Psychological Foundations of Learning

and Development

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 What is
Psychology?

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 Lecture Outline
Origin of the word Psychology
Modern Definition of Psychology
Goals of Psychology
Major Subfields of Psychology
Research Methods in Psychology
Experimental Research
Descriptive Research
Correlational Research
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 Origin of the word Psychology
• The word psychology comes from two Greek
words psyche and logos.
• the word psyche, which means mind or soul and
the word logos, which means the study of.
• psyche + logos = psychology
• mind + the study of = the study of mind
• And it is represented by the following symbol
which read as “psyc”

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• Until the 19th century, it was dependent on other
disciplines (philosophy and physiology).
• Becomes an independent science in the middle
of the 19th century. (1879)
• By Wilhelm Wundt who is considered as father of
modern Psychology and experimental
Psychology.
Modern Definition
• Today, as a modern discipline, Psychology is
defined as:
• The scientific study of human and animal
behavior and mental processes.“ 5
Scientific
-Uses systematic methods to observe, describe, explain
and control behavior.
-An empirical science that conduct scientific investigation
(e.g., observation and experimentation).
Behavior- The total response, motor and glandular which
an organism makes.
• includes all of a person’s overt actions and reactions,
which can be observed by others such as eating, talking,
smiling, and working.
Mental processes- refer to all the covert activities that
other people cannot directly observe. Activities such as
thinking, dreaming, feeling, and remembering are
examples of mental processes. 6
• Two purposes of studying animals
behavior.
1. It is ethically forbidden to conduct some
experiments on human beings, so
animals are subject to experiment.
2. Conclusions obtained from experiments
on animal behavior are usually
applicable to human behavior.

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 Goals of Psychology
1. Description
- Naming and classifying. Making a detailed record of behavioral observations.
- Giving clear picture about the phenomena. Or tell about what something is like.
- To describe, a psychologist would ask ‘what is happening?’, ‘when it happens?’ and ‘to
whom it happens?’
2. Explanation/Understanding- Stating the cause of behavior.
- The second goal is to find out ‘why is it happening?’ In other words, the psychologist is
looking for an explanation for the observed behavior or mental processes. - Telling
about why certain behavioral phenomenon is occurred.
3. Prediction
- The ability to forecast behavior accurately.
- Telling what something would be like in the future.
4. Control- Altering conditions that influence behavior in predictable ways.
- Manipulation or managing of a situation based on description, explanation, & prediction.
- It involves answering the questions “how”, “when” and “where” to intervene.
-This goal is to change an undesirable behavior to a desirable one.
- It is the ultimate goal of psychology.

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To illustrate all the 4 goals, consider the following
example.
• A group of psychologists observe a number of
students in order to describe how large their
vocabulary typically is at a certain age. Then, they
would attempt to explain how students expand the
vocabulary and why some students have limited
number of vocabulary. Psychologists would predict
that students with limited number of vocabulary will
probably continue to do poorly in academic. Finally,
the psychologists would propose certain language
learning strategies that can be used to increase the
size of vocabulary of the students (control/modify).
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 Major Subfields of Psychology
• Biological(Physiological) Psychology- seeks to discover the
relationship between biological process and behavior. For
example how do sex hormones influence behavior?
• Experimental Psychology- conduct research from a
behaviorist or cognitive perspective and use experimental
methods to study how people react to sensory stimuli and
perceive the world.
• Developmental Psychology- examines how people grow
and change from the moment of conception through death.
• Social Psychology How individuals are influenced by the
actual, implied or imagined presence of others.
• Personality Psychology- study the thoughts, emotions &
behaviors that define an individualistic personal style of
interacting with the world.

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• Clinical & Counseling Psychology- Apply psychological
principles to the diagnosis & treatment of emotional &
behavioral problems.
 Clinical – studies the diagnosis, causes, and treatment of
mental disorders.
• deal with sever mental disorders such as a loss of touch with
reality.
 Counseling- Often deal with less serious problems. The
problems may include difficulty in learning, emotional and
vocational problems and problems related to marriage, family
conflict etc.
• School Psychology- Work with children/students to evaluate
learning & Emotional problems.
• Educational Psychology- study educational systems, methods
of teaching, curriculum and other factors influencing learning
process. 11
• Concerned with teaching and learning processes, such as the
relationship between motivation and school performance.
• Industrial/organizational Psychology-studies all aspects of
behavior in work setting- selection of employees, evaluation of
performance, work motivation, leadership.
• They are concerned with improving working conditions, raising
production rate and developing decision-making abilities.
• Special Needs Psychology: concerned with the study of people
who have different disabilities.
• Measurement and Evaluation(Psychometrics): concerned about
test preparation, assessment and evaluation.
• Forensic Psychology : Applies psychological principles to improve
legal system (police, testimony etc).
• Health Psychology: Applies psychological principles to the
prevention, and treatment of psychological illness occurring from
psychological problems.
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 Research Methods in Psychology
Research Concepts
• Scientific Method: a process of gathering ideas and testing
them by making observations, experiments and statistical
analysis.
• The approach through which psychologists systematically
acquire knowledge and understanding about behavior and
other phenomena of interest.
• Theory: is a set of concepts and propositions intended to
describe and explain some aspects of experience.
• Hypotheses: is a tentative and testable proposition about the
relationship between two or more variables or phenomena.
• Variable: Any phenomenon that can vary along some
dimension. Continuous: varies continuously (body weight)
Categorical: can take on fixed values (gender)
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• A Variable is something that undergoes change or any factor that
varies in amount or kind.
• For example, if difficulty of a test is the variable in the study, the
study variable is difficulty.
• There are two major types of variables. These are:
a. Independent variable: refers to any factor whose change is
expected to affect the event that is being studied.
• The factor that the researcher manipulate or uses(control), it
function as the causal part of the relationship.
b. Dependent variable: the event that is expected to change when
the independent variable is altered.
• The effect part of the relationship.
• Example: The effect of violent films on aggressive
behaviour of preschool children. From this example
IV: violent film
DV: aggressive behavior of children
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 There are different research methods/design in
psychology that are employed
1. Experimental research method
 This is carried out to investigate the relationship
between two or more variables by deliberately
producing change in one variable and observing the
effect on the other.
 It involves the researcher manipulates some events
to determine precise cause and effect relationships.
 Extraneous variable – this is a variable that is not
controlled in the experiment but can influence the
experimental procedure.
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 Issues in Experimental Research
There are two groups in experimental method
A. Experimental group: This is the group that receives the
treatment(group exposed to independent variable or
conditions expected to create change).
B. Control group: A group that receives no treatment but
is created to see the difference created by the
treatment given to the experimental group.
• a group that is similar to the experimental group,
except that it has not been exposed to the treatment.
• Random assignments of participants present here to
avoid experimental bias.
Eg. The effect of chewing chat on academic achievement.
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 Limitations of Experimental Research
• The research process is too technical and too artificial to
allow generalizations to the real world. Because, It will be
difficult in the real world to avoid all extraneous
variables; hence the findings may not applicable outside
the experimental situations.
• It cannot be used in situations where the experiment is
dangerous to the subjects for ethical reasons.
• It is time consuming and costly.
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 2. Descriptive Research
• Descriptive research is descriptive because the
researcher simply records what s/he has
systematically observed.
• The descriptive approach seeks to describe
phenomena rather than to manipulate variables.
• Methods of descriptive research:
• Case studies
• Naturalistic observation
• Survey research

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 2.1 Case study/Case history/Clinical method

• An in-depth study of the behavior of one person or a small group

• Used when large numbers of subjects are not available.
• It produces a more detailed picture of the individual over a
long period of time.
• Often used in clinical research
– Freud’s case study approach
• Drawbacks include
– Because of small sample size it is difficult to generalize
for another similar subjects.
– Susceptibility to researcher bias
– We cannot draw conclusions about cause effect
relationship
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 2.2 Naturalistic Observation
• In-depth study of a phenomenon in its natural setting
• Involves the researcher observes, measures & records
people’s or animal’s behavior in their common, everyday
surroundings not interfere them.
• It can use photo camera, video camera, and observational
checklist, etc…
• Examples: Study of primate behavior in the wild or
behaviors of soldiers during combat
• Drawbacks:
– Observation per se/by itself can alter behavior
– Observational technique cannot infer cause of behavior
– Some behaviors occur infrequently & unexpectedly

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 2.3 Survey Method
 Involves the use of Questionnaires & Interviews
that gather information about the beliefs,
opinions, perceptions and attitudes of people.
 We can gather a large amount of data with
relative ease.
• Drawbacks:
– Sampling issues. i.e. the sample may not
be typical of the population
– People may not respond accurately
– It lacks depth or detailed information
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 3. Correlation Method
• A correlation refers to the degree of relationship between two or more
variables.
• Aim of the correlational approach is to determine the degree to which
two or more variables are related in systematic way.
• The statistic is used to express a correlation called correlation
coefficient (r)
– Correlation ranges in magnitude from -1 through 0 through
+1
– A Positive correlation: between two variables indicates that
they tend to change in the same direction.
– A Negative correlation: between two variables indicates that
they tend to change in opposite directions.
– Uncorrelated (0 correlation): no association between
variables

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 Cont’d…
• Example:
• The relationship between parental discipline
and juvenile delinquency.
• The relationship between cigarette smoking
and lung cancer
• The relationship between bonuses paid to
workers and productivity.

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  Followings are examples of positive, negative and zero
correlations one-to-one.

Drawbacks of Correlation Method:

-We cannot establish cause and effect relationship.
-lack of control over extraneous variables.

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 Ethical Principles of Research

Ethics in research with human participants

-Freedom from coercion/force
-Informed consent
-Limited deception
-Adequate debriefing
-Confidentiality

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 Ethical Principles of Research
Ethics of research with nonhuman
animals
-Necessity
-Health
-Humane treatment
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