Psychology topics -

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Psychology - Studies behavior mainly. Not goes in philosophy and God. Material view only of
Science not sufficient.

Mind (Brain generally believed to be the organ of mind, but some reflexes are from Spinal cord
also) and Body

Consciousness (Stream of thoughts) and Unconscious (mind working even while sleeping), Sub
Concious

Heredity (DNA, Chromososmes, Genes), Environment (Social environment) and Maturation

(Impact of heredity and environment makes learning, Practice. Finally takes to maturation)

Nervous System - Neurons (Nerve cell having number of branches and off-shoots is known as
Neuron. Nerve cells and Nerve fibres). Automatic Nervous System (Sympathetic system - some
emotional experience blood circulation, heart beat increase, feels more energized. Para-
Sympathetic System - inactivity dullness, heart beat becomes slow), Reflex Action (Spinal
Cord), Central Nervous System - sensing, information goes to brain, taking action. Glands and
their secretion.

Dynamics of Human Behaviour :

Drives (Unconscious), Needs (Current need, Primary (Hunger) and Secondary needs
(Accumulating wealth, Different for different persons)) and Instincts (Thinking), Habit
(Repetition of Behavior, Becomes Automatic).

Mood (more longer after sensing), Sentiments (Combination of feelings and Emotions,
Excessive display of Feeling and Emotions) and Complexes (Some event stored in
unconscious)

Non-Voluntary (Mechanical) (Automatic, Random, reflex, Conditioned Reflex, Ideo-motor

(motion due to some thought), Instinctive (native activities on stimulus, tendency present from
birth, a rat runs on seeing cat), Habitual) and Voluntary Actions (Consciousness and goal
present) (Simple Voluntary Actions - Motive, Desire and End; Happiness, objects giving
happiness; Appetite (Desire to satisfy a need), Impulse (Effort not required like jumping for
saving life) and Wish (Unfulfilled desire). Complex voluntary Actions - Will (Face inter-duel of
motives, Conquering desires and reaching a decision, determination, in the decision fully backed
by confidence); Rejected Motives (Exercising will power some motives get rejected and goes to
sub conscious); Self-Control (Will Power, getting above impulses); Effort, Power and Freedom
in Will.)
Feelings (feels on sensing) and Emotions (remains after sensing, more intense than feeling) -
Cognition (sensing), Affection (information goes to brain) , Conation (some action done)

Sensation - Sensing through sense organs. Intensity, Novelty, Repetition, Intention, Motivation
directs our attention towards stimulus. Necessary for Perception and Memory.

Perception - Understanding, Illusion - false understanding due to incomplete knowledge or

prejudice (prior knowledge)

Imagination - Making new ideas from old knowledge. Memory-image - Refers to past
experiences, inside mind. Day-Dreams - Lost in imagination for some time. Hallucination - More
vivid than Memory-image, based on external world, based on false sensation. Delusion - altered
reality, based on false belief. Schizophrenia - Completely outside reality. Originality, Will-
power, Belief, Purpose based imaginations. Invenntion - Creative Imagination. Worry - Thinking
imaginative bad scenarios. Dream - Activity of mind while in REM (Rapid Eye Movement)
Sleep, necessary for relaxation. Development of Imagination depends on Past Experiences and
Knowledge.

Belief - A descriptive thought that a person holds about something.

Attitude - A person's enduring favorable or unfavorable evaluation, emotional feeling and action
tendencies toward some object or idea.

Memory and Forgetting - Storing knowledge by association (Association, Comparison,

Deduction, Induction) and repetition. Exaggeration (More impact) makes more deeper memories.
New knowledge, activities creates new neural pathways in brain which are strengthened by
repetition.

From information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and
retrieval of memory:

 Encoding or registration, Remembering or Memorization: receiving, processing and

combining of received information
 Storage or Retention: creation of a permanent record of the encoded information. Interest
and thinking about things in which there is interest increases retention. Useless things
forget easily, necessary for forgetting bad things.
 Retrieval, recall or recollection: calling back the stored information in response to some
cue for use in a process or activity. Recall due to association of ideas. Similarity,
Contrast, Contiguity (Two things learned simultaneously), Recently Occurred, Vividness,
Frequency and Interest helps in Retention and Recall.

Sensory Memory, Short-term Memory, Long-term Memory

Encoding of working memory involves the spiking of individual neurons induced by sensory
input, which persists even after the sensory input disappears (Jensen and Lisman 2005; Fransen
et al. 2002). Encoding of episodic memory involves persistent changes in molecular structures
that alter synaptic transmission between neurons. Examples of such structural changes include
long-term potentiation (LTP) or spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). The persistent
spiking in working memory can enhance the synaptic and cellular changes in the encoding of
episodic memory (Jensen and Lisman 2005).

Habit Memory (Knowledge of arithmetic table, by repetition), Image Memory (By

Understanding vividly).

Method of Memorization - Part method (for children), Whole method (for adults, better). For
long complex topic first by part and then by whole. Continuous and Spaced learning (better).

Mental Effort, Not to break matter in parts, Revise (24 hrs, then 7 days, then 3 months), Taking
rest are better. Health, Previous knowledge and Environment are factors affecting memorization.

Attention - Interest, Motivation. Size, Movement, Duration and repetition, Intensity attracts
attention.

Aptitude (Innate learning ability, Interest helps), Vocational Guidance (Job) and Selection

Learning - Modifies Behavior, Interest, Motivation

Thinking -

Thinking (If no external behavior) or Reasoning (Saying or doing something) is mental process
by which one tries to find a solution of some problem. Using Concept (some general idea),
Concrete Objects (Things we can perceive through our senses), Images, Language, Symbols.
Creative thinking (To see new relationship in old things), Symbolic thinking, Thought and
perception thinking. Solving Problem - Understanding whole situation necessary, Trial and Error
and understanding of mutual relationship, Insight, Effort and Success method. Incorrect thinking
- Fallacy (reaching conclusion by one example only), Wishful thinking, Imperfect insight, Word
Fallacy (Two meaning of one word), Influence of environment, Motivation, Individual
differences, Silent Assumptions, Use of wrong method. Necessary things for correct thinking -
Motivation, Interest, Insight, Understanding, Mutual Relationship, Good knowledge and
experience; Time taken (More or less), Leaving out no possibility, To postpone for some time if
path is not clear.

Intelligence - Capacity to comprehend, think and rationalize. Applying knowledge. General and
specific Ability.
Personality - Mirror of behavior. Others reaction. An integrated form of characteristics of one's
nature. Introvert, Extrovert, Ambivert. Factors affecting personality - Physical appearance,
Nervous System health, Sensory differences, Intellectual differences, Emotional differences,
Culture.

Personality Adjustment (Obstruction in fulfillment of aim, healthy and unhealthy adjustment),

Conflicts (Difficult to choose choices) and Disorders (failure in adjustment, Neurosis, Anxiety,
Phobia or Fear, Obsession, Physical Ailment, Psychosis (Disturbed mental state)).

Mental Health - Excess should be avoided, Calm Environment, Happiness, Satisfaction, Worry
and Stress free, Good Physical and Mental Health.

Is Happiness Having What You Want, or Wanting What You Have? Happiness, in other words,
comes from both having what we want (up to a specific basic required medium income level)
and wanting (enjoying) what we have. The basic meaning of these findings is that neither things,
nor having them, are closely related to happiness. Rather, happiness comes from valuing the
things we have—being grateful for them and enjoying them.
Sadly, many people seem to lose the latter capacity when they attain wealth. They continue to
believe that if they obtain just one more thing—that new car, new and larger home, more items to
complete their wardrobe, one more piece of jewelry, one more piece of art—they will finally
attain the happiness they seek. But in fact, if they obtain these possessions, the happiness they
experience is fleeting, and they are soon focusing on the next item needed to complete their
happiness.

Intelligence -

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1. Many brilliant people cannot focus continuously on one thing and jump from topic to topic,
change interests frequently which is the reason for their failure. A genius is mainly better than
brilliant in this regard.

2. Genius, Brilliant, Intelligent, Above Average, Average, Fool may be considered various
grades of intelligence. For example Genius predicts far better and generally does right first time
due to prior knowledge, whereas Brilliant may take two attempts generally, and fools rarely do
anything right.

3. Intelligence refers to individuals' abilities to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to

the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome
obstacles by careful thought.

4. Intelligence Components
 Thurstone - Multifactor View

1. Verbal Meaning - Understanding of ideas and word meanings.

2. Number - Speed and accuracy in dealing with numbers.

3. Space - The ability to visualize objects in three dimensions, tracking moving targets in
relation to other moving targets in 3D space.

Composite of Nine abilities - Visual or Spatial, Perceptual, Numerical, Logical or Verbal

relations, Fluency in dealing with words, Memory, Inductive, Deductive ability, ability to restrict
the solution of a problem.

Gardner's - Multiple Intelligences

4. Musical Intelligence

5. Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence - Athletes

6. Personal or Emotional intelligence - Ability to get along well with others

Sternberg's - Triarchic theory

7. Componential or Analytic Intelligence - Abilities to think critically and Analytically.

Persons high on this dimension excel in standard tests of academic potential like Professors.

8. Experiential or Creative Intelligence - Insight and ability to formulate new ideas.

Persons high in this excel at zeroing in on what information is crucial in a given situation, and at
combining seemingly unrelated facts like Scientific geniuses such as Einstein, Newton.

9. Contextual or Practical Intelligence - Persons high in this are intelligent in a practical,

adaptive sense, street smarts and are adept at solving problems of everyday life.

Cattell's theory of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

10. Fluid Intelligence - Our largely inherited abilities to think and reason.

11. Crystallized Intelligence - Accumulated Knowledge

(Not to forget that both can be increased by practice.)

IQ - Mental Age / Chronological Age

Wechsler Adult Intelligence scale

a. Verbal Tests

1. Information - general Information (Knowledge)

2. Digit Span - repeat series of digits (Short Term memory)

3. Vocabulary - (Oxford Mini Dictionary)

4. Arithmetic (Geometry too)

5. Comprehension (Understanding of read or listened material)

6. Similarities (and differences, fast comparison)

b. Performance Tests

7. Picture Completeion - What part of picture is missing

8. Picture Arrangement - Arrange Pictures to make sensible story (Comics Writing)

9. Block Design - duplicate designs made with red and white blocks, Legos (Children can do
this)

10. Object assembly - Picture Puzzles, Zigsaw puzzles, Tangram

11. Digit Symbols - Alphabets and number encoding questions

Cognition - Thinking, Deciding, Communicating.

Intelligence - Cognitive, Practical, Emotional.

Personality - Uniqueness and Consistency in the behavior of individuals.

Cognitive Basis of Intelligence - Processing Speed

Quick study, quick witted, fast learner, being intelligent involves being able to process
information quickly. Inspection time - Minimum amount of time a particular stimulus must be
exposed for individuals to make a judgement about it that meets some preestablished criterion of
accuracy.

Neural Basis of Intelligence - Neurochmical events occurring in brain

Nerve conduction velocity - The speed with which nerve impulses are conducted in the visual
system.

Metabolic activity in brain during cognitive tasks. More intelligent people expend less energy
while working on various tasks.

Brain Structure - Size of certain portions of brain, including left and right temporal lobes and the
left and right hippocampus.
Career Succes : Competency Assesment

Key competencies (possess at least 5 for being successful)

Skill at several kinds of thinking, such as inductive reasoning and thinking.

A strong desire for success.

Flexibility.

Wanting to have an impact on others.

Willingness to take an initiative.

Self-confidence and good understanding of others (A cluster of skills psychologists often

describe as Social Skills)

Heredity plays a role in intelligence.

Environment plays a bigger role in intelligence.

Nature vs Nurture theory.

Females may score a bit better at literature, spelling and writing, whereas males at visual-spatial
tasks such as mental rotation or tracking a moving object through space.

Emotional intelligence - Cluster of traits or abilities relating to the emotional side of life.
Knowing our own emotions, Managing our own emotions, Motivating ourselves, Recognizing
and influencing other's emotions, Handling relationships.

Creativity - The ability to produce work that is both novel (original, unexpected) and appropriate
(it works - it is useful or meets task constraints)

Mundane Creativity - We utter a new sentence or understand a new concept. Occurs with respect
to problems for which our past knowledge and experience give us valuable cues, we know where
to look for solution.

Exceptional Creativity - The emergence of something dramatically new, such as printing press
by guttenberg, idea of integrated circuits which made computers possible. We do not know
where to begin looking for solution, so the solution founf is likely to be dramatic and to require
thinking that is "outside the box", thinking that breaks out of "mental rut". Get out of current
environment and thinking mentally and see things from ten thousand foot view (like navigating
maze being inside it versus looking at it from the top), and think of a new and novel solution.

Confluence Approach to creativity - Lubart. Creativity requires confluence of 6 resources.

Intellectual abilities - Ability to see problem in new ways, the ability to recognize which of one's
ideas are worth pursuing, and persuasive skills - the ability to convince others of these new ideas.

Kowledge - Enough knowledge about a field to move it forward.

Certain styles of thinking - thinking in novel ways and an ability to see the big picture, to think
globally as well as locally.

Personality attributes - Willingness to take risks and tolerate ambiguity. Intrinsic task based
motivation - Creative people usually love what they are doing and find intrinsic rewards in their
work.

Environment - that is supportive of creative ideas.

Decisions are taken on past knowledge and intelligent problem solving or on basis of emotions.

Trying new complex tasks help formation of new neural pathways, thus expanding brain
efficiency.

Grey Matter (Cerebral Cortex) - outermost layered structure of neural tissue of the cerebrum
(brain), in humans (Sensory, Motor, Association Areas).

White Matter (Neural Pathway) - connects various parts of nervous system,

Cerebrum - motor control.

Cerebellum - Central Nervous system.

Cerebral cortex- memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness.
Drink Water. Take deep long breaths. Meditate.

Perception - Understanding, deducing, extrapolating things from less data by thinking.

Prediction - Extrapolation of previous events, knowledge and thinking rational future outcome.

Intelligence associated with sensory input - Visual Spatiality - eyes. Musical, Navigating without
seeing - ears. Smell (new perfumes, food) - nose. Taste (food) - tongue. Touch (brail reading,
navigating without seeing) - skin.

Abstract logic and thinking - brain

Thorndike - Mechanical, Abstract and Social intelligence.

Guilford's theory -

1. Process or Operation - Cognition - recognize things, Memory - retain past experiences in

mind, Divergent thinking - think in various directions, Convergent thinking - think in such a way
as to reach the right conclusions, Evaluation - assess a certain situation appropriately for taking
the right decision.

2. Material or Content - Figure - understand by senses, Symbolic - understand symbols,

alphabets, Semantic - understanding basic ideas, Behavioral - social intelligence, helps one to
comprehend communication amongst people around him.

3. Products - Units - classify experience of senses by uniqueness, Categories or kinds - group

ideas according to their specific meanings, Relations - understand interrelationship existing
between things, Systems - mental ability which helps one to formulate problems for finding out
their solutions, transformations - offer suggestions for necessary improvement, forsee the nature
of a certain situation with a certain circumstance, Implications - see the implied meaning

Intelligence Components -

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Visual or Spatial ability

Perceptual ability

Language ability

Logical and Verbal relations ability

Numerical ability

Problem Solving

Memory

Deductive ability (Deductions oan base of available data)

Inductive ability (Extrapolation based on previous data)

I.Q. -

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140 and above - Genius

120 - 140 - Very Superior

110 - 120 - Superior

90 - 110 - Average (Normal)

80 - 90 - Dull

70 - 80 - Border Line

Below 70 - Feeble-minded

50 - 60 - Morons

20 - 50 - Imbeciles

Below 20 - Idiots

Social Psychology -

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Important causes of social behavior and thought include the behavior and characteristics of other
people (social factors), cognitive processes, emotion, environmental factors, culture (cultural
factors), and genetic factors (biological factors). Social psychologists currently recognize that
social thought and social behavior are two sides of the same coin, and that there is a continuous,
complex interplay between them.

Lumosity Brain Function Categorization -

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Memory -
Recalling the location of objects
Remembering names after the first introduction
Learning new subjects quickly and accurately
Keeping track of several ideas at the same time

Attention -
Maintaining focus on important tasks all day
Improving productivity and precision at work or home
Concentrating while learning something new
Avoiding distractions

Speed -
Decision making in time-sensitive situations
Speeding up cognitive processes
Adapting to changing environments
Reacting quickly

Flexibility -
Communicating clearly
Thinking outside the box
Avoiding errors (Creativity is opposite of this)
Multi-tasking quickly and efficiently

Problem Solving -
Dissecting complex arguments
Making quick and accurate estimations
Calculating figures in your head
Determining the best course of action