PSY 101 Introductory Psychology

Instructor: Vincent W. Hevern, S.J., Ph.D.

Fall 2025

• Definition of Psychology as Science & Profession
• Focus or concerns of different perspectives in psychology: personality & clinical, social & cultural, developmental, biological
  
• Principal psychological specialties: clinical, counseling, developmental, forensic, industrial-organizational, school, & social
• What does psychology mean by a "theory"
• What do we mean by the notion of "culture"
• Mental Health Professionals <== Review for test
  

Zygote

Fetal stage

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)

Cephalocaudal development (head to foot)

Proximodistal development (middle to distant/extremities)

Maturation in development

Developmental norms & wide variations

Temperament

Attachment

Separation anxiety

"Stage"

Identity

Operations

Sensorimotor stage

Object permanence

Pre-operational stage

Egocentric vs. socialized thinking

Decentration

Concrete operational stage

Reversibility

Conservation

Formal operational stage

Identity foreclosure

Identity moratorium

Identity diffusion

Identity achievement

Emerging adulthood in late teens and early 20s (Identity exploration, sense of instability, focus on self, feeling "in between" and optimism)

• Stages of prenatal development (germinal, embryonic, fetal)
• Environmental risk factors to fetal development
• Maternal malnutrition
• Stress & emotion
• Maternal drug usage
• Maternal alcohol consumption
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)
• No safe drinking level
  
• Maternal illness (infections)
• Environmental toxins
• Adult diseases as arising from fetal origins
  
• Temperament styles: easy, slow-to-warm-up, difficult
• Forms of attachment (secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant, disorganized)
• What did Harry Harlow find in his research with baby monkeys
  
• Stage Theory: fundamental beliefs
• Role of exposure to language (especially mother's) in language development of infants & toddlers
• Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development
• Trust vs. mistrust
• Autonomy vs. self-doubt
• Initiative vs. guilt
• Industry vs. inferiority
• Identity vs. Role confusion
• Generativity vs. self-absorption
• Integrity vs. despair
  
• Critique of Erikson's theory
• Piaget's stages of cognitive development
• Critique of Piaget's theory
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD-Vygotsky)
• Speech as first public before becoming inner speech (Vygotsky)
• Neural development in adolescents & young adults
• Grey matter declines
• White matter increases
  
• Prefrontal cortex matures
  
• The notion of "identity status" in adolescents (James Marica)
• The notion of "emerging adulthood" (18-29 years of age) and the qualities that individuals experience.
• Changes in US life patterns about marriage and independent living between the middle 20th century and today
  
• Changes to be expected by aging persons
• Alzheimer's disease in old age

• Levels of processing theory: structural (shallow), phonemic (intermediate), semantic (deep)
  
• Atkinson & Shiffrin's Model of Memory
• Miller's Theory of STM as 7 +/- 2 chunks of information
• Components of Baddeley's  "working memory" model
• How is long-term memory stored/organized?
• What did we learn from Patient H.M.?
• Types of memory systems: how vs. what
• Problems of retrieval from memory
• What is forgetting? Theories
• Decay
• Interference
• Ineffective coding
• Retrieval failure
• "Motivated" forgetting
• Memory as a process of construction or reconstruction and NOT simple recall of a previously recorded experience
  
• Elizabeth Loftus's research showing "implanted" memories
  
• What is the role of mental time travel according to Endel Tulving?