Hi, this is K Fakowski and in this video we are going to review the entire AP psych curriculum in preparation for the AP psych exam. This is not meant to be exhausted but rather to highlight key terms and individuals that you will likely see on the exam. So let's get into it. So in unit one is all about understanding the parts of the brain. So for example the cerebral cortex which is very much responsible for higher order functions of the brain. There are of course four loes, the frontal lobe, the parietal, the temporal and the occipital loes that are each specializing in processing this information. Now we also have the lyic system very important in terms of processing emotions. Uh that's where you get your memories and motivation. We also have the very critical role of the brain stem which is going to connect the brain with the spinal cord. We also have the basil ganglia and that's important for things like motor control, learning, even decision making. We have the phalamus uh which of course is the relay station if you want to think of it that way of sensory and motor information and it is going to process all of this before it does hit the cerebral cortex. So again a lot of important parts within the brain and then of course you have the hypothalamus which regulates many of the body's major functions. It's all about homeostasis and that critical idea of balance. Now let's talk about neurons which are specialized cells for electrical signaling and they are comprised of the dendrites which are going to receive the signals. We then have the soma which is going to contain the body and the axon that carries these signals away. They are insulated by this very fatty insulation known as myelin which is going to speed up the signal transmission. Now also important in this are neurotransmitters. These are signals that are released at the syninnapse that will bind with other receptors and again keep in mind the very important role of action potential which is this electrical impulse that's going to travel down a neuron and it is in a resting state. it's ready to fire and if that signal it becomes strong enough it will ultimately trigger that neuron to fire which will ultimately cause a spike that travels down that axon we just talked about similar to a domino effect it is like an all or nothing response so keep that in mind and of course the syninnapse is where the neurons are going to meet and keep in mind some of our very important transmitters here dopamine uh dealing with the pleasure reward motor control uh when we talk about serotonin we're talking about things of affecting mood sleep appetite emotions and keep in mind you really want to have a balance because you can have some deleterious side effects if you have too little or too much. Now it's also important to note uh of norinephrine uh which is going to help with control uh alertness arousal. We also have GABA uh in terms of this is the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter. It calms you down, helps with anxiety control. Um so to sort of remember these four, I think of don't stress, no gloom to think of the D and S and N and G here. So that might help you. All right, let's get into the nervous system as well. We have the central nervous system and we have the peripheral nervous system. And when we talk about the central nervous system, we're just talking really about the brain in the spinal cord. Whereas the peripheral, we're talking about nerves outside the central nervous system. So we have the sematic, which is going to be dealing with the voluntary movements, and then the autonomic, which is dealing with the involuntary movements. Though within this you also have the sympathetic which is going to be your natural response with fight or flight and then the parasympathetic all about maintaining homeostasis and that very critical role of balance. Now in terms of hormones think of these as the chemical messengers that are released by the endocrine system very influential on our behavior and psychological physiological processes. Um so when they do travel throughout the blood they hit target cells and keep in mind the critical role here again of the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland in this process. I would be very familiar with a lot of these uh different hormones. Just to mention a couple of these things cortisol with stress with testosterone, aggression, um estrogen of course being the female sex hormone. Uh melatonin in terms of regulating the sleep wake cycle. Uh and when you do have imbalances of these, you can have depression, anxiety, and a lot of other issues. All right, let's get into unit two. So when we're talking about mental processes from invol in terms of cognition, we're talking about involved from knowing, thinking, remembering to even communicating. So when information is going to be processed, we are going to encode, we're going to store, and we're going to try to retrieve this. And it really helps us make sense of the world. But again, a lot of this is going to be impacted by your attention, your prior knowledge on this sus uh on this subject, uh, and even the meaningfulness that you attribute to the information. So when we refer to the working memory model, keep in mind these four important uh components here in terms of the central executive in terms of our attention control, the funological loop in terms of the verbal information and the visiatial sketch pad in dealing with visual and spatial information and the episodic buffer when it's going to integrate various uh sources of information into our brain. So there's a lot going on in our brain. So some of our leading uh researchers that you should be somewhat familiar with is PJ with respect to the cognitive uh development theory with respect to children. Um and we'll get into that a little bit later in this slideshow. Uh Voyatsky dealing with social interaction and the role of culture for cognitive development uh with respect to the zone of proximal development. This is really referring to the difference between what a child can do independently and what they will ultimately need from guidance from more skilled individual. So think about scaffolding for example and then we have Chsky who will reappear various times in this presentation and that's about the idea of an innate language acquisition the device that he what's called an L that proposes that babies are basically set up to learn a language also with this idea of chunking can help with uh memory retrieval of information and of course Gardner with respect to multiple intelligences from linguistic logical mathematical spatial etc in terms of how we understand uh information and our various intellig igences. Now in terms of language, this is of course communication system using symbols, rules um as we are going to utilize our mental processes. Now in particular, the superior warf hypothesis is a theory that language influences thought and perception. It is really emphasizing that it does not determine thought. Now going back to Chsky once again he's going to maintain that there is a universal grammar uh basically built into uh children and we have this language acquisition device that is sort of innate. So that is very critical to understand here in terms of chsky. Now in terms of intelligence this of course allows humans to learn and apply knowledge. Uh in particular one of the leading researchers Spearman suggests that a single factor is the foundation of all cognitive abilities. Gardner's theory as we just talked about with multiple intelligences. You can even uh draw upon Sternberg's triarchic theory of focusing on the analytical, the creative and practical. These are three components he uh posits that makes up intelligence. And you can even point to different types of thinking. So for example, divergent thinking, the ability to generate multiple unique solutions to a problem uh very much associated with creativity con uh in contrast to convergent thinking or the ability to basically focus on that single best solution to a problem um as well. All right, so keep that in mind. All right, let's get into unit three, stages of development. So generally speaking, we have the prenatal uh stage here, conception to birth um and then you have infancy to toddlerhood, which will go from birth to age two. uh in which you're refining your basic motor skills. Early childhood 2 to six, this is where you're going to begin to see language and things like we're talking about with Chsky, social skills, self-regulation. Uh middle childhood 6 to 11, beginning logical thinking. You have the role of socialization comparison and more independence. And we're going to of course see that independence increase more in adolescence uh as puberty will begin to uh take its uh hold along with more abstract thinking. Now, once you get into early adulthood, notice how the span begins to increase. 18 to 40, you're focusing more on career development, intimate relationships, even parenthood, uh, and then middle adulthood, you're talking about professional, uh, personal growth, and then late adulthood, really talking more about retirement, life reflection, um, and anything adapting to the physical and cognitive changes uh, within that age bracket. Now going back to Vagotssky his role of the zone of proximal development again really focusing on the use of scaffolding and support social interaction another researcher in this field uh dealing with PI with cognitive development so the sensory motor stage birth to H2 so you're talking about things like object permanence basic solving skills and then between 2 and 7 the pre-operational that's where you're going to see uh the emergence of egoentrism animism symbolic thinking concrete operational stage 7 to 11 logical thinking and conservation and then by the time you hit 11 in these fourth stage you're really focusing on abstract thinking also even incorporating different viewpoints as well. Now when we talk about social and emotional development you're going to draw upon Bura's uh doll experiment again emphasizing the critical role of observation. We also have the attachment theory really focusing specifically on trust comfort and exploratory behavior in the caregivers's presence. We also have Ericson's psychosocial stages. These are eight different stages each with a psychosocial crisis that has to be resolved. For example, trust versus mistrust. And then of course we have Coberg's with uh his moral development and again the that role of moral reasoning is going to progress. So with this you're going to see morality focus on self-interest and avoiding punishment. Um in the early uh preconventional stage of 2 to9 conventional morality is really going to be based more on social norms and laws. And then postconventional morality is basically going to be guided by abstract and universal ethical principles here. Now once again hitting on language development. Uh and when we look at processing uh language you have phenology when we're talking about sounds, morphology, the word structure, syntax, the grammar, uh semantics, meaning and then of course pragmatics dealing with language use in different social contexts. to really have a key focus here. At 6 months for children, right, or infants, they are babbling early vocalizations before this language is going to happen. By about a year, you'll have your first words appear and then followed by two-word phrases. Again, I will reiterate Chsky and the language acquisition device here during this critical time period when language is developed within children. Also, bilingualism is easiest at the youngest ages. Again, Chsky would argue during that critical period and in by being bilingual uh does not inhibit language development as suggested by earlier studies. All right. Also dealing with learning, we have classical conditions. Of course, you're going to think about Pavlov uh learning association with a neutral stimulus with a reflexive response. So again you're starting with the neutral stimulus that becomes conditioned or CS stimulus uh and then the unconditioned stimulus the UCS will become the conditioned response and uh again extinction will happen when you have the weakening and the disappearance of the conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeated uh and presented without the unconditioned stimulus. We also have operant conditioning uh with respect to Skinner. And of course, you're going to draw upon these various forms of reinforcement and punishment. Be familiar with those. All right, moving into unit four. We're talking about social psychology and behavior, focusing on thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and how these are impacted by the actual imagine or even implied presence of others. Social cognition, uh social influence, social behavior, be uh be familiar with those terms. Social identity theory, how we group ourselves in and outside of groups, again ultimately impacting our self-esteem. Attribution theory, how we explain the causes of behavior. Also, cognitive dissonance theory that when we feel psychological discomfort, how we are going to handle and deal with those conflicting thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. We also have fundamental attribution error where we overestimate dispositional factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining another person's behavior. So, for example, if you were late to a meeting, you might attribute it to traffic, let's say, or an unfamiliar, you know, or unforeseen circumstance. But if your coworker arrives late, you might say that they're lazy or disrespectful, for example. So, again, you see a little bit of a disconnect in that regard. Now, when we talk about social cognition, we're thinking about uh how we understand and think about the world and we form schemas. This is basically how the mind is going to organize and interpret information that impacts our perception. This will lead to stereotypes as you see here. And it's also important to note that our mind also creates these mental shortcuts that simplify decision making. So the heruristics for example and there are two types of here availability and representiveness. So be familiar with that. We also have the primacy effect here. When recalling information basically information that's presented first you're more likely to remember. When we get into the group dynamics, interactions between members of a group, we have things like social facilitation, social loafing that might be familiar on a group project. group think uh where there's this desire for consensus but this overrides critical thinking. So think about the Bay of Pigs disaster. Uh we also have conformity and even obedience. Think for example the Mgram uh experiments as a good example there. Now in terms of personality uh your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors, think about the big five here of the trait theories. I like to remember them with this acronym of ocean. We also have psychonamic theories. Think Freud, the role of the unconscious. also the humanistic uh thought here with respect to Maslo's hierarchy of needs that your basic needs need to be met before reaching self-actualization. We also have the social cognitive again interaction of personal factors, behavior in the environment. Think again. You can also focus on genetics. Also think about various ways to measure personality as I have here as well. Now dealing with mental health here you have a few examples here. So you have um the general adaptation syndrome with alarm, resistance, exhaustion, ways to respond, the alisotic load here, the negative result of ineffective coping uh for example substance abuse. You have acute versus chronic stress which can make this better or worse. Also you have various ways of problem based versus emotional based versus maladaptive coping as well. But you can also deal with this u with mindfulness and yoga. Um so that has also been a recent trend as well. Now with respect to mental health disorders, we have a variety here. So these are major ones that I would be familiar with here. I won't read them off, but if you want to pause as well, again, key emphasis on schizophrenia, uh depressive disorders, bipolar, those are ones that typically uh peak up on the exam. Now with psychotherapy, you were talking this out. Cognitive based therapy, you're trying to identify those thoughts and behaviors that can that contribute to these adverse mental health conditions. Whereas intrapersonal, you're focusing on interpersonal relationships impacting your health. So you can treat this through medication, lifestyle changes, also community- based interventions are also just as important. So, I hope this helped you and good luck on your exam.