Exam Review
Chapters 1, 2, & 3.
Chapter 1
The Science of Psychology
Behavior: Everything, we do that can be directly observed.
Behavioral approach: an approach to psychology emphasizing the scientific study of observable behavioral responses and their environmental determinants.
Biological approach: an approach to psychology focusing on the body, especially the brain and nervous system.
Case study or case history: an in-depth look at a single individual.
Cognitive approach: an approach to psychology emphasizing the mental processes involved in knowing: how we direct our attention, perceive, remember, think, and solve problems.
Control group: The participants in an experiment who are as much like the experimental group as possible and who are treated in every way like the experimental group except for a manipulated factor, the independent variable.
Correlational research: research that examines the relationships between variables, whose purpose is to examine whether and how two variables change together.
Critical thinking: The process of thinking deeply and actively, asking questions, and evaluating the evidence.
Dependent variable: The outcome; the factor that can change in an experiment in response to changes in the independent variable.
Double-blind experiment: An experimental design in which neither the experimenter nor the participants are aware of which participants are in the experimental group and which are in the control group until the results are calculated.
Evolutionary approach: An approach to psychology centered on evolutionary ideas such as adaptation, reproduction, and natural selection as the basis for explaining specific human behaviors.
Experiment: A carefully regulated procedure in which the researcher manipulates one or more variables that are believed to influence some other variable.
Experimental group: The participants in an experiment who receive the drug or other treatment under study—that is, those who are exposed to the change that the independent variable represents.
Functionalism: James’s approach to mental processes, emphasizing the functions and purposes of the mind and behavior in the individual’s adaptation to the environment.
Humanistic approach: An approach to psychology emphasizing a person’s positive qualities, the capacity for positive growth, and the freedom to choose any destiny.
Hypothesis: A testable prediction that derives logically from a theory.
Independent variable: A manipulated experimental factor; the variable that the experimenter changes to see what its effects are.
Longitudinal design: A special kind of systematic observation, used by correlational researchers, that involves obtaining measures of the variables of interest in multiple waves over time.
Mental processes: The thoughts, feelings, and motives that people experience privately but that cannot be observed directly.
Natural selection: Darwin’s principle of an evolutionary process in which organisms that are best adapted to their environment will survive and produce offspring.
Naturalistic observation: The observation of behavior in a real-world setting.
Placebo: In a drug study, a harmless substance that has no physiological effect, given to participants in a control group so that they are treated identically to the experimental group except for the active agent.
Placebo effect: The situation where participants’ expectations, rather than the experimental treatment, produce an experimental outcome.
Population: The entire group about which the researcher wants to draw conclusions.
Psychoanalysis: techniques involves an analyst unlocking a person's unconscious conflicts by talking with the individual about his or her childhood memories, dreams, thoughts, and feelings.
Psychodynamic approach: an approach to psychology emphasizing unconscious thought, the conflict between biological drives (such as the drive for sex) and society’s demands, and early childhood family experiences.
Psychology: The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Sample: The subset of the population chosen by the investigator for study.
Sociocultural approach: an approach to psychology that examines the ways in which social and cultural environments influence behavior.
Structuralism: Wundt’s approach to discovering the basic elements, or structures, of mental processes.
Theory: A broad idea or set of closely related ideas that attempts to explain observations and to make predictions about future observations.
Validity: The soundness of the conclusions that a researcher draws from an experiment. In the realm of testing, the extent to which a test measures what it is intended to measure.
Variable: Anything that can change.
Wilhelm Wundt is most often regarded the "founding father" of modern psychology. He was also the founder of structuralism.
William James was the founder of functionalism.
J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner believed that psychology should focus on an organism's visible interactions with the environment—that is, behaviors.
Ethical Guidelines developed by the American Psychological Association include:
• informed consent.
• confidentiality.
• deception.
• debriefing.
Chapter 2
The Brain and Behavior
Action potential: The brief wave of positive electrical charge that sweeps down the axon.
Adrenal glands: glands at the top of each kidney that are responsible for regulating moods, energy level, and the ability to cope with stress.
Amygdala: An almond-shaped structure within the base of the temporal lobe that is involved in the discrimination of objects that are necessary for the organism’s survival, such as appropriate food, mates, and social rivals.
Association cortex: Sometimes called association areas, the region of the cerebral cortex that is the site of the highest intellectual functions, such as thinking and problem solving.
Autonomic nervous system: The body system that takes messages to and from the body’s internal organs, monitoring such processes as breathing, heart rate, and digestion.
Axon The part of the neuron that carries information away from the cell body toward other cells.
Basal ganglia Large neuron clusters located above the thalamus and under the cerebral cortex that work with the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex to control and coordinate voluntary movements.
Brain stem The stem like brain area that includes much of the hindbrain (excluding the cerebellum) and the midbrain; connects with the spinal cord at its lower end and then extends upward to encase the reticular formation in the midbrain.
Cell body The part of the neuron that contains the nucleus, which directs the manufacture of substances that the neuron needs for growth and maintenance.
Central nervous system (CNS): The brain and spinal cord.
Cerebral cortex: Part of the forebrain, the outer layer of the brain, responsible for the most complex mental functions, such as thinking and planning.
Chromosomes: In the human cell, threadlike structures that come in 23 pairs, one member of each pair originating from each parent, and that contain DNA.
Corpus callosum: The large bundle of axons that connects the brain’s two hemispheres, responsible for relaying information between the two sides.
Dendrites: Treelike fibers projecting from a neuron, which receive information and orient it toward the neuron’s cell body.
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA): A complex molecule in the cell’s chromosomes that carries genetic information.
Dominant-recessive genes principle: The principle that if one gene of a pair is dominant and one is recessive, the dominant gene overrides the recessive gene. A recessive gene exerts its influence only if both genes of a pair are recessive.
Endocrine system: The body system consisting of a set of glands that regulate the activities of certain organs by releasing their chemical products into the bloodstream.
Forebrain: The brain’s largest division and its most forward part.
Frontal lobes: The portion of the cerebral cortex behind the forehead, involved in personality, intelligence, and the control of voluntary muscles.
Genes: The units of hereditary information, consisting of short segments of chromosomes composed of DNA.
Genotype: An individual’s genetic heritage; his or her actual genetic material.
Glands: Organs or tissues in the body that create chemicals that control many bodily functions.
Glial cells: The second of two types of cells in the nervous system; glial cells (also called glia) provide support, nutritional benefits, and other functions and keep neurons running smoothly.
Hindbrain: Located at the skull’s rear, the lowest portion of the brain, consisting of the medulla, cerebellum, and pons.
Hippocampus: The structure in the limbic system that has a special role in the storage of memories.
Hormones: Chemical messengers that are produced by the endocrine glands and carried by the bloodstream to all parts of the body.
Hypothalamus: A small forebrain structure, located just below the thalamus, that monitors three pleasurable activities—eating, drinking, and sex—as well as emotion, stress, and reward.
Limbic system: A set of subcortical brain structures central to emotion, memory, and reward processing.
Midbrain: Located between the hindbrain and forebrain, an area in which many nerve-fiber systems ascend and descend to connect the higher and lower portions of the brain; in particular, the midbrain relays information between the brain and the eyes and ears.
Motor cortex: A region in the cerebral cortex, located just behind the frontal lobes, that processes information about voluntary movement.
Myelin sheath: A layer of fat cells that encases and insulates most axons.
Neocortex: The outermost part of the cerebral cortex, making up 80 percent of the human brain’s cortex.
Nervous system: The body’s electrochemical communication circuitry.
Neural networks: Networks of nerve cells that integrate sensory input and motor output.
Neurons: One of two types of cells in the nervous system; neurons are the nerve cells that handle the information-processing function.
Neurotransmitters: Chemical substances that are stored in very tiny sacs within the neuron’s terminal buttons and involved in transmitting information across a synaptic gap to the next neuron.
Occipital lobes: Structures located at the back of the head that respond to visual stimuli.
Ovaries: Sex-related endocrine glands that produce hormones involved in women’s sexual development and reproduction.
Pancreas: A dual-purpose gland under the stomach that performs both digestive and endocrine functions.
Parasympathetic nervous system: The part of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body.
Parietal lobes: Structures at the top and toward the rear of the head that are involved in registering spatial location, attention, and motor control.
Peripheral nervous system (PNS): The network of nerves that connects the brain and spinal cord to other parts of the body.
Phenotype: An individual’s observable characteristics.
Pituitary gland: A pea-sized gland just beneath the hypothalamus that controls growth and regulates other glands.
Plasticity: The brain’s special capacity for change.
Prefrontal cortex: an important part of the frontal lobes that is involved in higher cognitive functions such as planning, reasoning, and self-control.
Resting potential, The stable, negative charge of an inactive neuron.
Reticular formation: A system in the midbrain comprising a diffuse collection of neurons involved in stereotyped patterns of behavior such as walking, sleeping, and turning to attend to a sudden noise.
Somatic nervous system: The body system consisting of the sensory nerves, whose function is to convey information from the skin and muscles to the central nervous system about conditions such as pain and temperature, and the motor nerves, whose function is to tell muscles what to do.
Somatosensory cortex: A region in the cerebral cortex that processes information about body sensations, located at the front of the parietal lobes.
Stem cells: Unique primitive cells that have the capacity to develop into most types of human cells.
Stress: The responses of individuals to environmental stressors.
Stressors: Circumstances and events that threaten individuals and tax their coping abilities and that cause physiological changes to ready the body to handle the assault of stress.
Sympathetic nervous system: The part of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body to mobilize it for action and thus is involved in the experience of stress.
Synapses: Tiny spaces between neurons; the gaps between neurons are referred to as synaptic gaps.
Temporal lobes: Structures in the cerebral cortex that are located just above the ears and are involved in hearing, language processing, and memory.
Testes: Sex-related endocrine glands in the scrotum that produce hormones involved in men’s sexual development and reproduction.
Thalamus: The forebrain structure that sits at the top of the brain stem in the brain’s central core and serves as an important relay station.
Left Hemisphere
• verbal processing, speech, grammar
Right Hemisphere
• spatial perception
• visual recognition
• emotion
Chapter 3
Sensation and Perception
Absolute threshold: The minimum amount of stimulus energy that a person can detect.
Apparent movement: The perception that a stationary object is moving.
Auditory nerve: The nerve structure that receives information about sound from the hair cells of the inner ear and carries these neural impulses to the brain’s auditory areas.
Binding: In the sense of vision, the bringing together and integration of what is processed by different neural pathways or cells.
Binocular cues: Depth cues that depend on the combination of the images in the left and right eyes and on the way the two eyes work together.
Bottom-up processing: The operation in sensation and perception in which sensory receptors register information about the external environment and send it up to the brain for interpretation.
Cones: The receptor cells in the retina that allow for color perception.
Convergence: A binocular cue to depth and distance in which the muscle movements in an individual’s two eyes provide information about how deep and/or far away something is.
Depth perception: The ability to perceive objects three-dimensionally.
Difference threshold: The degree of difference that must exist between two stimuli before the difference is detected.
Feature detectors: Neurons in the brain’s visual system that respond to particular features of a stimulus.
Figure-ground relationship: The principle by which we organize the perceptual field into stimuli that stand out (figure) and those that are left over (ground).
Frequency theory: Theory on how the inner ear registers the frequency of sound, stating that the perception of a sound’s frequency depends on how often the auditory nerve fires.
Gestalt psychology A school of thought interested in how people naturally organize their perceptions according to certain patterns.
Inner ear: The part of the ear that includes the oval window, cochlea, and basilar membrane and whose function is to convert sound waves into neural impulses and send them to the brain.
Kinesthetic senses: Senses that provide information about movement, posture, and orientation.
Middle ear: The part of the ear that channels and amplifies sound through the eardrum, hammer, anvil, and stirrup to the inner ear.
Monocular cues: Powerful depth cues available from the image in one eye, either the right or the left.
Noise: Irrelevant and competing stimuli—not only sounds but also any distracting stimuli for the senses.
Olfactory epithelium: The lining of the roof of the nasal cavity, containing a sheet of receptor cells for smell.
Opponent-process theory: Theory stating that cells in the visual system respond to complementary pairs of red-green and blue-yellow colors; a given cell might be excited by red and inhibited by green, whereas another cell might be excited by yellow and inhibited by blue.
Optic nerve: The structure at the back of the eye, made up of axons of the ganglion cells, that carries visual information to the brain for further processing.
Outer ear: The outermost part of the ear, consisting of the pinna and the external auditory canal.
Pain: The sensation that warns an individual of damage to the body.
Papillae: Rounded bumps above the tongue’s surface that contain the taste buds, the receptors for taste.
parallel processing: The simultaneous distribution of information across different neural pathways.
Perception: The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information so that it makes sense.
perceptual constancy: The recognition that objects are constant and unchanging even though sensory input about them is changing.
perceptual set A predisposition or readiness to perceive something in a particular way.
place theory: Theory on how the inner ear registers the frequency of sound, stating that each frequency produces vibrations at a particular spot on the basilar membrane.
retina The multilayered light-sensitive surface in the eye that records electromagnetic energy and converts it to neural impulses for processing in the brain.
Rods: The receptor cells in the retina that are sensitive to light but not very useful for color vision.
selective attention: The act of focusing on a specific aspect of experience while ignoring others.
semicircular canals: Three fluid-filled circular tubes in the inner ear containing the sensory receptors that detect head motion caused when an individual tilts or moves the head and/or the body.
Sensation: The process of receiving stimulus energies from the external environment and transforming those energies into neural energy.
sensory adaptation: A change in the responsiveness of the sensory system based on the average level of surrounding stimulation.
sensory receptors: Specialized cells that detect stimulus information and transmit it to sensory (afferent) nerves and the brain.
signal detection theory: An approach to perception that focuses on decision making about stimuli in the presence of uncertainty.
subliminal perception The detection of information below the level of conscious awareness.
Thermoreceptors: Sensory nerve endings under the skin that respond to changes in temperature at or near the skin and provide input to keep the body’s temperature at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
top-down processing The operation in sensation and perception, launched by cognitive processing at the brain’s higher levels, that allows the organism to sense what is happening and to apply that framework to information from the world.
trichromatic theory: Theory stating that color perception is produced by three types of cone receptors in the retina that are particularly sensitive to different, but overlapping, ranges of wavelengths.
vestibular sense: Sense that provides information about balance and movement.
visual cortex: Located in the occipital lobe, the part of the cerebral cortex involved in vision.
volley principle: Principle addressing limitations of the frequency theory of hearing, stating that a cluster of nerve cells can fire neural impulses in rapid succession, producing a volley of impulses.
Weber’s law: The principle that two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount) to be perceived as different.
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