Psych Final

Developmental psychology

studies how people change as they age (These changes occur on three levels: physical processes, cognitive processes, and socioemotional processes)

Encoding

take in information

Plasticity

the brain's ability to change, especially during childhood, by reorganizing after damage or by building new pathways based on experience

Somatic Nervous System

the division of the peripheral nervous system that controls the body's skeletal muscles

Negative reinforcement

the frequency of a behavior increases because it is followed by THE REMOVAL of something undesirable.

Positive reinforcement

the frequency of a behavior increases because it is followed by a desirable stimulus.

Amnesia

the loss of memory

Tolerance

the need to take increasing amounts of a drug to get the same effect.

Temporal Lobe

the part of the cerebral cortex just above the ears, are involved in hearing, language processing, and memory.

Physical Addiction

the physiological need for a drug that causes unpleasant withdrawal symptoms such as physical pain and a craving for the drug when it is discontinued.

Learning

the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors

Cognitive psychology

the scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thought, memory, and reasoning

Sensory memory

time frame of a fraction of a second to several seconds.

Short-term memory

time frames up to 30 seconds

Long-term memory

time frames up to a lifetime

Neurotransmitters

transmit, or carry, information across the synaptic gap to the next neuron.

Dendrites

treelike fibers projecting from a neuron, receive information and orient it toward the neuron's cell body.

Independent variable

variable that is manipulated

Mental age (MA)

which is an individual's level of mental development relative to that of others.

Corpus Callosum

A thick band of axons that connects the two cerebral hemispheres and acts as a communication link between them.

Experimental Group

Consists of the participants in an experiment who ARE exposed to THE CHANGE that the independent variable represents.

Correlation

Does NOT equal causation.

Neurons

Individual cells in the nervous system that receive, integrate, and transmit information

Theory

Is a broad idea or set of closely related ideas that attempts to explain observations.

Descriptive Research

Is about describing some phenomenon, determining its basic dimensions and defining what it is, how often it occurs, and so on.

Hypothesis

Is an educated guess that derives logically from a theory.

Variable

Is anything that can change.

Controlled Group

Is as much like the experimental group as possible and it's treated in every way like and experimental group EXCEPT FOR THAT CHANGE

Cell Body

Largest part of a typical neuron; contains the nucleus and much of the cytoplasm

Double-Blind Experiment

Neither the participant nor the researcher knows who is getting the actual drug.

Types of descriptive research :

Observation, interviews, surveys, and case studies.

Interference memory

Retrieval error cased by existence of other (usually similar) information.

Correlational Research

Tells us about the relation between two or more variables.

Dependent variable

The measurable effect, outcome, or response in which the research is interested.

Negative Correlation

The variables move opposite of each other, in one increases the other decreases AND if one decreases the other increases.

Positive Correlation

The variables move together, if one increases so does the other AND if one decreases so does the other.

Placebo Effect

When the participant believes that the (fake) drug is actually working.

Development

You can remember this stage as the first one because as the label implies, it is based on the very limited capacities that an infant has: sensation and movement.

Negative punishment

a behavior decreases when a stimulus is removed.

Positive punishment

a behavior decreases when it is followed by the presentation of a stimulus.

Sensory Adaptation

a change in the responsiveness of the sensory system based on the average level of surrounding stimulation.

Placebo

a fake drug used in experiments

Myelin Sheath

a layer of cells containing fat, encases and insulates most axons.

Anterograde amnesia

a memory disorder that affects the retention of new information and events

Correlation Coefficient

a statistical measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other

Psychoactive Drug

act on the nervous system to alter consciousness, modify perception, and change mood.

Sleep Deprivation

any significant loss of sleep, resulting in problems in concentration and irritability

Circadian Rhythm

are daily behavioral or physiological cycles.

Stimulants (caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, cocaine, MOMA)

are psychoactive drugs that increase the central nervous system's activity.

Hallucinogens (marijuana, LSD)

are psychoactive drugs that modify a person's perceptual experiences and produce visual images that are not real.

Depressants (alcohol, barbiturates, tranquilizers, opiates)

are psychoactive drugs that slow down mental and physical activity.

Frontal Lobe

are the portions of the cerebral cortex behind the forehead that are involved in personality, intelligence, and the control of voluntary muscles.

Intelligence

as an all-purpose ability to do well on cognitive tasks, to solve problems, and to learn from experience.

Memory

as the retention of information or experience over time

Random Assignment

assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups

Central Nervous System

brain and spinal cord

Nervous system

brain, spinal cord, nerves

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

consists of an individual's mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100: (IQ = (MA/CA) X 100)

Sequence of Neural Transmission

dendrites, cell body, axon, axon terminal, synapses

Addiction

describes either a physical or psychological dependence, or both, on the drug.

Observational learning

experiencing a change in behavior after watching someone else takes more than just looking.

Night terrors

features sudden arousal from sleep and intense fear.

Giftedness

have high intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher) and/or superior talent in a particular area.

Neuroscience

how the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences

Classical conditioning

in which a neutral stimulus (the sound of a toilet flushing) becomes associated with an innately meaningful stimulus (the pain of scalding hot water) and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response (panic)

Sleep Disorders

insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, night terrors

Decision making

involves evaluating alternatives and choosing among them.

Retrograde amnesia

involves memory loss for a segment of past events.

Intellectual Disability

is a condition of limited ability that affects functioning in three domains:

Punishment

is a consequence that decreases the likelihood that a behavior will occur.

Operant conditioning

is a form of associative learning in which the consequences of a behavior change the probability of the behavior being repeated.

Nightmares

is a frightening dream that awakens a dreamer from REM sleep.

Conditioned stimulus (CS)

is a previously neutral stimulus that eventually elicits a conditioned response after being paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)

is a stimulus that produces a response without prior learning.

Semantic memory

is a type of explicit memory pertaining to a person's knowledge about the world.

Procedural memory

is an implicit memory process that involves memory for skills.

Consciousness

is an individual's awareness of external events and internal sensations under a condition of arousal.

Unconditioned response (UCR)

is an unlearned reaction that is automatically elicited by the US.

Sympathetic Nervous System

is involved in the "fight or flight" response, the body's reaction to a threat (an incident to which you can respond either by staying to fight or by running away). This system is also involved in another response to immediate threat, called "tend and befriend," which means that under stress we reach out and help others and seek social bonds.

Implicit memory (non-declarative)

is memory in which behavior is affected by prior experience without a conscious recollection of that experience.

Parasympathetic Nervous System

is responsible for the way you calm down once you have escaped the danger.

Explicit memory (declarative)

is the conscious recollection of information, such as specific facts and events and, at least in humans, information that can be verbally communicated.

Conditioned response (CR)

is the learned response to the conditioned stimulus that occurs after CS-US pairing.

Reasoning

is the mental activity of transforming information to reach a conclusion

Peripheral Nervous System

is the network of nerves that connects the brain and spinal cord to other parts of the body.

Axon

is the part of the neuron that carries information away from the cell body toward other cells (AXON - AWAY).

Reinforcement

is the process by which a stimulus or event (a reinforcer) following a particular behavior increases the probability that the behavior will happen again.

Perception

is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information so that it makes sense.

Sensation

is the process of receiving stimulus energies from the external environment and transforming those energies into neural energy.

Episodic memory

is the retention of information about the where, when, and what of life's happenings-basically, how we remember life's episodes.

Psychological Addiction

is the strong desire to repeat the use of the drug for emotional reasons, such as a feeling of well-being and reduction of stress.

representativeness heuristic

is the tendency to make judgements about group membership based on physical appearance of the match between a person and one's stereotype of a group rather than on available base rate information.

Hindsight bias

is the tendency to report falsely, after the fact, that we accurately predicted an outcome.

Confirmation bias

is the tendency to search for and use information that supports our ideas rather than refutes them

Autonomic Nervous System

is to take messages to and from the body's internal organs, monitoring such processes as breathing, heart rate, and digestion.

Occipital Lobe

located at the back of the head, respond to visual stimuli.

Parietal Lobe

located at the top and toward teh rear of teh head, are involved in registering spatial location, attention, and motor control.

Third variable problem

occurs when an observed correlation between two variables can actually be explained by a third variable that hasn't been accounted for.

Absolute Threshold

or minimum amount of stimulus energy that a person can detect.

Availability heuristic

refers to a prediction about the probability of an event based on the ease of recalling or imagining similar events.