Chapter 3: Biological Psychology

Chapter 3 really went into depth about the brain, Central Nervous System, Neurons, Neurotransmitters, etc.  I learned what a neuron is - a nerve cell specialized for communication - and how it works and why it is important to our brain. The neurons communicate with each other to help us think and recieve senses. The neuron is made up of multiple parts; the soma, dendrites, axons, synaptic vesicles, neurotransmitters, synapse, and synaptic cleft. What I didn't understand is what is the difference between resting potential and action potential? I think it just means the resting potential of the neuron is when it is not active, and the action potenital is when it is moving. Does the "all or none law" mean that all neurons will trigger at once, or none will? One thing I didn't realize in this chapter was that there are MANY different imaging and scanning techniques for your brain; many I have never even heard of like the PET (Position emission tomography) or the EEG (electroencephalograph). I wonder which one is the best to use? Another thing I learned was that the colorful pictures we see of the brain are not pictures of the brain in action, they are really pictures of the control task minus the experimental task. This is a misconception by many people, not just me! There were three misconceptions about heritability - percentage of the variability in a trait across individuals that is due to genes. I think we all should be aware of the misconceptions because they are ones that many of us fall prey to everyday. 1 - heritability applies to a single individual rather than to differences among individuals. 2 - heritabilty tells us whether a trait can be changed. 3 - heritabilty is a fixed number.  Heritability is important because it allows us to examine the influence of nature and nurture.

Chapter 2: Research Methods

Before I read this chapter I wasn't sure how important Research Design was to our every day lives, but I realized that without it, even the most intelligent people can be fooled.  We all know those people who "knew it all along" - hindsight bias or have the tendency to be overconfident. Hindsight bias and overconfidence can lead us to draw misleading conclusions! It is a good thing the scientific method exists and points us in the right direction. Some examples of research designs are naturalistic observations, case studies, correlational designs, and experimental designs. If I was going to choose one of them to do I would choose an experimental design because it is the only one that allows us to infer causation. I think surveys are a waste of time because alot of people don't take surveys seriously, and the questions are asked in a way that is usually confusing. For example, the match makers we do in school..umm nobody fills them out seriously! It's a good thing the information doesn't have significant value. One thing that I don't completely understand is how to determine the difference between correlation with causation. In the book some unreliable examples were,, "Eating fish prevents crime", "Winning World Cup lowers heart attack deaths", "Housework Cuts Breast Cancer Risk" ...how do we know when the media is telling the truth or not??

Chapter 1: Psychology and Scientific Thinking

In Chapter 1, I read about the basic concepts and history of psychology that we will be referencing through out the whole semester. The six principles of scientific thinking come up in our lives daily; ruling out rival hypotheses, correlation vs. causation, falsifiability, replicability, extraordinary claims, and occam's razor.  I wonder how they decided to name occam's razor?? Out of all of the fallacies I realized that I commit the "Not Me Fallacy" quite often. I think that if it does not have to do with me, it won't effect me..which I learned to be not true. I still am a little confused about the concepts behind the 5 major theoretical perspectives; structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, cognitivism, and psychoanalysis. How do they relate to each other and how do they differ?? I'm excited for the rest of the semester because I think I will learn alot of things that I can apply to real life situations, like detecting pseudoscientific claims!  I didn't realize before how often pseudoscientific claims were right in front of us; newspapers, magazines, internet, TV, billboards, etc. Now that I know I can be a more informed consumer!