Explaining how regions become major business centers of tourism and trade, including the cities of Dubai, Bangkok, New York, and Shanghai
Identifying how trends, including ecotourism and the cruise industry, affect island culture in tropical areas
Trace the development of psychology as a scientific discipline evolving from other fields of study.
Describing early psychological and biological inquiries that led to contemporary approaches and methods of experimentation, including ideologies of Aristotle, John Locke, Wilhelm Wundt, Charles Darwin, William James, Frantz Fanon, and G. Stanley Hall
Differentiating among various modern schools of thought and perspectives in psychology that have evolved since 1879, including each school’s view on concepts of aggression or appetite
Illustrating how modern psychologists utilize multiple perspectives to understand behavior and mental processes
Identifying major subfields and career opportunities related to psychology
Describe research strategies used by psychologists to explore mental processes and behavior.
Describing the type of methodology and strategies used by researchers in different psychological studies
Examples: surveys, naturalistic observations, case studies, longitudinal studies, cross-sectional studies
Contrasting independent, dependent, and confounding variables and control and experimental groups
Identifying systematic procedures necessary for conducting an experiment and improving the validity of results
Describing the use of statistics in evaluating research, including calculating the mean, median, and mode from a set of data; conducting a simple correlational analysis using either calculators or computer software; and explaining the meaning of statistical significance
Explain how processes of the central and peripheral nervous systems underlie behavior and mental processes, including how neurons are the basis for neural communication.
Describing how neurons communicate, including the role of neurotransmitters in behavior and the electrochemical process
Comparing the effect of drugs and toxins on the brain and neurotransmitters
Describing how different sections of the brain have specialized yet interdependent functions, including functions of different lobes and hemispheres of the cerebral cortex and consequences of damage to specific sections of the brain
Describing different technologies used to study the brain and nervous system
Analyzing behavior genetics for its contribution to the understanding of behavior and mental processes, including differentiating between deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), chromosomes, and genes; identifying effects of chromosomal abnormalities; and explaining how genetics and environmental factors work together to determine inherited traits
Describe the interconnected processes of sensation and perception.
Explaining the role of sensory systems in human behavior, including sight, sound, smell, touch, and pain
Explaining how what is perceived can be different from what is sensed, including how attention and environmental cues can affect the ability to accurately sense and perceive the world
Describing the role of Gestalt principles and concepts in perception
Explain ways to promote psychological wellness.
Describing physiological processes associated with stress, including hormones associated with stress responses
Describing Hans Selye’s general adaptation syndrome (GAS)
Describing the flight-or-fight response in terms of the autonomic and somatic nervous systems
Contrasting positive and negative ways of coping with stress related to problem-focused coping, aggression, and emotion-focused coping
Explaining approach-approach, approach-avoidance, and avoidance-avoidance conflicts
Identifying various eating disorders and conditions
Examples: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, obesity
Describe the physical, cognitive, and social development across the life span of a person from the prenatal through aging stages.
Outlining the stage-of-development theories of Jean Piaget, Erik H. Erikson, Sigmund Freud, Carol Gilligan, and Lawrence Kohlberg
Describe the processes and importance of memory, including how information is encoded and stored, mnemonic devices, schemas related to short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory.
Distinguishing between surface and deep processing in memory development
Comparing ways memories are stored in the brain, including episodic and procedural
Identifying different parts of the brain that store memory
