Writing Assignment: Review of Major Areas in Psychology (Essay Sample)

Review of the Major Areas in Psychology Student’s NameInstitution of AffiliationDate
Introduction
Psychology as a discipline refers to the study of mind and behavior together with embracing all the features of the unconscious and conscious experiences and thought. This paper will, therefore, discuss developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, behavioral psychology such as operant and classical psychology and social psychology as some of its units. It will also attempt to explain personality, how it is used and measured in psychology, discuss the importance of comprehending the brain in the study of psychology, describes depression as a major psychological disorder and finally it explains psychotherapy and one of its types.
Development Psychology
Developmental psychology refers to a scientific methodology that aims to give an explanation on how adults and children change over time. However, most developmental theories discuss more on the development of a child as a special focus since it is at this lifespan that most biological changes take place within an individual. According to these theories, conditions relating to mental health and other disorders not only affects but also children. As earlier stated, it is at this stage that many changes occur within an individual as it is the early stage of development. This is actually reflected by such disorders such as ADHD and autism that affect children at an early stage. The same also applies to other disorders such as mood, psychotic disorders, and anxiety National Institute of Mental Health (2014). Such disorders, together with obsessive compulsion, social phobia, bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia shows their signs during the ages between few months from birth till the age of 24 years.
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology refers to the scientific study of mental function and the mind, including attention, learning, perception, memory, language, reasoning, conceptual development and also decision making. According to (NIMH 2014), it deals with how human beings absorbs and processes information within their minds, how they take information from various sources into the brain and how after the treatment, the person gives desired responses. Cognitive psychologists at National Institute of Mental health deal with disorders relating to the internal processes relating to disorders that impair human language, attention, memory, perception, and thinking. It is also described that human cognitive psychology is an approach that is reductionist in nature, which means that no matter how complex it can be, all behaviors can be brought down to simplified cognitive processes such as perception.
At NIMH, psychological practitioner’s uses laboratory experiments when dealing with adult and child cases of mental disorders where through these, they can be able to come up with conclusive results on what exactly the disorder and treatment can be. Here, Participants at the library takes tests that are memory oriented in controlled and strict conditions.
Behavioral Psychology
Behavioral psychology includes the examination of styles in behavioral and provision of therapy which corrects any form negative and destructive forms of behavior. It also deals with studying the changes in peoples’ behavior which includes their emotions, thoughts, and actions (NIMH 2014). The methods used in these process are behavior modeling, intellectual reconstruction, and commonly, the operant and classical conditioning.
Classical conditioning refers to a behavior-based intervention technique where psychologists pair two stimuli together and repetitively to elicit similar behaviors in the responses of human subjects. NIMH (2014) states that what is done is that neutral stimuli together with a behavior inducing stimuli are subjected to a person where he or she will start to respond to the stimuli that are neutral in the same ways as the behavior-inducing stimuli. On the other hand, operant conditioning focuses on consequence and voluntary behavior’s association where the subject is either rewarded or punished after a particular action such that the behavior is either associated with a positive or negative consequences.
Social Psychology
Social psychology deals with the understanding of human behavior within a social context. It seeks to bring an understanding of the causes and the nature of an individual’s behavior in a social circumstance (NIMH 2014). It, therefore, looks into human behavior under the influence of other human beings and also looks into the social context where this form of interaction takes place. It can, therefore, be added that it deals with those factors which lead human beings to behave in a particular manner in the presence of other people within the same environment.
It also assesses the conditions of the context where the interactions take place in examining the actions and behaviors elicited by the person under study. Psychologists at NIMH uses this to associate certain human behaviors with the influence of a particular group of individuals and the resultant disorders to come up with corrective behaviors to the disorders. It is because certain disorders are associated with behavior induced by other people’s intentions, feelings, and actions which in turn affects the person psychologically.
Personality
Personality refers to the characteristic way of feeling, thinking and behaving and embraces attitudes, moods and opinions and is expressed clearly through interaction with other people in an environment. It involves those behaviors that are inherited and those that people acquire over time through associating with others which are distinct from one person to the other. It is observable through people’s relations subgroups and the environment.
Personality measurement is done through personality assessment where information is gathered for the desired result. This information collected is based on human behavior on actions, feelings, attitudes and interactions from the environment through observation which can be used to assess human traits. In psychology, this is used in ascertaining why people behave in a certain manner under different conditions and environments (NIMH 2014). It can be used to detect human disorders and diseases through conditional laboratory examination of patients.
Understanding human brain and nervous system
Brain basic understanding helps in providing information that is helpful in understanding how the brain work. NIMH (2014), adds that understanding this in important in psychology because one can be able to detect abnormal behaviors among human beings because he or she knows what is normal and what is not concerning human behavior and actions a directed by the brain. It also helps in understanding mental disorders and illnesses of the brain. Psychologists can use the understanding of such diseases and disorders in inducing therapy for ...