AP Psychology Exam Notes
Unit 0: Science Practices
Confirmation Bias: Seeking out information that confirms pre-existing beliefs.
Hindsight Bias: The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it.
Overconfidence: The tendency to be more confident than correct.
Independent Variable: The variable that is manipulated in an experiment.
Dependent Variable: The variable that is measured in an experiment.
Random Assignment: Assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance to minimize pre-existing differences.
Case Study: In-depth analysis of individuals or groups.
Correlation: The extent to which two variables are related. Correlation does NOT equal causation.
Meta-Analysis: A procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies.
Naturalistic Observation: Observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation.
Hypothesis: A testable prediction.
Falsifiable Hypothesis: A hypothesis that can be proven wrong.
Operational Definitions: Defining variables in measurable terms.
Confounding Variables / Third Variable Problem: Factors other than the independent variable that may affect the dependent variable.
Histogram: A bar graph depicting a distribution of data.
Scatterplot (Correlational Coefficient): A graph of plotted points that show the relationship between two sets of data. The correlational coefficient, , indicates the strength and direction of the correlation.
Central Tendency: A measure that represents the typical response or the behavior of the group as a whole (mean, median, mode).
Variation: How spread out a set of data is (range, standard deviation).
Percentile Rank: The percentage of scores that fall at or below a particular score.
Range: The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution.
Standard Normal Curve: A symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data. Important percentages: 68% within 1 standard deviation of the mean, 95% within 2, and 99.7% within 3.
Skewness: A measure of the asymmetry of a probability distribution.
Bimodal Distribution: A distribution with two modes.
Mean: The arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores.
Median: The middle score in a distribution; half the scores are above it and half are below it.
Mode: The most frequently occurring score(s) in a distribution.
Standard Deviation: A computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score.
Regression Toward the Mean: The tendency for extreme or unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average.
Population: The entire group of people about whom we would like to know.
Representative Sample: A sample that accurately reflects the characteristics of the population.
Random Sample: A sample in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being included.
Convenience Sampling: A sample of individuals who are easily accessible.
Sampling Bias: A flawed sampling process that produces an unrepresentative sample.
Generalization: Applying findings from a sample to the larger population.
Experimental Group: The group exposed to the treatment (independent variable).
Control Group: The group that does not receive the treatment.
Placebo: A fake treatment.
Single-Blind Study: Participants don't know whether they are in the experimental or control group.
Double-Blind Study: Neither the participants nor the researchers know who is in which group.
Experimenter Bias: When a researcher's expectations or beliefs influence the outcome of a study.
Social Desirability Bias: The tendency to answer questions in a way that will be viewed favorably by others.
Qualitative Measures: Data in the form of words, pictures, or objects (Structured Interviews)
Quantitative Measures: Data in the form of numbers (Likert Scales).
Peer Review: Evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field.
Replication: Repeating the essence of a research study to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances.
Statistical Significance: A statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance.
Size of Sample and Statistical Significance: A larger sample size generally increases the likelihood of achieving statistical significance.
Self-Report Bias: Inaccuracies or distortions in self-reported data.
Institutional Review Board: A committee that reviews proposals for research involving human participants.
Animal Research Ethical Standards: Guidelines for the humane care and treatment of animals in research.
Human Ethical Research Standards:
Informed Consent: Participants must be told about the study and agree to participate.
Protection from Harm: Participants must be protected from physical and psychological harm.
Confidentiality: Information about participants must be kept private.
Deception/Confederates: If deception is used, participants muframingst be debriefed afterward.
Debriefing: Explaining the purpose of the study to participants after it is over.
Unit 1: Biological Bases of Behavior
1.1 - Interaction of Heredity and Environment
Heredity: The genetic transfer of characteristics from parents to offspring.
"Nature" versus "Nurture": The debate over the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to development.
Evolutionary Perspective and Natural Selection: How natural selection favors traits that promote survival and reproduction. (Eugenics is related to evolutionary perspective, referring to movement aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population).
Twin studies, family studies, and adoption studies: Research methods used to study the influence of heredity and environment on behavior.
1.2 - Overview of Nervous System
Central Nervous System (CNS): The brain and spinal cord.
Peripheral Nervous System (PNS): The sensory and motor neurons that connect the CNS to the rest of the body.
Autonomic Nervous System: The part of the PNS that controls self-regulated action of internal organs and glands.
Somatic Nervous System: The part of the PNS that controls voluntary movements of skeletal muscles.
1.3 - The Neuron and Neural Firing
Neural Systems and Glial Cells: Neurons are the basic building blocks of the nervous system. Glial cells support, nourish, and protect neurons.
Spinal Cord Reflex / Reflex Arc: Sensory Neurons, Motor Neurons, Interneurons A simple, automatic response to a sensory stimulus, such as the knee-jerk response.
All-or-None Principle: A neuron either fires or it doesn't.
Depolarization: The process during the action potential when sodium is rushing into the cell causing the interior to become more positive.
Refractory Period: A period of inactivity after a neuron has fired.
Resting Potential: The electrical potential of a neuron at rest (approx. -70mV).
Reuptake: A neurotransmitter's reabsorption by the sending neuron.
Threshold: The level of stimulation required to trigger a neural impulse.
Multiple Sclerosis: An autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord by damaging the myelin sheath.
Myasthenia Gravis: An autoimmune neuromuscular disease that causes weakness in the skeletal muscles controlled by the patient.
1.4 - The Brain
Brain Stem: The oldest part and central core of the brain, responsible for automatic survival functions.
Medulla: Controls heartbeat and breathing.
Reticular Activating System (RAS): Controls arousal.
Cerebellum: Coordinates movement and balance.
Cerebral Cortex: The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells covering the cerebral hemispheres; the body's ultimate control and information-processing center.
Hemispheres: The brain is divided into two hemispheres.
Limbic System: Neural system associated with emotions and drives. (Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Pituitary Gland, Hippocampus, Amygdala).
Thalamus: Relays sensory information to the cortex.
Hypothalamus: Regulates body temperature, hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior.
Pituitary Gland: Master gland that controls other endocrine glands.
Hippocampus: Processes explicit memories for storage.
Amygdala: Involved in emotion, particularly fear and aggression.
Corpus Callosum: The band of neural fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres and carrying messages between them.
Lobes of Cortex:
Occipital Lobe: Vision.
Temporal Lobe: Hearing and language.
Parietal Lobe: Touch, temperature, pain, and spatial awareness (Somatosensory Cortex).
Frontal Lobe: Planning, judgment, and decision-making (Motor Cortex).
Split Brain Research (Corpus Callosum): Study of patients with severed corpus callosum. Reveals hemispheric specialization.
Epilepsy: A brain disorder characterized by recurrent seizures.
Broca’s Area: Controls language expression.
Wernicke’s Area: Controls language reception.
Contralateral Hemispheric Organization: The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body.
Brain Plasticity: The brain's ability to change, especially during childhood, by reorganizing after damage or by building new pathways based on experience.
EEG (Electroencephalogram): An amplified recording of the waves of electrical activity that sweep across the brain's surface.
fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging): A technique for revealing blood flow and, therefore, brain activity by comparing successive MRI scans.
Lesioning: Tissue destruction. A brain lesion is a naturally or experimentally caused destruction of brain tissue.
Neurotransmitters: Chemical messengers that cross the synaptic gaps between neurons.
Dopamine: Involved in movement, learning, attention, and emotion.
Serotonin: Affects mood, hunger, sleep, and arousal.
Norepinephrine: Helps control alertness and arousal.
Glutamate: A major excitatory neurotransmitter involved in memory.
GABA: A major inhibitory neurotransmitter.
Endorphins: Natural, opiate-like neurotransmitters linked to pain control and to pleasure.
Substance P: Involved in pain perception.
Acetylcholine: Involved in muscle action, learning, and memory.
Excitatory / Inhibitory Messages: Excitatory neurotransmitters increase the likelihood of a neuron firing; inhibitory neurotransmitters decrease the likelihood.
Hormones: Chemical messengers that are manufactured by the endocrine glands, travel through the bloodstream, and affect other tissues.
Adrenaline: Hormone released during stress.
Leptin: Suppresses hunger.
Ghrelin: Stimulates hunger.
Melatonin: Regulates sleep cycles.
Oxytocin: Promotes social bonding.
Endocrine System: The body's slow chemical communication system; a set of glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream.
Pituitary Gland: The endocrine system's most influential gland. Under the influence of the hypothalamus, the pituitary regulates growth and controls other endocrine glands.
Agonists and Antagonists: Agonists mimic the effects of neurotransmitters; antagonists block the effects of neurotransmitters.
Stimulants: Drugs that excite neural activity and speed up body functions. Caffeine and Cocaine
Depressants: Drugs that reduce neural activity and slow body functions. Alcohol
Hallucinogen: Psychedelic drugs, such as marijuana, that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input.
Opioids: Substances acting on the nervous system to relieve pain. Heroin
Psychoactive Drugs: Chemical substances that alter perceptions and moods.
Addiction: Compulsive drug craving and use, despite adverse consequences.
Withdrawal: The discomfort and distress that follow discontinuing the use of an addictive drug.
1.5 - Sleep
Consciousness: Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.
Circadian Rhythm: The biological clock; regular bodily rhythms that occur on a 24-hour cycle.
Jet Lag & Shift Work: Disruptions to the circadian rhythm.
EEG Waves: Electrical activity in the brain during sleep.
Sleep Stages: Distinct patterns of brain activity and physiological changes that occur during sleep.
NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement): Sleep stages 1-4.
Hyponogogic Sensation: Sensory experiences that occur during the onset of sleep.
REM (Rapid Eye Movement): A recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. Also known as paradoxical sleep.
REM Deprivation & REM Rebound: Loss of REM sleep and the tendency for REM sleep to increase following deprivation.
Dream Theories:
Consolidation Theory: Dreams help us process and consolidate information from the day.
Activation-Synthesis: Dreams are the brain's attempt to make sense of random neural activity.
Effects of Sleep Deprivation: Impaired cognitive performance, mood changes, and physical health problems.
Sleep Disorders:
Insomnia: Recurring problems in falling or staying asleep.
Narcolepsy: A sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks.
REM Sleep Behavior Disorder: A sleep disorder in which people act out their dreams.
Sleep Apnea: A sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings.
Somnambulism: Sleepwalking.
1.6 - Sensation
Sensation: The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.
Absolute Threshold: The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time.
Just-Noticeable Difference: The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time (Weber’s Law).
Sensory Adaptation: Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.
Synesthesia: A condition in which one kind of sensory stimulus evokes the subjective experience of another.
Sensory Interaction: The principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste.
Structures of Eye:
Retina: The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information.
Transduction: Conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies into neural impulses our brains can interpret.
Blind Spot: The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a "blind" spot because no receptor cells are located there.
Lens (Accommodation): The transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina.
Rods: Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond.
Cones: Retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. The cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.
Fovea: The central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster.
Ganglion Cells: Neurons that relay information from the retina to the brain via the optic nerve.
Nearsightedness / Farsightedness: Visual acuity problems.
Trichromatic Theory: The theory that the retina contains three different color receptors—one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue—which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color.
Opponent-Process Theory: The theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision.
Wavelength and Color: Wavelength determines the hue of a color.
Afterimage Effect: An image continuing to appear in one's vision after exposure to the original image has ceased.
Color Vision Deficiency: Reduced ability to distinguish between certain colors.
Prosopagnosia: Face blindness.
Blindsight: A condition in which a person can respond to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it.
Wavelengths vs Amplitude for vision and hearing: Wavelength determines hue (vision) and pitch (hearing) while amplitude determines brightness (vision) and loudness (hearing).
Theories of Hearing:
Place Theory: The theory that different frequencies of sound trigger activity at different places along the basilar membrane.
Volley Theory: The theory that neural cells alternate firing in rapid succession in order to achieve higher frequencies.
Frequency Theory: The theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch.
Sound Localization: The process by which we identify the location of a sound.
Conduction Hearing Loss: Hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.
Sensorineural Deafness: Hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; also called nerve deafness.
Olfaction: Sense of smell.
Pheromones: Chemical signals that trigger social responses in members of the same species.
Gustation: Sense of taste.
6 Tastes: Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, Umami & Olegustus.
Supertasters, Medium Tasters, or Nontasters: Differences in sensitivity to taste.
Smell and Taste are connected, and both are chemical senses: They both rely on chemical receptors.
Hot = Warm & Cold skin receptor activation: The sensation of hotness is a combination of warm and cold receptor activation.
Gate Control Theory: The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The "gate" is opened by activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain.
Phantom Limb Sensations: Sensations that an amputated limb is still present.
Vestibular sense & Semicircular Canals: The sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance. Semicircular Canals are responsible for balance.
Kinesthesis: The system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts.
Unit 2: Cognition
2.1 - Perception
Perception: The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.
Bottom-Up Processing: Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.
Top-Down Processing: Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
Schemas: A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Assimilation: Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.
Accommodation: Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
Perceptual Sets: A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
Context, Experience, and Cultural Experiences on Perception: These factors can influence how we interpret sensory information.
Gestalt Principles: Principles that describe how we organize sensations into perceptions.
Closure: Filling in gaps to create a complete object.
Figure and Ground: Organizing visual information into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground).
Proximity and Similarity: Grouping nearby or similar objects together.
Attention’s impact on internal and external processes: Attention influences what we perceive and remember.
Cocktail Party Effect: Ability to attend to only one voice among many.
Inattentional Blindness: Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Change Blindness: Failing to notice changes in the environment.
Binocular Cues: Depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes.
Retinal Disparity: By comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance—the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
Convergence: The extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object.
Monocular Cues: Depth cues available to either eye alone.
Relative Clarity: Hazy objects are perceived as farther away than sharp, clear objects.
Relative Size: Smaller objects are perceived as farther away.
Texture Gradient: A gradual change from a coarse, distinct texture to a fine, indistinct texture signals increasing distance.
Linear Perspective: Parallel lines appear to converge with distance.
Interposition: If one object partially blocks our view of another, we perceive it as closer.
Perceptual Constancies: Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, lightness, and color) even as illumination and retinal images change.
Shape & Size: Perceiving objects as having a constant shape and size, even when our angle of view changes.
Relative Motion: Objects that are actually stable may appear to move.
2.2 - Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision Making
Concepts: A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
Prototypes: A mental image or best example of a category.
Algorithms: A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
Heuristics: A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.
Representative Heuristic: Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes.
Availability Heuristic: Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common.
Mental Set: A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.
Priming: The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response.
Framing: The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.
Gambler’s Fallacy: The belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, it will happen less frequently in the future, or that if something happens less frequently than normal during some period, it will happen more frequently in the future
Sunk-Cost Fallacy: A framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation based on what they have previously invested in the situation
Executive Functions: Higher-order cognitive processes that control and regulate our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Creativity: The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
Divergent Thinking: Expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions.
Convergent Thinking: Narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
Functional Fixedness: The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem-solving.
2.3 - Introduction to Memory
Explicit Memory: Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare”.
Episodic Memory: Memory of specific events.
Semantic Memory: Memory of general knowledge and facts.
Implicit Memory: Retention independent of conscious recollection.
Procedural Memory: Memory of skills and habits.
Prospective Memory: Remembering to do things in the future.
Long-Term Potentiation (LTP): An increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.
Working Memory Model: Active system that processes the information in short-term memory.
Central Executive: Focuses attention.
Phonological Loop: Deals with auditory information.
Visuospatial Sketchpad: Deals with visual and spatial information.
Multi-Store Model of Memory: Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed this model. Sensory input -> Sensory memory -> Short-term memory -> Long-term memory
Sensory Memory: The immediate, initial recording of sensory information in the memory system.
Iconic Memory: A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.
Echoic Memory: A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.
Short-Term Memory: Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten.
Long-Term Memory: The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.
Automatic vs. Effortful Processing: Automatic processing is unconscious encoding of incidental information. Effortful processing requires attention and conscious effort.
Encoding: The processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.
Storage: The retention of encoded information over time.
Retrieval: The process of getting information out of memory storage.
Level of Processing Model: The deeper the level of processing, the more likely it is to be remembered.
Structural: Encoding only the physical qualities of something.
Phonemic: Encoding its sound.
Semantic Encoding: Encoding its meaning, deepest level of processing.
2.4 - Encoding Memories
Encoding: The processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.
Mnemonic Devices: Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.
Method of Loci: A mnemonic device that involves associating items with specific locations.
Chunking: Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.
Spacing Effect: The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.
Mass Practice vs. Distributed Practice: Mass practice is cramming. Spaced repetition and distributed practice are much more effective.
Serial Position Effect: Our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list.
Primacy Effect: Remembering the first items in a list.
Recency Effect: Remembering the last items in a list.
2.5 - Storing Memories
Memory: Sensory, Short-Term, Working and Long-Term
Rehearsal & Elaborative Rehearsal help Retention: Repeating something over and over. Elaborative is when we really think about the material and encode it better.
Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory: Exceptional ability to recall specific details of one's life experiences.
Amnesia: Loss of memory.
Retrograde: Loss of memory for events that occurred before the amnesia-inducing event.
Anterograde: Inability to form new memories after the amnesia-inducing event.
Infantile: The inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories before the age of 2–4 years.
Alzheimer’s Disease: A neurodegenerative disease characterized by gradual memory loss, decline in cognitive abilities, and changes in behavior and personality.
2.6 - Retrieving memories
Retrieval Process: The process of getting information out of memory storage.
Recall vs. Recognition: Recall is retrieving information learned earlier. Recognition is identifying items previously learned.
Context-Dependent Memory: Recall is improved when recall context is similar to encoding context.
Mood-Congruent Memory: The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood.
State-Dependent Memory: What is learned in one state (while one is high, drugged, or depressed) can more easily be remembered when in same state.
Testing-Effect: Enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information.
Meta-cognition: Thinking about thinking.
2.7 - Forgetting and Other Memory Challenges
Forgetting Curve: A graph showing retention and forgetting over time.
Encoding Failure: Failure to process information into memory.
Interference: When prior learning disrupts your recall of new information (proactive) and vice-versa (retroactive).
Proactive: The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.
Retroactive: The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.
Inadequate Retrieval: Happens when information is available in memory but cannot be accessed.
Tip of the Tongue: The feeling that a memory is available but not quite retrievable.
Repression: In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Misinformation Effect: Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event.
Source Amnesia: Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined.
Constructive Memory: Memory that is constructed from information available and is plausible rather than a verbatim record of the event.
Memory Consolidation & Imagination Inflation: Enhancement of source monitoring errors after imagining an event.
2.8 - Intelligence and Achievement
IQ: A score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess intelligence.
IQ Testing & Bias: Concerns about cultural biases in IQ tests.
General Intelligence (G Factor) vs. Multiple Intelligences: A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test vs. several different types of intelligence that are independent of one another
Psychometrics: The scientific study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits.
Standardization vs. Factor Analysis: Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group vs. A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score.
Validity: The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.
Reliability: The extent to which a test yields consistent results.
Test-Retest: Giving the same test twice and comparing the scores.
Split-Half: Dividing the test into two equal halves and assessing how consistent the scores are
Stereotype Threat vs. Stereotype Lift: A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype vs. awareness of positive expectations can improve task performance
Flynn Effect: The worldwide phenomenon that shows intelligence test performance increasing over the years.
Socio-cultural Bias: The existence of a systematic prejudice in the way items of a test are constructed that affects the performance of members of a specific social group
Achievement Test vs. Aptitude Tests: A test designed to assess what a person has learned vs. A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset: The idea that we have a set amount of an ability that cannot change vs. The idea that our abilities are malleable qualities that we can cultivate and grow.
Unit 3: Development & Learning
3.1 - Themes and Methods in Developmental Psychology
Developmental Psychology: A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.
Stability vs. Change: Do we remain the same person over time, or do we become different people as we age?
Nature vs. Nurture: How do genetic inheritance and experience influence our development?
Continuous vs. Discontinuous: Is development gradual and continuous, or does it proceed through distinct stages?
Stages of Development: Distinct periods of development with unique characteristics.
Longitudinal vs. Cross-Sectional Study: Research that follows and retests the same people over time vs. Research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time
3.2 - Physical Development Across the Lifespan
Teratogens: Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
Rooting Reflex: A baby's tendency, when touched on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth, and search for the nipple.
Visual Cliff & Depth Perception: A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals. Indicates that depth perception is partly innate.
Critical / Sensitive Periods: An optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.
Imprinting: The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.
Primary vs. Secondary Sex Characteristics: Body structures that make sexual reproduction possible vs. Non-reproductive sexual characteristics, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair.
Menarche vs. Spermarche: The first menstrual period vs. First ejaculation.
3.3 - Gender & Sexual Orientation
(covered elsewhere)
3.4 - Cognitive Development Across the Lifespan
Jean Piaget: A developmental psychologist known for his stage theory of cognitive development.
Schemas: A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Assimilation & Accommodation: Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas vs. Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information
Piaget's Stages:
1) Sensorimotor Stage: From birth to about 2 years old. Infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities. Mental Symbols, Pretend Play & Object Permanence.
2) Preoperational Stage: From about 2 to 6 or 7 years old. A child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. Conservation, Reversibility, Animism, Egocentrism, Theory of Mind.
3) Concrete Operational Stage: From about 7 to 11 years old. Children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. Logical, however, struggle with systematic thinking.
4) Formal Operational Stage: From about 12 through adulthood. People begin to think logically about abstract concepts. Hypothetical & Abstract Thinking.
Lev Vygotsky & Zone of Proximal Development: Zone of Proximal Development deals with Social and cultural factors, scaffolding.
**Crystallized vs. Fluid Intelligence: Accumulated knowledge and verbal skills tend to increase with age vs. Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly tends to decrease during late adulthood.
3.5 - Social Development Across the Lifespan
Erik Erikson: A developmental psychologist known for his stage theory of psychosocial development.
Trust vs. Mistrust: ( infancy, 0-1.5 years) If needs are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust.
Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt: (toddler, 1.5-3 years) Toddlers learn to exercise their will and do things for themselves, or they doubt their abilities.
Initiative vs. Guilt: (preschool, 3-6 years) Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about their efforts to be independent.
Industry vs. Inferiority: (elementary school, 6 years-puberty) Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks, or they feel inferior.
Identity vs. Role Confusion: (adolescence, teen years into 20s) Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are.
Intimacy vs. Isolation: (young adulthood, 20s to early 40s) Young adults struggle to form close relationships and to gain intimate love, or they feel socially isolated.
Generativity vs. Stagnation: (middle adulthood, 40s to 60s) In middle age, people discover a sense of contributing to the world, usually through family and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose.
Integrity vs. Despair: (late adulthood, late 60s and up) When reflecting on his or her life, the older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure.
Attachment Theory: The idea that early attachments with parents and other caregivers can shape our relationships for the rest of our lives.
Harry Harlow Monkey Studies: Showed that infant monkeys preferred contact with a soft, comforting caregiver over a wire one with food.
Secure Attachment: Demonstrated by infants who comfortably explore environments in the presence of their caregiver, show only temporary distress when the caregiver leaves, and find comfort in the caregiver’s return.
Insecure Attachment: Demonstrated by infants who display either avoidant or ambivalent attachment; they are less likely to explore the environment, may cling to the caregiver, and show great distress when the caregiver leaves.
Avoidant Attachment: Child avoids caregiver.
Anxious/Ambivalent Attachment: Child is anxious and not easily soothed.
Disorganized Attachment: Child has no predictable pattern of attachment.
Parenting Styles:
Authoritarian Parenting: Parents impose rules and expect obedience.
Permissive Parenting: Parents submit to their children’s desires; they make few demands and use little punishment.
Authoritative Parenting: Parents are both demanding and responsive; they set rules and explain the reasons for them.
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development:
Preconventional Morality: Self-interest; obey either to avoid punishment or to gain concrete rewards; characterize children.
Conventional Morality: Uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social order; characterizes early adolescence.
Postconventional Morality: Actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles; characterizes adulthood.
3.6 - Introduction to Learning
Learning: A relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience.
Classical Conditioning: A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.
Ivan Pavlov: Discovered classical conditioning through his work with dogs.
Neutral Stimulus (NS): A stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.
Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response.
Unconditioned Response (UCR): The unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus.
Conditioned Stimulus (CS): An originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.
Conditioned Response (CR): The learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus.
Acquisition: The initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response.
Extinction: The diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (US) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS).
Spontaneous Recovery: The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.
Generalization: The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.
Discrimination: The learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.
Taste Aversion (John Garcia): A classically conditioned dislike for and avoidance of a particular food that develops when an organism becomes ill after eating the food.
Learned Helplessness: The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
Systematic Desensitization: A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias.
Flooding: A behavioral therapy technique in which the individual is exposed directly to a maximum intensity anxiety-producing situation or stimulus, either in vivo or imaginatively.
Operant Conditioning: A type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher.
B.F. Skinner: A behaviorist who developed operant conditioning.
Thorndike’s Law of Effect: Behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.
Reinforcement: Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.
Positive Reinforcement: Increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response.
Negative Reinforcement: Increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli, such as shock. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response.
Punishment: An event that tends to decrease the behavior that it follows.
Positive Punishment: Administer an aversive stimulus. (ex: spray water on a barking dog)
Negative Punishment: Withdraw a rewarding stimulus. (ex: take away teen’s driving privileges)
Shaping: An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.
Reinforcement Schedules: Patterns that define how often a desired response will be reinforced.
Continuous Reinforcement: Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.
Partial Reinforcement: Reinforcing a response only part of the time; results in slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction than does continuous reinforcement.
Fixed-Ratio Schedule: Reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.
Variable-Ratio Schedule: Reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.
Fixed-Interval Schedule: Reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed.
Variable-Interval Schedule: Reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals.
Social (Observational) Learning: Learning by observing others.
Albert Bandura, Bobo Doll Experiment: Children learn social behavior such as aggression through the process of observation learning - watching the behavior of another person.
Mirror Neurons: Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation and empathy.
Unit 4: Motivation, Emotion, and Personality
4.1 - Theories of Motivation
Motivation: A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.
Instinct Theory: Instincts are fixed patterns of behavior that are not learned.
Drive-Reduction Theory: A physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.
Arousal Theory: We are motivated to seek an optimal level of arousal.
Yerkes-Dodson Law: Performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.
Hierarchy of Needs (Abraham Maslow): Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active.
Physiological: Need to satisfy hunger and thirst.
Safety: Need to feel that the world is organized and predictable; need to feel safe, secure, and stable.
Belongingness and Love: Need to love and be loved, to belong and be accepted; need to avoid loneliness and separation.
Esteem: Need for self-esteem, achievement, competence, and independence; need for recognition and respect from others.
Self-Actualization: Need to live up to our fullest and unique potential.
Self-Transcendence: Need to find meaning and identity beyond the self.
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation: A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake vs. A desire to perform a behavior to receive rewards or avoid punishment.
Glucose & Insulin: The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues. When its level is low, we feel hunger vs. Hormone secreted by pancreas that helps glucose get into cells for energy
The hypothalamus, Lateral vs. Ventromedial Hypothalamus: The lateral hypothalamus brings on hunger. The ventromedial hypothalamus suppresses hunger.
Set Point: The point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight.
Basal Metabolic Rate: The body’s resting rate of energy expenditure.
Anorexia Nervosa: An eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly underweight; sometimes accompanied by excessive exercise.
Bulimia Nervosa: An eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating (usually of high-calorie foods) with purging (by vomiting or laxative use) or fasting.
Binge-Eating Disorder: Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging, fasting, or excessive exercise that marks bulimia nervosa.
Testosterone & Estrogen: The most important male sex hormone. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty vs. A sex hormone, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males. In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity
Sexual Response Cycle (Masters and Johnson): The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
Sexual Orientation: An enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one’s own sex (homosexual orientation), the other sex (heterosexual orientation), or both sexes (bisexual orientation).
Affiliation Need: The need to build relationships and to feel part of a group.
Ostracism: Deliberate social exclusion of individuals or groups.
Achievement Motivation: A desire for significant accomplishment; for mastery of skills or ideas; for control; and for attaining a high standard.
Grit: Passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals.
Self-Efficacy: The belief in one’s ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task. This belief can greatly influence an individual's motivation and resilience.
4.2 - Theories and Physiological Responses to Emotion
Emotion: A response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience.
James-Lange Theory: Our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli (we are afraid because our heart pounds).
Cannon-Bard Theory: An emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion.
Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory: To experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.
Spillover Effect: Occurs when one emotion continues from one situation to another; arousal spills over.
Robert Zajonc; LeDoux: Some emotional responses happen instantly, without conscious appraisal.
Joseph LeDoux’s Theory: Some pathways bypass the cortex. For example, fear responses go directly to the amygdala.
Richard Lazarus: Appraisal Theory: Cognitive appraisal (is it dangerous or not?) sometimes without our awareness defines emotion.
Autonomic Nervous System: The part of the peripheral nervous system that controls the glands and the muscles of the internal organs (such as the heart). Its sympathetic division arouses; its parasympathetic division calms.
Sympathetic & Parasympathetic Nervous System: The division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations vs. The division of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body, conserving its energy
Facial Feedback Effect: The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness.
Behavior Feedback Effect: The tendency of behavior to influence our own and others’ thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Stress: The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.
General Adaptation Syndrome (Hans Selye): Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three phases—alarm, resistance, exhaustion.
Alarm: Heart rate increases, blood is diverted to skeletal muscles
Resistance: Temperature, blood pressure, and respiration remain high; adrenal glands pump hormones into bloodstream
Exhaustion: Body’s reserves are depleted; more vulnerable to illness
Tend and Befriend Response: Under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend).
Psychoneuroimmunology: The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health.
Lymphocytes, T Cells, B Cells: The two types of white blood cells that are part of the body’s immune system: B lymphocytes release antibodies that fight bacterial infections; T lymphocytes attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances
Coronary Heart Disease: The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in many developed countries.
Type A Personality: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.
Type B Personality: Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people.
4.3 - Theories of Personality
Personality: An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Psychodynamic Theories: View personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.
Sigmund Freud: Developed psychoanalysis, the theory of personality.
Psychoanalysis: Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
Free Association: In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.
Id: A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.
Ego: The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
Superego: The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.
Unconscious: According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.
Oedipus Complex: According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.
Psychosexual Stages: The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
Defense Mechanisms: In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
Repression: In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Regression: In psychoanalytic theory, a defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.
Reaction Formation: Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.
Projection: Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
Rationalization: Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions.
Displacement: Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.
Denial: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities.
Sublimation: transforming unacceptable impulses into socially valued motivations.
Neo-Freudians: Accepted many of Freud’s ideas but differed in some ways (placed more emphasis on the conscious mind and doubted that sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations).
Alfred Adler: Proposed the idea of the inferiority complex.
Karen Horney: Believed that childhood anxiety triggers our desire for love and security.
Carl Jung: Believed in a collective unconscious.
Collective Unconscious: Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.
Projective Tests: A personality test, such as the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Rorschach Inkblot Test: The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.
Humanistic Theories: View personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth.
Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers: Humanistic Theorists, Maslow proposed the Hierarchy of Needs.
Self-Concept, Ideal Self, Real Self: All the thoughts and feelings we have in response to the question, “Who am I?” vs. the person you would like to be vs the person you actually are.
Unconditional Positive Regard: According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person.
Trait Theories: See personality as a stable and enduring pattern of behavior.
Gordon Allport: A trait theorist who identified thousands of traits.
Raymond Cattell: Used factor analysis to identify 16 personality traits.
Hans and Sybil Eysenck: Believed that we could reduce many of our normal individual variations to two or three dimensions, including extraversion-introversion and emotional stability-instability.
Personality Inventories: A questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes.
The Big Five Factors (CANOE): Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extraversion.
Social-Cognitive Theories: Explores the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context.
Albert Bandura: Proposed the social-cognitive perspective.
Reciprocal Determinism: The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.
Personal Control: The extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless.
External Locus of Control: The perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.
Internal Locus of Control: The perception that you control your own fate.
Self-Efficacy: One’s sense of competence and effectiveness.
Learned Helplessness (Martin Seligman): The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
Self-Serving Bias: A readiness to perceive oneself favorably.
Terror-Management Theory: A theory of death-related anxiety; explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death
Spotlight Effect: overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders
Narcissism: excessive self-love and self-absorption
e-Identification: a psychological concept where individuals identify with a group or social category to enhance self-esteem, often leading to bias towards in-group members and prejudice against out-group members. is the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
False Consensus Effect: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors.
Social Responsibility Norm: The expectation that people will help those dependent upon them.
Social Reciprocity Norm: The expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.
Yerkes-Dodson Law: Performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.
Drive-Reduction Theory: A physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.
Lewins motivational conflicts:
Approach-Approach Conflict: Occurs when you must choose between two desirable options.
Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict: Occurs when you must choose between two undesirable options.
Approach-Avoidance Conflict: Occurs when one goal or event has both attractive and unattractive aspects.Multiple Approach-Avoidance Conflicts: This arises when you face multiple goals or options, each with both positive and negative attributes, making the decision process more complex.
Double Approach-Avoidance Conflict: Involves choosing between two options, both of which have positive and negative aspects.
Examples of Double Approach-Avoidance Conflict: Choosing between two job offers, where one offers higher salary but poor work-life balance, while the other provides a supportive work environment but lower pay.
Unit 5: Psychological Disorders
5.1 - Introduction to Psychological Disorders
Psychological Disorder: A syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior.
DSM V: The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders.
Medical Model: The concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital.
Biopsychosocial Approach: An integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis.
Diathesis Stress Model: Suggests that people are born with a predisposition (or “diathesis”) to a mental disorder that remains unexpressed until triggered by stress.
Culture-Related Symptoms: Some disorders are culture-specific. For example, susto in Latin America: marked by severe anxiety, restlessness, and a fear of black magic.
ADHD: A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
5.2 - Anxiety, Trauma-and-Stressor-Related, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
Anxiety Disorders: Psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder: An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal.
Panic Disorder: An anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations. Often followed by worry over a possible next attack.
Phobias: An anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation.
Social Anxiety Disorder: Intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such.
Agoraphobia: Fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): A disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions).
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): A disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience.
Conditioning and Learning: Classical and operant conditioning helps create anxieties.
Cognition: Our thoughts, memories, and interpretations play a role.
Biology: Genes, the brain, and natural selection influence anxiety, OCD, and PTSD.
5.3 - Depressive, Bipolar, and Related Disorders
Mood Disorders: Psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes.
Major Depressive Disorder: A mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or another medical condition, two or more weeks with five or more symptoms, at least one of which must be either (1) depressed mood or (2) loss of interest or pleasure.
Persistent Depressive Disorder: Experience a mildly depressed mood more often than not for at least two years.
Bipolar Disorder: A mood disorder in which the person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.
Mania: A mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.
Rumination: Compulsive fretting; overthinking about our problems and their causes.
Explanatory Style: Who or what they blame for their failures.
The depressed brain: Brain activity slows during depression and increases during mania.
Suicide: The act of intentionally taking one’s own life.
Non-suicidal Self Injury (NSSI): cutting, burning, hitting oneself, pulling out hair, inserting objects under fingernails or skin, self-poisoning, or carving words of symbols on skin
5.4 - Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders
Schizophrenia: A psychological disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished, inappropriate emotional expression.
Psychosis: A psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions.
Delusions: False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.
Hallucinations: False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.
Positive Symptoms: Schizophrenic symptoms such as hallucinations, disorganized talk, and inappropriate laughter.
Negative Symptoms: Schizophrenic symptoms such as toneless voices, expressionless faces, or mute and rigid bodies.
Chronic Schizophrenia: A form of schizophrenia in which symptoms appear by late adolescence or early adulthood. As people age, psychotic episodes last longer and recovery periods shorten.
Acute Schizophrenia: A form of schizophrenia that can begin at any age, frequently occurs in response to a traumatic event, and from which recovery is much more likely.
Dopamine Overactivity: Researchers found that schizophrenic patients express higher levels of dopamine D4 receptors in the brain.
Abnormal Brain Activity and Anatomy: People with schizophrenia have abnormally low brain activity in the frontal lobes, as well as enlarged ventricles.
Prenatal Environment: Viral infections, nutritional deprivation, and maternal stress contribute to increased risk of schizophrenia.
Genetic Factors: The likelihood of an individual having schizophrenia is roughly 1 in 100; if an individual has a parent or sibling with the disorder, the likelihood increases to 1 in 10
5.5 - Personality Disorders
Personality Disorders: Psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning.
Antisocial Personality Disorder: A personality disorder in which the person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members. May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist.
Genetic Factors: Antisocial and criminal behavior show some genetic influence
Brain Abnormalities: Reduced activity in the frontal lobes.
Psychological and Social Factors: Abusive or unstable home environment.
5.6 - Neurodevelopmental and Neurocognitive Disorders
Neurodevelopmental Disorders: neurologically based disorders that are revealed in a clinically significant way during a child’s developing years
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.
Biological Factors: Genetic Influences abnormal brain development.
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
Biological Factors: Genetic Influences abnormal brain development.
5.7 - Treatment of Psychological Disorders
Psychotherapy: Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.
Biomedical Therapy: Prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person’s physiology.
Eclectic Approach: An approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client’s problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy.
Psychoanalysis: Freud’s therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences—and the therapist’s interpretations of them—released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.
Resistance: In psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.
Interpretation: In psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight.
Transference: In psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).
Psychodynamic Therapy: Therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition; views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and seeks to enhance self-insight.
Humanistic Therapies: Aim to boost people’s self-fulfillment by helping them grow in self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Client-Centered Therapy (Carl Rogers): A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate clients’ growth (also called person-centered therapy).
Active Listening: Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers’ client-centered therapy.
Unconditional Positive Regard (Carl Rogers): A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Behavior Therapies: Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.
Counterconditioning: A behavior therapy procedure that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.
Exposure Therapies: Behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actual situations) to the things they fear and avoid.
Systematic Desensitization (Joseph Wolpe): A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias.
Aversive Conditioning: A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).
Cognitive Therapies: Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.
Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) (Albert Ellis): A confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people’s illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).
Group and Family Therapies:
Family Therapy: Therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.
Evaluating Psychotherapies:
Regression Toward the Mean: The tendency for extreme or unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average.
Meta-Analysis: A procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research
Drug Therapies:
Antidepressant Drugs: Used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Antipsychotic Drugs: Used to treat schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
Mood-Stabilizing Medications: Used to treat bipolar disorder.
Brain Stimulation:
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): A biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient.
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS): The application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity.
Psychosurgery: Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.
Lobotomy: A psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.