AP Psychology Exam Review

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

"Any theory of motivation that is worthy of attention must deal with the highest capacities of the healthy and strong person as well as with the defensive maneuvers of crippled spirits" (Motivation and Personality, 1970, p. 33).

Fluid Intelligence

"Brain power"

Accommodation

"Doggies" are different than "kitties"

Ivan Pavlov

"Experimental investigation ... should lay a solid foundation for a future true science of psychology" (1927).

Rosenham

"Fake" psychoatric patient study

Wundt

"Father of Psychology"; introspection

Sympathetic Nervous System

"Flight-or-fight"

Carl Jung

"From the living fountain of instinct flows everything that is creative; hence the unconscious is the very source of the creative impulse" (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960).

B. F. Skinner

"I am sometimes asked, 'Do you think of yourself as you think of the organisms you study?' The answer is yes. So far as I know, my behavior at any given moment has been nothing more than the product of my genetic endowment, my personal history, and the current setting" (1983).

Endorphins [en-DOR-fins]

"Morphine within" -- natural, opiate-like neurotransmitters linked to pain control and to pleasure.

Alfred Binet

"Some recent philosophers have given their moral approval to the deplorable verdict that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, one which cannot be augmented. We must protest and act against this brutal pessimism" (Binet, 1909, p. 141).

Albert Bandura

"The Bobo doll follows me wherever I go. The photographs are published in every introductory psychology text and virtually every undergraduate takes introductory psychology. I recently checking into a Washington hotel. The clerk at the desk asked, 'Aren't you the psychologist who did the Bobo doll experiment?' I answered, 'I am afraid that will be my legacy.' He replied, 'That deserves an upgrade. I will put you in a suite in the quiet part of the hotel" (2005).

Alfred Adler

"The individual feels at home in life and feels his existence to be worthwhile just so far as he is useful to others and is overcoming feelings of inferiority" (Problems of Neurosis, 1964).

Martin E. P. Seligman

"The main purpose of a positive psychology is to measure, understand, and then build the human strengths and the civic virtues."

Karen Horney

"The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women's self-respect" (Feminine Psychology, 1932).

Outgroup

"Them" -- those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup.

Ingroup

"Us" -- people with whom we share a common identity.

Accommodation

"doggies" are different than "kitties"

Sympathetic Nervous System

"fight or flight"

Lorenz

"survival of the fittest" and imprinting

Dorothea Dix

(1802-1887) "I ... call your attention to the state of the Insane Persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages."

Alcohol Use Disorder

(Popularly known as alcoholism). Alcohol use marked by tolerance, withdrawal, and a drive to continue problematic use.

Young-Helmholtz Color Theory

(Trichromatic theory) color determined by the relative activity in red, blue, or green sensitive cones

Teratogens

(literally, "monster maker") agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.

Normal Curve

(normal distribution) a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (about 68 percent fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer near the extremes.

Statistical Significance

.05 chance accounts for results less than 5% of the time

Erikson

1-bun, 2-shoe, etc. psycho-social development

Histogram

A bar graph depicting a frequency distribution.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A belief that leads to its own fulfillment.

Retinal Disparity

A binocular cue for perceiving depth: 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.

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.

Therapeutic Alliance

A bond of trust and mutual understanding between a therapist and client, who work together constructively to overcome the client's problem.

Psychiatry

A branch of medicine dealing with psychological disorders; practiced by physicians who sometimes provide medical (for example, drug) treatments as well as psychological therapy.

Counseling Psychology

A branch of psychology that assists people with problems in living (often related to school, work, or marriage) and in achieving greater well-being.

Community Psychology

A branch of psychology that studies how people interact with their social environments and how social institutions affect individuals and groups.

Psychodynamic Psychology

A branch of psychology that studies how unconscious drives and conflicts influence behavior, and uses that information to treat people with psychological disorders.

Developmental Psychology

A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.

Clinical Psychology

A branch of psychology that studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders.

Operational Definition

A carefully worded statement of the exact procedures (operations) used in a research study. For example, human intelligence may be operationally defined as what an intelligence test measures.

Unconditional Positive Regard

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed would help clients to develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Trait

A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.

Psychoactive Drug

A chemical substance that alters perceptions and moods.

Flashbulb Memory

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Cochlea [KOHK-lee-uh]

A coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger nerve impulses.

Flow

A completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one's skills.

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)

A complex molecule containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes.

Instinct

A complex, unlearned behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species.

Standard Deviation

A computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score.

Schema

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Savant Syndrome

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

Equity

A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it.

Intellectual Disability

A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life. (Formerly referred to as mental retardation.)

Down Syndrome

A condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

Split Brain

A condition resulting from surgery that isolates the brain's two hemispheres by cutting the fibers (mainly those of the corpus callosum) connecting them.

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

A confrontational cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that vigorously challenges people's illogical, self-defeating attitudes and assumptions.

Case Study

A descriptive technique in which one individual or group is studies in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles.

Achievement Motivation

A desire for significant accomplishment, for mastery of skills or ideas, for control, and for attaining a high standard.

Intrinsic Motivation

A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake.

Extrinsic Motivation

A desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment.

Cochlear Implant

A device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea.

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.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

A disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions).

Conversion Disorder

A disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found. (Also called functional neurological symptom disorder.)

Illness Anxiety Disorder

A disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease. (Formerly called hypochondriasis.)

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.

Agonist

A drug that binds to receptor of a cell in the synapse and triggers a response - mimics the action of a naturally occurring substance

Confounding Variable

A factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment.

Myelin [MY-uh-lin] Sheath

A fatty tissue layer segmentally encasing the axons of some neurons; enables vastly greater transmission speed as neural impulses hop from one sausage-like node to the next.

Sampling Bias

A flawed sampling process that produces an unrepresentative sample.

General Intelligence (g)

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.

Stereotype

A generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people.

Scatterplot

A graphed cluster of dots, each of which represents the values of two variables. The slope of the points suggests the direction of the relationship between the two variables. The amount of scatter suggests the strength of the correlation (little scatter indicates high correlation).

Cohort

A group of people from a given time period.

Humanistic Psychology

A historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people.

Client-Centered Therapy

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.)

Visual Cliff

A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.

B. F. Skinner

A leading behaviorist, Skinner rejected introspection and studied how consequences shape behavior.

AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)

A life-threatening, sexually transmitted infection caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). AIDS depletes the immune system, leaving the person vulnerable to infections.

Polygraph

A machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes) accompanying emotion.

Mental Age

A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8.

Recall

A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test.

Recognition

A measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test.

Relearning

A measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again.

Correlation

A measure of the extent to which two variables change together, and thus of how well either variable predicts the other.

Concept

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin).

Perceptual Set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Cognitive Map

A mental representation of the layout of one's environment. For example, after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned a cognitive map of it.

Intelligence Test

A method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

Algorithm

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier -- but also more error-prone -- use of heuristics.

Antagonist

A molecule that, by binding to a receptor site, inhibits or blocks a response.

Agonist

A molecule that, by binding to a receptor site, stimulates a response.

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.

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.

Bipolar Disorder

A mood disorder in which a person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania. (Formerly called manic-depressive disorder.)

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.

Mania

A mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.

Motivation

A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior.

Neuron

A nerve cell; the basic building block of the nervous system.

Reticular Formation

A nerve network that travels through the brainstem and thalamus and plays an important role in controlling arousal.

Hippocampus

A neural center located on the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for storage.

Hypothalamus [hi-po-THAL-uh-muss]

A neural structure lying below (hypo) the thalamus; it directs several maintenance activities (eating, drinking, body temperature), helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland, and is linked to emotion and reward.

Dendrites

A neuron's bushy, branching extensions that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body.

All-Or-None Response

A neuron's reaction of either firing (with a full-strength response) or not firing.

Reuptake

A neurotransmitter's reabsorption by the sending neuron.

Action Potential

A neutral impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon.

Working Memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN)

A pair of cell clusters in the hypothalamus that controls circadian rhythm. In response to light, the SCN causes the pineal gland to adjust melatonin production, thus modifying our feelings of sleepiness.

Adrenal [ah-DREEN-el] Glands

A pair of endocrine glands that sit just above the kidneys and secrete hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine) that help arouse the body in times of stress.

Reinforcement Schedule

A pattern that defines how often a desired response will be reinforced.

Conflict

A perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas.

Refractory Period

A period of inactivity after a neuron has fired.

Temperament

A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

A personality disorder in which a 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.

Projective Test

A personality test, such as the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

A popular integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior).

Incentive

A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior.

Cocaine

A powerful and addictive stimulant, derived from the coca plant, producing temporarily increased alertness and euphoria.

LSD

A powerful hallucinogenic drug; also known as acid (lysergic acid diethylamide).

Methamphetamine

A powerfully addictive drug that stimulates the central nervous system, with speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes; over time, appears to reduce baseline dopamine levels.

Sexual Dysfunction

A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning.

Meta-Analysis

A procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies.

Higher-Order Conditioning

A procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus. For example, an animal that has learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that a light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone. (Also called second-order conditioning.)

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.

Schizophrenia

A psychological disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished or inappropriate emotional expression.

Psychosis

A psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions.

Somatic Symptom Disorder

A psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause. (See conversion disorder and illness anxiety disorder.)

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.

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.

Personality Inventory

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.

Mutation

A random error in gene replication that leads to a change.

Dissociative Idenity Disorder (DID)

A rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities. Formerly called multiple personality disorder.

Self-Serving Bias

A readiness to perceive oneself favorably.

Skewed Distribution

A representation of scores that lack symmetry around their average value.

Experiment

A research method in which an investigator manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process (the dependent variable). By random assignment of participants, the experimenter aims to control other relevant variables.

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.

Emotion

A response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience.

Refractory Period

A resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm.

Iris

A ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of pupil opening.

Random Sample

A sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion.

Stereotype Threat

A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.

Dream

A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind. Dreams are notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities, and incongruities, and for the dreamer's delusional acceptance of the content and later difficulties remembering it.

CT (Computed Tomography) Scan

A series of X-ray photographs taken from different angles and combined by computer into a composite representation of a slice of brain's structure. (Also called CAT scan.)

Role

A set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave.

Gender Role

A set of expected behaviors for males or for females.

Heuristic

A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.

Reflex

A simple, automatic response to a sensory stimulus, such as the knee-jerk response.

Social Trap

A situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.

Night Terrors

A sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified; unlike nightmares, night terrors occur during NREM-3 sleep, within two or three hours of falling asleep, and are seldom remembered.

Sleep Apnea

A sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings.

Narcolepsy

A sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks. The sufferer may lapse directly into REM sleep, often at inopportune times.

Hypnosis

A social interaction in which one person (the subject) responds to another person's (the hypnotist's) suggestions that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur.

Dissociation

A split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others.

Correlation Coefficient

A statistical index of the relationship between two variables (from -1.0 to +1.0).

Factor Analysis

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.

Statistical Significance

A statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance.

Nicotine

A stimulating and highly addictive psychoactive drug in tobacco.

Conditioned Reinforcer

A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as a secondary reinforcer.

Cross-Sectional Study

A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.

SQ3R

A study method incorporating five steps: Survey, Question, Read, Retrieve, Review.

Health Psychology

A subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.

Insight

A sudden realization of a problem's solution.

Insight

A sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

Posthypnotic Suggestion

A suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors.

Psychological Disorder

A syndrome marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior. (Adapted from American Psychiatric Association, 2013.)

Ecstasy (MDMA)

A synthetic stimulant and mild hallucinogen. Produces euphoria and social intimacy, but with short-term health risks and longer-term harm to serotonin-producing neurons and to mood and cognition.

Biofeedback

A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension.

Survey

A technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group.

fMRI (Functional MRI)

A technique for revealing bloodflow and, therefore, brain activity by comparing successive MRI scans. fMRI scans show brain function as well as its structure.

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

A technique that uses magnetic fields and radio waves to produce computer-generated images of soft tissue. MRI scans show brain anatomy.

Mental Set

A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

Homeostasis

A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level.

Empirically Derived Test

A test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups.

Achievement Test

A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude Test

A test designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Hypothesis

A testable prediction, often implied by a theory.

Terror-Management Theory

A theory of death-related anxiety; explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death.

Signal Detection Theory

A theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise). Assumes that there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person's experience, expectations, motivations, and alertness.

Pitch

A tone's experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency.

Aversive Conditioning

A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

Systematic Desensitization

A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant, relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias.

Operant Conditioning

A type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher.

Classical Conditioning

A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.

PET (Positron Emission Tomography) Scan

A visual display of brain activity that detects where a radioactive form of glucose goes while the brain preforms a given task.

Basic Trust

According to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.

Oedipus [ED-uh-puss] Complex

According to Freud, a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.

Fixation

According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

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.

Manifest Content

According to Freud, the remembered story line of a dream (as distinct from its latent, or hidden, content).

Lantent Content

According to Freud, the underlying meaning of dream (as distinct from its manifest content).

Self-Actualization

According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential.

Unconditional Positive Regard

According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person.

Crystallized Intelligence

Acquired Knowledge

Crystallized Intelligence

Acquired knowledge

Short-Term Memory

Activated memory that hold a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten.

Antagonist

Acts against and blocks an action

Accommodation

Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Conformity

Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.

Assimilation

All four-legged animals are "doggies"

Self-Concept

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"

Cognition

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Population

All those in a group being studied, from which samples may be drawn. (Note: Except for national studies, this does not refer to a country's whole population.)

Coping

Alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods.

Organizational Psychology

An I/O psychology subfield that examines organizational influences on worker satisfaction and productivity and facilitates organizational change.

Human Factors Psychology

An I/O psychology subfield that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made safe and easy to use.

Personnel Psychology

An I/O psychology subfield that focuses on employee recruitment, selection, placement, training, appraisal, and development.

Near-Death Experience

An altered state of consciousness reported after a close brush with death (such as by cardiac arrest); often similar to drug-induced hallucinations.

Electroencephalogram (EEG)

An amplified recording of the waves of electrical activity sweeping across the brain's surface. These waves are measured by electrodes placed on the scalp.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a sate of autonomic nervous system arousal.

Phobia

An anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation.

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.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

An anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to electronic simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking.

Eclectic Approach

An approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy.

Motor Cortex

An area at the rear of the frontal lobes that controls voluntary movements.

Passionate Love

An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship.

Anorexia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) maintains a starvation diet despite being significantly (15 percent or more) underweight.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating (usually of high-calorie foods) with purging (by vomiting or laxative use), excessive exercise, or fasting.

Intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

Cannon-Bard Theory

An emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion

Attachment

An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.

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).

Informed Consent

An ethical principle that research participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate.

Punishment

An event that tends to decrease the behavior that it follows.

Social-Responsibility Norm

An expectation that people will help those needing their help.

Reciprocity Norm

An expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.

Double-Blind Procedure

An experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant (blind) about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placebo. Commonly used in a drug-evaluation studies.

Theory

An explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events.

Phi Phenomenon

An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.

Anterograde Amnesia

An inability to form new memories.

Retrograde Amnesia

An inability to retrieve information from one's past.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

Personality

An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Primary Reinforcer

An innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need.

Biopsychosocial Approach

An integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis.

Structured Interviews

An interview process that asks the same job-relevant questions of all applicants, each of whom is rated on established scales.

Token Economy

An operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats.

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behaviors toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.

Critical Period

An optimal period early in life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.

Habituation

An organism's decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it.

Gestalt

An organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Transgender

An umbrella term describing people whose gender identity or expression differs from that associated with their birth sex.

Norm

An understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. Norms prescribe "proper" behavior.

Prejudice

An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)

An yet unproven health care treatments intended to supplement (complement) or serve as alternatives to conventional medicine, and which typically are not widely taught in medical schools, used in hospitals, or reimbursed by insurance companies. When research shows a therapy to be safe and effective, it usually then becomes part of accepted medical practice.

Bottom-Up Processing

Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.

Stimulus

Any event or situation that evokes a response.

Aggression

Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy.

Washoe, Sara, Koko

Ape language studies

Somatosensory Cortex

Area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations.

Association Areas

Areas of the cerebral cortex that are not involved in primary motor or sensory functions; rather, they are involved in higher mental functions such as learning, remembering, thinking, and speaking.

John Garcia

As the laboring son of California farmworkers, Garcia attended school only in the off-season during his early childhood years. After entering junior college in his late twenties, and earning his Ph.D. in his late forties, he received the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award "for his highly original, pioneering research in conditioning and learning." He was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Random Assignment

Assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between the different groups.

Emotion-Focused Coping

Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to one's stress reaction.

Problem-Focused Coping

Attempting to alleviate stress directly -- by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor.

Source Amnesia

Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. (Also called source misattribution.) Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories.

Availability Heuristics

Based on availabile info

Availability Heuristics

Based on available info

Horney

Basic childhood anxiety; psychoanalytic

Phonemes

Basic sound units

Phonemes

Basic sound units, ex: "ch"

Morphemes

Basic units of meaning

Morphemes

Basic units of meaning, ex: "ology"

Two-Word Stage

Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.

Babbling Stage

Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

Respondent Behavior

Behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.

Operant Behavior

Behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.

Counterconditioning

Behavior therapy procedures that use classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; including 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.

Watson

Behaviorism; "Little Albert Study"; aversion therapy

Walter B. Cannon

Believed that gastric activity in an empty stomach was the sole reason for hunger; did experiment by inserting balloon in subjects stomach

S. Schacter

Believed that to experience emotions one must be physically aroused and must then label the arousal

Subliminal

Below one's absolute threshold from conscious awareness.

Maturation

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Eysenck

Biological model of personality; trait-type hierarchy

Sensation

Bottom-up processing

Nerves

Bundled axons that form neural "cables" connecting the central nervous system with muscles, glands, and sense organs.

Parasympathetic

Calming

Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history.

Glial Cells (Glia)

Cells in the nervous system that support, nourish, and protect neurons; they may also play a role in learning and thinking.

Ekman

Changes in facial expression brings about emotion like changes in the body

Hormones

Chemical messengers that are manufactured by the endocrine glands travel through the bloodstream and affect other tissues.

Neurotransmitters

Chemical messengers that cross the synaptic gaps between neurons. When released by the sending neuron, neurotransmitters travel across the synapse and bind to receptor sites on the receiving neuron, thereby influencing whether that neuron will generate a neural impulse.

Gender-Schema Theory

Children learn from their cultures a concept of what it means to be male or female and that they adjust their behavior accordingly

Pavlov

Classical conditioning; dogs (bells)

Belief Perseverance

Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Evidence-Based Practice

Clinical decision making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient characteristics and preferences.

Vygotsky

Cognitive dev. based on zone of proximal development

Cognitive Consistency Theory

Cognitive inconsistencies create tension and thus motivate the organism

Aaron Beck

Cognitive therapy treating depression

Jung

Collective unconscious; archetypes; psychoanalytic

Cones

Color vision

Cones

Color vision, more cones in middle of the retina

Control Group

Compared to the experimental, receives the placebo in a drug experiment

Wernicke's Area

Comprehends words

Addiction

Compulsive craving of drugs or certain behaviors (such as gambling) despite known adverse consequences.

Rumination

Compulsive fretting; overthinking about our problems and their causes.

David Rosenhan

Conducted a hospital experiment to test the diagnosis that hospitals make on patients; wanted to see the impact of behavior on being a patient; proved that once you are diagnosed with a disorder, your care would not be very good in a mental hospital setting

Stanley Milgram

Conducted a study on obedience when he had a subject shock a patient to the extent that they would be seriously injuring the patient

Philip Zimbardo

Conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment; studied the power of social roles to influence peoples behavior; proved people's behavior depends to a large extent on the roles they are asked to play; experiment had to be stopped because it got out of control

Asch

Conformity; people give obviously wrong answer

Substance Use Disorder

Continued substance craving and use despite significant life disruption and/or physical risk.

Internal Locus

Controlling the environment

Broca's Area

Controls language expression -- an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke's Area

Controls language reception -- a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.

Transduction

Conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret.

Cerebral Cortex

Covers the brain

Right Brain

Creative and spatial

Karen Horney

Criticized Freud; said that personality is continually molded by current fears and impulses rather than being determined solely by childhood experiences; saw humans as craving love and social interaction to drive their needs

Cattell

Crystallized fluid intelligence

Social Script

Culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations.

Charles Darwin

Darwin argued that natural selection shapes behaviors as well as bodies.

Explicit Memory

Declarative; facts

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.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca x 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100, with scores assigned to relative performance above or below average.

Standardization

Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.

Theory Y

Democratic

Monocular Cues

Depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone.

Binocular Cues

Depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes.

H. Rorschach

Developed one of the first projective tests, the Inkblot Test; subject reads the inkblots and projects to the observer aspects of their personality

David McClelland

Devised a way to measure H. Mrray's theory - "the need to achieve that varied in strength in different people and influenced their tendency to approach success and evaluate their own performances"; credited with developing the scoring system for the TAT's use in assessing achievement motivation, not for the TAT itself

Hubel/Wisel

Did a study of the activities of neurons in the visual cortex

Sensory Adaptation

Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.

Carl Jung

Disciple of Freud who extended his theories; believed in a collective unconscious as well as a personal unconscious that is aware of ancient archetypes which we inherit from our ancestors and we see in myths (young warrior, wise man of the village, loving mother, etc.); coined the terms introversion and extroversion

Hubel & Wiesel

Discovered feature detectors

Dissociative Disorders

Disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings.

85. Which of the following is true of the frequency distributions shown in the graphs above?

Distribution B has more variation than distributions A or C.

Corpus Callosum

Divides the brain

Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis

Dreams are products of spontaneous neural activity

Depressants

Drugs (such as alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates) that reduce neural activity and slow body functions.

Stimulants

Drugs (such as caffeine, nicotine, and the more powerful amphetamines, cocaine, Ecstasy, and methamphetamine) that excite neural activity and speed up body functions.

Barbiturates

Drugs that depress central nervous system activity, reducing anxiety but impairing memory and judgement.

Amphetamines

Drugs that stimulate neural activity, causing speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes.

Antianxiety Drugs

Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant Drugs

Drugs used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder. (Several widely used antidepressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors -- SSRIs.)

Antipsychotic Drugs

Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder.

Functionalism

Early school of thought promoted by James and influenced by Darwin; explored how mental and behavioral processes function -- how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish.

Structuralism

Early school of thought promoted by Wundt and Titchener; used introspection to reveal the structure of the human mind.

Telegraphic Speech

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram -- "go car" -- using mostly nouns and verbs.

Cannon-Bard's Thalamic Theory

Emotional expression caused by simultaneous changing bodily events, thoughts, and feelings

Active Listening

Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers' client-centered therapy.

Shallow Processing

Encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words.

Deep Processing

Encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention.

Effortful Processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Testing Effect

Enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effort or test-enhanced learning.

Testing Effect

Enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also sometimes referred to as retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning.

Primacy Effect

Enhanced memory for items presented earlier

Recency Effect

Enhanced memory for items presented last

External Locus

Environment control you, less optimistic

David Weschler

Established an intelligence test especially for adults (Weschler Intelligence Test for Adults)

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.

Environment

Every external influence, from prenatal nutrition to the people and things around us.

Gilligan

Examined moral differences between boys and girls based on social rules and on ethic of caring and responsibility

Narcissism

Excessive self-love and self-absorption.

Divergent Thinking

Expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions).

Placebo [pluh-SEE-bo;Latin for "I shall please"] Effect

Experimental results caused by expectations alone; any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which the recipient assumes is an active agent.

Attribution Theory

Explains how people make inferences about the causes of behavior; personal or situational; self-serving bias

Loftus

Eyewitness testimony & constructive memory

Change Blindness

Failing to notice changes in the environment.

Inattentional Blindness

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

Delusions

False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.

Hallucination

False sensory experience, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.

Hallucinations

False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.

Albert Ellis

Father of Rational Emotion Therapy, which focuses on altering client's patterns of irrational thinking to reduce maladaptive behavior and emotion (like, "if I fail the AP exam my life will come to an end")

Ivan Pavlov

Father of classical conditioning -- an unconditional stimulus naturally elicits a reflexive behavior called an unconditional response, but with repeated pairings with a neutral stimulus, the neutral stimulus will elicit the response

Agoraphobia

Fear of avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic.

Attitude

Feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.

Primacy Effect

First items remembered

Primary Effect

First items remembered

H. Ebbinghas

First to conduct scientific studies on memory and forgetting; learning curves

Intrinsic Motivation

For personal satisfaction

Extrinsic Motivation

For rewards

Extrinsic Motivation

For rewards or to avoid punishment

Emerging Adulthood

For some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to mid-twenties, bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible adulthood.

Ebbinghaus

Forgetting; decay model

Charles Spearman

Found that specific mental talents were highly correlated; concluded that all cognitive abilities showed a common core which he labeled "g" for general ability

John Watson

Founder of behaviorism; generalization; applied classical conditioning skills to advertising; most famous for Little Albert experiment, where he first trained Albert to be afraid of rats and then to generalize his fear to all small, white animals

Jean Piaget

Four-state theory of cognitive development -- sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational; two basic processes (assimilation and accommodation) work in tandem to achieve cognitive growth

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.

Type A

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.

Type B

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people.

Mirror Neurons

Frontal lobe neurons that some scientists believe fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation and empathy.

James

Functionalism

Alfred Binet

General I. Q.tests

Wertheimer

Gestalt psychology

Individualism

Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications.

Collectivism

Giving priority to the goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly.

Task Leadership

Goal-Oriented leadership that sets standards, organizes work, and focuses attention on goals.

GRIT

Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction -- a strategy designed to decrease international tensions.

Control Group

Group compared to the experimental

Experimental Group

Group that is tested

Social Leadership

Group-oriented leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; also called nerve deafness.

Conduction Hearing LOss

Hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.

Abraham Maslow

Hierarchy of needs; humanistic

Type A

High stress

Type A

High stress, higher risk of heart disease

Benjamin Whorf

His hypothesis is that language determines the way we think

Lawrence Kohlberg

His theory states that there are 3 levels of moral reasoning (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional) and each level can be divided into 2 stages

Abraham Maslow

Humanist psychologist who said we a series of needs which must be met; you can't achieve the top level, self-actualization, unless the previous levels have been achieved; from bottom to top the levels are physiological needs, safety, belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization; lower needs dominate and individual's motivation as long as they are unsatisfied

Carl Rogers

Humanistic psychologist who believed in unconditional positive regard; people will naturally strive for self-actualization and high self-esteem, unless society taints them; reflected back clients thoughts so that they developed a self-awareness or their feelings; client-centered therapy

Binet

I. Q.

Aphasia

Impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding).

Social Facilitation

Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.

Intimacy

In Erikson's theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood.

Preoperational Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage (from about 2 to about 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

Sensorimotor Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

Concrete Operational Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Formal Operational Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Little Albert

In Watson and Rayner's experiments, "Little Albert" learned to fear a white rat after repeatedly experiencing a loud noise as the rat was presented.

Grammar

In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. In a given language, semantics is the set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is the set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

Phoneme

In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

Morpheme

In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).

Experimental Group

In an experiment, the group exposed to the treatment, that is, to one version of the independent variable.

Control Group

In an experiment, the group not exposed to the treatment; contrasts with the experimental group and serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment.

Conditioned Response (CR)

In classical conditioning, a learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS).

Neutral Stimulus (NS)

In classical conditioning, a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally -- naturally and automatically -- triggers a response (UR).

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

In classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to trigger a conditioned response (CR).

Unconditioned Response (UR)

In classical conditioning, an unlearned, naturally occurring response (such as salivation) to an unconditioned stimulus (US) (such as food in the mouth).

Acquisition

In classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response.

Discrimination

In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.

Self

In contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Place Theory

In hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated.

Frequency Theory

In hearing, 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.

Operant Chamber

In operant conditioning research, a chamber (also known as a Skinner box) containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer; attached devices record the animal's rate of bar pressing or key pecking.

Variable-Ratio Schedule

In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.

Variable-Interval Schedule

In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals.

Fixed-Ratio Schedule

In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.

Fixed-Interval Schedule

In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed.

Discriminative Stimulus

In operant conditioning, a stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement (in contrast to related stimuli not associated with reinforcement).

Reinforcement

In operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.

Behavioral Approach

In personality theory, this perspective focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development.

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.

Interpretation

In psychoanalysis, the analyst's noting supposed dream meaning, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight.

Resistance

In psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.

Transference

In psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).

Repression

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Defense Mechanisms

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Embodied Cognition

In psychological science, the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgements.

Grit

In psychology, grit is passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals.

Catharsis

In psychology, the idea that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges.

Hormones

In the endocrine system

Nerotransmitters

In the nervous system

Neurotransmitters

In the nervous system

Perceptual Adaptation

In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.

Misinformation Effect

Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event.

Positive Reinforcement

Increasing behaviors by presenting positive reinforcers. 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. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. (Note: Negative reinforcement is not punishment.)

Ainsworth

Infant attachment styles

Adler

Inferiority complex, psychoanalytic

Normative Social Influence

Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.

Informational Social Influence

Influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality.

Top-Down Processing

Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.

Thorndike

Instrumental learning; cats; law of effect

Social Anxiety Disorder

Intense fear of social situations, leading to avoidance of such. (Formerly called social phobia.)

Assimilation

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

William Wundt

Introspection-psychology became the scientific study of conscious experience (rather than science); father of modern or scientific psychology; structuralism was the approach and introspection was the methodology

Classical Conditioning

Involuntary

Classical Conditioning

Involuntary, link two stimuli

William James and Mary Whiton Calkins

James was a legendary teacher-writer who authored an important 1890 psychology text. He mentored Calkins, who became a pioneering memory researcher and the first woman to be president of the American Psychological Association (APA).

Representativeness Heuristic

Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

Weber's Law

Just noticeable difference

Left Brain

Language and logic

Recency Effect

Last items remembered

Tolman

Latent learning; cognitive maps

E. L. Thorndike

Law of Effect -- the principle that behavior followed by favorable consequences becomes more likely and vice versa

Martin Seligman

Learned Helplessness is the giving up reaction that occurs from the experience that whatever you do you cannot

Observational Learning

Learning by observing others. Also called social learning.

Associative Learning

Learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (as in operant conditioning).

Latent Learning

Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.

Broca's

Left frontal lobe, language production

Broca

Left frontal lobe; if Broca's is broken, no words are spoken

Wernicke's

Left temporal lobe, language comprehension

Wernike

Left temporal lobe; receptive language

Whorf

Linguistic relativity hypothesis

Place Theory

Links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated

Psychophysiological Illness

Literally, "mind-body" illness; any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches.

Concrete Operantions

Logical thinking

Concrete Operations

Logical thinking

Ainsworth's Strange Situation

Looked at attachment in young children to their parents

Deindividuation

Loss of self-restraint that occurs out of anonymity

Proactive Interference

Loss of the new info

Retroactive Interference

Loss of the old info

Type B

Low stress

Frances Galton

Maintained that personality and ability depend almost entirely on genetic inheritance (human traits are inherited)

Carol Gillgan

Maintained the Kohlberg's work was developed only observing boys and overlooked potential differences between the habitual moral judgment of men and women

Broca's Area

Makes words

Hierarchy of Needs

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.

Mnemonics [nih-MON-iks]

Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Explicit Memory

Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare." (Also called declarative memory.)

Intelligence

Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

Robert Zajonc

Mere exposure effect; it is possible to have preferences without inferences and to feel without knowing why

Psychodynamic Theories

Modern-day approaches that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.

Harlow

Monkey studies; attachment; contact comfort

Kohlberg

Moral development (preconventional, conventional, postconventional)

Hull's Drive-Reduction Model

Motivation arises out of need

Efferent Neurons

Motor, brain to body

Efferent Neurons

Motor, brain to the body

Mirror-Image Perceptions

Mutual views often held by conflicting people, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the other side as evil and aggressive.

Convergent Thinking

Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

Chomsky

Native theorist; inherent existence of sets of cognitive structures

Murray

Need to achieve; TAT

Alfred Adler

Neo-Freudian; believed that childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personality formation; believed that people are primary searching or self-esteem and achieving the ideal self

Feature Detectors

Nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement.

Limbic System

Neural system (including the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus) located below the cerebral hemispheres; associated with emotions an drives.

Sensory (Afferent) Neurons

Neurons that carry incoming information from the sensory receptors to the brain and spinal cord.

Motor (Efferent) Neurons

Neurons that carry outgoing information from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles and glands.

Interneurons

Neurons within the brain and spinal cord that communicate internally and intervene between the sensory inputs and motor outputs.

Rods

Night vision

Rods

Night vision, more rods are at the periphery of the retina

Recall Memory

No cues

NREM Sleep

Non-rapid eye movement sleep; encompasses all sleep stages except for REM sleep.

Implicit Memory

Nondeclarative; skills

Secondary Sex Characteristics

Nonreproductive sexual traits, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair.

Inferential Statistics

Numerical data that allow one to generalize -- to infer from sample data the probability of something being true of a population.

Descriptive Statistics

Numerical data used to measure and describe characteristics of groups. Includes measures of central tendency and measures of variation.

Milgram

Obedience; Ethics; 65%

Albert Bandura

Observational learning -- allows you to profit immediately from the mistakes and successes of others; his experiment had adult models punching BoBo dolls and then observed children whom watched begin to exhibit many of the same behaviors; social learning theory

Bandura

Observational learning; Bobo dolls; social-cognitive theory

Naturalistic Observation

Observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation.

Deinstitutionalization

Occurred because of changes in political policy and development of new drug therapies

Central Route Persuasion

Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.

Peripheral Route Persuasion

Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness.

Self-Esteem

One's feelings of high of low self-worth.

Self-Efficacy

One's sense of competence and effectiveness.

B. F. Skinner

Operant conditioning -- techniques to manipulate the consequences of an organism's behavior in order to observe the effects of subsequent behavior; Skinner box; believed psychology was not scientific enough; wanted it to be believed everyone is born tableau rosa (blank slate); NOT concerned with unconscious or cause, only behavior

Skinner

Operant conditioning; rats and pigeons; behaviorist

Opiates

Opium and its derivatives, such as morphine and heroin; they depress neural activity, temporarily lessening pain and anxiety.

Opponent-Process Theory

Opposing retinal processes enable color vision (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black)

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

Fluid Intelligence

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

Crystallized Intelligence

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Consciousness

Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.

James-Lange Theory

Our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

Gender Identity

Our sense of being male or female.

Identity

Our sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles.

Social Exchange Theory

Our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs

Language

Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Adaptation-Level Phenomenon

Our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.

Serial Position Effect

Our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primary effect) in a list.

Spotlight Effect

Overestimating others' notice and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us).

Feature-Analysis Theory

Patterns are represented and recognized by distinctive features

Erik Erikson

People evolve through 8 states over the life span; each state is marked by psychological crisis that involves confronting "who am I"

Theory of Mind

People's ideas about their own and others' mental states -- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.

Feel-Good, Do-Good Phenomenon

People's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood.

Color Constancy

Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.

Perceptual Constancy

Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, brightness, and color) even as illumination and retinal images change.

Sleep

Periodic, natural loss of consciousness -- as distinct from unconsciousness resulting from a coma, general anesthesia, or hibernation. (Adapted from Dement, 1999.)

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

Person's language determines and limits a persons experiences

Kelley

Personal construct theory

Hans Eysench

Personality is determined to a large extent by genes; used the terms extroversion and introversion

Formal Operations

Philosophical thinking

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, signs include a small, out-of-proportion head and abnormal facial features.

Ernst Weber

Pioneered the first study on JND (just noticeable difference), which become Weber's Law; the JND between stimuli is a constant fraction of the intensity of the standard stimulus

Occipital [ahk-SIP-uh-tuhl] Lobes

Portion of the cerebral cortex lying at the back of the head; includes areas that receive information from the visual fields.

Parietal [puh-RYE-uh-tuhl] Lobes

Portion of the cerebral cortex lying at the top of the head and toward the rear; receives sensory input for touch and body position.

Frontal Lobes

Portion of the cerebral cortex lying just behind the forehead; involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making plans and judgements.

Temporal Lobes

Portion of the cerebral cortex lying roughly above the ears; including the auditory areas, each receiving information primarily from the opposite ear.

Posttraumatic Growth

Positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises.

Prosocial Behavior

Positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior.

Aptitude Test

Potential

Signal Detection Theory

Predicts how and when we detect the presences of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation

Scapegoat Theory

Prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

Biomedical Therapy

Prescribed medications or procedures that act directly on the person's physiology.

Zimbardo

Prison study; roles and role conflict

Fluid Intelligence

Processing speed

Contact Theory

Proposes that equal-status contact between antagonistic groups should lower tension and bring harmony

Hallucinogens

Psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") drugs, such as LSD, that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input.

Freud

Psychoanalytic; dream analysis; free association; structure of personality; stages of development; defense mechanisms

Sigmund Freud

Psychoanalytical theory that focuses on the unconscious; id, ego, superego; believed innate drives for sex and aggression are the primary motives for our behavior and personalities

Anxiety Disorders

Psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety.

Mood Disorders

Psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes. See major depressive disorder, mania, and bipolar disorder.

Personality Disorders

Psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning.

Basic Research

Pure science that aims to increase that scientific knowledge base.

Phineus Gage

Railroad spike; damaged limbic sys, emotions/motivational control center

REM Sleep

Rapid eye movement sleep; a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. Also known as paradoxical sleep, because the muscles are relaxed (except for minor twitches) but other body systems are active.

Prototype-Matching Theory

Recognition involves comparison

Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Reconcile cognitive discrepancies

Insomnia

Recurring problems in falling or staying asleep.

Partial (Intermittent) 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.

Continuous Reinforcement

Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.

Place Theory

Related perceived pitch to region

Frequency Theory

Related pitch to the frequency of sound waves and frequency of neuron firing

Replication

Repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances.

Longitude Study

Research in which the same people are restudied and retesting over a long period.

Implicit Memory

Retention independent of conscious recollection. (Also called nondeclarative memory.)

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.

Rods

Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond.

Self-Disclosure

Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others.

Lewis Terman

Revised Binet's I. Q. test and established norms for American children

Thorndike's Law of Effect

Reward and punishment encourages and discourages responding

Theory X

Rewards or punishment

Heuristics

Rule-of-thumb

Heuristics

Rule-of-thumb or intuitive, takes less time

Identical Twins

Same fertilized egg

Reliability

Same scores on a retest

Two-Factor Theory

Schachter's theory that to experience emotion one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal

Applied Research

Scientific study that aims to solve practical problems.

Subjective Well-Being

Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being (for example, physical and economic indicators) to evaluate people's quality of life.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three phases -- alarm, resistance, exhaustion.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

Sensations from the face provide cues to the brain that help us determine what emotion we are feeling (Ekman)

Afferent Neurons

Sensory, body to brain

Afferent Neurons

Sensory, body to the brain

Atkinson-Shiffrins 3 Stage Processing Model of Memory

Sensory-STM-LTM

Serial Position Phenomenon

Sequence influences recall

Estrogens

Sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contributing to female sex characteristics. In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity.

Superordinate Goals

Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation.

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund 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.

Binge-Eating Disorder

Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging or fasting that marks bulimia nervosa.

Adaptive Non-Responding Theory

Sleep and Inactivity have survival value

Mishel

Social-learning theory; people are not consistent (look at past performance)

Sheldon

Somatotyping; endomorph; mesomorph, ectomorph

Recognition Memory

Some hints

Piaget

Stages of cognitive develoopment; cognitive theorist

Kubler-Ross

Stages of death (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance)

Henry Murray

Stated that the need to achieve varied in strength in different people and influenced their tendency to approach success and evaluate their own performances; devised the TAT (Thematic Appreciation Test) with Christina D. Morgan

Premack Principle

States than any high-probability behavior can be used as a reward for any low-probability behavior

Algorithms

Step-by-step

Algorithms

Step-by-step, takes longer

Representative Heuristics

Stereotypes

Representative Heuristics

Stereotypes or prototypes

Lateral Hypothalamus

Stimulate hunger

Lateral Hypothalamus

Stimulates hunger

Template-Matching Theory

Stored copies

Titchner

Structuralism

James Marcia

Studied adolescent stage of Erikson; divided adolescent into four groups - foreclosed (having parents identity), achieved (your own identity), diffused (not even searching, living day-to-day), moratorium (actively searching for identity)

Harry Harlow

Studied theory of attachment in infant Rhesus monkeys; also experimented on the effects of social isolation in young monkeys and observed that they become severely emotionally disturbed and never recover fully

S. Asch

Study of conformity; experiment had a subject unaware of his situation to test if he would conform if all the members of a group gave an obviously incorrect answer

Ventromedial Hypothalamus

Suppresses hunger

Psychosurgery

Surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior.

Aerobic Exercise

Sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness; may also alleviate depression and anxiety.

Mary Cover Jones

Systemic Desensitization; maintained that fear could be unlearned; Little Peter experiment

Validity

Test measures what it should

Déjà Vu

That eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

Cerebellum [sehr-uh-BELL-um]

The "little brain" at the rear of the brainstem; functions include processing sensory input, coordinating movement output and balance, and enabling nonverbal learning and memory.

Social Identity

The "we" aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to "Who am I?" that comes from our group memberships.

DSM-5

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders.

Two-Factor Theory

The Schachter-Singer theory that to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

The WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

Self-Control

The ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long-term rewards.

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Creativity

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Depth Perception

The ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance.

Gender Typing

The acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.

Cognitive Learning

The acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others, or through language.

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response.

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory.

Pupil

The adjustable opening in the center of the eye though which light enters.

Intensity

The amount of energy in a light or sound wave, which we perceive as brightness or loudness, as determined by the wave's amplitude.

Industrial-Organizational (I/O) Psychology

The application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces.

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)

The application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity.

Mean

The arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores.

Object Permanence

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived/

Medulla [muh-DUL-uh]

The base of the brainstem; controls heartbeat and breathing.

Genes

The biochemical units of heredity that make up the chromosomes; segments of DNA capable of synthesizing proteins.

Circadian [ser-KAY-dee-an] Rhythm

The biological clock; regular bodily rhythms (for example, of temperature and wakefulness) that occur on a 24-hour cycle.

Primary Sex Characteristics

The body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible.

Endocrine [EN-duh-krin] System

The body's "slow" chemical communication system; a set of glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream.

Basal Metabolic Rate

The body's resting rate of energy expenditure.

Nervous System

The body's speedy, electrochemical communication network, consisting of all the nerve cells of the peripheral and central nervous systems.

Central Nervous System (CNS)

The brain and spinal cord.

Plasticity

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

Thalamus [THAL-uh-muss]

The brain's sensory control center, located on top of the brainstem; it directs messages to the sensory receiving areas in the cortex and transmits replies to the cerebellum and medulla.

Fovea

The central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster.

Middle Ear

The chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window.

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.

Coronary Heart Disease

The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in many developed countries.

Genome

The complete instructions for making an organism, consisting of all the genetic material in that organism's chromosomes.

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.

Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.

Sigmund Freud

The controversial ideas of this famed personality theorist and therapist have influenced humanity's self-understanding.

Social Clock

The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.

Companionate Love

The deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.

Fetus

The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Embryo

The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.

Range

The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution.

Levels of Analysis

The differing complementary views, from biological to psychological to social-cultural, for analyzing any given phenomenon.

Hue

The dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light; what we know as the color names blue, green, and so forth.

Tolerance

The diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger does before experiencing the drug's effect.

Extinction

The diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (US) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS); occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced.

Withdrawal

The discomfort and distress that follow discontinuing an addictive drug or behavior.

Retroactive Interference

The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

Proactive Interference

The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.

Wavelength

The distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next. Electromagnetic wavelengths vary from the short blips of cosmic rays to the long pulses of radio transmission.

Sympathetic Nervous System

The division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations.

Parasympathetic Nervous System

The division of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body, conserving its energy.

Somatic Nervous System

The division of the peripheral nervous system that controls the body's skeletal muscles. Also called the skeletal nervous system.

Pituitary Gland

The endocrine system's most influential gland. Under the influence of the hypothalamus, the pituitary regulates growth and controls other endocrine glands.

Culture

The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.

Group Polarization

The enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.

External Locus

The environment control you

Independent Variable

The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied.

Validity

The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (See also content validity and predictive validity.)

Validity

The extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

Content Validity

The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

Reliability

The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting.

Stranger Anxiety

The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.

Zygote

The fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo.

Menarche [meh-NAR-key]

The first menstrual period.

Margaret Floy Washburn

The first woman to receive a psychology Ph.D., Washburn synthesized animal behavior research in 'The Animal Mind'.

Selective Attention

The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

Glucose

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.

Neurogenesis

The formation of new neurons.

Sexual Response Cycle

The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson -- excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Learned Helplessness

The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

Drive-Reduction Theory

The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need.

Drive-Reduction Theory

The idea that psychological need creates an aroused tension state that motivates an organism to satisfy the needs

Sensory Memory

The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.

Inner Ear

The innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs.

Reciprocal Determinism

The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment.

Cognitive Neuroscience

The interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language).

Interaction

The interplay that occurs when the effect of one factor (such as environment) depends on another factor (such as heredity).

Cerebral [seh-REE-bruhl] Cortex

The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells covering the cerebral hemispheres; the body's ultimate control and information-processing center.

Synapse [SIN-aps]

The junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron. The tiny gap at this junction is called the synaptic gap or synaptic cleft.

Corpus Callosum [KOR-pus kah-LOW-sum]

The large band of neural fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres and carrying messages between them.

Delta Waves

The large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep.

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.

Threshold

The level of stimulation required to trigger a neural impulse.

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.

Nature-Nurture Issue

The longstanding controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience make the development of psychological traits and behaviors. Today's science sees traits and behaviors arising from the interaction of nature and nurture.

Deindividuation

The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

THC

The major active ingredient in marijuana; triggers a variety of effects, including mild hallucinations.

Median

The middle score on a distribution; half the scores are above it and half are below it.

Difference Threshold

The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference (or jnd).

Absolute Threshold

The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.

Groupthink

The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Mode

The most frequently occurring score(s) in a distribution.

Testosterone

The most important of the male sex hormones. 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.

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.

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.

Optic Nerve

The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.

Axon

The neuron extension that passes messages through its branches to other neurons or to muscles or glands.

Frequency

The number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time (for example, per second).

Brainstem

The oldest part of central core of the brain, beginning where the spinal cord swells as it enters the skull; the brainstem is responsible for automatic survival functions.

Figure-Ground

The organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground).

Dependent Variable

The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

Superego

The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

Autonomic [aw-tuh-NAHM-ik] Nervous System (ANS)

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.

Illusory Correlation

The perception of a relationship where none exists.

External Locus of Control

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate.

Relative Deprivation

The perception that we are worse off relative to those with whom we compare ourselves.

Internal Locus of Control

The perception that you control your own fate.

Grouping

The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Puberty

The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.

Memory

The persistence of learning over time though the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

Resilience

The personal strength that helps most people cope with stress and recover from adversity and even trauma.

Mere Exposure Effect

The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them.

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.

Blind Spot

The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a "blind" spot because no receptor cells are located there.

Debriefing

The postexperimental explanation of a study, including its purpose and any deceptions, to its participants.

Conservation

The principle (which Piaget believed to be part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite the changes in the forms of objects.

Frustration-Aggression Principle

The principle that frustration -- the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal -- creates anger, which can generate aggression.

Dual Processing

The principle that information is often simultaneously processed on separate conscious and unconscious tracks.

Sensory Interaction

The principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

The principle that performance increases with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance decreases.

Natural Selection

The principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on the succeeding generations.

Natural Selection

The principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations.

Weber's Law

The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount).

Imprinting

The process by which certain animals form strong attachments during an early-life critical period.

Sensation

The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.

Accommodation

The process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina.

Stress

The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging.

Identification

The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos.

Learning

The process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors.

Retrieval

The process of getting information out of memory storage.

Modeling

The process of observing and imitating a specific behavior.

Perception

The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.

Storage

The process of retaining encoded information over time.

Encoding

The processing of information into the memory system -- for example, by extracting meaning.

Parallel Processing

The processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision. Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving.

Parallel Processing

The processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions. Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving.

Heritability

The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.

Frequency Theory

The rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a ton, thus enabling us to sense its pitch

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.

Long-Term Memory

The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Alpha Waves

The relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state.

Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory

The retina contains three different color receptors -- one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue -- which when stimulated in a combination, can produce the perception of any color

Psychology

The science of behavior and mental processes.

Cognitive Psychology

The scientific study of all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Social Psychology

The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.

Positive Psychology

The scientific study of human functioning, with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to thrive.

Behavioral Psychology

The scientific study of observable behavior, and its explanation by principles of learning.

Positive Psychology

The scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

Biological Psychology

The scientific study of the links between biological (genetic, neural, hormonal) and psychological processes. (Some biological psychologists call themselves behavioral neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, behavior geneticists, physiological psychologists, or biopsychologists.)

Psychometrics

The scientific study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits.

Vestibular Sense

The sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance.

Audition

The sense or act of hearing.

Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)

The sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous system (CNS) to the rest of the body.

X Chromosome

The sex chromosome found in both men and women. Females have two X chromosomes; males have one. An X chromosome from each parent produces a female child.

Y Chromosome

The sex chromosome found only in males. When paired with an X chromosome from the mother, it produces a male child.

Gender

The socially constructed roles and characteristics by which a culture defines male and female.

Gate-Control Theory

The spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain

One-Word Stage

The stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in a single words.

Personality Psychology

The study of an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Experimental Psychology

The study of behavior and thinking using the experimental method.

Epigenetics

The study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without a DNA change.

Educational Psychology

The study of how psychological processes affect and can enhance teaching and learning.

Psychoneuroimmunology

The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health.

Social-Cultural Psychology

The study of how situations and cultures affect our behavior and thinking.

Parapsychology

The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis.

Psychophysics

The study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.

Psychopharmacology

The study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.

Evolutionary Psychology

The study of the evolution of behavior and mind, using principles of natural selection.

Evolutionary Psychology

The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection.

Behavior Genetics

The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior.

Molecular Genetics

The subfield of biology that studies the molecular structure and function of genes.

Predictive Validity

The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. (Also called criterion-related validity.)

Normal Curve

The symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

Kinesthesia [kin-ehs-THEE-see-a]

The system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts.

REM Rebound

The tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation (created by repeated awakenings during REM sleep).

Bystander Effect

The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.

Spacing Effect

The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.

Regression Toward the Mean

The tendency for extreme or unusual scores to fall back (regress) toward their average.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency for observers, when analyzing others' behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.

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.

Just-World Phenomenon

The tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

Foot-In-The-Door Phenomenon

The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

Facial Feedback Effect

The tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident than correct -- to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements.

Hindsight Bias

The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. (Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon.)

Ingroup Bias

The tendency to favor our own group.

False Consensus Effect

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and our behaviors.

Mood-Congruent Memory

The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood.

Other-Race Effect

The tendency to recall faces of one's own face more accurately than faces of other races. Also called the cross-race effect or the own-race bias.

Generalization

The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.

Cannon-Bard Theory

The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion.

Opponent-Process Theory

The theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) enable color vision. For example, some cells are stimulated by green and inhibited by red; others are stimulated by red and inhibited by green.

James-Lange Theory

The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.

Social Exchange Theory

The theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.

Scapegoat Theory

The theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.

Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic (Three-Color) 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.

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 the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.

Attribution Theory

The theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition.

Social Learning Theory

The theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished.

Menopause

The time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines.

Adolescence

The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.

Lens

The transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina.

Lymphocytes

The two types of white blood cells that are part of the body's immune system: B lymphocytes form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections; T lymphocytes form in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances.

Empiricism

The view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should, therefore, rely on observation and experimentation.

Behaviorism

The view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not (2).

Behaviorism

The view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2).

Framing

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements.

Stanford-Binet

The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test.

Continuity vs. Discontinuity

Theories of development, nature vs. nurture

Charles Darwin

Theory of evolution, survival of the fittest -- origin of the species

Howard Gardner

Theory of multiple intelligences

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Theory proposes that the terminally ill pass through a sequence of 5 stages - [1] denial, [2] anger/resentment, [3] bargaining, [4] depression, [5] acceptance

Paul Ekman

Theory that facial expressions are universal

William Sheldon

Theory that linked personality to physique on the grounds that both are governed by genetic endowment; endomorphic (large), mesomorphic (average), ectomorphic (skinny)

Group Therapy

Therapy conducted with groups rather than individuals, permitting therapeutic benefits from group interaction.

Psychodynamic Therapy

Therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight.

Behavior Therapy

Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.

Cognitive Therapy

Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

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.

Critical Thinking

Thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions. Rather, it examines assumptions, assesses the source, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions.

Law of Effect

Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.

Chromosomes

Threadlike structures made of DNA molecules that contain the genes.

Gordon Allport

Three levels of traits -- 1. cardinal trait - dominant trait that characterizes your life, 2. central trait - common to all people, 3. secondary trait - surfaces in some situations and not in others

Lesion [LEE-zhuhn]

Tissue destruction. A brain lesion is a naturally or experimentally caused destruction of brain tissue.

Edward Bradford Titchener

Titchener used introspection to search for the mind's structural elements.

Perception

Top-down processing

Allport

Trait approach; cardinal, central, secondary

Librium

Treat anxiety

Psychotherapy

Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.

Librium

Treats Anxiety

Lithium

Treats bi-polar

Robert Sternberg

Triarchic theory of intelligence - [1] academic problem-solving intelligence [2] practical intelligence [3] creative intelligence

Identical Twins (Monozygotic Twins)

Twins who develop from a single fertilized egg that splits in two, creating two genetically identical organisms.

Fraternal Twins (Dizygotic Twins)

Twins who develop from separate fertilized eggs. They are genetically no closer than brothers and sisters, but they share a fetal environment.

Amygdala [uh-MIG-duh-la]

Two lima-bean-sized neural clusters in the limbic system; linked to emotion.

Fraternal Twins

Two separate eggs

Automatic Processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.

Tend and Befriend Response

Under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend).

Personal Construct Theory

Unique system of reality

Discrimination

Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members.

Altruism

Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.

Humanistic Theories

View personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people's traits (including their thinking) and their social context.

Operant Conditioning

Voluntary

Operant Conditioning

Voluntary, link a behavior with a consequence

Les Vygotsky (1896-1934)

Vygotsky, a Russian developmental psychologist pictured here with his daughter, studies how a child's mind feeds on the language of social interaction.

John B. Watson

Watson (1924) admitted to "going beyond my facts" when offering his famous boast: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."

Cognitive-Dissonance Theory

We act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent

Arousal Theories

We all have optimal levels of stimulation that we try to maintain

Social-Learning Theory

We learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished

Restorative Theory

We sleep in order to replenish

Attribution Theory

We tend to give a casual explanation for someone's behavior, often by creating either the situation or the person's disposition

Dependent Variable

What is measure

Dependent Variable

What is measured or changes

Independent Variable

What is tested

Independent Variable

What is tested or manipulated

Achievement Test

What you've learned

Linguistic Determinism

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think.

Aptitude Test

Why you can do

John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner

Working with Rayner, Watson championed psychology as the science of behavior and demonstrated conditioned responses on a baby who became famous as "Little Albert."

Wilhelm Wundt

Wundt established the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig, Germany.

Internal Locus

You control the environment, more optimistic

Confirmation Bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions an to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Insight Therapies

a variety of therapies that aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing a person's awareness of underlying motives and defenses.

25. According to the Stanford-Binet formula for an intelligence quotient (IQ), the IQ of a ten-year-old child with a mental age of eight and a half years is

a. 85

96. Gender differences have most often been found in which of the following?

a. Aggression

20. In treating a patient for depression, Dr. Pratt focuses on changing the ways in which the patient interprets events. Which type of therapy is Dr. Pratt using?

a. Cognitive

75. A nine-year-old girl first learning about her capabilities on the playground and in the classroom would be in which of Erikson's stages of development?

a. Industry vs. inferiority

29. Which of the following is the correct sequence of the neural chain of events set in motion by an environmental stimulus?

a. Receptors, afferent neurons, interneurons, efferent neurons, effectors

69. Which of the following findings would support an interpretation of aggression as catharsis?

a. Societies that value aggressive sports are generally less aggressive than societies that do not value aggressive sports.

50. Which of the following regularities in behavior can most likely be accounted for by the existence of a group norm?

a. Students tend to use less profanity with adults than they do with their peers.

92. Which of the following occurs when a neuron is stimulated to its threshold?

a. The movement of sodium and potassium ions across the membrane creates an action potential.

7. Vic has unpredictable and repeated attacks of overwhelming anxiety that frequently leave him dizzy, nauseous, short of breath, and in tears. A psychologist is likely to view Vic's behavior as indicative of

a. a panic disorder

55. Processing every possible combination of the letters DBRI to arrive at the word BIRD is an example of the use of

a. an algorithm

14. John suffered a head injury in an accident five years ago. He now has clear memories of events that occurred before the accident, but he has great difficulty remembering any of the experiences he has had since the accident. John's symptoms describe

a. anterograde amnesia

52. Which of the following personality disorders is characterized by behavior that includes dishonesty, repeated trouble with authority figures, and an absence of remorse for these types conduct?

a. antisocial

60. John B. Watson is best known as the founder of

a. behaviorism

57. Lithium carbonate has been useful in some instances in the treatment of

a. bipolar disorder

91. "It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured." This belief is best explained by

a. cognitive dissonance theory

62. Robert Rescorla's contingency model of classical conditioning states that

a. conditioning occurs only when one event reliably predicts another

23. Community psychologists intervene at the primary level when they

a. design prevention programs for potential problems before the problems actually occur

7. One major objection to the early Skinnerian approach to psychology is that it

a. did not take into account internal thoughts and feelings

56. In experimental psychology, a significant difference refers to a

a. difference not likely due to chance

42. The more people present at a scene, the less likely it is that anyone will help a person in need. This phenomenon is a manifestation of

a. diffusion of responsibility

16. Drawing a random sample of people from a town for an interview study of social attitudes ensures that

a. each person in town has the same probability of being chosen for the study

19. The brain scans of people with amnesia are most likely to show damage to the

a. hippocampus

71. People who have experienced severe damage to the frontal lobe of the brain seldom regain their ability to

a. make and carry out plans

83. Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that help solve problems and reduce mental effort are called

a. neuristics

92. To score high on a test of creativity, a person's answers should be

a. original and valuable

65. In studying the behavior of five year olds in free-play situations, a cognitive psychologist would be most interested in the children's

a. problem-solving strategies

36. The factors chiefly responsible for interpersonal attraction include

a. proximity and similarity

98. The correlation between scores obtained on two halves of a single test yields information about the test's

a. reliability

62. Learned helplessness is most likely to result when

a. responses have no effect on the environment

32. When a newborn infant is touched on the cheek, the infant will turn its head toward the source of stimulation. This behavior is known as

a. rooting

100. The thalamus processes information for all of the following senses EXCEPT

a. smell

18. Climbing an irregular set of stairs is more difficult for an individual who wears a patch over one eye primarily because

a. some depth perception is lost

85. Noam Chomsky's view of language proposes that

a. there is an inherent language acquisition device

9. One of the consistent research findings in the area of facial expressions and emotion is the

a. universality of facial expressions across cultures

Twin Studies

allows a researcher to test influence of heredity vs. environment

Yerkes-Dodson Law

arousal will increase performances up to a point, then further increases will impair performance; inverted U function

42. The concept of habituation is best exemplified by which of the following situations?

b. A college student is no longer kept awake by her roommate's late-night typing.

76. Which of the following therapeutic approaches is most likely to be criticized because it does not treat the underlying cause of the disorder?

b. Behavioral

4. In an experiment, which of the following variables refers to the outcome that is measured by the experimenter?

b. Dependent

1. An individual experiencing a low blood-glucose level would be best advised to do which of the following?

b. Eat a snack

18. Which of the following systems produces, circulates, and regulates levels of hormones in the body?

b. Endocrime system

100. Failure to recognize that an object typically not used for a particular purpose can, in fact, serve that purpose illustrates which of the following?

b. Functional fixedness

6. A hostile person with a type A personality is most at risk for developing which of the following?

b. Heart disease

88. Which of the following concepts provides the best explanation for why people seek to put on warmer clothing when they start to feel cold?

b. Homeostasis

37. Which of the following research methods is being used if the same subjects are tested at two, four, and six years of age?

b. Longitudinal

79. Which of the following is a brain-imaging technique that produces the most detailed picture of brain structure?

b. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

9. Rafael has a sleep disorder for which he takes medically prescribed amphetamines. For which of the following sleep disorders is Rafael most likely being treated?

b. Narcolepsy

63. Which of the following types of validity is established by demonstrating that there is a correlation between scores on a test and later academic performance?

b. Predictive

5. Egocentrism, animism, and artificialism are characteristic of which of Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development?

b. Preoperational

78. Which of the following most accurately describes a dependent variable?

b. Some aspect of a participant's response that is measured in an experiment

73. Which part of the nervous system is most immediately activated by sudden fear?

b. Sympathetic

80. Which of the following represent, respectively, superordinate and subordinate categories for the basic-level category of "automobile"?

b. Vehicle, convertible

22. When is it permissible for a psychologist to share a client's test scores with another person?

b. When the client provides written permission to share results

72. A test is labeled as achievement test is most likely to be given to

b. allow a student to be exempted from a college course

3. A research design involves two randomly assigned groups of participants. One group receives a one-time treatment, and the other does not. Later, the two groups are compared to see whether the treatment had an effect. Psychologists call this kind of research

b. an experiment

35. Individuals exhibiting a hostile type A personality pattern are at an increased risk for

b. cardiovascular disease

75. Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer view emotion as resulting from

b. cognitive labels of physiological changes

40. In a research study, informed consent is a concern of

b. ethics

43. The reversible figure above illustrates the Gestalt organizing principle of

b. figure-ground

82. Cognitive theorists emphasize the

b. formation and modification of schemas

40. An important difference between humanistic and psychoanalytic approaches is that humanistic psychologists believe in the importance of

b. free will

94. After discussing a topic, a group makes a decision that is more extreme than the average position of all of the group members prior to discussion. The group's action is an example of`

b. group polarization

24. Hypnosis is best described as a state that

b. induces heightened suggestibility in the hypnotized individual

23. A genetically programmed action pattern is the ethologist's definition of

b. instinct

70. For most people, speech functions are primarily localized in the

b. left cerebral hemisphere

37. In a memory study, the experimenter reads the same list of words to two groups. She asks group A to count the letters in each word, and she asks group B to focus on the meaning of each word for a later memory quiz. During a recall test, participants in group B recalls significantly more words than participants in group A. Memory researchers attribute this effect to differences in

b. levels of processing

46. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel's research on responses of the brain to visual stimuli showed that

b. many cortical cells respond most strongly to specific visual information

89. In operant conditioning, the concept of contingency is exemplified by an "if A, then B" relationship in which A and B, respectively, respresent

b. response, reinforcement

34. Intense artificial light is most successfully used as therapy for

b. seasonal affective disorder

27. According to research on attraction, people are most likely to be attracted to others who are

b. similar to themselves in many way

91. When a pair of lights flashing in quick succession seems to an observer to be one light moving from place to place, the effect is referred to as

b. the phi phenomenon

Incentive Theory

behavior is pulled rather then pushed

Noam Chomsky

believed there are an infinite number of sentences in a language and that humans have an inborn native ability to develop language; words and concepts are learned but the brain is hardwired for grammar and language

Schachter's Cognitive-Physiological Theory

bodily changes, current stimuli, events, and memories combine to determine behavior - Schachter's 3-factors

38. Which of the following is a circadian rhythm?

c. A cycle of biological functioning that lasts about 25 hours

71. A supervisor who doubts the competence of a new employee unwittingly criticizes everything the new employee does. If the new employee consequently performs poorly, which of the following will most likely have occurred?

c. A self-fulfilling prophecy

3. Phobic and panic disturbances are examples of which of the following kinds of disorder?

c. Anxiety

58. Which of the following is an example of a prelinguistic event?

c. Babbling

64. Which of the following best supports the hypothesis that basic human emotions, such as sadness, are innate?

c. Basic emotions are understood and expressed in a similar fashion by individuals from diverse cultures.

44. Staff members at a mental hospital do not respond to patients who use threats, but praise patients who are courteous. Which of the following psychotherapeutic approaches is being used?

c. Behavioral therapy

1. A psychotherapist who believes that deviant behavior can be traced either to genetic anomalies or to problems in the physical structure of the brain must likely subscribes to which of the following views of abnormality?

c. Biomedical

82. Which of the following is the best interpretation of Solomon Asch's findings, pictured above, concerning conformity in perceptual judgements?

c. Conformity increases as group size increases to about four persons.

43. One suspected cause of schizophrenia is the abnormal increase of which of the following neurotransmitters in the brain?

c. Dopamine

36. In the James-Lange theory of emotion, which of the following immediately precedes an emotion?

c. Experience of physiological changes

97. Which of the following statements best depicts the concept of incentive theory?

c. Jennifer studies hard because her parents reward her by paying $20 for each superior grade that she brings home.

13. A stubborn individual who accuses peers of being uncooperative is exhibiting which of the following defense mechanisms?

c. Projection

78. Behavior therapists emphasize which of the following in their treatment of clients?

c. Responses that have been reinforced in the past

67. Developmental research on the formation of attachment indicates that a child's secure attachment to its mother during infancy is predictive of which of the following during its toddler years?

c. Social competence

70. Training in the construction of an anxiety hierarchy and in relaxation techniques is likely to be part of the treatment for which of the following?

c. Specific phobia

54. Which of the following behaviors is most closely associated with the foot-in-the-door phenomenon?

c. Sutan asks his father for $5, and when he agrees, Sutan asks him for $15 more.

33. Neurotransmitters are typically stored in which of the following parts of a neuron?

c. The terminal buttons

86. Which of the following is a partial reinforcement schedule that is most resistant to extinction?

c. Variable ratio

90. An individual diagnosed as having a somatoform disorder would be most likely to show

c. a biologically unfounded loss of bodily functioning

51. A brain tumor that results in obesity would most likely be located in the

c. area of the hypothalamus

63. According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, one of five stages frequently experienced by people facing death is

c. bargaining

97. When struck by light energy, cones and robs in the retina generate neural signals that then activate the

c. bipolar cells

11. Psychotic disorders frequently involve perceptions of nonexistent sensory stimulation, such as voices. Symptoms such as these are called

c. hallucinations

39. According to Freudian theory, the component of the personality that is "blind, impulsive, and irrational" is the

c. id

20. When a list of words is learned in order, the words most likely to be forgotten are those that are

c. in the middle of the list

5. In Sigmund Freud's view, the role of the ego is to

c. mediate among the id, the superego, and reality

66. When participants in dichotic listening experiments are repeating aloud a message presented in one ear, they are most likely to notice information on the unattended channel if that channel

c. mentions the participant's name

30. The result of the evolutionary process that preserves traits that enhance the adaptation of an organism and suppresses traits that do not is called

c. natural selection

32. A baby looks under the sofa for a ball that has just rolled underneath it. According to Jean Piaget, the baby's action shows development of

c. object permanence

46. In psychology, Gestalt principles are used to explain

c. perceptual organization

69. Alfred Binet's efforts to measure intelligence were directed at

c. predicting children's success in school

12. Punishment is most effective in eliminating undesired behavior when th

c. punishment is delivered soon after the behavior

26. The rationale underlying the use of projective personality tests, such as the Rorschach Test and the Thematic Apperception Test, is that they

c. reveal the subjects' personalities by eliciting responses to vague, ambiguous stimuli

24. On individual intelligence tests such as the Stanford-Binet and Wechsler scales, an IQ of 100 indicates that the test taker

c. scored at the average level for test takers of the same age

48. A student who obtained a percentile rank of 75 on an achievement test is best characterized as having

c. scored higher than 75% of the test takers

44. Studies of learning have shown that animals develop an aversion for tastes associated with

c. sickness

28. As you watch a friend walk away from you, your retinal image of your friend gets smaller. Despite this, you do not perceive him to be shrinking. This is an example of

c. size constancy

21. The rules of grammar are rule of

c. syntax

76. The tendency to believe that another person's behavior is caused by dispositional factors rather than by environmental factors is called

c. the fundamental attribution error

27. The tendency to develop a positive attitude toward a product that has been advertised repeatedly in the media is referred to as

c. the mere-exposure effect

Parasympathetic

calming - parachute

Opponent-Process Color Theory

color information is organized ito 3 antagonistic pairs

8. A stereotype is defined as which of the following?

d. A generalization about a social group

45. Which of the following is the best example of shaping?

d. A teacher rewards a student for sitting quietly for ten minutes on Monday, fifteen minutes on Tuesday, twenty minutes on Wednesday, and thirty minutes on Thursday.

68. A double-blind control is essential for which of the following?

d. Assessment of a treatment designed to reduce schizophrenic symptoms

25. Which of the following is LEAST likely to affect the immune system's ability to ward off illness?

d. Being around someone who has a serious case of the flu

95. Brain damage that leaves a person capable of understanding speech but with an impaired ability to produce speech most likely indicates injury to which of the following?

d. Broca's area

10. Which of the following parts of the brain is most active in decision-making?

d. Cerebral cortex

57. Although Paul seems bright and capable to his parents and friends, he has been failing in school. Paul agrees to speak with a psychologist, who suggests that his problems stem from internal processes such as unrealistic expectations and negative thinking. The psychologist's view is typical of which of the following models of behavior?

d. Cognitive

6. Which of the following would an industrial-organizational psychologist be LEAST likely to study?

d. Corporate profitability

88. Which of the following methods is used in studies designed to determine the primary components of intelligence?

d. Factor analysis

26. The precipitous decline of the impatient populations of state and county mental hospitals since the 1950's can be attributed to which of the following? I. Declining incidence of severe mental illnesses II. A policy of deinstitutionalization III. New drug therapies

d. II and III only

83. Which of the following areas of the body has the largest number of sensory neurons?

d. Lips

95. REM sleep, generally an "active" state of sleep, is accompanied by which of the following paradoxical characteristics?

d. Lowered muscle tone

60. Taking a painkiller to relieve a toothache is behavior learned through which of the following processes?

d. Negative reinforcement

33. Figures such as the one above are used in which of the following kinds of test?

d. Projective personality

73. The phenomenon of transference is a recognized component of which of the following therapeutic treatments?

d. Psychoanalysis

74. Alicia has started a new and very different job but believes in her skills and ability to carry out the tasks required of her. Albert Bandura would refer to Alicia's sense of confidence as which of the following?

d. Self-efficacy

96. A teach who is mistakenly informed that a student is learning disabled begins to treat that student differently from others. The teacher does not call on the student in class or help her with challenging material. The student's grades gradually decline. This result is an example of which of the following?

d. Self-fulfilling prophecy

53. For extinction to occur, which of the following must be true of the conditioned response (CR), the conditioned stimulus (CS), and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS)?

d. The CS is repeatedly presented in the absence of the UCS, and the CR loses strength.

15. Drive reduction as a motivational concept is best exemplified by which of the following?

d. The injection of heroin by an addict to avoid withdrawal symptoms

14. Harry Harlow's experiments with rhesus monkeys suggest which of the following as most important for infants when establishing an attachment to their mothers?

d. The tactile characteristics of the mother

15. The biological clock that operates in human being to adjust their functioning to night-and-day periodicity is referred to as

d. a circadian rhythm

77. An individual who drinks alcohol daily finds it necessary to drink increasing amounts to achieve the state of well-being attained in the past. This individual is showing

d. alcohol tolerance

47. Sabrina plays on a rugby team and collects antique dolls. Peter is on a football team and loves to cook. Both Sabrina and Peter demonstrate a high degree of

d. androgyny

59. Mary Ainsworth's Strange situation paradigm is typically used to test young children's

d. attachment

8. The coiled tube in the inner ear that contains the auditory receptors is called the

d. cochlea

65. In rational-emotive therapy, the therapist helps clients by

d. confronting clients with their faulty logic

87. A young child shown a nine-inch round bowl and a six-inch round bowl containing equal amounts of popcorn says he is certain the smaller bowl has more popcorn than the larger bowl. This child has yet to acquire what Jean Piaget called

d. conservation

90. A normally functioning 65-year-old who cannot solve abstract logic puzzles as quickly as he did when he was younger is experiencing a

d. decrease in his fluid intelligence

59. All of the following are reasons for requiring clearly specified procedures for the administration and scoring of assessment measures, such as standardized tests, EXCEPT to

d. decrease the amount of time needed to administer the test

2. For several weeks -- ever since she did not receive a raise that was given to several colleagues -- Enid has lacked energy, has been unable to go to work, and has expected bad things to happen every day. Of the following, she is most likely experiencing

d. depression

99. Vance is a popular honors student who, unlike his reference group, writes his best papers sitting on his motorcycle in the basement of his college dormitory. His behavior can be considered abnormal only if abnormality is defined as

d. deviation from cultural norms

74. Contemporary definitions of abnormal behavior typically characterize such behavior as all of the following EXCEPT

d. due to inappropriate child-rearing practices

13. According to the information-processing view of memory, the first stage in memory processing involves

d. encoding

72. According to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the need to have respect for ourselves and to be valued by others is classified within the category of

d. esteem needs

45. An individual's fear of dogs that is lost as the individual is exposed to dogs in nonthreatening situations is referred to be behaviorists as a fear that has been

d. extinguished

16. Visual acuity is best in the

d. fovea

12. Humanistic psychologists believe that the drive toward self-actualization is

d. innate

93. Wolfgang Köhler considered a chimpanzee's sudden solving of a problem evidence of

d. insight

4. The area of the brain stem that is important in controlling breathing is the

d. medulla

21. Understanding that things continue to exist even when they are not within view is called

d. object permanence

93. Memory for automatic activities, such as bike riding and handwriting, is known as

d. procedural

68. Hallucinatiosn are characteristic of

d. psychotic disorders

39. According to cognitive dissonance theory, human beings are motivated to

d. reduce tensions produced by inconsistent thoughts

34. In order to yield information that is generalizable to the population from which it was drawn, a sample must be

d. representative of the population

41. The correlation between two measures obtained on a group of individuals is graphically represented as a

d. scatterplot

49. A student's test score of 86 is at the 42nd percentile. This means that this student has

d. scored the same or higher than 42 percent of her fellow students

53. The most distinctive characteristic of the experimental method is that it

d. seeks to establish cause-effect relationships

19. Gustatory receptors are sensitive to all of the following taste qualities EXCEPT

d. spicy

55. A child who learns that spoons are tableware and then correctly calls forks and knives tableware is demonstrating

d. stimulus generalization

80. The sequence of shifts in the electrical charge of a neuron is called

d. the action potential

49. The general function of the bones in the middle ear is to

d. transfer sound information from the tympanic membrane to the oval window

58. Assume that R represents a dominant gene in rats for normal running and that r represents a recessive gene in rats for an abnormal gait called waltzing. Mating a female Rr rat with a male RR rat will produce offspring that are

e. 100% runners

77. Which of the following will NOT increase behavioral and mental activity?

e. Barbiturates

61. Photoreceptors relay visual information to the brain through which of the following cells?

e. Bipolar and ganglion

35. Which of the following situations poses an approach-approach conflict for a person who listens only to classical music?

e. Choosing to study with one of two friends, both of whom listen to classical music while studying

84. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is used primarily to provide information about which of the following?

e. Clinical disorders

66. Which of the following results of correlational studies implies that environment contributes to the determination of IQ?

e. Correlations for children and their adoptive parents are statistically significant and positive.

28. An individual's ability to remember the day he or she first swam the length of a swimming pool is most clearly an example of which of the following kinds of memory?

e. Episodic

50. Which of the following provides information regarding brain function by monitoring the brain at work through metabolism of glucose?

e. Positron emission tomography (PET)

94. Which of the following is the most appropriate criterion for evaluating the predictive validity of an intelligence test?

e. School grades

89. The linguistic relativity hypothesis of Benjamin Whorf suggest which of the following?

e. Speakers of different languages think differently due to the differences in their languages.

51. A person assembling a tool one week after reading the instructions can remember the first and last steps of the procedure but not the middle ones. This best illustrates which of following?

e. The serial position effect

48. An instructor conducted an experiment to determine the effects of two different methods of study on the amount students learned in introductory physics. The result showed that the average amount learned by the group using the other. However, the difference was not statistically significant. Which of the following is the most appropriate conclusion to be drawn?

e. There is a possibility that the difference between the two groups occurred by chance.

56. Which of the following best describes the response of members of the American Psychological Association to ethical issues in research?

e. They have developed codes of ethics for research with both human participants and animal subjects.

38. Rational-emotive behavior therapy assumes that abnormal functioning results from which of the following?

e. Unreasonable beliefs or assumptions

47. Judy believes that her fate is determined by her own actions. Judy's belief best illustrates

e. an internal locus of control

81. A technique that enables a person to control physiological responses that are normally involuntary, such as level of blood pressure, is known as

e. biofeedback

87. A man who experiences sudden blindness on witnessing the death of his wife is probably suffering from a

e. conversion disorder

52. Carol Gilligan's critique of Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development focuses primarily on

e. differences between males and females in the course of moral development

30. An advantage of group therapy over individual therapy is that group therapy

e. enables clients to realize that their problems ae not unique

86. The role of the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system is to

e. establish homeostasis after a fight-or-flight response

61. Montgomery prepares his résumé carelessly and arrives late for his job interview. He is rejected by the prospective employer. Montgomery concludes that "It's all a matter of dumb luck, anyway." Montgomery's judgement of his situation most clearly reflects

e. external locus of control

10. The perceived pitch of a time is largely determined by its

e. frequency

84. Stimulation of portions of the left temporal lobe of the brain during surgery will cause the patient to

e. hear sounds

31. A study can be regarded as scientific only if

e. its conclusion can be verified or refuted by subsequent studies

17. Individuals who believe that an unpleasant experience is unavoidable and therefore do nothing to change the course of events are exhibiting

e. learned helplessness

54. The performance of the group on which an IQ test is standardized sets the

e. norms against which the performance of later test takers can be evaluated

2. A person with obsessive-compulsive disorder is best described as an individual who experiences

e. persistent anxiety-provoking thought

79. All human languages have several basic sounds in common called

e. phonemes

98. The first area of psychology to be studied as a science is known as

e. psychophysics

29. Hans Selye's general adaptation syndrome is an attempt to explain

e. reactions to stress

11. Balance is influenced by the

e. semicircular canals

64. In Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments, subjects were LEAST likely to deliver maximum levels of shock when the

e. subjects observed other subjects who refused to obey the experimenter's orders

81. Carol Gilligan's criticism of Lawrence Kohlberg's developmental theory is based on the argument that Kohlberg's

e. theory fails to account sufficiently for differences between males and females

67. Metacognition refers to

e. thinking about thinking

22. Psychologists who emphasize the importance of personality traits are most often criticized for

e. underestimating the variability of behavior from situation to situation

Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

emergency reaction to stressful situations; alarm reaction, resistance, and exhaustion (ARE bad)

James-Lange Theory

emotion is caused by bodily changes

Lazarus's Cognitive-Psychological Model

emphasizes the process of appraisal (primary and secondary) as the primary determinant of stress

Egocentrism

in Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view.