AP Psychology Vocab Review

Psychology

The science of behavior and mental processes

Positive Psychology

A field of research that focuses on people's positive experiences and characteristics, such as happiness, optimism, and resilience.

Biological Psychologists

Psychologists who analyze the biological factors influencing behavior and mental processes.

Developmental Psychologists

Psychologists who seek to understand, describe, and explore how behavior and mental processes change over a lifetime.

Cognitive Psychologists

Psychologists who study the mental processes underlying judgment, decision making, problem solving, imagining, and other aspects of human thought or cognition. Also called experimental psychologists.

Clinical And Counseling Psychologists

Psychologists who seek to assess, understand, and change abnormal behavior.

Educational Psychologists

Psychologists who study methods by which instructors teach and students learn and who apply their results to improving those methods

School Psychologists

Psychologists who test IQ's, diagnose students' academic problems, and set up programs to improve students' achievement

Forensic Psychologists

Psychologists who assist in jury selection, evaluate defendants mental competence to stand trial, and deal with other issues involving psychology and the law.

Psychodynamic Approach

A view developed by Freud that emphasizes the interplay of unconscious mental processes in determining human thought, feelings, and behavior.

Behavioral Approach

An approach to psychology emphasizing that human behavior is determined mainly by what a person has learned, especially from rewards and punishments.

Critical Thinking

The process of assessing claims and making judgments on the basis of well-supported evidence.

Hypothesis

In scientific research, a prediction stated as a specific, testable proposition about a phenomenon.

Variable

A factor or characteristic that is manipulated or measured in research

Theory

An integrated set of propositions that can be used to account for, predict, and even suggest ways of controlling certain phenomena

Naturalistic Observation

The process of watching without interfering as a phenomenon occurs in the natural environment.

Case Study

A research method involving the intensive examination of some phenomenon in a particular individual, group, or situation.

Survey

A research method that involves giving people questionnaires or special interviews designed to obtain descriptions of their attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and intentions.

Control Group

In an experiment, the group that receives no treatment or provides some other baseline against which to compare the performance or response of the experimental group.

Independent Variable

The variable manipulated by the researcher in an experiment.

Dependent Variable

In an experiment, the factor affected by the independent variable.

Placebo

A physical or psychological treatment that contains no active ingredient but produces an effect because the person receiving it believes it will.

Experimenter Bias

A confounding variable that occurs when an experimenter unintentionally encourages participants to respond in a way that supports the hypothesis.

Double-Blind Design

A research design in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group.

Sampling

The process of selecting participants who are members of the population that the researcher wishes to study.

Correlation Coefficient

A statistic, r, that summarizes the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables.

Statistically Significant

Referring to a correlation, or a difference between two groups, that is larger than would be expected by chance.

Nervous System

A complex combination of cells whose primary function is to allow an organism to gain information about what is going on inside and outside the body and to respond appropriately.

Neuron

Fundamental unit of the nervous system; nerve cell.

Glial Cells

Cells in the nervous system that hold neurons together and help them communicate with one another.

Axon

A fiber that carries signals from the body of a neuron out to where communication occurs with other neurons.

Dendrite

A neuron fiber that receives signals from the axons of other neurons and carries those signals to the cell body.

Synapse

The tiny gap between neurons across which they communicate

Myelin

A fatty substance that wraps around some axons and increases the speed of action potentials.

Neurotransmitters

Chemicals that assist in the transfer of signals from one neuron to another.

Central Nervous System

The parts of the nervous system encased in bone, including the brain and the spinal cord.

Autonomic Nervous System

A subsystem of the peripheral nervous system that carries messages between the central nervous system and the heart, lungs, and other organs and glands.

Cerebellum

The part of the hindbrain whose main functions include controlling finely coordinated movements and storing memories about movement, but which may also be involved in impulse control, emotion, and language.

Thalamus

A forebrain structure that relays signals from most sense organs to higher levels in the brain and plays an important role in processing and making sense out of this information.

Hippocampus

A structure in the forebrain associated with the formation of new memories.

Cerebral Cortex

The outer surface of the brain

Corpus Callosum

A massive bundle of fibers that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres and allows them to communicate with each other.

Dopamine

A neurotransmitter used in the parts of the brain involved in regulating movement and experiencing pleasure.

Serotonin

A neurotransmitter used by cells in parts of the brain involved in the regulation of sleep, mood, and eating.

Sensations

Messages from the senses that make up the raw information that affects many kinds of behavior and mental processes.

Amplitude

The difference between the peak and the baseline of a waveform.

Wavelength

The distance from one peak to the next in a waveform

Frequency

The number of complete waveforms, or cycles, that pass by a given point in space every second.

Cornea

The curved, transparent, protective layer through which light rays enter the eye.

Pupil

An opening in the eye, just behind the cornea, through which light passes.

Iris

The colorful part of the eye, which constricts or relaxes to adjust the amount of light entering the eye.

Retina

The surface at the back of the eye onto which the lens focuses light rays.

Rods

Highly light-sensitive, but color-insensitive, photoreceptors in the retina that allow vision even in dim light.

Cones

Photoreceptors in the retina that help us to distinguish colors.

Blind Spot

The light-insensitive point at which axons from all of the ganglion cells converge and exit the eyeball

Optic Chiasm

Part of the bottom surface of the brain where half of each optic nerves fibers cross over to the opposite side of the brain.

Trichromatic Theory

A theory of color vision identifying three types of visual elements, each of which is most sensitive to different wavelengths of light.

Opponent-Process Theory

A theory of color vision stating that color-sensitive visual elements are grouped into red-green, blue-yellow, and black-white elements

Perception

The process through which people take raw sensations from the environment and interpret them, using knowledge, experience, and understanding of the world, so that the sensations become meaningful experiences.

Psychophysics

An area of research focusing on the relationship between the physical characteristics of environmental stimuli and the psychological experiences those stimuli produce.

Signal-Detection Theory

A mathematical model of what determines a person's report that a near-threshold stimulus has or has not occurred.

Just-Noticeable Difference

The smallest detectable difference in stimulus energy

Relative Size

A depth cue whereby larger objects are perceived as closer than smaller ones.

Texture Gradient

A graduated change in the texture, or grain, of the visual field, whereby objects with finer, less detailed textures are perceived as more distant.

Top-Down Processing

Aspects of recognition that are guided by higher-level cognitive processes and psychological factors such as expectations.

Parallel Distributed Processing

An approach to understanding object recognition in which various elements of the object are thought to be simultaneously analyzed by a number of widely distributed, but connected, neural units in the brain.

Classical Conditioning

A procedure in which a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with a stimulus that elicits a reflex or other response until the neutral stimulus alone comes to elicit a similar response.

Unconditioned Stimulus

A stimulus that elicits a response without conditioning

Unconditioned Response

The automatic or unlearned reaction to a stimulus

Conditioned Stimulus

The originally neutral stimulus that, through pairing with the unconditioned stimulus, comes to elicit a conditioned response.

Conditioned Response

The response that the conditioned stimulus elicits

Extinction

The gradual disappearance of operant behavior due to elimination of rewards for that behavior.

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of the conditioned response after extinction and without further pairings of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli

Stimulus Generalization

A phenomenon in which a conditioned response is elicited by stimuli that are similar but not identical to the conditioned stimulus.

Operant Conditioning

A process through which an organism learns to respond to the environment in a way that produces positive consequences and avoids negative ones

Positive Reinforcers

Stimuli that strengthen a response if they follow that response.

Negative Reinforcers

The removal of unpleasant stimuli, such as pain.

Primary Reinforcers

Reinforcers that meet an organism's basic needs, such as food and water.

Latent Learning

Learning that is not demonstrated at the time it occurs

Observational Learning

Learning how to perform new behaviors by watching others

Encoding

The process of acquiring information and entering it into memory.

Storage

The process of maintaining information in memory over time

Retrieval

The process of recalling information stored in memory

Episodic Memory

Memory of an event that happened while one was present.

Semantic Memory

A type of memory containing generalized knowledge of the world.

Explicit Memory

The process in which people intentionally try to remember something

Implicit Memory

The unintentional influence of prior experiences

Maintenance Rehearsal

Repeating information over and over to keep it active in short-term memory.

Elaborative Rehearsal

A memorization method that involves thinking about how new information relates to information already stored in long-term memory.

Parallel Distributed Processing (Pdp) Models

Memory models in which new experiences change one's overall knowledge base.

Selective Attention

The focusing of mental resources on only part of the stimulus field

Short-Term Memory

The maintenance component of working memory, which holds unrehearsed information for a limited time.

Chunks

Stimuli that are perceived as one unit or as a meaningful grouping of information.

Long-Term Memory

) A relatively long-lasting stage of memory whose capacity to store new information is believed to be unlimited.

Primacy Effect

A characteristic of memory in which recall of the first two or three items in a list is particularly good.

Recency Effect

A characteristic of memory in which recall is particularly good for the last few items in a list.

Context-Dependent Memory

Memory that can be helped or hindered by similarities or differences between the context in which it is learned and the context in which it is recalled.

State-Dependent Memory

Memory that is aided or impeded by a person's internal state.

Anterograde Amnesia

A loss of memory for any event that occurs after a brain injury

Retrograde Amnesia

A loss of memory for events prior to a brain injury.