Introductory Psychology: Memory, Thinking, Development, Motivation, and Emotion

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering foundational concepts from Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 of PSYCH (Fifth Canadian Edition), including memory systems, cognitive heuristics, developmental stages, and motivation and emotion theories.

Drive-Reduction Theory

The view that organisms learn to engage in behaviours that reduce primary drives (such as hunger, thirst, or pain) to relieve tension and maintain homeostasis.

Homeostasis

The physiological tendency of the body to maintain a steady state by taking action to reduce tension and internal imbalance.

Self-Actualization

In Abraham Maslow's humanistic theory, an innate capacity and drive for personal growth characterized by perceptive clarity, peacefulness, simplicity, and a sense of mission.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's ordering of human needs ascending from physiological needs and safety needs to love and belongingness, esteem needs, and self-actualization.

Ventromedial Nucleus (VMN)

A central region on the underside of the hypothalamus that functions as a stop-eating centre; destruction of this area causes rats to become hyperphagic.

Lateral Hypothalamus

An area located at the side of the hypothalamus that functions as a start-eating centre; destruction of this area causes rats to become aphagic.

Anorexia Nervosa

A life-threatening eating disorder characterized by an extreme fear of being heavy, dramatic weight loss, a distorted body image, and refusal to maintain a healthy body weight.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder characterized by repeated, cyclical episodes of binge eating followed by purging behaviours such as vomiting, fasting, or using laxatives.

Sexual Response Cycle

Masters and Johnson's model outlining the human sexual response through four distinct phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Achievement Motivation

The psychological drive to strive for success, accomplishment, and excellence, frequently measured using David McClelland's Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).

Facial-Feedback Hypothesis

The hypothesis that stereotypical facial expressions and facial muscle contractions produce physiological arousal that induces or enhances subjective emotional experience.

James–Lange Theory

The theory of emotion proposing that external stimuli instinctively trigger distinct patterns of physiological arousal and action, and subjective emotions result from appraising those bodily responses.

Cannon–Bard Theory

The theory of emotion proposing that external events are first processed by subcortical brain areas, triggering bodily arousal and emotional experience simultaneously.

Theory of Cognitive Appraisal

Schachter and Singer's theory proposing that emotional experience is determined jointly by physiological arousal and the individual's cognitive evaluation or appraisal of the surrounding context.

Elaborative Rehearsal

A memory storage strategy where newly received information is meaningfully associated with previously learned knowledge to facilitate long-term retention.

Method of Savings

Hermann Ebbinghaus's relearning metric measuring retention by calculating the difference between the number of trials originally needed to learn a list and the number needed to relearn it.

Atkinson–Shiffrin Model

A three-stage cognitive architecture describing memory flow through sensory memory, short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM).

Iconic Memory

The sensory memory system that briefly holds visual impressions (icons), typically fading within approximately $1\,\text{second}$.

Echoic Memory

The sensory memory system that stores mental representations of auditory stimuli (echoes), which persist for several seconds.

Serial-Position Effect

The tendency to accurately recall the initial items (primacy effect) and closing items (recency effect) of a list better than the items positioned in the middle.

Chunking

The cognitive process of clustering discrete items into meaningful units, allowing short-term memory to maintain roughly $7 \pm 2$ chunks of information.

Episodic Memory

A form of explicit (declarative) memory involving recollections of personal autobiographical events that occurred in one's life or presence.

Semantic Memory

A division of explicit (declarative) memory dedicated to storing generalized factual knowledge and objective concepts about the world.

Implicit Memory

Nondeclarative memory revealed through the performance of motor procedures, habits, or cognitive skills without requiring conscious, intentional recall.

Flashbulb Memory

A vivid, highly preserved, and emotionally intense long-term recollection of a momentous or surprising event.

Retroactive Interference

A phenomenon in forgetting where newly acquired information hampers the ability to retrieve previously stored knowledge.

Proactive Interference

A phenomenon in forgetting where older memories interfere with the retrieval and acquisition of newer material.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

A persistent enhancement in neuronal synaptic transmission efficacy following rapid, repeated electrical stimulation, serving as a neural substrate for learning.

Anterograde Amnesia

A memory disorder marked by the inability to form new long-term memories following physical trauma to brain regions such as the hippocampus.

Cephalocaudal Development

The prenatal and infant growth pattern in which structural development and physical growth proceed from the head downward to the lower body parts.

Proximodistal Development

The directional growth principle where vital internal organs and central bodily structures develop before outer extremities such as fingers and toes.

Teratogen

An environmental agent—such as a drug, alcohol, heavy metal, infection, or radiation—that induces developmental abnormalities and structural defects during pregnancy.

Object Permanence

The cognitive awareness that an object continues to exist even after it is hidden from sight, typically emerging during Piaget's sensorimotor stage around $8$ to $12\,\text{months}$.

Egocentrism

In Piagetian theory, the preoperational cognitive limitation wherein a young child is unable to perceive situations from another person's perspective.

Conservation

The cognitive understanding that properties such as mass, volume, or number remain identical despite changes in the outward shape or physical arrangement of an object.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Lev Vygotsky's concept defining the range of tasks that a child cannot complete independently but can master through instructional guidance and collaboration with a skilled elder.

Scaffolding

A temporary instructional framework or problem-solving structure provided by a teacher or parent that supports a learner until independent mastery is achieved.

Personal Fable

An aspect of adolescent egocentrism marked by the belief that one's personal feelings, ideas, and experiences are entirely unique and that one is exempt from common vulnerabilities.

Crystallized Intelligence

An individual's accumulated fund of factual knowledge, verbal fluency, and cultural information gained over a lifespan, which remains resistant to age-related decline.

Fluid Intelligence

The capacity to process information rapidly, think flexibly, and reason through novel abstract problems, which typically diminishes across late adulthood.

Contact Comfort

Harry Harlow's identified innate drive in infant primates to seek physical solace and attachment through touch with a soft tactile surrogate, overriding hunger needs.

Imprinting

A rapid, instinctual attachment process occurring during a critical developmental window where a newborn animal fixes its social attachment to the first moving object encountered.

Identity Foreclosure

James Marcia's identity status where an adolescent commits to values, occupations, or lifestyle goals dictated by parents without independently exploring alternatives.

Algorithm

A step-by-step, exhaustive procedure or mathematical formula that invariably guarantees a correct solution to a problem when applied accurately.

Heuristic

A cognitive rule of thumb or problem-solving strategy that simplifies decision-making and reduces search time, though it does not guarantee a successful outcome.

Means–End Analysis

A heuristic strategy in which a problem solver repeatedly compares the current situation with the ultimate goal state and executes actions to minimize that discrepancy.

Mental Set

The cognitive habit of approaching a novel problem with specific frameworks or methods that previously produced successful outcomes in similar situations.

Functional Fixedness

A cognitive limitation in problem-solving that restricts a person from viewing an object beyond its customary label or standardized practical application.

Availability Heuristic

A judgment bias where an individual estimates the frequency or probability of an event based on how readily concrete examples come to mind.

Representativeness Heuristic

A decision-making shortcut where the likelihood of an event or sample is judged by how closely it corresponds to the prototypical features of its broader category.

Framing Effect

The phenomenon whereby decisions, preferences, and judgments are altered by the semantic wording and context in which information or options are presented.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Noam Chomsky's proposed innate neurological structure that prewires the human brain to acquire syntax and generate grammatical sentences across languages.

Linguistic-Relativity Hypothesis

The proposal that the grammar and lexicon of a particular language dictate or shape how its speakers conceptualize, categorize, and perceive reality.

Phoneme

The smallest elemental unit of sound in a spoken language that distinguishes one spoken word from another.

Morpheme

The most fundamental unit of meaning within a language, consisting of individual words, affixes, roots, prefixes, or suffixes.

Triarchic Theory of Intelligence

Robert Sternberg's intelligence model dividing cognitive ability into three components: analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence.

Flynn Effect

The steady historical increase in average standardized intelligence test scores observed across the Western world between 1947 and 2002.

Divergent Thinking

A cognitive thinking style associated with creativity that generates multiple, varied, and novel solutions to an open-ended problem.