AP Psych Theories

- Weber's Law: Just noticeable difference

- Young-Helmholtz Color Theory (Trichromatic Theory): Color determined by the relative activity in red, blue, or green-sensitive cones

- Opponent-Process Color Theory: Color information organized into 3 antagonistic pairs

- Place Theory: Relates perceived pitch to region

- Frequency Theory: Relates pitch to the frequency of sound waves and frequency of neuron firing

- Facial Feedback Hypothesis: Sensations from the face provide cues to the brain that help determine emotion (Ekman)

- Statistical Significance: 0.05 chance accounts for results less than 5% of the time

- Template-Matching Theory: Stored copies

- Prototype-Matching Theory: Recognition involves comparison

- Feature-Analysis Theory: Patterns are represented and recognized by distinctive features

- Restorative Theory: We sleep in order to replenish

- Adaptive Nonresponding Theory: Sleep and inactivity have survival value

- Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis: Dreams are products of spontaneous neural activity

- Thorndike's Law of Effect: Reward and punishment encourage and discourage responding (Thorndike)

- Premack Principle: States that any high-probability behavior can be used as a reward for any lower-probability behavior

- Continuity vs. Discontinuity: Theories of development: nature vs. nurture

- Serial Position Phenomenon: Sequence influences recall

- Primacy Effect: Enhanced memory for items presented earlier

- Recency Effect: Enhanced memory for items presented last

- Decay Theory: Forgetting caused by learning similar materials; proactive (initially) vs. retroactive (previously)

- Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: A person's language determines and limits their experiences

- Hull's Drive-Reduction Model: Motivation arises out of need

- Cognitive Consistency Theory: Cognitive inconsistencies create tension and thus motivate the organism

- Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory: Reconcile cognitive discrepancies

- Arousal Theories: We all have optimal levels of stimulation that we try to maintain

- Yerkes-Dodson Law: Arousal will increase performance up to a point; further increases impair performance (inverted U function)

- Incentive Theory: Behavior is pulled rather than pushed

- James-Lange Theory: Emotion is caused by bodily changes

- Cannon-Bard's Thalamic Theory: Emotional expression caused by simultaneous changing bodily events, thoughts, and feelings