The Subject Psychology (i) The development of Psychology as a subject discipline: the father of modern Psychology – Wilhelm Wundt. Main features: Wilhelm Wundt and Structuralism; William James and Functionalism; John B. Watson and Behaviourism; Sigmund Freud and Psychodynamism.
(ii) The nature of modern Psychology - what is meant by a bio-social science - why is Psychology considered a science; different approaches to the study of Psychology today - physiological, cognitive, socio-cultural and psychodynamic.
(iii) Aims and objectives of studying Psychology and its special benefits; different fields of Psychology: clinical counselling, developmental, educational, industrial and social.
(iv) Methods of psychological research - observational methods; case studies; surveys; the correlational method; experimentation.
Biological Basis of Behaviour
(i) Receptors - the senses: vision, hearing, taste, skin senses, pain, smell, balance, movement, sensory thresholds, Weber's law.
(ii) Conductors - the nervous system: structure and functioning of neurons and the nervous system - central, peripheral, somatic and autonomic.
(iii) Effectors and Regulators - types and functions of muscles; structure and functioning of the endocrine system.
(iv) Heredity and Environment - meaning of the term “heredity”; basic principles and mechanism of heredity; meaning of the term “environment” - the importance of both heredity and environment in behaviour.
Attention and Perception
(i) Nature of attention - its inner and outer determinants.
(ii) Perceptual processes - difference between sensation and perception. Organizational principles of perception - laws, constancies, depth and colour perception.
(iii) Errors in perception - illusions of size and shape; what is meant by extra-sensory perception (ESP).
Emotions
(i) What is meant by emotion; the basic emotions.
(ii) Theories of emotion dealing with physiological, subjective and cognitive aspects.
(iii) Physiology and overt expression of emotions - facial expression and body language, functioning of the lie detector.
Motivation
(i) What is meant by motives, needs and instincts; unconscious motives.
(ii) Theories of Motivation; Maslow's Needs Hierarchy.
(iii) Social motives.
(iv) Frustration - blocking of motives; conflict among motives; defence mechanisms.
Learning
(i) What is meant by learning; how learning takes place - Classical and Operant conditioning;
cognitive learning.
(ii) Role of Reward and Punishment in learning.
Remembering and Forgetting
(i) The memory system - how it works – different models.
(ii) Why and how forgetting occurs.
(iii) How memory can be improved.
Thinking and Reasoning
(i) What is meant by thinking.
(ii) Concepts and how they are formed.
(iii) Reasoning - how it is carried out; common errors in reasoning; how reasoning can be made more effective. Decision making and problem solving - heuristics and algorithms.
(iv) Creative thinking - what is meant by convergent and divergent thinking; stages in creative thinking, how creativity can be fostered.
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