, for instance, learning of English past tenses, the child typically over generalizes all the –ed rule which in return leads to contractions of tenses. Is a form of language acquisition and application which Jessie is practicing. Reconstructive memory This is a process of assembling available information from already stored knowledge when a clear memory of particular event seems not to exist. A god example can be when a crime victim helps the interviewer to pull together a memory of a traumatic crime. Jessie’s story might also be as a result of reconstructive memory Schema This can be described I short as an structured pattern of thoughts that put together categories of information and creates some links among them. In other words to schema can be explained to be mental structure associated with preconceived ideas or rather a framework representing some world aspects or information References Benjamini, Y., Drai, D., Elmer, G., Kafkafi, N., & Golani, I. (2001). Controlling the false discovery rate in behavior genetics research. Behavioural brain research, 125(1), 279- 284. Dawson, B. V., & Foss, B. M. (1965). Observational learning in budgerigars. Animal behaviour, 13(4), 470-474. Read More