AP Psychology Mega Review Notes

Unit 1 - Biological Basis of Behavior

1.1 - Interaction of Heredity and Environment

(Nature vs. Nurture)

  • Explores the debate on which has the most influence on behavior: nature or nurture

  • Heredity (Nature): Genetic characteristics that we are born with and it influences traits and mental processes

  • Environment (Nurture): External factors like family and education influence traits and mental processes

  • Interactionist Perspective: Genetics and environment together (not on their own) interact to shape our behavior

Evolutionary Perspective

  • Natural selection (by Charles Darwin) affects behaviors and mental processes

    • Traits ensuring survival and reproduction are more favorable and thus are passed down

    • traits that do not help with survival and reproduction are not passed down

  • Eugenics (Debunked): Misuses evolutionary psychology to justify discrimination by encouraging those who have ‘desirable’ traits to have children while discouraging those who have ‘undesirable’ traits to not have children

    • attempts to play God

    • it was debunked because it is unethical and ignores the scientific complexity

  • Rejected by scientists due to denying human dignity and ignoring trait complexity.

Research on Nature vs. Nurture

  • has been done through twin, family, and adoption studies.

    • These studies reinforce the interactionist perspective, which shows that both nature and nurture are important in shaping our personalities and behavior

  • Twin Studies:

    • Compare identical twins (about 100% shared genes) and fraternal twins (about 50% shared genes).

      • to see the influence of genetics on traits

      • Greater trait similarity in identical twins suggests genetic influence.

    • Studying twins in different environments to see how the environment influences traits

  • Family Studies:

    • sees how traits are passed down the family

      • traits being more prevalent in family members suggests more of a genetic influence

    • the family also shares environments which can confounds results

  • Adoption Studies:

    • Compare adopted children to biological and adoptive parents.

      • Similarity to biological parents suggests genetic influence

      • Similarity to adoptive parents suggests environmental influence

1.2 - Overview of the Nervous System

  • A collection of nerves that help to transmit signals and coordinate actions allowing for communication throughout the body (communication network)

  • Central Nervous System (CNS):

    • Brain: Command center controlling thoughts, emotions, and vital functions.

    • Spinal Cord: Relays messages between brain and body.

      • Key Role in reflexes - autonomic responses to stimuli - like pulling away from something hot; it is done without needed brain input

  • Peripheral Nervous System (PNS):

    • the collection of nerves beyond the brain and spinal cord, carrying messages between the CNS and the rest of the body.

    • Autonomic Nervous System: Controls involuntary bodily functions

      • does not require conscious effort like breathing and heart rate

      • Sympathetic Nervous System: Prepares the body for stress (fight or flight).

        • Increases heart rate, dilates pupils, releases adrenaline.

      • Parasympathetic Nervous System: Calms the body after stress (rest and digest).

        • Slows heart rate, promotes digestion, conserves energy.

    • Somatic Nervous System: Controls voluntary movements.

      • conscious muscle movement like walking or writing.

1.3 - The Neuron and Neural Firing

2 types of Neural Cells that support the nervous system:

  • Neurons: nerve cells that are the basic building blocks of the nervous system; carry electrical and chemical signals.

    • parts of the neuron

      • dendrite: part that received information from another neuron

      • soma/cell body: processes the information and keeps the cell alive

      • axon: passes information to the end of the neuron

      • mylien sheath: speeds up the passing of information in the axon

      • terminal branches: where the info is sent to the next neuron

      • synapse: where both neurons communicate

  • Glial Cells: Support neurons by maintaining structure, insulating, facilitating communication, and removing waste.

  • they both work together to make sure that the nervous system functions properly

Reflex Arc:

  • Rapid, automatic responses to stimuli that do not need brain input

  • 3 types of neurons that form the reflex arc

    • Sensory Neurons: Detect stimuli and send signals to the spinal cord (afferent neurons: body to the CNS (afferent same as arriving))

    • Interneurons: Process information and send it to the motor neurons

    • Motor Neurons: Send signals to muscles to create a response (efferent neurons: CNS to the body (efferent same as exiting))

Neural Transmission:

  • action potential: the electrical impulse of the neuron; the ‘firing’ of the neuron

  • process allows for thought, movement, and perception by moving information rapidly

  • sequence of neural transmission

    • Resting Potential: Neuron maintains a stable charge at rest.

    • Threshold: minimum stimulation needed to activate action potential; activate depolarization

    • Depolarization: Electrical signal travels down the neuron.

      • follows All-or-Nothing Principle: Neuron fires completely or not at all.

    • Refractory Period: Brief moment when neuron cannot fire.

    • neurotransmitters are released

      • Neurotransmitters: Chemicals released into the synapse

      • neurotransmitters are either re-uptaked - neurotransmitters are reabsorbed - or are broken down

  • Disruptions to Neural Transmission:

    • this can cause issues to behavior and mental processes: it causes issues for communication in the nervous system

    • Multiple Sclerosis: damages to the neuron coverings, causing a slowing or blocking of signals between the brain and body causing muscle weakness and coordination issues

    • Myasthenia Gravis: Disrupted neuron-muscle communication, causing muscle weakness and fatigue

  • Types of Neurotransmitters and Their Functions:

    • Excitatory: Make a neuron more likely to fire.

    • Inhibitory: Make a neuron less likely to fire.

    • Dopamine: Movement, motivation, reward system. (excitatory)

    • Serotonin: Mood, appetite, sleep. (inhibitory)

    • Norepinephrine: Alertness, stress response. (excitatory)

    • Glutamate: Main excitatory neurotransmitter; learning and memory.

    • GABA (Gamma Aminobutyric Acid): Main inhibitory neurotransmitter; regulates neural activity.

    • Endorphins: Natural painkillers, promote pleasure. (inhibitory)

    • Substance P: Transmits pain signals. (excitatroy)

    • Acetylcholine: Muscle movement, attention, memory. (excitatory)

    • Imbalances can contribute to mental health conditions.

Hormones:

  • Released into bloodstream: slower but longer-lasting effects than neurotransmitters.

  • works with neurotransmitters to influence behavior, emotions, and bodily functions

  • Adrenaline: Prepares body for action during stress.

  • Leptin and Ghrelin: Regulate hunger.

    • Leptin signals fullness.

    • Ghrelin increases appetite.

  • Melatonin: Regulates sleep cycles.

  • Oxytocin: Social bonding, trust.

Psychoactive Drugs:

  • Alter neural activity by interfering with neurotransmitter function (the section where neurotransmitters are released)

    • Agonists: Mimic neurotransmitters, enhancing neural firing.

    • Antagonists: Block neurotransmitters, reducing neural activity.

    • Reuptake Interference: Prevent neurotransmitters from being reabsorbed, prolonging effects.

  • Types of Psychoactive Drugs:

    • Stimulants: (e.g., caffeine, cocaine) Increase neural activity; heightened alertness and energy

    • Depressants: (e.g., sedatives) Slow down neural activity; relaxation and drowsiness

    • Hallucinogens: (e.g., marijuana) Distort perception & cognition

    • Opioids: (e.g., heroin) Act as pain relievers; agonists to endorphins

  • Long-term Drug Use:

    • Tolerance: Requires larger doses for the same effect.

    • Addiction: Brain becomes dependent on the drug; if drug use stops it causes withdrawal

    • Withdrawal: Physical and psychological distress when drug use stops.

1.4 - Brain Structures and Functions

  • Brainstem: oldest part of the brain - involved in basic life functions

    • Medulla: Regulates essential functions breathing, heart rate, digestion.

      • damage to it can be fatal

    • Reticular Activating System: Regulates alertness, attention, and voluntary movement, eye movement, learning, cognition, emotion, an sleep-wake cycle

  • Brain's Reward Center:

    • reinforces behaviors that promote survival by releasing pleasurable chemicals

  • Cerebellum:

    • Coordinates movement, balance, and procedural learning; smooth precise movements; motor skills

  • Cerebral Cortex:

  • Largest, most complex part of the brain.

  • Divided into regions: specializes in perception, thought, language, and decision-making.

  • Limbic System:

    • Thalamus: Relays sensory information to areas of the brain

    • Hypothalamus: Regulates homeostasis (hunger, thirst, body temperature).

    • Pituitary Gland: Controls hormone release.

    • Hippocampus: Essential for forming and retrieving memories.

    • Amygdala: Processes emotions, especially fear.

  • Cerebral Cortex Lobes:

    • Occipital Lobes: Process visual information.

    • Temporal Lobes: Auditory processing and language comprehension.

    • Parietal Lobes: organize and interpret sensory information.

      • somatosensory cortex: processes touch temp, and pain

    • Frontal Lobes:

      • Higher-order thinking, decision-making, and executive functioning.

      • prefrontal cortex: reasoning, impulse control, and personality

      • Motor cortex: Directs voluntary movement.

Split-Brain Research

  • Research involving patients whose corpus callosum - sends information to the two hemispheres - is severed

    • gives insight into how the two hemispheres of the brain function.

    • split brain was usually done on patients with severe epilepsy (corpus callosum is severed to control seizures

  • Hemispheric Specialization

    • Left Hemisphere: Language processing (contains Broca's and Wernicke's areas) and logic

      • Broca’s area: speech production left frontal lobe (expressive aphasia)

      • Wernicke’s area: speech understanding left temporal lobe (receptive aphasia)

      • aphasia - condition that affects the language ability

    • Right Hemisphere: creativity

    • touch on one side of the body is processed on the other side of the hemisphere (ex: touch of a spoon on the left side is processed in the right hemisphere)

      • continuing on the example about someone with split-brain: right hemisphere cannot send information to the left hemisphere, so they cannot say what they are holding (but they understand what the spoon is - can point to it w/ their left hand)

Brain Plasticity

  • Brain's ability to adapt and reorganize itself; they form new connections and it is usually done to compensate for any damage it may receive: a brain part takes over another brain part

  • also important in learning and memory: new experiences strengthen and modify neural pathways

Brain Study Techniques

  • Brain scans

    • Electroencephalograms (EEGs): Measure electrical activity in the brain, often used to study sleep and neural activity.

    • Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Tracks blood flow, showing which areas are active during certain tasks; shows brain activity

  • Case Studies - a study on a specific person or small group:

    • brain study: focuses on individuals with brain injuries which help to understand the functions on brain structures

  • Surgical Procedures:

    • `lesions - intentionally damage a part of the brain to study its effects

    • helps researchers understand the importance/function of certain brain regions

1.5 - Sleep and Consciousness

Circadian Rhythm:

  • Regulates daily sleep-wake cycle.

  • it is influenced by environmental cues such as light and temperature

  • Can be disrupted by jet lag and shift work - work at night and sleep at day

    • cause issues with our cognitive and physical functioning (fatigue, mood issues, and decreased alertness)

Sleep Stages:

  • the stages happen 4-5 times per sleep and it takes 90-110 minutes for each round; as the night progresses, the NREM becomes shorter while the REM becomes longer

  • Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM): Consists of stages 1-3 becoming progressively deeper.

    • NREM stage 1 - lightest and shortest stage; progression into sleep; hypnagogic hallucinations - dream-like sensations when about to go to sleep (feeling of falling); easiest to wake them up here

    • NREM stage 2 - beginning of sleep; transition into deep sleep; brain waves slow down

    • NREM stage 3 - deepest stage of sleep; hard to wake up; helps with physical restoration and immune system restoration

  • Rapid Eye Movement (REM): Most dreaming occurs.

    • also called paradoxical` sleep

      • Brain activity during this stage closely resembles wakefulness

      • the body remains at its most relaxed state because of temporary muscle paralysis.

    • REM rebound = a person is deprived of REM sleep sleep causing for the REM sleep to be entered quicker and last longer the next time they sleep

  • Dream Theories:

    • Activation-Synthesis theory: Dreams are because of random neural activity which the brain tries to interpret as experiences

    • Consolidation theory: Dreams help process and store memories which help to strengthen learning and problem-solving skills

    • information-processing theory: dreams help to store the memories that you create during that day

    • Sigmund Freud’s dream theory: dreams reveal unconscious desires

      • manifest content - is the storyline of the dream

      • latent content - is the unconscious meaning behind the dream

Functions of Sleep:

  • Memory consolidation. By organizing and strengthening newly obtained information; similar to the consolidation theory

  • Energy restoration.

    • Replenishes the biochemical resources. that were used throughout the day; helps to improve overall cognitive and physical well-being.

Sleep Disorders:

  • Insomnia: Difficulty falling or staying asleep.

  • Narcolepsy: Sudden, uncontrollable sleep episodes during the day

  • REM Sleep Behavior Disorder: Body physically acts out the dreams; mainly because of a lack of REM sleep paralysis

  • Sleep Apnea: Interruptions in breathing during sleep; causing poor sleep quality

  • Somnambulism/sleepwalking: individuals engage in complex behaviors while still asleep, typically during deep N REM sleep.

  • manage sleep disorders

    • lifestyle adjustments, medical treatments, and keeping a sleep schedule

1.6 - Sensation

  • Detecting sensory information and converting it into neural signals.

Key Concepts:

  • Absolute Threshold: Minimum stimulus intensity for detection 50% of the time.

  • difference threshold/Just Noticeable Difference: minimum change in stimulus that can be detected 50% of the time

  • Weber's Law: Detecting differences depends on proportion of change, not fixed amount.

    • increase in stimulus causes a larger change to perceive a difference

  • Sensory Adaptation: Decreased sensitivity to unchanging stimuli.

  • Sensory Interaction: Senses work together to enhance perception and understanding the environment.

    • Synesthesia: Stimulation of one sense triggers experiences in another. ex: sees green when he hears the word Tuesday

Sensory Systems

  • Vision:

    • Retina: located at the back of the eye; detects light.

    • lens: the part that directs light to the retina

      • lens Accommodation: Adjusts focus for near or far objects.

        • impaired accommodation cause nearsightedness & farsightedness

    • photoreceptor cells: located in the retina

      • Rods: sensitive to light b/c of rhodopsin (sensitive to light); helps with night vision; detects shapes and movement; do not detect color (dark is in shades of gray)

      • Cones: Process color and detail

        • Blind Spot: Where optic nerve exits the eye.

          • brain fills the missing details of the blind spot

        • damage: can cause color blindness

    • Color Vision theories

      • Trichromatic Theory/Young-Helmholtz theory: the eye perceives color based on the combination of 3 main cones: red blue and green

      • Opponent Process Theory: Explains how colors are processed after they leave the retina.

        • Pairs of opposing colors; red/green, blue/yellow, and black/white; are processed together.

        • damage to it: cause color blindness

    • damage to brain’s visual processing center: cause prosopagnosia (affect facial recognition) and blindsight - individuals with damaged visual can respond to visual stimuli without conscious effort

  • Auditory System:

    • sound is the movement of air molecules at different wavelengths and amplitudes

      • Pitch: Wavelengths.

      • Loudness: Amplitudes.

    • pitch perception: how we interpret wavelengths as sounds

      • Place Theory: Different frequencies activate different locations in the cochlea.

      • Frequency Theory: Pitch perception based on neuron firing frequency.

      • Volley Theory: Groups of neurons alternate firing for high-frequency sounds.

    • Sound Localization: Detect differences in how sounds reach each ear.

    • hearing difficulties: because of aging or damage

      • Conductive Deafness: Sound waves cannot reach the cochlea; damage in the middle and outer ears

      • Sensorineural Deafness: Damage to cochlea's hair cells or auditory nerve.

      • ways to improve these issues

        • hearing aid: amplifies the sound

        • cochlear implant: goes beyond the damaged structures and stimulates the auditory nerve

  • Chemical Sensory Systems:

    • Olfaction (Smell):

      • Processed in olfactory regions rather than the thalamus.

      • Olfactory receptors detect airborne molecules which are then interpreted as scent

      • Pheromones: Influence social and biological behavior.

    • Gustation (Taste):

      • Detects sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami (savory), and oleogustis (fatty).

      • taste receptors: detect taste; differ based on each person

        • supertasters, medium taster, and nontaster

    • work together to bring the experience of flavor; ex: a block nose reduces flavor

  • somatosensation/ touch:

    • Receptors in the skin detect pressure, temperature, and pain.

      • sensation of ‘hot’: warm and cold receptors are activated at the same time

    • Gate Control Theory: Pain signals regulated in the spinal cord.

      • can block/allow pain signals to the brain

    • Phantom Limb Sensation: Pain in amputated limb, indicating pain is influenced by neural processing beyond the physical stimuli

  • Balance and Movement:

    • Vestibular System: In inner ear, senses movement by detecting changes in head position sending signals to the brain. This helps with posture, coordination, and spatial awareness.

      • disruption causes dizziness

    • Kinesthetic System: Helps the body sense its position and movement via receptors in muscles, joints, and tendons.

      • no need to look at the body

Unit 2 - Cognition

2.1 - Perception

  • Understanding and interpreting of sensory information

  • Processing:

    • Bottom-Up: Relies on sensory information without past experiences.

    • Top-Down: Uses prior knowledge and expectations.

  • Schemas: mental frameworks that help us organize and understand information; putting new experiences into what we already know.

  • Perceptual Set: perceive something in a certain way because of past experiences and expectations

  • External Factors influence perception: includes the context of a situation, personal experiences, and cultural background.

  • Gestalt Principles: whole is more important than the sum of its part

    • Closure: Completing incomplete images in mind.

    • Figure-Ground: Distinguishing objects from backgrounds.

    • Proximity: Grouping close objects.

    • Similarity: Grouping similar objects.

  • Attention: process that allows us to focus on something while filtering out the rest

    • bridge between sensation & perception

    • Limited capacity.

    • internal factors: interests, emotions, alerness

    • external: changes in environment, flashing light, someone calling your name

  • Selective attention: focus on one stimuli while ignoring the rest of the stimuli

    • Cocktail Party Effect: Noticing/being able to hear important information (e.g., your name/conversation) in a noisy environment; able to hold a convo in a noisy environemnt

    • Inattentional Blindness: Failing to notice unexpected objects in their visual field because of them being focused on a task

      • ex: invisible gorilla experiment, participants were told to count basketballs, causing them to not notice the man in a gorilla costume

    • Change Blindness: Failing to notice changes in a visual scene despite it being obvious; brain does not compare the before and after

  • Depth Cues:

    • Binocular Depth Cues: depth perception that require both eyes.

      • Retinal Disparity: The slight difference in the images perceived by each eye due to their different positions, which the brain uses to determine depth.

      • Convergence: Inward movement of the eyes when focusing on a nearby object, with greater convergence indicating closer distance.

    • Monocular Depth Cues: depth perception that require only one eye.

      • Relative Clarity: Clearer objects appear closer.

      • Relative Size: Smaller objects appear farther away.

      • Texture Gradient: Gradual decrease in detail as distance increases.

      • Linear Perspective: Parallel lines converge in the distance.

      • Interposition: Object blocking another object is closer.

  • Visual Perceptual Constancy:

    • Recognizing objects as unchanging despite sensory variations; ex: difference in angle

  • Apparent Movement:
    Still Stationary objects are perceived as moving due to visual cues; rapid succession of pictures (ex: animation)

    • phi phenomenon: blinking lights seems to be moving despite it not actually moving

2.2 - Thinking, Problem Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making

Thinking:

  • Concepts: They are mental framework that help us group similar things together; ex: bird

    • foundation of all thinking

    • prototypes: which are the best/most typical example of that category; help to recognize and classify new info; ex: pigean

    • Schema: more complex mental framework that includes not just a category but also what to expect from that category; ex: birds can fly and have feathers

  • According to Jean Piaget, there are two ways Schemas are Modified:

    • Assimilation: Taking in new information but not changing our existing Schema. The new information is integrated without altering the fundamental understanding.

    • Accommodation: New information forces a change in the Schema, itself. The existing framework is adjusted to incorporate the new data, leading to a revised understanding.

Problem Solving:

  • Algorithms: Step-by-step procedure guaranteeing the right answer. While algorithms are precise, they can be time-consuming and are not always practical for complex problems.

  • Heuristics: Mental shortcut relying on experience. Heuristics allow for quick decisions but can result in errors; causes stereotypes, assumptions, and biases

    • Representativeness Heuristic: Judging based on stereotypes/expectations; ex: someone who is quiet/reads a lot means that she is a librarian even w/o info

    • Availability Heuristic: Decisions based on the first example that comes to mind; ex: assuming there are many shark attacks because there was one on the news

Decision Making:

  • can be influenced by prior experiences (mental set) & circumstances surrounding it (priming & framing)

  • mental set: rely on strategies that worked in the past, even if they are not the best solution in a new situation.

  • Priming: Exposure to stimuli influencing decisions, often without conscious awareness.

  • Framing: How a decision is presented (gain vs. loss). The way information is framed can significantly impact choices, even if the underlying options are the same.

  • Examples of poor decision-making:

    • Gambler's Fallacy: Belief that past events affect future probabilities ex: gambling

    • Sunk Cost Fallacy: Continuing investment in a failing endeavor despite because resources were already used ex: gambling

  • good decision making:

    • Executive Functions: mental skills allowing people to set goals, make plans, and stay organized.

      • help w/ control their impulses, manage their emotions, and think critically

Creativity

  • Divergent thinking: broadening thinking to find multiple solutions for a single problem

  • convergent thinking: narrowing thinking to find one solution for a problem

  • Functional Fixedness: when the person only uses the object for its intended purpose

    • Overcoming functional fixedness - creative problem-solving.

Key Concepts of Memory

  • Explores various types of memory models. Explicit memory, which breaks down to episodic memory and semantic memory. Implicit memory, which also contains procedural memory and prospective memory.

  • Lets explore each type.

    • Explicit Memory: The type of memory we can consciously recall and explain.

      • Episodic memory, a subtype of explicit memory, refers to personal experiences.

      • Semantic memory, the other subtype, is knowledge about facts and concepts that are not linked to personal experiences.

    • Implicit Memory is the kind of memory that influences our behavior without us consciously thinking about it.

      • procedural memory, which stores information about how to perform tasks.

      • prospective memory is the ability to remember to do something later.

  • Long Term Potentiation: Long-term Potentiation occurs when neurons in the brain repeatedly activate together, strengthening the connections between them.

EXPLORE MEMORY MODELS

  • Working memory, multi store and levels of processing model:

    • Working Memory Model includes components like the phonological loop and visual-spatial sketchpad, which temporarily hold and manipulate information during cognitive tasks.

    • Multi-Store Model describes how information moves through different memory systems. It identifies three main types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

    • Level of Processing suggests that the way we encode information affects how well we remember it. The three levels of processing, ranked from shallow to deep, include structural processing, phonemic, and semantic processing.

Encoding Memories
  • Methods to more efficiently store information in your memory and retrieve them at a later time.

  • The Encoding methods you'll need to remember and understand for this unit are: mnemonic devices, methods of LOKI, information grouping, categorizing and making hierarchies, the spacing effect, and then the serial portion effect. Each of these methods represents strategies we can use to commit information to memory, lets start with mnemonic devices.

  • Method of LOKI: associating pieces of information with specific locations; for example, if you need to remember a grocery list, you could imagine placing each item in a different room of your house. When you mentally walk through your house, you recall each item by picturing it in its assigned location; Mnemonic Device acronyms.

  • Acronyms like PEMDAS for the order of operations in math mnemonics include: rhymes, songs melodies can help encoding, and imagery can be used when you create vivid mental pictures to help remember information.

  • Organization: Three effective ways to improve encoding: organization, chunking

  • Chunking: Breaking down long pieces of information into smaller, more manageable parts, like grouping things together into categories and or doing hierarchies.

  • TheSpacing effects: Example: A student can read vocabulary words for 20 minutes a day for a week to more affectingly retain rather than then cramming it the night before.

  • Serial position effect: Explain why we remember some parts of a list better than others, It saves that items at the beginning and end of a list are easier to record than goes in the middle.

    • Primacy Effect

    • Recency Effect

    • ThePrimacy effect is the tendency to remember information presented at the beginning of a list better than information in the middle because the first items receive more attention.

    • Recency Effect: The tendency to remember the last items in the list better than those in the middle.

Storing Memories
  • Sensory, short, working, and long term. How the categories relate in terms of storage duration, capacity, and content

    • Sensory Memory

    • Short term memory (20-30 seconds)

    • Working memory for short amount of time

    • Long term memory for the long time

  • Maintenance and Elaborative Rehearsal

    • Maintenance Rehearsal

    • Elaborative Rehearsal: Memory retention and storage capacity can vary person to person. See autobiographical memory people or memory that is stronger than random fact-based memories.

  • Hurting Autobiographical memories as stronger than memory of random facts.

  • Factors like: physical factors, condition and amnesia can drastically effect memories being lost. Retrograde and anterograde amnesia (2 Main memory types), and Altheizers, infantile Amnesia can Effect memories and storage capacity

Retrieval

  • The process of getting to access information that is stored in your brain.

  • Two main types of retrieval:

  • Recall and Recognition. Recognition is when you identify something from a set choice.

  • Conditions that can Enhance Memory retrieval: context and content-related. Including; Content-dependent memory; and, Mood Congruent Memory in State-dependent.

  • There are two Retrieval Techniques:

    • The Testing Effect In metacognitive processes/techniques. Active Retrieval

Forgetting
  • What happens To are storage capabilities. Hermann Ebbinghaus forgetting curve.

  • Retrieval failure:

    • Encoding failure Two interference And three in a

    • Proactive and Retroactive interference. Retrieval and in AdequateRetrievalInadequate retrievalTip of the tongue. A.

  • Memory Repression: According to psychodynamic theorist.

    • That some forgetting is a psychological defense mechanism defense mechanism

  • memory is not perfect recordings of the past Instead, they can be altered distorted or even created due to different cognitive processes.

    • -misinformation effect -source amnesia and source monitoring

  • iQ variability: Flynn Effect; Group Differences

    • IQ Variation

    • Job Discrimination

Achievement Testing
  • What a person has already learned standardized task apt test people of with two mindsets affect there achievement: fixed and a growth mindset

Themes and Methods in Developmental Psychology
  • Major Themes:

    • Stability Vs Change: traits remain continuous or change.

    • Natural Vs Nurture: genetic vs environment influences.

    • continuous Vs Discontinued: develop gradually over a long period or at jumps.

    • Research Method:

      • Sectional: people of different ages observed in one at a time.

      • Longitudinal, Follow the some group time over a long period of changing with age. Track behavior.

Physical Development Across the Lifespan
  • Prenatal development Teratogens Genetic mutations Maternal illness Hormonal factors and environmental factor. Infants reflexesDepth. Motor Coordination critical period and imprinting.

  • adolescent development Puberty Development of Sex Characteristics Adult Hood changes and a decline. women and mens decline/ menopause.

Sex and Gender.

  • Sex: biology and characteristics ( chromosomes and genetics gender:) Roles behavior expectations, and Schema and a socialization.

  • Piaget: A child takes in new information and fits it into what they already know.

  • Accommodation is when a child changes what they know to better understand something new.

    • sensorimotor: stage infants learns new through sensors and moment/ Object permanence

  • Cognitive Development of span: Piaget and Lev. Vygotsky scaffolding and zone of propinquity, Crystallized And Fluid Intelligence

    • Pre Operational stage

    • Concrete Stage

    • Formal Operational Stages.