Module 1: Definition of, 4 general goals (description, explanation, prediction, control), modern approaches (know basic ideas behind biological, cognitive, behavioral, psychoanalytic, humanistic and cross-cultural psychologies), historical approaches -- antecedents (philosophy & biology), structuralism, functionalism, gestalt, behaviorism (know what these 4 are, as well as the related names we noted), vocational view -- clinical psychologists vs. psychiatrists (know the difference), areas of specialization (social/personality, developmental, experimental, biological, cognitive, psychometrics -- know the basic gist of each).

Module 2: SURVEYS -- basic idea, advantage, disadvantages, population, sample, representative sample, random selection, the idea that the optimum is the largest representative sample size. CASE STUDIES -- basic idea, advantages, disadvantages, problematic aspects of personal beliefs & self-fulfilling prophecies, placebos, placebo effect. CORRELATION (know this as in class, which has a bit more detail than the book), correlation coefficient ( r ), what its various values indicate, scatter plots, best fit curves, the idea that correlation does not necessarily indicate causation (know this well enough to work with examples). NATURALISTIC vs. LABORATORY settings (basic ideas and problems as in class), EXPERIMENTATION -- purpose, independent & dependent variables, experimental & control groups (know these terms well enough to work with examples), conditions for concluding the presence of causal relations, random selection, double blind study, replication.

Module 3: Glial cells and neurons (basic functions), basic structure of neurons including the following terms (dendrites, cell body, myelin sheath, axon, end bulbs, semi-permeable membrane. Action potential (what it is, difference from household current), gates, resting state, depolarization, refractory period (know what these are, and how they relate to the graph of voltage changes we saw in class), all-or-none response (know what this is), cell body as decision making device on the basis of incoming excitatory and inhibitory influences (know what’s going on here). Neurotransmitters & synapses (know what these are), know what’s going on in each of the 6 stages of neurotransmission we saw in class (although you don’t need to memorize these stage by the numbers -- just know what’s going on in the sequence of actions). Acetylcholine and endorphines as examples of neurotransmitters (and what functions they’re associated with), alcohol, cocaine and curare as toxins that interfere with neurotransmission (and basically how each of them does it), blood-brain barrier (what it is). Afferent/sensory neurons vs. efferent/motor neurons (what these are), interneurons (what they are and their role in processing simple reflexes).

Module 4: Ways of finding out about: brain damage, EEG’s, MRI & fMRI, PET scans (what these are and basically how they work), divisions of the nervous system and the associated terms (central, peripheral, somatic, autonomic, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems -- what they are, what they do). Brain’s structures and terms -- BRAINSTEM, pons, medulla, reticular formation, thalamus, cerebellum, LIMBIC SYSTEM, hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus -- their functions and categories, but you don’t need to know their specific physical locations, the hypothalamus as pleasure center, CEREBRAL CORTEX -- FRONTAL LOBES -- executive function, Phineas Gage (and what his example demonstrated), motor cortex (what it does), motor homunculus (what it is, the idea behind it), cross-connection, Broca’s area (what it does) and Broca’s aphasia (what it is). PARIETAL LOBES -- somatosensory cortex (what it does), sensory homunculus (what it is, the idea behind it), cross-connection. TEMPORAL LOBES -- auditory processing, Wernicke’s area (what it does), Wernicke’s aphasia (what it is), Angular gyrus (what it does). OCCIPITAL LOBES -- vision. ENDOCRINE SYSTEM -- glands, hormones, pituitary gland, feedback loop. 2 HEMISPHERES -- damage to left usually produces greater impairment, split-brain operations, corpus callosum, the results of split-brain operations (understand what’s going on with these well enough to work with examples), general distribution of functions across hemispheres.