AP Psych - Semester 1 Exam Review

Community psychologists

Focuses on the different influences on a community and how they may affect the community

Key feature of psychodynamic perspective is..

How behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts

Mary Calkins

First female psychology graduate and APA president

The Cognitive Revolution involved a renewed interest in...

Internal processes driving human behavior

Placebo

Something that is designed to look like the tested drug, but has no effect

Identifying the mean

(total of all values)/(number of values)

Why is replication important to science?

Boosts confidence in results

Operational definition

The description of something in terms of the operations by which it can be observed and measured

Psychiatrist

Diagnoses and prescribes medicine for mental illnesses

Pituitary gland

Also called "master gland", controls functions such as growth and metabolism through hormones

Introspection

Looking within oneself

Behaviorists dismiss the value of...

reference to mental processes

Contemporary psychology is best defined as...

A broad field within psychology that utilizes modern techniques in research and studies.

Psychologists use experiments to distinguish between...

Cause and effect

Wording effects on experiments

Can change the way someone views something

Multiple levels of analysis

Three main levels of analysis - biological, psychological, and social cultural

Behavioral perspective

A focus on observable behavior without reference to mental processes

Standard deviation on a normal bell curve

About 68% of people are one standard deviation away from mean, 95% are two deviations away

Psychoanalyst focus vs humanist focus

Psychoanalysts focus on how behavior springs from unconscious behavior and drives, humanistic focuses on how we meet our needs for love and acceptance, and achieve self fulfillment

Which part of the brain relies on visual information in coordinating our voluntary movements?

Cerebellum

Parietal lobe

Lobe of the brain that processes sensory information

Synapse

The gap between neurotransmitters where information is transferred

Alcohol in small vs large doses

In small doses, it increases heart rate, aggression, and impulsivity. In large doses, causes sluggishness, disorientation, and slowed heart rate.

NREM-1 sleep

A brief period of sleep where breathing slows, irregular brain waves, may experience sensations of floating or falling

Why is it dangerous to combine alcohol and a sleeping pill?

Both will depress the nervous system and can lead to death

Brainstem

The oldest part of the brain that controls survival functions like breathing and heartbeat

Impact of smoking marijuana

Relaxes, impairs motor skills and reaction time, and disrupts memory formation and recall

Manifest content

The actual content of a dream

Light wave amplitude determines..

Brightness

Motor cortex

Part of the frontal lobe that controls voluntary movement

MRI

Magnetic resonance imaging, non invasive way to produce images of brain/ other organs

Everything that is _____ is also _____

Psychological; biological

Compared to a twenty year olds.. what is a sixty year old's sleep like?

Older adults are morning people, teens and young adults are night people

Sleep talking may occur in what stage of sleep?

NREM-3

Franz Gall

Inventor of phrenology, an inaccurate pseudoscience

REM-2 sleep

Around 20min, characterized by sleep spindles, and could still be awakened with little difficulty

Natural selection

Traits that contribute to reproduction and survival are more likely to be passed on

Endocrine system

A set of glands that communicate across the body through hormones

Retinal disparity

Binocular cue that allows us to perceive depth

Change blindness

When change in a situation is unnoticed

Receptor cells for kinethesis are located in...

Muscles, tendons, and joints

Pressure spots

Sensitive spots on body that respond to pressure stimuli

John Locke's belief on how people perceive the world

Empiricism theory that we acquire ideas through our experience of the world

Visual Cliff

An experiment done that showed that depth is at least partly innate

Movement of hair cells along basilar membrane

Bending movement triggers the hair cells to fire a neural impulse, which means that a sound wave has been detected

Color constancy

Our ability to recognize colors as consistent despite varying lighting/environments

Sensation

Process of detecting physical stimuli and converting into neural signals

Retina

Where the rods and cones are located, inner part of the eye

Frequency theory explains _____ and place theory explains _____

Low pitches; high pitches

Humans experience the longest visible electromagnetic waves

The longest waves as blue-violet and shortest as red

Sensory interaction

How our senses work together and influence each other

Olfactory receptor cells

Cells that detect smell

Perceptual set

A readiness to perceive certain objects or events above others

Gate control theory

Pain signals can be sent up the spinal cord to the brain, 'gates' either block pain or allow it to be sensed

Shape constancy

Ability to see shapes as constant despite distortion

Why is it hard to locate sound played directly above us?

It reaches both ears at the same time

The constant quivering of our eyes allows us to

Minimize sensory adaptation

Operant conditioning

Learning that is based around a response (either punishment or reinforcement) to behavior

Insight learning

Immediate and clear understanding without trial and error

Generalization

Tendency to respond to stimuli that resemble the original conditioned stimulus

Classical conditioning involves a learned association between...

A previously neutral stimulus (now conditioned) is now associated with a response

Negative reinforcer

Increasing a behavior by removing a negative stimulus

Internal locus of control

The belief that you have control over your own life

Positive punishment

Decreasing a behavior by adding an adverse stimulus

Why did BF Skinner want teaching machines?

It gave immediate feedback, and each student could progress at their own rate

Latent learning

The subconscious retention of information without reinforcement or motivation

Shaping

Guiding an organism closer to the desired final behavior

Extinction

Fading of a behavior that was previously learned by association of another event

Prosocial behavior

Positive, constructive, or helpful behavior

Observational learning

Learning things by imitating others

Mirror neurons

Allow us to imitate people or things

External locus of control

Belief that you don't have control over your fate (often seen in religions)

Negative reinforcement and punishment

NR: taking away a negative stimulus, NP: taking away a positive stimulus

The most crucial ingredient in learning is...

Experience

Associative learning

Learning to associate one stimulus with another

According to BF Skinner, learning is controlled by..

punishment and reward (think of law of effect)

Classical conditioning

An unconditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus, leading to a conditioned response

Spacing effect

We remember information better when we rehearse it over time

Imagery

Mental representations

Chunking

Organizing items into a familiar, manageable unit

Semantic encoding

Processing the meaning of information by associating it with what we already know

Passing an electric current through the brain during electroconvulsive therapy is most likely to disrupt __________ memory

Short term

An adult easily relearning a topic he learned as a child displays..

Relearning

Mood congruent memory

We're more likely to remember things that we initially recorded when we are in the same mood

Proactive interference

Old learning messes with new learning

Wording effects impact on memory

Also known as framing, can change how we remember something

Source amnesia

Inability to remember where/when a memory came from

Misinformation effect

Initial learning of misinformation can effect later memories

Prototype

A mental representation of a typical example of a thing

Confirmation bias

We often look for evidence that supports our beliefs, not the other way around

Mental set

The tendency to approach something one way, a way that has often been successful in the past, even if it is no longer successful

Overconfidence

The tendency to overestimate our beliefs and judgements

Framing

An individual's knowledge is affected by how the information is delivered to them

Intuition

An effortless, automatic feeling or thought

Language

Spoken, written, or signed words and the ways they are combined to communicate meaning constitute...

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound

Whorf's linguistic determinism hypothesis emphasizes that

Our language determines the way we think

Calculating someone's IQ score when given their age and their mental age

(mental age/ chronological age), x 100

Mental age

A chronological age that corresponds to someone's mental abilities/intelligence

Punishment

Actions taken to decrease behavior, can either be positive or negative