Psychology Overview

Flashcards covering key concepts from the psychology lecture notes.

Philosophical dualism

The view that the mind and body are fundamentally different things.

Philosophical materialism

The view that all mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena.

Philosophical empiricism

The view that all knowledge is acquired through experience.

Psychoanalytic theory

A general theory that emphasizes the influence of the unconscious on feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

Behaviorism

An approach to psychology that restricts scientific inquiry to observable behavior.

Cognitive psychology

The study of human information processing.

Independent variable

The variable that is manipulated in an experiment.

Dependent variable

The variable whose value 'depends on' the value of the independent variable.

Correlation coefficient

A mathematical measure of both the direction and strength of a correlation, symbolized by the letter r.

Type 1 error

Concluding there is a causal relationship when there is not, leading to a false positive.

Type 2 error

Concluding there is no causal relationship when there is one, leading to a false negative.

Absolute Threshold

The smallest amount of stimulation needed to detect the presence of a stimulus 50% of the time.

Signal differential theory (SDT)

Predicts how and when we detect the presence of a stimulus among distracting stimuli.

Inattentional Blindness

A failure to perceive objects that are not the focus of attention.

Top-down processing

When our perceptions are influenced by our expectations or prior knowledge.

Bottom-up processing

When we perceive individual bits of sensory information to construct a complex message.

Neurotransmitters

Chemicals that transmit information across the synapse to a receiving neuron’s dendrites.