Psychology Unit Study Guide 1 Flashcards 2.6.2026

Intro to Psychology and Learning

__________ is defined as the discipline concerned with behavior and   mental processes and how they are affected by an organism’s physical state, mental state, and external environment. Everything psychology is also biological.

  Psychology

Scientific Method, Empirical Evidence, Basic Psychology, Applied Psychology (4 types)

What are the Psychological Research types?

• Question, hypothesize, test, draw conclusion, and report

what is Scientific Method?

Evidence relying on observation,

experimentation, or measurement. 

What is Empirical Evidence?

What is this type of psycholog: By researching for practical use (How can knowledge of fearing roaches help people overcome their fears?)

APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY

What is this type of psychology: By knowledge (How is fear of cockroaches) ?

Basic Psychology

• Psychodynamic Perspective: Unconscious aspects of psychology; traumatic past experiences

• Cognitive Perspective: Thought process in the heads of humans and its development over time. Mental abilities (Example: Baby growing up)

• Behavioral Perspective: How we learn through association. Conditioning/behavior modification.

• Humanist Perspective: “Positive” psychology, focus on human potential, unconditional positive support

• Biological Perspective:  physiological aspects of psychology. Brain, nervous system, chemicals in our bodies 

• Sociocultural Perspective:Cultural and social forces outside of the individual.

6 Psychological Perpsectives are the following:

What is this type of perspective: Unconscious aspects of psychology; traumatic past experiences

Psychodynamic Perspective

What is this type of perpective:Thought process in the heads of humans and its development over time. Mental abilities (Example: Baby growing up)

Cognitive Perspective

What is this type of perspective: How we learn through association. Conditioning/behavior modification.

Behavioral Perspective

What is this type of perspective: “Positive” psychology, focus on human potential, unconditional positive support

Humanist Perspective

What is this type of perspective: physiological aspects of psychology. Brain, nervous system, chemicals in our bodies 

Biological Perspective

What is this type of perspective: Cultural and social forces outside of the individual.

Sociocultural Perspective

the process of acquiring new and enduring information via the formation of connections between stimuli and responses.

What is Associative Learning? II

What is: The process by which a previously neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to elicit a response through association with a stimulus that already elicits a similar or related response.

Classical Conditioning

 Something that causes a response.

Stimulus means

Something that follows a stimulus.

What is Response mean?

• Classical Conditioning Theorist, Russian Psychologist most commonly associated with classical conditioning.

• Help to develop Behaviorism Perspective.

Who is Ivan Pavlov?

What type of stimulus is Stimulus that elicits a reflexive response?

Unconditioned stimulus

what is a reflexive response to an unconditioned stimulus?

Unconditioned Response

What is initially neutral stimulus that causes a response only after being associated with an unconditioned stimulus?

Conditioned stimulus (CS)

What is response caused by a conditioned stimulus.

Conditioned response (CR)

What is a stimulus that does not cause a response.

Neutral stimulus

What is a response caused by a conditioned stimulus?

EXTINCTION

What is a response to

a stimulus that resembles a conditioned

stimulus but is different?

Stimulus Generalization

What is learning not

to generalize a similar stimulus?

Stimulus Discrimination

What is a neutral

stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus

through an association with an already

established conditioned stimulus?

Higher-order Conditioning

What is a neutral

stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus through an association with an already established conditioned stimulus?

Example: Dogs give Mr. Higa Anxiety

Conditioned Emotional Response

What type of response is this? Example: Dogs give Mr. Higa Anxiety

When Higa was young he had two bad experiences with dogs.

• Both times resulting in him getting bit.

• Today the presence of a dog makes gives him anxiety.

Conditioned Emotional Response

Who helped to popularize Psychology and

the Behaviorism Perspective

(Behavioral)

John B. Watson

Little Albert Experiment:demonstrated that fear could be learned in humans through classical conditioning. They exposed a 9-month-old infant ("Little Albert") to a white rat, then intentionally paired it with a loud, frightening noise. Consequently, Albert learned to fear the rat and similar fuzzy objects. Who did this study of Behaviorism Perspective?

John B. Watson

What is the process by which a response         

becomes more likely to occur or less so, depending on its

Consequences?   Reinforcement or punishment. 

  Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning theorist, External Conditioning.  His case study of animal behavior by training them to perform specific actions like pressing a lever to get food.

B.F. Skinner (Skinner Box)

what is the process by which a stimulus strengthens or increases the probability of a response?

(encourage)

Reinforcement

What is the process by which a stimulus weakens

or reduces the probability of a

response (discourage)?

PUNISHMENT

What is the process by which a stimulus strengthens or increases the probability of a response (encourage)?

Positive Reinforcement/Punishment

The process in which a response is followed by

the removal, delay, or decrease in intensity of a

stimulus.

Negative Reinforcement/Punishment

What are these 6 types of schedules?

Continuous Schedule

Partial Schedule

Fixed Schedule

Variable Schedule

Interval Schedule

Ratio Schedule

6 schedules of reinforcement

What schedule is Reinforcing a behavior each time it occurs, all the time?

Continuous Schedule

what type of schedule does  not reinforce behavior every time it occurs but only sometimes?

Partial Schedule:

What reinforcement schedule is Predictable internals or ratios?

Fixed Schedule

What reinforcement schedule that is Unpredictable intervals or ratios?

Variable Schedule

What reinforcement schedule is Based on the amount of time between the behavior and the reinforcement.

Interval Schedule

what is a reinforcement schedule based on the number of responses.

Reinforcement occurs after a number of

behaviors.

Ratio Schedule

to change unwanted behaviors by focusing on actions rather than thoughts, using rewards or consequences to encourage positive habits.

Behavior Modification

What is the application

of conditioning techniques to teach new

responses or to reduce or

eliminate problematic behavior. Consistency is the key  and punishment needs to teach (under Behavior Modification)?

Effective Punishment

What is when rewards with no merit are bad rewards. Rewards should be handle appropriately or may reinforce undesired behavior.

How ________ fails.

How reinforcement fails

What are these reason for? How ____________ fails.

1. People often administer punishment inappropriately or mindlessly.

2. The recipient of punishment often responds with anxiety, fear, or

rage.

3. The effectiveness of punishment is often temporary, depending

heavily on the presence of the punishing person or circumstances.

4. Most misbehavior is hard to punish immediately.

5. Punishment conveys little information.

6. An action intended to punish may instead be reinforcing because it

brings attention.

This is how punishment fails

what type of learning is influenced by the observation of

    others around us and our own expectations?

III. SOCIAL COGNITIVE LEARNING

what is the environment around us?

Social context

what is the mental activity that goes on when processing information?

Cognition

What theory is the learning is influenced by the observation of others around us and our own expectations?

Social cognitive Learning Theory

what Occurs when one suddenly realizes how to solve a problem?

“Aha moment”

Learning can occur by organizing our thoughts and

behaviors.

Insight learning

Who did the Chimpanzee Experiment? (1925)

The Stick Problem: Köhler's most famous subject, Sultan a chimpanze, was given two hollow sticks, neither of which was long enough to reach a banana placed outside his cage. After several failed attempts, Sultan sat back, seemed to "think," and then suddenly joined the two sticks together to create a longer tool to retrieve the fruit.

Wolfgang Kohler

what type of learning is a process in which an individual learns new responses by observing the behavior of others rather than through

direct experience?

Observational learning

Who was a Social-cognitive psychologist did observational learning?He did the bobo doll experiment.

Albert Bandura

What is Learning through observation of the actions of others?

Modeling

What experiment is this called?

4 Processes of Observational Learning

• Attention: The observer must focus on

what the model is doing.

• Retention: The observer must retain the

information they observed.

• Reproduction: The observer must be able

to perform the behavior they observed.

• Motivation: The observer must be driven

to perform the behavior they observed.

 Bobo Doll Experiment - A study by Albert Bandura that demonstrated observational learning in children by showing them how to interact with a Bobo doll.

what type of learning that is not

immediately expressed in an open

response and occurs without obvious

reinforcement?

Latent learning by Edward Tolman

Tolman’s Maze Running Rats Experiment:

1. Reinforcement (food) given to solve maze.

2. No Reinforcement given to solve maze

Edward Tolmanis best known for his research on latent learning, demonstrating that organisms can learn information without being immediately reinforced.

what is a mental map or understanding of physical layout of an area?

Cognitive map