Introductory Psychology and Memory Lecture Notes

50 vocabulary flashcards covering worldview perspectives, history of psychology, research methods, reasoning biases, and memory processes.

Worldview

A way of making sense of the world and our experience, acting as the lenses through which we perceive reality.

Relational persons

The view of human nature stating that we are built for relationship and form connections with the things around us.

Embodied

The view that human bodies matter, created by God for a reason, exemplified by Jesus dying and being resurrected with a physical touchable body.

Responsible limited agents

Human beings who are called by God to be stewards of the earth, possessing free deliberate action while having limited abilities that change over time.

Meaning-seekers

The perspective that humans look for a sense of purpose and want to know more than what is shown, beyond basic survival or reproduction.

Small-p psychology

Implicit 'folk' knowledge about people that is informal, traditional, and based on 'common sense'.

Big-P psychology

Explicit, formal knowledge about people as an academic field of study, which is scientific, recent, institutional, and powerful in modern western culture.

Wilhelm Wundt

The psychologist who established the first psychology laboratory in $1879$ at the University of Leipzig in Germany.

Structuralism

A school of thought led by Edward Titchener focused on breaking down concepts and behaviours into their core elements.

Analytic introspection

A structuralist technique where individuals reflected on their own mind as a basis for studying others.

Functionalism

A school of thought associated with William James that emphasizes what the mind does and how its function helps us adapt.

Gestalt Psychology

A school of psychological thought interested in consciousness, holding that the whole perception is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Apparent motion

An example in Gestalt psychology showing that mental phenomena frequently cannot be reduced to individual parts.

Psychoanalysis

A perspective developed out of clinical experience comprising a procedure to investigate inaccessible mental processes, a treatment for neurotic disorders, and a body of knowledge about the mind.

Sigmund Freud

The founder of psychoanalysis who promoted the notion that conscious motivators contribute only a small proportion of motivation, with most hidden in the unconscious.

Unconscious mind

The hidden part of the mind containing memories and motivators under the surface, described as most of the mind beneath the water like an iceberg.

J.B. Watson

The father of Behaviourism who argued that scientific psychology must deal only with observable behavior because the mind cannot be observed.

Behaviourism

A psychological perspective focusing strictly on observable actions and environmental conditions while excluding the unobservable mind from scientific study.

Humanism

A reaction against pessimism that focuses on human potential, phenomenology, self-actualization, self-perfection, and free will.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

A five-level humanistic model consisting of physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization.

Cognitive psychology

The study of people's ability to acquire, organize, remember, and use knowledge to guide behavior, examining what happens between input and output.

Cognitive Neuroscience/Biopsychology

An area emphasizing psychological and biochemical aspects of behavior, which transformed mental illness treatment and created methods to peer into the living brain.

Sociocultural perspective

A psychological perspective recognizing that humans live for relationships, allowing us to thrive and help others rather than existing purely as individuals.

System 1

A fast, effortless, mostly unconscious thinking system that triggers emotions, looks for patterns and causes, creates stories, and relies on mental shortcuts.

System 2

A slow, effortful, conscious thinking system that involves logic, reflection, options, catches errors, and identifies potential consequences.

Hindsight bias

A predictable reasoning error expressed as 'I knew that would happen' or 'I should have seen that coming'.

Availability heuristic

A mental shortcut where we assess the likelihood of something occurring based on how easily we can recall a vivid example.

Overconfidence

A cognitive tendency where individuals believe they know more than they actually do.

Confirmation bias

Seeking evidence to support or confirm existing beliefs while ignoring or interpreting evidence that challenges those beliefs.

Variable

Anything about a person or their circumstances that can vary or differ in behavior or characteristics.

Constructs

Abstract concepts in social science that cannot be observed directly, such as hunger, competitiveness, depression, wisdom, or creativity.

Operational definition

Defining an abstract term into a clear, unambiguous set of operations, observable actions, or measures for research purposes.

Case studies

A descriptive research method that examines one or a few people in depth to uncover their story and find clues applicable to others.

Surveys

A descriptive research method used to collect opinions and attitudes from large numbers of people.

Correlational method

A research method used to predict and identify relationships among variables without establishing causation.

Correlation Coefficient

A measure of association between two variables ranging from $-1.00$ to $+1.00$, where magnitude indicates strength and sign indicates direction.

Experimental method

A research method used to explain cause-and-effect relationships by systematically manipulating variables under controlled conditions.

Independent variable

The potentially casual factor in an experiment controlled and systematically manipulated by the researcher.

Dependent variable

The potential effect in an experiment whose value depends on changes in the independent variable.

Scientific attitude

A mindset composed of curiosity, skepticism, and humility that prevents maintaining unsupported beliefs.

Encoding

The key memory process of getting experience into memory.

Storage

The key memory process of representing and organizing experiences in our minds.

Retrieval

The key memory process of accessing our memories from storage.

Episodic memory

A type of memory that stores specific episodes in an individual's life.

Semantic memory

A type of memory that stores meanings and general knowledge.

Procedural memory

A type of memory for skills, complex movements, or mental abilities, such as driving a car.

Explicit (Declarative) memory

Memory for information that a person can outwardly state that they know.

Implicit (Non-declarative) memory

Memories that affect behavior whether a person consciously knows that they know them or not.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

The first psychologist to systematically study memory in $1885$ using nonsense syllables to test rehearsal, retention, and relearning.

Primacy effect

The memory phenomenon where the first few items in a list are rehearsed enough to move into long-term storage.