Task 1. Complete the sentences
1. Psychology is…
2. Psychologists observe …and use…
3. The term "psychology" occurs…
4. Psychology is a science about….
5. Formation of psyche of the person is connected…
6. General psychology studies…
7. Pedagogical psychology is….
8. Psychology of work investigates..
9. Legal psychology…
10. Legal psychology investigates…
Task 2. Match the words and their definitions
| 1.behavior | 1. in psychology, the use of semantic methods to observe, describe, predict, and explain behavior |
| 2 .mental processes | 2. The scientific study of behavior and mental processes |
| 3.psychology | 3. The process of becoming aware of objects and events by way of sensory organs |
| 4. science | 4. the thoughts, feelings, and motives that each of us experiences privately but that cannot be observed directly |
| 5.perception | 5. everything we do that can be directly observed |
Task 3. Read the text carefully and decide if the following statements are true or false
1. Psychology is any observable activity.
2. They look for patterns, that will help them understand and predict behavior, and they use scientific methods to test their ideas.
3. Most psychologists have a degree in psychology and may or may not specialize in the treatment of mental disordersю
4. Psychiatrists, on the other hand, usually have a medical degree and devote themselves to treating mental disorders.
5. Behaviour is the study of mental processes and behaviorю
6. Cognition is any mental processю
7. Social psychology investigates the psychological phenomena and the processes caused by a belonging of the person to concrete social groups.
8. Age psychology studies an originality of psyche of people of different age, process of formation of their personality and intellectual development, age features of processes of perception, thinking, memory, interests, motives of activity.
9. Psychology of work investigates psychological features of labor activity with the purpose of rationalization of work processes and improvement of industrial training.
10. Legal psychology investigates psychology of offenders and criminals, and also the questions connected to judiciary practice.
Task 4. Answer the following questions
1. What basic functions do psychologists study?
2. Which relations does psychology have with other sciences?
3. What basic words are there in the definition of psychology?What do they mean?
4. Which approaches in modern psychology do you know?
5. What job opportunities do the psychology students have?
Unit 2. DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Vocabulary notes:
| lifespan | тривалість життя |
| motor skills | моторика |
| identity | особистість |
| accumulation of knowledge | накопичення знань |
| to figure things out | осягати, розуміти речі |
| shifts | зміни, перехід |
| natural setting | природнє середовище |
| longitudinal research | лонгітюдний (продовжений) метод дослідження |
| maturation | дозрівання, досягнення повного розвитку |
| endowment | талант, дар |
| constraint | тиск, примушення, зневолення |
| roughly | приблизно |
| adolescence | юність |
| adulthood | зрілий вік |
| attachment | пристосування, належність, відданість, симпатія, уподобання |
| tie | зв’язок |
| vocalizing | вимова звуків, вигук |
| to be equated with | бути еквівалентним, відповідати |
| to forge | очолювати, випереджати, лідирувати |
| proximity | близькість |
| accommodation | пристосування |
| to process new information | обробляти нову інформацію |
| distortion | викривлення, спотворення |
| sensorimotor | почуттєво-моторний |
| perception | сприйняття |
| to span | охоплювати, закрити, заповнити |
| chasm | розрив, прогалина, прірва |
| conventional | традиційний, загальноприйнятий |
| regression | повернення до більш ранньої стадії розвитку |
| abnormal | анормальний |
| obsessive | нав’язливий, крайній, надмірний |
| compulsive | примусовий, нездоланний |
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Developmental psychology, also known as Human Development, is the scientific study of progressive psychological changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life. Originally concerned with infants and children, and later other periods of great change such as adolescence and aging, it now encompasses the entire lifespan. This field examines change across a broad range of topics including motor skills and other psycho-physiological processes, problem solving abilities, conceptual understanding, acquisition of language, moral understanding, and identity formation.
Developmental psychologists investigate key questions, such as whether children are qualitatively different from adults or simply lack the experience that adults draw upon. Other issues that they deal with is the question of whether development occurs through the gradual accumulation of knowledge or through shifts from one stage of thinking to another; or if children are born with innate knowledge or figure things out through experience; and whether development is driven by the social context or by innate, genetic mechanisms within each child.
Developmental psychology informs several applied fields, including: educational psychology, child psychopathology and developmental forensics. Developmental psychology complements several other basic research fields in psychology including social psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive development, and comparative psychology. MethodDevelopmental psychologists who study children rely more upon careful observation in natural settings than upon laboratory experiments. Under these circumstances, only partial conclusions can be drawn about the causes of development. The field has been dominated by descriptive research, with increasing attempts to explain developmental phenomena by the use of animal experiments or by statistical methods. In longitudinal research, a group of individuals is studied at regular intervals over a relatively long period of time. This contrasts with cross-sectional research, where individuals of different ages are studied at the same time. Conclusions from the two types of research may differ. Finally, case studies, that is, close and extensive observations of a few subjects, have been relied upon by important developmental theorists such as S. Freud and J. Piaget.TheoriesAn explanation of developmental changes requires a judgment as to the relative importance of genetically programmed maturation and environmental influences. Although most developmentalists believe that genetic endowment and environmental experience interact to account for behavior, the degree to which either affects a particular behavior is still often debated. This issue has important implications for the success of environmental intervention in the face of genetic constraints. For example, the influence on children of parental speech versus genetic programming in language acquisition is much debated, as is the origin of gender differences in behavior.Emotional developmentAinsworth defines attachment as “an affectional tie that one person forms to another specific person, binding them together in space, and enduring over time … [It] is discriminating and specific.” It is not present at birth, but is developed. In a word, attachment means love. Attachment behaviors such as crying, smiling, physical contact, and vocalizing are the means by which attachment is forged but are not to be equated with the more abstract, underlying construct of attachment. Attachment theory is strongly based on ethological notions. Thus, attachment is seen as serving a biological function, that is, the protection of infants by ensuring their proximity to (attached) adults. The common goal of attached individuals is proximity. Bowlby was influenced by Freud's psychoanalytic theory of development, but argues that there is a primary biological need to become attached to at least one adult, whereas Freud argued that love for a mother was secondary to her satisfaction of an infant's hunger.Intellectual developmentFor Piaget, intelligence is defined as the ability to adapt to the environment, an ability that depends upon physical and psychological (cognitive) organization. The adaptation process has two complementary components, assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation refers to the tendency to process new information, sometimes with distortion, in terms of existing cognitive structures. Accommodation refers to the opposite process, that is, the modification of existing cognitive structures in response to new information. An individual strives for equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation.Moral developmentL. Kohlberg's work on moral development spans the chasm between intellectual and emotional development. He studied reasoning about hypothetical moral dilemmas, such as whether a person should steal an unaffordable drug in order to save someone's life. He classified such reasoning in six stages. At birth children are considered to be premoral. By the age of 7, most children are in stage 1, chiefly characterized by the belief that people should act in certain ways in order to avoid physical or other punishment. In 2 or 3 years, children reason primarily in terms of doing things for rewards; this is stage 2. Stage 3 involves reasoning focused less on rewards than on maintaining the approval of others. Stage 4 involves reasoning that unquestioningly accepts conventional rules. Actions are judged by a rigid set of regulations, religious, legal, or both. Most individuals do not develop past this point. A few, however, do reach postconventional moral reasoning, stage 5. These individuals think in terms of moral principles. Rarely, a step higher to stage 6 is reached, governed by original abstract moral principles such as articulation of the golden rule. Kohlberg argued that moral development is progressive, without regression to earlier stages.Developmental psychopathologyTraditionally, child clinical psychology (abnormal development) and the study of normal development were separate. However, effort is being made to integrate them. Abnormal development is informative about normal processes. The serious disorders of childhood include autism, attention-deficit disorder with hyperactivity, and depression. Viewed another way, abnormal children are either overcontrolled (obsessive-compulsive) or undercontrolled (impulsive, aggressive). Developmental psychopathologists, however, are interested not just in disordered development in childhood, but in abnormal individuals over their lifetime. Such studies can shed light on the effectiveness of treatments and on the way in which disorders such as hyperactivity may be displayed differently at different ages.