Foundational Concept 6

Foundational Concept 6

Foundational Concept 6: Biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors influence the ways that individuals perceive, think about, and react to the world.

The ways we sense, perceive, think about, and react to stimuli affect our experiences. Foundational concept 6 focuses on these components of experience, starting with the initial detection and perception of stimuli through cognition and continuing to emotion and stress.

Content Categories 

  • Category 6A focuses on the detection and perception of sensory information.
  • Category 6B focuses on cognition, including our ability to attend to the environment, think about and remember what we experience, and use language to communicate with others.
  • Category 6C focuses on how we process and experience emotion and stress.

With these building blocks, medical students will be able to learn about the ways cognitive and perceptual processes influence their understanding of health and illness. 

jhoard@aamc.org

Content Category 6A: Sensing the Environment

Content Category 6A: Sensing the Environment

Psychological, sociocultural, and biological factors affect our sensation and perception of the world. All sensory processing begins with first detecting a stimulus in the environment through sensory cells, receptors, and biological pathways.

After collecting sensory information, we then interpret and make sense of it. Although sensation and perception are distinct functions, they are both influenced by psychological, social, and biological factors and therefore become almost indistinguishable in practice. This complexity is illuminated by examining human sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

The content in this category covers sensation and perception across all human senses.

Topic Our Social World Introduction to Sociology Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life Exploring Psychology

Sensory Processing (PSY, BIO):

  • Sensation
    • Threshold
    • Weber’s Law (PSY)
    • Signal detection theory (PSY)
    • Sensory adaptation
    • Psychophysics
  • Sensory receptors
    • Sensory pathways
    • Types of sensory receptors
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 6, pp. 189-232

Vision (PSY, BIO)

  • Structure and function of the eye
  • Visual processing
    • Visual pathways in the brain
    • Parallel processing (PSY)
    • Feature detection (PSY)
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 6, pp. 199-215

Hearing (PSY, BIO)

  • Structure and function of the ear
  • Auditory processing (e.g., auditory pathways in the brain)
  • Sensory reception by hair cells
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 6, pp. 216-220

Other Senses (PSY, BIO)

  • Somatosensation (e.g., pain perception)
  • Taste (e.g., taste buds/chemoreceptors that detect specific chemicals)
  • Smell
    • Olfactory cells (chemoreceptors) that detect specific chemicals
    • Pheromones (BIO)
    • Olfactory pathways in the brain (BIO)
  • Kinesthetic sense (PSY)
  • Vestibular sense
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 6, pp. 220-228

Perception (PSY)

  • Bottom-up/top-down processing
  • Perceptual organization (e.g., depth, form, motion, constancy)
  • Gestalt principles
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 6, pp. 189-232
jhoard@aamc.org

Content Category 6B: Making sense of the environment

Content Category 6B: Making sense of the environment

The way we think about the world depends on our awareness, thoughts, knowledge, and memories. It is also influenced by our ability to solve problems, make decisions, form judgments, and communicate. Psychological, sociocultural, and biological influences determine the development and use of these different yet convergent processes.

Biological factors underlie the mental processes that create our reality, shape our perception of the world, and influence the way we perceive and react to every aspect of our lives.

The content in this category covers critical aspects of cognition ― including consciousness, cognitive development, problem-solving and decision-making, intelligence, memory, and language.

Topic

 Our Social World Introduction to Sociology Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life Exploring Psychology

Attention (PSY)

  • Selective attention
  • Divided attention
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 3, pp. 81-83

Cognition (PSY)

  • Information-processing model
  • Cognitive development
    • Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
    • Cognitive changes in late adulthood
    • Role of culture in cognitive development
    • Influence of heredity and environment on cognitive development
  • Biological factors that affect cognition (PSY, BIO)
  • Problem-solving and decision-making
    • Types of problem-solving
    • Barriers to effective problem-solving
    • Approaches to problem-solving
    • Heuristics and biases (e.g., overconfidence, belief perseverance)
  • Intellectual functioning
    • Theories of intelligence
    • Influence of heredity and environment on intelligence
    • Variations in intellectual ability
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 1, pp. 16-17
  • Ch. 2, pp. 70-75
  • Ch. 4, pp. 119-162
  • Ch. 5, pp. 168-172
  • Ch. 8, pp. 268-269
  • Ch. 9, pp. 315-332, 336-346
  • Ch. 10, pp. 378-380
  • Ch. 13, pp. 489-491

Consciousness (PSY)

  • States of consciousness
    • Alertness (PSY, BIO)
    • Sleep
  • Stages of sleep
  • Sleep cycles and changes to sleep cycles
  • Sleep and circadian rhythms (PSY, BIO)
  • Dreaming
  • Sleep-wake disorders
    • Hypnosis and meditation
  • Consciousness-altering drugs
    • Types of consciousness-altering drugs and their effects on the nervous system and behavior
    • Drug addiction and the reward pathway in the brain 
 NA NA
  • Ch. 1, Taking a New Look at a Familiar World, pp. 5-7 (“A sociology of sleep”)
  • Ch. 3, pp. 79-114

Memory (PSY)

  • Encoding
    • Process of encoding information
    • Processes that aid in encoding memories
  • Storage
    • Types of memory storage (e.g., sensory, working, long-term)
    • Semantic networks and spreading activation
  • Retrieval
    • Recall, recognition, and relearning
    • Retrieval cues
    • The role of emotion in retrieving memories (PSY, BIO)
    • Processes that aid retrieval
  • Forgetting
    • Aging and memory
    • Memory dysfunctions (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, Korsakoff’s syndrome)
    • Decay
    • Interference
    • Memory construction and source monitoring
  • Changes in synaptic connections underlie memory and learning (PSY, BIO)
    • Neural plasticity
    • Memory and learning
    • Long-term potentiation
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 2, pp. 39, 44, 64
  • Ch. 4, pp. 152-154
  • Ch. 6, pp. 193, 227
  • Ch. 8, pp. 265-296
  • Ch. 11, p. 401

Language (PSY)

  • Theories of language development (e.g., learning, Nativist, Interactionist)
  • Influence of language on cognition
  • Brain areas that control language and speech (PSY, BIO)
 NA NA
  • Ch. 3, Building Reality: The Social Construction of Knowledge, pp. 50-53 (“Culture and language”)
  • Ch. 5, Building Identity: Socialization, pp. 113-118 (“The acquisition of self”)
  • Ch. 9, pp. 311-318
jhoard@aamc.org

Content Category 6C: Responding to the World

Content Category 6C: Responding to the World

We experience a barrage of environmental stimuli throughout the course of our lives. In many cases, environmental stimuli trigger physiological responses, such as an elevated heart rate, increased perspiration, or heightened feelings of anxiety. How we perceive and interpret these physiological responses is complex and influenced by psychological, sociocultural, and biological factors.

Emotional responses, such as feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, or stress, are often born out of our interpretation of this interplay of physiological responses. Our experience with emotions and stress not only affects our behavior, but also shapes our interactions with others.

The content in this category covers the basic components and theories of emotion and their underlying psychological, sociocultural, and biological factors. It also addresses stress, stress outcomes, and stress management.

Topic Our Social World Introduction to Sociology Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life Exploring Psychology

Emotion (PSY)

  • Three components of emotion (i.e., cognitive, physiological, behavioral)
  • Universal emotions (i.e., fear, anger, happiness, surprise, joy, disgust, sadness)
  • Adaptive role of emotion
  • Theories of emotion
    • James-Lange theory
    • Cannon-Bard theory
    • Schachter-Singer theory
  • The role of biological processes in perceiving emotion (PSY, BIO)
    • Brain regions involved in the generation and experience of emotions
    • The role of the limbic system in emotion
    • Emotion and the autonomic nervous system
    • Physiological markers of emotion (signatures of emotion)
 NA NA
  • Ch. 4, Building Order: Culture and History, pp. 95-96 (“Can Culture tell you what to feel?”
  • Ch. 2, pp. 55-56
  • Ch. 4, p. 142
  • Ch. 8, pp. 277-278
  • Ch. 10, pp. 367-395

Stress (PSY)

  • The nature of stress
    • Appraisal
    • Different types of stressors (e.g., cataclysmic events, personal)
    • Effects of stress on psychological functions
  • Stress outcomes, response to stressors
    • Physiological (PSY, BIO)
    • Emotional
    • Behavioral
  • Managing stress (e.g., exercise, relaxation, spirituality)
 NA NA NA
  • Ch. 11, pp. 384-406
  • Ch. 14, pp. 509-510
jhoard@aamc.org