UNIVERSITATEA BABEŞ-BOLYAI CLUJ-NAPOCA

FACULTATEA DE LITERE, DEPARTAMENTUL DE LIMBI

STRĂINE SPECIALIZATE

Study Pack for Students in Psychology and Education

Sciences, Semester 1

cameliateglas@gmail.com

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 1. Informaţii generale

1.1. Date de identificare a cursului

Date de contact ale titularului de curs:

Nume: Teglaş Camelia-Daniela Limba engleza-curs practic limbaj specializat

Birou: Cab.10, DLSS, Horea nr.7 LLU0011; LLU0012
Telefon: 0264/530724 Anul I, sem.1 si 2
E-mail: cameliateglas@gmail.com Curs obligatoriu
Consultaţii:

1.2. Condiţionări şi cunoştinţe prerechizite

Cursul este conditionat de deţinerea de cunoştinţe de limba engleză care situeaza studentul la nivel B1,
conform grilei de autoevaluare a Cadrului comun european de referinta a limbilor:
Trebuie avut în vedere faptul că înscrierea la examenul de licenţa la finalul ciclului bachelor este
conditionat de susţinerea şi promovarea unui test de competenţa lingvistică într-o limba de
circulaţie internaţională.

Nota Punctaj TCL in niveluri

10.00 Nivel C2
9.00 - 9.99 Nivel C1
7.00 - 8.99 Nivel B2
5.00 - 6.99 Nivel B1
3.00 - 4.99 Nivel A2
1.00 - 2.99 Nivel A1
0.00 - 0.99 ‒

1.3. Descrierea cursului

Este un curs cu obiective specifice care vizează achiziţia de cunoştinţe şi dezvoltarea deprinderilor de
limbă străină ca instrument de formare şi informare academică şi profesională. Tipologia
programului de învăţare are în vedere crearea unui profil de utilizator cu competenţe axate pe
studiul limbajelor de specialitate. În acest sens, studenţii îşi vor dezvolta capacitatea de
conştientizare a stării actuale a cunoştinţelor şi deprinderilor, se vor deprinde să-şi fixeze obiective
reale şi realiste, să-şi selecteze în mod autonom materialele şi să se autoevalueze.

1.4. Organizarea temelor în cadrul cursului

Suportul de curs este structurat în “units”, fiecare unitate fiind împărțită în secțiuni ce vizează
dezvoltarea celor patru competențe lingvistice: citire, scriere, vorbire, ascultare. Textele sunt alese
astfel încât să acopere domenii precum psihologia, pedagogia și psihopedagogia specială iar prin
intermediul activităților aferente fiecărei unități se au în vedere următoarele obiective:
- Cunoaşterea şi înţelegerea aprofundată a contextelor şi rolurilor, precum şi a conceptelor, metodelor
şi a discursului/limbajului specific diverselor situaţii de comunicare profesională în mediul academic
de limba engleză, cu accent pe situaţia retorică, formele de comunicare scrisă şi orală, etapele
procesului de scriere şi produsele scrisului academic, precum şi pe deontologia profesională.
- Transferul conceptelor învăţate în activităţi de receptare a textului scris şi de producere vizând
etapele procesului de scriere, organizarea şi dezvoltarea ideilor, structura textului şi strategiile de
comunicare verbală orală şi scrisă la standarde specifice limbii engleze specializate pentru discursul
ştiinţific.

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- Elaborarea unor lucrări scrise şi prezentări orale originale care să utilizeze principiile şi tehnicile de
redactare consacrate în mediul academic, cu accent pe genurile predilecte din psihologie şi ştiinţele
educaţiei.

1.5. Materiale bibliografice

1. Short, Jane, English for Psychology in Higher Education. Course Book, Reading, UK: Garnet
Education, 2010
2. Prodromou, L., Grammar and Vocabulary for First Certificate, Longman, 2001
3. Teglaş, Camelia (coord.), Felea, Cristina, Mezei, Vlad, English B2 – C1, Social Sciences and Sport,
Seria Autodidact (coord. Liana Pop), Cluj, Ed. Echinox, 2009
4. Teglaș, Camelia, Study Pack for Students in Psychology and Education Sciences. 2018
5. Understanding Psychology. Vocabulary Activities, Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, McGraw-Hill, 2008
6. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman, 2003
7. http://granturi.ubbcluj.ro/autodidact
8.https://www.verywellmind.com
9. http://esl.about.com/c/ec/1.htm
10. owl.english.purdue.edu/
11. https://edarticle.com/
12. https://www.ted.com

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 UNIT 1 - INTRODUCTION TO ESP: THE ACADEMIC SKILLS

English for Specific Purposes, or ESP, is the methodology of teaching English for
professionals in various fields, focusing on types of expressions, vocabulary, standard and
formal structures that will be used most of all in a specific field, etc. The most common ESP
is Business English; there are also e.g. English for law, English for medical purposes, English
for tourism, English for science purposes, etc.
(Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-ESP "English-for-Specific-Purposes")

ACADEMIC SKILLS

Reading Writing Speaking

READING

Though reading is often considered a passive skill, research in the field of psycholinguistics has
demonstrated that it is actually a highly complex process of interaction between the reader and text.

For example, it has been shown that the reader does not decode the
text in his first language in an orderly, linear fashion, word after word, but rather his eyes move
rapidly over the page, going forward and backward as he perceives meaningful groups of words and
relates these to the non-verbal information at his disposal (that is, to his knowledge of the world and
topic of the written text), thereby deriving meaning from the text.
Reading thus can be seen as the processing of information. The reader brings to the text his own
store of information deriving from his native culture, education, personal experience, and, normally
some specific knowledge of the written text. At the same time, the reader possesses a linguistic
competence, including knowledge of words, of how these words are deployed according to the
linguistic system in order to form sentences, and the rhetorical pattern and linguistic conventions
which characterize different types of text.

Furthermore, in an ideal situation, the reader approaches a text with a genuine motivation to read and
a reading purpose. Whatever the text, he will also have some expectations or predictions regarding
its content and how the text is likely to be organized depending on its genre. As he reads, these
predictions are confirmed or not confirmed by the text. Depending of his reason for reading, he will
use one or more specific strategies.

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Reading strategies
When we read in our own language we use – often unconsciously – a variety of reading strategies and
techniques depending on the text and our reason for reading. There are four principal “styles” of
reading:
Skimming involves moving your eyes rapidly over the page or pages in order to get a general idea of
what the text is about, focusing on certain key words or phrases.
Scanning, instead, is a strategy we use when we seek specific pieces of information in a text, such as
names, dates, statistics, or whether a particular topic is treated. Here our expectations are heightened
by our awareness of certain lexical fields or other textural features which are likely to signal the
presence of the information we are looking for.
Intensive reading is the style we use when we wish to have a very clear and complete understanding
of the written text. This implies a careful de-codification of the writer’s discourse, usually with the aim
of comprehending not only the literal meaning of the text, but also the writer’s deeper purpose, his
position or other eventual text subtleties.
Extensive reading is the term we use to describe the strategies called into play when we read longer
texts either for pleasure or for information, and may involve all the strategies previously mentioned,
which the reader applies according to the individual text and his interest in its various parts.
Thus, the reading style we apply to any given text should be a function of the type and content of the
text on the one hand, and our reading purpose on the other. It is important to use these strategies
appropriately and flexibly: obviously not all texts need to be read intensively, though language
learners often apply only this strategy to texts in foreign languages. In reading English for academic
purposes, for example, it will often suffice to have a general idea of whether certain information is
contained in an article and, if so, where, so that it might be consulted at a later date. On the other hand,
information which is of interest may be located quickly and selected passages focused upon for the
purpose of extracting and annotating specific information.
(Source: Adapted from Jordan, R.R, Academic Writing Course, Longman Publishing Group, 2004)

The “word cloud” below contains the keywords of the text. Use them to write down the
main ideas.

WRITING

Without doubt, the single most important reason for assigning writing tasks in disciplinary courses is
to introduce students to the thinking and writing of that discipline. Even though students read
disciplinary texts and learn course material, until they practice the language of the discipline through
writing, they are less likely to learn that language thoroughly. [...] Such writing helps students to:
- integrate and analyze course content
- provide a field-wide context to course material
- practice thinking skills relevant to analyses in the discipline
- practice professional communication
- prepare for a range of careers in the field
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Types of writing:
- Project or lab notebook
- Progress report
- Research report
- Management plan
- Opinion paragraph/ Position paper
- Essay
- Casebook
- Review of literature
- Journal or professional article
- Project proposals
- Grant proposals
- Lab/field reports
(Source: Adapted from https://wac.colostate.edu/resources)

Motto: “If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two tongues and one ear.”
Mark Twain

LISTENING

Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis for
language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication.

With the help of language instructors, students learn how they can adjust their listening behaviour to
deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and listening purposes, develop a set of listening
strategies and match appropriate strategies to each listening situation.

Listening Strategies
Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall
of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.
Top-down strategies (listening for the main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, summarizing )
are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context,
the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help
the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next.
Bottom-up strategies (listening for specific details, recognizing cognates, recognizing word-order
patterns) are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of
sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning.
Strategic listeners also use meta-cognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their listening.
 They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation.
 They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies.
 They evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and
whether the combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one.

SPEAKING

Academic speaking is similar in many ways to academic writing: it is linear, it is explicit, it has one
central point and it is presented in standard language. Academic spoken style is also similar in many
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ways in that it is formal, explicit, hedged, and responsible. However, it is less complex and objective
than written language.
Formal
In general this means that when you are speaking you should avoid colloquial words and expressions.
Explicit
It is the responsibility of the speaker in English to make it clear to the listener how various parts of the
talk are related. These connections can be made explicit by the use of different signalling words.
Precision
When speaking in an academic contexts, facts and figures are given precisely.
Hedged
In any kind of academic speaking you do, it is necessary to make decisions about your stance on a
particular subject, or the strength of the claims you are making. Different subjects prefer to do this in
different ways.
A technique common in certain kinds of speaking is known by linguists as a 'hedge'.
Responsible
In academic speaking you are responsible for demonstrating an understanding of the source text. You
must be responsible for, and must be able to provide evidence and justification for, any claims you
make.
Accuracy
Academic speaking uses vocabulary accurately. Most subjects have words with narrow specific
meanings. Linguistics distinguishes clearly between "phonetics" and "phonemics"; general English
does not.
Complex
Spoken language is less complex than written language. Spoken language has shorter words, it is
lexically less dense and it has a less varied vocabulary. It uses more verb-based phrases than noun-
based phrases. Spoken texts are longer and the language has less grammatical complexity, including
fewer subordinate clauses and more active verbs.
Objective
Spoken language in general has more words that refer to the speaker. This means that although the
main emphasis should be on the information that you want to give and the arguments you want to
make, it is not unusual to refer to yourself or your audience.
Planned
Formal academic spoken language is well planned. It usually takes place after research and evaluation,
according to a specific purpose and plan.
Organised
Formal academic speaking is well organised. It flows easily from one section to the next in a logical
fashion. A good place to start is the genre of your text. Once you have decided on the genre, the
structure is easily determined.
(Source: Adapted from http://www.uefap.com/speaking/spkframfeat.htm)

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 UNIT 2 - PSYCHOLOGY IN A NUTSHELL

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?

psychology (n.)
1650s, "study of the soul"
from Modern Latin psychologia, probably coined mid-16c. in Germany by Melanchthon from
Latinized form of Greek psykhe- "breath, spirit, soul"
(see psyche) + logia "study of" (see -logy).
Meaning "study of the mind" - first recorded in 1748, from Christian Wolff's "Psychologia empirica"
(1732);
main modern behavioural sense is from early 1890s.
(Source: Online Etymology Dictionary www.etymonline.com)

Fill in the diagram below with ten words you associate with "psychology".

1
10 2
9 3

8 4
7 5
6
READING ACTIVITIES:

While the subject of psychology in today’s modern world does reflect the discipline’s rich and colourful
history, its origins however differ quite considerably from the contemporary notions of the field. In order to fully
understand what psychology is all about, it is important to first go back into its history and explore its origins. How
did this discipline originate? When did it originate?
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 Contemporary psychology deals with a vast range of topics, while at the same time looks into human behavioural
patterns and mental processes from the cultural level to the neural level. Psychologists study all matters
pertaining to human mental issues that begin right from birth and continue up until the death of the person. So, by
gaining full understanding of the history of psychology, you will be able to better understand how the individual
topics are studied and what has been learnt so far.
Questions put forward during the Formation of Psychology
Right from the very beginning, the study of psychology has been faced with a number of difficult questions. The
first question of how is psychology defined established it as a separate science, separate from philosophy and
physiology. Other additional questions that psychologists were also faced with throughout the history of the
subject were: What issues and topics should the subject of psychology deal with? What methods of research
should be used when studying psychology? Should research be used in order to influence education, public
policy and other aspects of human behaviour? Is psychology a science? Should psychology focus on internal
mental processes or on observable behaviours?
The Emergence of Psychology: Physiology and Philosophy
While psychology did not really emerge as a separate science until the latter half of the 19th century, its initial
history can be traced right back to the ancient Greeks. During the 1600’s, the famous French philosopher, Rene
Descartes, introduced the concept of dualism, which stressed on the fact that the body and the mind were
basically two separate entities that interacted together to form the normal human experience. Many of the other
issues that are still debated by psychologists today, like relative contributions of nature vs. nurture, are deep
rooted in these early philosophical concepts. So why is psychology different from philosophy? While many of the
early philosophers relied heavily on methods like logic and observation, the psychologists of today tend to use
methods to study and come to conclusions about the human behaviour and thought. Physiology also made large
contributions towards the eventual emergence of psychology as a science. Early physiology research on
behaviour and brain had a very dramatic impact on psychology as it is today, ultimately leading to the application
of many scientific methodologies that study the human behaviour and thought.
Psychology as a Separate Scientific Discipline
During the mid 19th century, Wilhelm Wundt, a German physiologist started using scientific research methods to
look into reaction times. His works outlined many of the most important connections between physiology and
psychology. So what were Wundt’s views on psychology? He looked upon the subject as a study of the human
consciousness and even sought to apply certain experimental methods in order to study the internal mental
processes. While this process today is known as introspection and is considered to be highly unscientific and
unreliable, in those days it helped set the stage for all the future experimental methods. And although his
influence began to dwindle in the years to come, this impact on the subject is definitely unquestionable.

LANGUAGE FOCUS: Several verbs in the text above are written in italics. Organize them
in the table according to their tenses.

PRESENT SIMPLE
PAST SIMPLE
PRESENT PERFECT
PAST PERFECT

Academic textual functions, such as reporting, are signalled by characteristic language uses of tense and aspect. When
reporting findings or significant aspects of people’s work, we use The Present Simple. The Past Simple is used when
referring to the procedures used in individual studies.
Read the following excerpts from two research reports and fill in with the appropriate form of the
verb in brackets, according to the academic textual functions used in each of them.

Mood disorders (to affect _1) around forty four million Americans each year. The two most common mental disorders (to
be _2) depression and bipolar disease. There are several factors which researchers (to believe_3) contribute to mental
disorders. Some researchers (to think _4) that the most severe mood disorders (to be caused_5) by imbalances in the
brain’s chemical activity. Researchers also (to assume _6) the environment can play a part in mood disorders and it may
run in families. Some mood disorders (to prove _7) to be easier to diagnose due to the symptoms that the patient (to
display _8), while others may be a little more difficult and (to require_9) more testing due to the mood disorder going

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unrecognized. The good news (to be_10) that with the proper medication and psychotherapy a person afflicted with a
mood disorder can go on and live a productive life.
(Source: Adapted from: http://www.freeonlineresearchpapers.com/diagnosing-mental-disorders)

1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10

The most famous experiment Milgram (to conduct _1) was also his most controversial. The issue (to deal _2) with the
people's right to know on what he/she is being studied. On the surface, the experiment (to look _3) legit and totally
scientific. Two people (to be brought _4) in at a time and each would draw from a hat. One would be the teacher, one the
learner. After going over exactly how the shock treatment (to work _5), the teacher (to go _6) to his control panel and the
learner (to be hooked up _7) to electrodes. The teacher would first read lists of paired words then (to ask _8) the learner
to pair up the now separated words. For each wrong answer the learner (to give _9), an increasing dose of electricity (to
be given _10).
(Source: Adapted from: http://www.free-researchpapers.com/dbs/b11/smu317.shtml)

1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10

Identify the tenses of the verbs underlined in the following fragment and match them to the uses
suggested in the table below:

The research of consciousness, or states of awareness, has provided numerous interesting and influential studies.
Sleep, dreams, and hypnosis are states of awareness that have intrigued psychologists because they relate to the
quality of psychological interaction with the environment. States of awareness change constantly, which produces
changes in behaviour. Studies in this area have made great contributions to the understanding of psychology.
Researchers pursuing answers about states of awareness discovered Rapid Eye Movement sleep and how it relates to
dreaming. Rosalind Cartwright, a leading researcher in this area, takes the study of consciousness to another level by
suggesting that people may be able to control what they dream about. Many psychologists have theorized about why
people dream. Sigmund Freud believed that dreams were windows to your unconscious; that your greatest unfulfilled
wishes and fears would be expressed symbolically in your dreams. Freud's view has been highly influential, and
psychotherapists still use dream interpretation during therapy.
(Source: Adapted from: http://www.free-researchpapers.com/dbs/b6/pnl224.shtml)

USE TENSE VERBS

Habitual activities - States
An action that was begun in the
past and continues into the
present/ An action that
happened in the unspecified
past/ A recent action that has a
present effect.
Actions that happened at a
defined moment in the past.

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 Psychology is the study of the mind, along with such aspects of
mind as perception, cognition, emotion, and behaviour. In some ways, it has
only been around since the late 1800's, when people like Wilhelm Wundt,
William James, and Sigmund Freud separated it from its various mother
disciplines such as biology, philosophy, and medicine. But in other ways, it has
been around as long as human beings have been discussing human beings. I Specialist
suspect that cavemen and cavewomen probably sat around the fire talking about Vocabulary
the same things we do: How come their kids are weird, why can't men and behaviour
women get along better, what's with those folks from the next valley, how come cognition
old Zook hasn't been the same since that rock hit him, and what do dreams really discipline
mean.
emotion
Today, psychology tries to be a science. Science is the effort to study a subject
with an explicit promise to think as logically and stick to the empirical facts as
empirical
tightly as is humanly possible. Other sciences - chemistry, physics, biology, etc. experiment
- have had great success this way. Our cave-person ancestors would be lobotomize
astounded at our understanding of the world around us! But the subject matter of
psychology (and the other human sciences) is harder to pin down. We human
beings are not as cooperative as some green goo in a test tube! It is a nearly
impossible situation: To study the very thing that studies, to research the
researcher, to psychoanalyse the psychoanalyst.
So, as you will see, we still have a long way to go in psychology. We have a
large collection of theories about this part of being human or that part; we have a
lot of experiments and other studies about one particular detail of life or another;
we have many therapeutic techniques that sometimes work, and sometimes
don't. But there is a steady progress that is easy to see for those of us with, say, a mind
half century of life behind us. We are a bit like medicine in that regard: Don't perception
forget that it wasn't really that long ago when we didn't have vaccines for simple psychology
childhood diseases, or anaesthesia for operations; heart attacks and cancer were research
things people simply died of, as opposed to things that many people survive; and science
mental patients were people we just locked away or lobotomized! theory
Some day -- sooner rather than later, I think -- we will have the same kinds of
therapeutic
understanding of the human mind as we are quickly developing of the human
body. The nice thing is you and I can participate in this process!
techniques
Source: Adapted from: General Psychology by Dr. C. George Boeree Shippensburg University
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/genpsy.html Phrases
to be astounded at
to die of
to lock away
to pin down
to stick to

Unusual words
Zook
goo

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VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES
Word charts, like the oval diagram below, help students condense and organize data about multiple traits, facts or
attributes associated to a single topic.

The following definitions, as they appear in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, fit the words
in the chart above. Match them with the words by writing the corresponding letter next to them, according to
the model.
Model: EMOTION = J. a strong human feeling such as love, hate or anger
A. the process of knowing, understanding, and learning something
B. an area of knowledge or teaching that is studied at a university
C. the thing that a person or an animal does
D. based on scientific testing or practical experience, not on ideas
E. a scientific test done to find out how something reacts under certain conditions, or to find out if a
particular idea is true; a process in which you test a new idea or method to see if it is useful or effective
F. serious study of a subject, in order to discover new facts or test new ideas
G. knowledge about the world, especially based on examining, testing, and proving facts
H. an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain something about life or the world, especially an idea that
has not yet been proven to be true
I. to remove surgically part of someone’s brain in order to treat their mental problems
J. a strong human feeling such as love, hate or anger

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 UNIT 3 - BRANCHES OF PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology is a huge topic and conveying the depth and breadth of the subject can be difficult. As a
result, a number of different fields of psychology have emerged to deal with specific subtopics within
the study of the mind, brain and behaviour.
The following are just some of the major fields of psychology.

LISTENING ACTIVITIES
1. Listen carefully to the lecture and complete the tree diagram below with other pieces of information
you consider relevant.

2. Listen again and fill in the gaps with the missing information.

1. Social psychology is applied in _______________ planning.

2. In the ______________ world, social psychologists carry out surveys.
3. Organizational psychology focuses on group ______________ and how people are motivated at
work.
4. Neuropsychology can have an _____________ in the commercial world.
5. Educational psychology is __________ linked to developmental psychology.
6. Personality psychology __________ on analyzing the behaviour of individuals.
7. Counsellors help healthy people to manage ____________ stressful situations.

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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, according to psychologist Gordon Allport, is a discipline that uses
scientific methods "to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals
are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings" (1985).
Social psychology looks at a wide range of social topics, including group behaviour, social perception,
leadership, nonverbal behaviour, conformity, aggression, and prejudice. It is important to note that
social psychology is not just about looking at social influences. Social perception and social
interaction are also vital to understanding social behaviour. [...] Social psychology is often confused
with folk wisdom, personality psychology, and sociology. What makes social psychology different?
Unlike folk wisdom, which relies on anecdotal observations and subjective interpretation, social
psychology employs scientific methods and the empirical study of social phenomena.
Researchers do not just make guesses or assumptions about how people behave; they devise and carry
out experiments that help point out relationships between different variables.
While personality psychology focuses on individual traits, characteristics and thoughts, social
psychology is focused on situations. Social psychologists are interested in the impact that the social
environment and group interactions have on attitudes and behaviours.
Finally, it is important to distinguish between social psychology and sociology. While there are many
similarities between the two, sociology tends to looks at social behaviour and influences at a very
broad-based level. Sociologists are interested in the institutions and cultures that influence how people
behave. Psychologists instead focus on situational variables that affect social behaviour. While
psychology and sociology both study similar topics, they are looking at these topics from different
perspectives.
(Retrieved from: http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/f/socialpsych.htm)

NEUROPSYCHOLOGY studies the structure and function of the brain as they relate to specific
psychological processes and behaviours. It is an experimental field of psychology that aims to
understand how behaviour and cognition are influenced by brain functioning and is concerned with the
diagnosis and treatment of behavioural and cognitive effects of neurological disorders. Whereas
classical neurology focuses on the physiology of the nervous system and classical psychology is
largely divorced from it, neuropsychology seeks to discover how the brain correlates with the mind. It
thus shares concepts and concerns with neuropsychiatry and with behavioural neurology in general. It
is scientific in its approach, making use of neuroscience, and shares an information processing view of
the mind with cognitive psychology and cognitive science.
Neuropsychology is a relatively new discipline within the field of psychology. There is much debate
as to when societies started considering the functions of different organs. For many centuries, the brain
was thought useless, and was often discarded during burial processes and autopsies. As the field of
medicine developed its understanding of human anatomy and physiology different theories were
developed as to why the body functioned the way it did. Many times, bodily functions were
approached from a religious point of view and abnormalities were blamed on bad spirits and the gods.
The brain has not always been considered the centre of the functioning body. It has taken hundreds of
years to develop our understanding of the brain and how it affects our behaviours.
(Retrieved from: http://psychology.about.com)

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY is a scientific approach which aims to explain how children

and adults change over time.
A significant proportion of theories within this discipline focus upon development during childhood,
as this is the period during an individual's lifespan when the most change occurs.
Developmental psychologists study a wide range of theoretical areas, such as biological, social,
emotion, and cognitive processes. [...]To describe development it is necessary to focus both on typical
patterns of change (normative development) and on individual variations in patterns of change (i.e.
idiographic development).Normative development is typically viewed as a continual and cumulative
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process. However, it should be noted that people can change if important aspects of one's life change.
This capacity for change is called plasticity.[...] When trying to explain development, it is important to
consider the relative contribution of both nature and nurture. Nature refers to the process of biological
maturation inheritance and maturation. Nurture refers to the impact of the environment, which
involves the process of learning through experiences.[...]Developmental psychology as a discipline did
not exist before the industrial revolution when the need for an educated workforce led to the social
construction of childhood as a distinct stage in a person's life. [...]However, the emergence of
developmental psychology as a specific discipline can be traced back to 1882 when Wilhelm Preyer (a
German physiologist) published a book entitled The Mind of the Child. [...] During the 1900s three key
figures have dominated the field with their extensive theories of human development, namely Jean
Piaget, Leg Vygotsky, and John Bowlby.
(Adapted from: McLeod, S. A. (2012). Developmental Psychology. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/developmental-
psychology.html)

PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY is one of the largest and most popular branches of psychology.
Psychologists strive to understand how personality develops as well as how it influences the way we
think and behave. This area of psychology seeks to understand personality and how it varies among
individuals as well as how people are similar in terms of personality.
While there is no single agreed upon definition of personality, it is often thought of as something that
arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life. It encompasses all of
the thoughts, behaviour patterns, and social attitudes that impact how we view ourselves and what we
believe about others and the world around us.
Understanding personality allows psychologists to predict how people will respond in certain
situations and the sorts of things they prefer and value.
In order to understand how researchers study personality psychology, it is important to become
familiar with some of the most influential personality theories, namely the trait theories, the
psychoanalytic theories and the humanistic theories.
Personality psychologists not only study how personality develops - they are also interested in various
problems that may arise. A personality disorder is a chronic and pervasive mental disorder that affects
thoughts, behaviours, and interpersonal functioning. The DSM-5 currently lists 10 different
personality disorders.
In order to study and measure personality, psychologists have developed a number of different
personality tests, assessments, and inventories. Many of these tests are widely used in a variety of
settings.
(Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/p/personality.htm)

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY is concerned with the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention
of mental disorders. While professionals in this field often work in medical settings, clinical
psychologists are not medical doctors and do not prescribe medications in most states.
Clinical psychologists often work in hospitals, private practice, or academic settings. Clinicians are
trained in a range of techniques and theoretical approaches. Some specialize in treating certain
psychological disorders, while others work with clients suffering from a wide variety of problems.
Clinical psychologists treat some of the most severe psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and
depression.
In addition to working with clients, clinical psychologists have to keep detailed records of client
assessment, diagnosis, therapeutic goals and treatment notes. These records help clinicians and clients
track progress and are often needed for billing and insurance purposes.
Counselling psychologists help people of all ages deal with emotional, social, developmental, and
other life concerns. These professionals use a variety of strategies to help people manage behavioural
issues, cope with stress, alleviate anxiety and distress, and deal with the issues associated with
psychological disorders.
(Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologycareerprofiles/p/clinicalpsych.htm)

15
 UNIT 4 - SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Early Influences
Aristotle believed that humans were naturally sociable, a necessity which allows us to live together (an
individual centred approach), whilst Plato felt that the state controlled the individual and encouraged
social responsibility through social context (a socio-centred approach).
Hegel (1770–1831) introduced the concept that society has inevitable links with the development of
the social mind. This led to the idea of a group mind, important in the study of social psychology.
Lazarus & Steinthal wrote about Anglo-European influences in 1860. “Volkerpsychologie” emerged,
which focused on the idea of a collective mind. It emphasized the notion that personality develops
because of cultural and community influences, especially through language, which is both a social
product of the community as well as a means of encouraging particular social thought in the
individual. Therefore Wundt (1900–1920) encouraged the methodological study of language and its
influence on the social being.
Early Texts
Texts focusing on social psychology first emerged at the start of the 20th century. The first notable
book in English was published by McDougall in 1908 (An Introduction to Social Psychology), which
included chapters on emotion and sentiment, morality, character and religion, quite different to those
incorporated in the field today. He believed that social behaviour was innate/instinctive and therefore
individual, hence his choice of topics. This belief is not the principle upheld in modern social
psychology, however.
Allport’s work (1924) underpins current thinking to a greater degree, as he acknowledged that social
behaviour results from interactions between people. He also took a methodological approach,
discussing actual research and emphasizing that the field was one of a “science … which studies the
behaviour of the individual in so far as his behaviour stimulates other individuals, or is itself a reaction
to this behaviour” (1942: p. 12). His book also dealt with topics still evident today, such as emotion,
conformity and the effects of an audience on others.
The first handbook on social psychology was published by Murchison in 1935. Murphy & Murphy
(1931/37) produced a book summarizing the findings of 1,000 studies in social psychology. A text by
Klineberg (1940) looked at the interaction between social context and personality development by the
1950s a number of texts were available on the subject.
Early Experiments
There is some disagreement about the first true experiment, but the following are certainly among
some of the most important. Triplett (1898) applied the experimental method to investigate the
performance of cyclists and schoolchildren on how the presence of others influences overall
performance – thus how individual’s are affected and behave in the social context.
By 1935 the study of social norms had developed, looking at how individuals behave according to the
rules of society. This was conducted by Sherif (1935).
Lewin et al. then began experimental research into leadership and group processes by 1939, looking at
effective work ethics under different styles of leadership.
Later Developments
Much of the key research in social psychology developed following World War II, when people
became interested in the behaviour of individuals when grouped together and in social situations. Key
studies were carried out in several areas.
Some studies focused on how attitudes are formed, changed by the social context and measured to
ascertain whether change has occurred. Amongst some of the most famous work in social psychology
is that on obedience conducted by Milgram in his “electric shock” study, which looked at the role an
authority figure plays in shaping behaviour. Similarly, Zimbardo’s prison simulation notably
demonstrated conformity to given roles in the social world.

16
Wider topics then began to emerge, such as social perception, aggression, relationships, decision
making, pro social behaviour and attribution, many of which are central to today’s topics and will be
discussed throughout this website.
Thus the growth years of social psychology occurred during the decades following the 1940s.
(Adapted from: Social Psychology by Saul McLeod available at http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-psychology.html)

Social Psychology Key Figures

Gordon Allport
(1920) – Social Facilitation
Allport introduced the notion that the presence of others (the social group) can facilitate certain
behaviour. It was found that an audience would improve an actors’ performance in well learned/easy
tasks, but leads to a decrease in performance on newly learned/difficult tasks due to social inhibition.

Albert Bandura
(1963) - Social Learning Theory

Bandura introduced the notion that behaviour in the social world could be modelled. Three groups of
children watched a video where an adult was aggressive towards a ‘bobo doll’, and the adult was
either just seen to be doing this, was rewarded by another adult for their behaviour or were punished
for it. Children who had seen the adult rewarded were found to be more likely to copy such behaviour.

Leon Festinger
(1950) – Cognitive Dissonance

Festinger, Schacter and Black brought the idea that when we hold beliefs, attitudes or cognitions
which are different, then we experience dissonance – this is an inconsistency that causes discomfort.
We are motivated to reduce this by either changing one of our thoughts, beliefs or attitudes or
selectively attending to information which supports one of our beliefs and ignores the other (selective
exposure hypothesis).

17
Dissonance occurs when there are difficult choices or decisions, or when people participate in
behaviour that is contrary to their attitude. Dissonance is thus brought about by effort justification
(when aiming to reach a modest goal), induced compliance (when people are forced to comply
contrary to their attitude) and free choice (when weighing up decisions).

Henri Tajfel
(1971) – Social Identity Theory
When divided into artificial (minimal) groups, prejudice results simply from the awareness that there
is an “out-group” (the other group). When the boys were asked to allocate points to others (which
might be converted into rewards) who were either part of their own group or the out-group, they
displayed a strong in-group preference. That is, they allocated more points on the set task to boys who
they believed to be in the same group as themselves. This can be accounted for by Tajfel & Turner’s
social identity theory, which states that individuals need to maintain a positive sense of personal and
social identity: this is partly achieved by emphasizing the desirability of one’s own group, focusing on
distinctions between other “lesser” groups.

Bernard Weiner
(1986) – Attribution theory
Weiner was interested in the attributions made for experiences of success and failure and introduced
the idea that we look for explanations of behaviour in the social world. He believed that these were
made based on three areas: locus, which could be internal or external; stability, which is whether the
cause is stable or changes over time: and controllability.

Stanley Milgram
(1963) – Shock Experiment
Participants were told that they were taking part in a study on learning, but always acted as the teacher
when they were then responsible for going over paired associate learning tasks. When the learner (a
stooge) got the answer wrong, they were told by a scientist that they had to deliver an electric shock.
This did not actually happen, although the participant was unaware of this as they had themselves a

18
sample (real!) shock at the start of the experiment. They were encouraged to increase the voltage given
after each incorrect answer up to a maximum voltage, and it was found that all participants gave
shocks up to 300v, with 65 per cent reaching the highest level of 450v.
It seems that obedience is most likely to occur in an unfamiliar environment and in the presence of an
authority figure, especially when covert pressure is put upon people to obey. It is also possible that it
occurs because the participant felt that someone other than themselves was responsible for their
actions.

Philip Zimbardo
(1971) – Prison Study

Volunteers took part in a simulation where they were randomly assigned the role of a prisoner or
guard and taken to a converted university basement resembling a prison environment. There was some
basic loss of rights for the prisoners, who were unexpectedly arrested, given a uniform and an
identification number (they were therefore de-individuated).
The study showed that conformity to social roles occurred as part of the social interaction, as both
groups displayed more negative emotions and hostility and dehumanization became apparent.
Prisoners became passive, whilst the guards assumed an active, brutal and dominant role. Although
normative and informational social influence had a role to play here, de-individuation / the loss of a
sense of identity seemed most likely to lead to conformity.
Both this and Milgram’s study introduced the notion of social influence, and the ways in which this
could be observed/tested.
(Adapted from: Social Psychology by Saul McLeod available at http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-psychology.html)

Social cognition refers to the area of social psychology that is concerned with how people think about other
people or groups of people. Although this field shares many similarities with the field of cognitive psychology,
there is an assumption that the way in which we think about other people (i.e. our social world) differs in
important ways to the way in which we think about the physical world.
The attribution of causality - seeking explanations for our own behaviour and the behaviour of others - is
probably the area closest to popular understanding of psychology. [...] People have an overwhelming desire to
form a coherent understanding of their world and to control their social environment. One aspect which is
fundamental to this is that of causality - that is, what causes particular events or behaviours to occur. An
attribution is the end result of a process in which people use available information to make inferences about the
causes of a particular behaviour.
The tendency to take mental short cuts in processing information from our social world is illustrated by the
process of stereotyping - mentally placing people into pre-existing categories - which enables us to apply general
evaluations based on our existing 'knowledge' about that category and its members. [...] One of the inevitable
consequences of the process of categorization is the fact that we will judge some people more negatively than
others. [...] The notion of stereotypes can be traced back to Lippmann (1922), who believed that these 'pictures in
the head' represented an '... ordered, more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes,
our capacities, our comforts, and our hopes have adjusted themselves'.

ACTIVITIES
Follow the link, watch the video, and make a list of the stereotypes that keep you from getting what
you really want.

Threat of Stereotypes | Social Experiments Illustrated

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTYMSulvnyw

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 UNIT 5 - HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

People: Who Needs Them? by Gina Stepp

EXAMINING FRIENDSHIP AND OTHER SOCIAL BONDS.

People are social beings. It’s an innate trait, undeniable and inescapable, seated deep in the brain in a
pair of little almond-shaped structures called the amygdala. When these are missing, human beings
lose emotional feeling, recognition of the emotional significance of family and friends, and any
concept of a social world. They may isolate themselves, avoiding human contact; but there is no
loneliness, no sorrow, no tears, because they are unable to comprehend the magnitude of their loss.
In contrast, healthy human beings—amygdala intact—crave human companionship. As much as our
inner cowboy might like the idea of riding off alone into the sunset, real people cannot thrive that way
and will eventually, in actual practice, make a confidant of their horse, car or any other possible stand-
in for a companion. This is not breaking news, of course. Even before the human need for social
bonds was taken up for study by various sciences, it had long been recognized as a fundamental truth
by writers and other observers of human nature. And yet the implications of this truth may sometimes
pass unappreciated.
“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote English renaissance poet John Donne around 1624;
“every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” A priest as well as a poet, Donne is likely to have read some
of the ancient Hebrew writings preserved in the Bible, such as these words attributed to King
Solomon: “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment”
(Proverbs 18:1, English Standard Version).
Even in modern Western society, branded as individualistic to its core, the imperative of social
connection is acknowledged in cultural works of all kinds: “People who need people,” wrote lyricist
Bob Merrill in 1964, “are the luckiest people in the world.” The song went on to focus mainly on
romantic relationships. But while romantic partners certainly qualify as “people who need people,”
they are not by any means the only people who do. We are all in the same boat—whether single,
married, old, young, male, female; regardless of race, culture, or any other delineation—human social
interaction is key to our survival.
But what is “social connection” anyway? How many and what kinds are important?
Before addressing these questions, it will be useful to define terms and sweep down some of the
popular-psychology (pop-psych) cobwebs that may obscure the view when it comes to understanding
the importance of social relationships.

SOCIAL ANIMAL OR LONE RANGER?

The simple word social can evoke a variety of images. Social psychologists use the word to describe
humans as beings that live in an organized, interdependent society. The term social skills describes a
person’s ability to maintain cooperative interpersonal relationships of any kind, whether they are
extremely close bonds or more casual ones. Social bond often refers specifically to friendships, but
from a broader perspective it describes the connection between individuals and their society.
Colloquially, however, social may have an entirely different connotation. At “a social,” we may chat
with people about things that don’t really seem to matter, and in doing so we may judge the interaction
to be shallow, unnecessary, frivolous. We may see some people flitting from conversation to
conversation and label them “social butterflies,” unable to sustain deep relationships. Or we may see
others who prefer to sit on the sidelines; we call them “wallflowers” and assume they have negligible
social skills.
Stereotypes such as these are by-products of what may be one of the heaviest of the cobwebs that
obscure an accurate understanding of human relationships, one that has always been a hot topic on

20
pop-psych bookshelves: personality typing. Especially popular with the general public are the
concepts of extraversion and introversion. These constructs engender passionate debate, with some
books extolling the virtues of extraversion while others counter that introversion is the more
enlightened state. How accurate are such depictions, and where do they come from? Years and years
of research, right?
Certainly a great number of studies have focused on extraverts and introverts, but researchers do not
use these terms in the way most people do. What many journalists who report on such studies fail to
realize is that before individuals are accepted as research subjects, they must score either very high or
very low on psychological tests for extraversion or introversion. Curt and Anne Bartol, both respected
psychologists, professors and authors of multiple criminal psychology textbooks, explain that “usually,
two out of every three people will score in the ‘average’ range on the extraversion dimension,
thus disqualifying them from studies based on extraversion and introversion. Roughly 16 percent of
the population are extraverts, and another 16 percent introverts, and the remainder (68 percent)
are ambiverts” (Criminal Behaviour: A Psychosocial Approach, emphasis added). In other words,
studies comparing introverts and extraverts examine people who tend toward the extremes—a
minority of the population. It may be tempting to think of extraversion and introversion as two sides of
a coin—that each of us is either one or the other—but this is simply not the case. The concept should
instead be viewed as a scale or spectrum containing a generous (and generally preferable)
middle ground.
Where does the pop-psych concept of introversion and extraversion come from, then? While it has
morphed somewhat since its inception, this either-or view of personality was initially developed
by Carl Jung, who along with Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler is considered a father of modern
psychotherapy. To Jung the distinction was not about social inclinations, however. Rather it concerned
the direction in which one’s “psychic energy” flowed; introverts preferred to focus on such things as
their inner feelings, dreams and fantasies, while extraverts tended to focus on outward, tangible
realities—not just other people but things. Jung, who was undoubtedly intrigued by his own dreams
and visions, was also fascinated by mystical traditions—particularly those with heavy symbolism such
as Gnosticism, alchemy and Kabbalah. Shadows of these philosophies can be recognized in his views
on personality.
Following Jung’s typology to the letter, Katharine Cook Briggs (1875–1968), together with her
daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers (1897–1980), developed the now popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
(MBTI). Although neither was a psychologist, both have been described as keen “observers of human
behaviour.” Katharine had studied personalities by reading various biographies, so when she came
across Jung’s book Psychological Types in the 1920s, it resonated with her at such a level that she
brought it to her daughter’s attention, and the two women were motivated to develop a personality test
based on its principles. In 1943 the first version of the MBTI was published, and Myers in particular
worked over the next few decades to refine the test items in hopes of helping ordinary people identify
their Jungian personality type.
While the MBTI is perhaps the most widely administered personality test in popular circles today, it is
not as extensively used by psychologists and clinicians. To some degree this is because it is designed
specifically to apply Jung’s theories of psychological types—an approach not widely followed by
today’s mental health practitioners. Questions are structured for only yes or no answers, with no
degrees of choice available. This is because Jungian theory and the MBTI assume that people gravitate
toward one pole or the other on personality measures.
In contrast, personality tests such as the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire or the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory gauge personality traits on continuums. Psychologists prefer these
tests over the MBTI because of their ability to measure what they purport to measure in mental health
assessments. And while many of these other tests also include scales to measure something called
“introversion” or “extraversion,” they do not use the terms in the Jungian sense.
With this background in mind as we explore the importance of social relationships, then, it seems that
the most helpful approach would be to avoid labelling ourselves and others with generally
misunderstood and misapplied terms such as these and to focus instead on the universally shared and
well-recognized human need to connect.

21
RECONSIDERING FRIENDSHIP
How important is our need for social bonds? So important that we come into the world with it, just as
we arrive with a need for food and water, clothing and shelter. If any of these requirements is missing,
we fail to thrive.
“Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.” (Czech proverb)
Naturally our first ties are typically with family members, but while these may be among our most
formative they are not the only relationships we will need over the course of our lives. Peer
relationships begin to have an influence on our development fairly early in childhood, and the pro-
social skills we develop during these years affect many measures of health and well-being in
adulthood. Studies across cultural contexts indicate that those who lack strong social networks are
more likely to succumb to (and have difficulty recovering from) mental and physical illness. As we
age, friends tend to outnumber family in these networks, giving them an ever more important role in
keeping us healthy.
But besides the benefits to physical, mental and emotional resilience conferred by a solid network of
supportive social bonds, friendships serve other important functions. In part, we learn about who we
are and who we hope to become through feedback from others. With some of these others, we will
have deep and lasting relationships. With some we’ll have more casual relationships. But the
importance of what we learn about ourselves from their feedback may have very little to do with the
perceived depth of the individual relationship. Even our most casual relationships are capable of
influencing us in surprisingly profound ways, as some researchers have found, and even in the Internet
age it seems that friendships remain very diverse and complex in the lives of most people.
In their effort to understand this complexity, British social researchers Liz Spencer and Ray Pahl
undertook a detailed analysis of the nature of friendship and its role in today’s society. Published in
2006 as Rethinking Friendship: Hidden Solidarities Today, the study mapped the “personal
communities” of men and women across different ages, life-course stages, and socio-economic and
ethnic backgrounds throughout Britain. The researchers looked for any existing patterns while also
observing the rich variety in the way people arrange their social worlds. Interestingly, rather than
bolstering fears that the Internet has weakened social ties and made face-to-face interaction obsolete,
they found that “there has not been a mass retreat from face-to-face sociability, and it seems that the
Internet is mainly used to complement and sustain existing relationships, rather than creating entirely
new personal networks.” In examining through in-depth interviews the kinds of relationships people
include in their personal communities, Spencer and Pahl observed that family and friends are not
necessarily distinct groups in the minds of most. Some friends may be valued as family, while some
family members may enjoy more of a friend-like status than others do. They also exposed a depth of
field in patterns of friend-making that makes it clear why terms such
as extraversion and introversion are woefully inadequate and even misleading when used to describe
human modes of social interaction.
“Without knowing something about the quality of different friendships, it is difficult to draw many
conclusions from the fact that some people include more than twenty friends [in their personal
community maps], others just one or two,” Spencer and Pahl observed. In fact, their study turned up at
least seven prominent forms of overall personal communities, eight types of friendships and four kinds
of friendship repertoires, a term intended to describe the roles people allow friends to play in their
personal community.
For instance, those with a basic friendship repertoire might look only to family members or a partner
for supportive, confiding relationships, or might prefer “to sort things out on their own.” They may
allow friends to play limited, casual roles, but they do not view friends as confidants or
support networks.
People with an intense repertoire define their personal community only by their closest, most complex
relationships. Their personal community map would not include any level of friendship beyond, for
instance, a best friend or soul mate-type friendship such as a partner or other important
family member.
In contrast, those with a focal repertoire would include both simple and complex friendships in their
personal community maps, although they would distinguish between a small core of soul mates or
confidants alongside a larger variety of associates and “fun” friends.
22
Last but by no means least (though they do not intend any of their categorizations to describe the full
limits of the nature of friendship) is what Spencer and Pahl term broad repertoires. Individuals with a
broad friendship repertoire would include both simple and complex friendships, much as those with a
focal repertoire might. However, their maps contain an even wider range of friendship types, including
representatives of almost all of the eight types of friends: associates, useful contacts, favour friends,
fun friends, helpmates, comforters, confidants and soul mates. “Friends play many different roles and
people with this kind of repertoire take their friendships very seriously,” observed Spencer and Pahl.
“They tend to appreciate the particular qualities of different kinds of friendship.”
While social commentators sometimes dismiss the importance of relationships based on sociability
and fun, Spencer and Pahl found that these relationships can be stress relievers, making important
contributions to emotional resilience. As one of their research subjects noted, “Because life is so
serious most of the time, … it is nice to meet people that you can relax with… . Nowadays everybody
works so hard and it’s so fast, that sometimes you just need to get away from it and have a really good
laugh together.”
This sentiment can actually claim empirical support, in the sense that persistently talking about a
problem (rumination) has been linked by researchers to unhappiness and even depression, and while it
can certainly help to share a problem with a friend, mulling over it incessantly has the opposite effect.
In addition to fuelling depression and impairing problem-solving abilities, rumination tends to wear
down the compassion of one’s social network, driving away even the closest of friends. Clearly,
considering this factor alone, it can be useful for a social support network to include some friends with
whom troubles can be shared and others who might serve as distractions.
Indeed, when Spencer and Pahl compared the results of mental-health and well-being measures to the
personal community structures of their subjects, they found some interesting patterns. Poor mental
health scores were clustered among those with very small personal communities as well as those
whose personal communities were fragile, whether due to family instability during childhood or
simply through failure to nurture friendships. Spencer and Pahl attribute this mental health pattern to
the fact that people with broader personal communities have a range of people to rely on for support.
On the other hand, people who have “all their eggs in one basket” are likely to find their entire world
rocked if their sole supportive relationship becomes unavailable.
Spencer and Pahl’s study is not simply one more proof that social relationships are essential to human
health. One of its most important contributions to our understanding of social bonds is the fact that our
connections are so richly diverse and our patterns of forming and maintaining them so individual that
labels such as “introvert” or “extravert,” or claims that the Internet spells the death of social
interaction, completely miss the point. As human beings, our need for social interaction is innate.
Introvert, extravert or ambivert, everybody needs a variety of bonds with other people in order to be
mentally, physically and emotionally healthy.
It would seem, then, that people who need people aren’t just the luckiest people in the world, or even
just the happiest people. They’re the only people. They are all of us.
(Adapted from: https://www.vision.org/visionmedia/social-relationships-introvert-vs-extrovert/50363.aspx)

23
VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES:
Choose the term from the list below that best completes each sentence. Write the correct term in the
space provided.

complementarity social psychology

ego-support value stimulation value
physical proximity utility value social cognition

1. An attraction between opposite types of people might develop due to the principle of
______________.
2. The field of _________________ studies how we perceive, store, and retrieve information about
social interactions.
3. The friends you study with have __________________because they help you to achieve your goal
of getting good grades.
4. The field of __________________studies how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviours
are influenced by our interaction with others.
5. Your friend Margie is always there for you, in good times and bad. You appreciate Margie for her
_________________.
6. The closer the ____________________of two individuals, the more likely they are to become
friends.
7. A friend who is interesting or imaginative and who can introduce you to new ideas or experiences
has ________________________

24
 UNIT 6 - BRAIN AND BEHAVIOUR

Neuropsychology, a relatively new discipline within the field of psychology, is the branch
which is concerned with the study of the structure of the brain and the effect that stimuli may have on
the nervous system and behaviour. Neuropsychology is especially useful in the field of medicine; for
example, a neuropsychologist may analyze people's behaviour when they have taken specific drugs.

LISTENING ACTIVITIES
The lecture you are going to hear focuses on the problem of drug dependency amongst teenagers and
young people. Listen carefully and take notes. Organize your information in a spidergram.

-
- -
DRUG
DEPENDENCY

- -
-
25
WRITING ACTIVITIES

Look at the information you organized in the spidergram as well as at the brief notes above and write a
short text about The risks of using drugs

26
READING COMPREHENSION:

Your Brain on Fiction

Amid the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can
seem faded, even futile. But new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected
quarter: neuroscience. Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed
description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this
research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life. Researchers have long
known that the “classical” language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in
how the brain interprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is
that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of
reading can feel so alive. Words like lavender, cinnamon and soap, for example, elicit a response not
only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.

In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read
words with strong odour associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being
scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the
Spanish words for perfume and coffee, their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words
that mean chair and key, this region remained dark. The way the brain handles metaphors has also
received extensive study; some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are
so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more. Last month, however, a team of
researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their
laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture
through touch, became active. Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery
hands” roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing
voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not. Researchers have discovered that words describing motion
also stimulate regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas. In a study led by the
cognitive scientist Véronique Boulenger, of the Laboratory of Language Dynamics in France, the
brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like “John grasped the object” and “Pablo
kicked the ball.” The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body’s
movements. What’s more, this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex when the
movement described was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg.

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and
encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an
emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist),
has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers
just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative
metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica.
Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable
off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings. The novel, of
course, is an unequalled medium for the exploration of human social and emotional life. And there is
evidence that just as the brain responds to depictions of smells and textures and movements as if they
were the real thing, so it treats the interactions among fictional characters as something like real-life
social encounters.

27
Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, performed an analysis of 86 fMRI
studies, published last year in the Annual Review of Psychology, and concluded that there was
substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to navigate
interactions with other individuals — in particular, interactions in which we’re trying to figure out the
thoughts and feelings of others. Scientists call this capacity of the brain to construct a map of other
people’s intentions “theory of mind.” Narratives offer a unique opportunity to engage this capacity, as
we identify with characters’ longings and frustrations, guess at their hidden motives and track their
encounters with friends and enemies, neighbours and lovers.
It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and
Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and
2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people,
empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. This relationship persisted even after
the researchers accounted for the possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading
novels. A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories
they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching
movies but, curiously, not by watching television. (Dr. Mar has conjectured that because children
often watch TV alone, but go to the movies with their parents, they may experience more “parent-
children conversations about mental states” when it comes to films.) Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, “is a
particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky,
requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations
can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so
novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.”

These findings will affirm the experience of readers who have felt illuminated and instructed by a
novel, who have found themselves comparing a plucky young woman to Elizabeth Bennet or a
tiresome pedant to Edward Casaubon. Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and
improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.

(Annie Murphy Paul is the author, most recently, of “Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?pagewanted=all)

TASK 1:
Which is the function of the text? Circle your option:

a) to criticize b) to inform c) to offer a personal opinion

TASK 2:
Choose the correct answer according to the text. Circle your option.

1. The researchers from Emory University studied

a. Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area
b. several regions of our brain
c.the language processing areas

2. The neurological regions stimulated by reality

a.differ considerably from those activated by reading
b. are slightly different from those activated by reading
c.are identical with those activated by reading

3. Reading literature
a.improves our understanding of social and emotional life
b. increases our motor development
c.decreases our social interaction

28
LANGUAGE FOCUS: THE PASSIVE

FORMING THE PASSIVE

We form the passive using be in an appropriate tense or form + the past participle of a
transitive verb:
A small sum of money was stolen from the cash box.
They ought to have been punished more severely.
Having been beaten in the semi-final, she flew home the
next day.
• In spoken English, we sometimes use get instead of be in the passive:
They got told off for making so much noise.
However, get + -ed is more common with an active
meaning similar to 'become' in phrases like get dressed, get married, etc.

REASONS FOR USING THE PASSIVE

In English, the topic or subject matter is commonly at the beginning of the sentence, and
new information about the subject is normally at the end. In an active sentence, the
'agent' (the person or thing that performs the action) usually comes first and is the subject
of the sentence:

Subject (Agent) Action Result

Olympiakos scored the first goal.
This active sentence is principally about Olympiakos.
•In the passive, the result or thing affected by the action comes first and is the subject of
the sentence:
Subject (Result) Action Agent
The first goal was scored by Olympiakos.
This passive sentence is principally about the goal. We choose between active and passive
because of the topic we are talking about, especially when reporting information. An
English newspaper, assuming its readers are interested in the England football team,
makes the England team the topic. It is likely to report:
England have been beaten by Germany in a penalty shoot-out.
A German newspaper, more interested in their own national team, is likely to report:
Germany has beaten England in a penalty shoot-out.
(Source: Side, R. & Wellman, G. (2001), Grammar and Vocabulary for Cambridge Advanced and Proficiency. Longman

Finish each of the following sentences in such a way that it is as similar as possible to the
sentence before it.

a. The car completely destroyed my motorbike.

My motorbike ...............................................
b. The judge refused him permission to appeal against the decision.
He .................................................................
c. Blur have earned several million pounds from their new album.
Blur's new album .........................................
d. They suggested we try a new method of checking how much we were spending.
We ……………………………..

29
Prepositions after Passives
There are only a few prepositions that can follow the passive verbs. The most common is by.
Other prepositions are with, and in. We use other prepositions when the meaning requires
them. e.g. Emphasis is placed on rote memorization.

Choose the preposition that best completes each sentence. Tick (√) the correct answer.

Model: Five in ten toddlers are not read ………. regularly.

a for b by c to √ d with

1. The argument is centred ………. whether or not to encourage children to learn through experience.
a on b towards c of d about
2. The essay must be divided ………. three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.
a to b for c into d with
3. My attention was drawn ………. the pale little boy in the corner.
a with b to c for d on
4. The reading test was prepared ………. great patience.
a by b with c for d from
5. A storm of criticism has been levelled ………. the board of the school.
a against b towards c by d for

Structures with get and have – passive patterns

The passive pattern means “arrange for somebody else to do something” e.g. I’ll get the book
brought to you, or “things that happen to you” e.g. She’s had her computer stolen.

Fill each blank with a suitable word or phrase.

a. The video machine is behaving strangely but we're __________________ fixed next week.
b. The lights keep flickering: we must ____________________ to look at the wiring for us.
c. Tom is not the easiest person to get on with; that's something you'll have ___________ to.
d. I ________________________________car broken into the other day and the radio stolen.
e. Elderly people can get _____________________ in by con men going from house to house.

Follow the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhcgYgx7aAA&vl=en

and watch Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development.

Listen carefully and write down the main ideas.

Use concepts related to Piaget's theory to write sentences of your own in the Passive
Voice.
Model: Our five senses are developed in the Sensori-Motor Stage.

30
Creative writing.

Instructions: The text should be around 200 words and it can focus on any type of
conflict ( excessive use of gadgets, unemployment, misconduct, etc.)

Write a story about the conflicts that exist in a fictitious family due to
generational identity. The family should be an “extended family” made up of
several generations.

..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................

31
 UNIT 7 - THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE

ACADEMIC SKILLS

The ability to summarise and paraphrase is an essential academic skill all students must develop.
What is a summary? A summary is a condensed version of the main ideas of all or part of a source written in your own
words.
Why do we write summaries? The goal of writing a summary is to offer as accurately as possible the full sense of the
original, but in a more condensed form.
How do we write summaries?

A. You are going to listen to a set of instructions for writing a good summary and then fill in the
blanks with the missing information. You will listen to the recording twice. 

Writing an effective summary requires that you:

Read with the Writer's Purpose in Mind
Read the article……… (1), making ………(2) notes or marks and looking only for what the ………(3) is
saying.
After you've finished………(4), write down in one ………(5) the point that is made about the subject. Then
look for the writer's ………(6) and underline it.

Underline with Summarizing in Mind

Once you clearly ………(7) the writer's major point (or purpose) for writing, read the article again.
Underline the ………(8) supporting the thesis; these should be words or phrases here and there rather than
complete sentences.
In addition, underline ………(9)transitional elements which show how parts are connected. Omit specific
details, examples, description, and ………(10) explanations.

Write, Revise, and Edit to Ensure the Accuracy and Correctness of Your Summary
Writing Your Summary
Now begin writing your summary. ………(11) with a sentence naming the writer and article title and
………(12) the essay's main idea. Then write your summary, omitting nothing important and striving for
overall ………(13) through appropriate transitions.
Be concise, using coordination and subordination to compress ideas.
Conclude with a final ……….(14) reflecting the significance of the article - not from your own point of view
but from the writer's.
Throughout the summary, do not ……(15) your own opinions or thoughts; instead summarise what the writer
has to say about the subject.

Revising Your Summary

After you've completed a draft, read your summary and check for ……….(16).
Keep in mind that a ………(17) should generally be no more than one-fourth the length of the original. If
your summary is too long, cut out words rather than ideas. Then look for non-………(18) information and
delete it.
Write another draft -- still a draft for revision - and ask someone to read it ………(19).

Editing Your Summary

Correct grammar, spelling, and ………(20) errors, looking particularly for those common in your writing.
Write a clean draft and proofread for copying errors.
(Source: Adapted from http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/aca)

32
Vygotsky on Language and Thought

Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) was a Russian psychologist whose

pioneering work focused on child development, and the connections between language development,
social learning and cognition. Vygotsky analyzes the way in which language acquisition shapes a
child’s growing cognitive capabilities

The young child takes the first step toward concept formation when he puts together a number of
objects in unorganised congeries, or ‘heaps’ … consisting of disparate objects, grouped together …
inherently unrelated objects linked by chance in the child’s perception. At that stage, word meaning
denotes nothing more to the child than a vague syncretic conglomeration of individual objects that
have somehow or other coalesced into an image in his mind … Many words have in part the same
meaning to the child and the adult, especially words referring to concrete objects in the child’s
habitual surroundings. The child’s and the adult meanings of a word often ‘meet’, as it were, in the
same concrete object, and this suffices to ensure mutual understanding.

The second major phase on the way to concept formation comprises many variations of what we shall
call thinking in complexes … In a complex, the bonds between its components are concrete and
factual rather than abstract and logical … [S]pontaneous complex formations make up the entire first
chapter of the developmental history of children’s words … [A] child’s use of ‘quah’ to designate first
a duck swimming on the pond, then any liquid, including the milk in his bottle; when he happens to
see a coin with an eagle on it, the coin is also called a ‘quah’, and then any round, coin-like object.
This is typical of a chain complex [one amongst a number of varieties of thinking in complexes]—
each new object included has some attribute in common with another element, but the attributes
undergo endless changes … [A]t the complex stage, word meanings as perceived by the child refer to
the same objects that the adult has in mind, which ensures understanding between child and adult, but
that child thinks the same thing in a different way, by means of different mental operations …
Complex thinking begins the unification of scattered impressions; by organising discrete elements into
groups, it creates the basis for later generalizations.

But the advanced concept presupposes more than unification. To form such a concept it is also
necessary to abstract, to single out elements, and to view the abstracted elements apart from the
totality of the concrete experience in which they are embedded … In the actual development of the
child’s thinking, the above-mentioned functions—generalization and abstraction—are closely
intertwined. The greatest difficulty of all is the application of the concept, finally grasped and
formulated at the abstract level, to new concrete situations that must be viewed in these abstract terms.
As we know from investigations of the process of concept formation, a concept is more than the sum
of certain associative bonds formed by memory, more than a mere mental habit; it is a complex and
genuine act of thought that cannot be taught by drilling but can be accomplished only when the child’s
mental development itself has reached the requisite level … The development of concepts, or word

33
meanings, presupposes the development of many intellectual functions: deliberate attention, logical
memory, abstraction, the ability to compare and to differentiate. These complex psychological
processes cannot be mastered through the initial learning alone.

[It] is precisely during early school age that the higher intellectual functions, whose main features are
reflective awareness and deliberate control, come to the fore in the developmental process …
Attention, previously involuntary, becomes voluntary and increasingly dependent on the child’s own
thinking; mechanical memory changes to logical memory guided by meaning, and can now be
deliberately used by the child. One might say that both attention and memory become ‘logical’ and
voluntary, since control of a function is the counterpart of one’s consciousness of it …

Practical experience … shows that direct teaching of concepts is impossible and fruitless. A teacher
who tries to do this usually accomplishes nothing but empty verbalism, a parrot-like repetition of
words by the child, simulating a knowledge of the corresponding concepts but actually covering up a
vacuum.
(Vygotsky, Lev. 1934 (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.. pp.110–111, 112–113, 127, 126, 135,
136, 142, 149–150, 171, 173, 166–167, 150)
(Retrieved from: http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6/vygotsky-on-language-and-thought)

READING COMPREHENSION

Task 1: Which is the function of the text? Circle your option:

a) to criticize b) to inform c) to offer a personal opinion

Task 2: Write a short summary of each paragraph.

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

Paragraph 4

Paragraph 5

34
 UNIT 8 - SLEEP AND DREAMING

The Process of Sleep in Humans

Up to the 1950's sleep was regarded as a time when a person’s body and mind shut down for the
night. What we now know is that various parts of our brain are in fact very active throughout the time
we spend asleep. Time spent asleep is important with preparing us for the challenges of the next day.
Slowly, we are unravelling these secrets to what exactly goes on. Our brains contain very high
quantities of nerves, better known as neurons, to which signalling chemicals termed neurotransmitters
act to enable us to be asleep or awake. Neurotransmitters like norepinephrin and serotonin, released
from the brain stem between the lower brain and top of the spinal column, act to make certain sections
of our head fully functional whilst we are awake. When we begin to go to sleep there are other neurons
at the base of our brains that become active, switching off the activity of the neurons that keep us
awake. Throughout the day a chemical known as adenosine is believed to accumulate, it has the effect
of making people more and more tired. Once asleep, adenosine is known to be broken down.
When asleep, people typically pass through five sleep stages. These sleep stages make up a
sleep cycle that is completed roughly every 90-110 minutes. Moving through all the stages from 1 to
REM is known to be in one single sleep cycle. Half of our sleep involves stage 2, 20% involves REM,
the other stages taking up the remaining 30% of our sleeping time. As the length of time we have been
asleep each night increases so does our time during each sleep cycle that we remain in REM, the deep
sleep stages of 3 and 4 reducing. To a certain extent whilst in REM our bodies are unable to regulate
their temperatures, unusually hot or cold temperatures can disturb this sleep stage. Losses in REM
time tend to involve the next sleep cycles REM being longer so as to regain what REM time was
previously lost.
Our bodies have a biological 24-hour time clock known as a circadian rhythm, with peaks of
sleepiness occurring every 12 hours i.e. usually at night and around mid-afternoon. Through
neurological and hormonal processes light appears to trigger people to remain awake, although light is
not always required to achieve this result, e.g. with night shift workers inverting their days work and
sleep periods. Increased time spent awake leads to a build-up of time that a person needs sleeping.
Whilst asleep it is believed that important restorative and adaptive bodily functions are in progress.
Long-term memory is reorganized, tissue is renewed or repaired, and the mind is rejuvenated.
Younger people tend to have a greater degree of deep sleep than the older population. 6-8 hours of
sleep per day is all that the average person requires.
(Source: http://www.healthguidance.org/authors/453/Alex-Rider)

35
READING COMPREHENSION

Task 1: Which is the function of the text? Circle your option:

a) to criticize b) to inform c) to offer a personal opinion

Task 2: Choose the correct answer according to the text. Circle your option.
1. Our brains contain
a) considerable numbers of nerves
b) very low amounts of nerves
c) inconsiderable quantities of nerves

2. During REM sleep our bodies

a) can manage their temperatures
b) keep their temperatures stable
c) cannot control their temperatures

3. It is believed that while asleep

a) no functions are developed
b) recuperative bodily functions occur
c) destructive functions of the body are in progress

Task 3: Write a short summary of each paragraph.

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

36
 UNIT 9 - MEMORY

Memory is the term given to the structures and processes involved in the storage and
subsequent retrieval of information.
Memory is essential to all our lives. Without a memory of the past we cannot operate in the present or
think about the future. We would not be able to remember what we did yesterday, what we have done
today or what we plan to do tomorrow. Without memory we could not learn anything.
Memory is involved in processing vast amounts of information. This information takes many different
forms, e.g. images, sounds or meaning.
For psychologists the term memory covers three important aspects of information processing:

1. Memory Encoding
When information comes into our memory system (from sensory input), it needs to be changed into a
form that the system can cope with, so that it can be stored. Think of this as similar to changing your
money into a different currency when you travel from one country to another. For example, a word
which is seen (in a book) may be stored if it is changed (encoded) into a sound or a meaning (i.e.
semantic processing).
There are three main ways in which information can be encoded (changed):
1. Visual (picture)
2. Acoustic (sound)
3. Semantic (meaning)
For example, how do you remember a telephone number you have looked up in the phone book? If
you can see it then you are using visual coding, but if you are repeating it to yourself you are using
acoustic coding (by sound).
Evidence suggests that the principle coding system in short term memory (STM) is acoustic coding.
When a person is presented with a list of numbers and letters, they will try to hold them in STM by
rehearsing them (verbally). Rehearsal is a verbal process regardless of whether the list of items is
presented acoustically (someone reads them out), or visually (on a sheet of paper).
The principle encoding system in long term memory (LTM) appears to be semantic coding (by
meaning). However, information in LTM can also be coded both visually and acoustically.

2. Memory Storage
This concerns the nature of memory stores, i.e. where the information is stored, how long the memory
lasts for (duration), how much can be stored at any time (capacity) and what kind of information is
held. The way we store information affects the way we retrieve it. There has been a significant
amount of research regarding the differences between Short Term Memory (STM ) and Long Term
Memory (LTM).
Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory. Miller (1956) put this idea
forward and he called it the magic number 7. He though that short-term memory capacity was 7 (plus
or minus 2) items because it only had a certain number of “slots” in which items could be stored.
37
 However, Miller didn’t specify the amount of information that can be held in each slot. Indeed, if we
can “chunk” information together we can store a lot more information in our short-term memory. In
contrast the capacity of LTM is thought to be unlimited.
Information can only be stored for a brief duration in STM (0-30 seconds), but LTM can last a
lifetime.

3. Memory Retrieval
This refers to getting information out storage. If we can’t remember something, it may be because we
are unable to retrieve it. When we are asked to retrieve something from memory, the differences
between STM and LTM become very clear.
STM is stored and retrieved sequentially. For example, if a group of participants are given a list of
words to remember, and then asked to recall the fourth word on the list, participants go through the list
in the order they heard it in order to retrieve the information.
LTM is stored and retrieved by association. This is why you can remember what you went upstairs for
if you go back to the room where you first thought about it.
Organizing information can help retrieval. You can organize information in sequences (such as
alphabetically, by size or by time). Imagine a patient being discharged from hospital whose treatment
involved taking various pills at various times, changing their dressing and doing exercises. If the
doctor gives these instructions in the order which they must be carried out throughout the day (i.e. in
sequence of time), this will help the patient remember them.
(Source: Adapted from http://www.simplypsychology.org/memory.html)

VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES

Study the following extended definition of memory and notice the words marked in the text.
Memory, the ability to retain information or to recover information about previous experiences, is a
function of the brain. When we remember something, a process takes place in which our brains
recover and reconstruct information about things we've done or learned. There are two types of
memory: short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM).
Short term is memory of recent knowledge and happenings, while long-term memory helps us recall
events and knowledge from our pasts.
(Source: Adapted from http://www.aarp.org/health/brain/works/what_is_memory.html)

Below is a list of words that collocate with memory ( e.g. short-term memory ). Discover which of the
following definitions can be matched with the words you formed.

1. A hypothesized memory system that 'holds' the input while an interpretation of it is associative
worked out.
2. The presumed neurological events responsible for any relatively permanent memory. declarative MEMORY
3. Material that has supposedly been brought back into conscious memory by the use of
various techniques such as hypnosis and suggestion. drum
4. Memory for the words themselves with their graphological and phonological features, not
their meanings. explicit
5. Memory for the source of a message - who said something rather than what was said.
6. Term used as a label for any memory system that is hypothesized to rest on the notion of false
an association.
7. Conscious memory, memory for material that one is aware of. lexical
8. A piece of laboratory equipment that presents a series of stimuli to a subject for memory
experiments. recovered
9. Conscious memory, memory that one can communicate to others.
10. Memory fore some event that in fact did not happen. source

(Source: Adapted from: Reber, A.S. The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology) trace

working

38
Repressed Memories: Fact or Fiction?
In 1991, television comedian Roseanne alleged that her father had sexually molested her from infancy until she
was three years old. She asserted that the experience had been so horrific that she had somehow pushed the
memories from her conscious mind, and the images only returned 30 years later, when she entered therapy for
other emotional problems. Although Roseanne's was a sensational case because of her celebrity, in recent years
there has been a proliferation of similar cases in which adults purport to have recovered memories, often during
the course of psychotherapy, of traumatic sexual abuse during their childhoods. In the early 1990s, a Chicago
man accused a Roman Catholic cardinal of having abused him years earlier. The accuser reported that the
memories of this abuse had emerged in his psychotherapy. A few months later the accuser recanted his ac-
cusation and shared his realization with the media that the "memories" were false images that had emerged in his
therapy. The question of how to respond to reports of earlier abuse is one that perplexes the public and mental
health professionals alike. Indeed, there are many horrifying instances involving the exploitation, rape, and abuse
of children and other vulnerable individuals. For some of these people, the images of having been abused are so
painful that it is understandable that they push these thoughts from consciousness to the unconscious. When the
thoughts emerge into consciousness, the individual is likely to become alarmed and upset. Perhaps allegations
will be made and the matter will be brought to the attention of others, possibly in the form of legal accusations.
What do children remember from the earliest years of their lives? Freud suggested that children pass through a
period of infantile amnesia, during which they can recall few life events. More recently, researchers have
suggested that memory of early life events is difficult to verify. Yet, adults can sometimes recall fairly dramatic
events, such as hospitalizations and deaths that occurred prior to age two or three. There is even some evidence
that infants may be able to remember aspects of maternal speech and sequences of behaviour long before they
are able to conceptualize their lives in verbal terms. Although evidence has been contradictory, some in-
vestigators question if traumatic memories, such as those involving sexual molestation, might be deeply ingrained
in memory because of their emotional salience. Because of the verbal limitations of young children, such
memories might be retained in a different manner.
Although children may retain some early life events and recall them when they become adults, the accuracy of
these recovered or repressed memories remains in question. Memory researchers have established that
memories are not precise reproductions of past experience, like photographs or videos. Instead, they seem to be
influenced and modified by previous and subsequent events, feelings, thoughts, and interactions with other
people. Are memories of sexual abuse accurate recollections of past injustices, or are they so-called "false
memories" that bear little resemblance to past experience? The arguments are often controversial and highly
politicized. For too many years, reports of sexual abuse, particularly those presented by women, were regarded
as fantasy and were dismissed as symptoms of psychological problems. Such views have changed dramatically,
as society has become aware of the widespread problem of sexual abuse of children and with the development of
treatment models to help clients cope with psychological problems that are caused by such abuse. Many
therapists now accept their clients' reports of sexual abuse as fact, but the vagaries of human memory have led
researchers to question this acceptance and to decry therapists' use of questionable techniques that may
influence the experience and reporting of memories. It is certainly alarming to think that someone might be
erroneously accused, and perhaps prosecuted, for a false allegation of having sexually molested a child. Some
concerned spokespersons have banded together to combat inaccurate allegations of sexual abuse. The False
Memory Syndrome Foundation comprises concerned parents, clients, and researchers. In this group are parents
who believe that they were falsely accused of abuse, clients who contend that they were unduly influenced by
therapists' suggestions that they might have been sexually abused, and a sampling of like-minded researchers
who claim that many of these "memories" are unfounded. They suggest that mental health professionals have
gone from the extreme of doubting to the opposite extreme of the uncritical acceptance of reports of abuse. As
the issue of repressed memories has entered the mainstream media, many clients are wondering if they too
might have repressed memories of abuse. Prudent therapists are faced with a daunting challenge. Some
clinicians advocate the use of active techniques to recover repressed memories that may not yet have emerged
into consciousness. Others argue that memories of abuse should only become relevant when they spontaneously
emerge into consciousness. The reactions of therapists are tremendously influential in determining how these
concerns will be addressed and the extent to which they might escalate into disruptive concerns for the client. Of
primary importance is the need for the therapist to respond to clients who report repressed memories with con-
cern and understanding for the clients' feelings of vulnerability and victimization.
39
VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES

First decide what you think the following words (1-5) might mean with the help of context clues, then
match them with the definitions (a-e).
a. to state very firmly that you do not agree with
1. allege something

2. assert b. to claim to be or do something even if this is not true

3. dismiss c. to say publicly that you no longer have a political or

religious belief that you had before
4. purport
d. to say that something is true or that someone has
5. recant done something wrong although it has not been proven

e. to state firmly that something is true

ingrained vagaries [plural]

1 ingrained attitudes or behaviour are firmly established formal - unexpected changes in a situation or someone's
and therefore difficult to change behaviour, that you cannot control but which have an
ingrained in effect on your life
The idea of doing our duty is deeply ingrained in most vagaries of * the vagaries of the English weather
people.
2 ingrained dirt is under the surface of something and very
difficult to remove
salient decry
formal - the salient points or features of smth. are the most formal - to state publicly that you do not approve of
important or most noticeable parts of it something
the salient points of the report synonym condemn
salience noun [uncountable] Merkel decried the election results.
erroneous unduly
Erroneous ideas or information are wrong and based on formal - more than is normal or reasonable
facts that are not correct. unduly worried/concerned/anxious etc
erroneously adverb She doesn't seem unduly concerned about her exams.
Some parents attribute incorrect or erroneous motives, It didn't trouble me unduly.
desires or ideas to their children.
contend disruptive
1[intransitive] to compete against someone in order to gain causing problems and preventing something from
something continuing in its usual way
contend for disruptive to
Three armed groups are contending for power. Night work can be very disruptive to home life.
2[transitive] to argue or state that something is true Mike's parents thought I was a disruptive influence (a
contend that person who causes disruption).
Some astronomers contend that the universe may be Ways to handle disruptive pupils
younger than previously thought.
contend with something - phrasal verb
to have to deal with something difficult or unpleasant
The rescue team also had bad weather conditions to
contend with .
(Source: Richard P. Halgin and Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Abnormal Psychology: The Human Experience of Psychological Disorders)

40
Unscramble the following vocabulary terms and enter the terms on the lines provided. Then
match each numbered term to the correct lettered definition by placing the number of the
term on the line to the right of the definitions.

1. ERTASOG A - the memory process of transforming information

so that the nervous system can process it ____
_______

2. NOCEDGNI B - the memory process by which information is

________ maintained over a period of time ____

3. ICGNHKUN C - the process of grouping items together so that

________ they are easier to remember ____

4. AEVRTILRE D - the storage and retrieval of information that has

_________ been learned or experienced ____

5. ROMEYM E - the memory process that involves obtaining

______ information that has been previously stored ____

(Source: Adapted from: Glencoe Understanding Psychology. Vocabulary Activities)

Follow the link https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory to watch

Elizabeth Loftus' Ted Talk on How reliable is your memory and then write your own ideas
about false memories.

............................................................................................................................................................

............................................................................................................................................................

............................................................................................................................................................

............................................................................................................................................................

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41
 UNIT 10 - EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

What is Educational Psychology?

Educational psychology involves the study of how people learn, including topics such as student
outcomes, the instructional process, individual differences in learning, gifted learners, and learning
disabilities. Psychologists who work in this field are interested in how people learn and retain new
information.
This branch of psychology involves not just the learning process of early childhood and adolescence
but includes the social, emotional, and cognitive processes that are involved in learning throughout the
entire lifespan.
The field of educational psychology incorporates a number of other disciplines,
including developmental psychology, behavioural psychology, and cognitive psychology.
Topics of Interest Within Educational Psychology
In today's complex educational system, educational psychologists work with educators, administrators,
teachers, and students to learn more about how to help people learn best. This often involves finding
ways to identify students who may need extra help, developing programs aimed at helping students
who are struggling, and even creating new learning methods.
Some of the different topics that educational psychologists are interested in include:
- Educational Technology - looking at how different types of technology can help students learn
- Instructional Design - designing learning materials
- Special Education - helping students who may need specialized instruction
- Curriculum Development - creating curriculums can maximize learning
- Organizational Learning - studying how people learn in organizational settings
- Gifted Learners - helping students who are identified as gifted learners
- Significant Figures in Educational Psychology History
Throughout history, a number of figures have played an important role in the development of
educational psychology. Some of these well-known individuals include:
- John Locke: An English philosopher who suggested the concept of tabula rasa, or the idea that the
mind is essentially a blank slate at birth that knowledge is then developed through experience and
learning.
- William James: An American psychologist who was also known for his series of lectures titled
"Talks to Teachers on Psychology," which focused on how teachers could help students learn.
- Alfred Binet: A French psychologist who developed the first intelligence tests.
- John Dewey: An influential American psychologist and educational reformer who wrote extensively
about progressive education and the importance of learning through doing.
- Jean Piaget: A Swiss psychologist who is best-known for his highly influential theory of cognitive
development.
- B.F. Skinner: An American behaviourist who introduced the concept of operational conditioning. His
research on reinforcement and punishment continue to play an important role in education today.
History of Educational Psychology
Educational psychology is a relatively young subfield that has experienced a tremendous amount of
growth in recent years. Psychology did not emerge as a separate science until the late 1800s, so earlier
interest in educational psychology was largely fuelled by educational philosophers.
Many regard philosopher Johann Herbart as the "father" of educational psychology. Herbart believed
that a student's interest in a topic had a tremendous influence on the learning outcome and believed
that teachers should consider this interest along with prior knowledge when deciding which type of
instruction is most appropriate.
Later, psychologist and philosopher William James made significant contributions to the field. His
seminal 1899 text Talks to Teachers on Psychology is considered the first textbook on educational
psychology. Around this same period, French psychologist Alfred Binet was developing his

42
famous IQ tests. The tests were originally designed to help the French government identify children
who had developmental delays to create special education programs.
In the United States, John Dewey had a significant influence on education. Dewey's ideas were
progressive, and he believed that school should focus on students rather than on subjects. He
advocated active learning and believed that hands-on experience was an important part of the learning
process.
More recently, educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom developed an important taxonomy designed
to categorize, and describe different educational objectives. The three top-level domains he described
were cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning objectives.
Major Perspectives in Educational Psychology
As with other areas of psychology, researchers within educational psychology tend to take on different
perspectives when considering a problem.
The behavioural perspective suggests that all behaviours are learned through conditioning.
Psychologists who take this perspective rely firmly on the principles of operant conditioning to explain
how learning happens. For example, teachers might give out tokens that can be exchanged for
desirable items such as candy and toys to reward good behaviour. While such methods can be useful in
some cases, the behavioural approach has been criticized for failing to account for such things
as attitudes, cognitions, and intrinsic motivations for learning.
The developmental perspective focuses on how children acquire new skills and knowledge as they
develop. Jean Piaget's famous stages of cognitive development are one example of an important
developmental theory looking at how children grow intellectually. By understanding how children
think at different stages of development, educational psychologists can better understand what
children are capable of at each point of their growth. This can help educators create instructional
methods and materials best aimed at certain age groups.
The cognitive perspective has become much more widespread in recent decades, mainly because it
accounts for how things such as memories, beliefs, emotions, and motivations contribute to the
learning process. Cognitive psychology focuses on understanding how people think, learn, remember,
and process information. Educational psychologists who take a cognitive perspective are interested in
understanding how kids become motivated to learn, how they remember the things that they learn, and
how they solve problems, among other things.
The constructivist approach is one of the most recent learning theories that focuses on how children
actively construct their knowledge of the world. Constructivism tends to account more for the social
and cultural influences that impact how children learn. This perspective is heavily influenced by the
work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who proposed ideas such as the zone of proximal
development and instructional scaffolding.
(Source: Adapted from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-educational-psychology)

Pestalozzi, Father of Modern Education

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss social reformer and educator, is known as the Father of Modern
Education. The modern era of education started with him and his spirit and ideas led to the great
educational reforms in Europe in the nineteenth century.
Pestalozzi believed in the ability of every individual human being to learn and in the right of every
individual to education. He believed that it was the duty of society to put this right into practice. His
beliefs led to education becoming democratic; in Europe, education became available for everyone.
Pestalozzi was particularly concerned about the condition of the poor. Some of them did not go to
school. If they did, the school education was often useless for their needs. He wanted to provide them
with an education which would make them independent and able to improve their own lives.
Pestalozzi believed that education should develop the powers of ‘Head’, ‘Heart’ and ‘Hands’. He
believed that this would help create individuals who are capable of knowing what is right and what is
wrong and of acting according to this knowledge. Thus the well being of every individual could be
improved and each individual could become a responsible citizen. He believed that empowering and
ennobling every individual in this way was the only way to improve society and bring peace and
security to the world. His aim was for a complete theory of education that would lead to a practical
way of bringing happiness to humankind.
43
 Pestalozzi saw teaching as a subject worth studying in its own right and he is therefore known as the
father of pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or
theoretical concept). He caused education to become a separate branch of knowledge, alongside
politics and other recognised areas of knowledge.
Pestalozzi’s approach has had massive influence on education, for example, his influence, as well as
his relevance to education today, is clear in the importance now put on:
 The interests and needs of the child
 A child-centred rather than teacher-centred approach to teaching
 Active rather than passive participation in the learning experience
 The freedom of the child based on his or her natural development balanced with the self-discipline to
function well as an individual and in society
 The child having direct experience of the world and the use of natural objects in teaching
 The use of the senses in training pupils in observation and judgement
 Cooperation between the school and the home and between parents and teachers
 The importance of an all-round education – an education of the head, the heart and the hands, but
which is led by the heart
 The use of systemised subjects of instruction, which are also carefully graduated and illustrated
 Learning which is cross-curricular and includes a varied school life
 Education which puts emphasis on how things are taught as well as what is taught
 Authority based on love, not fear
 Teacher training
Pestalozzi’s influence over the spirit, the methods and the theory of education has continued into the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries and most of his principles have been assimilated into the modern
system of education.
(Source: Adapted from www.jhpestalozzi.org/)

LANGUAGE FOCUS
Reported Speech
When we report statements that were made in the past we change the tense of the original (direct)
speech. When we report things that are timeless, such as scientific theories, we can keep the verb in
the Present Simple. There are some verbs which introduce the Reported Speech: said, told, affirmed,
admitted, alleged, etc.

A. Reformulate these sentences. Use the reporting verbs given and make all the necessary
changes.
Model
Pestalozzi’s early experiments ran into difficulties.
It is said that Pestalozzi’s early experiments had run into difficulties.

1. The modern era of education started with Pestalozzi.

The author affirmed ……………………………………………………………………………………

2. He believed in the ability of every individual human being to learn.

It is asserted ……………………………………………………………………………………………...

3. Pestalozzi saw teaching as a subject worth studying in its own right.

It is stated ………………………………………………………………………………………

4. Pestalozzi’s approach has had massive influence on education.

Teachers alleged ……………………………………………………………………………………...

5. Most of Pestalozzi's principles have been assimilated into the modern system of education.
Educators admitted ……………………………………………………………………………………...

44
B. Read the text below and insert the word which best fits each space. Choose from the list
below:
report education assigned attend choice standards range
conducted satisfaction private

Parents of children who _____(1) private schools are more satisfied with their schools than parents of
children in public _____(2) settings, according to a new report from the National Center for Education
Statistics, while parents whose children attend the public school of their _____(3) are more satisfied
than those whose children attend an _____(4) public school.
Released in August, the _____(5) is based on telephone interviews with parents _____(6) in the first
half of 2007 on a wide _____(7) of topics: school satisfaction, parental involvement in schools,
school-parent communication, _____(8) with teachers, discipline and homework levels. While the
specific numbers varied, more _____(9) school parents than public school parents were very satisfied
with teachers, academic _____(10), discipline, and school/parent interaction.
(Source: Adapted from http://www.educationreport.org, Parent satisfaction higher in private schools, September 16, 2008)

WHAT IS SPECIAL EDUCATION?

Special Education programs are designed for those students who are mentally, physically, socially and/or
emotionally delayed. This aspect of “delay,” broadly categorized as a developmental delay, signify an aspect of
the child's overall development (physical, cognitive, scholastic skills) which place them behind their peers. Due to
these special requirements, students’ needs cannot be met within the traditional classroom environment. Special
Education programs and services adapt content, teaching methodology and delivery instruction to meet the
appropriate needs of each child.
(Source: Adapted from https://teach.com/what-is-special-education/)

Autism and Communication

Autism is a complex neurobiological disorder that typically lasts throughout a person's lifetime. It is part of a group
of disorders known as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Today, 1 in 150 individuals are diagnosed with autism,
making it more common than paediatric cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined. It occurs in all racial, ethnic, and
social groups and is four times more likely to strike boys than girls.
Autism was first identified in 1943 by Dr. Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the same time, a German
scientist, Dr. Hans Asperger, described a milder form of the disorder that is now known as Asperger Syndrome.
These two disorders are listed in the DSM IV as two of the five developmental disorders that fall under the autism
spectrum disorders. The others are Rett Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. All of
these disorders are associated with rigid routines and repetitive behaviours, such as obsessively arranging
objects or following very specific routines, but the most important characteristic is that they impair a person's
ability to communicate and relate to others.
The capacity to acquire and use language is a key aspect that distinguishes humans from other organisms.
Language acquisition starts in infancy and it is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive,
produce and use words to understand and communicate.
A child's acquisition of language can be broken down into different segments: phonology, which is a person's use
of speech sounds; syntax - the rules of grammar; semantics, which refers to a person's ability to understand and
create the meaning of language; pragmatics - the ability to use language for the purpose of communication.
Breaking down language into these different segments allows professionals to clarify to what extent and which
aspects of the language and communication of a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is impaired.
Children with an ASD often fail to communicate using speech or any other type of language, for example eye-
contact, hand gestures, body language. If a child does not wish to communicate intentionally, they will not explore
their ability to vocalise, learn new sounds or listen to the language spoken around them. This will ultimately result
in a delay in their language acquisition. Without this means of communication, a child will find it difficult to express
themselves. A child with an ASD may not see any reason to communicate with other people and, consequently,
without a reason there is no point in communicating or no need to communicate. Children with an ASD may also
remove themselves from situations that require communication, limiting their opportunities to communicate.
Without opportunities there cannot be a development in communication.
(Source: Adapted from http://www.autismspeaks.org/, http://www.nas.org.uk The National Autistic Society – Speech and Language Therapy)

45
Specialist Vocabulary
acquire/ communication/ impair/ occur/ repetitive behaviour/ rigid routines/ spectrum/ strike
Acronyms
AIDS ASD DSM PDD-NOS
Antonyms
pair ≠ impair integrate ≠ disintegrate order ≠ disorder
VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES
A prefix is placed at the beginning of a word to modify or change its meaning. dis- shows an opposite
or negative and, in verbs, it shows the stopping or removing of a condition.

A. Add the prefix dis- to the following words. Use a dictionary to find their meaning.
Model:
appear disappear to become impossible to see
any longer

ability approval associate believe compose graceful integrate junction

order
pleased qualify regard reputable satisfaction trust

…………………………………………………………………...............................................

B. Match the following words with the most suitable definition. Model: 0. explore = K

0. explore = K A. to damage something or make it not as good

as it should be
1. capacity B. someone’s ability to do something
C. to happen or exist in a particular place or
2. vocalize situation
3. delay D. the process by which you gain knowledge or
learn a skill
4. strike E. when something does not happen or start
5. spectrum when it should do
6. occur F. to break up, or make something break up,
7. disintegrate into very small pieces
G. to make a sound or sounds with your voice
8. routine H. to damage or harm someone or something
9. impair I. the usual order in which you do things, or the
things you regularly do
10. acquisition J. a complete range of opinions, people,
situations, etc. going from one extreme to its
opposite
K. to discuss or think about something carefully

C. Follow the link http://www.all-acronyms.com/ to find what these acronyms stand for. Choose
the ones that are the most suitable to the text above.

46
Model: ASD = autism spectrum disorders

AIDS = CDD =

DSM = PDD-NOS =

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Reported Speech
Other ways of reporting include using nouns such as: argument, assertion, comment, denial,
explanation, observation, remark, statement, etc.

A. The words in the following sentences have been jumbled. Rearrange them within the first and
last words given, in order to make coherent sentences. All the sentences contain reporting nouns.

Charles Aussilloux, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Montpellier,
and his team studied the patterns of autism in the population of Languedoc, France.
Below, there are reported some of the results of his research.

Model: was a to clearer of provide argument study major the picture

The major argument of the study was to provide a clearer picture of autism.

1. first his of that observations the was evolutions autistic of were persons
One ………………………………………………………………………………….………different.

2. about remark the autistic possibility of to autonomously was people live

His ……………………………………………………………………………………..encouraging.

3. was great of comment the importance on the environmental influence

Of …………………………………………………………………………………………….factors.

4. autism related the was important similarities statement to Asperger’s and between
Another ………………………………………………………………………………..Syndrome.

5. of the emphasized major autistic role normal assertion the in contact development of human
Aussilloux’s………………………………………………………………….………….children.

(Source: Adapted from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s21141.htm)

47
ACADEMIC WRITING

Opinion Paragraph

The opinion paragraph starts with a clear and original view point or attitude about a topic. Never use
expressions such as “In my opinion” or “I think”. You should directly start on with your opinion as it
is a truth. Instead of saying, “In my opinion life is worth living fully.” just write, “Life is worth living
fully.” Convincing as well as persuasive styles should be the most common throughout the whole
paragraph. An opinion without clear and vigorous arguments that support and sustain it is not at all
inspiring for the reader. You should also bear in mind that arguments are not new opinions, but only
an attempt to support the opinion with the most appropriate evidence. Therefore you should be careful
about the way the topic sentence is managed and reinforced through logical, resistant and easy to
assimilate supporting details, namely arguments. Examples are the most helpful tools to clarify and
back up your arguments. They should be positive statements aiming at bringing about the reader’s
involvement and understanding.
The concluding sentence, on the other hand, should not raise a new opinion or present an open
statement. It should be cautiously dealt with in order to echo the whole paragraph or at least to
paraphrase the topic sentence.

Figure 1
Retrieved from:
https://www.google.ro/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjzuPXZ64_fAhWBEVAKHZAlBjAQMwhWKAQ
wBA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fslideplayer.com%2Fslide%2F3849228%2F&psig=AOvVaw33nWUhy8wUomuwvsfoD44t&ust=1544345032
975728&ictx=3&uact=3

48
 Read carefully the following text and decide which of the headings below
correspond to the paragraphs numbered 1 - 6. In front of each paragraph there is a blue
line on which you have to write the correct letter.

A. Institutions communicate with D. Social media has gained credibility

students via YouTube and Facebook over the years as a trusted source of
information and platform where
organisations can interact with
audiences.

B. Learners can build social credibility E. Connecting with experts on topics

via social media

C. Enhanced Learning management F. It helps in Research process

systems

_____

1. We are seeing education institutions adapting these developments into their systems and relying on
group resources and mechanisms to improve the student life. The use of social media in education
provides students with the ability to get more useful information, to connect with learning groups and
other educational systems that make education convenient.
Social network tools afford students and institutions with multiple opportunities to improve learning
methods. Through these networks, you can incorporate social media plug-ins that enable sharing and
interaction. Students can benefit from online tutorials and resources that are shared through social
networks and LMS’s.
There is valuable knowledge to be gained through social media such as analytics and insights on
various topics or issues for study purposes. Social media is also a medium where students can
establish beneficial connections for their careers. As an educational institution, it is crucial to be active
in many social platforms possible, this helps create better student training strategies and shapes student
culture.

_____

2. The great thing about using social media is that you soon learn who the experts are in particular
fields and subjects. When you start following these experts you learn more and gain useful content
from them, this empowers you to produce great results.
Social media has the ability to broaden your perspective on various subjects and gives illuminating,
instant content that is new. You have the opportunity of engaging experts to get answers on topics that
you may need help in.

_____

3. Learning colleges have the ability to connect with students through social media networks such as
Facebook, Google Plus groups, and YouTube. These channels can be used to communicate campus
news, make announcements and provide students with useful information. This builds engagement
49
between the College and students which help tackle many student issues through the group
interactions.
Institutions can share supportive and positive posts that reach all students that are connected to the
networks and pages. You can initiate hash tags on social media to engage students and online
discussions that are helpful. Video is a prominent tool in social media trends that are effective and you
can use it to share useful videos that inspire students and help them in their course subjects. Through
social mediums such as YouTube, Facebook or Instagram live video the engagements between
students and the institution can be sustained. It is advisable to be selective about which social
platforms to use for the best practice.

_____

4. Social media offers audience and subject monitoring tools that are useful and it is one of the best
platforms to extract data. You can find out how the majority people feel about a particular topic or
how experts perceive and advice on specific issues.
This can help students compile and produce useful content for research. Whether students are working
on an assignment, working on a project or trying to gain more insight on a subject, some of the best
information and results can be extracted from social media.

_____

5. Learning management systems is a networking software that delivers educational programs and
gives institutions other administrative activities. Social media learning in LMS can include instant chat
functions, video, forums to share info and other lesson resources to help students.
Most LMS’s come with built in social media integration and this drives instant interaction between the
users and the system. The system strengthens student participation and makes team projects easy to
collaborate.
The system exists to tackle student and learning related issues to improve education schemes. It is
beneficial for institutions to use popular Learning management systems with social media
integration to have the best reach and effect through the system. Other social learning benefits are live
conferencing systems, webinar capability, share group reviews, blogs and much more.

_____

6. Building a brand through the social networks can help students build a portfolio for their career. The
platforms can be used to start sharing work while a student is still in the learning space. This is
beneficial to the launch of a student’s career it demonstrates the learning process has developed
through their social media.
By reflecting on educational background and gaining exposure on social media builds social
credibility and students come across as people who can offer their expertise in specified fields. This
prepares and positions your career to have social credibility.
As social networks interactions advance in education systems, social media will become the number
one means for solving education problems. The important benefit that networks build is the many
helpful and beneficial tools and access that make learning become a pleasant process. A digital
marketing qualification can inspire learners to know about the role of social media in education. This
can lead to various social media and marketing job paths.
(Source: Retrieved from https://www.lcibs.co.uk/the-role-of-social-media-in-education/)

50
 UNIT 11 - MOTIVATION

Ever wonder why some people seem to be very successful, highly motivated individuals?
Where does the energy, the drive, or the direction come from? Motivation is an area of psychology
that has gotten a great deal of attention, especially in the recent years. The reason is because we all
want to be successful, we all want direction and drive, and we all want to be seen as motivated.

What is Motivation?
Motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors.
Motivation is what causes you to act, whether it is getting a glass of water to reduce thirst or reading a
book to gain knowledge.

A Closer Look at Motivation

Motivation involves the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate behavior. In
everyday usage, the term motivation is frequently used to describe why a person does something. For
example, you might say that a student is so motivated to get into a clinical psychology program that
she spends every night studying.
"The term motivation refers to factors that activate, direct, and sustain goal-directed behavior...
Motives are the 'whys' of behavior—the needs or wants that drive behavior and explain what we do.
We don't actually observe a motive; rather, we infer that one exists based on the behavior we
observe."(Nevid, 2013)
What exactly lies behind the motivations for why we act? Psychologists have proposed
different theories of motivation, including drive theory, instinct theory, and humanistic theory. The
reality is that there are many different forces that guide and direct our motivations.

Components of Motivation
Anyone who has ever had a goal (like wanting to lose 20 pounds or run a marathon) probably
immediately realizes that simply having the desire to accomplish something is not enough. Achieving
such a goal requires the ability to persist through obstacles and endurance to keep going in spite of
difficulties.
There are three major components to motivation: activation, persistence, and intensity.
Activation involves the decision to initiate a behavior, such as enrolling in a psychology class.
Persistence is the continued effort toward a goal even though obstacles may exist. An example of
persistence would be taking more psychology courses in order to earn a degree although it requires a
significant investment of time, energy, and resources.
Intensity can be seen in the concentration and vigor that goes into pursuing a goal. For example, one
student might coast by without much effort, while another student will study regularly, participate in
discussions, and take advantage of research opportunities outside of class. The first student lacks
intensity, while the second pursues his educational goals with greater intensity.

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation

Different types of motivation are frequently described as being either extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic
motivations are those that arise from outside of the individual and often involve rewards such as
trophies, money, social recognition, or praise. Intrinsic motivations are those that arise from within the
individual, such as doing a complicated crossword puzzle purely for the personal gratification of
solving a problem.
Understanding motivation is important in many areas of life, from parenting to the workplace. You
may want to set the best goals and establish the right reward systems to motivate others as well as

51
to increase your own motivation. Knowledge of motivating factors and manipulating them is used in
marketing and other aspects of industrial psychology. It's an area where there are many myths and
everyone can benefit from knowing what works and what doesn't.
Theories of Motivation
Researchers have developed a number of theories to explain motivation. Each individual theory tends
to be rather limited in scope. However, by looking at the key ideas behind each theory, you can gain a
better understanding of motivation as a whole.
Motivation is the force that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is what causes
us to take action, whether to grab a snack to reduce hunger or enroll in college to earn a degree. The
forces that lie beneath motivation can be biological, social, emotional, or cognitive in nature. Let's take
a look at each one.

Instinct Theory of Motivation

According to instinct theories, people are motivated to behave in certain ways because they are
evolutionarily programmed to do so. An example of this in the animal world is seasonal migration.
These animals do not learn to do this, it is instead an inborn pattern of behavior. Instincts motivation
some species to migrate at certain times each year.
William James created a list of human instincts that included such things as attachment, play, shame,
anger, fear, shyness, modesty, and love. The main problem with this theory is that it did not really
explain behavior, it just described it.
By the 1920s, instinct theories were pushed aside in favor of other motivational theories, but
contemporary evolutionary psychologists still study the influence of genetics and heredity on human
behavior.

Incentive Theory of Motivation

The incentive theory suggests that people are motivated to do things because of external rewards. For
example, you might be motivated to go to work each day for the monetary reward of being paid.
Behavioral learning concepts such as association and reinforcement play an important role in this
theory of motivation.
This theory shares some similarities with the behaviorist concept of operant conditioning. In operant
conditioning, behaviors are learned by forming associations with outcomes. Reinforcement
strengthens a behavior while punishment weakens it.
While incentive theory is similar, it instead proposes that people intentionally pursue certain courses
of action in order to gain rewards. The greater the perceived rewards, the more strongly people are
motivated to pursue those reinforcements.

Drive Theory of Motivation

According to the drive theory of motivation, people are motivated to take certain actions in order to
reduce the internal tension that is caused by unmet needs. For example, you might be motivated to
drink a glass of water in order to reduce the internal state of thirst.
This theory is useful in explaining behaviors that have a strong biological component, such as hunger
or thirst. The problem with the drive theory of motivation is that these behaviors are not always
motivated purely by physiological needs. For example, people often eat even when they are not really
hungry.

Arousal Theory of Motivation

The arousal theory of motivation suggests that people take certain actions to either decrease or
increase levels of arousal.
When arousal levels get too low, for example, a person might watch an exciting movie or go for a jog.
When arousal levels get too high, on the other hand, a person would probably look for ways to relax
such as meditating or reading a book.
According to this theory, we are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal, although this level
can vary based on the individual or the situation.

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Humanistic Theory of Motivation
Humanistic theories of motivation are based on the idea that people also have strong cognitive reasons
to perform various actions. This is famously illustrated in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs,
which presents different motivations at different levels.
First, people are motivated to fulfill basic biological needs for food and shelter, as well as those of
safety, love, and esteem. Once the lower level needs have been met, the primary motivator becomes
the need for self-actualization, or the desire to fulfill one's individual potential.

Expectancy Theory of Motivation

The expectancy theory of motivation suggests that when we are thinking about the future, we
formulate different expectations about what we think will happen. When we predict that there will
most likely be a positive outcome, we believe that we are able to make that possible future a reality.
This leads people to feel more motivated to pursue those likely outcomes.
The theory proposes that motivations consist of three key elements: valence, instrumentality, and
expectancy. Valence refers to the value people place on the potential outcome. Things that seem
unlikely to produce personal benefit have a low valence, while those that offer immediate personal
rewards have a higher valence.
Instrumentality refers to whether people believe that they have a role to play in the predicted outcome.
If the event seems random or outside of the individual's control, people will feel less motivated to
pursue that course of action. If the individual plays a major role in the success of the endeavor,
however, people will feel more instrumental in the process.
Expectancy is the belief that one has the capabilities to produce the outcome. If people feel like they
lack the skills or knowledge to achieve the desired outcome, they will be less motivated to try. People
who feel capable, on the other hand, will be more likely to try to reach that goal.
While no single theory can adequately explain all human motivation, looking at the individual theories
can offer a greater understanding of the forces that cause us to take action. In reality, there are likely
many different forces that interact to motivate behavior.
(Source: Adapted from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-motivation and http://allpsych.com/psychology101/motivation/)

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 UNIT 12 - EMOTIONS

Emotions and Types of Emotional Responses

Emotions seem to rule our daily lives. We make decisions based on whether we are happy, angry, sad,
bored, or frustrated. We choose activities and hobbies based on the emotions they incite.

What Exactly Is an Emotion?

According to the book, "Discovering Psychology," "An emotion is a complex psychological state that
involves three distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral
or expressive response."
In addition to understanding exactly what emotions are, researchers have also tried to identify and
classify the different types of emotions. In 1972, psychologist Paul Eckman suggested that there
are six basic emotions that are universal throughout human cultures: fear, disgust, anger, surprise,
happiness, and sadness. In 1999, he expanded this list to include a number of other basic emotions,
including embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement.
During the 1980s, Robert Plutchik introduced another emotion classification system known as the
"wheel of emotions." This model demonstrated how different emotions can be combined or mixed
together, much the way an artist mixes primary colors to create other colors. Plutchik suggested that
there are 8 primary emotional dimensions: happiness vs. sadness, anger vs. fear, trust vs. disgust, and
surprise vs. anticipation. These emotions can then be combined in a variety of ways. For example,
happiness and anticipation might combine to create excitement.
In order to better understand what emotions are, let's focus on their three key elements.

1. The Subjective Experience

While experts believe that there are a number of basic universal emotions that are experienced by
people all over the world regardless of background or culture, researchers also believe that
experiencing emotion can be highly subjective. While we might have broad labels for certain emotions
such as "angry," "sad," or "happy," your own unique experience of these emotions is probably much
more multi-dimensional. Consider anger. Is all anger the same? Your own experience might range
from mild annoyance to blinding rage.
Plus, we don't always experience pure forms of each emotion. Mixed emotions over different events or
situations in our lives are common. When faced with starting a new job, you might feel both excited
and nervous. Getting married or having a child might be marked by a wide variety of emotions ranging
from joy to anxiety. These emotions might occur simultaneously, or you might feel them one after
another.

2. The Physiological Response

If you've ever felt your stomach lurch from anxiety or your heart palpate with fear, then you realize
that emotions also cause strong physiological reactions. (Or, as in the Cannon-Bard theory of
emotion, we feel emotions and experience physiological reactions simultaneously.) Many of the
physical reactions you experience during an emotion, such as sweating palms, racing heartbeat, or
rapid breathing are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, a branch of the autonomic nervous
system. The autonomic nervous system controls involuntary body responses, such as blood flow and
digestion. The sympathetic nervous system is charged with controlling the body's fight-or-flight
reactions. When facing a threat, these responses automatically prepare your body to flee from danger
or face the threat head-on.
While early studies of the physiology of emotion tended to focus on these autonomic responses, more
recent research has targeted the brain's role in emotions. Brain scans have shown that the amygdala,
part of the limbic system, plays an important role in emotion and fear in particular. The amygdala
itself is a tiny, almond-shaped structure that has been linked to motivational states such as hunger and
thirst as well as memory and emotion. Researchers have used brain imaging to show that when people
are shown threatening images, the amygdala becomes activated. Damage to the amygdala has also
been shown to impair the fear response.
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3. The Behavioral Response
The final component is perhaps one that you are most familiar with—the actual expression of emotion.
We spend a significant amount of time interpreting the emotional expressions of the people around us.
Our ability to accurately understand these expressions is tied to what psychologists call emotional
intelligence, and these expressions play a major part in our overall body language. Researchers believe
that many expressions are universal, such as a smile indicating happiness or pleasure or a frown
indicating sadness or displeasure. Cultural rules also play an important role in how we express and
interpret emotions. In Japan, for example, people tend to mask displays of fear or disgust when the
authority figure is present.

Emotions vs. Moods

In everyday language, people often use the terms "emotions" and "moods" interchangeably, but
psychologists actually make distinctions between the two. How do they differ? An emotion is
normally quite short-lived, but intense. Emotions are also likely to have a definite and identifiable
cause. For example, after disagreeing with a friend over politics, you might feel angry for a short
period of time. A mood, on the other hand, is usually much milder than an emotion, but longer-lasting.
In many cases, it can be difficult to identify the specific cause of a mood. For example, you might find
yourself feeling gloomy for several days without any clear, identifiable reason.
(Source: Adapted from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-emotions)

There are five theories which attempt to understand why we experience emotion.

James-Lange Theory
The James-Lange theory of emotion argues that an event causes physiological arousal first and then
we interpret this arousal. Only after our interpretation of the arousal can we experience emotion. If
the arousal is not noticed or is not given any thought, then we will not experience any emotion based
on this event.
EXAMPLE: You are walking down a dark alley late at night. You hear footsteps behind you and you begin to
tremble, your heart beats faster, and your breathing deepens. You notice these physiological changes and
interpret them as your body’s preparation for a fearful situation. You then experience fear.

EVENT → AROUSAL → INTERPRETATION → EMOTION

Cannon-Bard Theory
The Cannon-Bard theory argues that we experience physiological arousal and emotional at the same
time, but gives no attention to the role of thoughts or outward behavior.
EXAMPLE: You are walking down a dark alley late at night. You hear footsteps behind you and you begin to
tremble, your heart beats faster, and your breathing deepens. At the same time as these physiological changes
occur you also experience the emotion of fear.

EVENT → AROUSAL
→ EMOTION

Schachter-Singer Theory
According to this theory, an event causes physiological arousal first. You must then identify a reason
for this arousal and then you are able to experience and label the emotion.
EXAMPLE: You are walking down a dark alley late at night. You hear footsteps behind you and you begin to
tremble, your heart beats faster, and your breathing deepens. Upon noticing this arousal you realize that is
comes from the fact that you are walking down a dark alley by yourself. This behavior is dangerous and
therefore you feel the emotion of fear.
EVENT → AROUSAL → REASONING→ EMOTION

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Lazarus Theory
Lazarus Theory states that a thought must come before any emotion or physiological arousal. In other
words, you must first think about your situation before you can experience an emotion.
EXAMPLE: You are walking down a dark alley late at night. You hear footsteps behind you and you think it
may be a mugger so you begin to tremble, your heart beats faster, and your breathing deepens and at the same
time experience fear.

EVENT → THOUGHT → AROUSAL

→ EMOTION

Facial Feedback Theory

According to the facial feedback theory, emotion is the experience of changes in our facial muscles.
In other words, when we smile, we then experience pleasure, or happiness. When we frown, we then
experience sadness. it is the changes in our facial muscles that cue our brains and provide the basis of
our emotions. Just as there are an unlimited number of muscle configurations in our face, so to are
there a seemingly unlimited number of emotions.

EXAMPLE: You are walking down a dark alley late at night. You hear footsteps behind you and your eyes
widen, your teeth clench and your brain interprets these facial changes as the expression of fear. Therefore you
experience the emotion of fear.

EVENT → FACIAL CHANGES → EMOTIONS

(Source: Adapted from http://allpsych.com/psychology101/emotion/)

Follow the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNY0AAUtH3g and listen

carefully to Emotions and the brain, then answer the following questions:

1. Which are the feelings that come first to our mind when we hear the word "emotion".
…………………………………………………………………………………………………...
2. Which is the role of chemical messages?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………...
3. What is the name of the response in case of threat?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………...
4. Which are the hormones that make us feel good?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………...
5. What can help us understand and regulate behavior?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………...

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 VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES

When reporting emotions or impressions we may use certain adjectives.

Write some sentences describing emotions after you match the adjectives (A-F) with the
faces (1-6) Model: 6 – F

A. concerned; worried; alarmed; afraid;

uneasy

B. angry; infuriated; outraged; annoyed;

1 2 irritated

C. bored; uninterested; fed up; jaded

D. content; blissful; cheerful; joyful; delighted

3 4
E. depressed; miserable; unhappy;
disheartened

5 6 F. surprised; astonished; amazed; taken aback

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Opinion paragraph.

Instructions: Read again the guidelines given at page 50 in your Study Pack and

Write an opinion paragraph on the role of motivation in education

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