Psychology Exam Study Notes - Biology, Learning, Lifespan, Attidude

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering biological psychology, brain structures and functions, visual perception and learning theories, lifespan cognitive and emotional development, and social psychology attitudes and behaviors.

Nervous System

A system of networks of specialised cells (neurons) that connect different parts of the body to each other and the brain via electrochemical signals.

Divisions of the Nervous System

The structural split of the nervous system into the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system, which further subdivides into autonomic and somatic divisions.

Central Nervous System (CNS)

The primary control center of the nervous system containing the brain and spinal cord, as well as relay/connector neurons known as interneurons.

Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)

The communication pathway that carries signals back and forth between the brain and the extremities of the body.

Autonomic Nervous System

The division of the peripheral nervous system connected to the heart, glands, and smooth muscles that regulates largely involuntary bodily functions.

Sympathetic Nervous System

The arousing division of the autonomic nervous system that mobilizes the body during times of stress, activating the fight-or-flight response.

Parasympathetic Nervous System

The calming division of the autonomic nervous system that maintains normal bodily functions and operates the rest-and-digest response.

Somatic Nervous System

The division of the peripheral nervous system that communicates sensory information from sense organs to the CNS and transmits motor commands from the CNS to voluntary muscles.

Brain

Soft nervous tissue contained within the skull of vertebrates that functions as the coordinating centre of sensation, intellectual capacity, and nervous activity.

Corpus Callosum

A dense band of nerve fibres that connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres, enabling interhemispheric communication.

Left Hemisphere

The cerebral hemisphere specialised in language-based tasks (speaking, reading, writing), analytical thinking, sequential processing, and logical reasoning.

Right Hemisphere

The cerebral hemisphere specialised in visual-spatial tasks (reading maps, completing jigsaws), appreciation of art and music, detection and expression of emotion, and facial and pattern recognition.

Forebrain

The uppermost region of the brain responsible for sensory integration, voluntary motor control, higher mental functions, and hormone production.

Hypothalamus

A key forebrain structure responsible for controlling automatic body processes and regulating the release of hormones.

Thalamus

A forebrain structure that acts as a sensory relay switchboard, filtering incoming sensory information for all senses except smell.

Hippocampus

A structure within the forebrain critically associated with memory processing and memory storage.

Cerebral Cortex

The convoluted outermost layer of brain cells where higher-order thinking, complex cognition, and voluntary movements originate.

Midbrain

The central brain region that acts as a sensory switchboard, receiving and processing incoming sensory information.

Hindbrain

The lower region of the brain that controls vital involuntary functions such as respiration, sleep, coordination, and heart rate.

Cerebellum

A hindbrain structure located at the base and rear of the brain responsible for motor coordination and balance.

Brainstem

A hindbrain structure situated between the spinal cord and the rest of the brain that governs basic autonomic survival functions such as breathing and sleep.

Frontal Lobe

The brain lobe responsible for controlling voluntary movement, abstract thinking, personality, and the regulation of emotional behaviour.

Motor Cortex

The specific region situated within the frontal lobe responsible for executing voluntary muscle movements.

Broca's Area

An area located in the left frontal lobe dedicated to the production of articulate speech and aspects of language comprehension.

Parietal Lobe

The brain lobe that receives and integrates somatosensory information relating to touch, temperature, spatial positioning, and muscle movements.

Occipital Lobe

The posterior lobe of the cerebral cortex dedicated to receiving and processing visual information such as colour, shape, and motion.

Temporal Lobe

The cerebral lobe responsible for processing verbal and non-verbal auditory information and contributing to memory retention and facial recognition.

Brain Plasticity

The capacity of the brain's synapses and neural pathways to be modified, reorganized, and shaped over time.

Pre-frontal Cortex (Adolescence)

The last part of the brain to fully develop during adolescence; governs impulse control, problem-solving, risk management, and critical thinking.

Amygdala (Adolescence)

The emotion-processing structure that shows heightened activity in adolescence, often leading teenagers to make impulsive decisions driven by hyper-emotional states.

Electroencephalograph (EEG)

A neuroimaging device that detects, amplifies, and records general patterns of brain electrical activity through external scalp electrodes, displayed as brain waves.

States of Vigilance (EEG Waves)

Distinct electrical brain wave patterns associated with consciousness levels: beta waves (alertness), alpha waves (relaxing), theta waves (sleeping), delta waves (deep sleep), and desynchronised waves (REM paradoxical sleep).

Frontal Lobotomy

An unethical psychosurgical procedure popularized by Walter Freeman that used instruments like an ice pick through the skull to sever connections in the frontal lobes, often causing severe cognitive impairment, apathy, or death.

Learning

A relatively permanent change in behaviour resulting directly from past experience.

Stimulus-Response Approach

Early psychological models of learning proposing that behavioral alterations occur as organisms respond to environmental stimuli.

Attention

The cognitive state of actively processing specific environmental information, occurring either consciously or unconsciously.

Sensation

The physiological process by which specialized sensory receptors detect physical stimuli from the environment and transmit signals to the brain.

Perception

The psychological mental process of receiving, organizing, and interpreting sensory signals into meaningful experiences, objects, and events.

Steps from Sensation to Perception

The sequential six-stage continuum of sensory processing comprising reception, transduction, transmission, selection, organisation, and interpretation.

Reception

The initial sensory stage in which environmental stimulus energy (such as light) is collected by sensory receptor organs like the eye.

Transduction

The conversion of collected raw stimulus energy into electrochemical nerve impulses by receptor cells.

Transmission

The transport of electrochemical nerve impulses from sensory receptor cells along neural pathways to the primary sensory cortex.

Selection

The perceptual process of filtering millions of incoming stimuli to consciously focus attention only on those deemed important.

Organisation

The structuring and assembling of sensory features once they arrive at the brain so they can be recognized and understood.

Interpretation

Assigning subjective meaning to organized sensory input based on past experiences, context, personal values, and current motives.

Memory Formation Process

The mental capacity for retaining and recalling knowledge, consisting of three sequential phases: encoding (processing), storage (maintaining), and retrieval (recalling).

Encoding

The initial stage of memory that converts attended sensory information into a usable neurological code that the brain can process.

Storage

The retention and maintenance of encoded information in the brain's long-term memory structures over time.

Retrieval

The cognitive mechanism of recovering, accessing, and bringing stored long-term memory into conscious awareness for use.

Motivated Forgetting

The psychological phenomenon where an individual consciously or unconsciously blocks out distressing memories (e.g., repression) to avoid emotional trauma.

Decay Theory

The theory of forgetting asserting that memory traces naturally degrade and weaken over time when not actively rehearsed or retrieved.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

A progressive, degenerative brain condition caused by repeated head trauma that leads to memory loss, confusion, aggression, and dementia decades later.

Classical Conditioning

A learning paradigm where a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a reflexive, involuntary conditioned response.

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

A stimulus that inherently and predictably evokes an automatic, unlearned reflex response without prior conditioning.

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

An automatic, unlearned physiological or reflexive reaction directly elicited by an unconditioned stimulus.

Neutral Stimulus (NS)

A stimulus that initially elicits no specific target reflexive response prior to classical conditioning pairings.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A formerly neutral stimulus that, after repeated pairing with an unconditioned stimulus, triggers a learned reflexive response on its own.

Conditioned Response (CR)

A learned reflexive reaction produced by a conditioned stimulus following classical conditioning.

Graduated Exposure

A behavioral therapy where a patient constructs an anxiety hierarchy and is gradually exposed to fear-inducing stimuli while performing deep relaxation.

Flooding

An exposure therapy technique where an individual directly confronts the most extreme aspect of a phobic stimulus until their distress extinguishes.

Aversion Therapy

A behavior modification technique that eliminates undesirable habits by repeatedly pairing the maladaptive stimulus with an aversive, unpleasant consequence.

Lifespan Psychology

The field of psychological science that examines human growth, stability, and change from conception across the entire lifespan.

Developmental Stages Across the Lifespan

The chronological age periods defined in developmental psychology: Infancy (0–2 years), Childhood (2–10 years), Adolescence (10–20 years), Early adulthood (20–40 years), Middle age (40–65 years), and Older age (65+ years).

Critical Period

A specific biological timeframe during which an organism must be exposed to specific environmental experiences for normal development to occur.

Cognitive Development

The progressive expansion of mental abilities throughout life, encompassing transitions in reasoning, memory, schemas, and problem solving.

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

A four-stage framework proposed by Jean Piaget: Sensorimotor (0–2 years), Pre-operational (2–7 years), Concrete operational (7–12 years), and Formal operational (12+ years).

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget's first stage (birth to 2 years) where infants construct understanding through direct sensory contact and motor activity, lacking an understanding of object permanence.

Pre-operational Stage

Piaget's second stage (2 to 7 years) marked by symbolic play and rapid language acquisition, but constrained by an inability to perform mental operations and by egocentrism.

Egocentrism

A cognitive limitation seen in pre-operational children marked by the inability to perceive a situation or environment from another person's perspective.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's third stage (7 to 12 years) where children master logical thinking regarding tangible objects and grasp the principle of conservation.

Conservation

The realization that physical properties like mass, volume, area, and weight remain unchanged despite alterations in an object's external shape.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget's final cognitive stage (12+ years) wherein individuals achieve abstract reasoning, systematic deduction, and hypothetical problem-solving.

Attachment

A lasting emotional and psychological bond that develops between an infant and their primary caregiver during the first 12 months of life.

Four Characteristics of Attachment (Bowlby)

The core behavioral indicators identified by John Bowlby required for attachment formation: proximity maintenance, safe haven, secure base, and separation distress.

Proximity Maintenance

The innate desire of an infant to remain physically close to the specific person to whom they have formed an attachment.

Safe Haven

The role of the caregiver as a source of protection and emotional comfort to which an infant retreats when feeling threatened or distressed.

Secure Base

The role of an attachment figure as a reliable point of safety from which an infant feels confident to explore the surrounding environment.

Separation Distress

The evident emotional anxiety, protest, and distress exhibited by an infant when their attachment target departs or is absent.

Secure Attachment

An attachment style where an infant explores comfortably in the caregiver's presence, shows distress upon separation, and warmly greets them upon reunion.

Insecure-Avoidant Attachment

An attachment pattern characterized by an infant ignoring the caregiver, showing little distress during absence, and avoiding contact upon reunion; linked to rejecting caregiving.

Insecure-Resistant Attachment

An attachment pattern where an infant shows excessive anxiety near the caregiver, intense separation distress, and ambivalent anger/clinging upon return; linked to inconsistent caregiving.

Attitude

An evaluation of a person, object, event, or idea that influences an individual's thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Tripartite Model of Attitudes

A structural model proposing that attitudes are composed of three interrelated components: Affective (feelings), Behavioural (actions), and Cognitive (beliefs).

Antisocial Behaviour

Hostile, aggressive, or harmful actions that disrupt interpersonal well-being and inflict negative consequences on individuals or the wider community.

Diffusion of Responsibility

A sociopsychological phenomenon wherein bystanders feel less personal pressure to intervene in an emergency because other onlookers are present.

Audience Inhibition

The failure of a bystander to provide help because the presence of others creates self-consciousness and fear of social embarrassment.

Bystander Effect

The social psychological finding that the probability of a bystander helping an individual in need decreases as the number of witnesses increases.

Stereotype

A widely held, fixed, and oversimplified generalization applied uniformly to all members of a particular social group.

Discrimination

Differential positive or negative behavior directed unjustly toward an individual based solely on their social group membership.

Direct Discrimination

An overt practice where an individual is treated noticeably less favourably than another person under comparable circumstances due to a protected characteristic.

Indirect Discrimination

A practice, policy, or requirement that seems neutral and equal on the surface, but systematically disadvantages members of a specific social group.

Prejudice

A preconceived negative attitude held toward individuals solely because of their membership in a specific social group.

Old-Fashioned Prejudice

An explicit and visible form of prejudice where members of a majority group openly express rejection and derogatory attitudes toward a minority group.

Modern Prejudice

A hidden, subtle form of prejudice expressed in covert ways that mask bias to maintain social acceptability.

Racism

Prejudice and discriminatory actions directed against individuals because of their race, colour, descent, or ethnic origin.

Ageism

Systematic stereotyping, prejudice, and discriminatory practices targeted against people because of their age.

Sexism

Prejudice and discrimination directed against individuals based strictly upon their sex or gender.

Superordinate Goals

Shared, collaborative objectives that require the joint effort and cooperation of two conflicting groups to achieve, thereby reducing prejudice.

Mutual Interdependence

A cooperative structure where individuals or groups rely directly upon one another to achieve common success, breaking down established biases.

Sustained Contact

Prolonged, meaningful direct or indirect interaction between diverse groups over time that diminishes prejudiced assumptions.