Introduction to Psychology CLEP Exam Flashcards

Flashcards on main concepts, people and ideas in psychology.

What is psychology?

The scientific study of human behavior and mental processes.

Who is considered the father of structuralism?

Wilhelm Wundt.

What is structuralism?

A school of thought that sought to identify the basic elements of consciousness using introspection.

What is introspection?

A process by which someone examines their own conscious experience as objectively as possible.

Who is associated with functionalism?

William James.

What is functionalism?

The study of how mental experiences and processes were adaptive, or functional, for people.

What does the biological approach in psychology focus on?

Physiological and biochemical explanation of behavior (genes, hormones, and neurotransmitters).

Who are key figures in the behavioral approach?

Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner.

What is the main idea behind the psychodynamic approach?

Unmet needs from childhood affects personality.

Who founded the psychodynamic approach?

Sigmund Freud.

What are the three components of personality according to Freud?

Id, Ego and Superego

Which personality structure operates on the pleasure principle?

ID

What is the role of the ego?

The rational, realistic part of our personality. It involves problem solving and reasoning

In the psychosexual stages, what happens during the phallic stage for boys?

Boys feel castration anxiety, and has an Odipus complex.

Which approach studies problem solving, attention, expectation, memory, and other thought processes?

Cognitive approach.

What is the focus of the humanistic approach?

Motivated by the desire to grow and develop.

Who are associated with the humanistic approach?

Maslow and Rogers.

What is reciprocal determinism?

How people think, how people behave, and what their environment is like all interact to influence the consistency of behavior.

What is trait?

Consistent patterns of behavior.

What is the experimental approach?

Cause and effect, Independent variable: what is manipulated ( cause), Dependent variable: what is measured (effect).

What is a case study?

In-depth analysis of only one person.

What are two things to be aware of when performing Naturalistic Observation?

Being unobtrusive (not interfering with ongoing behavior) and having a high agreement among observers as to what is happening.

What is meant by 'inter-judge' or 'inter-rater' reliability?

Agreement among observers is a measure of reliability.

What do correlational studies measure?

How two variables relate to each other; does not measure cause and effect.

What is Behavioral neuroscience Concerned with?

How the communication between the body and its parts (the brain, muscles, glands, organs, nerves, arms, legs, etc).

What is neuron?

Nerve cell, pathways for communication.

What are the three types of neurons?

Sensory (afferent neurons), Motor (efferent), Interneurons (association neurons).

What is the role of myelin sheath

Fatty tissue that the axon and accelerates transmission of information.

What is synapse?

The junction where the end of one neuron meets the beginning of another.

What are neurotransmitters?

Chemical molecules contained in vesicles within the axon terminal, Released into the synaptic cleft , Bind to receptor sites on the next neuron’s dendrites, Excess is either broken down due to enzymatic degradation or absorbed through reuptake.

What are agonists?

Drugs that mimic a particular neurotransmitter or Make more of it available by blocking reuptake.

What does the Central Nervous System include?

Brain and the spinal cord.

What are the two systems the Peripheral Nervous System is divided into?

Somatic nervous system and Autonomic Nervous System.

What are the two divisions that the Autonomic Nervous System is divided into?

Sympathetic nervous system and Parasympathetic nervous system.

What does Brainstem control?

Breathing and heartbeat.

What does the Limbic System Contain?

Hippocampus: processes memory, Amygdala: influences fear and anger, Hypothalamus: influences hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior.

What is Hormones?

Chemical messengers, Produced in one kind of tissue, Travels through the bloodstream, Affects the function of other tissues, Helps make up the endocrine system.

What are the four regions the Cerebral Cortex divided into?

Frontal lobes, Parietal Lobes, Temporal Lobes and Occipital Lobes.

What is perception?

Involves mentally creating an image of the outside world, Constructing meaning out of sensation.

What is Selective Attention?

The amount of information we can hold in our awareness is less than the information available from our environment.

What is Sensory Adaptation?

When the nerves cell involved in detection fires less frequently and our sensitivity to the stimulus diminishes despite the fact that exposure is unchanging.

What is Gestalt psychology?

First to formulate rules in which the brain pieces together meaningful experiences out of fragments of sensation, Our minds fill in the gaps of our sensations.

What are the two types of cues Depth Perception Uses?

Binocular and Monocular cues

What is Consciousness

The state of being aware

What is Circadian rhythm?

Hormones levels, body temperature, and wakefulness rise and fall in predictable ways during the course of the day.

What are Sleep stages distinguished by?

By the typed and appearance of brain waves

What is Paradoxical sleep?

the brainstem blocks messages from the motor cortex.

What are The manifest content and The latent content?

The manifest content: the images that actually appear to the dreamer, The latent content: usually a “forbidden” sexual or aggressive wish that the dreamer would repress if awake.

What is Hypnosis?

An induced state of consciousness, Characterized by deep relaxation and heightened suggestibility.

What are the three types of Psychoactive drugs?

Depressants, Stimulants and Hallucinoges.

What is Learning

As an enduring or relatively permanent change in an organism caused by experiences or influences in the environment

What does Classical conditioning products?

Changes in responding by pairing two stimuli together

What is Operant Conditioning?

Learning an association between a response and a stimulus that follows it (predictably).

What is Reinforcement Schedules?

Rules for determining when reinforcement will be given.

What is Observational learning?

We can learn operant behaviors indirectly, Models: those we watch to learn a behavior, usually by watching the punishments and reinforcements they receive.

What is Non-Associative Learning?

Occurs when repeated encounters with a stimulus produces an enduring change in behavior.

What are Heuristics?

Shortcuts as a way to solve problems with minimal effort.

What are Grammer, Semantics and Syntax?

Grammer: a system of rules for language so people can make sense out of what it means, Semantics: rules for mapping morphemes onto the ideas they represent, Syntax: rules for combining morphemes in meaningful ways.

What is Memory?

The ability to store information and retrieve it again.

What are the three Psychological perspective to solve problems?

How can the ability to solve problems be summed up in a single score that can be used to predict others behavior and characteristics?, Since there are different kinds of problems to solve, are there also different kinds of intelligence? and Why do people differ in their problem-solving abilities?

What is Intelligence Quotient (IQ)?

mental age/ chronological age(physical age) X 100

What is Motivation?

The psychological process that energizes and directs behavior.

What is Hypothalamus is responsible for?

The part of the brain that monitors hunger-related signals.

What is Emotions?

Helps us to deal with the impacts our motives, goals, and values create, Can be sources of motivation.

What are Canon-Bard Theory and James-Lange Theory?

Cannon-Bard Theory: perceiving a stimulus that relevance to one’s well-being will generate arousal and a subjective emotional experience simultaneously, James-Lange Theory: the perception of a stimulus causes arousal first, which then causes me to feel an emotion.

What is Developmental psychology?

Deals with systematic, predictable changes in thinking and behavior over the lifespan.

What are the Piaget’s theory of cognitive development stages?

sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational

What are Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development?

Erikson's theory proposes 8 psychosocial stages, each with a unique conflict:

1. Trust vs. Mistrust: (Infancy) - Hope

2. Autonomy vs. Shame/Doubt: (Toddler) - Will

3. Initiative vs. Guilt: (Preschool) - Purpose

4. Industry vs. Inferiority: (School Age) - Competence

5. Identity vs. Role Confusion: (Adolescence) - Fidelity

6. Intimacy vs. Isolation: (Young Adult) - Love

7. Generativity vs. Stagnation: (Middle Age) - Care

8. Integrity vs. Despair: (Senior) - Wisdom

What is Abnormal Psychology?

The branch of psychology that deals with psychological disorders.

What are the Mood disorders?

characterized by depression, mania, or both.

What are Dissociative Disorders

feature the fragmentation of personality, behaves as if one part of their experience is separated from the other parts.

What are Schizophrenia Disorders?

Schizophrenia disorders are chronic brain disorders that affect a person's thinking, feeling, and behavior. They are characterized by symptoms of psychosis, such as hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and speech, and abnormal motor behavior, which impairs the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

What are Personality Disorders?

Enduring, inflexible patterns of behavior or thinking that deviate from cultural norms, causing distress or impairment.

What is encoding?

The input of memory into the brain

What is effortful processing?

Putting work and attention to learning information

What is range of reaction?

Our genes set the boundaries within which we can operate, and our environment interacts with the genes to determine where in that range we will fall

What is etiology?

The biological explanation for mental disorders within psychology; the roots or origins of mental problems.

What does the endocrine system control?

The endocrine system regulates growth rate, digestion, blood pressure, sexual development, and reproduction via hormones.

What is genetics?

Human behaviour is the product of genetics and our environment, and the interactions of the two.

What is myelin sheath?

Covers the axon on some of the neurons, not necessarily on all neurons, It’s meant to insulate the communication and the transmission of electrical impulses along the axon, so that it travels in a rapid and efficient manner.

What is Cerebellum?

Helps us control our balance, as well as other voluntary motions, and the limbic system.

What does Cerebral Cortex Control?

higher-order functioning, motor functioning, higher-order cognitive functions, aspects like time management and task management.

What are the two areas that the Frontal lobes contain?

Broca’s area and the Wernicke’s area, which control our speech and language and comprehension and speech production.

What is psychophysics?

The area of of psychology that address the topic of sensation; talks about the level of intensity that we can detect various stimuli.

What is Somesthesis?

The body’s sensitivity to touch.

What is Kinesthetic Sense?

Knowing how your body moves, without physically watching it, internal sense of awareness of the movement of your body.

What is Vestibular Sense?

Keeps the body’s balance system in order; gives you your sense of balance; also spatial awareness.

What is Olfactory Sense provides by?

By the nose.

What is Gustation?

Sense of taste.

What is Depth Perception

Allows us to estimate distances between ourselves and the objects we see; there are two types of cues that help: Binocular cue Monocular Cue

What Does Audition process?

The process of taking in sound through the ear and how it travels to the brain.

What is Insomnia?

The most common sleep disorder; characterized by difficulty falling asleep and the inability to enter deeper states of sleep.

What is Hypersomnia?

A sleep disorder where an individual sleeps excessively and has difficulty waking up.

What is Narcolepsy?

A sleep disorder characterized by sudden sleep onset.

What is Sleep Apnea?

A condition where individuals experience a loss of oxygen to the brain due to obstructed airways during sleep, often associated with snoring.