Terms I've Gotten Wrong Psych/Soc

Self-Efficacy

seeing yourself as being capable at a given skill or in a particular situation

Bottom-Up Processing

Object recognition by parallel processing and feature detection in response to sensory stimuli

Top-Down Processing

object recognition driven by memories and expectations

Weber’s Law

constant ratio between the change in stimulus magnitude needed to produce a JND and the original stimulus

Primary Drive Theory

posits that human behavior is motivated by innate, biological needs

Incentive Theory

behavior is motivated by the desire to pursue rewards and avoid punishment

Expectancy Value Theorem

People are motivated to pursue a goal if they believe they can succeed and they value the outcome

Attribution Substitution

phenomenon observed when individuals must make judgments that are complex but instead substitute a simpler solution or perception

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. It happens when your initial expectation, whether about yourself or someone else, causes you to change your behavior, which ultimately leads that expectation to manifest as reality

Knowing your going to bomb an interview so you exert high anxiety and lack of preparation which leads you to actually bomb the interview.

Just World Hypothesis

The cognitive bias that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people

Actor-Observer Bias

The tendency to make situational attributions about the self, but dispositional attributions about others, regarding similar behaviors

CT Scan

uses x-rays to detect:

Skull fractures

Intracranial bleeding

Bone fractures

Trauma

MRI

MRI uses magnetic fields instead of radiation.

Use MRI for:

Brain tumors

Multiple sclerosis

Torn ligaments

Spinal cord injury

fMRI

It shows which brain regions are active by measuring changes in blood oxygenation (the BOLD signal).

Use fMRI for:

Language studies

Memory research

Brain mapping before surgery

Cognitive neuroscience experiments

PET

ET measures cellular metabolism, usually using radioactive glucose (FDG).

Highly active tissues use more glucose.

Cancer detection

Cancer staging

Alzheimer's disease

Brain metabolism

Heart muscle viability

Short-Term Memory

Sensory Memory

• Iconic Memory→ Handles visual information, lasting for less than a second.

• Echoic Memory→ Handles auditory information, lasting for less than a second.

• Haptic Memory→ Briefly retains sensations related to touch and physical pressure.

Explicit Memory

involves information you have to consciously work to remember and recall

• Episodic Memory→ Stores specific personal events, experiences, and "episodes" tied to a particular time and place

• Semantic Memory→Stores general world knowledge, facts, concepts, and names

Implicit Memory

This type involves information or behaviors that you can recall without conscious effort

• Procedural Memory→ Responsible for knowing how to perform motor skills and tasks

• Priming→ The process where exposure to one stimulus influences how you respond to a subsequent stimulus

Proactive Psychology

a person acts in anticipation of future situations to drive change

Retroactive Interference

a memory phenomenon where newly learned information disrupts the recall of previously stored knowledge

Ex. new password causes you to forget your old password

Trace Decay Theory

a psychological hypothesis suggesting that memories naturally fade and erode over time due to the mere passage of time

Mental Set

the brain's tendency to approach a problem or situation using strategies that have worked in the past

Functional Fixedness

a cognitive bias that prevents people from seeing objects in ways other than their traditional or intended use

Formal Deviance

any behavior that violates rules, written laws, or official regulations

Ex. murder, robbery

Informal Deviance

actions or behaviors that violate unwritten social norms and expectations rather than formal laws

Critical Period

time between two years of age and puberty where exposure to a language is essential to eventual development of the language

Interposition

brain determines that an object is closer because it partially blocks or obscures another object

Proactive Interference

is when old memories disrupt the creation of new ones

Accommodation

Modifying or creating a schema because new information doesn't fit the old one.

Universal Emotions

happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise, and contempt

Place Theory of Hearing

Different sound frequencies are detected because they vibrate different places along the cochlea (basilar membrane).

Anomie

a social condition of "normlessness" marked by the lack of social or moral standards, a breakdown of rules, and personal alienation

Types of Studies

cohort study→ observational study following a group over time to see affects of exposure

cross-sectional→ data collected at one point in time

case-control→ two groups where one is the specific outcome or disease (case part) and one without (control part). They then look retrospectively at how they were obtained

Agranulocytes

Lymphocytes → B cells, T cells, NK cells

Monocytes → become macrophages/dendritic cells in tissues

Granulocytes

NEB

Neutrophils → phagocytose bacteria, first responders

Eosinophils → parasites + allergies

Basophils → histamine + allergic/inflammatory responses

positive vs negative sense RNA

+sense RNA can act directly as mRNA and be translated while -RNA needs to be transcribed first.