Intro to Psychology Final Exam

Psychology is the scientific study of _______

• Human behavior

• Mind

• Brain

Common biases

• Hindsight bias

• Confirmation bias

• Making casual relationships

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

People lack the ability to accurately rate their own performances in areas where they have little expertise.

Area of specialization in Psychology that deals with how humans grow & develop, with a focus on how experiences change throughout the lifespan

Developmental

Law of Effect

A behavior that results in something we like is more likely to occur

Pavlov’s most notable theory

Classical conditioning

Bandura’s most notable theory

Social cognitive learning

Thorndike’s most notable theory

Law of Effect

Skinner’s most notable theory

Operant conditioning

Flashbulb memories

• Detailed

• Memories of emotionally salient or large scale occurrences

• Reported with high confidence

Reconsolidation

A stored memory is reactivated & can be modified or strengthened

Context Dependent Memory

A retrieval cue where the recall situation is similar to the encoding situation

Long term memory

Storage of information from minutes to forever

Schema

Cognitive structures to perceive, understand, organize, & use information

Change blindness

Missing events due to our limited attention to all details

Endogenous attention

Intentional focus

Priming

A previous experience effects a response to stimulus

Subliminal perception

A stimuli that is processed but not consciously

Theories of why people sleep

• Circadian rhythm theory

• Restorative theory

• Facilitation of learning

Limitations with correlations

• They cannot determine the direction of the relationships between variables

• They cannot account for a possible third or other variables which may be accounting for the relationship

• They cannot determine causality

External validity

The extent to which the findings can generalize to other people, settings, or situations

Internal validity

Are you measuring what you think you are measuring?

Reliability

Are the findings/measurements repeatable?

Accuracy

Is the measurement error free?

Psychometric testing

Tests mental abilities

Aptitude testing

Predicting tasks that individuals may be good at in the future

Achievement testing

Tests levels of skills or subject knowledge

Mental age

The chronological age at which the person can perform tasks similar to the average of that age

Fluid intelligence

The ability to think logically without prior knowledge

Crystalized intelligence

The ability to use prior knowledge

General intelligence

A factor which contributes to all intellectual tasks

Distribution of IQ

Follows a normal curve

Emotional intelligence

Consists of four abilities that include:

• Managing your emotions

• Recognizing others emotions

Our tendency to overestimate the intensity & duration of emotional states

Affective forecasting

Macroexpressions

Very clear facial expressions

Misattribution

Giving or believing an incorrect cause

Discrete emotion theory

There a small number of core emotions which are biologically determined

Universal emotions

• Happiness

• Surprise

• Sadness

• Fright

• Disgust

• Contempt

• Fear

3 types of temperament

• Activity level

• Emotionality

• Sociability

Emotionally stable

Peaceful

Introversion

Quiet

Neurotic

Anxious

Extraversion

Outgoing

Theory of Mind (ToM)

Understanding that other's have perspectives and desires that may differ from our own

Reasons why many infant toys black and white

• Infants have low vision acuity

• Black and white contract easier for infants to see

• Infants have poor color vision

Theories to explain infantile amnesia

• Infants can not understand context enough to retain and retrieve their memories

• Memories require language to store them and access them

• Memories require autobiographical memory and experience

• Immature memory systems in the brain