GRE Psychology Subject Test

Thomas Szasz

"The Myth of Mental Illness" (name of his most famous book) outspoken critic of labeling people as "mentally ill" argues that most of the disorders treated by clinicians are not really illnesses rather traits or behaviors that differ from the cultural norm argues that labeling is a way to force people to change to conform to societal norms rather than allowing them to attack the societal causes of their problems

Hypothalamus's Functions

"four F's": feeding, fighting, fleeing and sexual functioning

Pragnanz

"good figure": term that encompasses the other four forms of Gestalt psychology law of good figure or the law of simplicity, objects are seen in a way that makes them appear as simple as possible

Metacognition and Metamemory

"meta" refers to the ability to reflect upon something terms refer to a person's ability to think about and monitor cognition and memory, respectively

Endomorphy, Mesomorphy, Ectomorphy (Person)

(William Sheldon) soft spherical hard, muscular and rectangular thin, fragile, lightly muscled

Social Facilitation (Person)

(Zajonic) - emission of dominant responses enhanced in presence of people tendency for people to perform well in the presence of others when they are skilled at a particular task or to perform poorly in the presence of others when they are not skilled at that task

Cognitive Psychology

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Systems Psychology

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Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection

1. Genetic differences between members of a species 2. If a genetic variation increases chances of reproduction, it will tend to be passed down to next generation If a genetic variation decreases chances of reproduction, it will tend not to be passed down to next generation 3. Over time, more members of species will tend to have that genetic variation that increases chances of reproduction and less will have genetic variation that decreases chances of reproduction

Two Main Principles of Cognitive Dissonance Theory

1. If a person is pressured to say or do something contrary to his or her privately held attitudes, there will be a tendency for him or her to change those attitudes 2. The greater the pressure to comply, the less the person's attitude will change. Ultimately, attitude change generally occurs when the behavior is induced with minimum pressure.

Action Potential Spike

1. resting potential 2. depolarization - rapid electrical pulse produced by neuron membrane when it reaches threshold (when cell's membrane suddenly becomes positive), due to sodium ions entering membrane 3. action potential spike, cell membrane repolarized and quickly switches back to negative charge by allowing potassium ions rush back in 4. hyperpolarization - when cell repolarizes too much, negative charge happens so quickly that it overshoots resting potential

George Berkeley

1709 listed various cues for depth two-dimensional image on retina has certain characteristics that signal the three-dimensionality of the actual object

Collins and Loftus

1975, proposed the spreading activation model

Peak Experiences

Abhram Maslow's idea that self-actualized people are more likely to have profound and deeply moving experiences in their life that have important and lasting effects on the individual

Self-Efficacy Theory (Person)

Albert Bandura component of Bandura's larger theoretical framework self-efficacy: individual's belief in his ability to organize and execute a particular pattern of behavior strong self-efficacy - more effort on challenging tasks (compared to low self-efficacy)

"Bobo" Doll Study

Bandura's famous experiment two groups of children aged 3-5 observed either an adult playing with tinker toys or an adult committing aggressive acts on an inflated rubber "Bobo" doll each child was made to feel frustrated and left alone in a room full of toys (including rubber doll) children who had observed the aggressive model were more likely to behave aggressively toward the doll, similarly to the adult some copied aggression blow for blow

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Cluster A (odd or eccentric) personality disorder involving a pervasive pattern of interpersonal deficits featuring acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships, as well as cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior.

Neurotransmitter that plays a role in Parkinson's Disease

Dopamine

Sleep Stage 3

EEG activity grows progressively slower until only a few sleep waves per second are seen low frequency, high voltage sleep waves called delta waves delta waves = deep sleep

Opponent-Process Theory of Color Vision

Ewald Hering suggested that his four primaries were arranged in opposing pairs so that one opponent process would signal the presence of red or green and another would signal the presence of blue or yellow also included black-white opposing pair e.g., red would excite a red-green cell while green would inhibit it implication: cannot have a reddish green

Gender Differences in Parental Behavior

Fathers tend to play more vigorously with their children than mothers do, while mothers tend to stress verbal over physical interactions

Neurotransmitter that plays a role in Anxiety Disorders

GABA

Empirical Criterion-Keying Approach

Hathaway and McKinley used this to develop the MMPI tested thousands of questions and retained those that differentiated between patient and non-patient populations, even if question did not seem to have to do with abnormality each criterion group's responses formed the basis of a particular clinical scale (if a new subject answered the same way as a group did they were categorized as that)

Feature Detection Theory

Hubel and Wiesel found a neural basis for this theory suggests that certain cells in the cortex are maximally sensitive to certain features of stimuli distinguished three types of cells: simple, complex and hypercomplex

Single-Cell Recording

Hubel and Wiesel measured cell responses using this latest research methodology available to sensory psychologists at the time method involves placing a microelectrode in the cortex so sensitive that it could record responses of a single cell technique sometimes called recording from single nerve fibers

Three Prominent Theories of How we Experience Emotion

James-Lange theory, Cannon-Bard theory, and Schachter-Singer theory

Heinz Dilemma

Kohlberg devised a test to determine the moral level of a given individual, consists of a series of hypothetical moral dilemmas subjects asked what the character of the story should do and give a reason subjects placed in one of six stages based on reasoning (rather than the decision)

Five Types of Receptors for Tactile Information

Pacinian corpuscles (deep pressure) Meissner corpuscles (touch) Merkel discs Ruffini endings (warmth) free nerve endings

Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC)

ROC curves employed by many researchers to graphically summarize a subject's responses (signal detection experiment) by measuring operating (sensitivity) characteristics of a subject's receiving signals

A. R. Luria

Russian neurologist associated with the study of neurological disorders

Wechsler's Three Major IQ Tests

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-R) - preschoolers Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R) - school-aged 5-16 years Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R) - adults 16 years and older WAIS-III current version used for adult intelligence testing

Cultural Truisms

William McGuire tested theory of inoculation against persuasion by using cultural truisms: beliefs that are seldom questioned vulnerable to attack bc individual has never practiced defending truism used "refuted counterarguments" to motivate people to practice defending beliefs and better able to defend when under attack found that truisms that were not inoculated were quite susceptible to attack

Limbic System

a group of neural structures looping around central portion of brain primarily associated with emotion and memory aggression, fear, pleasure, and pain all involved in limbic system components: septal nuclei, amygdala, hippocampus second major area of brain to develop, lies in the oldest part of the cerebral hemispheres

Histrionic Personality Disorder

a personality disorder characterized by excessive emotionality and preoccupation with being the center of attention, emotional shallowness, overly dramatic behavior

Iris

a ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil involuntary muscles and autonomic nerve fibers - controls size of pupil and amount of light entering eye

Crystallized Intelligence

ability to understand relationships or solve problems that depend on knowledge acquired as a result of schooling or other life experiences

Empathy

ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another, and it is thought by some social psychologists to be a strong influence on helping behavior

Midbrain (Mesencephalon)

above hindbrain, manages sensorimotor reflexes that also promote survival receives sensory and motor information associated with involuntary reflex responses triggered by visual or auditory stimuli

Inconsistencies

according to consistency theories, if a person is aware of an inconsistency, they will try to resolve it (stimuli or irritants), often resolved by changing attitudes

Sedative-Hypnotic Drugs (Depressants)

act to slow down the functioning of the central nervous system, reduce anxiety at low doses, produce sedation at medium doses, induce anesthesia or come at high doses e.g., alcohol and barbiturates dangerous combination that can easily result in coma include: benzodiazepines (tranquilizer used to reduce anxiety) and barbiturates (potent tranquilizer used as sedative) - facilitate and enhance action of GABA, stabilizes brain activity include: alcohol

Axon Hillock

action potential originates here, small elevation on neuron where the axon meets the cell body graded potential converted into all-or-nothing potential at this location on neuron

Synergistic

additive in effect - when two different drugs taken together, combined effect is greater than either drug alone

Dorothea Dix

advocated fro more humane treatment of the mentally ill 1841-1881 zealous advocate of treating hospitalized mentally ill in a humane way campaign was instrumental in improving lives of mentally ill in the United States

Operant Conditioning (Instrumental Conditioning)

also called reward learning based on learning relationship between one's actions and their consequences

Continuous Reinforcement Schedule (CRF)

animal reinforced for every response FR 1 schedule

Implosion

another behavior therapy that works on the same principle as flooding, but client only imagines the fearful situation asked to imagine anxiety-producing situation, intensely concentrating on the fearful stimulus in a way that nothing fearful can happen and able to confront phobia

California Psychological Inventory (CPI)

another personality inventory based on MMPI developed to be used with normal populations from ages 13 and up (oriented toward high school and college students) consists of 20 scales, including three validity scales, used to assess test-taking attitudes all scores expressed as standard scores with a mean and SD derived from standardization samples

Paivio's Dual-Code Hypothesis

another theory of memory information can be stored (or encoded) in two ways: visually and verbally abstract info tends to be encoded verbally, whereas concrete information tends to be encoded visually (i.e., as an image) e.g., virtue - verbally; elephant - visually and verbally

Correlation Coefficients

another type of descriptive statistic that measures to what extent, if any, two variables are related related if knowing value of one variable helps you predict the value of the other variable correlations help us understand the relationship and degree of association between two variables allows us to mathematically specify how well we can predict the value of the second variable given the corresponding value of the other variable range from -1.00 to +1.00 closer to zero, less sure about association zero, first variable does not help you predict the value of the second variable

z-score

another way of calculating how many standard deviations above or below the mean your score is to determine, subtract the mean of the distribution from your score and divide the difference by the standard deviation negative - below mean positive - above mean +2.0 = 98th percentile -1.0 = 16th percentile mean of distribution of z-scores = 0 standard deviation = 1

Limen

another word for threshold e.g., subLIMINal perception refers to perception of stimuli below a threshold (below threshold of conscious awareness)

Spreading of Alternatives

approaches to reducing dissonance (accentuating negative of one or accentuating positive of the other) - relative worth of the two alternatives is spread apart

Ability Tests

aptitude tests (predict what one can accomplish through training, predict future achievement) and achievement tests (attempt to assess what one knows or can do now, adequacy of learning content and skill)

Association Area

area that combines input from diverse brain regions e.g., prefrontal cortex contrasted with projection areas in humans, cortex devoted to association areas substantially larger than amount devoted to projection areas

Errors of Growth (Overregularization)

as children begin to master complex general rules we often see an increase in grammatical errors child who once said "I ran" will now say "I runned" many of these errors are universal and not a result of environmental influence e.g., they have never heard the word "runned" before indicates language acquisition may not be the result of imitation and reinforcement but active application of dynamic internalized set of linguistic rules

Forward Conditioning

as in Pavlov's experiment, CS presented before UCS (bell before food) CS must be before UCS in order for classical conditioning to work

Gate Theory of Pain

associated with Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall proposes that there is a special "gating" mechanism that can turn pain signals on or off, thus affecting whether we perceive pain or not gating mechanism is located at the spinal cord, able to block sensory input from large, thick sensory fibers, before brain is able to receive the pain signals

Encoding Specificity

assumption that recall will be best if the context at recall approximates the context during the original encoding e.g., study in the classroom in which you will be taking the test

Eardrum

auditory canal channels sound here, also called tympanic membrane membrane vibrates back and forth at a high rate for high-frequency sounds and slowly for low-frequency sounds

Rooting Reflex

automatic turning of the head in the direction of a stimulus that touches the cheek (such as nipple during feeding)

Retina

back of the eye, like a screen filled with neural elements and blood vessels image-detecting part of the eye organization of the retinal cells makes light pass through intermediate sensory neurons before reaching and stimulating the photoreceptors

Dominant Hemisphere (Left)

brain mostly communicates contralaterally with the body, dominant hemisphere is generally located opposite the hand used for writing most people left hemisphere dominant (97%) primarily analytic in function, good for managing details (language, logic, and math) letters, words, language-related sounds, speech, reading, writing, arithmetic, complex voluntary movement

Convolutions

bumps and folds of the cortex

Anterior Hypothalamus

causes and increase in aggressive sexual behavior when stimulated in lab animals, will mount just about anything (including inanimate objects) damage to anterior hypothalamus leads to permanent inhibition of sexual activity damage to Anterior hypothalamus leads to Asexual behavior also plays a role in arousal

Disturbance of Affect

common characteristic of schizophrenia, disturbance in expression of emotion problems may include... blunting: severe reduction in intensity of affect expression flat affect: virtually no signs of affective expression inappropriate affect: affect is clearly discordant with the content of the individual's speech or ideation difficult to assess because antipsychotic drugs often used in treatment frequently blunt or flatten affect

Cross Sectional Studies

compare groups of subjects at different ages

Lewis Terman's Study

compared a group of children with high IQ's (135+) to groups of children typical of the general population first study to focus on "gifted" children large-scale longitudinal study that followed development of the group over time, observing them every 5 years

Vicarious Learning (Vicarious Reinforcement)

component of social learning theory (Bandura), suggests we learn by observing other people's behaviors being reinforced (not only our own behavior being reinforced)

Top-Down Processing

conceptually driven processing object perception that is guided by conceptual processes such as memories and expectations that allow the brain to recognize the whole object and then recognize the components * top/ bottom distinction relevant for all senses if only this - we would only seen what we expected to see

Domain-Referenced Testing (Criterion-Referenced Testing)

concerned with the question of what the test taker knows about a specified content domain performance on such a test is described in terms of what the test taker knows or can do e.g., written test for Driver's License not important how you do compared to peers but whether you have mastery of the material

Narcolepsy

condition characterized by lack of voluntary control over the onset of sleep sudden, brief periods of sleep

Layers of Neurons Between Receptors and Optic Nerve

connection between these is not direct layers of neurons in between: horizontal, amacrine, bipolar cells and ganglion cells rods and cones connect with bipolar neurons, which connect with ganglion cells ganglion cells group together to form optic nerve greater receptors that converge through bipolar to ganglion, the more difficult it is to make out the fine detail

Medulla Oblongata

connects to hindbrain, lower brain structure responsible for regulating vital functions such as breathing, heartbeat and blood pressure

Reliability

consistency with which a test measures whatever it is that the test measures high reliability - test measures are dependable, reproducible and consistent expect individual to score about the same when retested on same test or a comparable form of the test precondition for validity (can have reliability but no validity)

Sensory Memory

contains fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli, information does not last long in this memory (at most, a few seconds) visual memory (iconic memory) auditory memory (echoic memory)

Oswald Kulpe

contemporary of Wundt, disagreed with him fundamentally (Wundt believed there could not be thought without a mental image) believed that there could be imageless thought performed experiments to prove his hypothesis

Albert Bandura

contends that learning principles are sufficient to account for personality development basis of his social learning theory is modeling observed behavior stressed that learning occurs not only by having one's own behavior reinforced (Skinner) but also by observing other people's behaviors being reinforced (vicarious reinforcement or vicarious learning)

Explanations Proposed for Why Classical Conditioning Works

contiguity - CS and UCS are near in time contingency - CS is a good signal for the UCS blocking - CS is a good signal for UCS AND provides non-redundant information about the occurrence of the UCS

Projection Area

contrasted with association areas receive incoming sensory information or send out motor-impulse commands examples: visual cortex (visual input from retina), motor cortex (sends out motor commands to muscles) in other mammals (not humans), projection areas are generally larger than association areas

Basal Ganglia

coordinates muscle movement as it receives information from the cortex and relays this information (via extrapyramidal motor system) to the brain and spinal cord Parkinson's Disease associated with this area may also play a role in Schizophrenia

Factor Analysis

correlation is the cornerstone of this technique attempts to account for the interrelationships found among various variables by seeing how groups of variables "hang together" high correlation between variables means they measure the same thing (factor) "armchair" factor analysis - see which factors have similar correlations

Neocortex

cortex sometimes referred to as this reminder that the cortex is the most recent brain region to evolve cortex has bumps and folds (convolutions), provides increased cellular mass

Ewald Hering's Criticism

critiqued the trichromatic theory held that yellow must be one of the primary colors and that yellow was a basic color along with red, blue and green

Relative Size

cue for depth perception when an object gets further away, the image on the retina gets smaller can tell how far away something is by comparing size of images on retina with what you know about actual sizes

Interposition (Overlap)

cue for depth perception when one object covers or overlaps with another object we see object A as being in front of object B

Binocular Disparity (Stereopsis)

cue of depth perception that requires two eyes depends on the fact that the distance between the eyes provides us with two slightly disparate views of the world degree of disparity between retinal images of the eyes due to slight differences in the horizontal position of each eye in the skill is called binocular parallax brain combines two views, get a perception of depth or stereopsis

Sleep Stage 4

deepest sleep stage of the full sleep cycle delta waveform reaches slowest rate and sleep spindles are at their steepest especially difficult to rouse someone from sleep during this stage

Foot-in-the-door Effect

demonstrates that compliance with a small request increase the likelihood of compliance with a larger request

Brenda Milner

described patient H.M.'s memory problems in detail

Humanism

developed as a system in the mid-20th C arose in opposition to both psychoanalysis and behaviorism believe in the notion of free will and the idea that people should be considered as wholes rather than in terms of stimuli and responses (behaviorism) or instincts (psychoanalysis) important humanists: Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers phenomenological theorists emphasize internal processes, sometimes called humanistic (focus on what distinguishes us from animals) concepts are similar to existential theorists

Law of Effect

developed by Edward Thorndike if a response is followed by an annoying consequence, the animal will be less likely to emit the same response in the future

Walter Cannon

developed conceptualization of homeostasis did pioneering work in regard to the ANS

Rationalization

developing a socially acceptable explanation for inappropriate behavior or thoughts

Stereotaxic Instrument

device used to locate brain areas when electrodes are implanted to make lesions or stimulate nerve cell activity selectively apply heat, cold or electricity to specific brain regions to study effects

Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) Scans

devices used to reveal structures of the brain in a living person

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

devised by Christiana Morgan and Henry Murry consists of 20 simple pictures depicting scenes that have ambiguous meanings test taker asked to tell a story about what is happening, give events leading up to picture and provide an ending no standardized scoring method, qualitative and clinician has to reply on clinical skills

Just Noticeable Difference (JND)

difference thresholds and JNDs measure the same things, but in different units e.g., 2 ounces is the point where a difference in weight is noticeable, 2 ounces = 1 JND amount of change necessary to predict the difference between two stimuli important concept in the field of psychophysics

Projective Tests

different from personality inventories in two basic ways: (1) stimuli in a projective test relatively ambiguous, (2) test taker is not limited to a small number of possible responses presented with stimuli and asked to interpret what he or she sees scoring is subjective

Garcia Effect

discovered by John Garcia illustrated in a classical conditioning experiment with thirst rats rats in group A allowed to lick a tube that releases sweet water with saccharin rats in group B allowed to lick another tube that releases unsweetened water while simultaneously flashing a light and making a clicking noise for half of group A and half of B, water (CS) paired with pain-inducing shock and other half, water (CS) paired with nausea inducing drug Group 1 - sweet water and shock Group 2 - sweet water and nausea Group 3 - bright-noisy water and shock Group 4 - bright-noisy water and nausea conditioning only successful for groups 2 and 3 - due to preparedness

James Olds and Peter Milner

discovered that stimulation of septal nuclei is intensely pleasurable and sexually arousing (1950s) demonstrated that when rats could stimulate their septal nuclei at will, the rats found it so pleasurable that they preferred it to eating, even after going 24 hours without food

General Paresis

disorder characterized be delusions of grandeur, mental deterioration, eventual paralysis and death due to brain deterioration caused by syphilis (untreatable until 1909), mental disorder seen in the syndrome caused by organic brain pathology discovery of this etiology was an important development idea that physiological factors could underlie mental disorders important advance

Schizophrenia

disorder characterized by gross distortions of reality and disturbances in the content and form of thought, perception and affect no single feature need be present to diagnose schizophrenia, person may have any or all of the following symptoms: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thought, inappropriate affect, catatonic behavior symptoms: positive and negative

Post-decisional Dissonance

dissonance emerging after making a decision

Carl Jung's Typology of Personality

distinguished two major orientations of personality: extroversion (orientation toward the external, objective world) and introversion (orientation toward inner, subjective world) one ordinarily dominant in personality but both present

T-scores

distribution has a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10 often used in test score interpretation e.g., T-score of 60 is 1 SD above the mean

Insomnia

disturbance affecting ability to fall asleep and/ or stay asleep

Behavior Therapies (Behavior Modification)

divided into two groups: those based on classical and those based on operant conditioning classical - flooding, implosion, systematic desensitization, conditioned aversion operant - contingency management, behavioral contract, time-out, Premack principle

Sleep Stage 1

dozing off, EEG shows appearance of sleep spindles (short bursts of alpha waves), slower frequencies and waveform more irregular and jagged, size or voltage of waves begins to increase

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)

e.g., Prozac (inhibits reuptake of serotonin, increasing supply in the synapse) type of antidepressant based on the concept that too much serotonin leads to manic states and too little is thought to produce depression

Reception

each sensory system has receptors to react to physical external energy

Allele

each specific trait is controlled by an alternative form of a gene (allele), each variation is represented by an allele that is either dominant or recessive for any given gene there are two alleles humans: both parents contribute a gene for each trait D D or D R --> dominant allele expressed R R --> recessive allele expressed

Between-Subjects Design

each subject exposed to only one level of each independent variable subjects randomly assigned to groups and subjects receive only one level of the IV possible that groups may differ on certain variables despite random assignment

Phineas Gage

early example of the relation between brain lesions and functional behavior 1848, Gage was injured when an explosive charge sent an iron rod through the front of his skull survived with relatively minor impairments, but notable differences in his personality became totally unpredictable, profane and intolerant changes due to prefrontal cortex damage

William Sheldon

early theorist of personality, defined physical/ biological variables that he related to human behaviors characterized people by body type, related somatotypes to personality types used terms: endomorphy (soft spherical), mesomorphy (hard, muscular and rectangular), ectomorphy (thin, fragile, lightly muscled) to characterize body types

Oval Window

edge of stirrup (stapes) rests here, entrance to inner ear

Saltatory Conduction

efficient conduction along a myelinated axon

Primary Prevention

efforts to seek out and eradicate conditions that foster mental illness and to establish the conditions that foster mental health e.g., increasing access to good prenatal and postnatal care, providing training in psychosocial skills to those who need it, promoting opportunities for education, training parents in child-raising skills proactive not reactive, seeks to stop mental illness before it occurs rather than treating the illness after it occurs

Erik Erickson

ego psychologist, provided direct extension of psychoanalysis to the psychosocial realm expanded and reworked Freud's stages to cover the entire lifespan, showed how negative events could have positive effects on adult personality

Defense Mechanisms

ego's recourse to releasing excessive pressures due to anxiety two common characteristics: (1) deny, falsify, or distort reality, (2) operate unconsciously eight main defense mechanisms: repression, suppression, projection, reaction formation, rationalization, regression, sublimation, displacement

Law of Proximity

elements close to one another tend to be perceived as a unit

Law of Good Continuation

elements that appear to follow in the same direction (such as a straight line or simple curve) tend to be grouped together tendency to perceive continuous patterns of stimuli rather than abrupt changes some researchers argue that phenomena of subjective contours may arise from this law

Encoding for Short-Term Memory

encoding for visual material likely to be based on phonology (acoustic) confusions occur with letters that sound alike e.g., D and T rather than letters that look alike e.g., D and O

Three Mental Processes or Stages of Memory

encoding: putting new information into memory storage: retaining information over time retrieval: recovery of stored material at a later time

Herman Witkin

endeavored to draw a relationship between an individual's personality and his or her perception of the world classified people according to their degree of field dependence (capacity to make specific responses to perceived stimuli - field independence vs. diffuse response to a perceived mass or undifferentiated stimuli - field dependence) field dependent - more influenced by opinions of others bc respond in a diffuse manner, not distinguishing separate ideas or own ideas from others'

Two Types of Negative Reinforcement

escape: behavior removes something undesirable (e.g., putting on seatbelt removes beeping noise) avoidance: organism gets a warning that an aversive stimulus will soon occur and appropriate response completely avoids aversive stimulus (e.g., stop sign warns you that it is unsafe to enter intersection without stopping)

Konrad Lorenz

ethologist (study animals in natural habitat not in the lab) who studied imprinting: rapid formation of an attachment bond between an organism and an object in the environment sought to determine which specific stimuli infants will attach to (specific feature of the mother, specific movement) believed that imprinting occurs during a critical period

Niko Tinbergen

ethologist who introduced experimental methods into the field, enabling the construction of controlled conditions outside of a laboratory

Batson's Electroshock Study

examined helping behaviors

Matched-Subjects Design

experimenter makes sure that both groups have, on average, roughly the same level of intelligence, age, ethnicity...etc.

Lateral Inhibition

explanation of simultaneous brightness contrast adjacent retinal cells inhibit one another if a cell is excited, neighboring cells will be inhibited (do not fire as often and corresponding area does not appear as bright) important part of visual perception because it sharpens and highlights the borders between dark and light areas

Fechner's Law

expresses the relationship between the intensity of the sensation and the intensity of the stimulus purpose of the equation to relate the intensity of the stimulus to the intensity of the sensation determined that sensation increases more slowly as intensity increases

Sleep Stage 2

fall more deeply asleep, EEG shows theta waves and becomes progressively slower and "K complexes" occur

Agoraphobia

fear of being in open places or in situations where escape might be difficult, tend to be uncomfortable going outside their homes alone

Turner's Syndrome

females with only one X chromosome results in failure to develop secondary sex characteristics physical abnormalities such as short fingers and unusually shaped mouths

Wilder Penfield

first used method to study brain regions involving electrically stimulating and recording brain activity before operating on brain, stimulated patient's cortex with an electrode (leads individual neurons to fire, activating behavioral or perceptual processes associated with those neurons) mapped out different areas on brain's surface neurosurgeons rely on assistance of patient who is alert and awake to make cortical maps no pain receptors in the brain

Sign Stimuli or Releasers

fixed-action patterns triggered by these (in general, one) sign stimuli - features of a stimulus that are sufficient to bring about a particular FAP e.g., Tinbergen's experiment on aggression in male sticklebacks (fish), red belly of invading male triggered aggression, painted red belly triggered attack (also a releaser) releasers - sign stimuli that function as signals from one animal to another (particular environmental stimulus that sets off a specific behavior)

John Locke

formed British empiricist school of thought along with others believed that all knowledge is gained through experience asserted that the child's mind is considered tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth and completely reliant on experiences with the environment born without predetermined tendencies

Chromosomes

formed by DNA strands together with proteins humans have 46 chromosomes organized into 23 homologous pairs (23rd determines the sex) XX - female XY - male nucleus of every cell in human body (except sperm or egg cells) holds all 23 pairs of chromosomes

Edward Titchener's Method of Introspection

formed the system of psychology called structuralism

Neurocognitive Disorders

formerly known as dementias neurological disorders characterized by a loss of intellectual functioning e.g., Alzheimer's disease (progressive memory loss), Huntington's chorea (loss of motor control) and Parkinson's disease (resting tremors and muscle rigidity)

Karl von Frisch

found that honeybees are able to communicate the direction and the distance of a food source to their fellow hive members by means of special movement patterns, called dances

G. Stanley Hall

founder of Developmental Psychology one of first to do empirical research on children

Carol Rogers

founder of humanist psychology

Two Types of Dissonant Situations

free-choice dissonance: occurs in a situation where a person makes a choice between several desirable alternatives (e.g., choosing between two men you like equally) forced-compliance dissonance: when an individual is forced into behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with his or her beliefs or attitudes, force may come from either anticipated punishment or reward (e.g., eat spinach get get cookie)

Frequency Theory vs. Place Theory

frequency theory - operative for tones up to about 500 Hz place theory - operative for tones higher than 4,000 Hz both - operative between 500 - 4,000 Hz

Four Lobes of Cortex

frontal, parietal (top back), occipital (back) and temporal (sides)

Haploid

gametes (sperm and egg cells) contain 23 single chromosomes rather than 46 pairs

Nodes of Ranvier

gaps along the myelin sheath where axon is unmyelinated depolarization occurs in these nodes action potential skips from node to node which is faster than one single impulse

Extrapyramidal Motor System

gathers information about body position (from areas such as the basal ganglia) and carries it to the brain and spinal cord helps make our movements smooth and posture steady

Proprioception

general term for our sense of bodily position and includes aspects of both the vestibular and kinesthetic senses

Token Economies

given for desirable behaviors and taken away for undesirable behaviors tokens can later be exchanged for array of rewards and privileges useful in mental hospitals where desirable behaviors might include aiding in self-care, making one's bed, interacting well...etc.

Contingency Management

goal of these operant therapies is to change client's behavior by changing reinforcement contingency that is associated with the behavior uses positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment and extinction to modify client behavior examples: behavioral contracts, time-out, token economies, and Premack principle

Structuralism

goal to break consciousness down into its elements, or specific mental structures

Superordinate Goals

goals best obtained through intergroup cooperation from Sherif's boys camp experiment - found that joint effort on superordinate goals dramatically improved intergroup relations

Frequency Distribution

graphic representation of how often each value occurs in a data set

Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders

grouping new to DSM-V but includes several conditions formerly classified elsewhere e.g., PTSD

Vestibular Sense

has to do with sense of balance and our bodily position relative to gravity receptors for balance are in semicircular canals in the inner ear, above and behind cochlea

Kinesthetic Sense

has to do with the awareness of body movement and position, specifically with muscle, tendon and joint position since receptors are at or near them

Subjective Contours

have to do with perceiving contours, therefore, shapes, that are not present in the physical stimulus leads to perception of shapes or lines that are not actually present

Adoption Studies

help us understand the environmental influences and genetic influence on behavior compare similarities between biological parent and adopted child to similarities between adoptive parents and adopted child IQ more similar to biological parents - IQ partially heritable criminal behavior among boys shows similar pattern of heritability

Brain: Three Basic Subdivisions

hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain

Obsessive-Compulsive Related Disorders

hoarding disorder, trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder), excoriation (skin-picking) disorder, body dysmorphic disorder

Syntax

how words are put together to form sentences child must notice the effects of word order on meaning

Nurture

human capabilities are determined by the environment and shaped by experience

Nature

human capabilities are innate (present at birth) and that individual differences are therefore largely a result of genetic differences

Hypothalamus

hunger and thirst; emotion subdivided into lateral hypothalamus, ventromedial hypothalamus and anterior hypothalamus serves homeostatic functions (self-regulatory processes) - metabolism, temperature, water balance key player in emotional experience during high arousal states, aggressive behavior and sexual behavior (manages "fight-or-flight" associated with sympathetic nervous system) helps control some endocrine (hormone) functions as well as autonomic nervous system contains osmoreceptors maintain water balance in body

Lateral Hypothalamus (LH)

hunger center because it has special receptors thought to detect when body needs more food or fluids tells you when to begin eating and drinking when destroyed in lab rats, refuse to eat or drink and die of starvation if not force-fed through tubes (aphagia) also plays a role in rage and fighting behaviors

Drive Behaviors

hypothalamus important in these behaviors - hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior

Time-Out Procedures

idea that undesirable behaviors occur in situations that reinforce the behavior, therefore, if you remove the client from the reinforcing situation before he receives reinforcement for behavior, behavior will not be reinforced and will cease

David McClelland

identified personality trait referred to as the need for achievement (N-Ach) people high in N-Ach tend to be concerned with achievement and have high pride in their accomplishments avoid high risks (to avoid failing) and low risk (easy tasks won't generate sense of achievement) set realistic goals and do not continue striving for goal if success is unlikely

Louis Thurstone

identified seven abilities which he called primary mental abilities (e.g., verbal comprehension, number ability, perceptual speed, general reasoning) and used factor analysis with factors more specific than Spearman's "g" and "s"

Johannes Muller

identified the law of specific nerve energies, states that each sensory nerve is excited by only one kind of energy (e.g., light or air vibrations) brain interprets any stimulation of that nerve as being that kind of energy sensation depends more on the part of the brain the nerves stimulate than the particular stimulus that activates them

Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome

if fetus does not produce or cannot use androgens, development will follow female pattern regardless of chromosomal genetic sex anatomic development of female fetus does not need female hormones, merely absence of androgens

Percentile

if scores form a normal distribution, you know how many standard deviations away from the mean your score is and can determine this tells us the percentage of scores that fall at or below the particular score, relative to other scores normal distribution: 2% - 14% - 34 % - 34% - 14% - 2%

Induced Motion

illusion of movement occurring when everything around the spot of light is moved

Moon Illusion

illusion that involves inappropriate size constancy scaling moon on horizon appears to be larger than when the moon is at its zenith, despite the fact that both are the same size one explanation - moon seems larger on horizon because of distance cues like buildings

Apraxia

impairment in the organization of motor action, "inability to act" characterized by an inability to execute a simple motor response to a verbal command, fragmented and disorganized (e.g., lights match again and again or lights it and puts in mouth) behavior not indicative of motor paralysis problems executing step-by-step sequence entailed in everyday acts projection areas in motor cortex remain more or less intact, problem from damage to association areas nearby which organize simple motor movements and predictable voluntary acts

Functional Fixedness

impediment to effective problem solving inability to use a familiar object in an unfamiliar way

Over-justification Effect

implication of the self-perception theory if you reward people for something they already like doing, they may stop liking it

David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel

important advances in the study of the visual cortex attributed to these two people worked on physiology of visual perception single-cell recording, pioneering work on individual brain cells in visual cortex of cats recorded electrical activity in brain to monitor ongoing activity (as opposed to stimulation for studying new activity) found neural basis for feature detection theory

Discriminative Stimulus (DS)

important concept in operant conditioning a stimulus condition that indicates the organism's behavior will have consequences pigeon pecking at key for food pellet but food will only come when light is on (discriminative stimulus)

Simultaneous Brightness Contrast

important factor in brightness perception target area of a particular luminance appears brighter when surrounded bu a darker stimulus than when surrounded by a lighter stimulus explanation of this is lateral inhibition

Risky Shift

important factor social psychologists consider in group decision making refers to the finding that group decisions are riskier than the average of the individual choices (and this average riskiness of the individual choices can be considered to be an estimate fo the groups original riskiness)

Babbling

important precursor to language almost all children babble without exception (even deaf infants) during their first year

Adaptation (Developmental)

important principle in Piaget's theory takes place through two complementary processes: assimilation and accommodation

Amygdala

important role in defensive and aggressive behaviors, dual effect on behavior studies of animals and humans with brain lesions when amygdala damaged, aggression and fear reactions are markedly reduced lesions to amygdala result in docility and hypersexual states

Charles Spearman

in favor of trait theories of personality and pioneered the statistical method of factor analysis suggested that individual differences in intelligence are largely due to variations in the amount of a general, unitary factor which he called "g" posited a second factor to describe individual differences in ability in performing specific tasks, called this factor "s"

Contralaterally

in most cases, one side of the brain communicates with the opposite side of the body cerebral hemisphere communicates... e.g., motor neurons of the left side of the brain activate movements on the right side of your body

Cognitive Structuralists

in opposition to the behaviorists orientation strongly influenced by work of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget

Ipsilaterally

in some cases, cerebral hemispheres communicate with the same side of the body e.g., smell

Preparedness

in-born tendency to associate certain stimuli with certain consequences rats biologically wired to associated illness with something they ingested and pair sights and sound with externally induced pain

Sleep Apnea

inability to breathe during sleep, sometimes for more than a minute people with this disorder awaken often during the night in order to breathe

Freud, Jung, Adler (major assumptions about what motivates behavior)

inborn instincts inborn archetypes striving for superiority

Helping Behavior

includes altruistic motivations but also includes behaviors that may be motivated by egoism and selfishness

Independent/ Dependent Variables

independent - variable whose effect is being studied and is the variable that the experimenter manipulates dependent - response that is expected to vary with differences in the independent variable

Temperament

individual differences as well as individual's pattern of responding to the environment thought to be somewhat heritable and emerge early in life (infancy) and be stable over time, pervasive across situations some disagreement in the field about how to conceptualize and measure it core concepts common to temperament theories - activity level, negative emotionality and sociability

Monoamine Oxidase (MAO) Inhibitors

inhibit the action of enzyme called MAO (normally breaks down and deactivates norepinphrine and serotonin in the synapse) by suppressing enzyme, MAO inhibitors increase supply of norepinephrine and serotonin

Endocrine System

internal communication network in body, uses chemical messengers called hormones somewhat slower than nervous system because hormones travel to target destinations through bloodstream (as opposed to fast communication of nervous system and neurotransmitters) involved in slow and continuous bodily processes (e.g., thyroid hormones regulate body growth) endocrine gland produces adrenaline (epinephrine) that increases available energy for "fight or flight" reactions also regulates sexual arousal and other functions associated with sexual reproduction

Cerletti and Bini (1938)

introduced the electroshock for the artificial production of convulsive seizures in psychiatric patients believed (incorrectly) that epileptic-like convulsions could cure schizophrenia

Danial Kahneman and Amos Tversky

investigated how our decision-making process can sometimes go awry found that humans use heuristics (shortcuts or rules of thumb to make decisions) heuristics essential to speedy and effective decision making

Somatoform Disorders

involve the presence of physical symptoms that suggest a medical condition but which are not fully explained by a medical condition afflicted person is not faking, but really believes that he or she has a medical condition e.g., conversion disorders, illness anxiety disorder

Norepinephrine

involved in controlling alertness and wakefulness implicated in mood disorders (depression and mania) theory: too much - mania, too little - depression

Real Motion

involves actually moving the light

Dissociative Fugue

involves amnesia that accompanies a sudden, unexpected move away from one's home or location of usual daily activities person in a fugue state is confused about his or her identity and may even assume a new identity

Norm-Referenced

involves assessing an individual's performance in terms of how the individual performs in comparison to others compare test taker's performance to that test's norms norms derived from standardized samples - large and representative of the population whom the particular test will be administered problem: population whom the tests will be administered can and does change

Representative Heuristic

involves categorizing things on the basis of whether they fit the prototypical, stereotypical, or representative image of the category often leads to correct decisions but can sometimes lead us astray

Semantic Priming

items in long-term memory are more likely to be encoded on the basis of their meaning assertion supported by this concept usual task - subject has to decide whether a stimulus is a word or a non-word subjects presented with pairs of words, some related (e.g., nurse-doctor) and some not (e.g., nurse-butter) response time quicker for related words

Encoding for Long-Term Memory

items in long-term memory likely to be encoded on the basis of their meaning

Robert Zajonc

key figure in mere exposure effect research, also suggested that the presence of others increases arousal and consequently enhances the emission of dominant responses (i.e., learning dance steps and making mistakes, people present = more mistakes vs. expert dancer likely to make correct moves, people present = correct moves enhanced)

Wernicke's Area

language comprehension, comprehension center for spoken and written language (input from auditory and visual cortex) associated with language reception and comprehension, area of brain enables us to understand spoken language serves in memory processing, emotional control and language electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe can evoke memories for past events (hippocampus associated with memory located in temporal)

Sample Size and Significance Level

larger the size of the sample, the smaller the difference between the groups has to be in order to be significant

Leadership and Communication

leaders of groups tend to engage in more communication than non-leaders artificially increasing the amount a person speaks increases person's perceived leadership status

Group Polarization

leading current explanation for the extremity shift in group decision making refers to the tendency toward riskiness or caution that becomes accentuated with discussion

Pons

lies above medulla and contains sensory and motor tracts between the cortex and the medulla

Neurotransmitter linked to Alzheimer's Disease

loss of Acetylcholine (CNS and PNS)

Osmoregulation

maintenance of water balance in the body performed by osmoreceptors in the hypothalamus

Wechsler Tests

major group of intelligence tests, not organized by age levels like Stanford-Binet all items of a given type grouped into subtests, items arranged in order of increasing difficulty within each subtest two broad subscales: (1) verbal scale based on information, vocabulary, and similar skills, and (2) performance scale derived from from tests of manipulative skill, eye-hand coordination and speed

Androgens

male development requires these hormones during critical stages of fetal development most important one: testosterone Y chromosome initiates production of androgens after conception normal development of testes and penis then proceeds

Klinefelter's Syndrome

males, possession of an extra X chromosome XXY configuration (sex chromosome abnormality) sterile and often have intellectual disability

Presynaptic Membrane

membrane of terminal button that faces the synapse contains vesicles (store neurotransmitters)

Habituation

method for studying visual perception in infants when a new stimulus is presented to an infant, the infant will orient toward it one stimulus is initially presented to the infant, once infant stops attending, experimenter introduces a new stimulus if infant cannot tell difference, infant will remain disinterested if infant orients to new stimulus, it is inferred that infant can tell the difference between the old and new

Guilford's Test of Divergent Thinking

most famous attempt to measure creativity subjects asked to produce as many creative answers to a question as possible e.g., "what can a brick be used for?" in divergent thinking, an individual's thoughts diverge along multiple paths of possibilities

Brainstem

most primitive region of the brain, first structures to develop evolutionarily

Behavioral Contract

negotiated agreement between two parties that explicitly states the behavioral change that is desired and indicates consequences of certain acts most often used when goal of therapy is to improve various interpersonal situations

Dopamine

neurotransmitter that plays an important role in movement and posture high concentrations found in basal ganglia (helps make movements smooth and posture steady) imbalances in dopamine have been found to play a role in schizophrenia

Neuron "Fires"

neurotransmitters (chemical substances) released into the space separating terminal buttons of one neuron from the dendrites of adjacent neurons (synapse) transforms chemical energy into electrical energy and vice versa

Monoamine (Catecholamine) Theory of Depression

neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin linked together in theory holds that too much NE and serotonin leads to mania while too little leads to depression more recent research has shown that it is not necessarily that simple

Second-Order Conditioning

neutral stimulus is paired with a CS rather than a UCS two stages: (1) regular classic conditioning (dog salivates to bell), (2) present new unconditioned stimulus (UCS) like a flash of light just before presenting the CS (bell ring) but without presenting food after several trials, dog will salivate to flash of light can do third-order conditioning by presenting a tick of metronome before light

Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)

new to the mood disorders in DSM-V presents in childhood and is characterized by negative mood accompanied by poor control of temper, even at minor provocations

Illumination

not the same thing as brightness physical, objective measure that is simply the amount of light falling on a surface

Fictional Finalism

notion that an individual is motivated more by his or her expectations of future than by past experiences human goals are based on subjective or fictional estimate of life's values rather than objective data from the past important concept in Alfred Adler's theory of personality

Conservation

notion that physical properties of matter (volume and quantity) do not change simply because the appearance of matter changes preoperational children focus on only one aspect aspect of Piaget's preoperational stage (2) of cognitive development

Type II Error

null is false and accept the null (accept the null when it is, in fact, false) statistically insignificant result obtained and null hypothesis was accepted when it was actually false probability of making a Type II error is called beta

Type I Error

null is true and reject the null (mistakenly reject the null when it is, in fact, true) really no difference between the population values mentioned in the null and a statistically significant result obtained by chance probability of making a Type I error is the same as the criterion of significance

Frequency

number of cycles per second, measured in Hertz (Hz) one Hz is one cycle per second inversely related to wavelength shorter wavelength, higher frequency human sensitivity ranges from 20 Hz to about 20,000 Hz with maximum sensitivity at about 1,000-3,000 Hz, depending on age and hearing ability

Reproductive Fitness

number of offspring that live to be old enough to reproduce animals act to increase reproductive fitness altruism is problematic for this

Law of Similarity

objects that are similar tend to be grouped together

Body Dysmorphic Disorder

obsessive-compulsive related disorder mistakenly believe that parts of their body are misshapen or ugly

Subtractive Color Mixture

occurs when we mix pigments, mixture of pigments is subtractive e.g., finger paints

Motion Aftereffect

occurs when you first view a moving pattern, such as stripes moving off to the right (or a waterfall), and then you view a spot of light, the spot of light will appear to move in the opposite direction

Retroactive Inhibition

occurs when you forget what you learned earlier as you learn something new e.g., if you learn List A, then List B, but find you can't recall List A anymore

Deindividuation

one of the major processes believed to be operating in Zimbardo's prison experiment refers to a loss of self-awareness and of personal identity

Septal Nuclei

one of the primary pleasure centers in the brain mild stimulation is reported to be intensely pleasurable and sexually arousing also acts to inhibit aggression, if damaged, aggressive behavior goes unchecked, resulting in vicious behavior (septal rage)

Accommodation

one of two processes in Piaget's theory of cognitive development occurs when the new information doesn't really fit into existing schemata, process of modifying existing schemata to adapt to this new information

Assimilation

one of two processes in Piaget's theory of cognitive development the process of interpreting new information in terms of existing schemata

Crying

one way infants are equipped to communicate needs

Shaping (Differential Reinforcement)

operant conditioning phenomenon reinforce successive approximations to desired behavior (e.g., want dog to fetch slippers but won't do this spontaneously) takes a long time and requires small steps reinforce desired response while extinguishing others

Narcotics

opium, heroine and morphine among most effective pain-relieving drugs available most bind directly to opiate receptors in brain, which normally respond to body's own naturally produced painkillers: endorphins alleviate pain by mimicking effects of natural pain killers

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

opposed John Locke believing that society was not only unnecessary but also a detriment to optimal development of a child wrote Emile (controversial book of its day)

Elaborative Rehearsal

organizing information/ material and associating it with information you already have in long-term memory

Semantic Memory

our memory for facts and knowledge of the external world (e.g., names of capital cities)

Episodic Memory

our memory of autobiographical events and experiences (e.g., childhood birthday party)

Three Main Parts to the Ear

outer ear, middle ear, inner ear

Procedural Memory

part of long-term memory involved in remembering how to perform tasks

Displacement

pent-up feelings (often hostility) are discharged on objects or people less dangerous than those objects or people causing the feelings e.g., a woman is harassed by her boss and goes home and provokes an argument with her husband

Philip Zimbardo and Anonymity Finding

people are more likely to commit antisocial acts when they feel anonymous within a social environment anonymous - diminished restraint of unacceptable behavior

S. S. Stevens and Steven's Power Law

performed some experiments that suggested that Fechner's law might be incorrect found that his results were best fit by another equation that relates the intensity of the stimulus to the intensity of the sensation

Acquisition

period during which an organism is learning the association of the stimuli

Competition

person acts for his or her individual benefit so that he or she can obtain a goal that has limited availability

Dissociative Disorders

person avoids stress by dissociating, or escaping from his or her identity person otherwise still has an intact sense of reality e.g. dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality) and depersonalization disorder

Depersonalization Disorder

person feels detached, like an outside observer of his or her mental processes and/ or behavior even during these times, person still has an intact sense of reality

Julian Rotter

personality research on internal and external locus of control internal locus - tend to believe that they can control their own destiny external locus - outside events and chance control their destiny locus of control and self-esteem are related attribute success to ability (internal) tend to have higher self-esteem than people who attribute success to luck or task ease (external) relationship between attributions of failure and self-esteem high self-esteem tend to attribute failures to bad luck or task difficulty (external) while low self-esteem attribute failures to lack of ability (internal)

Self-Reference Effect

phenomenon when individuals better remember information when it relates to themselves

Bystander Effect

phenomenon when individuals do not offer help when there are several people present e.g., Kitty Genovese case

Neo-Freudian Approaches

place more emphasis on current interpersonal relationship and life situations than on childhood experience and psychosexual development

Mere Exposure Hypothesis

possible explanation for spatial proximity being a factor in attraction based on familiarity mere repeated exposure to stimulus leads to enhanced liking for it

Semantic Feature-Comparison Model

proposed by Smith, Shoben and Rips in the early 1970s model suggests that concepts are represented by sets of feature, some of which are required for that concept and some of which are typical of that concept e.g., concept of "college" represented by the features "has faculty" (required), offers degrees (required), has fraternities (typical) semantic verification task sentence 1: "A robin is a bird." - compare characteristics of robins with birds - TRUE fairly quickly bc lots of overlap or FALSE quickly bc no overlap if there is only some overlap, will take longer to reach a decision

Equity Theory

proposes that we consider not only our own costs and rewards, but the costs and rewards of the other person we prefer that our ratio of costs to rewards be equal to the other person's ratio

Melanie Klein

psychoanalyst who worked with children important object relations theorist

Measures of Variation (Dispersion)

range, standard deviation, and variance all scores the same = no variation SD = typical distance of scores from the mean

Sensitive Period

rather than a critical period for language development, psychologists today believe there is a time when the environment has maximal effect on the development of a particular ability sensitive period for language before onset of puberty

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

reflex such as salivation, natural response to stimulus (does not need to be learned)

Maintenance Rehearsal

repeating information to keep it stored in short-term memory (e.g., a new phone number)

Stanley Schachter

research found that greater anxiety does lead to greater desire to affiliate situation with little anxiety - little desire to affiliate anxious people prefer the company of other anxious people, perceived similarity is a factor in the affiliation both anxiety and the need to compare oneself with other people may play roles in determining both when and with whom we affiliate

Peter Wolff

research with newborn babies using spectrograms to identify three distinct patterns of crying: basic cry (hunger), angry cry (frustration), pain cry (painful stimulus) even non-parent adults react with heart-rate accelerations following infant pain cries infants learn that caregivers respond to crying as early as 2 mos

Criterion of Significance (Alpha Level)

researcher decides before collecting data what probability represents statistical significance psychologists usually use 5% significance level equal to or less than 5%, results statistically significant

"Sham Rage"

researchers removed cat's cerebral cortex but left hypothalamus in place (1920s) - pattern of pseudo-aggressive behavior called "sham rage" lashing of tail, arching back, clawing and biting rage spontaneous or triggered by mildest touch random rage not necessarily directed at provocation (as in normal responses) concluded that cortex typically inhibits this type of response when removed cortex and hypothalamus together, no sham-rage, rougher stimulation required to provoke defensive behavior without cerebral cortex, little or no control over defensive or aggressive behavior without hypothalamus, cats lacked ability to defend themselves against threats to survival without both, lacked ability to coordinate and organize emotional responses

Id

reservoir of all psychic energy, everything psychological present at birth functions according to the pleasure principle: immediately discharge any energy buildup (relieve tension) primary process: id's response to frustration operating under the dictum of "obtain satisfaction now, not later" wish fulfillment: mental image of the object

Hypercomplex Cells

responses give information about more abstract concepts, such as object shape

Simple Cells

responses give information about the orientation and boundaries of an object

Complex Cells

responses give more advanced information about orientation, such as movement

Organ of Corti

rests on basilar membrane (runs length of cochlea), composed of thousands of hair cells which are the receptors for hearing (analogous to the rods and cones in the eye) when hair cells bend, bending is transduced into electrical charges in some way not fully understood signals transmitted out of cochlea along nerve fiber which connects to fibers in the auditory nerve

Classical Conditioning (Respondent Conditioning)

result of learning connections between different events e.g., learn that thunder follows lightening, smell of food followed by dinner

Neutral Stimulus

ringing of a bell, for example if presented several times before stimulus, neutral stimulus becomes paired with response

Rhodopsin

rods have only one photopigment, photochemical made up of vitamin A derivative called retinal and a protein called opsin when a molecule of rhodopsin absorbs a photon of light, the pigment begins to decompose or split, into retinene and opsin (bleaching) takes time to regenerate after bleaching rhodopsin regenerates and you can see better in the dark people with vitamin A deficiencies have trouble seeing in the dark

Conditioned Response (CR)

salivation or reflex in response to conditioned stimulus (CS) or bell

Test-Retest Method

same test administered to same group of people twice estimates the inter-individual stability of the test scores over time

Tardive Dyskinesia

schizophrenia patients given antipsychotic medication (dopamine transmission disruption) over a long period of time ultimately show side effects resembling the motor disturbances of Parkinson's disease

Personality Inventory

self-rating device usually consisting of between 100-500 statements subject asked to determine if the given statements apply to him or her quite reliable but veracity of responses not guaranteed (e.g., perceived social acceptability of responses)

Two Types of Declarative Memory

semantic memory (remembering general knowledge, especially meanings of words and concepts) episodic memory (memories for particular events, or episodes that you have personally experienced)

Spreading Activation Model

semantic memory organized into map of interconnected concepts; key is the distance between the concepts shorter distance between words on model, closer words are related semantically e.g., ambulance and fire engine are more closely related than ambulance and street using semantic verification task, subjects respond to questions about ambulances and fire engine quicker than questions about ambulances and streets

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational

Three Kinds of Nerve Cells

sensory, motor and interneurons

Libido

sex drive form of energy by which life instincts perform their work Freud believed it to be present at birth rather than lying dormant until puberty believed that libidinal energy and drive to reduce libidinal tension were the underlying dynamic forces that accounted for human psychological processes

Standard Error of Measurement (SEM)

smaller SEM means better test reliability no test perfect (zero would be the best)

Social Smiling

smile is one of earliest communicative signals to appear in infants smiling associated with facelike patterns develops initially almost any face is sufficient to elicit a smile but at about 5 mos, only familiar faces tend to elicit a smile

Peripheral Nervous System: Two Subdivisions

somatic and autonomic nervous systems

Diploid

somatic cells in human body are diploid (contain 46 pairs of chromosomes)

Conversion Disorder

somatoform disorder characterized by unexplained symptoms affecting voluntary motor or sensory functions e.g., paralysis with no neurological damage or blindness with no evidence of damage to visual system or brain used to be referred to as hysteria

Sensorimotor Cortex

somatosensory cortex (in parietal lobe) and motor cortex (in frontal lobe) very closely related, so interrelated that they are sometimes described as a single unit

Machiavellianism

someone who is manipulative and deceitful (personality traits) high scorers tend to agree with statements such as "most people don't really know what's best for them" "the best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear" "anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble" successful manipulators

Pinna

sound wave first reaches fleshy part of ear visible from the outside main function is to channel sound waves into the auditory canal, also in outer ear

Synaptic Cleft (Synapse)

space between terminal button and dendrite

Kinetic Depth Effect

special kind of motion parallax when an object rather than the perceiver moves, motion of that object gives us cues about relative depth of the parts of the object

Rapid Eye Movement (REM)

spend proportionately more time in this stage as infants than during any other time in the life span also called "desynchronized sleep" and "paradoxical sleep" - EEG brain waves look a lot like beta waves limbs are relaxed but eyes constantly moving

Meta-Analysis

statistical procedure that can be used to make conclusions on the basis of data from different studies can use this method to combine the results of two or more studies and come up with a more general conclusion

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

stimulus such as food, results in unconditioned response (UCR)

Freud's Model of Personality

structural dynamic model: id (all psychic energy, everything psychological present at birth), ego (guides or inhibits the activity of the id's pleasure principle), superego

Edward Titchner (1867-1927)

structuralist, used method of introspection, asked subjects to report on their current conscious experiences work spawned three other systems of thought in reaction to structuralism: functionalism, behaviorism and Gestalt psychology Wundt-trained psychologist and Wundt also relied on method of introspection

Thalamus

structure within forebrain that serves as an important relay station for incoming sensory information (all senses except for smell) sorts incoming senses and transmits them to appropriate areas of the cerebral cortex sensory "way station"

Eric Kandel

studied animal simple neural networks in aplysia (sea snails with large easily identifiable nerve cells) helped to understand the link between neurotransmitters and behavior studied reflexes that govern the movement of gills (usually withdraw gills with a light touch), learned this stimulation was harmless and stopped withdrawing (habituation) neurons governing gill-withdrawal reflex released smaller amounts of neurotransmitters then before demonstrated changes in synaptic transmission underlie changes in behavior

Muzafer Sherif's Conformity Study

studied conformity (norm formation) in the autokinetic experiment where individuals rated an amount of light movement (all movement was an illusion), when same individuals rated the same movement in group setting, their ratings changed to conform to the group's ratings individuals conformed to the group, judgements converged on some group norm

Elizabeth Loftus

studied eyewitness memories and the tendency for eyewitnesses to be influenced or confused by misleading information much of eyewitness memory (and testimony) can be erroneous for many reasons work influential in legal and psychological fields recently been studying accuracy of repressed memories that return later in life

Carol Gilligan

studied gender differences in morality critic of Kohlberg's work (especially postconventional phase), asserts that males and females adopt different perspectives on moral issues and that these differences stem from the different ways in which boys and girls are raised Kohlberg's work was done only with males and should not be used to evaluate moral development of females women adopt an interpersonal orientation that is neither more or less mature than the rule-bound thinking of men argues that women's morality tends to be focused on caring and compassion, they are concerned with relationships and social responsibilities

Sir Frederick Bartlett

studied memory in a classic study that used the "War of the Ghosts," a Native American folk tale found subject reconstructed the story in line with their own culture, expectations and schema for a ghost story found that prior knowledge and expectations influence recall

Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga

studied the effects of severing the corpus callosum (large collection of fibers connecting left and right hemispheres) studied epileptic patients whose corpus callosum was severed as a last resort effort to limit convulsive seizures determined that cc allows a sharing of information between the two hemispheres in a coordinated fashion "split brain" patient - each hemisphere has its own function and specialization that is no longer accessible to the other

Within-Subjects Design (Repeated-Measures Design)

subject's own performance is the basis of comparison each subject exposed to more than one condition allowing the researcher to separate the effects of individual differences in intelligence from the effects of the IV

Eagly

suggested that gender differences in conformity were not due to gender per se, but to differing social roles

E.G. Boring

suggested that the development of psychology is due not primarily to the efforts of great people, but to Zeitgeist (changing spirit of the times)

Clark Hull's Theory of Motivation (Drive-Reduction Theory)

suggested that the goal of behavior is to reduce biological drives, reinforcement occurs when a biological drive is reduced - innate drives determine behavior

State-Dependent Learning

suggests that recall will be better if your psychological or physical state at the time of recall is the same as your state when you memorized the material e.g., if you were upset when you memorized the material, you will probably have better recall if you are upset

Robert Sternberg's Triarchic Theory

suggests that there are three aspects to intelligence: componential (performance on tests), experiential (creativity) and contextual (street smarts/ business sense)

Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion

suggests two routes to persuasion: central route (when issue is important to us) - strong arguments will change our minds more than weak peripheral route (issue not very important to us or we can't clearly hear the message) - strength of persuader's argument doesn't matter - how, whom and in what surroundings argument is being presented matters

Basic Circuit Auditory Nerve Projects to...

superior olivary complex inferior colluculus medial geniculate nucleus in the thalamus temporal cortex

Victor Frankl

survivor of Nazi concentration camps, closely identified with the human search for meaning to existence believed that mental illness and maladjustment stems from a life of meaninglessness

George Sperling

suspected that whole-report procedure (4 of 9 items remembered in sensory memory) might not be an accurate indication of the capacity of sensory memory devised method called partial-report procedure (also used a 3x3 matrix of letters and flashed array for a fraction of a second) asked subjects only to report a row of the array tone after presentation indicated which row to report (don't know ahead of time which to report) subject's report was nearly perfect (suggesting the capacity for sensory memory was about nine items)

The Method of Loci

system of associating information with some sequence of places with which you are familiar people can remember things for months if they associate what they have to learn with places well known to them

Functionalism

system of thought in psychology that was concerned with studying how mental processes help individuals adapt to their environments

Psychodynamic Orientation

system of thought that arose out of clinical, rather than academic or research setting originating from work of Sigmund Freud stress the role of the subconscious conflicts in the development of functioning and personality

Fetal Period

takes place during third month marked by beginning of measurable electrical activity in the brain fetus continues to grow

Mnemonic Devices

techniques used to improve the likelihood of remembering something

Transformational Rules

tell us how we can change one structure into another e.g., how to change a sentence into a question

Halo Effect

tendency for bias in evaluations of other people tendency to allow a general impression about a person to influence other, more specific evaluations about a person occurs when we perceive a person in a certain way (e.g., likeable) based on a single attribute (e.g., good looking) believe that people are generally good or generally bad

Categorical Perception

the ability to distinguish between differences in sound that do not denote differences in meaning and those differences in sound that do denote differences in meaning

Fluid Intelligence

the ability to quickly grasp relationships in novel situations and make correct deductions from them solving analogies requires this type of intelligence

Absolute Threshold

the minimum of stimulus energy that is needed to activate a sensory system amount of stimulus a person can perceive e.g., how bright or how loud a stimulus must be before it is perceived

Color Constancy

the perceived color of an object does not change when we change the wavelength of the light we see when you put on amber sunglasses, you can still identify the colors of most of the objects you see

Androgyny

the state of being simultaneously very masculine and very feminine

Proxemics

the study fo how individuals space themselves in relation to others (personal space)

Pitch

the subjective experience or perception of the frequency of the sound what distinguishes between a low tone and a high tone

Cornea

the transparent layer forming the front of the eye gathers and focuses incoming light .

Lens

the transparent structure behind the pupil and iris that changes shape to help focus images on the retina controls curvature of light coming in and can focus near or distant objects on retina

Sandra Bem

theory on gender identity related to personality people can achieve high scores on measures of both masculinity and femininity on personality inventories follows that masculinity and femininity must be two separate gender dimensions

Conditioned Aversion

therapy based on classical conditioning used when client is attracted to a behavior that client or therapist find undesirable used to help people with alcohol problems, addictions to cigarettes and various fetishes stimulus that attracts client becomes paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus associated with punishment

Carl Jung's Four Psychological Functions

thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting typically, one is more differentiated than the other three

Antipsychotic Drugs

thorazine, chlorpromazine, phenothiazine, and haloperidol (Haldol) effective in treating delusional thinking, hallucinations, and agitation commonly associated with schizophrenia most thought to block receptor sites for dopamine, making it difficult for dopamine to bind to postsynaptic membrane thought to reduce sensitivity to dopamine, reducing delusions, hallucinations and agitation

Tricyclic Antidepressants

thought to reduce depression by facilitating the transmission of norepinephrine or serotonin at the synapse chemical structure makes them tricyclic block reuptake of monoamines

Postsynaptic Potential

tiny electrical charge generated after neurotransmitter binds to receptor site on dendrite can make neuron more (excitatory postsynaptic potential, EPSP) or less (inhibitory postsynaptic potential, ISPS) likely to fire

Holophrasis

toddler's use of a single word to express a complete thought e.g., "apple" used to label apple, ask for apple, ask if an object is an apple...etc.

Stereoscope

tool used in stereopsis research go back to the 19th C and give impression of depth to a flat picture by presenting to each eye a separate and slightly different picture, corresponding to the retinal image that would have occurred in each eye had the three-dimensional scene been viewed normally

Phenotype

total collection of expressed traits that constitute an individual's observable characteristics identical phenotypes can have different genotypes

Genotype

total genetic complement (genetic makeup) of an individual identical genotypes can have different phenotypes (due to environment)

Partial Reinforcement Effect

train rat A that each time it presses a lever it will receive food and rat B that every other time it presses lever it will receive food extinction training would take longer for rat B (occasional reinforcement rat) e.g., gambling, behavior reinforced occasionally

Raymond Cattell

trait theorist, used factor analysis to measure personality in a more comprehensive way attempting to account for the underlying factors that determine personality divided mental abilities into two major types: fluid intelligence (gradually increases in childhood, levels off in young adulthood and decreases in advanced age) and crystallized intelligence (increases throughout lifetime, dependent on education/ experience) identified 16 basic traits (relatively permanent reaction tendencies) in individuals that constitute the building blocks of personality

Somatosensory Cortex

transduction occurs in the receptors and information travels to this area of the parietal lobe of the brain

Sublimation

transforming unacceptable urges into socially acceptable behaviors

Sensory Neurons (Afferent Neurons)

transmit sensory information from receptors in the spinal cord and brain transmit information through afferent fibers (ascend to top of brain)

Three Basic Types of Research

true experiments: randomly assign subjects into conditions, controls or manipulates the levels of IV quasi-experiments: no random assignment or control over variables, no causal determinations correlational studies: no manipulation of IV

Nuclei in the Midbrain

two collectively called colliculi superior colliculus: receives visual sensory input (seeing) inferior colliculus: receives sensory information from the auditory system, role in reflexive reactions to sudden noises

Cerebral Hemispheres

two halves of the cortex

Muller-Lyer Visual Illusion

two horizontal lines are same length but arrow line pointing out vs. in make the lines appear to be different lengths

Ponzo Visual Illusion

two identical lines across a pair of converging lines (railroad tracks), line between wider converging lines appears to be smaller than line between narrower converging lines

Peptides and Neuropeptides

two or more amino acids joined together, involved in neurotransmission synaptic action of neuromodulators (neuropeptides) involves a more complicated chain of events in the postsynaptic cell than that of regular neurotransmitters relatively slow and have longer effects on postsynaptic cell than neurotransmitters endorphines (natural pain killers) - most important to know endorphines and enkephalins are very similar in structure to morphine and other opiates

Type Theorists and Trait Theorists

type: attempt to characterize people according to specific types of personality trait: attempt to ascertain the fundamental dimensions of personality

Belief Perseverence

under certain conditions, people will hold beliefs even after those beliefs have been shown to be false when people are asked to provide their own explanation for a statement and then told it is false, they tend to continue to believe the statement to be true

Deep (Abstract) Grammatical Structure

underlying form that specifies the meaning of the sentence sentences can have the same deep meaning but different surface structures

Confounding Variables

unintended independent variables researchers need to discount any other variables to infer causal relationship between IV and DV

Hans Eysenck

used factor analysis to develop a theory of personality, determined that the broad dimensions of personality were types followed by more specific traits goal was to use scientific methodology to test Jung's division of extroversion and introversion distinguished two dimensions in which human personalities differed: introversion-extroversion and emotional stability-neuroticism added psychoticism later on

Cones

used for color vision and for perceiving fine detail most effective in bright light and allow us to see chromatic and achromatic colors greater sensitivity to fine detail than rods

George Kelly

used himself as a model to theorize about human nature, and set aside the traditional concepts of motivation, drive, unconscious emotion and reinforcement hypothesized the notion of the individual as scientist, person who devises and test predictions about behavior of significant people in their life, scheme of anticipation for what others will do psychotherapy is a process of insight whereby the individual acquires new constructs that will allow him or her to successfully predict troublesome events

ANOVA

used to compare the means of more than two groups estimate how much group means differ from each other by comparing the between-group variance to the within-group variance using a ratio called F ratio can also be used to determine if there is any interaction between two or more IVs

t-test

used to compare the means of two groups

Availability Heuristic

used when we try to decide how likely something is, using this heuristic we make our decisions baed upon how easily similar instances can be imagined use the information most readily available in memory to make our decisions often leads us to a correct decision but not always

Base-Rate Fallacy

using prototypical or stereotypical factors rather than actual numerical information about which category is more numerous

Nondominant Hemisphere (Right)

usually the right hemisphere, associated with intuition and creativity, music and spatial processing spatial processing faces, music, emotions, creativity, sense of direction

Levels of the Independent Variable

values the IV has in a study e.g., no-protein, low-protein and high-protein (three levels of the IV)

Catatonic Motor Behavior

various extreme behaviors characteristic of some people with schizophrenia patient's spontaneous movement and activity may be greatly reduced or patient may maintain a rigid posture, refusing to be moved at the other extreme, catatonic behavior may include useless bizarre movements not caused by any external stimuli

Extirpation (Ablation)

various parts of the brain are surgically removed and the behavioral consequences are observed

Graded Potentials

voltage of postsynaptic potentials in the dendrites can vary in intensity not subject to all-or-nothing law voltage depends on how much receptor sites are stimulated by neurotransmitters spread out from original site of stimulation, voltage weakens as they travel along dendrites (action potentials retain strength)

Reciprocity Hypothesis

we tend to like people who indicate that they like us (inverse is hypothesized) attractions are a two-way street - evaluate a person's qualities and take into account the person's evaluation of us

Type A/ Type B

well-known type theory that divides personalities into two types Type A: characterized by behavior that tends to be competitive and compulsive, more prone to heart disease and more prevalent among middle/ upper-class men Type B: generally laid-back and relaxed

Law of Closure

when a space is enclosed by a contour it tends to be perceived as a figure refers to the fact that certain figures tend to be perceived as more complete (or closed) than they really are

Minimal Justification Effect (Insufficient Justification Effect)

when behavior can be justified by means of external inducements (e.g., $20), no need to change internal cognitions, BUT when external justification is minimal, need to reduce your dissonance by changing internal cognitions (e.g., boring task wasn't so bad) related to Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) experiment

All-or-Nothing Law

when depolarization reaches critical threshold (-50 mV) neuron is going to fire, each and every time once action potential begins, its voltage always peaks at the same intensity (+35 mV) regardless of the stimulation that triggered it

Zygote

when gamete cells (sperm and egg) combine to form a single cell also referred to as a fertilized egg divides into two shortly after fertilization

Reative Schizophrenia

when onset of schizophrenia symptoms is intense and sudden, prognosis for recovery is better

Reactance

when social pressure to behave in a particular way becomes so blatant that the person's sense of freedom is threatened, the person will tend to act in a way to reassert a sense of freedom if you try too hard to persuade someone of something, that person will chose to believe the opposite

Recency Effect

when the most recent information we have about an individual is most important in forming our impressions e.g., words at the end of a list are remembered best

Neurotransmitter involved in alertness/ wakefulness and implicated in Mood Disorders (depression, mania)

Norepinephrine

Piaget and Language

believed that development of thought directed development of language how we use language depends on cognitive stage

Fundamental Attribution Error

bias in attributional process toward making dispositional rather than situational attributions tendency for individuals to attribute other people's behavior to internal dispositions (personality traits) rather than situational explanations e.g., tendency to look for personality flaws in Kitty Genovese witnesses rather than situational influences

Predictive Validity

type of criterion-related validity that determines whether test performance can predict future performance

Heinrick Kluver and Paul Bucy

performed studies that linked the amygdala with defensive and aggressive behavior in monkeys

Harry Harlow

studied early relationship between caregivers and their infants suggesting early bonding is important to emotional behavior used baby Rhesus monkeys separated from their mothers took newborns from their mothers 6-12 hours after birth and placed them in cages with so-called surrogate mothers (cylinder with feeding nipple and other was wood cylinder covered in terrycloth with no food) monkeys preferred cloth mother - "contact comfort" was more essential in bond formation than physical needs observed subsequent social interactions after being raised by these surrogates wire-mother monkeys less socially adept and took longer to integrate than cloth monkeys socially isolated for less than a year could be brought back into society by "therapist" monkeys

R.C. Tyron (1942 Study)

studied inheritance of maze-running ability in lab rats given equal number of trials to familiarize themselves with the maze divided into three groups based on ability: "maze-bright" rats, "maze-dull" rats and intermediate rats used selective breeding of rats with similar traits next generation tested on ability difference between maze-bright and maze-dull rats intensified with each generation evidence that learning ability has a genetic basis specific to the type of maze tested

Theory of Kin Selection

suggests that animals act to increase their inclusive fitness rather than their reproductive fitness inclusive: not only number of offspring that survive to reproductive age but also the number of relatives who survive to reproductive age

Inhibition Theory

suggests that forgetting is due to the activities that have taken place between original learning and the later attempted recall two basic types: retroactive and proactive inhibition

Signal Detection Theory

suggests that other, nonsensory factors influence what the subject says she senses (experiences, motives and expectations) e.g., a cautious person may want to be absolutely certain that he or she heard a tone before responding "yes," someone else might only have an inkling before responding "yes" - response bias: tendency of subjects to respond in a particular way due to nonsensory factors stimulus presented (signal) or not presented (noise trials) subject reports signal or no signal (hit or miss) HIT - yes and signal present MISS - no and signal present FALSE ALARM - yes and no signal CORRECT REJECTION - no and no signal

Young-Helmholtz Theory (Trichromatic Theory)

suggests that the retina contains three different types of color receptors (cones), which are differently sensitive to different colors one maximally sensitive to red, one blue and one green all colors are produced by combined stimulation of these receptors ratio of activity in the receptors that determines color Young demonstrated that you can mix the three primary lights to produce all of the other colors

Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory

suggests we learn from observing others in social contexts one of the most influential theories on aggression that is also focused on social context theory holds that aggression is learned through modeling (direct observation), or through reinforcement

Negative Symptoms

symptoms that involve the absence of normal or desired behavior e.g., flat affect or blunted emotional expression

Validity

extent to which a test actually measures what it is intended to measure evidence used to examine validity depends on the nature of the test itself and, more specifically, what the test is used for

Spatial Proximity

factor in attraction people generally develop greater liking for someone who lives within a few blocks than for someone who lives in a different neighborhood possible explanation - greater opportunity, accessible to each other may also increase intensity of initial interactions

Adaptation (Sensation and Perception)

factor in how we perceive brightness when you adapt to a darker environment you experience dark adaptation can't see anything at first, then eyes adapt light reaching photoreceptors before entering dark bleached photopigment in the rods when you walk into light, you experience light adaptation

Object Relations Theory

falls under realm of psychodynamic theories of personality "object" refers to the symbolic representation of a significant part of the young child's personality object relations theorists look at the creation and development of these internalized objects in young children important theorists: Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, Margaret Mahler, Otto Kernberg

Illness Anxiety Disorder

formerly hypochondriasis person is preoccupied with fears that he or she has a serious disease, fears are based on a misinterpretation of one or more bodily signs or symptoms fears continue even after complete medical exams have proven person doesn't have disease she or he claims to have

Persistent Depressive Disorder

formerly known as dysthymia doesn't meet criteria for major depressive disorder, but essentially characterized by similar, less severe symptoms

Alternate-Form Method

examinees given two different forms of a test, taken at two different times

Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank

example of a sentence completion test, projective technique researchers and clinicians use test taker provided with 40 sentence stems and asked to complete them theory is that test taker will fill in the blanks with whatever is on his or her mind

Hyperphagia

excessive eating due to lesion in Ventromedial Hypothalamus (VMH) Very Hungry (VH) - Ventromedial Hypothalamus (VH)

John Darley and Bibb Latané Study on Diffusion of Responsibility

if subject is only one present during an emergency, 100% of responsibility falls on them - act if others are present, may sway person toward not acting or helping subjects believed they were participating in a discussion of college life via intercom each person allowed 2 mins to speak and only that mic was turned on no one was actually listening or talking to subject one prerecorded subject spoke of tendency toward epileptic seizures - then later pretended to have a seizure (situation not ambiguous and could not tell how other 'bystanders' were reacting) found that subjects who thought they were the only ones listening always reported seizure when thought 2 others were listening, 85% reported when 4 others listening, 62% reported results supported diffusion of responsibility hypothesis

Reticular Formation

extends from the hindbrain into the midbrain and is composed of a number of interconnected nuclei primarily regulates arousal and alertness (sleeping and waking) - brain stem anesthetics cause unconsciousness in part by depressing activity of this area associated with Arousal, Alertness and Attention if disconnected from cortex, patient will sleep for most of the day

James Stoner

conducted 1968 experiment in which couples were presented dilemmas to study risky shift in controversial situations found a shift toward caution instead of risk nature of the dilemma may determine the direction of the shift

Kurt Lewin's Study

conducted research to determine the effects of different leadership styles manipulated leadership styles used to supervise boys in an after-school program: autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire laissez-faire: less efficient, organized and satisfying democratic: more satisfying and cohesive autocratic: more hostile, aggressive, dependent on leader, work greater but motivation and increase not strong

Fritz Heider's Balance Theory

consistency theory concerned with the way three elements are related: the person whom we're talking about (P), some other person (O), and a thing, idea, or some other person (X). Balance exists when all three fit together harmoniously. When there isn't balance, there will be stress, and a tendency to remove this stress by achieving balance balance exists in triad if 1 or 3 positives, unbalanced if 0 or 2 positives

Anna Freud

founder of ego psychology, modified Freud's theory (her father) suggested that psychoanalytic theory and psychotherapy could profit from more direct investigation of the conscious ego and its relation to the world, unconscious and superego

B. F. Skinner

founder of operant conditioning (part of behaviorist school of thought), agreed with Thorndike that environmental consequences affect probability of a response but rejected stress on mentalistic terms such as "annoying" or "satisfying" developed the study of operant conditioning: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment and extinction considered personality to be a collection of behavior that happens to have been sufficiently reinforced to persist "personality" is the result of behavioral development of an organism

Consistency Theories

hold that people prefer consistency, and will change or resist changing attitudes based upon this preference

Gestalt Psychology

how individuals perceive and make sense of perceptual forms

Karen Horney

postulated that the neurotic personality is governed by one of ten needs - each directed toward making life and interactions bearable e.g., need for affection and approval, need to exploit others, need for self-sufficiency and independence neurotic needs resemble healthy ones except - disproportionate in intensity, indiscriminate in application, partially disregard reality and they have a tendency to provoke intense anxiety primary concept: basic anxiety child's early perception of self is important three strategies: moving toward people to obtain good will, moving against people to obtain upper hand, moving away or withdrawing from people - health people use all three

Edward Tolman

part of behaviorist school, coined the term "cognitive map": mental representation of a physical space conducted experiments with rats in mazes to show that behavior is not always simply a matter of stimulus-response reinforcement learning showed that rats form cognitive maps of mazes if familiar path through maze was blocked, rats able to utilize cognitive map to adopt an alternative route

Declarative Memory

part of long-term memory that is responsible for remembering events and facts episodic memory and semantic memory are two components of declarative memory

Iconic Memory

part of sensory memory

Door-in-the-face Effect

people who refuse a large initial request are more likely to agree to a later smaller request

Cooperation

persons act together for their mutual benefit so that all of them can obtain a goal

Social Loafing

phenomenon that occurs when individuals make less of an effort when working in a group than they would if they were working individually examples: tug of war, clapping at a sporting event, collective farm productivity

Hawthorne Effect

phenomenon that occurs when subject improve their behavior when they know they are being assessed, developed out of the Hawthorne studies conducted on factory workers - researchers manipulated levels of lighting to test if it impacted productivity and found that all productivity improved, concluded that improvement was due to workers knowing they were being experimentally measured

Theodore Newcomb's Study

political norms demonstrated influence of group norms study at a small women's college - wealthy, conservative but college had liberal atmosphere students increasingly accepted the norms of their community (more liberal each year) 1936 presidential election: Rep votes, 66% Fresh., 43% Sopho., 15% Jun. + Sen. most liberals remained liberal, most who married conservative returned to conservative beliefs

Carl Jung

preferred to think of libido as psychic energy in general (not just rooted in sexuality as Freud theorized it) ego - conscious mind unconscious - personal unconscious and collective unconscious (system shared by all humans, residue of the experiences of our early ancestors) believed that systems, attitudes and functions all interact in dynamic ways to form personality

Primary and Secondary Circular Reactions

primary: infant begins to coordinate separate aspects of movement advent of goal-oriented behavior secondary: directed toward manipulation of objects in the environment aspects of Piaget's sensorimotor (1) stage of cognitive development

Short-term Memory

refers to our capacity to hold a small amount of information in the mind for a short period of time

Construct Validity

refers to the extent that a test measures a theoretical construct how well performance on the test fits the theoretical framework related to what it is you want the test to measure

Convergent Validity

refers to the extent that a test of a particular construct converges on (or correlates with) another test of the same construct

Discriminant Validity

refers to the extent that a test of a particular construct should not be related (or correlated) to a test of a dissimilar construct, opposite of convergent validity

Groupthink

refers to the tendency of decision-making groups to strive for consensus by not considering discordant information

Primacy Effect

refers to those occasions when first impressions are more important than subsequent impressions e.g., words at the beginning of a list are remembered well, but not as well as words at the end

Style of Life

represents manifestation of the creative self and describes a person's unique way of achieving superiority (as opposed to inferiority) family environment is crucial in molding the person's style of life important concept of Alfred Adler's theory of personality

Preoperational Stage

second stage in Piaget's stages of cognitive development: verbal and egocentric thinking, centration - egocentrism & conservation 18-24 months to 7 years marked by representational thought, creativity, and insight milestones

Split Brain

severed corpus callosum (connects two hemispheres of the brain), last resort procedure conducted in severely epileptic patients, side effects: when stimulus presented to left visual field of split brain patient, cannot verbally name what he has seen (hemispheres no longer communicating)

Clark and Clark (1947)

studied ethnic self-concept among ethnically white and black children using the famous doll preference task showed doll and asked questions about how each child felt about each doll majority of white and black children preferred the white doll over the black doll highlighted the negative effects of racism and minority group status on self-concept of black children used to argue against school segregation subsequent research has shown black children hold positive views of own ethnicity

M.J. Lerner

studied tendency of individuals to believe in a just world (BJW), i.e., good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people research centers around measures used to indicate degree to which people believe in a just world strong belief in a just world increases the likelihood of "blaming the victim" since just world denies possibility of innocent victims (bad people if bad things happen)

Irving Janis

studied the ways that group decisions often go awry, examined thousands of documents about situations in which government officials had made what he considered to be serious blunders (e.g., Bay of Pigs and Pearl Harbor) believed that judgement failed bc of "groupthink"

Robber's Cave Experiment (Person)

study on cooperation and competition conducted by Muzafer Sherif created hostilities through competition and then reduced hostilities through cooperation took place at a boy's camp in Robber's Cave, OK two groups of boys arrived and kept separate first week - cooperative activities (resulted in: status hierarchy, role differentiation, norms for behavior, names for groups adopted) next week - groups informed about each other's existence and a four day competitive tournament staged (created hostilities) next step to reduce hostilities - mere contact between groups (movies, meals), then to solve a problem together (need funds to see movie, truck broke down) --> superordinate goals

Concrete Operational Stage

third stage in Piaget's stages of cognitive development: children can conserve and take the perspective of others into account but are limited to working with concrete objects or information directly available, difficulty with abstract thought 7 to 11 years

Carl Jung's Major Archetypes

thought or image that has an emotional element images of our common experiences (collective unconscious) referred to as archetypes deep elements of the collective unconscious (include but not limited to): the shadow (dark side of human behavior, animal instincts), the self (regulating center of the psyche), the persona (one's public image), the anima (female aspect in men), animus (masculine - helps us understand gender)

Concurrent Validity

type of criterion-related validity that measures the correlation between a test and a criterion measure (such as GPA), but the test and criterion are collected at the same time (unlike predictive validity)

Pituitary Gland

"master gland" of the endocrine system works directly with hypothalamus (feeding, flighting, fleeing, and sexual functioning) located at the base of the brain, divided into two parts: anterior (releases hormones that regulate activities of endocrine glands, controlled by hypothalamus) and posterior secretes various hormones into bloodstream that travel to other endocrine glands located elsewhere in the body to activate them, once activated, gland manufactures and secretes own characteristic hormone into bloodstream, chemical messenger signals specific organ to change its functioning

Ventromedial Hypothalamus (VMH)

"satiety center" - tells you when you've had enough to eat, brain lesions in this area lead to obesity (hyperphagia)

Oral Stage

(0-1 year) first stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development gratification is obtained through putting objects into the mouth by biting and sucking libidinal energy centered on the mouth orally fixated adult would be excessively dependent

Anal Stage

(1-3 years) second stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development gratification gained through elimination and retention of waste material libidinal energy centered on the anus fixation during anal stage results in excessive orderliness or sloppiness in the adult

Carl Rogers

(1902-1987) identified himself as a humanist psychologist but his personality theory is basically phenomenological most known for his psychotherapy technique known as client-centered therapy, person-centered therapy, or non-directive therapy believed that people have the freedom to control their own behavior and are neither slaves to the unconscious (psychoanalyst) nor subjects of faulty learning (behaviorists) client seen as able to reflect upon his or her problems, make choices, take positive action, and help determine his or her own destiny unconditional positive regard

Abraham Maslow

(1908-1970) important humanist theorist, known for hierarchy of motives and views on self-actualization proposed that needs are organized hierarchically (basic to complex psychological needs), people strive for higher level needs only when lower level needs are met physiological and safety needs belongingness and love esteem, cognitive and aesthetic needs self-actualization (realize one's fullest potential) studied lives of self-actualizers and identified characteristics in common (non-hostile sense of humor, originality, spontaneity, need for some privacy)

Phallic or Oedipal Stage

(3-5 years) third stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development central conflict is resolution of the Oedipal conflict for male children and the Electra conflict for female children male child envies father's relationship with mother and wishes to eliminate father to possess mother but feels guilty about wishes deals with conflict by identifying with father, establishing sexual identity and internalizing moral values then the child de-eroticizes libidinal energy to be socially acceptable (collecting objects, focusing on school work)

Latency

(5 years until puberty) fifth stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development once libido is sublimated, child enters latency

Gain-Loss Principle (People)

(Aronson and Linder) hypothesized a twist to reciprocity hypothesis principle states that an evaluation that changes will have more of an impact than an evaluation that remains constant (e.g., we like someone more if their liking for us has increased rather than consistently liked us, dislike a person more if decreased rather than constant dislike)

Punishment

(B. F. Skinner) goal to decrease probability of a particular behavior probability that a response will be made is decreased by giving the organism something undesirable whenever response is made (e.g., sending child to room when they misbehave) when stimulus applied, it is punishment when it is removed, it is negative reinforcement don't know if something is a reinforcer or punisher until we see the effect on behavior (increase or decrease)

Positive Reinforcement

(B. F. Skinner) probability that the desired response will be performed is increased by giving the organism something it wants (reward) whenever it makes the desired response e.g., give dog a treat when it sits upon command, will learn to respond in order to get a treat goal to increase probability of a particular behavior

Negative Reinforcement

(B. F. Skinner) probability that the desired response will be performed is increased by taking away or preventing something undesirable whenever desired response is made negative reinforcers can be "turned off" when desired response has been achieved goal to increase probability of a particular behavior

Daryl Bem's Self-Perception Theory

(Bem) been used to explain forced-compliance dissonance when your attitudes about something are weak or ambiguous, you observe your own behavior and attribute an attitude to yourself (e.g., "I must like brown bread bc I eat it a lot.") $1 group - "$1 is not enough to justify lie so I must have enjoyed the experiment."

Two Situational Factors that may Influence People Not to Help in an Emergency Situation

(Darley and Latané) social influence and diffusion of responsibility

Zone of Proximal Development (Person)

(Lev Vygotsky) skills and abilities that have not yet fully developed but are in the process of development child needs guidance to demonstrate those skills and abilities e.g., child takes cognitive test, and takes it again with aid from adult - difference in performance is zone of proximal development

Gender Schematic Processing Theory (People)

(Martin and Halverson) builds on Kohlberg's theory, holds that as soon as children are able to label themselves, they begin concentrating on those behaviors that seem to be associated with their gender and pay less attention to those they believe are associated with the opposite gender

Autokinetic Effect (Used by Who in Conformity Study)

(Muzafer Sherif) if you stare at a point of light in a room that is otherwise dark, the light will appear to move illusory movement is called autokinetic effect

Transformational Grammar

(Noam Chompsky) syntactic transformations or changes in word order that differ with meaning children learn to make transformations effortlessly at an early age and concluded that this ability must be innate

Three Things that Can Happen to Neurotransmitters within the Synapse

(a) they can attach themselves to receptor sites on postsynaptic membrane (binding) (b) they can remain in the synapse, where they are destroyed and washed away by other biochemical substances (c) they can be drawn back into vesicles of the terminal buttons via reuptake

Dissociative Identity Disorder

(formerly multiple personality disorder) two or more personalities that recurrently take control of a person's behavior disorder results when components of identity fail to integrate e.g., Sybil - 15 personalities, Truddi Chase - 92 separate personalities in most cases, patients have suffered severe physical and/ or sexual abuse as young children after much therapy, personalities can usually be integrated into one

Genital Stage

(puberty to adulthood) sixth stage in Freud's psychosexual stages of development if prior development has proceeded correctly, person should enter healthy heterosexual relationships if sexual traumas of childhood have not been resolved, behaviors such as fetishism may result

William Wundt

1879, founded first psychology laboratory brought together work in philosophy, physiology and psychophysics to create psychology as a science believed that experimental psychology as very limited use - could not be used to study higher mental processes such as memory, thinking and language

Emil Kraepelin

1883 published textbook in which he noted that some symptoms of mental disorders occurred together regularly enough that the symptom patterns could be considered specific types of mental disorders described disorders and worked out a scheme of classifying by integrating clinical data precursor to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)

Hermann Ebbinghaus

1885 - history of modern memory research began with this person, shoed that higher mental processes could be studied using experimental methodology famous experiments, used meaningless strings of letters to study capacity of our memory system nonsense syllables (e.g., qas and ceg) to study memory using himself as a subject measured how much of original list he could remember after a distraction so influential that people used nonsense syllables for decades, but study of memory for meaningful material didn't really begin until 1950s

Lewis Terman

1916, revised Binet-Simon test for use in the U.S. became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test

Prefrontal Lobotomies

1935-1955, tens of thousands of patients were subjected to lobotomies to treat schizophrenia surgical treatment in which frontal lobes of the brain are severed from the brain tissue disconnect frontal lobe from limbic system and hypothalamus (associated with mood and emotion) procedure also destroyed parts of the frontal lobe (responsible for traits making us distinctly human) didn't cure schizophrenia, just made patient easier to handle (tranquil and absence of feeling)

Introduction of Antipsychotic Drugs

1950s - to treat schizophrenia changed atmosphere of psychiatric hospitals surgeons stopped performing lobotomies and using electroshock therapy for schizophrenia major breakthrough in treatment modalities many formerly "hopeless" patients released

Keller and Marion Breland

1950s thought operant conditioning could be used to train animals to do pretty much anything, but soon discovered otherwise used shaping to attempt to train raccoon to pick up coins and deposit them in piggy bank despite reinforcement, raccoon would pick up coin, rub it on container, clutch it and then drop it in with hesitation next step, two coins - not successful at all would pick up coins and rub them together and only dip them in piggy bank raccoons catch crayfish, rub them together, dip in water and remove shell

Deviation Quotients

1960 revision of the Stanford-Binet used this to get around the problem of mental age remaining constant, IQ decreases with age this score tells us how far away a person's score is from the average score for the particular age group the subject is a member of represents the individual's standing among his or her same-aged cohort

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

550 statements to which subjects respond "true," "false," and "cannot say" yields scores on ten clinical scales measuring things such as depression, schizophrenia, and masculinity/ femininity has scales that indicate whether the person is careless, faking, misrepresenting or distorting purpose to aid in assessment of various clinical disorders

Blocking

CS and UCS must be contingent but also must provide non-redundant information about the occurrence of the UCS in order for conditioning to occur blocking experiment: (1) rats heard hissing noise (CS) and given an electrical shock (UCS), (2) hissing noise and a light presented at the same time, followed by electrical shock (UCS) procedure repeated - two CSs now, if classical conditioning was based on contingency alone, then we would expect rat to show fear response to light when light presented alone, rat did not show fear response (no association learned) light provided no additional information about predicting shock in stage 2, so rats ignored not enough to be contingent, must be useful (non-redundant) information

Method of Savings

Ebbinghaus measured how much of his original list of nonsense syllables he remembered using this method after memorizing the initial list, he compared the number of time he had to read the list in order to rememorize it if he rememorized it faster than he originally memorized it, he concluded that he had remembered something from the first time to calculate, he subtracted number of trials it took to rememorize the list from the number of trials it originally took to memorize the list, then divided the quantity by the original number of trials and multiplied by 100 to get a percent (percent change)

Psychodynamic (Psychoanalytic) Theory

Freud pioneered the psychoanalytic system of thought in psychology postulates the existence of unconscious internal states that motivate the overt actions of individuals and determine personality

Schemata (singular form is schema)

Piaget referred to organized patterns of infant behavior and/or thought infants develop behavioral schemata, characterized by action tendencies older children develop operational schemata, characterized by more abstract representations of cognition

Insight

Wolfgang Kohler proposed that animals could learn by insight, not just trial-and-error learning as E. L. Thorndike proposed perception of the inner relationships between factors that are essential to solving a problem

Pluralistic Ignorance

a situation in which a majority of group members privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume that most others accept it, and therefore go along with it (e.g., subjects reported not thinking the smoke was a fire bc confederates were non-responsive to possible emergency)

Forebrain

above midbrain, divided into two cerebral hemispheres, associated with complex perceptual, cognitive and behavioral processes associated with emotion and memory, has greatest influence on human behavior not absolutely necessary for survival but associated with intellectual and emotional capacities most characteristic of humans

Sympathetic Nervous System

acts to accelerate heartbeat and inhibit digestion, activated when you face stressful situations, closely associated with fear and rage reactions "fight or flight" reactions - increased heart rate, blood sugar level and respiration, decrease digestive processes, pupils dilate to increase visual information, adrenaline released in bloodstream (energy)

Pragmatics

actual efficient use of language child must learn to understand inflections and produce them to indicate different meanings of words and sentences

Phonology

actual sounds stem of language children must learn to distinguish language sounds from environment and what sounds denote meaning

Surface Grammatical Structure

actual word order of the words in a sentence sentences can have same surface structure and different deep meanings

Agnosia

affects perceptual recognition, "not knowing" visual - impairment in visual recognition (can see an object but cannot recognize what it is) damage to cortical area results in visual agnosia without interfering with ability to see

Spontaneous Recovery

after a period of rest following extinction, presenting CS (bell) will elicit a weak CR of salivation

Frequency Theory

alternative theory to place theory suggests that basilar membrane vibrates as a whole, and the rate of vibration equals the frequency of the stimulus vibration rate directly translated into the appropriate number of neural impulses per second theory cannot be applied to tones above 1,000 Hz Wever and Bray modified this theory by proposing the volley principle - high rates of neural firing can be maintained if nerve fibers work together

Methylphenidate (Ritalin)

amphetamine used to treat hyperactive children who suffer from attention deficit disorder behavioral stimulant increases alertness and decreases motor activity in hyperactive children

Intensity

amplitude or height of air-pressure wave, measured in bels (Alexander Graham Bell) generally talk in terms of tenths of bels or decibels more decibels, noisier the sound is sounds above 140 decibels tend to be painful to human ear intensity related to loudness

Paul Broca

around 1860, added to knowledge of physiology by examining the behavioral deficits of people with brain damage first person to demonstrate that specific functional impairments could be linked with specific brain lesions

Temporal Lobes

associated with a number of functions, auditory cortex and Wernicke's area located here

Luteinizing Hormone (LH)

associated with ovulation, release of the egg from one of the ovaries

Social Exchange Theory

assumes that a person weighs the rewards and costs of interacting with another (social behavior) the more rewards outweigh the costs, the greater the attraction to the other people attempt to maximize rewards and minimize costs

Stratified Random Sampling

assures that each subgroup of the population is randomly sampled in proportion to its size not randomly sampled

Occipital Lobes

at the rear of the brain, contain visual cortex which is sometimes called striate cortex ("furrowed" or "striped") researchers understand visual cortex more than many other brain regions areas in this lobe also been implicated in learning and motor control

Estrogen and Progesterone

at various stages of the cycle, ovaries manufacture and secrete these two hormones increasing estrogen - associated with manufacture and release of egg or ovum from ovary progesterone function - prepare uterus for implantation of fertilized egg (promotes pregnancy) if ovum not fertilized, estrogen and progesterone levels decrease and menstruation begins

Cannon-Bard Theory

awareness of emotions reflects our physiological arousal and our cognitive experience of emotion postulates that bodily changes and emotional feelings occur simultaneously more recent than James-Lange theory - brain plays a more central role in subjective experience of emotion discovered that activation of the sympathetic nervous system produced same physiological response (heart rate, perspiration, trembling) argued that subjective experience of emotion must affect specific neural circuits in the brain and that different circuits correspond to euphoria emotional responses include simultaneous physiological arousal of sympathetic nervous system

Prodromal Phase

before schizophrenia is diagnosed, patients typically go through a phase characterized by poor adjustment exemplified by clear evidence of deterioration, social withdrawal, role functioning impairment, peculiar behavior, inappropriate affect and unusual experiences phase followed by active phase of symptomatic behavior

Behaviorism

behaviorist theories of personality tend to look first and foremost at behavior basic assumption: behavior is learned as people interact with their environment

Behavior Therapy

behaviorists view maladjustment and abnormal behavior as learned through interactions, faulty coping patterns maintained by some reinforcement believe symptoms to BE the disorder rather than manifestations (psychoanalysts) proved successful with phobias, impulse control problems and personal care maintenance for people with intellectual disabilities and hospitalized psychotic patients

Reproductive Isolating Mechanisms

behaviors that prevent animals of one species from attempting to mate with animals of a closely related species provide animal with a way of identifying others of its own species found only in locations where closely related species share a common environment e.g., species-specific call of the black-headed gull makes

Positive Symptoms

behaviors, thoughts, or affects added to normal behavior e.g., delusions and hallucinations, disorganized speech and disorganized or catatonic behavior some consider these symptoms in two dimensions: psychotic dimension and disorganized dimension (perhaps with different underlying causes)

Jean Piaget

believed children to be actively involved in their own development, constructing knowledge of the world through their experiences with the environment insisted there are qualitative differences between child and adult thought believed that children pass through stages of cognitive development (continuous process)

Arnold Gesell

believed that development occurred asa a maturational (or biological) process, regardless of practice or training "nativist" in that he believed much of development was biologically based and development blueprint existed from birth

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

bell or neutral stimuli that becomes paired with conditioned response (CR)

Psychoanalysis

best known type of psychotherapy developed by S. Freud - intensive, long-term treatment for uncovering repressed memories, motives and conflicts stemming from problems in psychosexual development Freud believed that by gaining insight into repressed material, the energy being utilized to deal with the repressed content would be freed up and made available for further development used hypnosis early on free association (client says whatever comes to conscious mind to reconstruct nature of client's original conflict) dream interpretation (defenses relaxed so can understand unconscious conflicts) resistance - unwillingness or inability to relate to certain thoughts, motives or experiences transference: attributing to the therapist attitudes and feelings that developed in the patient's relations with significant others in the past countertransference: emotions the therapist feels during the process, therapist must understand so it doesn't impinge on treatment

Stages of Waking and Sleeping

beta, alpha, theta and delta waves, REM sleep (dreams) measured on an electroencephalograph (EEG) sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes order of brain waves: BAT-D

F ratio

between-group variance estimate/ within-group variance estimate if IV makes no difference for DV, F ratio near 1 (mean scores same or close)

Instinctual Drift

biological constraints important in operant conditioning animal reverts to species-specific behavior pattern e.g., raccoon rubbing coins together and dipping

John Dollard and Neal Miller

blended some psychoanalytic concepts in a behavioral stimulus-response reinforcement learning theory approach, focused on conflicting motives or conflicting tendencies in the development of personality

Cognitive-Behavior Therapy

blending cognitive and behavioral approaches tries to change and restructure patient's distorted and/or irrational thoughts

Forgetting Curve

by using his "method of savings," Ebbinghaus came up with this curve horizontal axis indicates number of days between time the list originally learned and the time list was relearned vertical axis indicates the percent savings % savings originally decreases rapidly but then plateaus

Babinski Reflex

causes the toes to spread apart automatically when the sole of the foot is stimulated

Four Basic Parts of Neurons

cell body (soma) - contains nucleus, dendrites (receive incoming information via presynaptic receptors), axon (end branches into numerous terminals) and terminal buttons (contains tiny vesicles or sacs filled with neurotransmitters)

Nervous System: Two Primary Components

central nervous system and peripheral nervous system

Fixed-Action Patterns (FAP)

certain action patterns relatively stereotyped and appear to be species-typical considered innate more complex than a reflex (unconditioned response) follows automatically once organism perceives the sign stimulus e.g., rolling an egg back into a nest or courtship ritual

Levels-Of-Processing Theory (Depth-Of-Processing Theory)

challenge to stage theory of memory most influential competing theory, proposed by Craik and Lockhart suggests that what determines how long you will remember material is not what memory system it gets into (suggest only one memory system) but the way in which you process the material postulated that an item entering into memory is analyzed in stages three ways: (1) physical (visual), focusing on appearance, size, and shape, (2) acoustical, focusing on the sound combinations words have, (3) semantic, focusing on the meaning of the word demand different amounts of mental effort - deeper processing, more effort, better memory of material

Walter Mischel's Criticism

challenges the notion of stable personality traits believes that human behavior is largely determined by the characteristics of the situation rather than by those of the person argued against traditional theories of personality (which state that personality is highly consistent and stable regardless of situation), his research showed to the contrary that an individual's behavior is largely determined by situation

Kluver-Bucy Syndrome

changes in animals that resulted from bilateral removal of the amygdala

Beta and Alpha Waves

characterize brain activity when we are awake beta - high frequency and occur when person is alert or attending to some mental task that requires concentration, occur when neurons randomly firing alpha - awake but relaxing with our eyes closed, somewhat slower than beta waves, more synchronized than beta waves

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance or uniqueness, a preoccupation with fantasies of success or power, an exhibitionist need for constant admiration and attention and characteristic disturbances in interpersonal relationships, such as feelings of entitlement fragile self-esteem, constantly concerned with how others are viewing them may be marked by feelings of rage, inferiority, shame, humiliation, or emptiness when individuals are not viewed favorably by others

Dissociative Amnesia

characterized by an inability to recall past experience, "dissociative" means that amnesia is not due to neurological disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder

characterized by anxiety that is due to social situations, persistent fear when exposed to social/ performance situations that may result in embarrassment

Major Depressive Disorder

characterized by at least one major depressive episode, essential feature is at least a two-week period during which there is a prominent and relatively persistent depressed mood, or loss of interest in all or almost all activities other symptoms include appetite disturbances, substantial weight changes, sleep disturbances, decreased energy, feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt (sometimes delusional), difficulty concentrating, thoughts of death or attempts at suicide symptoms must cause significant distress and/ or impairment in functioning

Parkinson's Disease

characterized by jerky movements and uncontrolled resting tremors connection to basal ganglia and dopamine thought to result from loss of dopamine-sensitive neurons in basal ganglia (substantia nigra) disruptions lead to resting tremors and jerky motor movements

Anorexia Nervosa

characterized by refusal to maintain a minimal normal body weight, distorted body image and believes that he or she is overweight when emaciated amenorrhea: cessation of menstruation common in females 90% of cases are female, 10% of hospitalized cases result in death

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

characterized by repeated obsessions (persistent irrational thoughts) that produce tension and/ or compulsions (irrational and repetitive impulses to perform certain acts) that cause significant impairment in a person's life obsessions are thoughts and compulsions are behaviors e.g., a person might obsess about dirt and compulsively wash his hands (to neutralize anxiety produced by obsession)

Disorganized Thought

characterized by the loosening of associations may be exhibited as speech in which ideas shift from one subject to another or unrelated subjects in such a way that a listener would be unable to follow the train of thought "word salad" - speech that is so disorganized that it will seem to have no structure, words thrown together

Smell Receptors

chemical sense found in upper nasal passage of nose called olfactory epithelium smell information travels to olfactory bulb in the brain

Taste Buds

chemical sense groups of cells that serve as receptors for taste found in little bumps on the tongue (papillae) taste information travels to taste center in thalamus

Epinephrine (Adrenaline)

chemical that can act as both a neurotransmitter and a hormone adrenaline also sometimes acts as a neurotransmitter endocrine gland produces hormone adrenaline (epinephrine) that increases available energy

Neurotransmitter

chemical that helps individual neurons communicate with each other

Freud's Five Psychosexual Stages of Development

children faced with a conflict in each stage between societal demands and the desire to reduce the libidinal tension associated with different body parts fixation occurs when a child is overindulged or overly frustrated during a stage of development child forms a personality pattern based on that stage, which persists into adulthood - oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital

Korsakoff's Syndrome

chronic alcoholics sometimes suffer from this produces even more serious disturbances in memory, anterograde amnesia (memory loss from anything new) doesn't arise from drinking too much alcohol, traced to vitamin deficiencies in thiamin (vitamin B) malnutrition often occurs in chronic alcoholics

Need Complementarity

claims that people choose relationships so that they mutually satisfy each other's needs (e.g., talkative person attracted to listener) even successful complementary relationships have fundamental similarities in attitudes that favor dissimilarity

Phenothiazines

class of antipsychotic medications thought to reduce the sensitivity of dopamine receptors less sensitive, the less likely the person is to experience schizophrenic symptoms

Behavioral Stimulants

class of drugs that increase behavioral activity by increasing motor activity or by counteracting fatigue include: amphetamines, antidepressants (tricyclics and MAO inhibitors)

Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss (1952) and Sleeper Effect

classic study in credibility, articles on controversial topics of the time, cited them as being authored by a credible source or not credible source assessed opinions before, after and four weeks after reading article communications by credible sources more effective in changing attitudes over time, the persuasive impact of the high credibility source decreased while persuasive impact of low-credibility increased (sleeper effect) sources increase credibility by arguing against own self-interest - produces significant attitude change

Antidepressants

classified as behavioral stimulants, used to treat symptoms of clinical depression, often elevate mood, increase overall activity level and appetite, improve sleep patterns tricyclics and monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors

Unconditional Positive Regard

climate of Carl Roger's therapy along with understanding provided to enhance the desired outcome of helping the client to become willing and able to be him or herself and increase congruence between what the person thinks he or she should be (ideal self) and hat he or she actually is

Wolfgang Kohler

co-founder of Gestalt psychology addresses how figure-ground configurations are represented in the brain theory of isomorphism - suggests that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the object in the perceptual field and the pattern of stimulation in the brain - hasn't faired well empirically disagreed with Thorndike about trial-and-error learning, if right opportunity animals could learn by "insight" placed chimps in play areas and placed food in their sight but out of reach (suspended), first would reach, then tried novel ways (sticks or climbing boxes) Kohler believed this suggested insight (problem for models of conditioning)

Aaron Beck

cognitive therapy for depression (example of CBT) e.g., client may be asked to write down negative thoughts about him or herself, figure out why they are unjustified, come up with more realistic and less destructive cognitions

Eugen Bleuler

coined term "schizophrenia" in 1911 previously called "dementia praecox" schizophrenia literally means "split mind" because disorder is characterized by gross distortions of reality and disturbances in the content and form of thought, perception and affect led many to confuse schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder) meant that the mind split off from reality

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon

collaborated to publish the first intelligence test known as the Binet-Simon test purpose of the test was to assess the intelligence of French schoolchildren to ascertain which children were too intellectually disabled to benefit from ordinary schooling Binet - mental age or age level at which a person functions intellectually, regardless of chronological age

Sequential Cohort Studies

combine cross-sectional and longitudinal research methods several groups of different ages are studied over several years

Twin Studies

comparing monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins able to distinguish the relative effects of shared environment and genetics MZ - 100% of genes shared DZ - 50% of genes shared assuming that share same environment so differences reflect hereditary factors MZ twins treated more similarly and imitate each other more (not completely the same environment as DZ twins)

Central Nervous System (CNS)

composed on the brain and spinal cord

Frontal Lobe

comprised of two basic regions: prefrontal lobes and motor cortex

Afterimages

concept that led Hering to his theory of opponent-processes sensation that appears after prolonged or intense exposure to a stimulus most of interest are those that involve color used to support Hering's theory of color vision since afterimage will be the "opposite" of the original color

Schema

conceptual frameworks we use to organize our knowledge we interpret our experiences and therefore remember them in terms of our existing schemata trying to make experiences fir into existing schemata can lead to distortions in our memories if we have a tough time matching experiences with a schema, we will have difficulty remembering it

Psychophysics

concerned with measuring the relationship between physical stimuli and psychological responses to stimuli

Descriptive Statistics

concerned with organizing, describing, quantifying and summarizing a collection of actual observations

Psychopharmacology

concerned with the development of medications to treat illness psychiatric and illness drug produce main effects by modifying neurotransmission

Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment

conducted one of the most well-known studies of obedience, thought they were participating in a study on punishment and learning participants asked to administer electric shocks to unknown confederate ("Mr. Wallace") when question answered wrong - most subjects willing to obey request of experimenter even if it meant harming another participant generator had 30 switches marked 15 to 450 volts along with warning labels increased 15 volts with each wrong answer, Mr. Wallace fell silent after 330 volts if subject turned to experimenter, told to continue obedience to authority measured by maximum shock subject would administer every subject willing to hurt at experimenters demand almost 2/3 were completely obedient results indicated that drive to obey was stronger than drive to hurt someone separate study involving "teachers" - defied experimenters in the middle and 90% of subjects followed their lead

Soloman Asch's Conformity Study

conformity: yielding to group pressure when no explicit demand has been made to do so subject was placed in a classroom with seven to nine college men and informed that they would be comparing the lengths of lines, two white target cards were shown (one single black line - comparison, and other with three black lines of different lengths) comparisons were easy and obvious, students announced in the order in which they were seated (last seat always subject) first two rounds - all agreed on correct third - all confederates said the same wrong answer found a strong tendency for subjects to conform to the incorrect response of confederates (without explicit pressure)

Long-Term Memory

considered the permanent storehouse of your experiences, knowledge and skills items here can be brief or last a lifetime use elaborative rehearsal to get information to stay in this type of memory

Somatic Nervous System

consists of sensory and motor neurons distributed throughout the skin and muscles

Nonequivalent Group Design

control group is not necessarily similar to the experimental group since the researcher doesn't use random assignment common in educational research because you can't randomly assign subjects to different classes

Counterbalancing

counteract order effects (order subjects take test or survey)

Rorschach Inkblot Test

created by Hermann Rorschach 10 cards that are reproductions of inkblots, presented to subject in a specific order and asked to describe what it is that the blots remind the subject of clinician interprets the results based on what the person saw and spontaneous remarks that the person made

Ivan Pavlov

credited with founding the basic principles of classical conditioning stimulus that had previously no relation to a specific reflex could come to trigger that reflex studied salivation (reflex) of dogs in response to food (stimulus)

Circadian Rhythms

daily cycle of waking and sleeping regulated by internally generated rhythms approximates a 24-hour cycle, somewhat affected by external cues such as day and night - only affect minor changes in internal rhythm

Bottom-Up Processing

data driven processing object perception that responds directly to the components of incoming stimulus on the basis of fixed rules sums up the components to arrive at the whole pattern (such as in feature detection) * top/ bottom distinction relevant for all senses if only this - we wouldn't be good at recognizing objects

Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

defined seven intelligences: linguistic ability, logical-mathematical ability, spatial ability, musical ability, bodily-kinesthetic ability, interpersonal ability and intrapersonal ability argues that Western culture values the first two abilities over the others (two tested by traditional IQ tests)

J. J. Gibson

depth cue of texture gradient variations in perceived surface texture as a function of the distance from the observer more distant parts of a scene appear to have smaller, more densely packed elements sudden changes in texture generally signal either a change in distance or a change in direction (e.g., a corner)

Linear Perspective

depth cue that refers to the convergence of parallel lines in the distance lines which are actually parallel appear to converge on the horizon since you know lines don't actually converge, you can use this cue in forming your impression of depth

Motion Parallax

depth cue, when in motion fix gaze at a stationary object halfway between you and horizon objects closer to you appear to move in same direction as you relative speed of motion varies depending on how close object is to fixation point (parallax)

Monocular Depth Cues

depth cues that only require one eye only binocular depth cue is stereopsis or binocular disparity

Emmert's Law (Size-Distance Invariance Principle)

describes relationship between size constancy and apparent distance size constancy depends on apparent distance farther away object appears to be, the more the scaling device in the brain will compensate for its retinal size by enlarging our perception of the object e.g., room gets smaller, person looks larger Ames room - erroneous depth information confuse our notion of size, distorts floor-to-ceiling height

Preferential Looking

designed by Fantz two different stimuli are presented side by side, amount of time spent looking at each one is recorded if difference in looking time, conclude that infant can discriminate between the two stimuli and the one the infant looks longest at is preferred Fantz found that relatively young infants prefer to look at complex and socially relevant stimuli (e.g., mother's face) and patterns over uniform surfaces

Lightness Constancy

despite changes in the amount of light falling on an object (illumination), the apparent lightness of an object remains unchanged even when the sun goes behind the clouds, the sail on a boat still appears white rather than gray levels of illumination are the same for both the object and the background

Visual Angles

determines the size of the image on the retina two things that determine this are size of object and distance between object and eye if distance remains constant, bigger object, bigger visual angle, bigger retinal size if object remains constant, closer object, larger visual angle, larger retinal size

William Stern

developed an equation to compare mental age to chronological age, came to be known as intelligence quotient (IQ)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

developed as a reaction to a traumatic event such as sexual abuse, a combat situation, or an accident or situation of violence in which the individual or someone close to them is injured or killed most likely sufferers are combat veterans, emergency workers and survivors of violence or sexual assault sufferers typically relive the traumatic event through flashbacks or nightmares and often display hypervigilance and depressed mood

Systematic Desensitization

developed by Joseph Wolpe to address criticisms of flooding and implosion (that client must experience a great deal of anxiety at the beginning of therapy) process uses hierarchy of anxiety-producing situations coupled with the use of relaxation techniques principle is that client cannot experience contradictory emotions (relaxation and anxiety) simultaneously relaxation responses are reinforced to anxiety-invoking stimulus (counter-conditioning)

Ratio IQ

developed by William Stern problem: after a certain age, chronological age increases while mental age does not IQ of 100 means person's mental age is equal to chronological age mental age/ chronological age x 100

Proximal/ Distal Stimuli

distal - actual object or event out there in the world (e.g., vision - image out in the world) proximal - information our sensory receptors receive about the object (e.g., vision - image on retina) if only this - world would appear chaotic

Cyclothymic Disorder

doesn't meet criteria for bipolar disorder, but essentially characterized by similar, less severe symptoms

Best-Fitting Straight Line

draw line through scatterplot of data slope of the line tells us the correlation of the data

L-dopa

drug that can treat motor disturbances of Parkinson's disease synthetic substance that increases dopamine levels in the brain before discovery of this drug, doctors unsuccessfully tried giving patients oral doses of dopamine - when ingested orally, dopamine was blocked from entering brain by blood-brain barrier L-dopa can make it past this barrier to increase production of dopamine in brain unfortunately, it can produce psychotic symptoms in Parkinson's patients due to oversupply of dopamine in the brain

Békésy's Traveling Wave

early 1960s, Von Békésy found that movement of basilar membrane is maximal at a different place along the basilar membrane for each different frequency (although whole membrane vibrates for any given stimulus) high frequencies maximally vibrate the membrane near the part of the cochlea close to the oval window low frequencies maximally vibrate near the apex, or tip of cochlea also found that low frequency tones, less than 400 Hz, maximally displaced a very broad part of the basilar membrane

John Watson

early founder of behaviorism, conducted little Albert experiment (paired white rat to startling loud noise), showed fear response to white rat, rabbit and mink coat behaviorism dominant until 1960 in U.S. originated classical conditioning important early American psychologist with theories influential in developmental psychology believed in importance of environmental influences on child development accepted Locke's view of tabula rasa maintained that only useful methods of study were objective methods of studying behavior

Edward L. Thorndike

early psychologist who studied learning considered part of functionalist system of thought and an early behaviorist (studied objective behavior of animals) pioneer of operant conditioning developed the law of effect: formed basis for operant conditioning

Monoamine Neurotransmitters (Biogenic Amines)

epinephrine, norepinephrine and dopamine (catecholamines) loosely classified as this all play an important role in experience of emotions

Delusions

false beliefs, discordant with reality, that are maintained in spite of strong evidence to the contrary common delusions: delusions of reference (others are talking about them, common elements in environment directed at him or her), persecution (belief that you are being deliberately interfered with, discriminated against, plotted against or threatened), grandeur (belief that he or she is a remarkable person, such as an inventor, historical figure), thought broadcasting (one's thoughts broadcast to the external world), thought insertion (thoughts are inserted into one's head)

Optic Chiasm

fibers from the nasal half of the retina (close to nose) cross paths nasal fibers from left eye go to the right side of the brain and nasal fibers from right eye go to left brain fibers from temporal halves of retina do not cross paths temporal fibers from left go to left and right to right all information from left visual field of both eyes is processed in the right cerebral hemisphere and all information from right visual field of both eyes processed in left hemisphere

Sir Charles Sherrington

first inferred the existence of synapses many of his conclusions have held over time, except one - he thought the synaptic transmission was an electrical process, but we now know that it is primarily a chemical process

Hermann von Helmholtz

first to measure the speed of nerve impulse by measuring the speed of impulse in terms of reaction credited with the transition of psychology into the field of natural sciences

Four Basic Types of Partial Reinforcement (Schedules of Reinforcement)

fixed-ratio (FR): receives reinforcement after fixed number of responses variable-ratio (VR): reinforcement after a varying number of responses (e.g., average of every 5 presses) - most resistant to extinction (Very Resistant) - produces most rapid response rate (Very Rapid) fixed-interval (FI): reinforced on first and after a fixed period of time since last reinforcement (e.g,. 45-second schedule) variable interval (VI): reinforced on first response after variable amount of time since last reinforcer (e.g., average of 45 seconds in between reinforcements but could be more or less)

Ventricles

fluid-filled cavities in the middle of the brain that link up with spinal canal that runs down the middle of the spinal cord ventricles and spinal canal filled with cerebrospinal fluid researchers have linked abnormally enlarged ventricles with pattern of symptoms seen in schizophrenia (social withdrawal, flat affect and catatonic states)

Longitudinal Studies

follow a specific group of people over an extended period of time, data may be collected from this group at regular intervals over a period of many years

Fear Response

follows a certain developmental course from undifferentiated to increasingly specific fear is first evoked through sudden change in level of stimulation first year, may experience stranger anxiety or separation anxiety after first year, fear response reserved for sudden absence of specific individual or presence of object or person who in the past has been harmful

Altruism

form of helping behavior in which a person's intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to him or herself behavior that decreases an animal's reproductive fitness

Bipolar Disorder

formerly known as manic-depression major type of mood disorder characterized by both depression and mania manic episodes are often characterized by an abnormal and persistent elevated mood, accompanied by a decrease need for sleep, flight of ideas and increased self-esteem, judgement is usually impaired, sexual and other behavioral restraints are lowered, individual tends to be impatient with attempts to restrain behavior manic episodes have rapid onset and briefer duration than depressive episodes Bipolar I - manic episodes Bipolar II - hypomania

Interneurons

found between other neurons and are the most numerous of the three types of nerve cells in the nervous system located predominantly in the brain and spinal cord and are linked to reflexive behavior

Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin

found evidence of better verbal abilities in girls in their studies (gender studies remain controversial)

Acetylcholine

found in both central and peripheral nervous systems used in parasympathetic nervous system to transmit nerve impulses to muscles in central, linked to Alzheimer's disease (memory loss) - loss of acetylcholine in neurons that connect with hippocampus

Max Wertheimer

founder of Gestalt psychology, beginning with visual illusion called the "phi phenomenon" studies led him to conclude that the experience of the visual illusion has a wholeness about it that is different from the sum of its parts believed that an analysis of the experience into parts is not a valid way of studying the conscious experience

Stress-Diathesis Model

framework that can be used to examine the causes of mental disorders diathesis: predisposition toward developing a specific mental disorder (genetic or anatomic abnormality, biochemical disorder that predisposes individual to mental illness) stress operating on a person with a predisposition may lead to the development of the specific mental disorder individual whose brain is oversensitive to dopamine and who also experiences excessive stress may be likely to develop schizophrenia causal factors at the biological and physiological levels interact

Rods

function best in reduced illumination and allow perception only of achromatic colors low sensitivity to detail and are not involved in color vision more rods than cones in the eye not found in fovea, number of rods increases as you move further from fovea (cones decrease)

Down Syndrome

genetic anomaly in which the individual has an extra 21st chromosome varying levels of intellectual disability age of biological parents may affect possibility of genetic mutation (older parents increased risk)

Phenylketonuria (PKU)

genetic disorder degenerative disease of the nervous system results when the enzyme to digest phenylalanine (amino acid found in milk and other foods) is lacking infants today are given a test and can avoid effects with a strict diet first genetic disease that could be tested in large populations

Additive Color Mixture

has to do with lights primary colors are blue, green and red mix red and green to get yellow apple appears red because the wavelengths that appear red to us are reflected by the apple while all other wavelengths are absorbed

Double-Bind Hypothesis

holds that as a child, the person with schizophrenia received contradictory and mutually incompatible messages from his or her primary caregiver (usually the mother) e.g., mother may tell child to be more affectionate, yet yell at or punish the child for approaching her torn between messages, child may begin to feel anxious and disorganized messages become internalized begins to see his or her perceptions of reality as unreliable not widely supported but research shows that faulty family communication may play some role in explaining origins of some forms of schizophrenia

Decay Theory

holds that if the information in long-term memory is not used or rehearsed, it will eventually be forgotten problem: theory assumes that what you've learned in the time that elapsed between memory and attempted retrieval makes no difference (we know that it does)

Cognitive Development Theory (Jean Piaget)

holds that language has to do with the child's capacity for symbolic thought, which develops toward the end of the sensorimotor period language continues to develop according to the child's cognitive level e.g., acquisition of comparison terms like "more than" or "less than" occurs about the same time that cognition develops from pre-operational to concrete operational thought

Learning Theory

holds that language is acquired through classical conditioning, operant conditioning and/ or modeling B. F. Skinner is a proponent of this perspective

Difference Threshold

how different two stimuli (in magnitude) must be before they are perceived to be different compare a standard stimulus to a comparison stimulus subject's task is to adjust the weight of the comparison stimulus until it matches the standard stimulus after many trials, the difference between weight of standard and comparison are averaged ratio between standard and average 1 : 10 or 1,000 : 10,000

Operational Definitions

how does the researchers plan to define the variables of the experiment so they are measurable

External Validity

how generalizable the results of an experiment are

Criterion Validity

how well the test can predict an individual's performance on an established test of the same skill or knowledge area

Autokinetic Effect

illusion that occurs when a spot of light appears to move electrically in a dark room, simply because there is no frame of reference

Apparent Motion (Phi)

illusion that occurs when two dots flashed in different locations on a screen seconds apart are perceived as one moving dot

Problem Solving

illustrates point of disagreement on behaviorism that maybe not all learning can be explained by a simple conditioning model E. L. Thorndike conducted experiments to prove that problem solving is best explained by the law of effect placed hungry cat in a puzzle box (animal can open with a simple action) cat by chance discovers how to open after trying lots of actions to get food placed outside escapes at a quicker rate on each successive trial does cat have insight on how to get out? - NO mere trial-and-error learning, correct response reinforced by food and other responses are not

Reflexes

infants are equipped with array of reflexes that help ensure survival comparing point in time at which each of these reflexes appears to established norms allows us to tell whether neural development is taking place in a normal fashion

Grasping Reflex

infants automatically close their fingers around objects placed in their hands

Moro Reflex

infants react to abrupt movements of their heads by flinging out their arms, extending their fingers and then bringing their arms back to their bodies and hugging themselves may be from a time when pre-human ancestors lived in trees and falling could be prevented by instinctive clutching usually disappears after 4-5 months of age

Stage Theory of Memory

influential theory in cognitive psychology holds that there are several different memory systems and that each system has a different function furthermore, suggests that memories enter the various systems in a specific order three memory systems: sensory memory, short-term memory (working memory) and long-term memory

Short-Term Memory

information you attend to goes from sensory memory into this type of memory link between rapidly changing sensory memory and more lasting long-term memory length of time memory stays here depends on what is done with it if nothing - stays only 20 seconds if rehearsed - can stay for a relatively long time (maintenance rehearsal) limit to the amount of information that can be stored here George Miller found that 7 (plus or minus 2) pieces or chunks (meaningful pieces of information) can be stored here

Motor Cortex

initiates voluntary motor movements by sending neural impulses down the spinal cord toward the muscles considered a projection area neurons arranged systematically according to parts of the body to which they are connected starting at the top, neurons connected to toes of opposite foot, foot, leg, torso, hand, face...etc. certain muscles require more motor control so they take up more space in motor cortex than you would expect from relative size in body

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

innate capacity for language, thought to be triggered by exposure to language enables infants to listen and process sounds

Instinct

innate psychological representation (wish) of a bodily (biological) excitation (need) propelling aspects of Freud's dynamic theory of personality two general types: life and death instincts (Eros and Thanatos)

Clustering

interesting effect when subjects are asked to memorize and then recall words people break down the list into clusters and tend to recall words belonging to the same category

Bulimia Nervosa

involves binge-eating accompanied by excessive attempts to compensate for it by purging, fasting, or excessive exercising unlike anorexia nervosa, individual tends to maintain a minimally normal body weight 90% of cases are female

Broca's Area

language production, articulation center (controlling muscles necessary for speech production) third part of frontal lobe (prefrontal, motor...), important for speech production usually found in only one hemisphere ("dominant" hemisphere, which for most people is the left) Broca discovered that a man who'd been unable to talk was actually unable to do so because of a lesion in a specific area of the left side of the brain

Germinal Period

last approximately two weeks from time of conception period of cell division and cellular mass travels down fallopian tube and implants on uterine wall

Embryonic Stage

lasts approximately 8 weeks embryo increases in size by about 2 million percent or about 20,000 times grow to be about an inch long and begins to develop a human appearance (limbs appear and tail recedes, fingers, toes and external genitals appear, nerve cells in spine develop and first behaviors and motion of limbs occur)

Robert Rescorla

late 1960s, performed some brilliant experiments that suggested classical conditioning was a matter of learning signals for the UCS to the extent that the CS is a good signal and has informational value or is a good predictor of the UCS, CS and UCS will become associated and classical conditioning will occur approach called contingency explanation of classical conditioning

James-Lange Theory

late 19th C, argued that we become aware of our emotion after we notice our physiological reactions to some external event "we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble" emphasized the role of the peripheral nervous system

Information from Optic Chiasm Goes to Several Places in the Brain:

lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus visual cortex in the occipital lobe superior colliculus (involved in vision)

Law of Pragnanz

laws operate to create the most stable, consistent and simple figures possible within a given retinal array Pragnanz encompasses the other laws and says that perceptual organization will always be as regular, simple, and symmetric as possible

Dopamine Hypothesis

leading biochemical explanation for schizophrenia dopamine (neurotransmitter) plays an important role in movement and posture in certain brain pathways suggests that delusions, hallucinations and agitation associated with schizophrenia arise from excess of dopamine activity at certain sites in the brain variation of hypothesis - amount of dopamine typical but oversensitivity to dopamine in the brain or too many receptors evidence comes from effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs in treating schizophrenia

Lawrence Kolberg's Stages

leading figure in the debate over development of moral thought and action believed that there were three phases of moral thought with each phase consisting of two stages each (total six stages) preconventional morality - (1) hedonistic consequences of given action: punishment or obedience, (2) instrumental relativist stage: orientation toward reciprocity conventional phase of morality - (3) "good girl, nice boy" orientation - seeks approval of others, (4) law-and-order orientation - morality defined by rules of authority post conventional morality - (5) social contract orientation - moral rules as convention designed to ensure greater good, (6) universal ethical principles

Taste-Aversion Learning - Problems for Classical Conditioning

learned taste aversion can occur after only one trial subsequent experiments on taste-aversion learning have shown that learning can take place even if the UCS occurs up to 24 hours after the CS

Semantics

learning of word meanings child must learn that certain combinations of phonemes represent certain physical objects or events and certain words refer to entire categories (e.g., women vs. mommy)

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

linked to the development of the nervouos system and typically first present during infancy, childhood or adolescence includes learning and communication disorders, attention-deficit disorder and the autism spectrum

Cochlea

located in inner ear, filled with saltwater-like fluid called cochlear fluid couple of membranes that run the length of the cochlea (most important is basilar membrane)

Parietal Lobe

located to the rear of the frontal lobe contains somatosensory cortex (involved in somatosensory information processing) this projection area is the destination for all incoming sensory signals for touch, pressure, temperature and pain central region associated with spatial processing and manipulation - makes it possible to orient yourself in 3D space, manipulate block designs, apply spatial-orientation skills as in map reading

Hindbrain

located where brain meets the spinal cord, primary function include balance, motor coordination, breathing, digestion, and general arousal processes such as sleeping and waking manages vital functioning necessary for survival

Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess

longitudinal study to examine temperament proposed three categories of infant emotional and behavioral style: "easy" (generally positive mood, regularity in body functions, easy adaptation to new situations), "slow to warm up" (initially withdrew but soon able to adapt to new situations), and "difficult" (negative emotions, irregular bodily functions, tended to withdraw in new situations)

Serotonin

loosely classified as a monoamine or biogenetic-amine transmitter (along with catecholamines) thought to play a role in regulating mood, eating, sleeping and arousal along with norepinephrine, thought to play a role in depression and mania theory: oversupply - mania, undersupply - depression (led to production of SSRIs)

Subjective Dimensions of Sound (3 of 8)

loudness, pitch and timbre

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

low-key sense of constant anxiety, most are unable to state what makes them anxious but are able to maintain a high level of function without seeking psychiatric care

Electroencephalogram (EEG)

machine that measures patterns of electrical activity that can be detected and recorded by using electroencephalograph produces this procedure non-invasive (does not cause brain damage), commonly used in human subjects (net of electrodes placed on head) sleep research relies heavily on this method

Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)

made up of the nerve tissue and fibers outside the brain and spinal cord (i.e., the PNS connects the CNS to the rest of the body)

Parasympathetic Nervous System

main role to conserve energy, associated with resting and sleeping states and acts to reduce heart and respiration rates also responsible for managing digestion promotes "resting and digesting" acetylcholine responsible for parasympathetic responses

Weber's Law

mathematical expression of Ernst Weber's discovery about just noticeable differences formulated by Gustav Fechner states that the change in stimulus intensity needed to produce a JND divided by the stimulus intensity of the standard stimulus is a constant /\ I / /\ I = K I/I = K S/S = K /\ I = change in intensity K called Weber's fraction or Weber's constant smaller the K the better the sensitivity 10 candles and can detect 11 candles are brighter 11-10/ 10 = 1/10 or 0.1 fits all sense modalities that have been scaled except at very low or very high intensities

Eye Movements

measurement used in the study of human cognition to study reading and language comprehension eye movements are an "on-line" measure: they can be measured as the subject is actually performing tasks

Brain Imaging

measurement used in the study of human cognition, increasingly important as researchers have tried to associate various cognitive processes to various parts of the brain

Reaction Time

measurement used in the study of human cognition, measurement of time elapsed between a stimulus presentation and a subject's response to it provided insight into the organization of cognitive processes method sometimes called mental chronometry

Innate Releasing Mechanism (IRM)

mechanism in animal's nervous system that serves to connect the stimulus with the right fixed-action response even if stimulus is removed in the middle of behavioral sequence, animal will continue to perform actions as if stimulus was present

Anterograde Amnesia

memory loss in which a person cannot remember anything new, characterized by not being able to establish new long-term memories while memory for distant events is usually intact associated with surgical removal of the hippocampus (brain structure in limbic system) severe case with Brenda Milner's patient H.M.

Flooding

method of behavior therapy to eliminate phobia client experiences CS without US that originally elicited the fear e.g., force client to hold cat, experience it as harmless, learns it does not need to be avoided

Dichotic Listening

method psychologists have used in the lab to study selective attention two ears are simultaneously presented with two different messages generally, listeners are asked to shadow (repeat) one of the messages as it is presented method demonstrated that observers can indeed attend to one message and dampen another

Whole-Report Procedure

method used by early researchers to find out how much information could be retained in sensory memory subjects looked for a fraction of a second at a visual display of nine items and then asked to recall as many of the items as they could could remember an average of 4 items

Semantic Verification Task

method used to investigate the organization of semantic memory semantic memory (part of long-term memory) has to do with remembering general knowledge, especially meanings of words and concepts in this task, subjects are asked to indicate whether or not a simple statement presented is true or false measures time it takes subject to respond (response latency) idea is that response latencies will provide information on how semantic knowledge is stored in memory

McClelland and Rumelhart

mid-1980s, published two-volume book about parallel distributed processes (PDP), proposing that information processing is distributed across the brain and done in parallel fashion as opposed to brain processing information serially (one stage of processing at a time)

Fovea

middle section of the retina contains only cones visual acuity is best in the fovea and fovea most sensitive in normal daylight vision

Hypomania

mild manic state that does not significantly impair functioning, no psychotic features although individual may be more energetic and optimistic

Two-Point Thresholds

minimum distance necessary between two points of stimulation on the skin such that points will be felt as two distinct stimuli size of this threshold depends on the density of nerves in particular areas of the skin

Poggendorff Visual Illusion

misperception of the position of one segment of a transverse line that has been interrupted by the contour of an intervening structure diagonal line on the bottom seen as a continuation of the diagonal line on the the top

Psychedelics

mixed class of drugs that alter sensory perception and cognitive processes cannabis, mescaline, psilocybin

Measures of Central Tendency

mode: value of the most frequent observation in a set of scores (can have two modes, bimodal or no mode) median: middle value when observations are ordered from least to greatest (or greatest to least), not necessarily the halfway point, average middle two if even data set mean: arithmetic average (measure most sensitive to extreme scores or outliers)

Case Study Method (Clinical Method)

more detailed look at the development of a particular child, collate facts about a particular child and his or her environment in order to gain a better perspective

Anxiety Disorder

more than ten anxiety disorders listed in DSM-V

Figure-Ground

most important concept to consider in form perception (exist in mind not retinal image) figure - integrated visual experience that stands out at the center of attention ground - simply the background against which the figure appears e.g., ball is figure and grass is ground (many elongated shapes) sometimes figure and ground can change (face-vase illusion)

Cerebral Cortex

most recent evolutionary development of the human brain outer covering of the cerebral hemispheres associated with language processing, problem solving, impulse control, long-term planning complex perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral processes

DSM-5

most widely accepted scheme in the United States for classification of mental disorders based on atheoretical descriptions of symptoms of the various disorders (not theories of etiology or treatments) e.g., "neurosis" not listed bc it is a theoretical term derived from psychoanalytic theory

Noam Chompsky

nativist, believed that children must have some special innate capacity for language acquisition known for his study of transformational grammar believed in critical period between age 2 years and puberty for language acquisition linguist, critiqued B. F. Skinner's 1957 book "Verbal Behavior" opposed to behaviorist position that speech is best explained by operant conditioning and language is acquired by reinforcement (evidence: errors of growth, novel language) believed that language study was the most viable route to understanding the mind

Helmholtz's Place-Resonance Theory

neural basis of pitch perception has to do with basilar membrane, movement determines perception of pitch suggests each different pitch causes a different place on the basilar membrane to vibrate different places of disturbance cause different hair cells to bend

Attention-deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by developmentally atypical inattention and/ or impulsivity-hyperactivity children with this may have short attention spans or difficulty staying with or organizing task, typically unable to follow instructions or requests and focus for long periods of time group situations particularly difficult hyperactivity manifests in motor activity (running, fidgeting, restlessness) impulsivity manifested by an inability to delay gratification, impatience, and frequently interrupting others often undiagnosed until school but manifests by age 3, 3-5% of school age children experience symptoms, more prevalent in males symptoms usually attenuate during adolescence but may continue into adulthood

Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PDD)

new to the mood disorders in DSM-V long been controversial but recently supported by research, affects 20% of women of reproductive age characterized by dysphoric or depressed mood, anger and physiological symptoms for a few days before menstruation

Neologisms

new words invented by a schizophrenic patient

Four Basic Types of Measurement Scales

nominal (categorical scale): labels observations so that observations can be categorized ordinal: observations are ranked in terms of size or magnitude (highest score to lowest score) interval: uses actual numbers (not ranks), number correct on spelling test - addition/ subtraction ratio: true zero point that indicates the total absence of the quantity being measured (e.g., 0 degrees F does not mean there is no temperature outside) - addition/ subtraction and multiply/ divide

Regional Cerebral Blood Flow (rCBF)

noninvasive procedure that detects broad patterns of neural activity based on increased blood flow to different parts of the brain when a specific cognitive function (listening to music) activates specific part of brain, blood flow to that area increases special device detects radioactivity in bloodstream (after a person inhales a harmless radioactive gas) records regional cerebral blood flow

Superego

not directly in touch with reality (like the id) and strives for the idea rather than the real moral branch of personality, striving for perfection two subsystems: conscience (rules and norms about what constitutes bad behavior) and ego-ideal (rules for good, appropriate behavior) system of right and wrong substituted for parental punishment/ reward

Interaction

occurs whenever the effects of one independent variable are not consistent for all levels of the second independent variable ANOVA's can assess interactions

Panic Disorder

often linked to agoraphobia manifests as frequent panic attacks - period of intense fear or foreboding accompanied by physiological fight-or-flight response relatively normal moods punctuated by attacks

Extinction

once classical conditioning occurs, it can be unlearned through this process repeatedly present CS with out UCS e.g., ring bell and present no food powder dog will eventually stop salivating to the bell

Cocktail Party Phenomenon

one example of how you can attend to something you are interested in, while not totally ignoring background noise can be having a conversation when your ears perk up because someone across a room full of people mentions your name heard name despite attending to conversation and not background noise selective attention is not all-or-none filter, more of loudness control that dampens but does not block out ancillary stimuli

Batson's Empathy-Altruism Model

one explanation for the relationship between empathy and helping behavior according to model, when faced with situations in which others may need help, people might feel distress (mental pain or anguish), and/ or they might feel empathy either of these states can determine helping behavior ** some social psychologists disagree and instead believe that helping behavior occurs only when there is some benefit to the individual offering help **

Sir Francis Galton

one of first researchers interested in individual differences maintained anthropometric lab for six years in which he measured the sensory abilities of nearly 10,000 people

William James (1842-1910)

one of the earliest American psychologists believed that it was important to study how the mind functioned in adapting to the environment view was among the first theories that formed functionalism (studying how mental processes help individuals adapt to their environments

Franz Gall

one of the earliest theories that behavior, intellect, and personality might be linked to brain anatomy developed the doctrine of phrenology: if a particular trait were well developed, then the part of the brain responsible for that trait would expand and push the skull outward (causing a bulge on the head) shown to be false but generated serious research on brain functions

John Dewey (1859-1952)

one of the founders of functional psychology 1896 article seen as functionalism's inception - criticized the concept o the reflex arc, which breaks the process of reacting to stimulus into discrete parts believed that psychology should focus on the study of the organism as a whole as it functioned to adapt to the environment

Frustration-Agression Hypothesis

one possible explanation social psychologists have found for aggressive behavior when people are frustrated, they act aggressively research has found that strength of frustration experienced is correlated with the level of aggression observed

Significance Test

one tool researchers use to draw conclusions about populations based on research conducted on samples trying to show that one hypothesis (research hypothesis or alternative hypothesis) is supported by the data by showing that other possible hypotheses (null hypothesis) are inconsistent with data presented help us determine if a 2-point difference is a real difference, or due to chance if not due to chance, reject the null hypothesis and accept the research hypothesis

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS): Two Subdivisions

parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system two branches act in opposition to one another (antagonistic)

Mendelian Genetics

parental genes are distributed randomly to all offspring four equally likely possibilities of combining the alleles of the parents

Measures of Temperament (3)

parental reports of child behavior - knowledgable about the infant but biased responses observations in naturalistic settings (home) - more objective measures but time-consuming observations in laboratory settings - experimental methods can be used to measure specific behaviors under controlled conditions but artificial situations may not be indicative of infant in normal conditions

Personality Disorders

pattern of behavior that is inflexible and maladaptive, causing distress and/ or impaired functioning in at least two of the following: cognition, emotions, interpersonal functioning or impulse control DSM-V lists 10 personality disorders, four of the most common: schizoid, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial

Hallucinations

perceptions that are not due to external stimuli but have a compelling sense of reality can occur in all sensory modalities most common form is auditory (involving voices that individual perceives as coming from outside his or her head)

Refractory Period

period of time following action potential in which the neuron cannot fire again two stages: absolute refractory period (unresponsive to stimulation) and relative refractory period (after action potential spike, repolarization)

Two-Sided Messages

persuasion contain arguments for and against a position often used for persuasion since such messages seem to be "balanced" communication e.g., news reporting demonstrates frequent use of two-sided messages

Carl Hovland's Model - Three Components

persuasion/ attitude change deals with attitude change as a process of communicating a message with the intent to persuade someone communication of persuasion three components: the communicator (persuading someone to adopt their position), the communication (presentation of the argument), and the situation (surroundings in which communication takes place) credibility of communicator plays a role in persuasion

Schizoid Personality Disorder

pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of emotional expression people with this disorder show little desire for social interactions, have few or no close friends, have poor social skills * NOT the same as schizophrenia

Aphagia

phagos - eating when lateral hypothalamus is destroyed and lab rats refuse to eat or drink Lacking Hunger (LH) - Lateral Hypothalamus (LH)

Specific Phobias

phobia: an irrational fear of something that results in a compelling desire to avoid it specific phobia: one in which anxiety is produced by a specific object or situation (claustrophobia - closed spaces, acrophobia - heights, cynophobia - dogs)

Sigmund Freud

pioneer in charting personality and emotional growth human psychology and human sexuality were inextricably linked theory of personality - first comprehensive theory on personality and abnormal psychology used experience treating neurosis to form new perspective on personality

Jerome Kagan

pioneering psychologist and researcher in the field of human development conducted a seminal study of temperament on children's behaviors longitudinal research - infancy to adolescence - to see if early signs of inhibited or uninhibited behavior in infancy predict future temperament profiles concluded that temperament is a strong predictor of adult behaviors remains significant theoretical construct

Gonadotropic Hormones (Gonadotropins)

pituitary gland releases these during puberty chemical messengers activate a dramatic increase in production of hormones by the testes or ovaries cause development and maintenance of secondary sex characteristics

Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH)

pituitary gland secretes this to stimulate growth of an ovarian follicle, small-protective sphere surrounding the egg or ovum

Philippe Pinel

placed in charge of an asylum in Paris 1972 believed that people with mental illness should be treated with consideration and kindness (not kept in dungeons, chained, and left to sleep on straw) allowed patients to go outside hospital grounds, gave them beds, unshackled them reforms spread as patients benefited

Similarity

plays a role in affiliation and attraction e.g., intelligence, attitudes, education, height, age, religion, SES, drinking, and mental health

Hippocampus

plays a vital role in learning and memory processes parts of temporal lobes (including amygdala and hippocampus) removed in famous patient H.M. surgery performed to control epileptic seizures, intelligence largely intact but suffered drastic and irreversible loss of memory for anything new

Lithium Carbonate

prescribed to treat bipolar disorder effective mood stabilizer and eliminates 70-90 percent of symptoms associated with bipolar disorder, prevents mood swings and extremely effective in controlling acute manic symptoms

Backward Conditioning

presenting the CS following the UCS, generally unsuccessful

Sense of Touch: Four Broad Categories

pressure, pain, warmth, cold

Antisocial Personality Disorder

previously referred to as a psychopathic disorder and sociopathic disorder essential feature is a pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others - evidenced by repeated illegal acts, deceitfulness, aggressiveness and/ or a lack of remorse for these actions person exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members, may be aggressive and ruthless serial killers who show no guilt for their actions, imposters and many career criminals have this

Gordon Allport

primarily a trait theorist, listed three basic types of traits or dispositions: cardinal (traits around which a person organizes his or her life, not everyone has these), central (major characteristics of personality that are easy to infer), and secondary (more personal characteristics limited in occurrence) major part of theory: functional autonomy (a given activity or form of behavior may become and end or goal in itself, regardless of its original reason for existence) idiographic approach to personality (individual case studies) vs. nomothetic approach to personality (groups of individuals to find commonalities) ** later became morphogenic vs. dimensional **

"Visual Cliff"

primary tool used in infant depth perception studies developed in early 1960s by Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk assesses whether or not infant is able to perceive depth table set up to create illusion that the left half of the table is much lower than the right half entire table is a level piece of glass infant placed and mother at other side of cliff at 6 mos, infants will not attempt to cross cliff (perceive depth)

Two Types of Long-Term Memory

procedural (how things are done, e.g., how to tie shoelaces) and declarative memory (explicit information/ fact memory)

GABA (gamma-amino butyric acid)

produces inhibitory postsynaptic potentials and is thought to play an important role in stabilizing neural activity in the brain exerts its effects by causing hyperpolarization in postsynaptic membrane

Blacky Pictures

projective test devised especially for children 12 cartoonlike pictures that feature a little dog named Blacky developed according to psychoanalytic theory, each picture depicts Blacky in a situation designed to correspond to a particular stage of psychosexual development test taker asked to tell stories about the pictures he or she is shown

Aurthur Jensen

prominent educational psychologist who studied intelligence claimed that intelligence as measured by IQ tests was almost entirely genetic in nature and that you could not teach someone to score higher on IQ test focused on differences in IQ scores across racial lines, and provoked a great deal of controversy with this line of inquiry

Whorfian (Linguistic Relativity) Hypothesis

proposed by Benjamin Whorf, suggests our perception of reality (the way we think about the world) is determined by the content of language language affects the way we think and not the other way around e.g., Eskimo language has many words for snow, English has one - Eskimos are better at discriminating types of snow than English speakers

Stimulus-Overload Theory (Person)

proposed by Milgram to explain differences between city and country dwellers

Nativist Theory

proposed by Noam Chompsky, theory of language acquisition, believed that there must be some sort of innate, biologically driven mechanism for language (children across the world produce speech so early in development and speak by 5) proposed Language Acquisition Device (LAD): built-in advanced knowledge of rule structures in language

Donald Broadbent

proposed that selective attention acts as a filter between sensory stimuli and our processing systems if a stimulus is attended to, it will be passed through the filter and analyzed further if it is not, it will be lost Broadbent claimed that selective attention is an all-or-nothing process - if we attend to something, we don't attend to everything else - more recent evidence indicates that this is not the case

Five Laws that Explain Form Perception (Gestalt Psychology)

proximity, similarity, good continuation, closure and Pragnanz

Symptom Substitution

psychoanalysts do not believe that symptom relief is adequate therapy because the underlying cause is still there, suggest that new symptoms will develop to replace the old ones behaviorists disagree

Theories of Personality (Four Areas)

psychodynamic (psychoanalytic) behaviorist phenomenological type and trait

William McGuire

psychological inoculation uses analogy of inoculation against diseases in reference to how people are able to resist persuasion pathogen in weakened form injected into body and body develops a resistance to stronger forms of pathogen

Gustav Fechner

psychophysics researcher who discovered the relationship between physical stimuli and psychological responses to stimuli formulated Weber's law

Erik Erickson's Theory

psychosocial theory: development is a sequence of central life crises with a possible favorable outcome and unfavorable outcome emphasizes emotional development and interactions with social environment believed that development occurred through resolutions of conflicts between needs and social demands - these conflicts occur in stages

Ernst Weber

published book De Tactu in 1834, investigation of muscle sense book introduced the notion of "just noticeable difference" (JND) in sensation

Timbre

quality of a particular sound when sound played at the same pitch and same loudness, a note on piano sounds different from note on clarinet related to complexity of the sound wave or mixture of frequencies

Autism Spectrum

range of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impairment in social skills and communication skills as well as repetitive behaviors includes former DSM-IV autism, Asperger syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) individuals with ASD are often inflexibly routined and stereotyped, may not cuddle or make eye contact, may display little or no facial expression impairment with language skills (receptive and expressive) common tend to be oversensitive to sensory stimuli (sounds, lights, color, odor and/ or touch) often persists into adulthood, affected individuals may not achieve autonomous life with adequate social adjustments as adults

Albert Ellis

rational-emotive therapy (RET) (example of CBT) basic assumption: people develop irrational ways of thinking therapist might challenge an irrational belief that client has, help him or her to recognize these beliefs and change them to more rational ones

Five Different Ways to Make a Light Look like it is Moving

real motion, apparent motion (stroboscopic movement or phi phenomenon), induced motion, autokinetic effect, and motion aftereffect (waterfall illusion)

Generation-Recognition Model

recall task taps the same basic process of accessing information in memory as does a recognition task, however, a recall task requires an additional processing step, have to generate information rather than simply recognize information presented

Two Most Common Methods of Retrieval

recall: independently reproducing the information that you have been previously exposed to e.g., short-answer and fill-in-the-blank questions recognition: realizing that a certain stimulus event is one you have seen or heard before e.g., multiple choice questions

Shape Constancy

rectangular door is rectangular despite in the course of opening and closing, retinal shape can be trapezoid to rectangular to thin line has to do with how we judge relative depth of the different parts of a stimulus based on its retinal image

Demand Characteristics

refer to any cues that suggest to subjects what the researcher expects from them assumption is that if the subjects have an idea of what the researcher expects, they will perform as expected

Retrograde Amnesia

refers to memory loss of events that transpired before brain injury

"Barnum Effect"

refers to the tendency of people to accept and approve of the interpretation of their personality that you give them relatively simple to generate a "report" from stereotyped statements, reports are readily accepted as accurate form of pseudo validation

Cerebellum

refined motor movements at the top of the hindbrain, mushrooming out of the pons, structure that helps maintain posture and balance and coordinates body movements damage to this area causes clumsiness, slurred speech and loss of balance (alcohol impairs functioning of cerebellum)

John A. Swets

refined the use of ROC curves associate with signal detection theory

Reflex Arcs

reflexive behavior controlled by neural circuits called reflex arcs behavior that is crucial to survival is controlled by reflexes

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

regulates heartbeat, respiration, digestion, and glandular secretions manages the involuntary functions associated with many internal organs and glands helps regulate body temperature by activating sweating or shivering - all functions automatic, independent of conscious control

Statistically Significant

reject the null when the observed difference is...

Creativity

related to problem solving cognitive psychologists think of it as a cognitive ability that results in new ways of viewing problems or situations don't have much empirical evidence about creative process

Color Perception

related to the wavelength of the light entering the eye, human eye can see wavelengths from about 400 to 800 nanometers color and light are related

Reaction Formation

repressed wish is warded off by its diametrical opposite e.g., young boy hates his brother and is punished for hostile acts, so showers his brother with affection

John Darley and Bibb Latané Research

research on bystander intervention 1964 Kitty Genovese case - stabbed to death while 38 identified people witnessed the attack or heard her screams, no one intervened or called the police

Luchins Water-Jar Problem

research on impediments to effective problem solving subjects presented with three empty jars and a list of the capacities of each jar asked to obtain a particular amount of water in one of the jars get used to a more complicated method and don't notice a simpler way to solve the problem (after doing several previous problems) - developed a mental set

Diana Baumrind

research on parenting style and discipline measured parenting control, nurturance, clarity of communication and maturity demands proposes three distinct parenting styles: authoritarian (punitive control methods, lack emotional warmth), authoritative (high demands for child compliance, use positive reinforcement and high emotional warmth) and permissive (low on control/ demand) authoritative parents produce children who are more socially and academically competent authoritarian or permissive - difficulties in school and peer relations

Naturalistic Observation (Field Study)

researcher observes what happens naturally not looking at the relationship between two variables, no intervention in what is being studied

Inferential Statistics

researchers generalize beyond actual observations concerned with making an inference from the sample involved in the research to the population of interest, estimate of popular characteristics allows us to use a relatively small batch of actual observations to make conclusions about the entire population of interest - make these everyday, e.g., soup needs pepper based on one spoonful (generalizations)

E. O. Wilson

scientist most associated with sociobiology (the study of how various social behaviors increase fitness) believes that behavior is due to a complex and dynamic interplay between genetics and the environment effect of social behavior on animal fitness

Ego

secondary process: takes into account objective reality operates according to the reality principle: guides or inhibits the activity of the id and the id's pleasure principle, postpone pleasure principle until the actual object that will satisfy the need has been discovered or produced ego can be understood to be the organization of the id - gets its power from the id so never independent from it

Prefrontal Cortex

serves an executive function in which it supervises and directs the operations of other brain regions, supervises processes associated with perception, memory, emotion, impulse control, and long-term planning governs and integrates numerous cognitive and behavioral processes

Mood Disorders

severe and persistent disturbances in mood

Borderline Personality Disorder

show behavior that has features of both personality disorders and some of the more severe psychological disorders pervasive instability in interpersonal behavior, mood, and self-image interpersonal relationships often intense and unstable, often exhibit fear of abandonment profound identity disturbance manifested by uncertainty about self-image, sexual identity, long-term goals, or values suicide attempts and self-mutilation are common

Lenneberg, Rebelsky and Nichols (1965)

showed that the age babbling begins is about the same for hearing children with hearing parents, hearing children with deaf parents, and deaf children BUT for hearing children, babbling continues and becomes more frequent (highest around 9 to 12 months) for deaf children, verbal babbling ceases soon after it begins

Four Major Constancies in Visual Perception

size constancy, shape constancy, lightness constancy, and color constancy these are all phenomena that help us make sense of our environment, by allowing us to make sense of retinal images

Phonemes

smallest sound units of language

Morphemes

smallest units of meaning in language

John Darley and Bibb Latané Study on Social Influence

staged emergencies in laboratory settings, many ambiguous (smoke), bystanders define situation (based on past experiences, desires, what they see and others present) smoke piped into room while subjects were completing a questionnaire (either alone or with two confederates) hypothesized and confirmed that two non-responsive confederates would inhibit response of subject

Premack Principle

states that a more preferred activity can by used to reinforce a less preferred activity principle often applied by parents requiring children to do homework before they can play play is reinforcing homework

Duplexity or Duplicity Theory of Vision

states that the retina contains two kinds of photoreceptors

Reversible Figure

stimulus pattern in which two alternative, equally compelling perceptual organizations spontaneously oscillate e.g., Necker cube

Supernormal Stimulus

stimulus that is more effective in triggering a fixed-action pattern than the actual stimulus found in nature e.g., Tinbergen's painted red bellies, elicited a more aggressive response than actual male stickleback fish

Charles Darwin

stressed importance of studying the mind as it functioned to help the individual adapt to the environment central characteristic of the functionalist system of thought

Pierre Flourens

studied the functions of the major sections of the brain did this by extirpation (ablation): various parts of the brain surgically removed and behavioral responses observed most of his work was done on pidgins led to his assertion that the brain had specific parts for specific functions and that removal of one part weakens the whole brain

James McKeen Cattell

studied under Wundt, introduced mental testing to the United States

David Rosenhan (1973)

studied whether or not it was possible to be judged sane if you are in an "insane place" (psychiatric hospital) Rosenhan and other "sane" people were admitted into different psychiatric hospitals by reporting auditory hallucinations each of the pseudo-patients diagnosed to have paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder acted normally once admitted yet bc they were labeled as mentally ill, normal activities interpreted by staff as evidence of mental illness e.g., discussed their situation in a rational way with members of the staff, reported to be using the defense mechanism of intellectualization remained in hospitals approximately 3 weeks not one was identified as sane concluded that clinicians need to exercise greater care when judging normality and abnormality mentally ill label never really goes away also demonstrated that illness could be feigned as well as misdiagnosed

Ethology

study of animal behavior under natural conditions, radically different from behaviorism concerned with species-specific or species-typical behaviors ethologists observe animal behavior in the animal's natural habitat and tend to look at more complex behavior ethologists attempt to discover the evolutionary significance of various behaviors

Schachter-Singer Theory (Two-Factor Theory of Emotion)

subjective experience of emotion is based on the interaction between changes in physiological arousal and cognitive interpretation of that arousal in absence of any clear emotion-provoking stimulus, interpretation of physiological arousal depends on what is happening in the environment around us individual's appraisal of the situation determines interpretation famous experiment - injected subjects with adrenaline (increases physiological arousal), half told drug increases arousal, half told it was a vitamin then asked to wait with another "subject" confederate acted silly and joyful and played with paper airplanes subjects not told effects of adrenaline reported euphoria subjects told to expect arousal (due to drug) did not feel euphoria once physiological arousal was induced, subjects labeled emotions based on information available

Loudness

subjective experience of the magnitude or intensity of the sound

Brightness

subjective impression of the intensity of a light stimulus

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)

subjects asked to perform boring tasks (e.g., putting 12 spoons in a tray, emptying tray, refilling it and emptying it), after an hour, subjects asked to tell the "next subject" that the experiment was enjoyable and interesting some subjects paid $1 and some paid $20 to mislead next subject after complying, taken to another room and asked to give ratings of the experiment $1 group reported enjoying the experiment more results consistent with Cognitive Dissonance Theory - $20 group able to explain away dissonance by saying at least I got paid - $1 group changed attitude to reduce dissonance and justify lie

Single-Blind Experiment

subjects don't know whether they are in the treatment group or control, but researchers know

Batson's Experiments

subjects witness someone in distress and given a choice to help or not help the person closed circuit television (e.g., person receiving electric shocks) some subjects given a choice to leave after first two electric shocks (easy escape), others asked to stay and witness ten shocks (difficult escape) after second all subjects given questionnaire to assess distress and empathy for the person told person had experienced shocks as a child and given opportunity to take their place for remaining 8 shocks easy-escape condition who reported more distress than empathy tended to leave rather than help subjects who reported more empathy than distress were more likely to help regardless of easy or difficult escape conditions

Humanistic-Existential Therapies

tend to emphasize the process of finding meaning in one's life by making one's own choices mental disorders tend to be viewed as stemming from problems of alienation, depersonalization, loneliness and lack of a meaningful existence humanistic therapy facilitates exploration into a client's thoughts and feelings existential approaches to therapy include empathy toward the client as well as understanding, affirmation and positive regard

Generalization

tendency for similar stimuli to the CS to elicit the CR e.g., dog salivates to bells of a different pitch and/or timbre or even to chimes seen in phobias and Little Albert example also applies to operant conditioning pigeon pecks for food pellet when green light is on but might also peck when similar light is on (more similar, more likely)

Attractiveness Stereotype

tendency to attribute positive qualities and desirable characteristics to attractive people likely explanation for physical attractiveness being a determinant of attraction

Mental Set

tendency to keep repeating solutions that worked in other situations past experience affects the strategies we use to solve problems

Hypothesis

tentative and testable explanation for the relationship between two or more variables (characteristic or property that varies in amount or kind, and can be measured)

Phylogeny

term for evolutionary history

Neuropsychology

term used to refer to the study of functions and behaviors associated with specific brain regions applied in research settings, attempt to associate very specific areas of brain to behavior and in clinical settings where patients are treated for brain lesions

Split-Half Reliability

test takers take only one test but divided into equal halves one half correlated with other half high correlation, high reliability level

Content Validity

test's coverage of the particular skills or knowledge area that it is supposed to measure

Cross Validation

testing the criterion validity of a test on a second sample, after you demonstrated validity using an initial sample

Chi-Square Test

tests equality of two frequencies or proportions significance tests that work with categorical data (nominal), rather than numerical data when summarizing categorical data, we end up with frequencies or proportions e.g., 47 of 150 people polled are Democrats

Three Depth Cues not Included in Berkeley's Work

texture gradient - J. J. Gibson motion parallax binocular disparity

Pupil

the adjustable opening (hole) in the center of the iris through which light enters contracts in bright light and expands in dim light to let more in

Null Hypothesis

the population mean is the same as the sample mean

Ossicles

three tiny bones in the middle ear smallest bones in your body hammer, anvil and stirrup (malleus, incus and stapes) transmit vibrations of the tympanum to the inner ear

Kohlberg's Gender Stages

three-stage cognitive development theory of self-socialization (1) gender labeling (2-3 years) - children achieve gender identity, realize they are a member of a particular sex and accept that they are a boy or girl and can label themselves and others as such (2) gender stability (3-4 years) - marks the period when children can predict that they will still be a boy or girl when they grow up but understanding superficial and dependent on physical notion of gender (3) gender consistency (4-7 years) - children understand the permanency of gender, regardless of what one wears or how one behaves

Tourette's Disorder

tic disorder characterized by multiple motor tics (e.g., eye-blinking, skipping, deep knee bends) and one or more vocal tics (e.g., grunts, barks, sniffs, snorts, coughs, utterance of obscenities) tics are sudden, recurrent, and stereotyped duration of disorder lifelong but periods of remission may occur occurs in about 4-5 out of 10,000 individuals

Biological Constraints

to challenge behaviorist theories, researchers point to evidence that different species have different inborn predispositions to learn different things in different ways affect both classical and operant conditioning

Transduction

translation of physical energy into neural impulses or action potentials once this occurs, electrochemical energy sent to various projection areas in the brain along various neural pathways and can be processed by the nervous system

Motor Neurons (Efferent Neurons)

transmit motor information from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles travel along efferent fibers (exit the brain and spinal cord on their way down to muscles)

Erik Erickson's Psychosocial Theory Stages

trust vs. mistrust - trust in environment or be suspicious of the world autonomy vs. shame and doubt (1-3 years) - feeling of will and ability to exercise choice and self-restraint, competency and autonomy or sense of doubt and lack of control initiative vs. guilt (3-6 years) - purpose, ability to initiate activities, enjoy accomplishment or fear of punishment overwhelming, restricts himself, may overcompensate by showing off industry vs. inferiority (6-12 years) - competent, exercise abilities and intelligence, affect the world in a desirable way or sense of inadequacy, inability to act in a competent manner, low self-esteem identity vs. role confusion (adolescence) - "physiological revolution" - fidelity (see oneself as unique, integrated person with sustained loyalties) or confusion of one's identity and kind of amorphous personality that shifts day to day intimacy vs. isolation (young adulthood)- love, ability to have relationships, commit oneself, own one's goals or avoidance of commitment, withdrawal, superficial relationships generativity vs. stagnation (middle age) - capable of being productive, contributing member of society or sense of stagnation, self-indulgent, bored, self-centered integrity vs. despair (old age) - wisdom, assurance in meaning of life, dignity, life worthwhile or bitterness about life, worthless, fear of death

Sensory Preconditioning

two neutral stimuli are paired together and then one of the neutral stimuli is paired with a UCS two stages: (1) pair two neutral stimuli like a flash of light and a bell ring, (2) pair the bell with the UCS of food after animal salivates to bell alone, test for effect of sensory preconditioning by flashing light without either ringing bell or presenting food even though the light and food were never paired directly, the light flash elicits salivation

Monoamine Theory of Depression

two theories of norepinephrine and serotonin oversupplies and undersupplies leading to mania and depression (lumped together)

Gametes

two types of cells (egg and sperm cells) that are the human sex cells combine to form a single cell called a zygote

Wundt Visual Illusion

two vertical lines are both straight, but they may look as if they are bowed inwards to some observers due to angled lines in the background

Process Schizophrenia

when schizophrenia development is slow and insidious, prognosis for recovery is especially poor

Interest Taking

usually used to assess an individual's interest in different lines of work best-known is the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory, organized like a personality inventory (developed using an empirical criterion-keying approach like MMPI) test takers given lists of interests and asked to indicate whether they like or dislike the interest listed other section, indicate preference for one of two paired items interpretation of results partially based on Holland's model of occupational themes (divided interests into 6 types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional) sometimes called the RIASEC system

Proactive Inhibition

what you learned earlier interferes with what you learn later e.g., if you learn French as a second language then Spanish as a third, you may find that as you are learning Spanish, you occasionally speak French

REM Rebound

when people who have been deprived of REM sleep are allowed to sleep undisturbed, they compensate for the loss of REM by spending more time than usual in REM sleep

Hering Visual Illusion

when two straight and parallel lines are presented in front of radial background (like the spokes of a bicycle), the lines appear as if they were bowed outwards

Physiological Zero

when we talk about cold, stimulus has caused the skin to drop in temperature below physiological zero, or temperature of the skin

Face Validity

whether or not the test items appear to measure what they are supposed to measure

Postsynaptic Membrane

within dendrite opposite terminal buttons contains receptors

Lev Vygotsky

work contributed to our understanding of cultural influences on cognitive development child's internalization of various aspects of the culture (rules, symbols, language) and interpersonal rules drives cognitive development

Leon Festinger's Social Comparison Theory

~ same Festinger of cognitive dissonance theory ~ suggests that we are drawn to affiliate because of a tendency to evaluate ourselves in relationship to other people three principles: 1. people prefer to evaluate themselves by objective, non-social means, however, when this is not possible, people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing them to those of other people 2. the less similarity of opinions and abilities between two people, the less the tendency to make these comparisons 3. when a discrepancy exists with respect to opinions and abilities, there is a tendency to change one's position so as to move it in line with the group

Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory

~ same Festinger of social comparison theory ~ consistency theory of attitude change cognitive dissonance: conflict that you feel when your attitudes are not in synch with your behaviors dissonance can be reduced by changing dissonant elements or by adding consonant elements

John Bowlby

1940s study on attachment of children raised in institutions such as orphanages children physically well cared for but often lacked intimate bodily contact - tended to be timid and asocial identified several phases of the attachment process: pre-attachment (several weeks - infant reacts identically to all adult smiling faces), second phase (3 mos - discriminates between familiar and unfamiliar faces), third phase (6 mos - infant seeks out and responds specifically to mother), forth phase (9-12 mos - bonding intensifies and expresses stranger anxiety), second year - child reacts to mother's absence in strong protest (separation anxiety), third year - child able to separate from the mother without prolonged distress

Gestalt Laws of Form (Perceptual Organization)

Closure: tendency to see incomplete figures as being complete Proximity: tendency to perceive images that are close together as one unit instead of separate entities Similarity: group elements that are similar together Good continuation: tendency to view elements as grouped together when they appear to follow in the same direction

Attribution Theory (Person)

Fritz Heider (one of founders) focuses on the tendency for individuals to infer the causes of other people's behavior attribute people's actions to dispositional (beliefs, attitudes, personality) or situational causes (threats, money, social norms, peer pressure)

Prisoner's Dilemma

classic method for investigating people's choices to compete or cooperate A and B (two prisoners) in custody and separated each prisoner can betray or remain silent both silent - both charged with misdemeanor both betray - both be prosecuted for felony and moderate sentence recommended one betrays and other doesn't - betrayer has charges dropped and other prisoner prosecuted for felony at maximum sentence

Gestalt Theory of Personality

closely linked to both existential and humanistic theories, has a holistic view of the self

Prison Simulation (Person)

Philip Zimbardo advertised as a study on prison life at a university half randomly selected to be guards and the other half as prisoners police sent to "arrest" prisoners student guards received no training just told to maintain law and order and physical violence was prohibited prisoners rebelled on the second morning, guards sprayed with carbon dioxide and put ringleaders in solitary guards became more abusive, several prisoners had breakdowns ended after 6 days rather than 2 weeks

Compliance

change in behavior that occurs as a result of situational or interpersonal pressure

Egocentrism

children cannot take the perspective of other people and cannot understand relationships are reciprocal e.g., child can say if they have a sister but cannot say if their sister has a sister aspect of Piaget's preoperational stage (2) of cognitive development

Yerkes-Dodson Law

curvilinear relationship between arousal and performance: as arousal increase, performance increase BUT if arousal increases too much, performance will decrease performance is worst at extremely low or extremely high levels of arousal and optimal at some intermediate level

Mary Ainsworth

demonstrated the universality of Bowlby's sequence of attachment process with study of Ugandan infants devised the "strange situation" procedure to examine caregiver and child relationships, put children in a room and observed reactions as caregivers and/or strangers entered and exited in and out of the room

Martin Seligman

developed theory of learned helplessness by conducting classic studies in the 1960s placed dogs in a cell with high walls, administered a shock to the floor of the cell dogs would initially try to jump free, but over time the dogs stopped jumping replaced the high walls with low walls, administered shock to the floor and dogs did not jump even though they could have escaped dogs learned to be helpless extrapolated this finding to human depression and locus of control

Sensorimotor Stage

first stage in Piaget's stages of cognitive development: involves learning object permanence and primary and secondary circular reactions birth to 18-24 months

Alfred Adler's Theory

focused on immediate imperatives of family and society (social variables) and their effects on unconscious factors originator of the concept of the inferiority complex (individual's sense of incompleteness and sense of imperfection, physically and socially) striving toward superiority drives the personality socially oriented - endeavors benefit all people selfish and not socially oriented - root of personality disturbances

Creative Self

force by which each individual shapes his or her uniqueness and makes his or her own personality important concept of Alfred Adler's theory of personality

Formal Operational Stage

forth and final stage of Piaget's stages of cognitive development: ability to conduct abstract reasoning and systematic problem solving observed in Piaget's pendulum experiment - asked to find what determined the frequency of the swing (length, weight, force, height) able to hold variables constant and determine what caused change and ignore preconceived notions 12+ years

Zeigarnik Effect

found that we tent to remember incomplete tasks better than we remember completed tasks e.g., remember unfinished chores better than finished noticed that waiters tended to better remember orders that were still open (customer still in restaurant eating) than they remembered closed orders (after customer had left)

Dimensions of Personal Identity

individuals have more than one dimension of personal identity several factors that determine which identity will be enacted in particular situations hierarchy of salience

Attachment Styles

insecure/ avoidant (Type A) - not distressed when left alone with stranger, avoid contact with mother upon return securely attached (Type B) - mildly distressed during separations but greet mother positively when she returns insecure/ resistant (Type C) - distressed during separation and inclined to resist physical contact with mother upon return (Mary Ainsworth)

Kurt Lewin's Field Theory

little stock in constraints on personalities such as fixed traits, habits or structures (e.g., id, ego, superego) focus on current behaviors and thought processes (rather than early development) theory heavily influenced by Gestalt psychology saw personality as being dynamic and constantly changing personality can be divided up dynamically into ever-changing regions called "systems" optimal conditions - regions are well articulated and function in an integrated fashion under tension or anxiety - articulation between regions is generally diffused

Fovea and Photoreceptor Cells

middle section of retina contains cones - responsible for color vision and perceiving fine detail

Ganglion Cells

nerve cells present in the fovea that transmit signals from the cones (not photoreceptor cells), group together to form the optic nerve many more photoreceptor cells than ganglion cells so ganglion cell represents combined activity of photoreceptors combined

Edward Hall

norms for interpersonal distance in interpersonal interactions suggests that there are cultural norms that govern how far away we stand from the people we are speaking too U.S. intimate relationship - 1 foot and a couple inches U.S. stranger - a couple feet

Object Permanence

occurs when the child realizes that objects continue to exist even though the child cannot perceive their existence marks beginnings of representational thought, meaning that the child has begun to make mental representations of external objects and events and can begin to understand that objects do not disappear when they are not in sight aspect of Piaget's sensorimotor (1) stage of cognitive development

Value Hypothesis

one explanation for the risky shift in group decision making suggests that the risky shift occurs in situations in which riskiness is culturally valued e.g., riskiness in business ventures is culturally valued

"Strange Situation" Procedure

study quality of the mother-child attachment relationship series of three minute episodes conducted in an unfamiliar room with toys - child free to explore and play - stranger enters and remains silent - stranger talks to mother and plays with infant - mother leaves room and stranger interacts - mother returns and stranger leaves - infant is left alone in room - stranger returns and interacts with infant - mother returns and stranger leaves

Centration

tendency to be able to focus on only one aspect of a phenomenon egocentrism and conservation aspect of Piaget's preoperational stage (2) of cognitive development