PSY 101 Introductory Psychology

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

2026 Fall

• Scientific Theory
• hypothesis
• variable
• Operational definition
• Independent Variable
• Dependent Variable
• Experiment
• Case Study
• Naturalistic Observation
• Survey
• Experimental group
• Control group
• Extraneous variable
• Random assignment
• Correlation
• Positive Correlation
• Negative Correlation
• Zero correlation
• Spurious correlation
• Placebo
• Sample bias
• Convenience sample
• Social desirability response
• Response sets in experiments
• Experimenter bias
• Double-blind research
  

• Goals of Science: Description, Prediction, Control
• What science means by "theory"
  
• Testability: Falsification (falsifying theory)
• Approach to Research: hypothesis, research study design, collecting data, analyzing data & drawing conclusions, reporting findings
• What is an experiment?
• Types of variables
• Types of groups in experiments
• Problems faced in doing experiments
• Non-random assignment
  
• Advantages & disadvantages of experiments
• Meaning of correlations: strong when approaching +/- 1.0; absent when approaching 0.0
• Cause/effect vs. linkages
• Descriptive/correlational research: purpose
• Types of flaws in experimental research
• Placebo effect
• Types of distortions in self-report data
  
• Ethics: Consent as voluntary, no harm, debriefing, right to privacy
  

• Glial cells
• Neuron
• Nerve: what is?
  
• Dendrite
• Soma
• Axon
• Axonal hillock
• Myelin sheath
• Terminal button
• synapse (synaptic cleft)
• neurotransmitter
• sodium-potassium pump
• receptor sites
• synaptic pruning
• post-synaptic potential (PSP)
• Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)
• Somatic Nervous System
• Autonomic Nervous System
• "Fight or Flight" response
• Sympathetic Nervous System
• Parasympathetic Nervous System
• Spinal Cord
• Cerebellum
• Medulla
• Pons

• Reticular Formation
• Thalamus
• Hypothalamus
• Limbic System
• Hippocampus
• Amygdala
• Medial Forebrain Bundle
• Cerebral Cortex
• Cerebral Hemispheres
• Corpus callosum
• Primary motor strip
• Primary somatosensory strip
• Primary auditory cortex
• Primary visual cortex
• Broca's area
• Wernicke's area
• Chromosome
• Gene
• Polygenetic determinism
• Diathesis = genetic vulnerability
• Epigenetics

• Role of glial cells: structural support in brain, nourish, decontaminate, regulate neurons
  
• Origin of brain tumors
  
• The neuron at rest as a tiny, leaky battery
• Resting potential
• Action potential
• All-or-Nothing Law
• Role of myelin in conduction of nerve impulse
• Excitatory vs. inhibitory postsynaptic potential
• Roles of neurotransmitters
• Acetylcholine (Ach)
  
• Dopamine (DA)
• Norepinepherine (NE)
• Serotonin (5-HT)
• GABA
• Glutamate
  
• Endorphins
• Organization of the Nervous System: PNS, CNS
• Neuro-imaging Techniques in the Brain
• Computerized Tomography (CT)
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
• Functional Magnetic Imaging (fMRI)
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
  
• General functions of the four brain lobes
• Frontal
• Parietal
• Temporal
• Occipital
• Split brain operation: what it shows about hemispheres
• Hemispheric Specialization
• Left hemisphere: what it does
  
• Right hemisphere: what it does
  
• Strategies to research role of heredity vs. environment on behavior
• family studies
• twin studies (monozygotic vs. dizygotic twins)
• adoption studies
  
• concordance rate
• genome mapping (genome wide association studies, GWAS) showing strong POLYgenetic influences
  

• What did Charles Darwin claim to be the means of evolution?
• fitness
• natural selection
• Modern refinements of Darwin's theory
• adaptation
• behaviors as adaptive traits

• Walter Cannon (Fight or flight)
• Paul Broca (expressive aphasia)
• Carl Wernicke (receptive aphasia)
• Roger Sperry (Split-brain)
  

• Learning
  
• Reflexes
• Classical (reflex or Pavlovian) conditioning
• Unconditioned stimulus (US)
• Unconditioned response (UR)
• Conditioned stimulus (CS)
• Conditioned response (CR)
• Extinction of CR
• Spontaneous recovery of CR
• Stimulus generalization
• Stimulus discrimination
• Higher order conditioning
• Law of Effect
  
• Operant conditioning
• Reinforcement
• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement
• Punishment
• Discriminative stimuli
• Generalized responses
• Schedules of reinforcement
• Fixed interval schedule
• Fixed ratio schedule
• Variable interval schedule
• Variable ratio schedule
• "Garcia" effect
• Applied behavioral analysis
• Observational Learning/Social modeling

• What is "learning" to a psychologist?
• Classical conditioning as a theory of "signaling"
• Pavlov's experiments with conditioning dogs to salivate
• Watson's experiment with Little Albert: Fear conditioning
• Examples of classical conditioning in everyday life, e.g., fears, phobias, political advertisements
• Skinner's theory of "operant" conditioning
• "Skinner Box" - components
• Positive reinforcement: examples
• Difference between negative reinforcement & punishment
• Advantages of variable over fixed schedules of reinforcement
• Learning "predispositions"
• Garcia effect as "one shot learning"
• Mental disorders as defined by their behaviors
• Principle of positive reinforcement over punishment
• What did Bandura discover about the effects of adult modeling on children in his Bobo Doll experiments?
• What did researchers in the 1990s discover about the role of violence on television?
• Why do some more recent researchers argue that there is much less of a link between media violence and real world violence than researchers used to claim?

• Ivan Pavlov
• John B. Watson
• Edward L. Thorndike
• B. F. Skinner
• John Garcia
• Albert Bandura