PSYC 100 FINAL EXAM UDEL

population

entire group of interest

naturalistic observation

researcher watches and describes

Participant Overt

Researcher is participating and patients know

Participant Covert

Researcher is participating and patients do not know

Non-Participant Overt

Researcher is not participating and patients know

Non-Participant Covert

Researcher is not participating and patients do not know

Correlational study

study the strength and direction of two continuous variables

Positive correlation

scores will go hand in hand with one another.

Negative correlation

inverse relationships between results of variables.

Confounding variable

Not a variable of interest but it could affect the dependent variable.

Biological Psychology

Concerned with how your biology influences your behavior.

Dendrites

receive messages from other cells

Axon

Sends messages away to other cells or muscles

Myelin Sheath

improves efficiency of neural impulses (wraps around the axon)

Agonist

a chemical or a drug that binds to receptors in the brain and causes a reaction.

Antagonist

chemical that binds to neurotransmitter but doesn't get it to fire. Can block them from doing their functions.

Dopamine

influences movement, learning, attention, and emotion

Serotonin

Affects mood, hunger, sleep, and arousal

Endorphins

Natural opiate-like neurotransmitters linked to pain control and pleasure.

Nerves

Bundles of axons that form cables & connect the CNS with muscles, glands and sense organs.

Autonomic nervous system

Controls things that happen automatically. Ex. liver

somatic nervous system

Controls voluntary movements of skeletal muscle

Hypothalamus

controls pituitary glands, monitors things and sends instructions to pituitary gland to secrete hormones

Pituitary

Considered "master gland." Gives instructions to other glands.

Adrenal glands

Secretes epinephrine and norepinephrine

epinephrine

adrenaline, constricts blood vessels and increases heart rate and blood pressure and blood sugar

norepinephrine

noradrenaline, opens up blood vessels to skeleton and liver

Brainstem

oldest & innermost brain region; crossover point.

Pons

controls balance and spatial navigation

Reticular formation

controls activity and rest

Thalamus

controls all the senses except smell

Cerebellum

nonverbal learning and memory; time judgement, emotion regulation, sound and texture discrimination; voluntary movement

Hippocampus

responsible for the formation of memories

Cerebral cortex

Outermost layer; interconnected neural cells; control and information-processing center

Motor cortex

contains things that you can control or move voluntarily

Sensory cortex

Contains some parts that you can't move on its own

Cerebral Cortex

Association area - areas involved in higher mental functioning (e.g. learning, remembering, thinking, speaking)

Consciousness

our awareness of ourselves and our environment

Cognitive process

Perception, thinking, language, memory

Dual processing

We evaluate our environment both consciously and unconsciously

Blindsight

respond to visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it

Selective attention

focus conscious awareness on a particular stimulus

Cocktail party effect

can ignore all other incoming information, but become aware of our own name

Threshold

Minimum amount of stimulation you need in order to notice something

Inattentional Blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

Change Blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment

Developmental Psychology

examine physical, cognitive, and social development across lifespan.

Infantile amnesia

Forgetting memories from before 3rd birthday

Puberty

Period of sexual maturation; become capable of reproduction

Primary sex characteristics

Body structures that make sexual reproduction possible

Secondary sex characteristics

non-reproductive sexual characteristics.

Assimilation

Interpreting new ideas in terms of different schemas

Accommodation

Adapting current schemas to incorporate new information

Concrete operational

Capable of thinking logically.

infancy and childhood

Assimilation and Accommodation

2 to 7 Years

Egocentrism starts to fade away

7 to 11 Years

Concrete operational, Concrete analogies form

12 + Years

Abstract reasoning

Sensation

The experience of having your sense organs stimulated

Perception

interpreting the sensations to recognize meaningful objects and events

Ambiguous Images

Images with multiple interpretations

Filling-in

(pattern completion phenomena) perception that goes beyond sensation

Prosopagnosia

inability to recognize faces

Bottom-up Processing

analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information

Top-down Processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations

Psychophysics

study of relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience of them

Absolute Threshold

minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time

Difference Threshold

Minimum difference a person can detect between 2 stimuli half the time.

Weber's Law

To be detectable the stimuli must vary by constant proportion - not constant amount.

Sensory Adaptation

diminishing sensitivity to an unchanging stimulus.

Transduction

transforming one form of energy to another

Pupil

Black dot in your eye

Iris

The colored part of your eye, regulates the amount of light that comes in.

Cornea

Clear outer coating on the eye. (Keeps out dirt & stuff. Also focuses the light.)

Lens

Responsible for focusing the light.

Retina

Everything in your peripheral view (where vision sensory neurons are located)

Fovea

the central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster

Optic Nerve

Information for photoreceptors leaves the eye through here

Nearsightedness

Visual image is focused in front of the retina

Farsightedness

Visual image is focused behind the retina

Cones

For seeing things with color & clarity under bright illumination

Rods

For seeing large overall shapes

Optic nerve

Transmits information to the visual cortex in the brain.

Optic chiasm

point at which optic nerve fibers cross in the brain

Feature detectors

Nerve cells that respond to specific features of the stimulus

Supercell clusters

Receives informations from feature detectors & responds to more complex patterns

Perceptual Constancy

Perceiving objects as unchanging even as the image on the retina changes

Shape and Size Constancy

The object in the real world doesn't change shape even though it does on your retina.

Lightness Constancy

Objects seem to have the constant lightness even when illumination varies

Color constancy

Perceiving familiar objects as having constant color when changing illumination alters reflected wavelengths

Innate

Things that you are born with

Learned

Relatively permanent behaviour change due to experience

Associationism

a learned connection between two ideas or events

Contiguity

nearness in time and space

Frequency

How often something occurs

Similarity

How alike things are

Association

Developing and understanding that certain events occur together

Classical conditioning

Type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli & anticipate events.

Discrimination

Learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other irrelevant stimuli

Operant conditioning

Strengthening or diminishing voluntary behaviors with consequences