Psychology Exam Review: History, Methods, and Neuroscience

Vocabulary flashcards covering core terms, key figures, research methodologies, genetics, and neurobiology principles from the psychology lecture transcript.

Nativist

A philosopher or theorist who believes that certain skills, abilities, or knowledge are hardwired into the brain at birth rather than acquired through experience.

Empiricist

A researcher or philosopher who holds that all knowledge originates in sensory experience and relies on direct, observable data collection.

Rationalist

A philosopher who holds that truth is best discovered through logic, reason, and intellectual deduction rather than sensory observation.

Deductionist

A practitioner of top-down reasoning who derives specific conclusions from general premises or logical principles.

Inductionist

A practitioner of bottom-up reasoning who gathers specific empirical examples to formulate probable conclusions or general laws.

Monist

A philosopher who believes that mind and body (or reality) consist of a single physical or unified substance.

Dualist

A philosopher who believes that the physical world and the ideal or abstract world (mind/soul and body) are two fundamentally distinct realms.

Tabula Rasa

The philosophical concept of the mind as a 'blank slate' prior to experience, stating that humans are born without innate mental content.

Discourse (Discursive Method)

A teaching or learning method based on structured dialogue where an instructor asks questions to lead students to discover an answer.

Socrates

An Ancient Greek philosopher (429 BCE) who advocated universal truths, nativism, monism, and the discursive method of questioning.

Plato

An Ancient Greek philosopher (387 BCE) who was a rationalist, deductionist, nativist, and dualist, known for proposing the theory of ideal abstract forms.

Aristotle

An Ancient Greek philosopher (335 BCE) who was an empiricist, inductionist, non-nativist, and dualist, emphasizing mental representations and associationism.

René Descartes

A 17th-century French rationalist, nativist, and dualist who contributed to psychology through early concepts of reflexes, emotions, self-consciousness, and mind-body interaction.

John Locke

An English empiricist, non-nativist, and dualist who proposed the concept of tabula rasa and argued that identity is determined by memories (psychological continuity).

Benjamin Rush

An 18th-century physician and American Revolutionary Founder who published research comparing Black and White clinical patients to demonstrate a lack of evidence for racial differences in health.

Drapetomania

A historical, pseudoscientific psychological condition posited by S. A. Cartwright in 1851 that claimed to cause enslaved people to want to escape.

Wilhelm Wundt

The founder of the first modern formal psychology laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany.

Edward Titchener

A structuralist psychologist who sought to analyze conscious experience by breaking the mind down into its structural components.

Determinism

The philosophical assumption that all behavior is governed by prior causes and principles, making outcomes predictable.

Conceptual Variable

The general or abstract theoretical idea of a variable, such as the overall effect of cocaine on heartbeat.

Operational Variable

The specific, narrow, and concrete measurement definition of a variable used in a study, such as counting a patient's verbal responses within 10 minutes.

Meta-Analysis

A statistical method that combines the numerical results of multiple separate studies on the same topic to arrive at an overall conclusion.

Epigenetics

The study of changes in gene activity and expression that occur without altering the underlying DNA sequence.

Myelin

A fatty insulating sheath wrapped around axons that speeds up electrical signal propagation via saltatory conduction.

Saltatory Conduction

The rapid transmission of an action potential along a myelinated axon caused by the signal jumping from one node of Ranvier to the next.

Astrocytes

Glial cells that form the blood-brain barrier, act as gatekeepers, and mediate or inactivate neurotransmission to allow neural synchrony.

Action Potential

A rapid, transient, all-or-none electrical impulse that propagates down an axon when membrane voltage reaches the threshold of $-55\,\text{mV}$.

Depolarization

The phase of an action potential where voltage-gated $Na^+$ channels open, allowing positive sodium ions to enter the axon until reaching a peak of $+30\,\text{mV}$.

Repolarization

The phase of an action potential where $Na^+$ channels close and $K^+$ channels open, allowing potassium ions to leave the axon and lowering internal voltage.

Hyperpolarization

The phase of an action potential where membrane potential briefly drops below resting potential to approximately $-90\,\text{mV}$ due to slow-closing $K^+$ channels.

Sodium-Potassium Pump

A cellular transport mechanism that actively pumps $3\,Na^+$ ions out of the cell for every $2\,K^+$ ions brought in to restore and maintain resting potential at $-70\,\text{mV}$.

Exocytosis

The process by which synaptic vesicles fuse with the presynaptic terminal membrane to release neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft.

Reuptake

The reabsorption of released neurotransmitter molecules back into the presynaptic terminal button via transporter proteins for recycling.

Enzymatic Degradation

The chemical breakdown and inactivation of neurotransmitter molecules within the synaptic cleft by specific enzymes.

Williams Syndrome

A rare genetic neurodevelopmental condition caused by a microdeletion on chromosome 7, characterized by high social motivation and verbal fluency along with spatial cognitive deficits.

Heritability Coefficient

A statistical estimate ($h^2$) ranging from $0.0$ to $1.0$ that indicates the proportion of population variance in a trait attributable to genetic variance.

Proband

The initial individual presenting a specific genetic trait or disorder under study in a pedigree analysis.