AP Psychocolgy Last minute FRQ Terms
Acetylcholine (LMM) | A neurotransmitter that enables learning and memory and also triggers muscle contraction | 0 |
arousal theory | A theory of motivation suggesting that people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of alertness and physical and mental activation. |
|
availability heuristic | estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common |
|
belief perseverance | clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited | |
Big Five Personality Traits | openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism | |
Extraversion | A personality dimension describing someone who is sociable, gregarious, and assertive |
|
circadian rhythm | the biological clock; regular bodily rhythms (for example, of temperature and wakefulness) that occur on a 24-hour cycle | |
cognitive dissonance | unpleasant mental experience of tension resulting from two conflicting thoughts or beliefs | |
context dependent memory | The theory that information learned in a particular situation or place is better remembered when in that same situation or place. |
|
Correlation | A measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other. Can range from -1 to +1. Negative correlations the variables rise and fall inversely, positive correlations variables rise and fall together. Negative does not mean weak and positive does not mean strong |
|
Deindividuation (sports crowd) | the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity |
|
difference threshold | the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time | |
distributed practice | spacing the study of material to be remembered by including breaks between study periods | |
divergent thinking (New solutions to problems) | a type of creative thinking in which one generates new solutions to problems |
|
Dopamine (MALR) | A neurotransmitter associated with movement, attention and learning and the brain's pleasure and reward system. | |
drive-reduction theory | the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need |
|
encoding failure | the inability to recall specific information because of insufficient encoding of the information for storage in long-term memory | |
episodic memory | A category of long-term memory that involves the recollection of specific events, situations and experiences. |
|
ethics in research (CCDP) | informed consent protection from harm/discomfort maintain confidentiality debriefing | |
experiment | A research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process |
|
correlational research | research that seeks to identify whether an association or relationship between two factors exists. Does not manipulate variables. |
|
explicit memory | memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare" (also called declarative memory) | |
external locus of control | the perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your fate. |
|
extrinsic motivation | a desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment | |
GAS exhaustion phase | body runs out of adaption energy stores for adjusting to stressor, and disease resistance drops below normal; if we can stay in the stress it can have a negative effect |
|
gender roles | sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one's status as male or female | |
gestalt principle of proximity | we group nearby figures together |
|
implicit memory | Memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously | |
incentive theory | A theory of motivation stating that behavior is directed toward attaining desirable stimuli and avoiding unwanted stimuli. | |
intrinsic motivation | a desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake | |
normative social influence (gain social approval) | influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval |
|
operational definition | a statement of the procedures used to define research variables. Must be recordable/countable/measurable. | |
overjustification effect | The effect of promising a reward for doing what one already likes to do. The person may now see the reward, rather than intrinsic interest, as the motivation for performing the task. |
|
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. |
|
postconventional moral reasoning | Kohlberg's third level of moral reasoning, emphasizing moral principles |
|
prefrontal cortex (TPL) | processing center in the frontal lobe responsible for thinking, planning, and language |
|
proactive interference | Being unable to retrieve new information because old information gets in the way | |
procedural memory | a type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioral habits (tying shoes, eating with a fork) |
|
prospective memory | remembering to do things in the future |
|
random assignment | assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups | |
random selection | A way of ensuring that a sample of people is representative of a population by giving everyone in the population an equal chance of being selected for the sample | |
retinal disparity | a binocular cue for perceiving depth |
|
retroactive interference | Unable to retrieve old information because of newly encoded information | |
selective attention | the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus |
|
self-efficacy | one's sense of competence and effectiveness in a specific task. | |
self-fulfiling prophecy | a prediction or expectation about our future behavior that is likely to come true because we believe it and thus act in ways that make it come true | |
Serotonin | A neurotransmitter helps mood and appetite. Increase in it helps depression as it is a mood booster. |
|
social facilitation | improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others, decreased performance on difficult or non well-learned tasks |
|
state-dependent memory | The theory that information learned in a particular state of mind (e.g., depressed, happy, somber) is more easily recalled when in that same state of mind. | |
statistical significance | a statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance. Measured by p-value. To say something is statistically significant it must have a p value of less than .05 (p=<.05) | |
sympathetic nervous system | the division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations |
|
Yerkes-Dodson Law | the principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases |
|
cognitive restructuring | a therapeutic approach that teaches clients to question the automatic beliefs, assumptions, and predictions that often lead to negative emotions and to replace negative thinking with more realistic and positive beliefs | |
kinesthetic sense | sense of the location of body parts in relation to the ground and each other |
|
basilar membrane | A structure that runs the length of the cochlea in the inner ear and holds the auditory receptors, called hair cells. | |
somatosensory cortex | area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations |
|
motor neurons (efferent) | neurons that carry outgoing information from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles and glands | |
Heuristic | a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms | |
secondary reinforcer | any reinforcer that becomes reinforcing after being paired with a primary reinforcer, such as praise, tokens, or gold stars |
|
Algorithm | A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. |
|
social loafing | the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable |
|
Habituation | decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner. | |
alarm stage of GAS | organism recognizes stress, begins to respond. Fight or flight and sympathetic nervous system engages |
|
authoritarian parenting | style of parenting in which parent is rigid and overly strict, showing little warmth to the child |
|
identity vs. role confusion | Erikson's stage during which teenagers and young adults search for and become their true selves | |
unconditional positive regard | according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person |
|
elaborative rehearsal | the linking of new information to material that is already known | |
central route persuasion | going through rational mind, persuading using logic and evidence. | |
source amnesia | attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined |
|
fluid intelligence | our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood |
|
agoraphobia | fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic | |
Ethnocentrism | Belief in the superiority of one's nation or ethnic group. | |
Rods | retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond | |
Broca's area | speech production (mouth movement) |
|
gestalt principle of closure | we fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object |
|
double blind research | a research study in which both the researcher and the participants are unaware of the predicted outcome | |
myelin sheath | A layer of fatty tissue segmentally encasing the fibers of many neurons; enables vastly greater transmission speed of neural impulses as the impulse hops from one node to the next. |
|
punishment | an event that decreases the behavior that it follows | |
Endorphins | natural, opiate-like neurotransmitters linked to pain control and to pleasure | |
Introversion (introvert) | dimension of personality in which people tend to withdraw from excessive stimulation |
|
cognitive map | a mental representation of the layout of one's environment | |
cocktail party effect | ability to attend to only one voice among many |
|
Cerebellum | the "little brain" at the rear of the brainstem; functions include processing sensory input and coordinating movement output and balance | |
observational learning | learning by observing others | |
Human Factors | interaction with people and machines | |
reticular formation | alertness and arousal | |
predictive validity | Refers to the function of a test in predicting a particular behavior or trait. | |
semantic memory | general knowledge | |
serial position effect | our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list | |
functional fixedness | the tendency to perceive an item only in terms of its most common use (not thinking outside the box) | |
operant conditioning | a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher | |
Reinforcement | any event that strengthens the behavior it follows | |
Conformity | compliance with standards, rules, or laws. | |
figure-ground (objects standing out from their surroundings) | the organization of the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings |
|
occipital lobe | A region of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information | |
Use of Phonemes | in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit /k/ for cat | |
Modeling | learning by imitating others; copying behavior | |
age and language acquisition | older students are less successful in acquiring a language. | |
foveal vision | sharp central vision | |
feature detectors | cells in the cortex that specialize in extracting certain features of a stimulus | |
compliance | the tendency to agree to do things requested by others | |
crystallized intelligence | our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age | |
motor cortex | controls voluntary movements | |
conditioned response | a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus | |
inattentional blindness | a failure to perceive objects that are not the focus of attention | |
mnemonic devices | strategies for enhancing memory | |
external cues | time of day, social cues, sight and smell of food |
