UNIT 1
PSYCHOLOGY AT A GLANCE
Psychology studies the activities of individual. The science of human behaviors is actually a group of sciences. On one side we find psychology investigating the organs and cells that do the work of the organism and the other side we see the social sciences studying nations and groups of mankind. There is room for a middle science that shall focus its attention on the individual. That middle science is psychology. Psychology studies the individual’s activities through out his span of life, from the beginning before birth, up through the end of life. During this life history, the man remains the same individual, although his behavior shows continuity along with many changes.
Psychology compares children and adults, the normal and the abnormal, and the human and the animal. It is interested in the differences between one individual and another, and still more interested, if possible, in the general laws of activity including event of very different individual-laws, for example, of growth, learning, thinking and emotion. Psychology can be defined as the science of the individual’s activities.
The word “activity” is used here in a broad sense. It includes not only motor activities like walking and speaking but also cognitive (knowledge-getting) activities like seeing, hearing, remembering, thinking, and other emotional activities like laughing and crying, or feeling happy or sad. These last may seem passive, because they are activities, for they depend on the life of the organism. Any manifestation of life can be called an activity. No matter how passive an individual may seem to himself in watching a game or listening to music, he is carrying on an activity. The only way to be completely inactive is to be dead.
Glossary
Behavior :tingkah laku
Attention :perhatian
Mankind 
rang
Remains :tetap
Defined :diartikan, didefinisikan
Manifestation :perwujudan
Exercise 1
Answer these following questions
1. What is psychology?
2. Name some individual activities!
3. Give example(s) of motor, cognitive, and emotional activities!
4. Is listening to music, a kind activity? Why? Why not?
5. What is meant by: the science of human behavior is actually a group of sciences?
6. When do we call an individual completely inactive?
7. The word “activity” is used in a very broad sense. What does it mean?
8. What kind of activity is happening when you write a letter to your girl or boy friend?
9. Why do we study human behavior?
10. What cause the differences between individuals?
LANGUAGE WORK
A sentence is a group of words constructed orderly. It needs certain rules how to put the words into sentence. First of all, we have to analyze the parts of speech that is a classification of the word. Traditionally, a word in English is devided into four parts of speech, namely, noun, adjective, verb, and adverb. Look at these examples.
1. Psychology compares children and adults.
Psychology: noun
Compares: verb
Children: noun
Adult: noun
2. The word “activity” is used here in a very broad sense.
Word: noun here: adverb
Activity: noun very: adverb
Is: verb broad: adjective
Used: verb sense: noun
Behavior, attention, childhood, adolescence, maturity, motor activity, cognitive activity, emotional activity, investigates
1. He loves his mother very much. When his mother was sick, he showed his …
2. When he was a child, he never played toys. He really had an unhappy …
3. Their … towards me shows that they do not like me. It can be proved from how they look at me. When we meet, they always look away from me.
4. When a boy or a girl gets biological changes and psychological changes (puberty), he or she enters in the … era.
5. When a baby learns how to walk and how to talk, he develops his …
6. It is common for a mother to make her baby smile by doing funny thing. Often, she does not get smiling and crying, even laughing is good for a baby because at such time he develops his ….
7. There was a mysterious murder. The police get difficulties to handle this case and look for the murderer. Finally they ask some detectives to … this case.
8. In Javanese culture when a baby is just delivered by a mother, the other people always try to wake the baby up by making loud noise. The baby, of course, is surprised. But it is good for him because he develops his …
