AP Psychology Unit 2

absolute threshold

the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time

Application: Students in elementary school use a hearing test to determine their hearing levels, often using their absolute threshold as a gauge compared to normal levels of auditory ability.

Rillo

accommodation

the process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina

Application: Mateo's eyes automatically use accommodation while playing baseball in the outfield. His eyes must adjust to a ball hit from home plate and change its focus as the ball comes closer.

Rillo

Extrinsic Motivation

DEFINITION: Encouragement to perform a certain behavior in order to acquire external rewards or evade receiving punishments.
APPLICATION: Promising a cookie to a toddler who was successfully able to use the restroom.
O'Malley

Fixed-Interval Schedule

DEFINITION: Used in operant conditioning where the reinforcers are applied to a response only after a fixed period of time has passed.
APPLICATION: You are baking brownies so you put them in the oven and set a timer and then must wait the full duration of the time to pass until you can eat them. This positively reinforces the patience needed to cook the brownie all the way by having the reinforcer come in at a set time.
O'Malley

long-term potentiation

an increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

Application: Amanda adopts a golden retriever puppy. At first the puppy doesn't know where his bowl is but after a couple times of Amanda leading him to the bowl, he eventually remembers where it is and can locate it more quickly.

Annie Wyatt

misinformation effect

incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event

Application: A speaker at Mt. Carmel high school told students to touch their elbow while he touched his forehead. Since he was touching his forehead they were led to believe that was the correct information.

Annie Wyatt

mnemonics

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

Application: To study for his Exam, Samuel studies by memorizing acronyms. Such as, NATO for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Annie Wyatt

mood-congruent memory

to recall stored experiences or events along with the the mood they were in at the time because of what is felt currently.

Application: Lara started crying because she didn't make the Varsity Volleyball team. While she's crying she thinks of the time she had a fight with her best friend earlier that week.

Annie Wyatt

long-term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Application: As Frankie walks to psychology class he sees another student fall, and recalls the time where he fell in front of his classmates freshman year so he helps the student up.

Annie Wyatt

conditioned response (CR)

a reaction that resembles an unconditioned response but is produced by a conditioned stimulus

app: knowing it is dinner time when you hear the bell
Nichols

conditioned stimulus

a stimulus that elicits a response only after learning has taken place

app: hearing the sound of the bell when you smell the food
Nichols

continuous reinforcement

a type of learning in which behavior is reinforced each time it occurs

app: every time Carter goes pee on the potty he receives an M&M
Nichols

discrimination learning

the ability to respond differently to different stimuli

app: using whistles with different sounds to represent different tasks, when training an animal
Nichols

extincition

the gradual disappearance of a conditioned response when it is no longer reinforced

app: Carter stopped peeing on the toilet, and started peeing his pants because he stopped receiving M&Ms
Nichols

Retina

The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information.

Knapek

retinal disparity

A binocular cue for perceiving depth: By comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance-the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object

Knapek

Rods

Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don´t respond

Knapek

Sensation

The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.

Your senses detect information and they transmit information to the brain.

Knapek

Sensorineural hearing loss

Hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea´s receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; also called nerve deafness

Knapek

explicit memory

Facts and experiences that we consciously know or declare, processed through conscious effortful processing

Application: Effortfully memorizing the names and locations of states for a geography exam.

Wu

implicit memory

Information that we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously

Application: Getting a song stuck in your head because you remembered the tune without consciously trying to remember it

Wu

iconic memory

a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; lasts less than half a second

Application: When you turn off the lights in your room, you briefly see the last thing you saw when the lights were still on

Wu

flashbulb memory

the memory of emotionally significant events that people often recall with more accuracy and vivid imagery than everyday events

Application: People who are caught in an earthquake remember exactly what they were doing and where they were during the earthquake almost a year and a half later.

Wu

Hippocampus

A temporal-lobe neural center located in the limbic system that helps process explicit memories for storage; acts as a loading dock for memories, doesn't permanently store them

Application: When you memorize and later recall words, those explicit memories get saved to the hippocampus.

Wu

Fixed-Ratio Schedule

DEFINITION: Used in operant conditioning where an action is reinforced after it has been performed a certain number of times
APPLICATION: When certain employees receive bonuses or additional compensation after reaching a certain requirement through performing certain tasks repeatedly.
O'Malley

Generalization

DEFINITION: The habit of responding the same or similar to stimuli that are comparable to each other.
APPLICATION: Someone who is afraid of a dark room and acts with apprehension would respond similarly when asked to go out very late at night
O'Malley

Higher-Order Conditioning

DEFINITION: Also known as second-order conditioning and it is where a second often weaker stimulus begins to become another conditioned stimulus replacing the old conditioned stimulus
APPLICATION: When the food is dropped in the dog bowl it makes a clank. This is the original conditioned response, but the second one would be the dog realizing it is being fed BEFORE the noise is made because they see the owner walk out into the garage realizing that they will return with food thanks to a conditioned association to that result.
O'Malley

pitch

Definition: a tone's experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency
Application: In the experiment, the experimenter was testing how the pitch of someone singing affected the glass window
Johnston

place theory

in hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated
Application: The place theory explains that we connect places on our cochlea membrane to specific pitches, if we hear a higher pitch large vibrations will be near the beginning of the cochlea
Johnston

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response
activation: a child sees a bag of candy at a park, the child would think of that park or candy the next time they see it is the concept of priming
Johnston

signal detection theory

a theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise). Assumes there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person's experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness.

Application: An exhausted parent will notice the slightest sound from their newborn yet tend to ignore larger noises because at the moment, getting the baby to fall asleep is their priority

Landress

pupil

the adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters
Johnston

top-down processing

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

Application: A person is given an image of a flower. Top-down processing allows us to interpret what is detected from the image, such as how the flower may smell, or its texture in real life

Landress

subliminal

below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness

Application: For example, a word or phrase that is flashed on a screen could go unnoticed by our conscious mind but affect our response to a following question

Landress

Transduction

Definition: Conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brains can interpret.

Application: When I listen to music, transduction occurs with the soundwaves and my eardrum allowing me to listen to the music.

Lee

Vestibular Sense

Definition: The sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance.

Application: My vestibular sense was used when I was spinning for a long time and still felt like I was spinning after I stopped.

Lee

Visual Cliff

Definition: A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.

Lee

Wavelength

Definition: The distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next. Electromagnetic wavelengths vary from the short blips of cosmic rays to the long pulses of radio transmission.

Lee

Weber's Law

Definition: The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount).

Lee

Psychophysics

the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them
application: our motor sensory unit reacts to sharp or dull sensations in a dematomal patten when poked with a sharp object we flinch as a result of pain, with psychophysics we look at this reaction
Johnston

sensory interaction

the principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste

Application: the phrase "you eat with your eyes first" which implies that if the presentation of food is not appetizing then it will influence how the food tastes or your desire to eat it

Landress

sensory adaptation

diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation

Application: entering a room with an unfamiliar or unsettling odor but eventually getting used to the smell and/or forgetting about it

Landress

Reinforcement schedule

A pattern that defines how often a desired response will be reinforced.

Application: Learning to raise your hand in class is a pattern behavior to reinforce staying quiet until being asked to speak.

Tanzi

Respondent behavior

Behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.

Application: When you put your hand in a flame, the pain causes you to automatically pull your hand away without putting much thought into the action.

Tanzi

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.

Application: When your parents teach you to brush your teeth, they are shaping your behavior toward the desired behavior of brushing your teeth every day.

Tanzi

Spontaneous recovery

The reappearance, after a pause of an extinguished conditioned response.

Application: A trained dog that does not hear a certain command for a few weeks would still respond to it now as it would've before.

Tanzi

Stimulus

Any event or situation that evokes a response.

Application: Someone screaming would be an audible stimulus that evokes a response of surprise or concern

Tanzi

cognitive learning

the acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others, or through language

Application: For example encouraging discussions about what is being taught

Mitchell

cognitive map

a mental representation of the layout of one's environment.

Application: For example, after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned a cognitive map of it.

Mitchell

classical conditioning

a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events

Application: for example if you are training a dog to salivate in response to the sound of a bell, you can associate the presentation of food to the sound of a bell.

Mitchell

Behaviorism

The theory that human behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning.

Application: For example a teacher that rewards students for their good behavior.

Mitchell

B.F. Skinner

Behaviorist that developed the theory of operant conditioning by training pigeons and rats

Application: B.F. Skinner created the theory to reward and punish certain behaviors

Mitchell

Law of Effect

An effect in which behavior that is rewarded is more likely to occur and behavior met with consequences is less likely to occur.

Application- A child is at the mall and begins to throw a fit because it wants their parent's phone. The parents gave the phone to the child and he stopped screaming. The kid's behavior was rewarded and because of that is more likely to occur.

Rico

Mirror Neurons

Neurons in the frontal lobe that go off when performing or observing actions.

Application- As the student was eating lunch the action of eating the food fired the neurons. When back in class viewing the teacher eating a snack the same neurons were firing.

Rico

Modeling

learned behaviors through observation and imitation

Application- When playing outside a kid watches their sister play barefoot in woodchips. When their sister gets a splinter they learn to wear shoes when playing in the wood.

Rico

Negative Reinforcement

strengthens a behavior by stopping or reducing something negative. (Negative Reinforcement is not a punishment)

Application- After getting a knee injury playing soccer, Sophie began to take painkillers once a day. Since the painkillers reduced the pain from her knee she continued to take them.

Rico

Neutral Stimulus

A stimulus that gets no response before conditioning.

Applictaion- Pavlov did experiments reguarding conditioning. When running an experiment using a dog he views that the dog would drool when viewing food and wouldn't drool when hearing a certain sound. Through conditioning when the dog would hear the tone he would drool.

Rico

Observational Learning

Learning without direct experience but by observing others.

Application- Jessie would watch her mom wash the dishes after she would eat. Soon, Jessie began to also wash her dishes after eating.

Rico

ESP

Definition: Idea that perception can occur without using your five senses.

Application: The tarot reader showed extrasensory perception when she described the stranger's traumatic experiences when they were a kid even though the reader only knew their first name.

DiBernardo

Feature Detectors

Definition: Nerve cells that detect shapes, angles, and movements of objects and people.

Application: Without feature detector cells in the brain it would be impossible to notice that an oval object, such as a football, was coming towards you at 25 mph.

DiBernardo

Fovea

Definition: Part of the retina where the center of vision is most focused.

Application: (See Image) The part of the eye that lets you see the sharpest image.

DiBernardo

Frequency

Definition: How often something happens in a given amount of time usually in context towards wavelengths.

Application: The number of people in a neighborhood that own a cat is a frequency or the amount of men or women participating in a research study.

DiBernardo

Figure-Ground

Definition: Visual grouping necessary to identify objects from a background.

Application: (See Image) Do you see two faces, a case, or both?

DiBernardo

Parapsychology

Definition: The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis.

Huerta

Perception

Definition: The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.

Application: Which figure do you think is closer in the image?

Huerta

Perceptual Adaptation

Definition: In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.

Huerta

Perceptual Constancy

Definition: Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, brightness, and color) even as illumination and retinal images change.

Huerta

Perceptual Set

Definition: A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Huerta

Frequency Theory

Definition: in hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch.

Application: The screeching sound triggered the frequency theory of the guys brain in order for him to hear the pitch.

Foucault

Gate-Control Theory

Definition: the theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The "gate" is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain.

Application: (see image)

Foucault

Gestalt

Definition: an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes

Application: (see image) the cut outs in the circles when seen all together form of bigger triangle

Foucault

Grouping

Definition: the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups

Application: The rules of grouping applies to proximity, continuity and closure using the rules to perceive how whole differs from the sum of its parts.

Foucault

Hue

Definition: the dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light: what we know as the color names blue, green and so forth.

Application: (see image) The different hues are what we experience in real time. Such as the blue in someone's eyes or the green in the grass

Foucault

Binocular Cues

visual information taken in by our two eyes that allows us depth perception (stereopsis)

application: binocular clues allow us to see in 3-D, for example, if the ground is sloping up or down

Demange

Blind Spot

the particular spot on the optic nerve that does not have any receptors and therefore can't receive any visual information to transmit to the brain

application: if you have two dots on the left and right side of your screen, close your right eye and start getting closer to the left dot, your blind spot will make the other dot disappear

Demange

Bottom- up Processing

processing a stimulus as you encounter it and building an image in your mind from this information

application: you are shown only the outline of a dog, but you build the image of a dog in your mind

Demange

Cochlea

a spiral shaped, bony tube in the ear that sound waves travel through and trigger nerve impulses, the cochlea is essential for hearing
application: When a bell is rung, your cochlea converts the sound vibrations from it into nerve impulses so that your brain can process the sound
Demange

Color Constancy

the effect where the perceived color of something remains constant despite changes in the intensity and light quality

application: (see image) this picture of a dress is an example of a fail of color constancy as the shade of blue does not always appear blue, and the black does not always appear black

Demange

Young-Helmholtz

Researchers who measured the response of various cones to different color stimuli. They confirmed the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic Theory

Application: When studying color blindness, researchers may consider the research of Young-Helmholtz regarding perception of color in the retina

Liu

Young-Helmholtz trichromatic Theory

The retina contains three different color receptors -one most sensitive to red, once to green, and one to blue. When stimulated in combination, they can produce the perception of any color.

Liu

Acquisition

In classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response.

Application: When a baby first establishes the connection between balloon and fear, because the balloon may make a loud, scary noise.

Liu

Albert Bandura

pioneering researcher of observational learning

Application: a young child observes his father shaving every morning. The little boy begins to mimic his father, and pretends to shave with his father.

Liu

Associative learning

learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning).

Application: when training a dog, the dog associated a trick with a treat.

Liu

Conduction Hearing Loss

Hearing loss caused by the damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea

Application: Wearing headphones for too long and listening to music too loud can create long term damage to someone's ears

Descans

Cones

retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. The cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.

Application: It is much harder to see color in dim light than in sun light or a well lit area

Descans

depth perception

the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance

Application: Using the visual cliff experiment, scientists found that when peering over a glass covered edge, infants still fear falling, showing they comprehend depth

Descans

difference threshold

the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time

Application: It is easier to tell the difference if you add 1 oz to a 10 ounce weight than it is to notice 1 oz added to 100 oz

Descans

embodied cognition

in psychological science, the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgments

Application: Holding a heavy clipboard makes someone feel more important than holding a light clipboard

Descans

positive reinforcement

D: the application of adding rewards(stimulus seeming to be good) to alter behavior to become more frequent

A: Giving a dog a treat when they sit to reinforce sitting.

Soucek

Primary Reinforce

D: A reinforcement that is based on an organisms basic needs, like food water or shelter

A: A mouse will run through a maze to find cheese in order to eat to live.

Soucek

proscocial behavior

D: A type of social behavior that benefits the needs of other humans, or society as a whole

A: When you share some of you lunch with someone who forgot theirs. Charity of all types.

Soucek

Punishment

D: Any change in stimulus that is meant to discourage the behavior.

A: Giving students who talk more homework. Taking candy away from a misbehaving child.

Soucek

Reinforcement

D: Any change in stimulus that is meant to encourage behaviors.

A: Rewarding students who were quiet with less homework. Giving children who behave candy.

Soucek

Unconditioned response

Naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus

Application: The smell of food (US) makes you hungry (UR)

Velazquez

Unconditioned stimulus

Something that naturally and automatically triggers a response.

Application: Cutting an onion (US) makes your eyes water (UR)

Velazquez

Anterograde amnesia

The decreased ability to retain new information.

Application: A blow to the head can cause brain trauma which results in someone not being able to remember new information and events.

Velazquez

Automatic processing

The unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

Application: Recognizing spoken words is an example because the words process without you having to think about doing it.

Velazquez

Chunking

Combining small pieces of information into larger clusters or chunks that are more easily held in short-term memory

Application: Chunking phone numbers into easier groups of 3,3 and 4

Velazquez

middle ear

the chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window

Hatamy

monocular clues

depth clues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone

Application: If two objects are of similar size, we perceive the object that looks smaller as farther away.

Hatamy