Psychology 1 - Midterm 2 (UC Berkeley)

Herman Ebbinghaus

performed tests on himself (primarily) and others involving nonsense syllables, truly scientific/ systematic approach to memory, derived human memory capacity (7) and demonstrated malleability of human mind

free recall test

remembering things "out of the blue," free response, no clues or hints

cued recall test

answering questions with hints, for example recalling states from memory with the help of a blank map

recognition test

identifying the correct answer, multiple choice tests, correct answer is shown amongst other wrong answers

Savings test

tests one's ability to relearn something, relearning something is more efficient than learning all new material

implicit memory test

test linked to bodily reactions, classically conditioned actions, physical skills; describes the ability of people with amnesia to improve upon their drawing of a star through a mirror, despite having not remembered practicing it before, or the ability to ride a bike in adulthood

encoding

the process of converting info into a form that will allow us to retrieve that information later, sensory memory to short term memory

storage

the process of retaining critical info for later use, short term memory to long term memory

retrieval

the process of accessing the stored information that we have encoded in order to use it, long term memory to short term memory

George Sperling

conducted study of sensory memory involving flash of 12 letters linked to a tone

sensory memory

the hypothetical memory composed of input from external events, infinite capacity and only lasts for fractions of seconds

short term memory (STM)

information deemed relevant, novel, or important from sensory memory, capacity of 7 (give or take 2), lasts 10 seconds to a few days, either forgotten or stored in LTM

long term memory (LTM)

the short term memory that is important yet susceptible to distortions and complete fabrications, can be very complex

procedural memory

mental and behavior actions known

declarative memory

explicit memory that is able to be consciously recalled (includes episodic and semantic memory)

serial order (position) effect

retention of information/ items is easier or more difficult due to when it is presented with respect to other information/ items

primacy effect

the ability to remember information at the beginning more easily; the importance of first impressions

recency effect

the ability to remember information at the end more easily

interference

information can be lost or less accurate due to an overlap of similar information

proactive interference

new material is lost (not easily stored) due to old material (difficulty with learning new names of classmates)

retroactive interference

old material is lost/ forgotten due to new material (forgetting old locker combinations)

reconstruction effect

memory can improve when there are ways to tie topics together but also leads to sometimes including inaccurate information into our memories in an attempt to 'fill in the gaps' or 'fix the errors'

hindsight bias

altering our memory of our past thinking

levels of processing

successful conversion of information from STM to LTM is highly impacted by your approach to make sense of the information

-shallow: narrow or no connections, rote learning, no assessment or attempts to explain

-deep: more assessment, attempt to explain, sustained by taking breaks to increase the number of primacy and recency effects

encoding specificity

our ability to recall something can be increased if we're asked to recall something related first

-mood dependency

-language studies

-situation dependency

-state dependency

Elizabeth Loftus

conducted a mall study of recalling getting lost in a mall when the event never occurred to test the reconstruction effect

mnemonic device

encoding/ storage techniques that aid in the process of information retrieval

-acronyms

-chunking

-method of loci

intelligence

the ability to solve problems and adapt and learn from the environment; aspects include interpersonal skills, memory capacity, vocabulary usage, novelty in ideas

Spearman's psycho geometric approach

one specific overall level of intelligence; could be the result of outside factors such as childhood health

Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence

three main levels of intelligence that did not overlap include: componential, experiential, contextual and in reality tend to correlate with each other

Howard Gardner

Harvard psychologists who developed a theory of multiple intelligences that includes near 9 forms of intelligences

Salvoy and Mayer

developed theory of emotional intelligence (EQ)

fluid intelligence

intelligence based on the ability to learn across all areas of interest (street smarts; cognitive ability)

crystallized intelligence

intelligence that is obtained through experience over the lifespan (book smarts; factual knowledge)

Alfred Binet

one of the first psychologists to scientifically explore intelligence who worker for the French Ministry of Education; goal of developing better remedial education programs

Theodore Simon

student of Alfred Binet who helped him formulate a test

Binet-Simon test

test that examined basic mental skills such as: sentence generation, naming body parts, remembering number strings in order to compare children of different ages in how well they performed both the basic and more complex skills

mental age

the age that the child's responses were most indicative of

chronological age

the actual age of a child

Stanford-Binet IQ test

a test designed to measure multiple facets of intelligence across a large range of ages; measured more topics: fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual spatial reasoning, and working memory; originally said to measure a person's inborn ability to learn to promote eugenic

Lewis Terman

psychologist who designed the Stanford-Binet test

intelligence quotient (IQ)

introduced by the Stanford-Binet test which signified one's level of intelligence by divided their mental age over their chronological age and multiplying by 100

David Wechsler

person who developed the Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and the Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), currently used abundantly; included verbal skills and performance based skills

heritability

the proportion of a characteristic that can be attributed to the genetic makeup of parents; an estimate of the variance within a psychological concept that is due to genetics

nature

the amount of a characteristic that can be attributed to our biology (high heritability)

nurture

the amount of a characteristic that can be attributed to our environment (low heritability)

the Flynn effect

worldwide increase in intelligence over the past few decades (slowing/ reversing of this effect)

developmental psychology

belief that human beings are constantly changing throughout life not just becoming smarter or more experienced and that development follows a pattern that is often times altered; snowflake analogy;

apgar scale

measurement taken at birth which identifies physical and mental development as well as the ability to handle stress; horrible visual abilities, great hearing, okay taste, very poor motor and sensory system development (exception of reflexes)

puberty

the process of physical and mental change from childhood to adulthood; increase in hormones in the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland that are sent to the gonads which produce hormones (estrogen in women, testosterone in men)

precocious puberty

the very early onset and rapid progression of puberty more often in girls; negative impacts of riskier behaviors, more emotional and social problems, poorer school performance, life choices similar to older peers, more time spent with older peers, emotional problems, more drug and alcohol problems

Thomas Bouchard

conducted the Minnesota Twin Registry focused entirely on monozygotic (identical) twins; "The Jims" who had a multitude of uncanny similarities, yet revealed a problem with this study as these similarities where drawn out of a few answers amongst 100s of questions

Gerald McClearn

research on aging in twins at Penn State

chromosomes

tiny connected protein strands of genetic material; humans contain 46 of them (23 pairs)

human genome

the complete set of genes contained within each of us

genes

determine how your cells are going to multiply and divide, some determine a lot of who you are and how you're going to develop

Jean Piaget

the leader in cognitive development research, began research by observing his own children; his theory of development says that children go through different, set stages of development as they progress toward adulthood; distinct stages cannot be sped up through adulthood help and that children are always adapting to their environment through demands put on them

schema

a concept or mental framework that organizes and interprets information in the world

equilibrium

a cognitive state of mind that comes from harmony between a child's environment and present schema

disequilibrium

a cognitive state of mind caused when new information contradicts current schemas

assimilation

interpreting one's new experience in terms of one's existing schema

accommodation

adapting one's current schemas to incorporate new information

equilibration

shifting from one frame of mind to the next; children begin to alter their schema until the conflicts within their current schema subside after multiple exposures

sensorimotor stage

Piaget's stage that focused on learning different outcomes through the senses and then learning the ways to increase the frequency of desirable outcomes; challenges with object permanence and sense of self; from birth till age 2

preoperational stage

Piaget's stage that includes overcoming egocentrism, learning pretend play, overcoming animism, learning symbolism, and the challenge of conservation; from ages 2 to 7

concrete operational stage

Piaget's stage that includes metacognition, ability to do operations (reverse actions), and understand analogies; from ages 7 to 11

formal operational stage

Piaget's stage that includes abstract reasoning and adolescent egocentrism; skepticism about this stage occurring for everyone, if people completely master this stage, and if everyone experiences it in the same way; from ages 11 to 15

abstract reasoning

the ability to focus on the ideal and hypothetical; easy recognition of logic problems, move toward hypothetical-deductive reasoning

adolescent egocentrism

a heightened sense of self-consciousness that includes personal fables (perception of being unique and invincible) and an imaginary audience (perception of being the constant center of attention)

David Elkind

psychologist who introduced the idea of adolescent egocentrism

Lev Vygotsky

psychologist who created the idea that cognitive development occurs through gradual and continual growth, not quick shifts; agreed with Piaget about the notion that a developmental process in cognitive skills does take place, yet argued against Piaget's idea that this cognitive development is set, and cannot be accelerated; formed his own theory of development

zone of proximal development

areas where a learner can accomplish a cognitive task with guidance; below this includes what one can do, and above this includes what one cannot do

scaffolding

the process of teaching slightly above the current level of cognitive development in order to help the learner better understand a cognitive concept

social psychology

field that examines the interaction between the social environment and the human mind/ behavior from a number of different angles

self-fulfilling prophecies

an effect that occurs when someone's expectations change his/her behavior as to increase the probability of the predicted event; example of the funny friend; phone and attractiveness study

Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid

psychologists who conducted the phone conversation study

stereotype

a generalized belief or expectation about a group of people that we form; can be based on both negative and positive concepts; can be beneficial and necessary when accurate

prejudice

an attitude formed toward a member of a group solely because he/she is a member of that group

discrimination

unfair treatment of a member of a group, solely because he/she is a member of a group; can be learned in a very short period of time and based on accurate and inaccurate stereotypes

Jane Elliot

eye of the storm; 3rd grade teacher who examined racism in her students and tried to shift their view of prejudice and discrimination

attributions

the processes that we use in order to assign causes to behavior

internal attributions

explaining the behaviors based on the internal characteristics of the person in question

external attributions

explaining behaviors based on the situation and surrounding environment

fundamental attribution error

our tendency to attribute behaviors to internal attributions when explaining the behaviors of others

actor-observer effect

the tendency to make internal attributions for the actions of others, while making external attributions for our own actions

Walter Cronkite

media member in the 70s used as an example in studies of the fundamental attribution error and the actor-observer effect

self-serving attribution bias

the tendency to attribute personal failures to the situation, while attributing personal successes to ourselves; i.e. doing well on a test and reasoning that it was due to your own intelligence and studying, yet when doing bad on a test, you blame your teacher

conformity

maintaining or changing one's behavior due to the real or imagined influence of others; a result of the fact that there is no true appropriate behavior or responses in most social situations, so we look to the group or leaders to act

Muzafer Sherif

psychologist who observed and studied the auto kinetic effect in his "moving light bulb" study; goal of studying conformity

Solomon Asch

psychologist who studied conformity through his "line study" experiment

norms

social standards of behavior and thought that are set by a group

public compliance

conforming to other people's behavior publicly without necessarily believing in what the other people are doing or saying

normative social influence

the impact that other people can have on us because of our desire to be liked and accepted by them

private acceptance

conforming to other people's behaviors out of a genuine belief that what they are doing or saying is right

Kitty Genovese

person who was stabbed and murdered in NY, dying as a result of the bystander effect

the bystander effect

our decrease in likelihood of helping when with others

pluralistic ignorance

assuming that others in the group know more than you do; demonstrated in the "smoke in the room" study

diffusion of responsibility

we tend to feel less of a responsibility to act when others are nearby something is certainly wrong; demonstrated by the "seizure over a phone call" experiment

heuristics

rules of thumb; characteristics: employ shortcuts, based on experience, prone to human error quick

representative heuristic

assumption that an item that resembles members of some category is probably also in that category; causes the base-rate fallacy