Exam 2 Psychology Word Bank

Inversion Effect

Difficulty in recognizing upside-down faces compared to upright ones.

Own Race Bias

Tendency to more easily recognize faces of one's own race.

Prosopagnosia

Inability to recognize familiar faces, also known as face blindness.

Duchenne Smile

A genuine, involuntary smile involving eye and mouth muscle contractions.

Introspection

The examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes.

Latent Content

The underlying, symbolic meaning of a dream.

Activation-Synthesis

Theory that dreams are the brain's attempt to synthesize random neural activity.

Habituation

Decreased response to a stimulus after repeated exposure.

Behaviorism

Psychology approach focused entirely on observable behaviors.

Classical Conditioning

Learning by pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus.

Operant Conditioning

Learning process where behaviors are modified by reinforcement or punishment.

Primary Reinforcer

A biologically satisfying stimulus, such as food or water.

Skinner Box

An enclosure used to test operant conditioning in animals.

Learned Helplessness

A state of passive resignation following repeated inescapable adverse events.

Working Memory

A system for temporarily storing and managing active cognitive information.

Mnemonics

Memory aids that use organizational techniques or vivid imagery.

Chunking

Grouping individual bits of information into larger, meaningful units.

Forgetting Curve

Hypothesized decline of memory retention over time.

Childhood Amnesia

The inability to remember events from early childhood.

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a specific category.

Algorithm

A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution.

Representativeness Heuristic

Judging likelihood by comparing an event to an existing prototype.

Availability Heuristic

Estimating likelihood based on how easily examples come to mind.

Functional Fixedness

Inability to see an object having a function other than its usual one.

Framing

The way an issue is presented, influencing decisions and judgments.