AP Psychology: Memory, Stress, Health, and Personality

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the study of memory encoding, storage, retrieval, and forgetting; stress, health, and coping mechanisms; and psychoanalytic, humanistic, and trait theories of personality.

Memory

The persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information; the content of your mind.

Encoding

The initial process of getting information into the memory system.

Storage

The process of retaining encoded information over time.

Retrieval

The process of getting information out of memory storage.

Connectionism

An information-processing model that focuses on multitrack, parallel processing and views memories as products of interconnected neural networks.

Sensory Memory

The immediate, fleeting recording of sensory information in the memory system that momentarily registers rich detail.

Short-Term Memory

Activated memory that holds a few items briefly (such as $7 \pm 2$ bits of information described by George Miller in 1956) before the information is stored or forgotten.

Working Memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, as well as information retrieved from long-term memory.

Central Executive

In Alan Baddeley's (2002) model, the managerial component of working memory that focuses attention and coordinates auditory and visual rehearsal with long-term memory retrieval.

Explicit Memories (Declarative Memories)

Memories of conscious facts, dates, and experiences that are encoded through conscious, effortful processing.

Implicit Memories (Nondeclarative Memories)

Memories that form through automatic processing and bypass the conscious encoding track, including motor skills (such as riding a bike) and classically conditioned associations.

Chunking

An effortful processing strategy involving the organization of items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

Mnemonics

Memory aids, especially organizational devices and techniques that use vivid imagery (such as the peg-word system or acronyms like PEMDAS and OCEAN).

Spacing Effect

The tendency for distributed study or practice over time to produce better long-term recall than massed study or cramming.

Testing Effect

Enhanced memory and retention resulting from repeated retrieval practice (self-assessment or testing) rather than simply rereading material; also known as the retrieval practice effect.

Self-Reference Effect

The tendency for individuals, especially in individualist Western cultures, to show superior recall for information that is made personally meaningful and related to themselves.

Memory Consolidation

The neural storage and stabilization of long-term memories, wherein the hippocampus temporarily registers and holds explicit memories before moving them to other brain regions.

Infantile Amnesia

The blank conscious memory of one's first three years of life, caused by the lack of language command and a fully developed hippocampus.

Flashbulb Memories

Clear, vivid memories of emotionally significant moments that occur via emotion-triggered hormonal changes and rehearsal, proving very resistant to decay.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a synapse's firing potential following brief, rapid stimulation, considered the neural basis for learning and memory.

Encoding Specificity Principle

The idea that the cues and contexts specific to a particular memory formed at the time of encoding serve as the best retrieval cues.

Context-Dependent Memory

The phenomenon whereby we retrieve a memory more easily when tested in the exact same physical environment or context where it was encoded.

Mood-Congruent Memory

A form of state-dependent memory involving the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad emotional state.

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to best recall the last items (recency effect) and the first items (primacy effect) in a list compared to items in the middle.

Storage Decay

Forgetting that occurs when physical memory traces in the brain fade over time, characterized by a rapid initial drop in retention that subsequently levels off.

Proactive Interference

The disruptive effect that occurs when an older memory makes it more difficult to remember newly acquired information.

Retroactive Interference

The disruptive effect that occurs when new learning disrupts the retrieval or memory of older information.

Misinformation Effect

The corruption or distortion of a memory by misleading post-event information.

Imagination Effect

The creation of false memories that results from repeatedly imagining fake actions, events, and scenarios.

Stress

The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Hans Selye's three-phase model of the body's adaptive response to stress: Phase 1 Alarm reaction (mobilizing resources), Phase 2 Resistance (coping with the stressor), and Phase 3 Exhaustion (depletion of reserves).

Psychoneuroimmunology

The study of how psychological factors and emotions (psycho) affect the brain (neuro), which controls the endocrine stress hormones that influence the disease-fighting immune system.

Health Psychology

A subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine, studying how stress and behavior influence health and vulnerability to illness.

B Lymphocytes

White blood cells of the immune system that release antibodies to fight bacterial infections outside the cells.

T Lymphocytes

White blood cells of the immune system that attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances inside the cells.

Macrophages

Immune system cells ('big eaters') that search out, engulf, and attack harmful invaders and clean up worn-out cells.

Natural Killer Cells (NK cells)

Immune system cells that pursue and attack diseased cells, such as those infected by viruses or cancer.

Type A Personality

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone individuals who show elevated risks for heart disease.

Type B Personality

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed individuals.

Type D Personality

A personality term (Grande et al., 2012) for individuals who suppress negative emotion in order to avoid social disapproval.

Coping

Reducing stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods.

Problem-Focused Coping

A coping strategy where an individual attempts to alleviate stress directly by addressing the stressors themselves.

Emotion-Focused Coping

A coping strategy employed when an individual believes they cannot change the situation, focusing instead on managing the emotional impact of the stressor.

Learned Helplessness

The passive resignation and generalized helpless behavior an animal or human learns when experiencing uncontrollable bad events and a perceived lack of control.

External Locus of Control

The belief that chance or outside forces beyond personal control determine one's fate.

Internal Locus of Control

The belief that individuals control their own destiny and outcomes.

Self-Control

The ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards.

Personality

An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Psychodynamic Theories

Theories that posit that human behavior is a dynamic interaction between the conscious and unconscious mind.

Id

In Freud's personality structure, the totally unconscious reservoir of psychic energy operating on the pleasure principle that strives to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress.

Ego

In Freud's theory, the mostly conscious executive system operating on the reality principle that seeks to realistically gratify the id's impulses for long-term satisfaction while mediating with the superego.

Superego

In Freud's theory, the internalized moral conscience and standard for judgment that focuses on ideal behavior and strives for perfection.

Fixation

According to Freud, the lingering or stalling of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage due to unresolved conflicts.

Defense Mechanisms

Unconscious tactics employed by the ego that reduce and redirect anxiety by distorting reality.

Repression

The foundational defense mechanism (motivated forgetting) that banishes anxiety-arousing wishes and feelings from consciousness, underlying all other defense mechanisms.

Regression

A defense mechanism involving retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage where some psychic energy remains fixated (such as thumb sucking on the first day of school).

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism involving switching unacceptable impulses into their direct opposites (such as displaying exaggerated friendliness to mask repressed angry feelings).

Projection

A defense mechanism involving disguising one's own threatening impulses by attributing them to others (such as a cheating spouse accusing their partner of infidelity).

Rationalization

A defense mechanism involving offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one's actions.

Displacement

A defense mechanism involving shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.

Denial

A defense mechanism involving refusing to believe or perceive painful realities.

Projective Test

A personality assessment that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics and reveal unconscious motives.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test in which people express their inner feelings, interests, and motives through the stories they invent about ambiguous scenes.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

The most widely used projective test, consisting of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

Humanistic Approach

A personality perspective that focuses on the potential for healthy personal growth and people's inner striving for self-determination and self-fulfillment.

Self-Actualization

In Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the ultimate psychological need of achieving one's full potential, arising after basic physical and psychological needs are satisfied.

Unconditional Positive Regard

In Carl Rogers' person-centered perspective, an attitude of total acceptance and respect toward another person, serving as a core component of a growth-promoting environment.

Trait Theories

Approaches that examine characteristic, stable, and enduring patterns of behavior to describe personality differences rather than explain their underlying causes.

Factor Analysis

A statistical procedure used to identify clusters of test items or related variables (factors) that tap into basic underlying components of personality or intelligence.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

An empirically derived and objectively scored personality inventory originally designed to assess emotional stability, anxiety, adjustment, and behavioral problems.

Big Five Personality Factors

The most widely accepted five-factor personality model (Costa & McCrae), summarizing personality along the dimensions of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, and Extraversion (CANOE / OCEAN).

Person-Situation Controversy

The debate regarding whether an individual's behavior is primarily driven by stable, enduring internal traits or shaped by the immediate power of specific situations.