Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Identify the general and special senses in humansDescribe three important steps in sensory perceptionExplain the concept of just-noticeable difference in sensory perception

The content of this book is designed to help you be a more competent communicator. The four major objectives are:

Explain the fundamental processes that significantly influence communication.
Construct messages consistent with the diversity of communication purpose, audience, context, and ethics.
Respond to messages consistent with the diversity of communication purpose, audience, context, and ethics.
Utilize information literacy skills expected of ethical communicators.

Each section of this text is designed to help you recognize what you should be gaining from the text in support of our goal to help you be an effective communicator. The first thing you will see is an introduction of what will be covered in each subsequent chapter, followed by content that will offer you the opportunity to click on bolded terms for definitions, and finally, links to external resource materials (e.g., videos or other content).

Everyone has their own view of the nature of consciousness based on their education and background. The intention of this book is to expand this view by providing an insight into the various ideas and beliefs on the subject as well as a review of current work in neuroscience. The neuroscientist should find the philosophical discussion interesting because this provides first-person insights into the nature of consciousness and also provides some subtle arguments about why consciousness is not a simple problem. The student of philosophy will find a useful introduction to the subject and information about neuroscience and physics that is difficult to acquire elsewhere.

The NOBA Project is a growing collection of expert-authored, open-licensed modules in psychology, funded by the Diener Education Fund. From these open modules, Tori Kearns and Deborah Lee created an arranged open textbook for her introductory psychology class. This textbook was created under a Round One ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.

Noba is a high-quality, flexibly structured digital introduction to psychology resource for higher-ed classrooms and virtual classrooms. Noba consists of nearly 90 short (2500-4000 word) chapters authored by leading instructors and researchers including 7 winners of the William James Award. Chapters are organized in familiar categories (Development, Learning & Memory, Personality, etc.) for easy reference. All Noba materials are licensed through Creative Commons under the CC BY-NA-SA license terms.

The Noba website allows anyone to combine chapters in any order to create unique psychology textbooks to suit virtually any curriculum. In addition to allowing users to build their own customized collections, Noba provides a series of "Ready-Made" digital textbooks curated from the Noba chapters to conform to the scope and sequence of some of the most commonly taught 100/200-level psych courses (Intro-to-Psych, Psych as a Biological Science, Psych as a Social Science, etc.). The Ready-made books can also be edited to add or remove chapters, or sections so that they better conform to the specific course an instructor will teach.

Custom-made books, Ready-made books, or even individual chapters can be used online, downloaded as PDFs or shared withe learners via email and social media using easy-share tools built in to the website.

Psychology is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.Senior Contributing AuthorsRose M. Spielman, Formerly of Quinnipiac UniversityContributing AuthorsKathryn Dumper, Bainbridge State CollegeWilliam Jenkins, Mercer UniversityArlene Lacombe, Saint Joseph's UniversityMarilyn Lovett, Livingstone CollegeMarion Perlmutter, University of Michigan

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Distinguish between sensation and perceptionDescribe the concepts of absolute threshold and difference thresholdDiscuss the roles attention, motivation, and sensory adaptation play in perception

The first chapter provides an overview of the textbook and reviews the history of psychology and its methodology. Psychology is described as a science studying how hereditary (nature) and experiential (nurture) variables interact to influence the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals. The remainder of the text will be organized in sections entitled “Mostly Nature” (Biological Psychology; Sensation & Perception; Motivation & Emotion), “Mostly Nurture” (Direct Learning; Indirect Learning (i.e., observational learning and language); Cognition), and “Nature/Nurture” (Human Development; Personality; Social Psychology; Maladaptive Behavior; Professional Psychology and Human Potential).

The topics of sensation and perception are among the oldest and most important in all of psychology. People are equipped with senses such as sight, hearing and taste that help us to take in the world around us. Amazingly, our senses have the ability to convert real-world information into electrical information that can be processed by the brain. The way we interpret this information-- our perceptions-- is what leads to our experiences of the world. In this module, you will learn about the biological processes of sensation and how these can be combined to create perceptions.

Different types of sensory systems with their functional modalities will be presented. The biological bases for how these functions are generated and modified will then be described. Scientific information will be integrated into the lectures, such that students use critical skills in interpreting data, proposing hypotheses and designing experiments.