PSYC 1110 Comprehensive Review: History, Science, Biology, and Learning

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering the history of psychology, scientific methodology, biological foundations, and learning paradigms based on PSYC 1110 lecture materials.

Natural Philosophy

The philosophical study of the natural world and physical universe that predated modern science and served as the historical root from which psychology developed.

Ebers Papyrus

An ancient Egyptian medical document dating to around $1500\text{ BC}$ that described psychological conditions such as dementia and depression, locating human essence and intelligence in the heart rather than the brain.

Relational Theory of Mind

An Indigenous perspective proposing that the mind is relational rather than situated purely inside an individual, emerging between people through stories, shared experiences, and interconnectedness.

Animism

A worldview foundational to many First Nations traditions holding that all beings—humans, animals, plants, rocks, and natural elements—possess spirit or agency within a spiritually interconnected world.

Four Humours

Hippocrates' physiological theory positing that bodily and mental health depend upon the balance of four vital fluids: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile.

Tripartite Soul

Plato's psychological model dividing the immortal psyche into three competing components: Appetite (bodily desires located in the abdomen), Spirit (courage and willpower located in the chest), and Reason (wisdom and intellect located in the head).

Inner Harmony (Plato)

Plato's conception of mental health as justice or internal balance within the soul, achieved when Reason governs with the support of Spirit to keep the Appetites in check.

Aristotle's Hierarchy of the Soul

A biological framework in De Anima classifying psychic capacities into the vegetative soul (growth and reproduction in plants), the sensitive soul (mobility and sensation in animals), and the rational soul (thought and reflection in humans).

Floating Man Thought Experiment

A thought experiment devised by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) asking whether a mature human created in total sensory and physical isolation would be aware of their own existence, demonstrating that self-consciousness is distinct from the physical body.

Mind-Body Dualism

The philosophical doctrine, prominently advanced by René Descartes, stating that the mind is a non-material, thinking entity distinct from and irreducible to the physical body.

Interactionism

The philosophical problem confronting Cartesian dualism regarding how an immaterial, non-physical mind can causally interact with and influence a material, physical body and vice versa.

Monism

The materialist position, represented by Thomas Hobbes, arguing that the mind and body are one and the same physical entity, allowing mental phenomena to be studied through physical science.

Tabula Rasa

John Locke's British empiricist concept asserting that the human mind begins as a blank slate upon which experience writes, providing an intellectual antecedent for behaviorism.

Structuralism

An early school of psychology founded by Wilhelm Wundt that sought to analyze consciousness into its basic elements and sensations using systematic introspection.

Functionalism

An early school of psychology founded by William James, heavily influenced by Darwinian evolutionary theory, focusing on the adaptive functions and purposes of consciousness and behavior.

Subconscious vs. Unconscious

The subconscious consists of mental content not currently in focal awareness that can be accessed with deliberate effort; the unconscious consists of repressed, instinctual processes unavailable to direct introspection that must be inferred.

Psychodynamic Perspective

Sigmund Freud's psychological framework asserting that behavior is driven by unconscious conflicts, repressed sexual and aggressive drives, childhood experiences, and defense mechanisms.

Law of Effect

Edward Thorndike's principle stating that responses followed by satisfying consequences become more likely to be repeated, whereas responses followed by unsatisfying consequences become less likely to recur.

Operant Conditioning

A form of learning, emphasized by B. F. Skinner, where the frequency of voluntary behaviors is modified and governed by their environmental consequences.

Cognitive Behaviorism

Albert Bandura's approach combining behavioral and cognitive principles, asserting that observational learning and internal thought processes mediate environmental influences on behavior.

Self-Actualization

Abraham Maslow's humanistic concept describing the innate human striving to realize one's full potential, situated at the apex of the hierarchy of needs.

Gestalt Psychology

An early cognitive tradition asserting that the mind actively organizes sensory elements into unified, coherent perceptual wholes rather than simple aggregates of parts.

Sociocultural Perspective

An approach in psychology examining how cultural traditions, social norms, relationships, and group dynamics influence individual thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Law of Parsimony (Occam's Razor)

The scientific principle stating that when two theories explain and predict the same phenomenon equally well, the simpler explanation is preferred.

Operational Definition

A precise statement defining an abstract psychological variable in terms of the exact procedures or measurement operations used to observe or produce it.

Representative Sample

A sample whose demographic composition mirrors the key characteristics of the broader target population, enabling valid generalizations.

Correlation Coefficient

A statistical metric ranging from $-1.00$ to $+1.00$ that indicates the direction and strength of a linear relationship between two measured variables.

Third-Variable Problem

A fundamental limitation of correlational research where an observed association between two variables ($X$ and $Y$) may be caused by an unmeasured extraneous variable ($Z$).

Independent Variable (IV)

The condition or factor systematically manipulated by an experimenter to determine its direct causal effect on an outcome.

Dependent Variable (DV)

The variable measured by an experimenter to evaluate whether it changes as a result of manipulating the independent variable.

Confounding Variable

An uncontrolled factor that covaries with the independent variable, providing an alternative explanation for group differences and undermining internal validity.

Placebo Effect

A beneficial change in symptoms or behavior resulting from an inactive, look-alike treatment because of the participant's expectations of improvement.

Hawthorne Effect

A change in participant behavior produced merely by the awareness that one is being observed or evaluated as part of a research study.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

The logical fallacy of inferring that because event $B$ occurred after event $A$, event $A$ must have caused event $B$.

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

The error of cherry-picking a localized cluster of data that fits a favored hypothesis while ignoring the broader random distribution or contrary data.

WEIRD Samples

Research participant pools drawn disproportionately from populations that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, restricting cross-cultural generalizability.

Somatic Nervous System

The branch of the peripheral nervous system consisting of nerves that connect to voluntary skeletal muscles and sensory receptors.

Autonomic Nervous System

The branch of the peripheral nervous system regulating involuntary functions of smooth muscles, heart, blood vessels, and glands, divided into sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions.

Sympathetic Nervous System

The division of the autonomic nervous system that mobilizes the body's resources for emergencies, fight-or-flight reactions, and heightened arousal.

Parasympathetic Nervous System

The division of the autonomic nervous system that conserves physiological resources, slows heart rate, promotes digestion, and supports restoration.

Thalamus

A forebrain sensory relay station that processes and redirects incoming sensory information (except smell) to appropriate areas of the cerebral cortex.

Hypothalamus

A forebrain structure located beneath the thalamus that maintains internal homeostasis and regulates basic drives: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproduction.

Corpus Callosum

A wide band of white-matter axons connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, the surgical severing of which results in split-brain syndrome.

Glial Cells

Supporting cells of the nervous system (including astrocytes and oligodendrocytes) that nourish neurons, form structural matrices, produce myelin sheaths, and destroy pathogens.

Resting Potential

The stable, negative electrical charge across an inactive neuron's membrane, maintained at approximately $-70\,\text{mV}$.

Sodium-Potassium Pump

An active transport mechanism that expels $3\,\text{Na}^+$ ions from the intracellular fluid for every $2\,\text{K}^+$ ions it imports using ATP, preserving the negative resting potential.

Action Potential

A brief, rapid reversal of electrical membrane potential triggered when cellular depolarization reaches the threshold of approximately $-55\,\text{mV}$, propagating down the axon as an all-or-none wave.

All-or-None Law

The neurophysiological principle stating that an action potential fires at full amplitude once the threshold is exceeded and travels to the terminal buttons without weakening.

Refractory Period

A brief pause of approximately $1\text{--}2\,\text{ms}$ immediately following an action potential during which the neuron cannot fire another action potential until ionic gradients recover.

Reuptake Transporters

Presynaptic membrane protein complexes that actively reabsorb released neurotransmitters from the synaptic cleft back into the axon terminal for recycling.

Acetylcholine (ACh)

A neurotransmitter that mediates communication between motor neurons and voluntary skeletal muscles, while also playing critical roles in memory, attention, and arousal.

GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid)

The brain's primary inhibitory neurotransmitter that hyperpolarizes postsynaptic membranes, generating inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (IPSPs) that reduce firing probability.

Genotype vs. Phenotype

Genotype represents an organism's underlying genetic blueprint or allele combination, whereas phenotype represents the observable physical, physiological, or behavioral expression of those genes.

Polygenic Inheritance

A pattern of inheritance where a phenotypic characteristic (such as intelligence or extroversion) is determined by the additive interaction of multiple gene pairs.

Genomic Imprinting

A genetic phenomenon in which the expression of an allele depends strictly upon whether it was inherited from the mother or the father.

Gene-Environment Correlations (Passive, Evocative, Active)

Passive occurs when biological parents provide both genes and a congruent rearing environment; evocative occurs when an individual's genetically influenced traits evoke environmental responses; active occurs when an individual actively selects environments matching their genotype.

Reaction Range

The genetically determined upper and lower boundaries within which environmental opportunities and constraints establish an individual's realized phenotype.

Canalization

The capacity of a population to develop the same phenotypic outcome regardless of environmental variability or underlying minor genetic differences, requiring extreme conditions to alter.

Flintstonization

The cognitive error of projecting modern cultural norms, pair-bonding practices, or social structures backward into ancestral evolutionary environments.

Arousal Non-Concordance

The empirical finding that physiological genital arousal does not necessarily correlate with or reflect subjective psychological sexual desire.

Classical Conditioning

A learning process in which a previously neutral stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response through association with an unconditioned stimulus that naturally elicits that response.

Evaluative Conditioning

A variant of classical conditioning wherein positive or negative liking of a target stimulus changes after repeated pairing with pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, commonly used in advertising.

Stimulus Contiguity

The temporal and spatial proximity of the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus necessary for an association to form during acquisition.

Extinction (Classical Conditioning)

The gradual weakening and suppression of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus.

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response following a period of rest or non-exposure to the conditioned stimulus, proving the association was suppressed rather than erased.

Renewal Effect

The sudden recovery of an extinguished conditioned response when an organism is placed in an environmental context different from the setting where extinction occurred.

Compensatory Conditioned Response

A conditioned bodily response that counteracts the physiological disruption caused by an unconditioned stimulus (such as a drug), helping maintain homeostasis in familiar environments.

Stimulus Generalization vs. Discrimination

Generalization occurs when an organism responds similarly to novel stimuli resembling the original CS; discrimination occurs when an organism learns to respond exclusively to the specific CS and not to similar stimuli.

Higher-Order Conditioning

A two-phase conditioning procedure where a previously established conditioned stimulus acts as an unconditioned stimulus to condition a new neutral stimulus.

Positive Reinforcement vs. Negative Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement increases behavior by presenting a rewarding stimulus; negative reinforcement increases behavior by removing or ending an aversive stimulus.

Positive Punishment vs. Negative Punishment

Positive punishment decreases behavior by presenting an aversive stimulus; negative punishment decreases behavior by removing an appetitive or pleasant stimulus.

Shaping

An operant procedure that establishes a complex or novel behavior by systematically reinforcing successive approximations toward the final target response.

Schedules of Reinforcement

Contingencies determining reinforcement delivery based on response count (Fixed Ratio: rapid responding with pauses; Variable Ratio: high steady responding resistant to extinction) or elapsed time (Fixed Interval: scalloped response pattern; Variable Interval: steady moderate responding).

Superstitious Behavior

An operant response accidentally strengthened when an organism receives non-contingent, random reinforcement immediately following an arbitrary behavior.

Escape Learning vs. Avoidance Learning

Escape learning occurs when an organism acquires a behavior that terminates an ongoing aversive stimulus; avoidance learning occurs when an organism learns a response that prevents the aversive stimulus from occurring.

Learned Helplessness

A passive state resulting from prior exposure to unavoidable and uncontrollable aversive stimulation, causing an organism to fail to escape even when escape opportunities become available.

Latent Learning

Learning that occurs in the absence of reinforcement and remains unexpressed until an incentive or reinforcement makes its demonstration advantageous.

Observational Learning Processes

Bandura's four cognitive-behavioral stages required to learn from a model: Attention (noticing), Retention (remembering), Reproduction (physical/cognitive execution), and Motivation (incentive to perform).

Mirror Neurons

Neurons in the cortex that fire both when an individual executes an action and when they observe another individual performing that same action, providing a biological mechanism for observational learning and imitation.

Responsibilities of a dendrite on a neuron

Dendrites are responsible for receiving incoming signals from other neurons and transmitting this information to the cell body.

Axon

The axon is a long, slender projection of a neuron that conducts electrical impulses away from the cell body and towards other neurons, muscles, or glands.

Cell Body (Soma)

The cell body, or soma, is the central part of a neuron that contains the nucleus, organelles, and is responsible for maintaining the life of the neuron.

Axon Terminal

The axon terminal is the endpoint of an axon where the transmission of signals to other neurons, muscles, or glands occurs, releasing neurotransmitters into the synapse.

Synapse

The synapse is the junction between two neurons or between a neuron and a muscle or gland, where neurotransmitters are released to transmit signals.

Mylein Sheath

The myelin sheath is a fatty layer that encases the axon of a neuron, facilitating faster transmission of electrical impulses along the nerve cells.

Node of Ranvier

The Node of Ranvier is a short segment of unmyelinated axon between adjacent myelin sheaths, allowing for the rapid conduction of electrical impulses via saltatory conduction.

Schwann cell

Schwann cells are a type of glial cell that produce the myelin sheath around peripheral nerve fibers, aiding in the insulation and support of neuronal signals.

Axon Hilock

The axon hillock is the conical structure at the beginning of an axon, where action potentials are initiated and integrated signals from the neuron are processed.