Psychology 1010 Lecture Notes

Flashcards based on lecture notes for Psychology 1010, covering topics from the definition of psychology to brain lobes.

What is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes?

Psychology

What is defined as any movement or posture produced by an individual that influences its relationship to the environment?

Behavior

What are things such as thinking and feeling that can’t be directly observed?

Mental Processes

What is the idea that at birth, human minds are a blank slate?

Tabula Rasa

What is the idea that certain smaller elements combine to create the entire mental experience?

Structuralism

Who established the first psychology laboratory in Germany in the late 1800s?

Wilhelm Wundt

What is it when individuals describe their mental processes?

Introspection

What is the idea that the whole of perception is greater than the sum of the parts?

Gestalt Psychology

Who is associated with Gestalt Psychology?

Max Wertheimer

What asks how does a behavior assist an organism with survival and/or reproduction in its environment?

Functionalism

Functionalism is based on whose idea of evolution through natural selection?

Darwin

What states that behavior is the result of unconscious and often conflicting desires (psychodynamics)?

Psychoanalysis

Who is associated with psychoanalysis?

Sigmund Freud

What is the idea that since the mind can’t be directly observed, only observable behavior should be studied and quantified?

Behaviorism

Who are associated with behaviorism?

John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, and Edward Thorndike

What emphasizes free will of people to choose their own behavior and states that people are innately good until corrupted by society?

Humanism

Who are associated with humanism?

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

What examines the physical causes for behavior including genetics, hormones, brain structures, physiology etc.?

Biological Psychology

What takes the history of the species into consideration when examining behavior and Asks how a behavior (currently or in the past) assists with survival/reproduction?

Evolutionary Psychology

What is the modern study of mental processes such as problem solving or memory?

Cognitive Psychology

Who is associated with cognitive psychology?

Ulric Neisser

These are modern approaches to psychology: how behavior changes across the lifespan, how other people affect thoughts and behavior, studies the varieties of behavior instead of averages, and identifying and treating abnormal behavior

Developmental psychology, social psychology, personality psychology, clinical psychology

What assumes that the universe works in predictable ways that can be measured with systematic observation?

Science

What project set out to replicate findings of previously published articles in psychology?

Replicability Project

These are the goals of psychology: observe and document behavior, anticipate behavior based on previous observations, determine the causes of behavior, and if causes are known, we can attempt to change or control behavior.

Describe behavior, predict behavior, explain behavior, and control Behavior

A statement regarding the reason for the observed phenomenon that must be testable, and falsifiable is?

Hypothesis

What is it called if a single observation could show it to be false?

Falsifiable

What is it called if it can be investigated using currently available scientific methods?

Testable

the process where others in the scientific community scrutinize papers before they are published to make sure methods are appropriate, interpretations reasonable etc.

Peer review

What is the examination of a particular individual in detail because only one or a few subjects of a particular type are available?

Case study

What are questionnaires that seek to gather information about attitudes or opinions?

Surveys

In surveys, researchers need to make sure they have a ___, or a group of people that reasonably approximates the population being studied.

Representative Sample

What is gathering data about a large group and looking for statistically significant trends?

Correlational Studies

What is a value between -1 and 1 that indicates the strength of the correlation between 2 variables?

Correlation coefficient

What is when a researcher manipulates one or more variables and measures the effects of manipulation and all other variables are held constant?

Experiment

What is a variable that the researcher manipulates?

Independent variable

What is a variable that is potentially changed as the result of experimental manipulation?

Dependent variable

What is a pill containing no active ingredients?

Placebo

What is it called when experimenters don’t know (until the experiment is over) whether they were administering the active drug or a placebo and Subjects don’t know whether they were taking an active drug or placebo?

Double-blind

What is it if an experimenter expects differences between groups, s/he might treat the groups differently, leading to different outcomes?

Experimenter bias

What the group of subjects that receives the experimental treatment (new drug)?

Experimental group

What is the group of subjects that does not receive the experimental treatment (placebo)?

Control group

experiments: different subjects appear in groups that differ with respect to the independent variable

Between subjects

experiments: the same subjects are measured before and after a treatment, and the measurements are compared.

Within subjects

What is any variable other than the independent variable that might affect the outcome (dependent variable) of an experiment?

Confounding variable

What reduces bias and potential confounding variables in between subject experiments?

Random assignment of subjects to treatment groups

A baseline measurement is needed in what type of experiments?

Within subjects experiments

What do we need to precisely define what we mean by a particular behavior in order to measure it?

Operational definition

What is a statistical analysis of a large number of studies to get a better sense of a phenomenon than just a single study could provide?

Meta-analysis

___ experiments have artificial environments, but most variables are closely controlled. whereas in ______ (naturalistic) experiments subjects are studying in their natural environment with more authentic environments, but many variables can not be controlled.

Laboratory, field

What is observing individuals in their natural environment in order to make correlations/predictions?

Naturalistic observations

What is all of the people that a scientist is interested in for a particular study?

Population

What is a subset of the population of interest?

Sample

What is a portion of the population of interest that reflects the population as a whole. Often achieved with a random sample to avoid sample bias?

Representative Sample

What is the study of different groups of people of different ages?

Cross-sectional study

What is the historical factors that influence an age group might be responsible for the outcome of a study, not actual differences?

Cohort effects

What is it called to study the same group at different points in time?

Longitudinal study

If the experiment measured what it was supposed to measure is called what?

Validity

The extent to which a study actually measures the concept it is supposed to measure is called?

Construct validity

What measures how consistent a measurement is?

Reliability

What is how likely it is that 2 people take the same measurement and get the same outcome?

Inter-rater reliability

Statistics help us to understand patterns in data, but can’t tell us if the patterns or differences between groups are meaningful.

Descriptive

What looks at how many subjects belong in each category?

Frequency Distribution

What is average of scores (add all scores up, divide by number of subjects). Good for when data are regularly distributed (no extreme scores, or outliers)?

Mean

What means most scores occur at the mean, with symmetrical distributions on either side?

Normal Distribution

What is the score that appears in the middle. I.e. half the scores are higher, half are lower (if there are an even number of data points, you average the 2 in the middle to get the median)?

Median

What is the score that appears most frequently and Can be useful if there is more than one peak in the data (bimodal distribution).?

Mode

What is a measure of variability that tells us how tightly clustered the scores are around the mean?

Standard deviation

After you collect data, how do you know that any differences you see between groups are meaningful? _!

Significance

_ means there is only a small chance that the differences you see were the result of chance.

Statistical Significance

What is a p ≤ ___ is a standard level of significance?

0.05

What is the complement of genes a particular organism has?

Genotype

What is segment of DNA in a particular location that codes for a functional molecule?

Gene

What is all cells contain an individual’s entire complement of DNA, but only certain genes are expressed at a given time (or at all)?

Gene expression

What are the observable characteristics of an organism?

Phenotype

What are the different versions of a gene?

Alleles

What is having 2 copies of the same allele for a given gene?

Homozygous

What means having 2 different copies of an allele for a given gene?

Heterozygous

If an allele is _, it will be expressed, regardless of the other allele for that gene.

Dominant

If an allele is _, it will only be expressed if the other allele is also recessive.

Recessive

What are the One pair of chromosomes that contain different genes, and they look very different?

Sex Chromosomes

__ – when a male inherits a deleterious (i.e. bad) recessive allele on his (only) X chromosome, it will be expressed. Examples: baldness, red-green colorblindness, hemophilia

Sex-linked trait

An individual’s phenotype is always the result of the ___ between his or her particular genetic makeup, and his or her particular environment.

Interaction

What means “above the genome” – the epigenome controls the expression of particular genes without changing the underlying DNA sequence. Changes can be handed down to future generations!

Epigenetics

Examining the influence of biology (e.g. neural structures, hormones, etc.) on behavior, and behavior on biology is?

Biological Psychology

What are Neurons (nerve cells)?

Transmit and process information in the nervous system.

What contains the cell body of the neuron that contains the nucleus?

Soma

What is a branched structure attached to the soma that receives information from the terminal buttons of other neurons?

Dendrites

What is a thin, cylindrical structure that conveys information from the soma to it’s terminal buttons?

Axon

What is a bud at the end of an axon that sends information to another neuron?

Terminal buttons

What are Non-neuronal cells that provide support and assist with functions in central nervous system neurons?

Glial cells

These glial cells form a “mesh” in which neurons are suspended and Assist with passage of chemicals from blood to neurons.

Astrocytes

Which glial cells send out extensions that wrap axons with myelin (fatty insulating substance)?

Oligodendrocytes

What is the outer covering of the cerebrum consisting mostly of glia, cell bodies, and dendrites (grayish hue – gray matter).?

Cortex

What is an electrical impulse that travels down the axon of a neuron, and leads to chemical communication with another neuron?

Action potential

What is a junction between the terminal button of one neuron and the membrane of another neuron which Neural communication takes place across this gap?

Synapse

The inside of an axon is negatively charged compared with the outside. This difference in electrical charge is called the _ potential or potential.

Resting, membrane

If the difference in charge between inside and outside the cell is reduced, the membrane becomes .

Depolarized

When threshold is reached, (Na+) channels in the cell membrane open, allowing sodium into the cell

Sodium

Potassium (K+) channels then open, allowing potassium to __ the cell.

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