INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY– YALE – COURSERA

COURSE NOTES

About this Course

“What are people most afraid of? What do our dreams mean? Are we natural-born racists? What makes us
happy? What are the causes and cures of mental illness? This course tries to answer these questions and
many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores
topics such as perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, persuasion, emotions, and
social behavior. We will look at how these aspects of the mind develop in children, how they differ across
people, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to illness and injury.”

Taught by: Paul Bloom, Brooks & Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology & Cognitive Science, Yale

MODULE 1 – WELCOME TO INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

I – Reading: About this course

II – Video: How to take this course

III – The PERMA Test

 Reading: Optional happiness survey (PERMA test)
 Martin Seligman’s PERMA+:
P – Positive Emotion
E – Engagement
R – Positive Relationships
M – Meaning
A – Accomplishments/Achievements
 Yet happiness goes beyond a “+” can include other important areas, such as:
O – Optimism,
N – Nutrition,
PA – Physical Activity and
S – Sleep
 Results: “YOUR PERMA RESULTS ARE, ON 03/01/25:
O POSITIVE EMOTIONS = 8
O ENGAGEMENT = 9.67
O RELATIONSHIPS = 9
O MEANING = 8.67
O ACCOMPLISHMENT = 9
O HEALTH = 8.67
O NEGATIVE EMOTIONS = 7.33
O LONELINESS = 8
O OVERALL WELL-BEING = 8.81”
“NOTE: Keep track of these scores to see if any of the metrics improve over time. You will be prompted to
take this survey again at the end of the course. Please write these numbers down in your notes, take a
screenshot of this page, or record wherever you will be able to reference later. Once you click out of this
survey, you may not be able to refer back and see your scores.”

IV – Introductory readings

1 – History of Psychology
Baker, D. B. & Sperry, H. (2018). History of psychology. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds),
Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. DOI:nobaproject.com
 Psychology’s precursors came from philosophy and physiology
 Philosophy:
o John Locke and Thomas Reid
o Empiricism: knowledge would be acquired through how our mind observes and experiences life,
its facts, and events through our mind, intellect faculties, will, and senses
 Physiology: Herman von Helmholtz measured the speed of the neural impulses
o Physiology of hearing and vision (speed of light and sound)
o This unveiled the mismatch between sensorial perception and external world phenomena
o Scientific evidence of the possibility of such mismatches between the mind and the external
world, challenging the accuracy of empiricism hegemony in the understanding of the external
world, in the perception by the mind and in the construction of knowledge
o Physical reality and psychological reality are not identical
o Psychophysics: methods to measure the relationship between physical stimuli and human
perception

1.1 – Wilhelm Wundt

 Leipzig, 1879, considered the father of psychology as a science
 Experimental psychology or experimental introspection
 Developed the technic, or rather a method, of introspection through which the person would self-report
on varied reactions to presented stimuli
 His objective was to identify and explore elements of consciousness
 He differentiated between “structural introspection” and everyday self-observation
 Experimental introspection implied structured and controlled self-observation and reporting of conscious
thoughts, feelings, and sensory experiences
 It included an observing and reporting on the chronometry between stimuli and reactions
 It was a study of sensations and perceptions, i.e., sensorial experiences
 For Wundt VOLUNTARISM (a school of psychology) would be the analysis of how the power of will
organising the mind content (stimuli such as sensations and feelings) into high-level thought processes
and reactions using experimental introspection

1.2 – Structuralism
 Titchener (Englishman in the US, Cornell University)
 Studied under Wundt and proposed the theory of structuralism in psychology
 The structures of the “mind”, i.e., the mind conceived in term of its contents, being them the mental
experiences (sensations, images, and feelings) and how they combine to form more complex
experiences
 They would be the components of the mind – which could to, a certain extent, be understood as the
mental process of consciousness itself
 With experimental introspection constituting the controlled method to break down consciousness into its
basic elements (components)
 He focused almost entirely on the mind of an adult and on hHow the mind would be structured and such
structures would process complex experiences in relation to physical events
 These structures, elements, components, or states of consciousness would be divided into 3 groups:
o sensations (sights, sounds and tastes),
o images (components of thoughts),
o and affections (feelings or components of emotions);
 And analysed through introspection according to 5 properties:
 quality,
 intensity,
 duration, and
 clearness (to the attention)

1.3 – Functionalism
 Opposed to structuralism, did not accept the human mind could be defined in terms of elements,
components, or structures
 Rather than focus on the components of the mind, it focused on the activities of the mind and its
functions
 Influenced by Darwinism, it demanded a dynamic approach to mental processes that viewed the mind
and mental states in function of environmental changes, opportunities, and need for adaptation
 Behaviour and mental states would be like survival mechanisms in view perceived sensorial stimuli and
biological in terms in function of the need to adapt to environmental changes, contexts, and conditions
 John Dewey (University of Chicago), Harvey A. Carr, William James, James Ward

1.4 – Gestalt
 Also sees the mind as a dynamic organisation of experiences in whole patterns and equally whole
configurations
 It originated in Germany and Austria, hence, under the influence of Kant’s epistemology and Husserl’s
 phenomelogical method
o Both see experience of central importance either to attain knowledge (Kant) or to the method to
understand phenomena
o Lived experience and how the person perceives it and its unfolding results are one whole central
to the mental process
 It puts greater relevance on humanistic and holistic view of the mental process, favouring a more
qualitative approach to psychology as a field of study
o Then, it opposes behaviourists views of complex behaviour as result of elementary conditioned
reflexes

2 – Research Designs
Scollon, C. N. (2018). Research designs. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook
series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. DOI:nobaproject.com
 Types of research
o Experimental design (e.g., field experiments; controlled experiments; quais-experiments; etc.)
o Correlational designs (e.g., case-control studies; observational studies; etc.)
o Case Studies
o Quasi-experimental designs
o Reviews (e.g., literature reviews; systematic reviews; bibliometric reviews; etc.)
o Descriptive Designs (e.g., case studies; naturalistic observations; surveys; etc.)
o Cross-sectional Designs
o Observational Study
o Qualitative designs (e.g., observational designs; case studies; discourse/narrative analysis; etc.)
o Quantitative designs (e.g., descriptive designs; correlational designs; surveys; experiments; etc.)

2.1 – Experimental Design

 Seeks to identify or measure the causality between an independent variable (IV) and a dependent one
(DV) based on a hypothetic or established correlation between them
 The independent variable is manipulated (controlled variable) by the researcher to verify variations in the
effects of it over the dependent variable
 The most important feature of experiments is the random assignment (neither participants nor
researcher may influence the allocation of a participant in a specific group within the population sample
(this is to guarantee that the groups preserve a distribution as aleatory as possible as in the population)
 Experiments should avoid:
 Confounds (aka confounders) which are variables that may influence the independent
variable, the dependent variable, participants, researchers, or both, giving rise to
spurious associations
 Placebo effect is when a participant becomes aware of the group they belong to
 Participant demand happens when participants behave in a way that they believe the
researcher wants them to do
 Experimenter expectation, analogously, when the researcher let their expectations
influence their choices or the participants behaviours
o Double-blind procedure is a research procedure that seeks to ensure that neither
experimenters nor participants are or become aware of each other’s expectations or of the
conditions they will be in
o Thus, the possibility of verifying or ruling out causation is a main feature of experiments

2.2 – Correlational Design

 Is a passive (observational) method of research. The researcher observes a phenomenon to measure
and analyse a pattern of correlation between two variables without interfering with them and, usually, not
being able to infer causation in the relationship between them
 In principle, it is a quantitative research method, making use of scatterplots to mark the relationship
events between the two variables
 The relationship between the variables can be positive or negative, strong or week, and these are
indicated in the correlation coefficient (r) which is inscribed in the mathematical model that may represent
such relationship based on the scatterplot, or better, on the data
 The correlation coefficient is positive when the two variables move in the same directions, e.g., when one
goes up in value or frequency of occurrence, so does the other; conversely, when they move in opposite
directions, e.g., when one increases in value or frequency, the other does the opposite
 They will have stronger correlation the more the pairs of values of the two variables appear in the
scatterplot closer to an alignment (slope line, e.g., regression line); conversely, the less it happens, i.e.,
 when the scatterplot pairs appear distant from the slope line and are more spread out, the weaker is the
correlation between the two variables
 Also, if an association has too many exceptions, it will be weaker, and, conversely, the fewer the
exceptions, the stronger will be the correlation
 While the nature of the correlation (i.e., positive/direct, or negative/inverse) is given by the sign of the
correlation coefficient (r: + or -, respectively), its absolute value will represent the correlation’s strength
(i.e., the closer it is to 1, the stronger is the correlation – scatterplot concentrates neatly around the slope
line –; the close it moves toward “0”, the weaker will be the correlation – scatterplot too spread-out
around the slope line)
 As a rule of thumb, correlation does not mean causation
 Qualitative Research often involves the close observation of a group’s organisation, culture, and
behaviour (e.g., ethnography); of specific individuals or specific contexts (e.g., case study, e.g., in Freuds
studies); or the analysis of communication extracts, stories, or accounts in a particular context (discourse
and narrative analysis of theme, structure, dialogues, signals, significant, etc.)
 Qualitative methods make use of induction, i.e., the departure from data on specifics to elaborate a
theoretical argumentation

Método dedutivo Método hipotético-dedutivo

Parte de verdades gerais e

Combina o método dedutivo
Como conclusões já conhecidas
com a formulação e
funciona para chegar a uma
experimentação de hipóteses
conclusão particular

É utilizado na filosofia, nas

É o método mais aceito em
Utilização leis científicas e na
todos os campos da ciência
educação

 Control variable in experiments or correlational designs is a third (or more) variable(s) that is (are) kept
constant to allow to observe potential effects of the independent variable on the dependent one

2.3 – Quasi Experimental Design

 When even though it is not possible to assign group aleatorily, i.e., when the groups need to be pre-
determined; e.g., married, or single subjects, the study is carried out as if it were an experiment
 It may make difficult or impossible to infer causation

2.4 – Longitudinal Studies

 Involve following an individual, group of people or situation over a long period of time to see how they
behave along it

2.5 – Surveys
 Involve interviews or data collection, being possible to collect, organise and study data through either
descriptive or inferential methods (e.g., in correlational research or in an experiment)

2.6 – Parameters for research choice:

 Time,
 Resources,
 Costs,
 Possibility of random assignment,
 Ethics,
 Cultural factors, etc.

MODULE 2 – THE BRAIN

1 – The Astonishing Hypothesis (Video)

The Astonishing Hypothesis posits that "a person's mental activities are entirely due to the
behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and
influence them." [Francis] Crick [biologist] claims that scientific study of the brain during the 20th
century led to acceptance of consciousness, free will, and the human soul as subjects for
scientific investigation.[1]
 Rather than attempting to cover all the aspects of consciousness (self-awareness, thought,
imagination, perception, etc.), Crick focuses on the primate visual system and breaks down the
prerequisites for conscious experience into several broad subconditions, including some sort of
short-term memory and attention mechanism. The book then delves into a brief overview of
many neuroscientific topics, ranging from a survey of how neurons function to a description of
basic neural circuits and their artificial equivalents. Throughout, Crick cites various experiments
which illustrate the points he is making about visual awareness, such as studies investigating
the phenomenon of blindsight in macaques.

The later chapters of the book synthesize many of the points made earlier about the visual
system into a unified framework, although Crick recognises exceptions to his proposed
framework. Also, here he takes the opportunity to make suggestions for further experiments that
could provide empirical basis for further understanding about human consciousness and
includes a brief addendum on several topics he glossed over, like free will. Overall, the
message Crick repeats as the main purpose of writing the Astonishing Hypothesis is to break
the scientific community's reluctance to give consciousness a thorough and scientifically-
grounded investigation, and to encourage others such as philosophers to address the issues of
consciousness in a way that takes account of neuroscientific discoveries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astonishing_Hypothesis

 By presenting Phineas Gage story, which took place in the 19 th Century, the text introduces a materialist
approach to the study of the brain and, consequently, to the notion of consciousness. Gage was a
foreman who had an accident working that caused severe brain injuries. Although he managed to
recover and regain basic motor and cognitive capabilities, he came out of it with significant changes in
his usual behaviours. This would confirm the brain as a source of our mental life (and behaviour) and the
validity – at least relatively – of Francis Crick’s Astonishing Hypothesis.
 According to it, our mental activity, life, or consciousness, would derive from be influenced by nerve and
glial cells, composing the bring and parts of the spinal cord, consequently from the atoms, ions and
molecules that compose them, i.e., a materialistic conception of brain and consciousness which has
contributed to the acceptance of psychology’s scientific status
 While it is important to stress that Crick’s focus was on the visual system and on the role of memory and
attention in the conscious experience; such study parameters do not rule out the value of Crick’s
contribution. On the contrary, they are in line with scientific methodology – which requires the declaration
of the research’s assumptions and scope – as well as confirm Popper’s very idea of falsifiability intrinsic
to scientific models, hypothesis, and theories
 One still may question whether the brain is the mind; or the mind is what the brain does; or if mental
life emerges from the brain (either from a materialistic or dualistic approach). However, no doubt
Crick’s study added to the understanding of the mind by highlighting the feasibility and value of
neurological approaches to the brain and consciousness – if not from at least materialistic perspective

2 – Dualism (Video)
 René Descartes isa traditional example of dualistic philosopher
 Based on the assumption that one could never know for sure neither what can we question or not (i.e.,
method of doubt), he argued that only animals could be defined solely in material terms, humans could
not
 Given the impossibility of certainty, one should presume that the physical world could just be product of
our imagination, a mental construction
 In this direction, humans would need to rely not only on intuition, and our consciousness and existence
would be exactly the measure of such a construction, intuition, spiritual activity
 Hence, thinking would not derive from mere physical phenomena, but from the human capability of
intuiting, creating spontaneously our own reality, i.e., our very existence, so that “I think therefore I am”
not only states existence, but also is the cause of our existence
 The mind and the psychological phenomena would imply admitting that human existence presupposes a
spiritual existence besides a material one, and that both existences could even be two separate things
 For Descartes, based on his observation of mentally ill and the admission that such people would see
their own (maybe exclusive) reality or that humans also accept beliefs such as the survival of the soul
despite the end of one’s physical existence (or some sort of survival of the SELF after death), there
would be a duality between body and soul
 However, as neurological science develops, including the technological progress in bran activity image
observation and measurement, more and more evidence accumulates on the relationship between
mental and physical activities, pointing out that dualism may seem, to some extent, more a human form
 of coping with not-yet-known or unexplained phenomena, instead of scientifically sustainable argument
against materialism
 That is to say that while materialism may not be able to clearly see or explain all psychological
phenomena, scientific and technological advances more and more collect evidence that filled so-far
unknown gaps and challenge dualistic views
 Contemporary physical evidence, measure and arguments about human mind, mental activity, and the
brain more and more move away from initial attempts to explained them in terms of responses to
environmental conditions, to more sophisticated attempts to match our equally complex physical and
mental life, precisely with the help physical evidence and theories relating it to our physiology, making it
similarly more and more difficulty not to see the brain as a physical entity

3 – Neurons (Video)
 Such massive of new evidence brought about by neuroscience has been stressing the role of the brain
as the source of our mental life, e.g., the source of our motions, decision-making, emotions, sensations,
passions, excitement, inhibition, pleasure, pains, etc.
 Among other things, such as chemicals etc., the brain is composed of its neurons, its smallest parts
which are wired and connect and interact in and through massive and complex parallel neural systems
and networks
 Neuros are subdivided into:
1st. Dendrites that responsible by receiving information (e.g., stimuli);
2nd. The Cell Body and its nucleus that sum up the information;
3rd. The Axon (insulated by a fatty tissue (the myelin sheath) that transmit it;
4th. Through its Axon Terminals via the synoptic.

 Some estimate that a brain may have 100 billion neurons, or even more, in a rather complex structure
 There are three types of neurons:
o Sensory neurons: responsible for taking environmental or from the external world information;
o Motor neurons: responsible for motor control; and
o Interneurons: responsible for connecting the neurons, without contact with the external world,
through sensation or motor action by firing
 Neural firing is absolute or nil; the degree or intensity of it is given by the firing frequency or by the
number of neurons firing
 The communication between neurons is not through direct physical contact, but through synapse –
which are gaps or junctions between a neuron’s axel terminals and their synaptic knobs and the other
neuron’s dendrites (or gland or muscle cell) – by shot neurotransmitters (nerve impulses or chemicals)
 Different neuros shoot different neurotransmitters – which can be excitatory neurotransmitters,
increasing the energy or neuron firing, leading to greater effects in their recipients, or be inhibitory
neurotransmitters, decreasing energy or firing, and leading to lesser in their recipients.
 Some psychopharmacology may be designed to increase pleasure, enhance focus, block motor activity,
inhibit self-consciousness
o They may be antagonists and lower down the
intensity of things by binding to the dendrites,
inhibiting neurotransmission; or
o Agonists and increase in different ways the number of
neurotransmitters available – e.g., amphetamine (such
as cocaine and speed), which increases the amount of
norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that causes general
arousal; or Prozac and L-Dopa, which increase,
respectively, the supply of dopamine (in cases of
Parkinson) or serotonin (in cases of depression).
 The brain cannot be compared to computers for two reasons: 1) the brain is highly resilient – it may
suffer damage, but is far more resistant to a total failure than a computer; 2) computers are fast because
they rely purely on electronic circuits, while the brain needs a far more complex and efficient network of
structures to performing also fast, but carrying out truly complex parallel processes and exchanges while
compensating the slowness of brain tissues

4 – Parts of the Brain (Video)

 The brain's functions are carried out by networks of many different brain regions working together
 The brain is divided in different parts, which in turn are primarily responsible for different tasks. However,
such distribution is not necessarily or always absolute or excluding, i.e., parts of the brain may have to
rewire themselves to try to perform or perform, for different reasons, functions that are not include in their
primary purpose, for instance, to compensate a failure from a specific part
 Each lobe has specific functions and they work together to process and synthesize information and
perform complex tasks
 So, a damage to each part of the brain may cause specific effects – which indeed constitute a “natural
experiment” as it may be used by researches to identify functions that such a part performs; analogous
to what is done through MRI and PET Scan measuring brain activity when performing specific tasks
 There, however, some activities that may be performed without the brain involvement – at least without
involving cognition or conscious attention – such as involuntary or reflex movements (e.g., breathing,
peristalsis, heart pumping, blood pressure control, etc.)
 Relevant structures of the brain that are sub-cortical, in the centre of the brain, underneath the cortex
and the cerebrum, are the medulla, the cerebellum, the hypothalamus and the brain stem (which is the
upper end of spinal cord)
 The medulla controls some automatic functions as blood pressure, heart rate, swallowing, etc.
 The cerebellum ins involved in body balance and movement co-ordination
 The hypothalamus is involved in hunger, thirst, sex, and other appetites
 The cortex is circa of 3 mm. If taken out of our body and laid down straight, it would occupy circa of 2
square feet (roughly a square of 40 x 40 cm), so it is very crumpled and folded up resulting in many
grooves (sulci) and raised bits (gyri)
 It is in the cerebral cortex that all reasoning, complex perception, and language comes from, and only
mammals have it (being particularly large in humans)
 The cortex is divided in two hemispheres, left and right, that are linked to each other by a bundle of
nerve fibres, the corpus callosum, responsible for the co-ordination between them
 The cortex is also divided into lobes:
o The frontal lobe,
o The occipital lobe,
o The temporal lobe, and
o The parietal lobe
 The cortex is like a topographical map that replicates the body, so neighbour cortex areas are disposed
exactly as body neighbour arrangements
 There are many disfunctions due to damage or failure in their corresponding brain area:
o Apraxia: problems with co-ordinating movements into complex actions
o Agnosia: difficulty with visual recognition (psychic blindness)
o Prosopagnosia: cannot recognise faces
o Aphasia: language disorders
o Broca’s Aphasia: cannot speak
o Receptive Aphasia: disorder that makes difficult to understand spoken and written language,
numbers, gestures, and drawings (aka Wernicke’s Aphasia)
o Sensory Neglect: condition in which a person does not process or respond to sensory
information due to a neurological disorder and not for receptors’ failure as they are working
normally (the most common type is special neglect)

5 – Our Two Brains (Video)

 Lateralization involves the division of the brain in two (apparently) symmetrical hemispheres, left and
right, and the recognition that there might be some prevailing primary functions to each one of them.
 However, this is idea holds no longer, as it widely understood that, despite some prevalence of functions
in each one, they tend to work together through the corpus callosum – a network of neurons linking both
hemispheres. In fact, a better way to see such lateralization is by understanding that there may be a
dominance of one of the hemispheres regarding some abilities and functions, that all, as most functions
are performed on both hemispheres.
 Thus, we may say the left hemisphere is more associated to spoken and written language,
reasoning, logic, numerical skills, and science; while the right one is more associated with
insight, imagination, art awareness, and music, but they normally work in co-ordination, in a double
or duplicate capacity.
 Conversely, it is necessary to acknowledge that lateralization also implies collateral organisation, as
the left hemisphere sees the right side of the external world; and the right hemisphere controls the
left side of the body (and vice-versa) in a crossover fashion.
 Finally, the video discusses how some people suffered and became sort of two people in one, as they
were submitted to brains surgery to cut off their corpus callosum. It was believed, wrongly, that isolating
each other the neural storms that caused epilepsy would be avoided it would. The result was disastrous
as the loss of the callosum, instead of avoid neural storms, made the same brain work in an
uncoordinated double way.

QUIZ – SPLIT-BRAIN SYNDROME

 A split-brain patient is presented with two images:
o a key is presented on her left side; and
o a ring is presented on her right side.
 The patient is asked to report what she sees. How will she respond?
o In a case of split-brain syndrome, the connection between the left and right hemispheres is
removed.
o The image presented on the left side (the key) is obtained by the right side of the brain.
o The image presented on the right side (the ring) is obtained by the left side of the brain.
o Despite the split-brain syndrome, they may share these two pieces if information, but as the
right side of the brain is not language dominant, she may not be able to verbalize
visualization of the key.
o On the other hand, she still able to verbalize the information obtained by the left side, saying that
she sees the ring.

6. A Bit of Humility (Video)

 The lecture raises two objections to materialistic or strictly scientific views of the brain and mental life, or
notes of humility or notes of caution about absolute materialism – which would imply denying any
possibility of validity for dualism, even in a relative format.
 The first objection is based on the notion of the Hard Problem of Consciousness, first raised by David
Chalmers. The problem questions whether explanations on brain or mental activity and facts based on
neural physical-chemical terms should be limited to functional, mechanical, and behavioural systems and
patterns, as such systems may not be able to account for phenomelogical experiences of activities and
facts.
 For instance, while functions such as watching, listening, speaking, eating, or moving may be easily
understood into physical and chemical terms – the easy problems of consciousness –, the experiences,
the qualia, the subtle shades of the way different individuals may try involved in in theses mental
processes may utterly differ from one individual to another despite their sharing common vocabularies or
any other common systems of representation – the hard problems of consciousness. Where Mary may
see petrol blue, Gary may see petrol green, just to give a very simplistic illustration. When Diana tastes
nuts in a Boudreaux, Camilla may taste berries.
 The second objection comes with the notion of values, principles, ethics, moral, etc., humanistic
dimensions that seem impossible to be reduced to neural physical-chemical reactions or accounted for in
any equivalent terms.
 Therefore, the hard problem of consciousness would hinder efforts to explain physical states on
strictly scientific ground, i.e., without the need to account for unconscious choices to which would be
hard to identify evidence, measure, and test. Scientific views of consciousness would be limited to
explaining mental functions, processes, dynamics, and structures, and they may not able to answer
elements of subjectivity in mental experiences such to why “something is like it” – i.e., a physicalist
ontology versus a phenomelogical one hard to be explained without considering subjective issues.

7 – The Brain (Reading)

Beck, D. & Tapia, E. (2018). The brain. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook
series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. DOI:nobaproject.com

7.1 – Introduction
 The text presumes that the human brain is responsible for all behaviours, thoughts, and experiences
 As a rule, the human cognition is limited and we cannot perform tow tasks simultaneously.
 The brain is a major consumer of our oxygen and glucose intake, circa of 20% of their total, despite it
representing only 2% of the total body mass.
 The average human brain contains circa of 86 billion neurons
 Based on neuro-imaging technology, it is estimated that we use not more than 10% of our brain at the
same time, however, all parts of our brain are eventually engaged in different mental activities, just at
different times
 Our limited behaviour capacity is, then, limited more by the complexity of our neurons may interfere with
one another and the resulting complexity of their interactions than by any specific resource shortage

7.2 – The Anatomy of the Brain

 The brain me be divided into 3 main parts:
1. The Brain Stem;
2. The Cerebellum; and
3. The Cerebrum: Cortex and White Matter, Cerebral Hemispheres & Subcortical Structures.

 It may also be divided into layers:

1. The Telencephalon Cerebral Hemispheres (cortex + white matter + subcortical structures) Brain
2. The Diencephalon Thalamus & Hypothalamus Midbrain
3. The Mesencephalon Midbrain
4. The Metencephalon Pons + Cerebellum Hindbrain
5. The Myelencephalon Medulla

7.2.1 – Brain Stem

 Responsible for regulating our respiration, heart beat and digestion, as well as it is involved in our sleep-
wake cycle, in some sensor and motor functions, and in growth and hormonal behaviour
o It is divided in pons, medulla, midbrain, and diencephalon (the thalamus plus the hypothalamus)
o In some countries, the lost of the brain stem capacity may lead to a brain-dead diagnosis,
however, in others, it may be necessary evidence of significant cortex tissue loss – impeding any
chance of conscious experience – to support the same diagnosis

7.2.2 – Cerebellum
 Responsible for co-ordinating movement, posture, and a range of cognitive functions, including language
o It is the structure of the brain that contains the greatest number of neurons

7.2.3 – Cerebrum
 Cortex and White Matter + Cerebral Hemispheres + Subcortical Structures
 It is the largest part of the brain and contains the cortex
 Controls voluntary movement, memory, emotions, and sensation
 Divided into left and right hemispheres
 The hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibres

7.2.3.1 – The cortex

 The cortex is part of the cerebrum together with the white matter
 It is part of the cerebrum and is the grey mass that involves the centre of the brain
o The outer layer of the cerebrum, which is the largest part of the brain
o Also known as “grey matter”
o Responsible for processing language, memory, and thought
 o Controls intelligence, personality, and conscious thought
o Divided into three types of functional areas: primary, secondary, and association
o It is covered with ridges and folds called gyri and sulci; like a large carpet made of neural grey
tissue of grey crumpled into folds (gyrus) and grooves (sulcus) with a convoluted look
 Cortes vs White Matter
o While is the cortex that processes information and responds for complex functions such as
thought and perception (therefore, also known as the thinking part of the cerebrum); the white
matter acts as a communication network between the different areas of the cortex and brain
regions, as it is a tissue consisting mainly of myelinated axons that transmit the neural signals
between those areas and regions

7.2.3.2 – Cerebral Hemispheres

 Consist of the cerebral grey-matter cortex, the white matter, and the subcortical structures
o Together, they are responsible for our cognitive abilities and conscious experience
 Lateralization involves the division of the brain in two (apparently) symmetrical hemispheres, left and
right, and the recognition that there might be some prevailing primary functions to each one
 Despite some prevalence of functions in each one, they tend to work together through the corpus
callosum – a network of neurons linking both hemispheres. In fact, a better way to see such lateralization
is by understanding that there may be a dominance of one of the hemispheres regarding some abilities
and functions, but that most functions are performed on both hemispheres
 Thus, we may say the left hemisphere is more associated to spoken and written language, reasoning,
logic, numerical skills, and science; while the right one is more associated with insight, imagination, art
awareness, and music, but they normally work in co-ordination, in a double or duplicate capacity
 Besides lateralization, there is also a collateral organisation, as the left hemisphere sees the right side of
the external world; and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body in a crossover fashion

7.2.3.3 – Subcortical Structures

 Consist of the Basal Ganglia, Amygdala and Hippocampus

o The way into and from the brain and, thus, playing a vital role in voluntary motor functions, but
also related to emotions, gratification, and aversion

7.4 – The Lobes

 The cerebrum is also divided into four lobes:
o Occipital Lobe – mainly responsible for vision
o Temporal Lobe – responsible for auditory processing, vision, memory, and multisensory
integration
o Parietal Lobe – somatosensory cortex responsible for body sensations, visual attention, and
multisensory convergence
o Frontal Lobe – the thinking brain, responsible for movement, motor planning, language
functions, judgement, decision-making, reasoning, etc.

7.5 – A Brain Divided

 The two brain hemispheres are connected to each other by a bundle of white-matter neural tracts called
corpus callosum. This neural highway allows the two hemispheres to work together, communicating,
sharing, alternating, distributing, or even replicating tasks between themselves.
 In some cases, the hemispheres work in a collateral fashion: their respective cortex area is responsible
for sensations and movements in the diametrically opposed side of the body. While the left hemisphere is
responsible for movements and sensations of the right side of the body, the right hemisphere responds
 for those of the left side.
 In other cases, they may work in a lateral way. For instance, for most right and left-handed individuals,
the left hemisphere will tend to respond for language.
 Such function coordination and distribution between the two hemispheres may explain why, after the
corpus callosum is disabled or eliminated (e.g., a surgical intervention (callosotomy) to reduce believed
excessive neural activity in epilepsy cases), individuals may find it difficult to perform tasks which would
follow collateral modes of operation (e.g., not be able to name an object presented only to their left side.
As the object will be seen and processed by the right hemisphere, but the language is processed usually
by the left hemisphere, this may cause a delay, a difficulty, or even the impossibility of the person naming
the object.
 Nonetheless, such a “two-brain” or “split-brain” situation may facilitate the same person to be able to
search for an object using both visual fields (right and left) or to perform split simultaneous motor tasks
such as rubbing their head and stomach at the same time.

7.6 – Grey versus White Matter

 While the grey matter is composed by the neurons’ nuclei, the white matter is composed by their axons.
 On one hand, all protein and main metabolic and synthetizing functions of the neurons occur in the grey
matter causing all the main processing of information and command of mental and physical functions to
be initiated and conducted from the grey matter – thus, known as the working house or muscle of the
brain.
 On the other hand, the white mater, thus, has a myelinic nature, responding for all the communication
among neurons and different regions of the brain and the body.
 Nonetheless, the complex and interactive nature of mental processes require grey and white matter to
work together. One cannot perform without the other. Losses of portions of any one of them may
implicate loss reasoning, memory, language, and other mental functions.

7.7 – Studying the Human Brain

 The first attempts to study the brain’s anatomy and functions may be traced to phrenology, the 19th-
Century field of study of that believed that bumps and indentations of the skull reflected the brain itself
and its specific functions. Despite outdated, phrenology’s views on a structure of the brain and on the
distribution of functions among its parts have survived, however with new views on them because of
modern psychology and neuroscience theories and methods.

7.8 – Neuroanatomy
 Dissection of brains of animal and cadavers, particularly due to staining techniques and microscopy
technology, is a good method for studying cells, neurons, small brain structures and the changes in them
caused by diseases, injuries, or exposure to experiments. They offer very high spatial resolution.
 The discovery of new technologies (CAT/CT, computerized axial tomography, and scanning with MRI,
magnetic resonance imaging, or PET, positron emission tomography) have introduced a virtual form of
dissection. Through them, it has been possible not only to observe cells, neuros, brain structures and
changes in them by diseases and injuries, as well as experiment observing how they behave during the
execution of specific functions, e.g., as observing which parts of the brain are involved in cognitive
functions such as in memory tests or exposure to emotional triggers.

7.9 – Changing the Brain

 Study Case of brain changes in animals or human patients is possible by observing how they respond
to lesions, ablations, and diseases.
 Using TMS (transcranial magnetic simulation) a magnetic pulse generates a weak electrical current that
is applied to the brain allowing to observe responses to temporary interference in neural communication.
It has a good temporal resolution, but poor space resolution as it reaches only the surface of the
cortex
 TDCS (transcranial direct current simulation), diversely, applies a direct electrical current to a brain area,
during a longer span of time, and it is used in cognitive training to improve mental functions in
mathematics, memory, attention, and coordination.

7.10 – Neuroimaging
 PET and MRI scans measure, respectively, the blood level (using a marker) and oxigene level of brain
areas by comparing them with before and during or after an injury, disease, or task performance. They
 have good spatial resolution (not as good as dissection though), but poor temporal resolution.
 EEG (electroencephalography) measures electric brain activity through electrodes. It has good
temporal resolution, but poor spatial resolution.
 DOI (diffuse optical imaging) uses an infrared beam that goes through the brain. Eventual changes in the
beam’s colour properties are caused by oxygenated blood and active neurons, indicates the levels of
activity it encountered during on the way. It offers both good spatial and temporal resolution when it
targets active neurons detection, but poor low temporal resolution when targets oxygenated blood level.
 In face of differences in resolution of each method, research attempts to combine them to obtain
converging evidence.
MODULE 2 – FREUD

1 – Sigmund Freud (Introduction)

 No doubts, a historical figure, resulting from a highly educated society (the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s
Viennese society) and into a grand far-reaching theory with several offsprings

2 – The Psychodynamic Approach

 Is it the same as Psychoanalysis?

According to many therapists who practice this therapeutic orientation, the terms
"psychoanalysis" and "psychodynamic therapy" are often used interchangeably.
However, the basic distinction is more relevant in the context of therapy.

Psychoanalysis in particular has two meanings. First, it is a theory for

understanding clinical presentations, and perhaps even people in general. It is
also used to describe a form of intensive psychotherapy in the most classic
sense, which involves long-term treatment, often for years. The treatment takes
place several times a week, with the patient on a couch and conducted by a
therapist who is a certified psychoanalyst.

Psychoanalytic theory, in part developed based on the intensive form of therapy

described above, guides the practice of psychodynamic therapy to a large extent,
but not completely.

Psychodynamic therapy is psychoanalytic for the most part and makes

assumptions about how the mind works that are based on psychoanalytic theory.
But the technique is radically different from a traditional psychoanalysis
treatment. It is brief—15 sessions would not be unusual—and often similar in
number of sessions to CBT. It is mostly delivered once per week and takes place
face-to-face. The therapist may not be a certified psychoanalyst, but is someone
who trained in psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy and considers that his
or her therapeutic orientation. In APA's Div. 39 (Psychoanalysis) the term
"psychoanalysis" covers the whole range of psychoanalytically oriented therapy,
research and treatment. — Amy Novotney
(APA: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/12/psychoanalysis-psychodynamic)

 Freud expanded the notion of unconsciousness, systematizing and developing a theory about
unconscious motivation, unconscious reason, and unconscious dynamics. According to it, our feelings,
desires, and actions related to processing of stimuli and responding to them occurs mostly at the
unconscious level.
 Against common sense conception, we often do not know what we are doing or why we do it.
Psychology accepts that we do not fully understand how our mind works and that we may not have clear
access to the systems that give rise to our experiences, beliefs, and actions, e.g., as in language
comprehension or perception.
 For Freud, our mind operates in a dynamic perpetual conflict between three speres of the self: the id, the
ego, and the superego.

 Id, Ego & Superego

 The id would represent those sensations, drives and actions most closely related to our animal being.
The mental processes dominated by natural instincts without any constraint set by society or elaborated
reasoning, such as eating, drinking, sleeping, pooping, peeing, getting warm, or getting sensual
pleasure, i.e., those directed linked to immediate socially unconditioned satisfaction and under the
principle of pleasure. The unconscious nature of our selves.
 The ego would relate to processes of sensations, drives and actions involving some logic and reasoning
to satisfy or restrain them in function of pragmatic considerations, i.e., the principle of reality. Thus, the
ego would be our conscious self, where consciousness emerges – at around our first three years of
life.
 The third process of the self would be the superego, which internalizes rules and values provided by
society and parents, mediating id and ego processes. The superego is not a mere internalization of
consequences to rule breaking, but the development of the understanding of what is right or wrong and
adherence to the norms. The superego is our moral consciousness or our preconscious nature and
our effort to make it conscious.
 However, the superego does not necessarily represent a mindset guided by reasoned adherence to fair
moral norms, as it might have been set up in function of prejudices, social impositions, or ingrained
beliefs. So, it possible that your superego – which begins to be set up earlier in your childhood, from
around the first five years of age onwards – does not accept some sexual behaviour that you otherwise
consider, intellectually, perfectly fine.
 The superego’s main role is to suppress maladapted impulses (i.e., those considered wrong or socially
unacceptable), putting pressure on the ego to act morally (rather than realistically), or punishing or
supressing the id.
 The superego is present in all three levels of consciousness of the topological model (conscious,
preconscious, and unconscious). That is why one may feel guilt without being able to understand the
cause for it – the superego is acting at the unconscious level, i.e., the person is unaware of it. However,
when it operates at the conscious level, the person is aware of it and is capable of understanding what is
involved. If, however, the superego acts unconsciously to punish or suppress the id, we might end up
with feelings of guilt and no real understanding of why we feel that way.

3 – Stages of Development
 According to Freud’s development theory, the id comes with birth, then the person develops an ego (from
2 years old onwards), and, finally, starts developing a superego (from 5 years old onwards). His theory
is, however, much more complex with people developing their mind from infancy, through childhood and
adolescence to adulthood, and this mind development occurs mainly according to psychosexual stages,
i.e., in terms of sex and sexuality and the focus of the mind on the part of the body associated with that
stage.
 During any of these stages of development, problems may occur. If one is not able to properly deal with
or resolve any of such problem, it could become a fixation. The person could fixate their behaviour or
state of mind on that issue, keeping their focus of pleasure on the object (i.e., a part of the body)
associated with that stage also during their adult life.

Stage Years Focus Issue Problem (e.g.) Consequence/Fixation (e.g.)

Oral 0<1 Mouth Breast feeding Bad weaning Dependent or needy
Anal 2<3 Anus Toilet training Too harsh or too lax Compulsive, clean, stingy
Phallic 3<6 Genitals Family relationships Abnormal Vanity, inferiority, sexual disfunction
Latent 6 < Puberty None Same-sex peer models Develop social skills None
Genital Puberty on Genitals Sexual attraction begins
4 – Defence Mechanisms
 In Freud’s view, defence mechanisms are unconscious psychological processes that protect the self from
anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and external stressors.
 They are used by the ego (i.e., the self or the mind), often, offering a refuge to from a situation that one
cannot cope with.
 Defence mechanisms are not necessarily bad, and they are commonly used by people to deal with the
risks of anxiety and stress. However, when they become inadequate, recurrent, or excessive they may
become pathological, causing faulty behaviour, and leading to physical or mental distress to the person
or others.
 Repression: unconscious blockade. When the ego deals with id’s maladapted impulses by
suppressing them, or even directing them to more acceptable behaviour. Blocking: inability to
temporarily remember a negative memory.
 Displacement: redirects stressor to a less threatening target. If the ego redirects such maladapted
impulses towards people, end, or target that one (even if erroneously) deems acceptable or less
unacceptable; e.g., when a boy with serious issues with his father, leading to hate him, turns his anger
towards other boys.
 Sublimation: channelling unaccepted impulses to accepted activities. When one to scape a
maladapted impulse, such as a sexual-tabu desire (i.e., forbidden by the superego), compulsively
redirects all energy to work or study.
 The causes of displacement or repression of the id’s emotions, drives or impulses may, notwithstanding,
be identified in dreams, in jokes, or in slips of the tong.
 Projection: blaming other for a stressor impulse. It is another defence mechanism used when the
ego tries to reduce anxiety by attributing to or seen a maladapted impulse in somebody else – e.g., a
woman who have strong sexual desire for other women, but is ashamed of it for seeing them as
inappropriate due to her upbringing, keeping them buried in her unconsciousness and starting to believe
that other women are attracted to her.
 Rationalization: justify with logical reasons maladapted impulses to mask them. It is the
mechanism the ego may use to turn anxiety-producing thoughts into more accepted into more accepted
ways – e.g., a too harsh father who tends to severely and excessively punish his children due to an
unconscious pleasure to impinge physical harm, but earnestly believes his doing his best for them.
 Regression: unconsciously reverting to an earlier stage of development. It is when somebody goes
back and adopts behaviours that are characteristic and more adequate to an earlier stage of
psychoanalytical development due to stressful impulses from the id or other external stressors.
 Reaction formation: acting in the opposite way of one’s real feeling. It is a coping strategy that
people use to reduce anxiety and pressure from having socially unacceptable desires. For instance:
pretending that a bad experience did not affect you, or assuming a hyper moral stance to master
unacceptable impulses.
 Denial: refuse to acknowledge a difficult thing. It Happens when one refuses to recognise the
existence or occurrence of a fact or situation (associated with a maladapted impulse) that is difficult to
 handle – e.g., when does not accept his or her alcohol dependency/addiction despite clear evidence of it.
 The classification and conceptualization of each mechanism seems to vary according to authors and
therapeutical approaches. Below, there are 2 lists just for reference.

 Anna Freud Defence Mechanisms based on Freud’s work:

1. Repression
2. Regression
3. Reaction formation
4. Isolation
5. Undoing
6. Projection
7. Introjection
8. Turning against one’s own person
9. Reversal into the opposite
10.Sublimation or displacement

 Defence Mechanisms Extended List:

1. Acting out: Coping with stress by engaging in actions rather than acknowledging and bearing
certain feelings; e.g., instead of telling someone that you are angry with them, you might yell at
them or throw something against the wall.
2. Aim inhibition: Accepting a modified form of their original goal; e.g., becoming a high school
basketball coach rather than a professional athlete.
3. Altruism: Satisfying internal needs through helping others; e.g., one recovering from substance
use might volunteer to help others in recovery to deal with one’s own drug cravings.
4. Avoidance: Refusing to deal with or encounter unpleasant objects or situations; e.g., rather than
discuss a problem with someone, you avoiding them not have to deal with that person or issue.
5. Compensation: Overachieving in one area to compensate for failures in another; e.g., someone
who feels insecure academically might compensate by excelling in athletics.
6. Dissociation: Becoming separated or removed from something stressful, e.g., you might mentally
and emotionally disengage yourself from the situation.
7. Fantasy: Avoiding reality by retreating to a safe place within your mind; i.e., to escape anxiety into
one’ own inner world.
8. Humour: Pointing out the funny or ironic aspects of a situation; e.g., cracking a joke in a stressful
or traumatic situation.
9. Intellectualization: Thinking about events in a cold, clinical way, avoiding stressors by focusing
only on the intellectual component; e.g., a person diagnosed with a terminal illness might focus on
learning everything about the disease to avoid distress and remain distant from the reality.
10.Introjection: Taking in the beliefs, attitudes, or feelings of others; e.g., imitating a parent's
behaviour; adopting societal beauty standards; or adopting a bully's behaviour to stop being picked
on.
11. Isolation of Affect:" Detach one’s emotions from a thought or memory; e.g., recalling a traumatic
event without the associated feelings, treating it in a very detached and factual manner by
separating the cognitive aspect from the emotional one.
12.Passive-aggression: Indirectly expressing anger instead of telling someone that you are upset,
e.g., you might give them the silent treatment.
13.Somatization: Converting repressed emotions into physical symptoms. It is a way for the body to
communicate distress symbolically.
14.Splitting: Viewing people, things, or situations in extremes, as either all good or all bad – aka
binary or black-and-white thinking; e.g., idealize someone one moment and then devalue them the
next.
15.Undoing or Ritual: Trying to make up for what you feel are inappropriate thoughts, feelings, or
behaviours: e.g., if you hurt someone's feelings, offer to do something nice to assuage your anxiety
or guilt, or an absent father buying his children a lot of gifts occasionally.
 Hysteria for Freud was a symptom, manifested through different ways, sometimes in ungovernable
excessive emotional behaviour or maladapted impulses, including panic, paralysis, loss of memory or
speech, blindness, deafness, etc.
 When memories are bought out, externalized, spoken about, recovered, or brought to light, via cathartic
methods such as hypnosis, free association, an explosive release of emotion and insight occurs allowing
understanding them and treating related problems.

5 – Assessment of Freud
Freud’s Dream Theory Key Points:
 The Interpretation of Dreams is Freud’s seminal work in which he introduced his theory of
psychoanalysis, a revolutionary approach to understanding the human mind focusing on the role of role
of the unconscious mind and the introduction of new concepts and techniques such as, respectively, the
Oedipus complex and free association.
Freud believed dreams are royal roads to consciousness as during them the ego may lower its
defence mechanisms allowing repressed wishes, impulses, and other material to emerge into
awareness, i.e., they may come through to awareness although in distorted symbolic forms being
possible to use dreams as a key to interpret how the unconscious mind operates, and to understand
people’s motivations, fears, thoughts, and desires.
This epiphany came to Freud precisely during a dream of his. He had been felling guilty for not
being able to help a patient, Irma, as effectively as he wished. During a dream, he imagined that her
condition was caused by another doctor’s medical error (using an infected syringe in an injection on
Irma), thus, alleviating his own (Freud’s) guilt. So, he interpreted his dream to be the fulfilment of a wish,
a way to cope with uncomfortable material.
 Dreams as Psychological Insights it was a novel idea, as until then dreams were dismissed as
meaningless and dealt from religious or mystical perspectives. Freud innovate by proposing a theory and
a scientific approach to see and study them as insights to interpret people’s unconscious desires and
conflicts.
 Dreams as Wish Fulfilments was another way Freud proposed to interpret dreams, as representations
of unconscious motivations, desires, and thoughts that people’s mind repress.
 Manifest and Latent Contents was a classification of dreams’ contents Freud proposed. The first
related to what one could remember about the dream after waking up; the second related to the hidden
psychological meanings associated with the dream. The manifest content would be the distorted view of
the wish as produced and seen by the conscious mind and which the mind tries to fulfil; while the latent
content would be the actual underlying wish hidden in the unconsciousness.
The manifest content is, then, the dream conscious storyline and events as remembered by the
patient; while the latent content refers to hidden, symbolic, or unconscious meanings or themes behind
the dream’s conscious events (i.e., its manifest content).
The latent content relates to unconscious desires, conflicts and impulses that are troubling or
unacceptable to the conscious mind, so they become repressed and surface disguised in the manifest
content through symbolization.
 Dream-Work is the process of the unconscious mind to alter the true meaning of a dream into something
less disturbing and more acceptable to the conscious mind using mechanisms such as displacement
(shifting the emotion significance from one object to another less disturbing); condensation (combining
several ideas into one); and symbolization (representing an action or idea through symbols).
 Dreamwork is, then, functions analogously to the ego’s mechanisms of defence. It censors disturbing or
socially unacceptable impulses, desires, or themes, disguising them through symbolisms into non-
threatening forms or events in the (conscious) manifest content to reduce anxiety and allow the
individual to sleep.
 Displacement is the shifting of the emotional load of an unconscious memory, desire, person or event to
another shape, object, person, or event to another; e.g., dreaming about strangling a dog when in fact
the individual wished to do so with a relative, reducing significantly the guilt felt with the action.
 Condensation is the combination of two or more actions, objects, or persons into one to disguise a
conflicting desire or impulse towards one of them; e.g., dreaming about one person who takes elements
referring to one’s father and lover; or a dream about an orderly house may refer simultaneously the
carving for security and one’s appearance to the rest of the world.
 Symbolization is the dream mechanism through which a person replaces a theme, object, or person
that symbolizes a source of internal conflict or social disproval by another less disturbing or more
acceptable; e.g., a dream about the person climbing a ladder may symbolize an ambition or desire for
success that may, for whatever reason, be troubling to the patient. Although Freud proposed some
universal symbolizations – such as poles, swords, and guns for penis; horse riding and dancing for
sexual intercourse; flying for sexual desire; or loss of teeth for aging –, he also insisted that
symbolization should not neglect individual considerations – such as the patient’s personality, history,
and content. He warned about incorrect or superficial interpretation and the use of universal symbolisms;
e.g., as in the case of his patient who had a Pisces mother, so her dream about a longish fish rather than
symbolizing a penis represented her mother.
 Secondary Elaboration is another dreamwork mechanism and refers to unconscious mind process of
taking unconscious mind’s raw symbolic content of the dream and organizing it into a more logical and
coherent narrative. Essentially, when the patient tries to remember a dream, the mind dresses it up
making it a more logical, coherent, and cohesive narrative, more like a normal experience, further
obscuring the underlying latent content of the dream.
 Free Association is the technique to uncover latent content by prompting the patient to say whatever
 comes to mind based on the dream to uncover insights into unconscious wishes related to the dream;
without censoring or judging his or her thoughts, or how random or unconnected they may seem.
 Transference is a process where the feelings and desires that the individual has towards significant
people in their life are transferred onto the therapist. Observing transference patterns can provide clues
about the latent content of the individual’s dreams.
 Dream Analysis is the detailed examination of the dream’s content. The analyst and the individual work
together to explore the dream’s manifest content (the actual events of the dream) and try to understand
what these might symbolize in terms of the dreamer’s unconscious desires or conflicts (the latent
content).

Taking Freud Seriously

 Academic Perception of Freud and Contributions:
o Invented and developed psychoanalysis, a technique for treating mental illness, despite all
possible criticisms;
o Introduced the free association, a talking therapy technique called;
o Freud believed that talking to a therapist could help patients improve.
o His theory of the mind stressed the relevance and importance of unconsciousness; and how
thoughts, feelings, and memories are repressed and unavailable to the conscious mind;
o Developed the concept of defence mechanisms to deal with maladapted impulses and repressed
thoughts and feelings that are threatening and anxiety-inducing;
o Put together and proposed a theory of personality structure, of stages of development and
psychosexuality; as well as a model of psychic structure that included the id, ego, and super-
ego;
o Several elements of his theories of motivation, mental illness, and defence mechanisms are still
studied by psychologists today in the field of psychology;
o Introduced the concept of libido, a sexualized energy that generates erotic attachments;
o Develop studies on the effects of traumatic childhood events on mental health & adult life.
 Criticisms:
o Karl Popper’s Falsification Principle (falsifying)
o Simplicity
 His theories are too simple to explain the complexity of the human mind, repetitive and
cannot be easily proven or disproven.
o Sexism
 Freud overemphasized sex and was gender biased.
o Unscientific
 Data is reduced to results found only in case studies;
 His theories were not developed through the thorough application of a scientific method
that allowed falsification;
 Hypotheses and assumptions of the psychoanalytic theory cannot be tested empirically,
making it difficult to prove or disprove their validity.

7 – Freud (Reading)
 Bornstein, R. (2025). The psychodynamic perspective. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba
textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/zdemy2cv
 Smith, E. (2018). Thinking like a psychological scientist. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba
textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. DOI:nobaproject.com

The Psychodynamic Perspective

 Emphasises the role of unconscious psychological processes and the importance of childhood
experiences in shaping adult life and mental health.
 Equally, from a psychodynamic perspective, personality is also defined in terms of unconscious
psychological processes (e.g., fears and wishes the individual is not fully aware).
 Its therapeutical objective is to uncover drives, emotions, repressed memories, aggressive drives and
several other maladapted impulses and conflicting experiences, all of them rooted in the individual’s
unconscious mind, so they can be analysed and interpreted.
 Core Assumptions
o Primacy of the unconscious: not only the study of the mind cannot be dissociated from
subjective considerations, as subjectivity is closely influenced by the fact that most psychological
processes occur independent from conscious awareness and by the fact that mental activities
are also largely unconscious.
o The importance of early experiences: psychodynamic theories are not alone in attributing
 relevance to early experiences in life in people’s adulthood and mental health. However, the
degree of importance attributed to childhood events in shaping people’s personality development
and mental health is much greater in their theory and practice, particularly when such events fall
out of the ordinary.
o Psychic causality: for psychodynamic therapists, there are no random thoughts, feeling, drives,
or behaviours. Despite not all psychologists accepting the causality relations proposed by
psychoanalysis, one cannot disregard how thoughts, emotional responses, motivations and
expressed behaviours stem out of eventual combinations off biological, compartmental, and
psychological processes (PS: motive is an inner drive; motivation is the process of acting on a
drive).

Object Relations Theory

 Psychoanalytic theory that emphasizes the importance of interpersonal relationships, exploring how
early relationships with caregivers shape a person's adult relationships; i.e., the development of early
attachments with parents, especially mothers, and their influence in lifelong relationship skills. It argues
that an infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines personality formation in adulthood; i.e.,
self-development.
 Objects: people or things that represent people or parts of people;
 Object relations: internalized relationships with those people or objects;
 Attachment: the emotional bond formed with a caregiver during infancy. Secure early attachments are
the foundations for future attachments and personal development, the foundations of self-development;
 Regression: returning to a primary status to find a more mature object relation
 Applications: Object Relations Therapy can help people develop a stronger ability to form healthy object
relations by guiding the person through sensitive areas to promote self-awareness and understanding;
 Key figures: Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and William Fairbairn.

Object Relations Theory vs Freudian Psychoanalysis

 While both are psychoanalytic approaches, the first primarily focuses on how early relationships with
caregivers shape an individual's internal representations of themselves and others, emphasizing the
need for connection and relationship formation; whereas psychoanalysis (primarily Freudian) centres
on uncovering conflicts derived from equally unconscious repressed sexual and aggressive drives, as
primary motivators of behaviour, by analysing repressed memories and desires to understand
psychological issues.
 Object relations theory sees connection and positive relationships as a primary motivator; while
psychoanalysis emphasizes biological drives like libido and aggression as primary motivators.

The Evolution of Psychodynamic Theory

 In its infancy, the psychoanalysis started from Freud’s research interest into his day’s state of the science
of neurology, following a path of transformation and development of chain of ideas, findings, techniques,
and theories.
 Among these steps, three models were proposed:
1. The Topological Model;
2. The Psychosexual Stage Model; and
3. The Structural Model.

The Topographic Model

 It was proposed in his The Interpretation of Dreams with the mind being seen divided at three areas or
levels: the consciousness, the preconsciousness, and the unconsciousness.
 The conscious area holds and process immediate information, i.e., what is being processed at the
present time and the very thoughts and feelings involved in that very moment.
 The preconscious area contains material that can become conscious since one’s attention is directed
towards it, otherwise it may remain dormant in the unconsciousness.
 The unconscious is the main hold of the brain, the place where all anxiety, impulses, urges, desires, and
fears originate, are stored, or processed – including through the association among the id, ego, and
superego –, often through repression or other mechanism as a form of self-protection against
uncomfortable, conflicting, or disturbing material.

The Psychosexual Model

 The aka Psychosexual Development Theory had already been being developed since the end of the 19th
Century, but it was in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, of 1905, that Freud formally
presented its outline. According to his theory, sexuality play a major role in people’s physical and mental
life, and they progress through a sequence of development stages that gravitate around it.
 Each of these stages have specific a centre of reference, challenges, and gratifications. From birth to
 adulthood, people go through an oral, an anal, a phallic, a latent, and a genital phase, and frustrations,
over-gratifications or other maladapted experiences may lead to fixation to the stage related to them,
and to the development of personality types significantly influenced and determined by such phases.

The Structural Model

 As Freud advanced in his development of psychoanalysis, he expanded his understanding of personality
to include a structural framework of the mind. In his book The Ego and the Id, of 1923, he formally added
to it the idea of three interacting psychic structures: the id, the superego, and the ego.
 The fist housing all drives and instincts born with the person, and representing our natural urge to try to
externalize our impulses and act according to them. The superego being the set of moral, norms, and
prohibitions that guide our behaviour as social beings. The ego, then, representing our mental capacity
of acting reasonably, logically, and according to reality and to a balance between the id’s urges and the
superego’s set of references.
 The personality is, then, a result of how these three psychic structures interplay in life. When the id
predominates may indicate an impulsive personality. When is the superego that prevails, it may an
overcontrolled or excessively restrained personality. When the ego is dominant, it may indicate a more
balanced personality, or, quite the opposite, it may lead to a personality that is excessively centred on the
reality, with difficulty to identify and process feelings, excessively self-centred (egocentric), or even
childish as children tend to have their needs and attend by their caregivers, and erroneously identifying
themselves as the centre of the world.

The Ego and Defence Mechanisms

 The ego is the part of the mind where logical, rational, and reality-oriented material is processed. It is
also responsible for managing anxiety through defence mechanisms, which are mental strategies
applied automatically and unconsciously by people to cope with potential threatening, conflicting, and
upsetting material and experiences.
 However, at the same time, such mechanisms may also bring negative contributions as when attempting
to defend the self they involve some distortion of reality – as in cases of repression and denial,
respectively, for example, by removing conflicting thoughts, feeling, and experiences from consciousness
and burying them deep in the unconscious mind; or by not allowing one to recognise or take into account
the implications to the self by refusing to become or keep aware of equally upsetting material.

Psychodynamic Theories: Where Are We Now?

 Current trends in the psychodynamic perspective
 The three classical models: the topographic model, the psychosexual-stage model, and the structural
model have been under constant revision and betterment, and today they are also studied from the
perspectives of the Object Relations Theory, of empirical testing of psychodynamic concepts, of
psychoanalysis vis-à-vis culture, and of new developments in neurosciences.

The Object Relations Theory

 Aka Interpersonal Relations Theory, it focuses on the personality development based on the
relationships grown between the individual and their closest caregiver. Personality, then, reflect mental
images of significant figures in one’s early life within the family and household environment.
 The nature and characteristics of such relationship will give rise to introjections, which may be
understood as blueprints left on the individual by positive or negative memories and patterns by
interactions with such key figures (i.e., the caregivers). Such introjections will, then, function as
templates in future interpersonal relationships.
 This theory is relevant for psychology theory, as for development psychologists, to whom mental
representations of key figures play an important role in shaping one’s behaviour (e.g., in Attachment
Theory), as well as for social psychologists, to whom the same type of mental representations plays an
equally important role in social cognition in terms of thoughts and feelings towards other people.

Empirical Research on Psychodynamic Theories

 Empirical tests of psychodynamic concepts have produced mixed results. While the psychosexual-
stage model has not held up empirical scrutiny in terms of early expression of sexual feelings, notions
related to personality types (e.g., control-oriented, competitive, or dependent) have found empirical
support.
 The role of unconsciousness in human behaviour, developed from the topographical model, have
also fund significant empirical support. Today, contemporary cognitive and social psychology largely
accept the role of unconsciousness, and that human behaviour is shaped by feelings, motives, and
motivations that one is only partially aware of.
 As for the structural model, the conceptualization of defence mechanisms and its different types have
 equally found empirical support. They help understand one’s defence style, psychological adjustments,
and health, including identifying how some may offer positive contributions (as rationalization and
sublimation), while others may work negatively (as denial, repression, and reaction formation).
 Finally, empirical evidence has shown that mental representations of the self and others may indeed
shape or influence behaviour and future relationships. However, while research confirms that people
may expect be treated by others as they were by their caregivers in early life, empirical evidence has not
hold up the idea that one would necessarily seek a romantic partner based on paternal or maternal
figures.

Psychoanalysis and Culture

 Research has shown the relationship between socio-cultural traces and individual behaviour – e.g.,
individuals from individualistic independence-focused societies (e.g., USA and UK) tendo to define
themselves in terms of personal attributes (e.g., private attitude and interests), as an independent cutout
of a whole; while individuals from sociocentric interdependent cultures tend to see themselves in terms
of interpersonal relations and connections to others, as an integral part of the whole.

The Opportunities and Challenges of Neuroscience

 Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel (1998) approach to human behaviour and mental functions based on an
empirically-oriented psychodynamic perspective and neuroscience: neuropsychoanalysis.
 It involves contemporary models of dream formation developed with the support of empirical evidence
from neuroimaging techniques (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imagery, fMRI) (Levin & Nielsen,
2007).
MODULE 2 – SKINNER

1 – B. F. Skinner
 Skinner put together the theory of Behaviourism based on previous scholars such as John Watson.
 Behaviourism has three major claims:
1. It rejects the idea of innate ideas or traits, on the contrary, it believes that everything one knows or
does comes from experience, i.e., knowledge, capacities and behaviour are the result of a learning
processes based on previous behaviour and the environment;
2. Behaviourism is anti-mentalist, i.e., it attempts to define and study behaviour from a strictly scientific
perspective, and observation and falsifiability become paramount criteria. Therefore, things such as
emotions, desires, and beliefs are set aside as they cannot be either observed or measured in
satisfactory scientific terms; and the focus falls on things that can observed, recorded, or measured
such as stimuli, responses, environmental conditions, etc;
3. Finally, it understands that the principles of behaviour-learning processes are common to living
species.

2 – Habituation
 For behaviourists there are three learning mechanisms: Habituation, Classical Conditioning, and
Instrumental Conditioning.
 Habituation refers to a tendency to respond less and less to stimuli that become familiar due to repeated
exposure. The more one experiences a stimulus, the less strong will be the response, particularly if such
a stimulus occurs regularly.
 Despite not consisting an important learning tool, habituation is an important psychological mechanism
as it helps people to focus on novelty, e.g., a threat, another yet important stimulus or reward, and
whatever is relevant and worth attending to.

3 – Classical Conditioning
 Aka Pavlov Conditioning
 It is a learning mechanism that involves a primary and an intermediary stimulus, respectively a
unconditioned and a neutral stimulus. Classical conditioning pairs a neutral stimulus (i.e., a stimulus
that originally would not generate a response) to a (unconditioned) response that would originally
result from an unconditioned stimulus (which could be innate or previously learned or built in).
 So, if a dog is trained to salivate to a bell as it would to food (as in Pavlov’s classical experiment), it is a
case of classical conditioning – being the bell the neural stimulus and the food the unconditioned one.
 As a subject is repeatedly exposed to such a paring in a process of association (aka a reinforced trial),
the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus, and the unconditioned response becomes
conditioned response to this new conditioned stimulus.
 As the conditioned response becomes associated to the conditioned stimulus through the pairing of
the unconditioned stimulus and a priorly neutral stimulus (now conditioned), it is also said to be the
preparation for the unconditioned stimulus because it is an anticipation of its initially expected
response – one of the possible explanations for blocking and prediction errors, which may occur if one
attempts to pair a second neutral stimulus with the unconditional stimulus, as the first conditioned
response is already preparing the now conditioned response, hence blocking or causing a prediction
error.
 Reinforced trails, thus, are meant to strength the learning through pairing the neutral and unconditioned
stimulus, turning the former into a conditioned stimulus, by providing a reward (the unconditioned
stimulus). These may be used to change association patterns in dealing with phobias through
desensitization (e.g., by starting gradually associating snakes with feelings of relaxation instead of
angst).
 Conversely, unreinforced trials happen when the reward is not provided. These are useful to
measure the strength of the conditioning (i.e., how long the association may survive without the
unconditioned stimulus) and may be applied to extinguish unwanted behaviours through processes
such as extinction – e.g., if one is afraid of spiders, it may help expose the person to images of it in
neutral conditions (risk free) until the person loses it by not getting the fear (unconditioned stimuli when
exposed to spiders).
 The closer (time wise) the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus’ exposures, the quicker and
more efficiently the association is learnt.
 The conditioned stimulus’ effects on behaviour are not limited only to the conditioned response (e.g.,
besides salivating, the dig digestive system will elicit the production of other fluids and enzymes, as well
as the dog will tend to eat more; or people feeling hungry or desiring to eat crisps or drink coke by seeing
their ads).
 Taste Aversion Conditioning: when a bad experience with a bad meal affects peoples future food
choice.
 Fear Condition: anxieties created by association between the environment and emotional traumas.
 Conditioned Compensatory Responses: association between an emotion and similar environmental
stimuli (e.g., the risk OD not because of deciding to take in excess, but by taking it too much due to
changes in environmental set-up).
 Spontaneous Recovery: refers to the later resurrection of a extinct conditioning.
 Renewal Effect: extend a conditioned stimulus to other similar environmental conditions.

4 – Instrumental Conditioning
 Aka Operant Conditioning, it is the relationship between actions and rewards or punishment.
 Contrary to Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning happens when a behaviour becomes paired
with significant event.
 It differs from Classical Conditioning. On one hand, Classical Conditioning is passive, i.e., the subject
does to act, only responds to exposure to stimuli’s association. On the other hand, Operant Conditioning
involves one’s action that leads to positive or negative results that shape learning and future behaviour.
 The first study and foundations of Operant Conditioning were done by Edward Thorndike, a psychologist.
For him, behaviour changes because of its consequences, and only humans may follow instrumental
conditioning, as animals are not capable of assessing the consequences of behaviour and learn only
through trial and error and the nature of the results (i.e., positive/negative reward or reinforcement, and
punishment), which may encourage, discourage, increase, or decrease the tendency to a given
behaviour (i.e., an action or an inaction).
 Effects that increase behaviour tendency are called reinforcers; while those that decrease behaviour
tendency are referred to as punishers.
 Reinforcement can be positive (i.e., giving a desired reward) or negative (i.e., releasing one from
something aversive).
 Reinforcement (or reward) is not necessarily full; it may be partial and intermittently. In fact, partial
reinforcement tends to stick longer, as the subject may not know exactly when it will come, but
experience may show that will eventually come – obviously, the gap left by intermittently reinforcement
cannot be such as to raise the risk of extinction.
 Nonetheless, Operant Conditioning use of extinction can lead also to positive results (e.g., if a child has
been rewarded with attention for crying, if such attention is gradually withdrawn, the tendency is the
extinction of the initial conditioning).
 Thorndike’s Law of Effect says that behaviours with positive effects tend to be repeated in the future,
whereas those with negative effect is less likely to be repeated in the future.
 Operant behaviours are essentially voluntary in nature – it involves choice.

5 – Scientific Assessment of Skinner

 Skinner’s three major claims – the inexistence of innate knowledge; the anti-mentalist view of behaviour
and mental life; and that these are guided only by learning mechanisms based on stimuli and response –
have being revised due to evidence of the existence of unlearnt knowledge (e.g., Chomsky’s claims
about universal grammar; aptitude for numeracy), as well as of other learning mechanisms beyond
conditioning (e.g., how some species learn to navigate, or form attachments or develop cooperative
behaviour, or evidence that laboratory mice are capable of learning maze orientation beyond trial and
error), or our capacity to think and fantasize even without any involvement of actions (which invariably
point to the relevance of internal mental representations not necessarily connected to conditioning or
external rewards).

6 – Skinner (Reading)
Bouton, M. E. (2018). Conditioning and learning. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba
textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. DOI:nobaproject.com

6.1 – Social Learning Theory and Observational Learning:

 Learning by social observation, i.e.: observing and imitating others, particularly peers, and social
integration models and patterns.
 Albert Bandura: recognized that cognition, environment, and behaviour all mutually influence each other
(reciprocal determinism).
 He argues that the observational learning process is formed by four elements: attention (to what is
being observed), retention (internalise the observed behaviours and store them in the memory),
initiation (practice of the learnt behaviour), and motivation (to effectively engage in the observation and
about the other parts of the learning process).
 His theory also recognises the significative effect of culture on human development and learning in terms
of cultural norms, values, generation and intergeneration patterns, family and interpersonal dynamics,
and social contexts.
 While Bandura recognises the value and benefits of reinforcement in observational learning, he does not
consider it essential.
MODULE 3 – DEVELOPMENT AND LANGUAGE

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 The three views on development: empiricism, nativism, and constructivism
 Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory:
o The concepts of schema, assimilation, and accommodation
o The stages in Piaget’s theory
o The concept of object permanence and conservation
o Three Mountains task and the theoretical implications to children’s task performance
o The three primary criticisms of Piaget’s theory
o Sucking and looking time measures, and how infants think and reason about the world
o How looking-time measure studies challenge Piaget’s theory of development
o Sally-Ann task, how children may respond, and its theoretical implications
o Neural changes in infants and children during development
 Susan Carey’s theory of development
 The modular Development Theory and Autism Spectrum Disorder
 Language role in understanding the mind
o Basic facts about language
o The idea of creolization
o The phoneme
o Word identification vis-à-vis the sound stream
o The morpheme
o Syntax
o The concept of recursion
o Sentence building based in emerge on linguistic system rules
 Chomsky’s perspective on language
o Evidence for and against the nativist perspective on language acquisition
o The language development timeline
o What do children typically know at different ages
 Animal communication and language
 Linguistic expectations, prediction, language knowledge, and the processing of spoken sentences
 Context, language and thought

DEVELOPMENT

BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT DEVELOPMENT

 Involving notions such as morality, good and evil, kinship, love, sadism, self-control, and humour.
 Foundation Questions:
o First, about morality and the origin of moral thought, two views:
 We start off as immoral or at best amoral
 Christina doctrine of original sin, or the Freudian idea of id and unrestrained
appetites that need to be socialized – acceptance of norms
 Hobbes and Freud
 State of Nature: we start off as animals, nasty and brutish.
 Another associated with scholars like Jean-Jacques Rousseau
 It suggests that we are basically good, but are corrupted through culture
 We would not be naturally prejudiced or racist, but shaped so by culture
o Second, related to continuity,
 The relationship between children’s and adults’ behaviour
 Behavioural traces’ continuity from childhood into adulthood
 The extent to which our adult personality is a continuity of our child nature
 Odds of prediction of adult personality and mental state based on childhood behaviour
and traces
 When studies are done with 90-minute interviews with a three-year-olds indicating that
personality may be predicted on certain standard scales – e.g., as for the quality of their
personal relationships, career, criminal behaviour and so on
 As the poetic phrase goes, the child is father to the man
o Third, is the question of cognitive development
 How much of what we know now is innate or how much we have to learn?
 Knowledge as a cognitive developmental process, the process of development of
 cognition
 Developmental psychologists have three different views
o One is empiricism
 We start off empty and then we learn (cf. with behaviourism)
o The second is nativism
 Noam Chomsky, who rejects the idea that learning plays a critical role
 We are born with rich, complex, and powerful mental structure systems
o The third view is constructivism
 Jean Piaget
 Share ideas with empiricists: the role of learning through interaction with
environment and others
 Share ideas with nativists: the mind is quite complex, and learning is not only
accumulation of information or conditioned behaviour, but a process of
transformation, development, through schema (Assimilation and
Accommodation)
 The role of interaction with the environment and social interaction in cognition,
knowledge, and behaviour development
 Learning is a complex process that also involves innate complex mental
systems and built-in capabilities of development of such systems in terms of
individual and social interactions with the self, the others, and the environment

PIAGET
 Genetic epistemology: the study of the origins and development of knowledge, particularly scientific
knowledge, focusing on its historical, sociological, and psychological aspects:
 "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," a theory popularized by Ernst Haeckel, suggests that the
development of an individual organism (ontogeny) mirrors the evolutionary history of its species
(phylogeny).
 Schema is a mental framework, systems, or concept, that helps individuals organize and interpret
information, a mental template, structure, or toll used to do so, acting as a building block for
understanding the world and operating in it
 Jean Piaget was the founder of the modern study of developmental psychology, rather than saying that
his focus was on children, he was interested in the development of knowledge in the human species
 Due to the challenges of studying the human species, he turned his attention to individual children and
inferred from there patterns of development within the species
 He perceived children as a sort of scientists, active thinkers trying to make sense of the world
 In their path into the world and society, he argued, children employed what he called schemas, i.e.,
mental systems, some innate, others transformed, acquired, or created as needed
 In this respect, he is was simultaneous congenial with empiricism (as schemas are employed, adjusted
or created as part of leaning processes), as well as with nativism (as schemas could be part of innate
mental systems)
 He also considered that schemas were the frameworks which one would work on to acquire knowledge,
through two main psychological mechanisms:
o Assimilation: the process of taking in new information and new experiences and matching them
with existing schemas
o Accommodation: the process of adjusting existing schemas or creating new ones as needed to
fit or process the new information and new experience
o There are schemas having to do with objects or number or people
 A baby's understanding and ultimately a child's understanding get transformed because of the process of
assimilation and accommodation, so that at each stage of development there are different and specific
problem-solving strategies, reasoning, and solutions – as empirical evidence supports that children think
in entirely different ways than adults
 Thus, it would not be an entirely nativist perspective as children do not know it all from the start; but
neither an empiricist one as neither the child’s mind would be a blank board nor would learning be a
mere accumulation of knowledge or conditioned behaviours
 Also, this progression of transformations during growth would point to a theory of transform, of
development, through stages – not like in Freud, but through stages corresponding to different styles of
thinking, specific ways of making sense of how the world works, with particular styles of reasoning

PIAGET’S DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE THEORY

 For Piaget, there were four distinct stages
o Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years):
 Children learn through sensory experiences and motor actions, developing object
 permanence and basic understanding of the world.
o Pre-operational Stage (2 to 7 years):
 Children begin to use symbols and language, engaging in pretend play, but struggle
with abstract concepts and conservation.
o Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 years):
 Children develop logical thinking skills and can perform concrete operations,
understanding concepts like conservation and reversibility.
o Formal Operational Stage (12 years and up):
 Individuals develop abstract thinking, hypothetical reasoning, and the ability to solve
complex problems.

1st – Sensorimotor Stage

 From 0 to 2 years of life
 Baby is a purely sensory creature
o Know the world through movements and sensations
o Information is gained through the senses and through the child's motoric activities
o Learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening
 Later, realize that they are separate beings from the people and objects around them
 Development of object permanence (after 6-month-old)
o Learn that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen
o Understanding that objects exist independently of one's actions or perceptions of them
o Peekaboo!
 Realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them
 Child perceives and manipulates, but does not have any reasoning
 No sense of time, no sensors stability

2nd – Pro-operational Stage

 From 2 to 7 years
 Symbolic thought: begin to think symbolically
 Learn to use words and pictures to represent objects
 Tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others
 Getting better with language and thinking, but still tend to think in very concrete terms
 They can differentiate themselves from others
 They have a rudimentary understanding of time
 Limitations
o 1st: they can reason, but they cannot reason into higher order
o 2nd: egocentrism: children literally can't see the world through another's eyes, they literally can't
understand that other people have different perspectives
 Classic illustration: Three Mountains task
 They do not quite get the idea that they could know something and another person
couldn't know it, or that other people could know things that they don't
 They think the world as they see it
o 3rd: they lack the concept of conservation
 They cannot understand conservation, i.e., the idea that certain operations on the world
will change some properties but not others
 E.g., an adult appreciates that the number of things will remain constant even if you
move them around. Kids cannot conserve a number through a transformation: spread
out vs quantity, or water into different-shape containers

3rd – Concrete operational Stage

 From 7 to 11
 Kids become sophisticated
 Begin to think logically about concrete events
 Begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal
to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example
 Thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete
 Begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle (generalisation)
 Less egocentricity
 Still inability to reason fully abstractly or fully hypothetically
 Child is not quite capable of scientific reasoning
o Difficulty to think in terms of experiments
4th – The Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development
 Age 12 and up
 Begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
 Begins to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require
theoretical and abstract reasoning
 Begins to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information (induction)

 Unlike Freud, Piaget did not believe that there were further traumas, or troubles, or developments, or
transformations as an adult
 He believed everybody went through these stages

SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION OF PIAGET

 Made interesting and falsifiable claims
 Forwarded a rich theoretical framework
 Striking findings with support evidence
 Limitations:
o Theoretical limitations: did not explain how assimilation and accommodation work
o Methodological: based on interviews (Q&A), and question and answers on children
o Factual: recent evidence reveals that children may be far smarter than he believed and that they
grow outside his stage framework

METHODS FOR STUDYING INFANTS

 Neuroscientific methods such as brain wave scanning
 Alternative new methods such as experiments to test numeracy notions in babies and to test potential
claims about innate moral choices such as on good or evil

HOW ARE CHILDREN DIFFERENT FROM ADULTS?

 The Sally-Anne test is a psychological experiment used to assess a child's ability to understand that
others have beliefs that differ from their own, a concept known as "theory of mind"
 A child's ability to correctly answer the question about where Sally will look for the marble demonstrates
their understanding of false beliefs and their ability to take another person's perspective, i.e., a child who
understands theory of mind will answer that Sally will look in the basket, because that is where she
(Sally) believes the marble to be, even though the child knows it is in the box

EXPLANATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT

 Neuroscientific grounds
 Modules
 Thomas Kuhn and mind and changing world (e.g., including of an adult and of a child)

LANGUAGE

WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
 In this moment of the course, language should be understood in a more restricted sense, as a medium
or tool that people use exclusively in day-to-day life, both spoken languages such as English and sign
languages such as American Sign Language

BASIC FACTS ABOUT LANGUAGE

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PHONOLOGY
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MORPHOLOGY
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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
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LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

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