Psychology Revision Guide

Made By Sylvester And Co Revision

ContentsPersonalities Social Influences

Behaviour Learning Difficulties

Body Language Reinforcements

Child Psychology Animal Psychology

Fetal Children Pavlov’s Dogs

Memory Phobias

Personalities• What are personalities? They are our attitudes and behaviour that we set ourselves. They

determine how we act and what we do in certain situations. Almost every thing we choose to do and everything we choose to like is what makes our personalities. Your personality is what makes you, you.

Social Influences• A social influence is when someone’s behaviour is changed by other people in your friend group or

maybe outside it. A social influence can be small things like what sort of bands you like or large things like whether you smoke or not. Each of us has a social influence. A social influence that effects us all is the type of toys/jobs/family roles we use.

Behaviour• Your behaviour is made from what rules you choose to follow and what rules you choose not to.

Your behaviour is heavily linked with your personality. Usually a bad behaved child is called that because they don’t follow rules that they have been told to follow.

Learning Difficulties• Some people have learning difficulties. These come about when the persons brain development is

affected during or after birth. A learning difficulty could mean you have to live with a carer for your life if it’s a severe difficulty.

Body Language• Most people can be read like a book because of their body language. People usually have a

significant twitch or involuntary action when they are lying. Psychology lies mainly in body language and quite a lot of things can be known by the way you act in certain situations.

Reinforcement• Reinforcement is how you treat people after they had done a task. In Asia a test was carried out to

see which reinforcement was best. Positive and negative. They got 50 pilots and they flew around a course. Half were given negative feedback for the things they did wrong the others received positive feedback for the things they did right. A couple days later they took the test and the people that received negative feedback got on average a mark gap higher than those that received positive reinforcement.

Child Psychology• The best way to understand your child is to monitor the ways they sleep, eat or play. Look for

constant traits they like to maintain. Can they adjust to changes easily? Ask your child questions. That is the best way for them to open up to you.

Animal Psychology• Different animals behave in different ways. Somebody who studies animal behaviour is called an

ethologist. A very simple test for animal behaviour is the choice chambers. This shows ethologists the perfect habitat for a certain animal because of their subconscious choices.

Feral Children• Feral children prove that habitat, dietary and speaking choices aren’t chosen by what species you

are. Feral children are children who have been abandoned from a young age and act like the animals that brought them up. They are in all ways but physical whatever animal reared them as its own.

Pavlov’s Dogs• Famous psychologist Pavlov noticed that whenever he put food out for his dogs they would drool.

So he hypothesized that if he rang a bell every time he gave them food they would eventually drool every time they heard the same pitched bell. He guessed correctly and at the end of his experiment he could ring a bell and get his dogs to stop and wait for food.

Memory• Memory is triggered by the cerebral cortex. You have a short term memory which lasts for 30

seconds and a long term memory which can last your whole life. Your long term memory has no capacity and so it is never impossible to learn new things. Your memory is improved by repetition and is stronger if you can find a link between objects you want to remember.

Phobias• Phobias are fears that are triggered by a response in the brain. Phobias can be caused by early life

trauma a.k.a if you were to fall head first into a swimming pool as a child you would probably be scared of water later on in life. Phobias can be linked to an ultimate fear of death if traced back far enough. A fear of water is actually a fear of drowning and a fear of spiders is instead a fear of being bitten by a poisonous spider.