Psychology: theories, studies, and what they explain

Here is the example Nila uses for psychology:

A woman whose brain halves were surgically separated is shown the word “key” on the left side of a screen. She says she saw nothing, yet her left hand picks a key out of a bag. How can she find what she says she never saw?

Each half of the brain sees the opposite side of what is in front of it, so the word reached only her right hemisphere. Speech sits in the left hemisphere, and with the corpus callosum cut, the word could not cross over to it, so she could not say it. But the right hemisphere did see it, and it controls the left hand.

It is a question about anatomy, perception and language at once, and the answer is a chain of reasoning, not a definition.

• Profiles for a key study: question, method, finding, limits.
• Tables for theories and disorders you confuse, side by side.
• Pathways for processes: memory encoding, the stress response.
• Scenarios in Learn: a case to explain with what you’ve learned.
• Connection questions across modules, such as biological and cognitive psychology.

Psychology is where the research on studying comes from, and its findings are the ones Nila is built on: recall instead of rereading, spaced reviews, and explaining ideas in your own words. Read our guides to the science of learning.