ap psych exam study guide

History and Approaches

  • APPROACHES KEY WORDS

    • Evolutionary – Genes

    • Humanistic – free will, choice, ideal, actualization

    • Biological – Brain, NTs

    • Cognitive – Perceptions, thoughts

    • Behavioral – learned, reinforced

    • Psychoanalytic/dynamic – unconscious, childhood

    • Sociocultural – society

Research Methods

  • EXPERIMENT

    **

    • Adv: researcher controls variables to establish cause and effect

    • Disadv: difficult to generalize

    • Independent Variable: manipulated by the researcher

      • Experimental Group: received the treatment (part of the IV)

      • Control Group: placebo, baseline (part of the IV)

      • Placebo Effect: show behaviors associated with the exp. group when having received placebo

      • Double-Blind: Exp. where neither the participant or the experimenter are aware of which condition people are assigned to

    • Dependent Variable: measured variable (is DEPENDENT on the independent variable)

  • Operational Definition: clear, precise, typically quantifiable definition of your variables – allows replication

  • Confound: error/ flaw in study

  • Random Assignment: assigns participants to either control or experimental group at random – minimizes bias, increase chance of equal representation

  • Random Sample: method for choosing participants – minimizes bias

  • Validity: accurate results

  • Reliability: same results every time

  • NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION: Adv: real world validity (observe people in their own setting) Disadv: No cause and effect

  • CORRELATION: Adv: identify relationship between two variables Disadv: No cause and effect (CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION)

    • Positive Correlation – Variables vary in the same direction

    • Negative Correlation – variables vary in opposite directions

    • The stronger the # the stronger the relationship REGARDLESS of the pos/neg sign

  • CASE STUDY:

    Adv. Studies ONE person (usually) in great detail – lots of info Disadv: No cause and effect

  • DESCRIPTIVE STATS: shape of the data

    • Measures of Central Tendency:

      • Mean: Average (use in normal distribution)

      • Median: Middle # (use in skewed distribution)

      • Mode: occurs most often

  • INFERENTIAL STATISTICS: establishes significance (meaningfulness) Significant results = NOT due to chance

  • ETHICAL GUIDELINES (APA)

    • Confidentiality

    • Informed Consent

    • Debriefing

    • Deception must be warranted

Biological Basis

  • NEURON: Basic cell of the NS

    • Dendrites: Receive incoming signal

    • Soma: Cell body (includes nucleus)

    • Axon: AP travels down this

    • Myelin Sheath: speeds up signal down axon

    • Terminals: release NTs – send signal onto next neuron

    • Synapse: gap b/w neurons

  • Action Potential: movement of sodium and potassium ions across a membrane sends an electrical charge down the axon

    • All or none law: stimulus must trigger the AP past its threshold, but does not increase the intensity of the response (flush the toilet)

    • Refractory period: neuron must rest and reset before it can send another AP (toilet resets)

  • Sensory neurons – receive signals

  • Afferent neurons – Accept signals

  • Motor neurons – send signals

  • Efferent neurons – signal Exits

  • CENTRAL NS: Brain and spinal cord

  • PERIPHERAL NS: Rest of the NS

    • Somatic NS: Voluntary movement

    • Autonomic NS: Involuntary (heart, lungs, etc)

      • Sympathetic NS: Arouses the body for fight/flight (generally activates)

      • Parasympathetic NS: established homeostasis after a sympathetic response (generally inhibits)

  • NEUROTRANSMITTERS (NTS): Chemicals released in synaptic gap, received by neurons

    • GABA: Major inhibitory NT

    • Glutamate: Major Excitatory NT

    • Dopamine: Reward & movement

    • Serotonin: Moods and emotion

    • Acetylcholine (ACH): Memory

    • Epinephrine & Norepinephrine: sympathetic NS arousal

    • Endorphins: pain control, happiness

    • Oxytocin: love and bonding

  • Agonist: drug that mimics a NT

  • Antagonist: drug that blocks a NT

  • Reuptake: Unused NTs are taken back up into the sending neuron. SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) block reuptake – treatment for depression

  • AREAS OF THE BRAIN:

    • Hindbrain: oldest part of the brain

      • Cerebellum – movement (what does it take to ring a bell)

      • Medulla – vital organs (HR, BP)

      • Pons – sleep/arousal (Ponzzzzzz)

    • Midbrain

      • Reticular formation: attention (if you can’t pay attention, You R F’d)

    • Forebrain: higher thought processes

      • Limbic System

        • Amygdala: emotions, fear (Amy, da! You’re so emotional!)

        • Hippocampus: memory (if you saw a hippo on campus you’d remember it!)

      • Thalamus: relay center

      • Hypothalamus: Reward/pleasure center, eating behaviors

      • Broca’s Area: Inability to produce speech (Broca – Broken speech)

      • Wernicke’s Area: Inability to comprehend speech (Wernicke’s what?)

      • Cerebral Cortex: outer portion of the brain – higher order thought processes

        • Occipital Lobe: located in the back of the head - vision

        • Frontal Lobe: decision making, planning, judgment, movement, personality

        • Parietal Lobe: located on the top of the head - sensations

        • Temporal Lobe: located on the sides of the head (temples) – hearing and face recognition

        • Somatosensory Cortex: map of our sensory receptors –in parietal lobe

        • Motor Cortex: map of our motor receptors – located in frontal lobe

      • Corpus Callosum: bundle of nerves that connects the 2 hemispheres – sometimes severed in patients with severe seizures – leads to “split-brain patients”

        • Lateralization: the brain has some specialized features – language is processed in the L Hemisphere

        • Split-brain experiments: done by Sperry & Gazzanaga.

          • Images shown to the right hemisphere will be processed in the left (& vice versa), patient can verbally identify what they saw

  • BRAIN PLASTICITY: Brain can “heal” itself

  • NATURE VS. NURTURE: ANSWER IS BOTH

    • Twin Studies:

      • Identical twins – Monozygotic (MZ)

      • Fraternal twins – Dizygotics (DZ)

    • Genetics: MZ twins will have a higher percentage of also developing a disease

    • Environment: MZ twins raised in different environments show differences

  • ENDOCRINE SYSTEM: sends hormones throughout the body

    • Pituitary Gland: Controlled by hypothalamus. release growth hormones

    • Adrenal Glands: related to sympathetic NS: releases adrenaline

Sensation & Perception

  • ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD: detection of signal 50% of time (is it there)

  • DIFFERENCE THRESHOLD (also called a just noticeable difference (JND) and follows WEBER’S LAW: two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum proportion. (Can you tell a change?)

  • SIGNAL DETECTION THEORY

  • Sensory Adaptation: diminished sensitivity as a result of constant stimulation (can you feel your underwear?)

  • Perceptual Set: tendency to see something as part of a group – speeds up signal processing

  • Inattentional Blindness: failure to notice something b/c you’re so focused on another task (gorilla video)

  • Cocktail party effect: notice your name across the room when its spoken, when you weren’t previously paying attention

  • VISUAL SYSTEM:

    • Pathway of vision: light --> cornea -->pupil/iris --> lens --> retina --> rods/cones --> bipolar cells --> ganglion cells --> optic nerve --> optic chiasm --> occipital lobe

    • Cornea – protects the eye

    • Pupil/iris – controls amount of light entering eye

    • Lens – focuses light on retina

    • Fovea–area of best vision(cones here)

    • Rods – black/white, dim light

    • Cones – color, bright light

    • Bipolar cells – connect rods/cones and ganglion cells

    • Ganglion cells – opponent-processing occurs here

    • Blind spot – occurs where the optic nerve leaves the eye

    • Feature detectors – specialized cells that see motion, shapes, lines, etc. (experiments by Hubel & Weisel)

  • THEORIES OF COLOR VISION:

    • Trichromatic – three cones for receiving color (blue, red, green)

      • Explains color blindness - they are missing a cone type

    • Opponent Process – complementary colors are processed in ganglion cells – explains why we see an after image

  • Visual Capture: Visual system overwhelms all others (nauseous in an IMAX theater – vision trumps vestibular)

  • Constancies: recognize that objects do not physically change despite changes in sensory input (size, shape, brightness)

  • Phi Phenomenon: adjacent lights blink on/off in succession – looks like movement (traffic signs with arrows)

  • Stroboscopic movement: motion produced by a rapid succession of slightly varying images (animations)

  • MONOCULAR CUES (how we form a 3D image from a 2D image)

    • Interposition: overlapping images appear closer

    • Relative Size: 2 objects that are usually similar in size, the smaller one is further away

    • Relative Clarity: hazy objects appear further away

    • Texture Gradient: coarser objects are closer

    • Relative Height: things higher in our field of vision look further away

    • Linear Perspective: parallel lines converge with distance (think railroad tracks)

  • BINOCULAR CUES: (how both eyes make up a 3D image)

    • Retinal Disparity: Image is cast slightly different on each retinal, location of image helps us determine depth

    • Convergence: Eyes strain more (looking inward) as objects draw nearer

  • TOP-DOWN PROCESSING: Whole --> smaller parts

  • BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING: Smaller Parts --> Whole

  • AUDITORY SYSTEM:

    • Pathway of sound: sound --> pinna --> auditory canal -->ear drum (tympanic membrane) --> hammer, anvil, stirrup (HAS) --> oval window --> cochlea --> auditory nerve --> temporal lobes

    • Outer Ear: pinna (ear), auditory canal

    • Middle Ear: ear drum , HAS (bones vibrate to send signal)

    • Inner Ear: cochlea – like COCHELLA (sounds 1st processed here)

  • THEORIES OF HEARING: both occur in the cochlea

    • Place theory – location where hair cells bends determines sound (high pitches)

    • Frequency theory – rate at which action potentials are sent determines sound (low pitches)

  • OTHER SENSES:

    • Touch: Mechanoreceptors --> spinal cord --> thalamus --> somatosensory cortex

    • Pain: Gate-control theory: we have a “gate” to control how much pain ix experienced

    • Kinesthetic: Sense of body position

    • Vestibular: Sense of balance (semicircular canals in the inner ear effect this)

    • Taste (gustation): 5 taste receptors: bitter, salty, sweet, sour, umami (savory)

    • Smell (olfaction): Only sense that does NOT route through the thalamus 1st. Goes to temporal lobe and amygdala

  • GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY: Whole is greater than the sum of its parts Gestalt Principles:

    • Figure/ground: organize information into figures objects (figures) that stand apart from surrounds (back ground)

    • Closure: tendency to mentally fill in gaps

    • Proximity: tendency to group things together that appear near each other

    • Similarity: tendency to group things together based off of looks

    • Continuity: tendency to mentally form a continuous line

States of Consciousness

  • STATES of CONSCIOUSNESS:

    • Subconscious: Sleeping and dreaming

    • No awareness: Knocked out

  • METACOGNITION: Thinking about thinking

  • SLEEP: Beta Waves: awake Alpha Waves: high amp., drowsy Stage 1: light sleep Stage 2: bursts of sleep spindles Stage 3 (delta waves: Deep sleep Stage 4: extremely deep sleep Rapid Eye Movement (REM): dreaming Entire cycle takes 90 minutes, REM occurs inb/w each cycle. REM lasts longer throughout the night

  • CIRCADIAN RHYTHM: 24 hour biological clock

    • Body temp and awareness change due to this

    • Controlled by the Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain

    • Explains jet lag

  • SLEEP DISORDERS

    • Insomnia: Inability to fall asleep (due to stress/anxiety)

    • Sleep walking: (due to fatigue, drugs, alcohol)

    • Night terrors: extreme nightmares – NOT in REM sleep – typical in children

    • Narcolepsy: fall asleep out of nowhere (due to deficiency in orexin)

    • Sleep Apnea: stop breathing suddenly while asleep (due to obesity usually)

  • DREAM THEORIES:

    • Freud’s Unconscious Wish Fulfillment: Dreaming is gratification of unconscious desires and needs

      • Latent Content: hidden meaning of dreams

      • Manifest Content: obvious storyline of dream

    • Activation Synthesis: Brain produces random bursts of energy – stimulating lodged memories. Dreams start random then develop meaning

  • HYPNOSIS

    • It Can: Reduce pain, help you relax

    • It CANNOT: give you superhuman strength, make you regress, make you do things against your will

  • PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS:

    • Triggers dopamine release in the brain

    • Depressants: Alcohol, barbiturates, tranquilizers, opiates (narcotics)

      • Decrease sympathetic NS activation, highly addictive

    • Stimulants: Amphetamines, Cocaine, MDMA (ecstasy), Caffeine, Nicotine

      • Increase sympathetic NS activation, highly addictive

    • Hallucinogens: LSD, Marijuana

      • Causes hallucinations, not very addictive

    • Tolerance: Needing more of a drug to achieve the same effects

    • Dependence: Become addicted to the drug – must have it to avoid withdrawal symptoms

    • Withdrawal: Psychological and physiological symptoms associated with sudden stoppage. Unpleasant – can kill you.

Learning

  • CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: PAVLOV!

    • Unconditioned Stimulus (US): brings about response w/o needing to be learned (food)

    • Unconditioned Response (UR): response that naturally occurs w/o training (salivate)

    • Neutral Response (NS): stimulus that normally doesn’t evoke a response (bell)

    • Conditioned Stimulus (CS): once neutral stimulus that now brings about a response (bell)

    • Conditioned Response (CR): response that, after conditioning, follows a CS (salivate)

    • Contiguity: Timing of the pairing, NS/CS must be presented immediately BEFORE the US

    • Acquisition: process of learning the response pairing

    • Extinction: previously conditioned response dies out over time

    • Spontaneous Recovery: After a period of time the CR comes back out of nowhere

    • Generalization: CR to like stimuli (similar sounding bell)

    • Discrimination: CR to ONLY the CS

  • CONDITIONED TASTE AVERSION (ONE-TRIAL LEARNING): John Garcia – Innate predispositions can allow classical conditioning to occur in one trial (food poisoning)

  • COUNTERCONDITIONING: Little Albert and John Watson (father of behaviorism) – conditioned a fear in a baby (only to countercondition – remove it - later on)

  • OPERANT CONDITIONING: SKINNER!

    • LAW OF EFFECT (Thorndike): Behaviors followed by pos. outcomes are strengthened, neg. outcomes weaken a behavior (cat in the puzzle box)

  • PRINCIPLES OF OPERANT COND:

    • Pos. Reinforcement: Add something nice to increase a behavior (gold star for turning in HW)

    • Neg. Reinforcement: Take away something bad/annoying to increase a behavior (put on seatbelt to take away annoying car signal)

    • Pos. Punishment: Add something bad to decrease a behavior (spanking)

    • Neg. Punishment: Take away something good to decrease a behavior (take away car keys)

    • Primary Reinforcers: innately satisfying (food and water)

    • Secondary Reinforcers: everything else (stickers, high-fives)

      • Token Reinforcer: type of secondary - can be exchanged for other stuff (game tokens or money)

    • Generalization: respond to similar stimulus for reward

    • Discrimination: stimulus signals when behavior will or will not be reinforced (light on means response are accepted)

    • Extinction / Spontaneous Recovery: same as classical conditioning

    • Premack Principle: high probability activities reinforce low probability activities (get extra min at recess if you everyone turns in their HW)

    • Overjustification Effect: reinforcing behaviors that are intrinsically motivating causes you to stop doing them (give a child 5$ for reading when they already like to read – they stop reading)

    • Shaping: use successive approximations to train behavior (reward desired behaviors to teach a response – rat basketball)

    • Chaining: tie together several behaviors

    • Continuous Reinforcement schedule: Receive reward for every response

    • Fixed Ratio schedule: Reward every X number of response (every 10 envelopes stuffed get $$)

    • Fixed Interval schedule: Reward every X amount of time passed (every 2 weeks get a paycheck)

    • Variable Ratio schedule: Rewarded after a random number of responses (slot machine

    • Variable Interval schedule: Rewarded after a random amount of time has passed (fishing)

    • Variable schedules are most resistant to extinction (how long will keep playing a slot machine before you think its broken?)

  • SOCIAL (OBSERVATIONAL) LEARNING: BANDURA!

    • Modeling Behaviors: Children model (imitate) behaviors. Study used BoBo dolls to demonstrate the following

      • Prosocial – helping behaviors

      • Antisocial – mean behaviors

  • MISC LEARNING TYPES

    • Latent learning (Tolman!) – learning is hidden until useful (rats in maze get reinforced half way through, performance improved

      • Cognitive maps – mental representation of an area, allows navigation if blocked

    • Insight learning (Kohler!) – some learning is through simple intuition (chimps with crates to get bananas)

    • Learned Helplessness (Seligman!) – no matter what you do you never get a positive outcome so you just give up (word scrambles)

Cognition

  • ENCODING: Getting info into memory

    • Automatic encoding – requires no effort (what did you have for breakfast?)

    • Effortful encoding – requires attention (school work)

    • Shallow, intermediate, deep processing: the more emphasis on MEANING the deeper the processing, and the better remembered

    • Imagery – attaching images to information makes it easier to remember (shoe w/ spaghetti laces)

    • Self-referent encoding – we better remember what we’re interested in (you’d remember someone’s phone number who you found extremely attractive)

    • Dual encoding – combining different types of encoding aids in memory

    • Chunking – break info into smaller units to aid in memory (like a phone #)

    • Mnemonics – shortcuts to help us remember info easier

      • Acronyms – using letter to remember something (PEMDAS)

      • Method of loci – using locations to remember a list of items in order

    • Context dependent memory – where you learn the info you best remember the info (scuba divers testing)

    • State dependent memory – the physical state you were in when learning is the way you should be when testing (study high, test high)

  • STORAGE: Retaining info over time

    • Information Processing Model – Sensory memory, short term memory, long term memory model

    • Sensory Memory – stores all incoming stimuli that you receive (first you have to a pay attention)

      • Iconic Memory – visual memory, lasts 0.3 seconds

      • Echoic Memory – auditory memory, lasts 2-3 seconds

    • Short Term Memory – info passes from sensory memory to STM – lasts 30 secs, and can remember 7 ± 2 items

      • Rehearsal (repeating the info) resets the clock

    • Working Memory Model splits STM into 2 – visual spatial memory (from iconic mem) and phonological loop (from echoic mem). A “central executive” puts it together before passing it to LTM

    • Long term memory – lasts a life time

      • Explicit (Declarative): Conscious recollection

        • Episodic: events

        • Semantic: facts

      • Implicit (Nondeclarative): unconscious recollection

        • Classical conditioning

        • Priming: info that is seen earlier “primes” you to remember something later on (octopus, assassin, climate, bogeyman)

        • Procedural: skills

  • Memory organization

    • Hierarchies: memory is stored according to a hierarchy

    • Semantic networks: linked memories are stored together

    • Schemas: preexisting mental concept of how something should look (like a restaurant)

  • Memory storage

    • Acetylcholine neurons in the hippocampus for most memories

    • Cerebellum for procedural memories

    • Long-term potentiation: neural basis of memory – connections are strengthened over time with repeated stimulation (more firing of neurons)

  • RETRIEVAL: Taking info out of storage

    • Serial Position Effect: tendency to remember the beginning and the end of the list best

    • Recall: remember what you’ve been told w/o cues (essays)

    • Recognition: remember what you’ve been told w/ cues (MC)

    • Flashbulb memories: particularly vivid memories for highly important events (9/11 attacks)

    • Repressed memories: unconsciously buried memories – are unreliable

    • Encoding failure: forget info b/c you never encoded it (paid attention to it) in the first place (which is the real penny)

    • Encoding specificity principle: the more closely retrieval cues match the way we learned the info, the better we remember the info (like state dependent memory)

    • Forgetting curve: recall decreases rapidly at first, then reaches a plateau after which little more is forgotten (EBBINGHAUS)

    • Proactive interference: old info blocks new

    • Retroactive interference: new info blocks old

    • Misinformation effect: distortion of memory by suggestion or misinformation (Loftus – lost in the mall, Disney land)

    • Anterograde amnesia: amnesia moves forward (forget new info – 50 first dates)

    • Retrograde amnesia: amnesia moves backwards (forget old info)

    • ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE: caused by destruction of acetylcholine in hippocampus

LANGUAGE

  • Phonemes: smallest unit of sound (ch sound in chat)

  • Morpheme: smallest unit that caries meaning (syllable)

  • Grammar: rules in a language that enable us to communicate

  • Semantics: set of rules by which we derive meaning (adding –ed makes something past tense)

  • Syntax: rules for combining words into sentences (white house vs casa blanca)

  • Babbling stage: infants babble 1st stage of speech

  • One-word stage: duh

  • Two-word stage: duh duh

  • Theories of language development:

    • Imitation: Kids repeat what they hear – but they don’t do it perfectly

      • Overregularization: grammar mistake where children over use certain morphemes (I go-ed to the park)

    • Operant conditioning: reinforced for language use

    • Inborn universal grammar: theory comes from NOAM CHOMSKY – says that language is innate and we are predisposed to learn it

    • Critical period: period of time where something must be learned or else it cannot ever happen (language must be learned young – Genie the Wild Child)

    • Linguistic determinism: language influences the way we think (Hopi people do not have words for the past, thus cannot easily think about the past) developed by WHORF

THINKING

  • Concepts: mental categories used to group objects, events, characteristics

  • Prototypes: all instances of a concept are compared to an ideal example (what you first think of)

  • Algorithms: step by step strategies that guarantee a solution (formula)

  • Heuristics: short cut strategy (rule of thumb)

    • Representative