FINAL AP PSYCH FLASHCARDS

Neurotic

Not harmful but statistically deviating from the norm.

Psychotic

harmful and statistically deviating from the norm

Epigenetics

The study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without a DNA change.

Psychological Disorder

A syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s

cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A psychological disorder marked by extreme inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity.

Schizophrenia

A pattern of disturbed thinking, emotions, and perceptions. This disorder is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and diminished, inappropriate emotional expression.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

• disorganized speech

  • neologisms

  • loose associations

  • word salad (disorganized speech)

• delusions

  • delusions of reference

  • delusions of grandeur

  • delusions of prosecution

• diminished and inappropriate emotions

  • flat effect state

  • catatonia

  • impaired theory of mind

• hallucinations

  • thought broadcasting

  • thought blocking

Neologisms

These are made up words that only the person who made it up knows what it means.

This is a symptom of schizophrenia.

Loose Associations

When the topic of the conversation jumps a lot.

This is a symptom of schizophrenia.

Word Salad

Iincoherent and disorganized speech or writing. It is characterize by severe loose associations where this is little to no logical connection between words and phrases and it doesn’t make much sense.

This is a symptom of schizophrenia.

Flat Effect State

An emotionless state of no apparent feeling.

This is a symptom of schizophrenia.

Catatonia

Characterized by motor behaviors ranging from a physical stupor (remaining motionless for hours) to senseless compulsive actions (like continually rocking or rubbing an arm) to severe and dangerous agitation.

This is a symptom of schizophrenia.

Impaired Theory of Mind

The difficulty in perceiving facial expressions and reading other’s states of mind.

This is a symptom of schizophrenia.

Positive vs Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia

inappropriate behaviors present vs appropriate behaviors are absent

Positive: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech

Negative: flattened affect, reduced speech, lack of initiative

Chronic (Process) Schizophrenia

A form of schizophrenia in which symptoms usually appear by late adolescence or early adulthood. As people age, psychotic episodes last longer and recovery periods shorten.

Negative symptoms can be usually seen with this, such as social withdrawal.

Acute (Reactive Schizophrenia)

A form of schizophrenia that can begin at any age; frequently occurs in response to a traumatic event.

They often have more positive symptoms that respond to drug therapy.

Biological Components of Schizophrenia

• over-synaptic pruning in puberty has a correlates with schizophrenia

• dopamine overactivity can be found in those with schizophrenia

• more activity in the amygdala

• a smaller thalamus (causes hallucinations because the brain is unable to filter some signals), prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus

Somatic Symptom Disorder (Somatoform Disorder)

A psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic/bodily form without apparent physical cause.

Conversion Disorder (Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder)

A disorder related to somatic symptom disorder in which anxiety converts to a physical symptom that has no reasonable neurological or medical basis.

Dissociative Disorders

It is a whole family of disorders where someone’s anxiety is so severe that parts of one’s personality separates. Their conscious awareness becomes separated from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings.

Examples of Dissociative Disorders: DID, Dissociative Amnesia, Dissociate Feud, Depersonalization Disorder

Illness Anxiety Disorder

A disorder related to somatic symptom disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease or disorder.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

• have at least 2 alters

• each alter has their own memories, abilities, …

• their personalities do not overlap

• the alter are aware of what you do and you can talk to them too

• this is a coping mechanism for major stress and anxiety triggers

Dissociative Amnesia

Happens when people experience trauma and then don’t remember it. This is only a disorder if it happens regularly. According to Freud, this is a defense mechanism of the brain.

Dissociative Feud

This is when someone becomes a different person and starts a whole new life, and they don’t remember who they are.

Depersonalization Disorder

When someone feels that they are not themselves. They see their body differently in size or shape and feel as if they are outside of their body, like they’re watching themselves through a documentary.

The Three Clusters of Personality Disorders

• anxiety

• eccentric or odd behaviors

• dramatic or impulsive behaviors

Personality Disorders

Inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

A personality disorder in which a person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members; may be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist.

These people are sometimes called sociopaths or psychopaths and may show lower emotional intelligence as there is less activity in the frontal lobe (they are also more likely to have substance abuse too because of this). The amygdala is also smaller as they feel less fear.

Anorexia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly underweight; sometimes accompanied by excessive exercise because they view themselves as fat.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person’s binge eating (usually of high-calorie foods) is followed by inappropriate weight-loss promoting behavior, such as vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise.

Binge-eating disorder

Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory behavior that marks bulimia nervosa.

Anxiety Disorders

Psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or dysfunctional anxiety-reducing behaviors.

Social Anxiety Disorders

Intense fear and avoidance of social situations.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

An anxiety disorder in which a person is unexplainably and continually tense and uneasy. This person is in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder in which a person experiences panic attacks, sudden episodes of intense dread, and fears the next episode’s unpredictable onset. A person might develop agoraphobia if their fear is intense enough.

Agoraphobia

Fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic.

This can be the result of panic disorder.

Phobias

An anxiety disorder in which a person is intensely and irrationally afraid of a specific object, activity, or situation.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

• can be a disorder itself or a symptom of another disorder (like schizophrenia)

• involves obsessive thoughts and a compulsion

• obsessive thoughts: can’t stop thinking about something which creates anxiety

• compulsion: the only thing that can stop the obsessive cycle and solves the anxiety of the obsession.

• Treatments:

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

  • brain surgery

• correlations: bad nutrition, LSD

Exposure Prevention

The extent that someone can tolerate a behavior (for OCD, this is assessing where the threshold is).

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

What you do to reduce the threshold (reward system, systematic lowering, etc).

This is used to treat OCD.

Hoarding Disorder

An OCD-related disorder which is characterized by cluttering one’s space with acquired possessions one can’t let go.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder

An OCD-related disorder which is characterized by preoccupation with perceived body defects.

Trichotillomania

An OCD-related disorder which is characterized by hair-pulling.

Excoriation Disorder

An OCD-related disorder which is characterized by excessive skin-picking.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, hypervigilance, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience.

Major Depressive Disorder

A disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or another medical condition, two or more weeks with five or more symptoms, at least one of which must be either depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure.

Symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder

• depressed mood most of the time

• dramatically reduced interest or enjoyment in most activities most of the time

• significant challenges regulating appetite and weight

• significant challenges regulating sleep

• physical agitation or lethargy

• feeling listless or with much less energy

• feeling worthless, or feeling unwarranted guilt

• problems in thinking, concentrating, or making decisions

• thinking repetitively of death and suicide

Persistant Depressive Disorder (Dysthymia)

Experience a mildly depressed mood more often than not for two years or more. They display two of the following symptoms:

• difficulty with decision making and concentration

• feeling hopeless

• poor self-esteem

• reduced energy levels

• problems regulating sleep

• problems regulating appetite

Bipolar Disorder

A disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.

The only psychiatric condition linked to working in a creative profession is bipolar disorder.

Mania

A hyperactive, wildly optimistic state in which dangerously poor judgement is common.

Neurotransmitters and Depression

A decrease in norepinephrine and serotonin is linked to depression.

Norepinephrine: alertness, attention, and stress response

Serotonin: mood regulation and sleep

Yerkes-Dodson Law

People perform best at a moderate level of arousal.

Theories of Motivation

• instinct

• drive-reduction

• arousal

• incentive

• cognitive dissonance

Instinct Theory

The idea that we operate in a fixed action pattter and we have unlearned genetically encoded motivation (instincts),

Drive-reduction theory

the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.

Arousal Theory

When our arousal level dips below normal, there is motivation to get arousal levels back up.

Incentive theory

People are motivated by a desire to obtain external incentives.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.

Order (bottom to top): Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem, Self-Actualization

Lateral hypothalamus (LH)

The “on” button for eating.

*Remember: If it is lesioned, people will not feel hungry and they will become little (LH).

Ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH)

The “off” button for eating.

*Remember: If it is lesioned, people will not feel full and they will become very huge (VMH)

Appetite hormone

Controls the levels of glucose and the hunger of people.

Includes: Insulin, Leptin, Orexin, Ghrelin, PYY

Leptin

Protein secreted by fat cells; when abundant, causes brain to increase metabolism and decrease hunger.

Orexin

Hunger-triggering hormone secreted by hypothalamus

Ghrelin

Hormones secreted by empty stomach; sends “I’m hungry” signals to the brain.

PYY

Digestive tract hormone; sends “I’m not hungry” signals to the brain.

Set Point

The point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.

Basil metabolic rate

The body’s resting rate of energy expenditure.

Sexual Response Cycle

The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson – excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Emotion

A response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience.

James-Lange theory

Our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.

Cannon-Bard theory (Thalamic Theory)

an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion.

Schachter-Singer theory (Schachter-Two Factor)

to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.

Cognitive-Appraisal Theory

Our emotional experience depends on our interpretation of the situation we are in (primary and secondary appraisal)

Primary Appraisal

Appraise a situation of whether or not you want to do something based on the consequences.

Secondary Appraisal

Deciding to do something based on the primary appraisal and your current emotion.

Valence

How pleasant something is.

Feel-Good, Do-Good Phenomenon

When we feel happy we are more willing to help others.

Well-being

Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being (for example, physical and economic indicators) to evaluate people’s quality of life.

Tend and Befriend

A behavior exhibited by some animals, including humans, when under threat. It refers to protection of offspring (tending) and seeking out the social group for mutual defense (befriending).

Adaptation-level Phenomenon

Our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.

Relative Deprivation

The perception that we are worse off relative to those with whom we compare ourselves.

Behavioral Medicine

An interdisciplinary field that integrates behavior and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease.

Health Psychology

A subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.

Facial Feedback

The effect of facial expressions on experienced emotions, as when a facial expression of anger or happiness intensifies feelings of anger or happiness.

Catharsis

Emotional release. The catharsis hypothesis maintains that “releasing’ aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.

Polygraph

A machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measure several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes).

William McDougal

Behavior is instinct, such as aggression.

Konrad Lorenz

Studied the critical attachment period and imprinting in birds.

Clark Hull

Drive reduction is a major cause of learning and behavior.

David McClelland

Studied achievement motivation in which he said some people are more motivated by achievement than others.

Abraham Maslow

Humanist who developed the Hierarchy of Needs.

Cannon-Washburn

Came up with the stomach contraction theory which states that we know we are hungry when our stomach contracts. In the notorious balloon study, Washburn trained himself to swallow a balloon, which was attached to a balloon, and then the balloon was inflated inside of his stomach. When the balloon was inflated, he did not feel hungry. Later this theory was opposed by the fact that people whose stomach was removed still felt hungry.

Y.C. Tsang

Removed rat stomachs, connected the esophagus to the small intestines, and the rats still felt hungry (and ate food).

Paul Ekman

Conducted the most extensive research on the facial expressions of basic emotions, said there are 6 basic emotions and a universal “facial language.”

Carol Izzard

Isolated 10 emotions. Most of them are present in infancy, except for contempt, shame, and guilt.

Walter Cannon

Proposed that the stress response (fast) was a fight-or-flight response marked by the outpouring of epinephrine and norepinephrine from the inner adrenal glands, increasing heart and respiration rates, mobilizing sugar and fat and dulling pain.

Thomas Holmes

Developed the stress scale, the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), of 43 stressful life events that can contribute to illness.

Alfred Kinsey

His sex studies in the 40s and 50s made the discussion of sex less taboo.

Attribution Theory

The theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition

Ex. Either a person is always angry or they are angry because they were just stung by a large jellyfish while swimming.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency for observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition

Ex. If someone cuts you off on the highway, you are more likely to say they are always a bad driver than to say they just forgot to check their blind spot that one time.