Studied by 3 people
Aaron Beck’s view of depression
Developed a cognitive theory of depression; identified patterns of thinking that correlated with symptoms of depression. In an effort to better understand depression and related illness, he developed the Depression Inventory, Anxiety Inventory and the Scale for Suicide Ideation. He believes that depression is maintained because depressed patients are unaware of the negative automatic thoughts that they habitually formulate.
Absolute threshold
The minimum amount of physical energy needed to produce a reliable sensory experience; operationally defined as the stimulus level at which a sensory signal is detected half the time.
Achievement vs. aptitude tests
Achievement: measures what has been acquired (terminal); selection purposes; designed for K-12; group or individually administered.
Aptitude: predicts future performance or ability; decisions about future; designed for high school+; group or individually administered
Action vs. resting potential
Action: nerve impulse activated by in a neuron that travels down the axon and causes neurotransmitters to be released into a synapse. Resting: polarization of cellular fluid within a neuron, which provides the capability to produce an action potential.
Acuity-vision
Acuteness of vision or perception; keenness
Ainsworth Strange Situation (Paradigm)
Widely used in child development research. Goal of the procedure was to provide an environment that would arouse in the infant both the motivation to explore and the urge to seek security. An observer (often a researcher or therapist) takes a mother and her child (usually around the age of 12 months) to an unfamiliar room containing toys. A series of eight separations and reunions are staged involving mild, but cumulative, stress for the infant. Separation in such an unfamiliar setting would also likely activate the child’s attachment system and allow for a direct test of its functioning. Ainsworth categorized the responses into three major types:
(A) Anxious/avoidant--the child may not be distressed at the mother’s departure and may avoid or turn away from her on her return
(B) Securely attached--the child is distressed by the mother’s departure and easily soothed by her on her return
(C) Anxious/resistant--the child may stay extremely close to the mother during the first few minutes and become highly distressed at her departure. When she returns, the child will simultaneously seek both comfort and distance from the mother. The child’s behavior will be characterized by crying and reaching to be held and then attempting to leave once picked up.
Albert Bandura: major view on learning and Bobo Doll experiment
Argued that individuals, especially children, learn aggressive responses from observing others, either personally or through the media or environment. He stated that many individuals believed that aggression will produce reinforcements. In his experiment, he had children witness a video of a model aggressively attacking a plastic clown. After the video, the children were placed in a room with attractive toys, but they could not touch them. The process of retention had occurred. Therefore, the children became angry and frustrated. Then the children were led to another room where there were identical toys used in the video. The motivation phase was in occurrence. He and many other researchers found that 88% of the children imitated the aggressive behavior. Eight months later, 40% of the same children reproduced the violent behavior observed in the experiment
Albert Ellis Rational Emotive Therapy (RET)
Is a comprehensive system of personality change based on changing irrational beliefs that cause undesirable, highly charged emotional reactions such as severe anxiety.
Albert Adler inferiority complex
This feeling of inferiority is derived from physical disability or from faulty relationships. The inferiority complex is a need to validate one’s self by oneself; it is the need for individual accomplishment. It arises from the experience of denigration as a child.
All-or-nothing law (all-or-none) of neural firing
The rule that the size of the action potential is unaffected by increases in the intensity of stimulation beyond the threshold level.
altruism
prosocial behaviors a person carries out without considering his or her own safety or interests.
American Psychological Association (APA)
An organization that includes psychologists from all over the world. At the end of 1998, the organization was reported to have over 155,000 members worldwide.
amnesia
a failure of memory caused by physical injury, disease, drug use, or psychological trauma.
apparent motion
a movement illusion in which one or more stationary lights going on and off in succession are perceive as a single moving light; the simplest form or apparent motion is the
phi phenomenon.
arousal
A motivational state of excitement and tension brought about by various stimuli. A result is emotions, which serve as a motivational function.
Asch’s conformity study
Male college students were led to believe that they were in a study of simple visual perception. They were shown cards with three lines of differing lengths and asked to indicate which of the three lines was the same length as the standard line. Most of the participants, when faced with conflicting beliefs, who yielded to the majority’s opinion, were described as “disoriented” and “doubt-ridden.” Two-thirds of the time, however, participants gave the correct, nonconforming answer.
attachment
emotional relationship between a child and the “regular” caregiver.
attribution theory
A social-cognitive approach to describing the ways the social perceiver uses information to generate causal explanations.
aversive conditioning
when a stimulus one seeks to avoid is used to condition a subject.
aversive conditions
when a stimulus one seeks to avoid it is present.
Babinsky response
A reflex produced by stroking the sole of the foot that manifests in dorsal flexion of the big toe.
behavior as being adaptive
Behavior that is learned in response to a set of stimuli in an environment.
bell curve (normal distribution)
used to assess intelligence on a bell shaped curve; most people's scores cluster in the middle and fewer are found toward the two extremes of genius and mental deficiency.
Benjamin Whorf's theory of linguistic relativism (determinism)
through cross-linguistic exploration, came to the conclusion that differences in language created differences in thought.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
linguistic relativity- structural differences between languages will generally be paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences in the native speakers of two languages.
linguistic determinism
the structure of language strongly influences or fully determines the way that its native speakers perceive and reason about the world.
binocular disparity
the displacement between the horizontal positions of corresponding images in the two eyes.
blind spot- a.k.a., the optic disc
which is the region in the retina where optic nerve leaves each eye; contains no receptor cells. You do not experience total blindness for two reasons - The blind spots of the two eyes are positioned so that receptors in each eye register what is missed in the other, and, The brain "fills in" this region with appropriate sensory information from the surrounding area.
blood brain barrier
made up of specialized glial cells (astrocytes) that form a continuous envelope of fatty material around blood vessels in the brain. Protects the brain from poisons and harmful substances that are not fat-soluble.
What part of the brain do we share with animals?
We and animals share the same basic hind brain, at the base of our skull where the brain meets the spinal cord. These structures are important for basic vital functions such as heartbeat, balance, digesting and breathing. So humans and animals all have the same lower part to their brains. It’s only the higher parts that distinguishes us from the apes, dogs, lions, tigers and bears.
Brainstorming
A way to generate novel solutions to problems. Everyone in the room just sort of shouts out ideas about something and the ideas are written on the board, no one is allowed to criticize the ideas until everyone has said everything they want. By reducing criticism, there is a free flow of ideas from which you can go back later on and judge which ones are good or which ones are bad. But the initial idea is to get those ideas out and on the board. If you know you’ll be instantly criticized, they someone with a good idea might not speak up in the first place.
Broca’s Aphasia
this is a kind of language disorder that is caused by damage to the left frontal lobe. Damage in this area could lead to an inability to produce speech. A person has a hard time forming them words, moving his mouth, much like a stroke victim that can’t actually make the correct sounds for the words he’s trying to say. Aphasia means language problem and Paul Broca was the French physician who discovered the specific area in the brain that contributes to it.
Bystander Intervention
This has to do with the factors or forces that influence whether or not you are likely to come to someone’s aid if you are an innocent bystander. What affects whether or not you stop to help someone in need? Surprisingly enough, there are number of factors: whether or not you are in a hurry, whether you feel competent, whether the person is like you, whether you are with a small group versus a large group, whether or not you are in a good mood.
Cannon/Bard critique of James-Lange Theory of Emotions
They argued that emotions result from reading our visceral (physiological) reactions and thereby concluding certain emotions. For example, we see a bear, we feel our heart beat, feel our sweat pour out, notice our hair stand on end and we conclude I’m afraid. They argued that 1) sometimes we feel and emotion first and only after realize what it did to our body 2) different emotions may have similar physiological responses (for example both fear and joy might cause the heart to beat) so how can one certain physiological response lead to any specific emotion? They argued instead that emotions and our perception of them are simultaneous. The raised the question of whether or not one’s bodily response (heart beating) occurs before, after or simultaneously with one’s perceived emotional reaction (I am afraid).
Carol Gilligan’s Critique of Kohlberg
His research had a distinct male bias as not many of his subjects that he surveyed and interview were female. He seems to suggest that males often reason through moral issues at higher levels than females. Gilligan pointed out the male bias in Kohlberg’s research and argued that females have different ways of reasoning through moral issues, this does not make them inferior to male reasoning, but only points out the females value different things when trying to reason through moral issues.
Chaining
this is a term from learning theory that refers to putting several learned behaviors together to make one complete whole routine. For example, suppose you were to break down all the small routines that might go into a marching band performance. There are lots of little routines going on that when they are all put together make for a grand show. Chaining is linking each smaller routine to the larger whole.
Chunking
this is a term from learning theory that refers to putting several learned behaviors together to make one complete whole routine. For example, suppose you were to break down all the small routines that might go into a marching band performance. There are lots of little routines going on that when they are all put together make for a grand show. Chaining is linking each smaller routine to the larger whole.
Classicial Conditioning
Pioneered by Pavlov, this is a kind of learning by association. The subject learns to associate a one stimulus with a certain response. This is also called Pavlovian conditioning. It’s a very basic yet powerful kind of learning.
Clever Hans Experiment
This is the tendency to think animals are smarter than they actually are. There was a horse trainer in Germany that told everyone his horse, Hans, was super intelligent. The horse could tap out the date with his hooves, nod his head at the saying of the correct Prime Minister of Germany, neigh when he recognized the correct month, etc., etc. Everyone was amazed at Hans. Then we found out the Hans was merely associating certain nonverbal body language cues that the trainer would give after he asked a certain question. The trainer would touch his ear and the horse would neigh, adjust his cap and the horse would tap three times, etc. The horse didn’t understand anything, he was just trained to do certain things when he saw the trainer give certain subtle body language cues.
Cognitive Dissonance
refers to the state of uneasiness within a persons mind whenever they are shaken up. Suppose you learned that your minister was secretly a serial killer. You would be taken aback, your mind would be in a state of disbelief. You’d have contradictory thoughts prompting you to reevaluate your attitude toward your minister and probably change your behavior toward him. We often create a state of cognitive dissonance in people to get them to think about something, sort of shake them up a little.
Color blindness
It’s caused because people lack certain photo receptors (neurons tuned to respond to certain frequencies of light) on their retina. Most common form is distinguishing red/green colors. Mostly in males (attached to the X-chromosome). Those that can’t distinguish any color are very rare.
Complementary colors
Mostly black/white, red/green, blue/yellow. There are pairs of cones that are antagonistic (work opposite each other) on the retina and they are tuned to these colors.
Four kinds of conflicts
Approach/Avoidance: having to choose something that has some good qualities but it also has some bad qualities.
Approach/Approach – having to choose between two things, both of which have something good to offer. You get into Princeton and Harvard and you like them equally.
Avoidance/Avoidance – Choosing between two equally bad things. Caught between a rock and a hard place. You can eat your spinach (which you hate) or you can eat your asparagus (which you also hate).
Double Approach/Avoidance – having to choose between two or more things all of which have something good and bad about them. You got into Princeton but it’s so expensive, you also got into Harvard, but it’s too far from home.
correlation coefficients
A statistic that indicates the degree of relationship between two variables
cross cultural studies
Studies in which researchers try to figure out whether a certain behavior, belief, practice, etc. transcends cultural boundaries or differs from culture to culture.
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