Psychology AP Units 1-8 Outlines

hypnosis as a social phenomenon

1 explanation of the hypnotized state ; people under hypnosis might be responding to it only to be "good test subjects" ; those who're called "gullible" under hypnosis may stop responding once their motivation for being hypnotized is gone ; an authoritative person in a legitimate context can induce people, hypnotized or not, to perform some unlikely acts (a hypnotist who comes off very strong-willed and in-charge will match up well with a gullible subject and be able to hypnotize them more easily than a strong-willed subject) ; social influence theory of hypnosis goes with this explanation of the hypnotized state

hypothesis

a testable prediction often implied by a theory ; involved in the scientific method

incentives

positive or negative environmental stimuli that motivate behavior (we're pulled by them)

nociceptors

sensory receptors that detect hurtful temperatures, pressures, or chemicals

erectile disorder

a sexual dysfunction where men have issues having an erection

female orgasmic disorder

a sexual dysfunction where women have issues having an orgasm

reuptake

in this process, the sending neuron reabsorbs the excess neurotransmitters

personality psychologists

investigate personality traits ; involved with basic research

type B

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people

membrane

a covering for something

melatonin

a sleep-inducing hormome

sleep stages

about every 90 minutes, we cycle through 4 distinct ones (they're NREM-1, NREM-2, NREM-3, and REM) ; times of each one are estimates because they're based on when in the sleep cycle and the person's age

Sigmund Freud

absolutely crazy, but some of his ideas survived to the present time ; associated with Freudian psychology

deep processing

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of words ; tends to yield the best retention ; for example, ACT questions that ask you which word fits best into a sentence or doesn't belong in a group of words (you have to analyze using the words' definitions) ; digging deeper into a word

culture and emotional expression

gestures are typically different among cultures ; facial expressions and musical expressions of emotion are generally universal

visual action track

guides our moment-to-moment movements ; part of dual processing

can hypnosis be therapeutic?

hypnosis has been helpful in the treatment of obesity ; hypnosis hasn't been helpful in drug, alcohol, and smoking addictions (even though these are partially mental, they're also physical)

sensory functions

include the somatosensory cortex, visual cortex, and auditory cortex

scientific method

includes theories and hypotheses

interposition

monocular cue that says if 1 object partially blocks our view of another object, we perceive it as closer ; for example, if someone is blocking your view of a dog, you know that the person who's blocking your view is closer to you than the dog is

auditory nerve

nerve that sends signals, via the thalamus, to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe ; formed when axons of the adjacent nerve cells converge

law of effect

principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely ; for examples, 1) if you get a piece of chocolate for doing something, you're probably going to do it again 2) if you get kicked in the head for doing something, you probably aren't going to do it again ; created by Edward L. Thorndike ; inspired Skinner's experiments

levels of analysis

the differing complimentary views, from biological to psychological to social-cultural, for analyzing any given phenomenon

frequency

the length of sound waves ; determines the pitch of sounds

spontaneous recovery

the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response ; in Pavlov's experiments, after extinction and a waiting period, the CR (salivation) might come back if the CS (bell) happened again ; when the response comes back

68%

% of scores that fall within 1 standard deviation (for example, if the average score is 90%, most students scored between an 85%-95%) ; within 1 higher or 1 lower ; smaller type of standard deviation ; dark blue on the picture

95%

% of scores that fall within 2 standard deviations (for example, if the average score is 90%, most students scored between an 80%-100%) ; bigger type of standard deviation ; light and dark blue on the picture

hypnosis as divided consciousness

1 explanation of the hypnotized state ; some scientists argue that hypnosis is actually an altered state of consciousness (people aren't fully conscious) ; 1 piece of evidence that these scientists use to support their arguments is that distinct brain activity takes place during hypnosis (scans show that different brain activity is going on than normal) ; researcher Ernest Hilgard believed hypnosis involved social influence and a special dual-processing state called dissociation ; PET scans have suggested that hypnosis reduces brain activity in the region that processes painful stimuli, but not in the sensory cortex which receives the raw sensory input (this suggests that hypnosis doesn't block the sensory input, but it does distract our attention away from those stimuli)

case study

1 individual group is studied and depth in the hope of revealing universal principles (for examples, 1) studying a child raised in a room with no human contact 2) studying people with a rare form of cancer 3) studying children who witnessed 1 parent murder the other) ; often used to study individuals or small groups who suffer from rare diseases or have unique experiences (studies things that aren't very common in the world) ; pros are 1) don't have to find a bunch of people for them 2) can be very interesting because you have very direct contact with the person involved in the study 3) findings often inspire more research in other studies ; con is 1) results won't be super reliable, constant, or generalizable because you only worked with specific people ; type of descriptive technique

acetlycholine (ACh)

1 of the best-understood neurotransmitters ; plays a role in learning, memory, and muscle function ; the messenger at every junction between motor neurons (carry information from the brain and spinal cord to the body's tissues) and skeletal muscles ; when it's released to our muscle cell receptors, the muscle contracts/moves ; if its transmission is blocked, such as during anesthesia, the muscles can't contract and we're paralyzed ; with Alzheimer's disease, neurons that produce it deteriorate ; the most important neurotransmitter from the chart that will probably be on the AP exam

opiates

1 of the depressants ; opium and its derivatives can depress neural functioning ; users' pupils constrict, breathing slows, and lethargy sets in ; when repeatedly flooded with an artificial opiate, the brain eventually stops producing endorphins, which are natural opiates ; examples of them are heroin, codeine, and morphine

alcohol

1 of the depressants ; slows brain activity that controls judgement and inhibitions ; low doses of it relax the drinker by slowing the sympathetic nervous system ; larger doses cause slow/slurred speech and deteriorated performance and motor function ; can be a potent sedative ; can lead to death via alcohol poisoning or, sometimes, victims choking on vomit after passing out ; long term effects are disruption of memory formation, brain shrinkage, and nerve cell death and reduction in the birth of new nerve cells ; deals with alcohol use disorder

barbiturates

1 of the depressants ; tranquilizers that depress nervous system activity ; used to induce sleep and reduce anxiety ; can impair memory and judgement ; when mixed with alcohol, they're deadly

sleep deprivation

1 of the effects of sleep loss ; can make people fatter (increases ghrelin, a hunger-arousing hormone, and decreases leptin, a hunger-suppressing hormone ; also increases cortisol, which stimulates the body to make fat) ; can suppress immune cells that fight off viral infections and cancer (why doctors recommend a lot of sleep when you're sick) ; slows reactions and increases errors on visual attention tasks (feels like your brain is skipping like a CD ; starts to break down your abilities)

marijuana

1 of the hallucinogens ; THC is the major active ingredient in it ; experience can be colored by emotional state ; frequent use in adolescence can lead to depression ; disrupts memory formation

LSD

1 of the hallucinogens ; a powerful hallucinogenic drug that's also known as "acid" (lysergic acid diethylamide) ; experience is colored by the person's emotional state ; experience may vary from euphoria to detachment to panic

light

1 of the influences on sleep patterns ; being around it disrupts our circadian rhythms ; artificial kind delays sleep

suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and pineal gland

1 of the influences on sleep patterns ; bright light activates the light-sensitive proteins in the retina ; these proteins trigger signals to the SCN, located in the hypothalamus, which controls the pineal gland ; the pineal gland then decreases its production of melatonin

technology

1 of the influences on sleep patterns ; lighting and electronics cause people to stay up far past the time that their ancestors would've gone to bed

age

1 of the influences on sleep patterns ; newborns need a lot of sleep, whereas many adults can function fine on only 6 hours of sleep

genetics

1 of the influences on sleep patterns ; there can be certain similarities between you and your family members dealing with your sleeping patterns

depressants

1 of the main types of psychoactive drugs ; drugs such as alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates that reduce neural activity and slow body functions ; include alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates

hallucinogens

1 of the main types of psychoactive drugs ; drugs that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input ; also called psychedelic drugs ; include LSD, marijuana, Ecstasy, and PCP

stimulants

1 of the main types of psychoactive drugs ; drugs that excite neural activity and speed up body functions ; users' pupils dilate, heart and breathing rates increase, and blood sugar levels rise, causing a drop in appetite ; used to feel alert, lose weight, and boost mood or athletic performance ; include caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, cocaine, methamphetamine, and Ecstasy

night terrors

1 of the major sleep disorders ; characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified ; usually target children ; unlike nightmares, they occur during NREM-3 and are seldom remembered (you aren't supposed to wake up the child during one {you should let it play out and help them back to bed})

sleep apnea

1 of the major sleep disorders ; characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings (these frequent awakenings deprive the sufferer of slow-wave sleep {they feel incredibly tired all of the time until they're diagnosed}) ; sufferers of it often don't know that they have the disease until someone else points it out because they don't remember the frequent awakenings and cessations in breath ; associated with obesity and high blood pressure (it can increase the risk of a heart attack and stroke) ; a special mask can keep the airway open and alleviate these symptoms

narcolepsy

1 of the major sleep disorders ; characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks ; the sufferer may lapse directly into REM sleep, often at inopportune times ; it can be mild to severe ; severe sufferers can't drive and have difficulty completing everyday activities because of the frequent and severe nature of their sleepiness attacks ; people with it have to be in certain situations for their sleep attacks to kick in (for example, a sleep attack won't hit while someone is running a marathon, but it will hit when someone is watching a video in class)

insomnia

1 of the major sleep disorders ; recurring problems in falling or staying asleep ; some degree of it is normal when under temporary stress or excitement (for example, the night before vacation when you're too excited to sleep) ; complainers of it often severely overestimate how long it takes them to fall asleep and how often they wake up (for example, a person might think that they're only sleeping for 2-3 hours per night, but a sleeping test may prove that they're actually sleeping 5-6 hours per night) ; sleeping pills and alcohol can exacerbate it (it's very easy to become addicted to sleeping pills, so doctors prescribe them with extreme caution)

nightmares

1 of the major sleep disorders ; simply bad dream that occur during REM sleep ; adults and children can have them

cocaine

1 of the stimulants ; a powerful and addictive stimulant, derived from the coca plant, producing temporarily increased alertness ; induces a rush of euphoria and depletes neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine) ; can lead to aggression, suspiciousness, convulsions, cardiac arrest, or respiratory failure

methamphetamine

1 of the stimulants ; a powerfully addictive drug that stimulates CNS, with speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes ; triggers the release of dopamine (over time, appears to reduce baseline dopamine levels) ; aftereffects include irritability, insomnia, hypertension, seizures, social isolation, depression, and violent outbursts

nicotine

1 of the stimulants ; a stimulating and highly addictive psychoactive drug in tobacco ; just as addictive as heroin and cocaine ; withdrawal symptoms include insomnia, anxiety, irritability, and distractibility ; signals the CNS to release a flood of neurotransmitters (epinephrine, norephinephrine, dopamine, and opioids)

amphetamines

1 of the stimulants ; drugs that stimulate neural activity, causing speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes ; used for the treatment of ADHD, obesity, and narcolepsy

caffeine

1 of the stimulants ; withdrawal symptoms include fatigue, headaches, irritability, and depression

Ecstasy

1 of the stimulants and hallucinogens ; also known as MDMA ; produces euphoria and social intimacy, but with short-term health risks and longer-term harm to mood and cognition ; triggers the release of serotonin and dopamine (can damage serotonin producing neurons) ; has dehydrating effects that can kill, especially when combined with aerobic activity (like dancing) and drinking alcohol

tips for improving memory

1) rehearse repeatedly (the more that you use the information, the more that you'll be able to actively retain it) 2) make the material meaningful (the more that you can relate things to your life, the better that they'll stick) 3) activate retrieval cues (try to think of things that remind you of the thing that you're trying to remember) 4) use mnemonic devices 5) minimize interferences (try not to learn too much at once) 6) sleep more (helps you encode things into long term memory ; prepares you to encode and retrieve things better the next day) 7) test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to find out what you don't yet know

Margaret Floy Washburn

1st female to be awarded a Ph.D in psychology ; 2nd female American Psychological Association President in 1921 ; in a time when behaviorism was growing in popularity, published "The Animal Mind", which opposed the idea that only observable/behavioral events should be studied and included in the field of psychology ; interested in mental events as well as observable/behavioral events ; known for her involvement in experimental psychology

amygdala

2 lima-bean sized neural clusters ; linked to emotions, like rage and fear (for example, in 1939, scientists removed one from a monkey who was usually ill-tempered and it turned into a very a very mellow creature) ; stimulating one in an animal can produce a display of aggression ; when the electrode is moved slightly, the same animal might display an irrational amount of fear ; linked to the storage of emotional memories ; part of the limbic system ; our emotions trigger stress hormones that influence memory formation (stress hormones provoke it to initiate a memory ; significantly stressful events can form almost unforgettable memories {stronger emotions make for stronger, more reliable memories})

spinal cord

2-way information highway connecting the peripheral nervous system and the brain ; contains ascending neural fibers and descending neural fibers ; provides the neural pathway to control our reflexes

circadian rhythm

24-hour cycle of night and day by an internal biological clock ; as morning approaches, body temperature rises ; it peaks during the day and it drops again in the evening ; age and experience can alter one ; for examples, 1) teenagers have to adjust theirs after the summer in order to wake up early for school 2) people who work night shifts have a different one than people who work day shifts 3) most adults are "morning people" with their performance declining as the day wears on while young adults, however, are usually "night-owls" with their performance peaking in the evening 4) interruptions in it include jet lag, pulling an all-nighter, etc., because the body is "out of wack" ; before electricity, most people had the same one because they naturally woke up when the sun came up and went to bed when the sun went down ; electricity allows us to have different ones because we can make our own light at any hour that we please

Francis Bacon

English ; often known as the "father of empiricism" and the "father of the scientific method" ; insisted that scientific knowledge could only be based on careful observation and experimentation (just because some people thought something could be so, we don't have to call it science) ; ideas influenced those after him to approach psychology and other sciences in a more down-to-earth and not philosophical manner (more of a "hard science" view)

John Locke

English political philosopher ; wrote "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", arguing that the mind was a "tabula rasa" (blank slate) on which experience writes (what you go through determines who you are) ; agrees with Aristotle's philosophy ; ideas contributed to empiricism

Rene Descartes

French ; more of a scientist than a philosopher ; came after Socrates and Plato and agreed with them ; believed that mind and body are separate and knowledge is innate ; wanted to find out how the mind and body are connected (how the mind controls the body) ; dissected animals and concluded that the fluid found in the brain contained "animal spirits" (thought that these animal spirits flowed through the nerves to the muscles ; kind of correct because fluids do flow through the brain, but thought of it in simplistic terms because he lacked the knowledge to understand it like we do now)

why we dream

Freud's theories ; filing away memories and experiences (stores away the day's events in your brain) ; developing neural pathways and strengthening them (similar to exercise for your brain) ; make sense of neural static (forming a story that effectively synthesizes the strange visions that come from random simulation in multiple parts of the brain {because your brain is trying to store all of these different experiences away, your brain turns them into a dream filled with a mangled version of what actually happened}) ; reflect cognitive development/engage brain networks

type A

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people ; these personalities and those who express anger and stress regularly are at a greater risk for developing heart disease and other health problems (people who often hold in feelings of resentment and anxiety are also at a higher risk)

Wilhelm Wundt

German professor at the University of Leipzig in Germany ; performed the 1st documented psychological experiment along with 2 of his graduate students (created an apparatus that measured the time lag between people's hearing a ball hit a platform and their pressing a button ; people responded in 1 tenth of a second when asked to press the button as soon as the sound occurred and in 2 tenths of a second when asked to press the button as son as they were consciously aware of perceiving a sound ; concluded that it takes us a little longer to process the information of a sound than to react to it simply from hearing it) ; known as the "father of psychology", creating the first psychological laboratory

Aristotle

Greek ; Plato's student ; disagreed with Socrates and Plato ; thought that knowledge isn't innate ; believed that knowledge grows from experience ; believed that mind and body were inseparable (once the body dies, the mind dies as well) ; believed that the mind was in the heart

Plato

Greek philosopher ; Socrates' student ; thought that mind and body were separate (once the body dies, the mind can live on) ; thought that knowledge was innate/inborn (we're born with a certain amount of knowledge already) ; believed that the mind was in the head

Socrates

Greek philosopher ; thought that mind and body were separate (once the body dies, the mind can live on) ; thought that knowledge was innate/inborn (we're born with a certain amount of knowledge already)

can hypnosis force people to act against their will?

Myers says no ; in laboratory experiments, unhypnotized people did the same things that hypnotized people did (the hypnosis wasn't a factor in their behavior)

general adaptation syndrome

Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in 3 phases: 1) alarm 2) resistance 3) exhaustion

linguistic determinism

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think ; he says that if we don't have a word for something, then we can't think about it ; this hypothesis is too extreme ; however, it's true that people think differently and make different decisions when speaking different languages (others might choose to express something in a certain language over another, suggesting that language does have some impact on the way we think and vice versa)

gestalt

a German word meaning "form" or "whole" ; this type of psychology involves integrating pieces of information into meaningful wholes ; helps us perceive the world in unified groups or patterns

productive language

a baby's ability to produce words ; starts with the babbling stage ; after the babbling stage, the one-word stage (ages 1-2) comes ; after the one-word stage, the two-word stage (ages 2 and beyond) comes

receptive language

a baby's ability to understand what's said to and about them ; by 4 months, babies can start to recognize speech sounds (they can read lips and prefer to look at a face that matches a sound) ; by 7 months, babies can segment sounds into individual words

retinal disparity

a binocular cue for perceiving depth ; by comparing images from the retinas in the 2 eyes, the brain computes distance ; the greater the disparity (difference) between the 2 images, the closer the object (for example, finger in front of your eye vs. something far away from you)

operant chamber

a chamber containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer ; atttached devices record the animal's rate of bar pressing or key pressing ; designed by Skinner to use in his experiments ; popularly known as a "Skinner box"

smell

a chemical sense ; also known as olfaction (olfactory {what it is} neurons bypass the thalamus ; olfactory cortex is in the temporal lobe) ; attractiveness of them comes from association ; as good experiences are linked with a particular scent, people come to like that scent (for example, if you're close with a family member and they wear a certain perfume, smelling that scent will make you think of them and you'll like the scent) ; we have a powerful capacity to recognize long-forgotten odors and the associated memories (years later, a smell can bring you back to a memory that you weren't even thinking about ; there's a connection between the olfactory cortex and the limbic system areas associated with memory)

flashbulb memory

a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event ; for examples, 1) where you were on 9/11 2) what happened to you during Katrina ; as we relive, rehearse, and discuss these memories, misinformation seeps in (at a certain point, its likely that the memory isn't 100% accurate anymore)

standard deviation

a computed measure of how many scores vary around the mean source ; 1 of the measures of variation

paraphilia

a condition characterized by abnormal sexual desires ; for examples 1) exhibitionism 2) fetishism 3) pedophilia ; most of them aren't illegal on their own, but if you act on them, then they can be

intrinsic motivation

a desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake ; comes from within ; for examples, 1) reading a book for leisure 2) doing well in a class because you enjoy learning the content 3) going to an extra dance class for fun

extrinsic motivation

a desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishments ; comes from outside sources ; for examples, 1) reading a book because you have to take a test on it 2) doing well in school to avoid being punished by your parents 3) going to an extra dance class to make up a previously missed class in order to avoid getting in trouble with your teacher

PYY

a digestive tract hormone ; sends "I'm not hungry" signals to the brain

confounding variable

a factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment (for example, in an experiment where the effect of coffee on how fast someone types is being studied, your typing skills or how much sleep you get) ; we want to eliminate as many of them as possible

sampling bias

a flawed sampling process that produces an unrepresentative sample (only including part of the population in the selection process)

consciousness

a hard term to define and has changed throughout the history of psychology (hasn't been a constant definition) ; today's definition of it is our awareness of ourselves and our environment ; works as more of a scale or spectrum (there's a lot of different degrees of consciousness)

ghrelin

a hormone secreted by an empty stomach ; sends "I'm hungry" signals to the brain

insulin

a hormone secreted by the pancreas ; controls blood glucose

gherlin

a hunger-arousing hormone ; increased by sleep deprivation

orexin

a hunger-triggering hormone secreted by the hypothalamus

value judgement

a judgement of the rightness or wrongness of something ; psychological research isn't free of them (researchers use their value judgements to determine what they will research and how they will go about it and analyze the results ; humans have bias and can't always control it) ; even popular psychological attitudes and findings can contain hidden values ; the science of behavior and mental processes can help us reach our goals, but it can't tell us what those goals should be ; involved with ethics in research

conditioned response

a learned response to a previously neutral, now conditioned, stimulus ; in Pavlov's experiments, salivation

polygraph

a machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses, such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes, accompanying emotion ; aren't good indicators of dishonesty (they have about the same chance of detecting a lie as flipping a coin ; some people can be nervous about using one without being guilty and some guilty people can lie without their bodily functions changing) ; these machines are really just measuring the responses of the sympathetic nervous system, which could be the result of any emotion that causes arousal

glutamate

a major excitatory neurotransmitter that's involved in memory ; oversupply of it can overstimulate the brain, which produces migraines or seizures (why some people avoid MSG, monosodium glutamate, in food)

GABA

a major inhibitory neurotransmitter ; undersupply of it is linked to seizures, tremors, and insomnia

correlation

a measure of the extent to which 2 variables change together and thus how well either variable predicts the other (use the word "predicts" because we can't just say "causes" without performing an experiment) ; doesn't equal causation (for example, if people with cancer tend to have a certain shoe size, we can't say that cancer causes the shoe size or vice versa) ; shown with scatterplots

sensory memory

a memory that records momentary images of scenes or echoes of sounds (what you can remember seeing or hearing from the recent past) ; feeds our working memory ; can be iconic memories or echoic memories

implicit memories

a memory that's retained independent of conscious recollection ; things we didn't know that we knew/learned ; for example, the time that you got home from school yesterday ; acquired through automatic processing ; part of our dual-track memory ; system of them is made up of the cerebellum and basal ganglia

color

a mental construction (light rays aren't colored) ; our difference threshold for it is so low that we can discriminate more than 1 million different variations of it ; doesn't reside in objects (our experience of it depends on the object's context)

concepts

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people ; for example, one might be a simple chair (once it's established, high-chairs, barstools, recliners, etc. can be grouped into the one of a "chair") ; as you get older, your understanding of them gets deeper because you find out more information

prototypes

a mental image or best example of a category ; matching new items to one provides a quick and easy method for sorting them into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin) ; for examples, 1) a robin is a good one for a bird (penguins and ostriches aren't as "birdy" as a robin, so they aren't good ones) 2) a dining room chair is a good one for a chair (a beanbag isn't really included in our concept of a "chair" because it doesn't fit the one of a dining room chair very well) ; almost like stereotypes

perceptual set

a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another ; for examples, 1) pictures of the Loch Ness monster might look like a tree limb to those who've been told to look at it skeptically 2) children who taste fries from a McDonald's bag prefer them to fries that they eat from an unmarked bag, even if both bags contain the same fries

algorithms

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem ; contrasts with the usually speedier, but also more error-prone, heuristics ; for examples, 1) using a formula to solve a math equation 2) following a recipe exactly from a cook book to ensure that the dish will come out a certain way ; formulas or a certain set of steps that get something done

unconditioned response

a naturally occuring response ; in Pavlov's experiments, salivation

motivation

a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior ; comes from both nature and nurture (nature gives us a bodily "push" and nurture provides "pulls" from thought processes and culture) ; 4 theories of it are 1) instinct theory 2) drive-reduction theory 3) arousal theory 4) Maslow's hierarchy of needs ; can influence how we perceive things (for example, softball players who're more convinced that they're going to hit the ball do hit the ball more often {they perceive the ball to be bigger and easier to hit})

arcuate nucleus

a neural arc included in a larger region known as the ventromedial hypothalamus ; has a center that secretes appetite-stimulating hormones and a center that secretes appetite-suppressing hormones ; when this area is stimulated electrically, well-fed animals will begin to eat ; when this area is destroyed, even starving animals have no interest in food

reticular formation

a neuron network that extends from the spinal cord right up through the thalamus ; located inside the brainstem in between your ears ; in 1949, Giuseppe Moruzzi and Horace Magoun discovered that electrically stimulating the one of a cat almost instantly produced an awake, alert animal (when Magoun severed the animal's one, the cat went into a coma and never awoke) ; enables arousal

working memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on the conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information and of information retrieved from long-term memory ; for example, right now, you're using your it to link the information in this outline to other information that you've learned in the past ; without focused attention, information often fades from memory ; one of the memory models ; capacity of it varies, depending on age and other factors (young adults have a greater capacity for it than younger children or older adults, so young adults can do a better job at multitasking)

pedophilia

a paraphilia where people are sexually attracted to children

exhibitionism

a paraphilia where people enjoy having sex in front of others

fetishism

a paraphilia where people have a sexual fetish

higher order conditioning

a procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in 1 conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus ; for example, an animal that's learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that a light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone

leptin

a protein hormone secreted by fat cells ; a hunger-suppressing hormone (when it's abundant, it causes the brain to increase metabolism and decrease hunger) ; decreased by sleep deprivation

mutation

a random error in a gene replication that leads to a change ; nature has selected advantageous variations from the new gene variations produced at each human conception and the ones that sometimes result (each generation has its own ones and changes in DNA) ; our adaptive flexibility in responding to different environments contributes to our fitness ; sometimes result from new gene combinations ; deals with natural selection and adaption

variable-ratio schedule

a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses ; "after an unpredictable number" ; for examples, 1) playing slot machines 2) casting a fishing line ; matters more on how many times instead of the length of time

variable-interval schedule

a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals ; "unpredictably often" ; for example, checking for an Instagram response ; random time determines when the reinforcement comes ; most unpredictable reinforcement schedule

fixed-ratio schedule

a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses ; "every so many" ; for example, if you buy 10 coffees, you then get 1 free ; not a specified length of time, but a specified ratio

fixed-interval schedule

a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed ; "every so often" ; for example, happy hour (1/2 prices only on Wednesdays) ; certain length of time determines when the reinforcement comes

experiment

a research method in which an investigator manipulates 1 or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental processes (the dependent variable) ; only research method that can establish cause and effect relationships ; contains 2 groups (experimental group and control group)

refractory period

a resting pause ; during it, the neuron pumps the positively charged ions back outside the cell (like how you have to refill a confetti cannon before spraying more confetti out of it) then the neuron can fire again ; for example, if you hurt your hand, it feels numb (numbness is when it goes out of pain and throbbing happens when it comes back into pain)

random sample

a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion (drawing out of a hat that includes the names of an entire study "population" or selecting the names with computer software) ; can keep randomly pulling until you have a combination that you like as long as you randomly select the names every single time ; AP exam loves this topic and it's usually on the FRQ

CT (computer tomography) scan

a series of x-ray photographs taken from different angles and combined by a computer into a composite representation of the brain's structure ; can reveal brain damage, strokes, and bleeds in the brain ; also called a CAT scan

endocrine system

a set of glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream ; close relatives with the nervous system (both produce molecules that are on receptors elsewhere) ; although it takes longer than the nervous system to deliver messages, it produces longer-lasting reactions (for example, hunger) ; contains the adrenal gland and the pituitary gland

premature ejaculation

a sexual dysfunction where men have an orgasm way too quickly

heuristics

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently ; usually speedier, but also more error-prone than algorithms ; for example, in a jumble of letters, one might start to group letters that go together (CH or LY) in order to form a word ; we're assuming things and taking shortcuts when using them (this can sometimes lead to errors)

pupil

a small adjustable opening ; actually not a black mass, but a hole ; light passes through it after entering the eye through the cornea

cochlea

a snail-shaped tube in the inner ear (resembles the magic conch from SpongeBob) ; vibrations from the eardrum are transmitted here by the 3 tiny bones (the hammer, anvil, and stirrup) in the middle ear ; incoming vibrations cause its membrane (the oval membrane) to vibrate, jostling the fluid that fills the tube

hypnosis

a social interaction in which 1 person (the subject) responds to another person's (the hypnotist's) suggestions that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur ; very different for everyone ; hypnotist's power resides in the subject's openness to suggestion (some people are more open than others)

dissociation

a split between different levels of consciousness ; related to DID (dissociative identity disorder) ; very controversial because not all psychologists believe in it ; special dual-processing state

correlation coefficient

a statistical index of the relationship between 2 variables from -1.0 to +1.0 (-1.0 and +1.0 are both strong correlations, so +0.03 would be weaker {the closer you get to 0, the weaker the correlation becomes})

unconditioned stimulus

a stimulus that automatically triggers a response ; in Pavlov's experiments, food

discriminative stimulus

a stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement (in contrast to related stimuli not associated with reinforcement) ; for example, pigeons can learn to distinguish between pictures of flowers, dogs, humans, etc. and only respond to certain images (certain images them)

neutral stimulus

a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning ; doesn't really mean anything by itself ; turns significant and means something when it becomes a conditioned stimulus ; in Pavlov's experiments, 1) tuning fork 2) bell 3) etc.

conditioned reinforcer

a stimulus that gains its reinforcing powers through its association with a primary reinforcer ; also known as a secondary reinforcer ; for example, if a rat learns that the light reliably signals food delivery, the light becomes a conditioned stimulus

positive reinforcer

a stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response ; deals with positive reinforcement

SQ3R

a study method incorporating 5 steps: 1) survey 2) question 3) read 5) retrieve 6) review

insight

a sudden realization of a problem's solution ; contrasts with strategy-based solutions ; for examples, 1) eureka 2) "I've got it!" 3) an "ah-ha" moment! ; doesn't necessarily mean that you're right or wrong

insight learning

a sudden realization of a problem's solution ; understanding that pops into your head ; for examples, 1) in the middle of psychology class, you suddenly understand a chemistry problem that you were thinking about earlier 2) when you can't think of the right word for something and it comes to you later on

normal curve

a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data ; most scores fall near the mean and fewer near the extremes ; 1 of the measures of variation

survey

a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group ; interviews or surveys given on paper or online ; pro is 1) if people are anonymous when submitting them, they may be more honest with their answers ; cons are 1) since you aren't watching them complete the survey and aren't familiar with your participants, you don't know if they're being truthful 2) can't go back and dig deeper into the answers that were given ; wording can often have an impact on them because the way we frame a question will often change the responses we get (for example, people are more accepting of "aid for the needy" than "welfare") ; type of descriptive technique

fMRI (functional MRI)

a technique for revealing blood flow and, therefore, brain activity comparing successive MRI scans ; show brain structure and brain activity ; extremely detailed ; a series of many MRIs ; blood goes to where the brain is active (scientists compare MRI scans taken seconds apart to observe the activity) ; scans show scientists, just by brain scans, what activities people are doing

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan

a technique that uses magnetic fields and radio waves to produce computer generated images of soft tissue ; show brain anatomy ; very expensive and detailed, so they aren't used that commonly ; medical uses include detecting Alzheimer's disease ; certain characteristics of brain ones have been correlated with Autism, Panic Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

faces

a temporal lobe area by your right ear enables you to perceive them and recognize them from different viewpoints ; when researchers temporarily disrupt the brain's face-processing areas with magnetic pulses, people are unable to recognize them (face blindness occurs) ; detection of them is in a separate area from object detection

mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in 1 particular way, often a way that's been successful in the past ; for examples, 1) if I give you O-T-T-F-?-? and tell you that we're talking about numbers, you might guess "F-S" for 5 and 6 (after this, you might have an easier time guessing J-F-M-A-?-?-? (months of the year) 2) if you've just spent 2 weeks conjugating verbs in the present tense and then have a pop quiz where you have to conjugate verbs in the future tense, it'll be hard for you to get out of the habit of conjugating the verbs in present tense ; can also be influenced by something that you were just doing

homeostasis

a tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state ; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level ; the aim of the drive-reduction theory

signal detection theory

a theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) ; depends on our experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness ; seeks to understand why people respond differently to the same stimuli ; for examples, 1) some teachers are much more perceptive to talking or texting in class than others are 2) police officers have a different level of perception than we do because of their extensive training

cerebral cortex

a thin surface layer of interconnected neural cells ; your brain's "thinking crown" and its ultimate control and information processing center ; actual area of it is about equal to a large pizza (its wrinkles allow for all of that matter to fit inside the skull) ; each structure of it is divided into 4 lobes separated by fissures or folds (frontal lobes, occipital lobes, temporal lobes, and parietal lobes) ; have 8 lobes total ; contains glial cells ; have motor functions, sensory functions, and association areas

eardrum

a tight membrane ; if you puncture or hurt it in some way, it's hard to fix and can leave permanent damage (why you aren't supposed to put q-tips in your ear)

perceptual constancy

a top-down process in which we recognize objects without being deceived in color, brightness, shape, or size ; comparisons govern our perceptions ; sometimes an object whose actual shape can't change seems to change shape with the angle of our view

operant conditioning

a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher ; can be applied at school, in sports, at work, at home, and for self improvement ; associated with operant behavior ; voluntary and operates on the environment ; associating a response with a consequence

classical conditioning

a type of learning in which one learns to link 2 or more stimuli and anticipate events ; 1 event signifies the other (for example, snow and being cold) ; conditioning and Pavlov's experiments laid the groundwork for John B. Watson to found behaviorism ; associated with respondent behavior ; involuntary/automatic (builds on biological responses) ; organism is associating events (NS is paired with a US and becomes a CS)

PET (positron emission topography) scan

a visual display of brain activity that detects where a radioactive form of glucose goes while the brain performs a given task (active neurons are glucose hogs {these scans show "hot spots" showing which brain areas are most active as the person does mathematical calculations, looks at images, etc.}) ; medical uses are primarily to detect cancer in the brain or a problem area that's consuming more glucose than normal (parts of the brain that aren't functioning as normal)

positive punishment

administering an aversive stimulus (adding a negative stimulus) ; for examples, 1) spanking 2) spraying water on a misbehaving cat

benefits of belonging

affiliation need is a basic human motivation ; most of us seek to affiliate with others and enter into relationships ; social bonds increased our ancestors' chances of survival (living in a community aids in defense, finding food, and reproducing) ; feelings of love activate the brain's reward center and our safety systems ; chain migration

alcohol use disorder

alcohol use marked by tolerance, withdrawal, and a drive to continue problematic use ; popularly known as "alcoholism" ; prolonged and excessive drinking characterizes it

universal grammar

all languages share some basic elements (all human languages have nouns, verbs, and adjectives ; we have a built-in readiness to learn grammar)

population

all of those in a group being studied, from which samples may be drawn (for example, for a study on SJA students, SJA students are the popuation {not all of them will be selected for the study}) ; the whole group you want to study and describe

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

EEG (electroencephalogram)

an amplified recording of the waves of electrical activity sweeping across the brain's surface ; these waves are measured by electrodes placed on the scalp (researchers present a stimulus repeatedly and have a computer filter out brain activity unrelated to the stimulus ; what remains is the electrical wave evoked by the stimulus ; used to diagnose epilepsy and brain death {not used to tell if people are brain dead as often because there's better ways to find that out now})

limits on classical conditioning

an animal's capacity for conditioning is restrained by its biology ; each species' predispositions prepare it to learn the associations that enhance its survival (for examples, 1) rats have taste aversion because, for rats, the easiest way to identify tainted food is to taste it {the rats learned to associate taste, but not smell, sight, or sound, with tainted food because of this biological influence} 2) birds are biologically primed to develop aversions to the sight of tainted food, not the taste) ; conditioning is speedier, stronger, and more durable when the conditioned stimuli is ecologically relevant (something that's tied in to the animal's natural instincts) ; not all stimuli can become conditioned stimuli (it depends on the animal and their biological predispositions)

intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning ; a gut feeling ; tells you to do something a certain way ; can lead us to faulty thinking, so logical reasoning should be used whenever possible ; may be a good tool for discerning if choices are safe or unsafe (if you have a gut feeling that something is a bad idea, then don't do it)

cochlear implants

an electronic device that converts sounds into electrical signals that convey information about sound to the brain ; only way to restore hearing for people with nerve deafness

punishment

an event that tends to decrease the behavior that it follows ; may only teach the child not to do something in a given situation (they learn to discriminate between situations and the behavior isn't extinguished {become more sneaky about when they exhibit the behavior}) ; punished behavior is suppressed, but not forgotten (you won't do the punished behavior around the person who punished you, but you will do it when they aren't around) ; tells you what not to do

theory

an explanation using an integrated set of principals that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events ; scientifically, not the same as a simple idea or hunch (everyday theories) ; no matter how reasonable it sounds, we have to it to the test using the scientific method (make sure it's observable for science)

anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories (after an accident usually) ; for example, the movie "50 First Dates" (she remembers before the accident, but she relives the same day every day following the accident because she can't form new memories)

retrograde amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past ; for example, the movie "The Vow" (she can remember new information after the accident, but can't remember a large chunk of time before the accident)

long-term potentiation

an increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation ; believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory ; drugs that block it interfere with learning (for example, rats given a drug that enhanced it learned a maze with half the usual number of mistakes while injecting rats with a chemical that blocked the preservation of it erased recent learning) ; good thing when it comes to learning

placebo

an inert substance that's usually given to a control group (for example, a sugar pill that does nothing) ; involved in the double blind procedure

primary reinforcer

an innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need ; for example, food and water

biopsychosocial approach

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

epigenetic mark

an organic molecule attached to a part of a DNA strand (for examples, 1) factors such as diet and drugs can affect the epigenetic molecules that regulate gene expression 2) if you have a breast cancer gene in your family, one may make it present or not present) ; instructs the cell to ignore any gene present in that DNA segment

habituation

an organism's decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it ; for examples, 1) when your friend sneaks up on you and scares you, you get scared, but when they try the same thing every few minutes, you no longer have a severe reaction after a while (you've habituated) 2) when you vacuum around your house, your puppy freaks out, but when you keep vacuuming routinely, your dog becomes less irritated by the vacuum (your dog has habituated)

conditioned stimulus

an originally irrelevant stimulus that comes to trigger a response ; means something by itself ; in Pavlov's experiments, 1) tuning fork 2) bell 3) etc.

bottom-up processing

analysis that begins with the sensory receptor and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information (starts at the sensory receptors and works up to higher levels of processing) ; for examples, 1) touching a desk 2) stumbling around in the dark and touching someone's hair ; when we encounter something new, it's often times this kind of processing (for example, when eating a food that you've never tried before, you taste it first then realize what it is)

cognitive processes and classical conditioning

animals can learn the predictability of an event (for example, if a tone always precedes a shock and a light precedes the tone, a rat will learn that the tone is the best predictor of the shock, not the light) ; associations can influence attitudes (for example, cartoon characters with ice cream may be more liked by children than cartoon characters with brussels sprouts)

cognitive processes and operant conditioning

animals on a fixed-interval reinforcement schedule respond more and more frequently as the time approaches when a response will produce a reinforcement (the animals behave as if they expected that repeating the response would soon produce the reward)

reinforcement

any event that strengthens the behavior that it follows ; can be positive or negative ; schedules can be continuous or partial ; tells you what to do ; most psychologists say that it's the way to go when disciplining people

aphasia

any impairment of language, usually caused by damage to Broca's area or Wernicke's area ; could be an impairment of speaking, comprehension, writing, etc. ; many different forms and severities of it are possible

sexual dysfunctions

any problems that consistently impair sexual arousal or functioning ; for examples, 1) erectile disorder 2) premature ejaculation 3) female orgasmic disorder ; can be helped through therapy and sometimes medication

negative reinforcer

any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response ; deals with negative reinforcement

psychophysiological illness

any stress related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches ; literally "mind-body" illness ; stress leaves us less able to fight off disease (lowers the strength of your immune system)

arousal

anything people get excited ; doesn't only refer to the sexual kind

antisocial effects

application of observational learning ; harmful, unconstructive behavior ; the opposite of prosocial behavior ; for examples, 1) children who're abused are more likely to become the abuser 2) children who play violent video games or who're exposed to media violence may be predisposed to act more aggressively than others 3) men who beat their wives often had wife-beating fathers

prosocial effects

application of observational learning ; positive, constructive, helpful behavior ; the opposite of antisocial behavior ; for examples, 1) a child may observe an adult being polite and model that same behavior 2) teachers might teach students by setting the example to hold the door for people 3) Martin Luther King and Gandhi set positive examples for those around them

industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologists

apply psychological concepts and methods to optimizing behavior in places (look at how they can improve a work place) ; involved with applied research ; study the relationship between people and their working environments ; try to increase productivity, help choose the right personnel, promote job satisfaction, etc.

forensic psychologists

apply psychological principles to legal issues ; for example, would ask the question "does a certain brain issue explain why someone committed a crime enough to where the criminal can qualify for a mental defect claim?" ; consult on jury selections and deliberation processes ; involved with applied research

visual cortex

area at the back of the brain in the occipital lobes ; one of the sensory functions

somatosensory cortex

area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations ; if a scientists stimulates this area, the subject may report being touched on the shoulder or feeling a touch on the face even though no one is touching them ; the more sensitive the body region, the larger its area is devoted to it (for examplea, 1) rats have large parts dedicated to their whiskers while owls have larger areas for hearing sensations 2) people have large parts dedicated to their hands, face, neck, etc.)

motor cortex

area that's located in the rear of the frontal lobes and controls voluntary movements

association areas

areas of the cerebral cortex that aren't involved in primary motor or sensory functions ; rather, they're involved in higher mental functions such as learning, remembering, thinking, and speaking ; can't be or haven't been neatly mapped ; aren't dormant (it's a myth that we only use 10% of our brains) ; not as specific as other areas ; include the prefrontal cortex ; damage to the frontal lobe can also alter personality and remove a person's inhibitions (for example, people with damaged frontal lobes may have intact memories, high scores on intelligence tests, and great cake baking skills ; however, they wouldn't be able to plan ahead to begin baking a cake for a birthday party)

spillover effect

arousal spills from 1 event to the next ; for example, people very excited at a soccer game may react violently and angrily to small stimuli, causing a riot

sympathetic nervous system

arouses and expends energy ; if something alarms or challenges you, it will accelerate your heart rate, raise your blood pressure, etc. (for examples, 1) friends jumping out at you 2) hearing a noise while home alone 3) watching someone get badly injured 4) being in a bad car accident) ; fight or flight mode ; immediately kicks in after something happens to you ; part of the autonomic nervous system that deals with emotions ; it 1) mobilizes the body for action 2) adrenal glands release epinephrine and norepinephrine 3) liver pours extra sugar into the bloodstream (gives you a boost of energy) 4) digestion slows 5) blood is diverted to the skeletal muscles (even more so than usual) 6) pupils dilate and let in more light 7) perspiration ; part of the stress response system that's activated, increasing heart rate and respiration, diverting blood from the digestive system to the skeletal muscles, releasing sugar and fat from the body's stores

exhaustion

as time passes with no relief from stress, the body's reserves run out (you become more vulnerable to disease ; in some cases, people can collapse or even die) ; 3rd phase of general adaptation syndrome

counseling psychologists

assist people with problems in living (usually related to school, work, or marriage) and in achieving greater well being ; usually have specialties ; involved with applied research ; help people adjust to life transitions or make lifestyle changes (deal with specific issues ; don't necessarily treat people with mental disorders) ; many work in school and university settings ; counseling is typically short term ; if you want to independently practice and offer counseling to the public, you must obtain a license (can't just rent a building and start treating patients)

hierarchy of needs

associated with Abraham Maslow (a humanistic psychologist) ; pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must 1st be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become more active ; doesn't account for the desire to find a mate and reproduce ; sometimes, humans can consciously choose to ignore this hierarchy and change their priorities (for examples, 1) an athlete might put his self-actualization needs above his safety needs when injured and playing in a big game 2) people on a hunger strike are putting self-transcendence needs above their basic needs for food and water)

limbic system

associated with emotions and drives ; between the older structures of the brain and the newer structures, which include the cerebral hemispheres ; contains the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus

prefrontal cortex

association area that enables judgment, planning, and the processing of new memories ; located in the forward part of the frontal lobes

Broca's area

association area where speaking is controlled ; located in the frontal lobe ; damage to it could result in aphasia ; controls language expression ; enables the muscle movements involved in speech

Wernicke's area

association area where understanding language is controlled ; located in the temporal lobe ; involved in language comprehension and expression

psychological influences on pain

athletes focused on winning can often play through the pain ; we seem to edit our memories of pain to seem less than what they were (for example, during childbirth, women promise that they'll never have more kids because of how great the pain is ; later on, they end up having more kids because they remember childbirth as less painful than it really was) ; research participants usually only recall the peak moment of it and the end of the painful experience

Pavlov's experiments

attached a dog to a harness and measured the dog's salivation with different stimuli ; paired the dog's food with neutral stimuli and the dog learned to associate the neutral stimuli with the food, making the neutral stimuli into conditioned stimuli ; neutral stimuli and conditioned stimuli were 1) tuning fork 2) bell 3) etc. ; unconditioned stimulus was food ; unconditioned and conditioned responses were salivation

source amnesia

attributing to the wrong source an event that we've experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined ; along with the misinformation effect, it's at the heart of many false memories

adrenal gland

autonomic nervous system (ANS) orders it on top of the kidneys to release epinephrine (adreline) and norepinephrine (nonadrenaline) which increases heart rate and blood pressure ; these hormones give us a surge of energy, known as the fight-or-flight response (people react differently) ; when the emergency passes, the hormones and feelings of excitement linger a while (hard to recover from) ; located in the endocrine system

taste

basic ones are sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami ; pleasurable ones attracted our ancestors to energy or protein rich foods that enabled their survival and bad ones deterred them from foods that could be toxic (for example, the leaves outside would probably taste bad, which would indicate that you aren't supposed to be eating them) ; a chemical sense (taste buds contain pores that catch the chemicals present in food) ; taste receptors produce themselves every week or 2 ; as you grow older, taste buds and taste sensitivity decrease ; expectations can often influence it (if everyone around you thinks something is good, you're probably going to think it's good ; if everyone around you thinks something is bad, you're probably going to think it's bad) ; there's supertasters, nontasters, and the rest of us that fall in between the 2

divided brain

because damage to the left hemisphere seemed to have a more dramatic impact than damage to the right hemisphere, people believed for a long time that the right hemisphere was less important/functional than the left hemisphere ; in the 1960s, neurosurgeons Vogel and Bogen speculated that major epileptic seizures were caused by an amplification of abnormal brain activity bouncing between the 2 hemispheres (they operated on patients and severed their corpus callosum, which connects the 2 hemispheres ; the patients' seizures were drastically reduced and nearly disappeared {these patients have split brains}) ; when testing these, the patients see what's displayed to their right side, but they point to the item on their left side with their left hand (they have trouble with the 2 sides communicating)

visual information processing

begins in the retina's neural layers ; after processing by the retina, messages travel to your bipolar cells and then to the ganglion cells ; then, the messages travel through those twined axons of the ganglion cells (the optic nerve) ; from there, messages travel to the occipital cortex (through the thalamus)

culture

behavior depends on one's this and gender ; most studies on it are done with W.E.I.R.D. participants (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) ; absolutely matters when looking at the results of a study (try to balance out your experimental and control group when doing an experiment) ; what's true of a population in one country isn't necessarily true in another country (for example, a study that happened in Europe may not hold true with Americans) ; collectivist ones emphasize the needs of the group, whereas individualist ones focus on the needs of individuals (for example, an Asian country is more concerned with the needs of the group {collectivist} while America leans toward the idea of every man for themselves {individualist}) ; some things are generally true across all of them (people diagnosed with a specific learning disorder (dyslexia) exhibit the same malfunction regardless of where they live in the world ; facial expressions and body language are ways in which people can communicate across them {for example, smiling always means happiness because it's a natural reaction to joy} ; across them, loneliness is magnified by shyness, low self-esteem, and being unmarried {we all crave love and affection}) ; gender doesn't matter (women and men do have significant differences, but they do share many, many traits and biological truths) ; 1 of the influences on sleep patterns (people in the U.S. and Canada often sleep less than people in other parts of the world {U.S. tends to be more "busy" than some other countries})

respondent behavior

behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus ; associated with classical conditioning

operant behavior

behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences ; associated with operant conditioning

subliminal stimuli

below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness (I may not detect something that happens around me, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened)

genetic relatives

biological parents

molecular genetics

biology that studies molecular structure and the function of genes ; many things, such as body weight and height, are influenced by genetics ; allows couples to see what their genes may provide for their children (predispositions) ; genetic tests can now reveal the at-risk population for diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, and alcohol use disorder

BMI

body mass index

testosterone

both males and females have this sex hormone, but the additional amount in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty ; the most important of the male sex hormones ; if a woman's natural level of it drops, her sexual interest may wane ; testosterone replacement theory replenishes sexual appetite in both men and women, but it also impacts men's overall attitude and energy level

neural layers

brain tissues in the retina that have migrated to the eye during fetal development

plasticity

brains can be sculpted by our experiences and modify itself after damage (for example, when a person gets sick in a group project and the rest of the group members do their work on top of their own work) ; brain isn't regrowing itself, but its leftover parts are taking over and acting out the functions of the lost parts ; severed neurons usually don't regenerate ; some brain functions seem preassigned to specific areas ; however, some neural tissue can reorganize in response to damage (may occur after serious damage, usually with a child) ; may explain why people who've lost 1 sense experience higher functions of their remaining senses ; deals with constraint-induced therapy and neurogenesis

psychodynamic psychology

branch of psychology that studies how unconscious drives and conflicts influence behavior and uses that information to treat people with psychological disorders ; for example, how can someone's personality traits and disorders be explained by unfulfilled wishes and childhood traumas? ; inspired by Freud ; looks at how people obtained a certain disorder ; easy to go over-board with this type of psychology and "make mountains out of molehills"

nerves

bundled axons that form neural "cables" connecting the central nervous system with muscles, glands, and sense organs (get 1 when you clump up a bunch of neurons together) ; found in the nervous system

hunger

can exist without stomach pangs and, in fact, without a stomach (persists in those without stomachs, indicating that hunger is also controlled by the brain) ; we feel it when our glucose level is low ; neural areas, many of them housed in the hypothalamus, control it and eating (the arcuate nucleus that's included in a larger region known as the ventromedial hypothalamus is 1 neural arc)

taste preferences

carbohydrates, such as chips, pasta, and sweets, help boost serotonin, making these snacks comfort foods when people are stressed ; people sickened by a food may develop an aversion to it (for example, if you get food poisoning from sushi, you may not want to eat sushi anymore) ; culture teaches us foods that are and aren't acceptable (for example, people in North America think it's gross to eat the eyes of camels, rat meat, horse meat, etc. when these things are regularly enjoyed in other parts of the world) ; biological/evolutionary wisdom tells us what to eat (for example, through the years, we've learned not to eat grass) ; upbringing may shape children's as well (the foods that parents feed their children will influence the what foods they like in the future {for example, if a dad buys his children fatty foods, then his kids will probably have health issues in the future because they'll become used to eating these foods and won't want to eat other foods besides them})

operational definition

carefully worded statements of the exact procedures (operations) used in a research study ; cover exactly what's being measured and the limits of variables (for example, if we're measuring academic success, what does that entail? grades? standardized test scores? participation in class?) ; should be so specific that anyone who reads the text can replicate/repeat the experiment exactly (makes sure that the results are reliable ; we can only say that something is empirical {scientifically accurate} if we've repeated the same experiment multiple times and gotten the same results)

glial cells (glue cells)

cells in the nervous system that support, nourish, and protect neurons ; may also play a role in learning and thinking ; not exactly sure what's going on scientifically that makes them so helpful for the rest of the brain ; since neurons are like queen bees who can't feed or protect themselves, these cells are like the worker bees who provide protection and nourishment

stressors

certain events that push our stress buttons ; include catastrophes, significant life changes, and daily hassles

hormones

chemical messengers that are manufactured by the endocrine glands and travel through the bloodstream and affect other tissues (when they act on the brain, they influence our interest in sex, food, and aggression {for examples, 1) primal drives 2) human nature}) ; some are chemically identical to neurotransmitters

psychoactive drugs

chemical substances that alter perceptions and moods ; 3 main types of them are depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens

critical periods

children have a better capacity to become bilingual if a 2nd language is introduced to them by age 7 ; people who learn languages as children can speak the language more efficiently and often with less of an accent

children's eyewitness recall

children's memories are extremely easy to mold (when told that something happened to them, many children became convinced that the event had happened to them ; these children could give detailed accounts of the events that didn't happen) ; children can't discern true memories from false or constructed memories

belief perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited ; for example, some people still believe that vaccines cause autism, even though no scientific study supports this (just the opposite is true because this has been disproven by science)

basic research subfields

cognitive psychologists, developmental psychologists, educational psychologists, experimental psychologists, psychometric psychologists, quantitative psychologists, and social psychologists work here

instincts

complex, unlearned behavior that's rigidly patterned throughout a species (means that everyone in the species does them) ; humans don't have many true ones (for example, a true one is a baby rooting around and sucking to find a nipple) ; after Darwin's theory of evolution gained popularity, people began labeling all behaviors as them (instead of explaining human behaviors, this simply named them ; although this theory makes some sense in tying our behaviors to those of our ancestors, it doesn't account for the majority of complex human behavior {most behavior isn't due solely to them})

hierarchies

composed of a few broad concepts divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts ; for example, your unit outline that makes up this Quizlet is a perfect example of it ; 1 of the effortful processing strategies

addiction

compulsive craving of drugs or certain behaviors (such as gambling) despite known adverse consequences ; ever-increasing doses of most psychoactive drugs may lead to it

health psychologists

concerned with psychology's contribution to promoting health and preventing disease ; design and conduct programs to help people stop smoking, improve sleep, etc. ; identify health crises and organize effect interventions (for example, work to eliminate the disease of AIDS) ; involved with applied research

making material meaningful

connecting material to one's own life increases the likelihood that one will retain the information ; for example, engineering students applying math concepts to real-life situations are much more stimulated to learn than students who're doing equations in class just for the sake of learning the formulas

psychology today

considers both observable and non-observable events important in the study of psychology ; gives us the modern definition of psychology ; instead of arguing about what's the most important field, studies everything because all fields are important

substance use disorder

continued substance craving and use despite significant life disruption and physical risk ; substance being abused is a psychoactive drug

autonomic nervous system

controls our glands and the muscles of our internal organs, influencing such functions as glandular activity, heartbeat, and digestion (deals with unconscious functions, such as breathing, heartbeat, and brain) ; usually, this system runs on its own, but some functions can be overridden (for example, breathing consciously can be overridden by holding our breaths or taking a deep breath) ; broken down into the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system ; part of the peripheral nervous system

sexual response cycle

created by William Masters and Virginia Johnson ; 4 stages are 1) excitement phase 2) plateau phase 3) orgasm 4) resolution phase

REM sleep deprivation

created by repeated awakenings during REM sleep ; REM rebound happens after it

scientific attitude

curious (ask questions and put things to the test) , skeptical (question results and outcomes {for example, news reports say that "researchers now say" usually aren't reliable because the research is often unreliable} and don't be afraid to doubt), and humble (realize we aren't perfect and all-knowing and just because something makes perfect sense to us, it's not scientifically true

basal ganglia

deep brain structures involved in motor movement ; close to the core of the brain ; facilitates the formation of our procedural memories for skills (for example, learning how to ride a bike) ; part of the implicit memory system

state-dependent memory

depends on the physical or mental state of the person when the memory was encoded ; for example, if someone hides money while drunk, they may not remember where the money is when they're sober, but when they're drunk again, they may know where the money is

context-dependent memory

depends on the setting where the memory was encoded ; for examples, 1) a scuba diver who was taught words underwater recalled them better underwater than they did on land 2) if you form the memory of studying at a desk, you'll remember the information better when you're taking the test at a desk

monocular cues

depth cues that are available to either eye alone ; includes relative height, relative motion, relative size, interposition, linear perspective, and light and shadow

binocular cues

depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of 2 eyes ; each retina receives a slightly different image of the world

semantics

deriving meaning from sounds/words ; more about sentence meaning

retaining information in the brain

despite the brain's vast storage capacity, we don't store information as libraries store their books, in discrete, precise locations ; instead, many parts of the brain interact as we encode, store, and retrieve the information that forms our memories

APA (American Psychological Association)

develop ethical principles ; require informed consent ; protect people from physical or emotional harm/discomfort ; protect confidentiality ; require researchers to debrief participants ; deal with ethics in human research

modern hearing aids

device that compresses sound, meaning that harder to hear sounds are more amplified than loud sounds ; want to help with the background sounds instead of amplifying all sounds

psychometric psychologists

devise tests for use in clinical settings, business settings, school settings, etc. ; for examples, 1) design military tests to figure out the candidate's best qualities 2) created emergenetics testing ; administer, score, and interpret such tests ; involved with basic research

school psychologists

diagnose and treat cognitive, social, and emotional problems that negatively influence student learning (work with students going through tough events during school) ; collaborate with teachers and parents to make recommendations to improve learning ; involved with applied research

Elizabeth Loftus

did experiments to show how eyewitnesses reconstruct their memories after a crime or accident ; her experiments confirmed that eyewitness accounts weren't always reliable, especially if the witnesses were exposed to misleading information

context effects

differences in perception because of immediate context ; similar to perceptual set ; for example, if you hear words that rhyme with "milk", such as "silk", and then someone asks you what cows drink, you might say "milk" instead of "water" because of immediate context

sensory adaptation

diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation ; for example, you detect a foul odor less when you've been exposed to it for a longer period of time (bath and body works) ; the advantage of it is that we can focus on informative changes in our environment without being distracted by "background chatter" (allows us to move on to the more important things in life)

hypothalamus

directs maintenance activities like eating, drinking, and body temperature ; located below the thalamus ; helps govern the endocrine system through the pituitary gland (controls the pituitary gland) ; linked to emotion and reward ; function example is the cerebral cortex "thinks" about sex, the hypothalamus secretes hormones, the pituitary gland is triggered to release hormones, sex glands produce hormones, and the thoughts of sex intensity in your cerebral cortex (the nervous system and endocrine system influence each other) ; in 1954, 2 scientists were trying to place an electrode on a rat's reticular formation, but they placed the electrode incorrectly (they noticed that the rat kept returning to the area in which the electrode was implanted ; the scientists had accidentally planted the electrode in the hypothalamus on a region that created pleasurable effects) ; contemporary researchers are experimenting with new ways of using the limbic system reward centers in future situations like search-and-rescue observations ; to calm violent patients, 1 neurosurgeon implanted electrodes in human pleasure areas of the limbic system ; part of the limbic system ; deals with the 4 F's (Fahrenheit = temperature, food = hunger, fun = reward center, fornication = sex)

measures of variation

display the variation (differences) in the data ; includes range, standard deviation, and normal curve

additional study tips

distribute your study time (avoid cramming by splitting it up over the period of multiple days) ; learn to think critically (think about the information being presented during class) ; process information actively (take a moment to make sure that you understand the information as it's taught) ; overlearn (don't overestimate how much you know) ; be a smart test-taker (eliminate answer choices when you can ; read questions carefully)

control group

doesn't receive the treatment/condition in an experiment ; used to compare whatever we're manipulating to a "normal" situation

descriptive techniques

don't explain behaviors, but describe them ; can't make cause and effect conclusions ; includes case studies, naturalistic observations, and surveys

Bobo doll experiment

done by Albert Bandura ; what went down (1) in a room, a child was working on a drawing ; in another part of the room, an adult begins punching, kicking, and screaming at a Bobo doll 2) then, the child is taken into a room with lots of toys ; however, the child is told that they can't have the toys because they're only for the "good kids" 3) these children then took out their anger on a Bobo doll that was in the room the same way the adult did 4) in contrast, the children who didn't observe the adult beating the Bobo doll did nothing when they were told not to play with the toys) ; shows that by watching a model, we experience vicarious punishment and vicarious reinforcement and we learn to anticipate a behavior's consequences in situations like those we're learning

tools of discovery

early case studies revealed that injury to 1 side of the head could cause paralysis in the opposite side of the body, damage caused to the back of the head disrupted vision, etc. ; rat brains are the most commonly studied for human purposes ; scientists can now selectively lesion (destroy) tiny clusters of brain cells to measure effects and/or remove a malignant growth

ions

electrically charged atoms that are exchanged in the neuron's chemistry-to-electricity process ; the fluid outside the axon's membrane has mostly positively charged ones and the axon's fluid interior has mostly negatively charged ones ; when a neuron fires, a cell's gates come flying open and positively charged ones come flooding in (this depolarizes the axon section and causes another 1 to open and then another and another like dominoes falling down {a chain reaction} ; slowly, the entire axon is depolarized) ; during the refractory period, the neuron pumps the positively charged ones back outside the cell

physiology of emotions

emotions look different ; fear and joy stimulate different facial muscles ; during fear, brow muscles tense ; depression-prone people and those with generally negative personalities show more right frontal lobe activity ; positive moods trigger more left frontal lobe activity

humanistic psychology

emphasizes the growth potential of healthy people ; believes having our needs for love and acceptance satisfied is very important ; studies how we can become healthy people if we aren't already ; deals with the hierarchy of needs ; Rogers and Maslow came up with this

Freudian psychology

emphasizes the way our subconscious/unconscious thought processes and emotional responses to childhood experiences affect our behavior (studied what people weren't thinking about, but what was in their brain and how it affects them) ; associated with Freud

cerebellum

enables nonverbal learning and memory (for example, riding your bike) ; extends from the rear of the brainstem ; baseball sized ; means "little brain" ; helps to judge time, modulate our emotions, and discriminate sounds and textures ; injuries to it would leave the patient struggling to walk, keep balance, and shake hands with people (movements would be jerky and exaggerated) ; one of the older brain structures ; often stores skills and conditioned associations ; with a damaged one, people can't develop certain conditioned reflexes, such as associating a tone with a puff of air to the eye (it would be hard to condition someone in this situation) ; part of the implicit memory system

brain

enables our thinking, feelings, and acting ; its neurons cluster into work groups called neural networks/pathways (for example, a "well-beaten" trail that has been cleared out from being walked on so many times) ; neurons that are located near each other and fire together often become connected or "wired" together ; part of the central nervous system

visual perception track

enables us to "think about the world" and recognize things ; part of dual processing

depth perception

enables us to estimate an object's distance from us ; partially innate (we know this because of visual cliff experiments that took place at Cornell University {infants were enticed by their mothers to crawl over a sheet of glass suspended over a drop-off ; most infants refused to crawl on the glass, indicating that they could perceive the depth of the drop-off})

somatic nervous system

enables voluntary control/movement of our skeletal muscles (the system that makes your body get up at the end of class when the bell rings) ; part of the peripheral nervous system

shallow processing

encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words ; for example, learning how to spell a word ; familiarizing yourself with the basic characteristics of a word

effortful processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort ; for example, learning a new skill or learning new information at school (you're making a conscious effort to form new memories and learn new things) ; explicit memories are formed through this process ; part of our dual-track memory ; 3 strategies for it are 1) chunking 2) mnemonics 3) hierarchies

testing effect

enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information ; for example, give yourself a quiz instead of rereading the chapter ; also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning ; without looking, pulling the information out of your brain instead of skimming a page or definition ; quiz yourself

availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory ; if instances readily come to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we assume such events are common ; for examples, 1) "global warming can't be real because we just had a bunch of cold days last week" 2) fearing flying because of 9-11 and other plane crashes, even though the alternative, driving, is much more likely to result in our deaths

divergent thinking

expands the number of possible problem solutions ; out of the box thinking (when doing this kind of thinking, you'll try to think of ideas that're different from the known problem solutions and work well for your problem) ; creative thinking that diverges in a different direction ; schools are promoting it more and more

visual interpretation

experience guides, sustains, and maintains the brain's neural organization as it forms the pathways that affect our perceptions ; people born blind who later gain sight can't visually recognize objects that they'd learn to recognize through touch (our perceptions of the world are gained through experience and these adults don't have those visual experiences) ; there's a critical period for normal sensory and perceptual development (if someone misses this period, they may not have all of the normal functions that we have naturally and they'll have to learn them to an extent)

pain

experiences of it vary widely among people (different people have different thresholds for it {some people are extremely pain tolerant while some people are extremely pain sensitive}) ; woman are more pain sensitive than men are ; there are different nociceptors that deal with it ; deals with the gate-control theory ; can be stopped by brain-to-spinal-cord messages (being distracted from it {psychologically} and soothed by the release of endorphins {biologically} can diminish our experience of it {illustrates the fact that it's a very mental thing}) ; some amputees and people born without certain limbs deal with it through phantom limb sensations ; influenced by psychological influences and social-cultural influences ; controlled by placebos because they're often found to lessen a patient's experience of it and by distracting people with pleasant images or drawing their attention away from the painful stimulation

cognitive psychologists

experiment with how we perceive, think, and solve problems ; involved with basic research ; could be professors, industrial consultants, human factors specialists, etc.

human factors psychologists

explore how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made safe and easy to use ; subfield of industrial organizational (I/O) psychology ; involved with applied research

social psychologists

explore how we view and affect one another ; involved with basic research ; do market research, consultations for companies, etc. ; for examples, 1) figuring out which kinds of products people want to buy 2) studying how to trick people into wanting to buy things that they don't really need

functionalism

explored how mental and behavioral processes function (how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish) ; created by William James

active

expressed genes ; about 1.5% of the human genome

detecting emotion in others

facial expressions, non-verbals, gestures, and body language can indicate emotions ; even when listening to different languages, anger is the most readily detectable ; a teacher's tone of voice can easily indicate like or dislike for a student ; before language, humans communicated through these cues ; simple face expressions, like those of happiness, sadness, and anger, are typically universal among different cultures

change blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment ; for example, participants who were giving directions to a construction worker failed to notice that a different construction worker took his place while the researchers staged a brief interruption ; some stimuli, however, are so powerful that they draw our attention away (for example, noticing someone in a crowd who's staring at you or making an angry face)

inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere ; for examples, 1) basketball experiment (most people don't see the gorilla because they're so focused on counting the number of passes the players in white make) 2) magic (magicians direct our attention elsewhere while they perform the magic trick)

what we dream

familiar details of our lives (whatever's been going on in your life) ; negative events or memories (sometimes our fears) ; very common for people to dream about the previous day's nonsexual experiences and preoccupations (for example, if you spend all day working on science fair, it's not strange if you dream about science fair) ; sensory stimuli (smells, sounds, etc.) can have effects on our dreams (for example, if your alarm wakes you up with a song, it can possibly just blend into your dream instead of waking you up)

retina

first, light makes contact with its outer layer of cells ; then, the light hits the buried receptor cells, which are the rods and cones ; there, light energy triggers chemical changes that spark neural signals (this activates the nearby bipolar cells) ; the bipolar cells then activate the neighboring ganglion cells ; from the optic nerve, the neural messages are transmitted to the thalamus ; where the optic nerve leaves the eye, there are no receptor cells (this is known as the blind-spot)

lens

focuses incoming light rays into an image on the retina (similar to a movie projector) ; after doing this, it then focuses the rays by changing its curvature in a process called accommodation ; located behind the pupil

color deficient

for 1 person in 50, vision is this (usually male) ; most people with this kind of vision aren't actually color blind (they lack function in the red-sensitive or green-sensitive cones {sometimes both}) ; dogs lack receptors for the wavelengths of red, giving them limited, di-chromatic color vision (can only see shades of blue and yellow)

Weber's law

for an average person to perceive a difference, 2 stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (not a constant amount) ; for examples, 1) if the lights were 30% lower, we probably wouldn't notice, but if we were in the gym and 30% of the students were removed, we would notice 2) if someone took 3 noodles off of our plate of pasta, we probably wouldn't notice, but if 3 of the bulletin boards in Mrs. McGill's classroom were removed, we would notice

applied research subfields

forensic psychologists, health psychologists, industrial-organizational psychologists, neuropsychologists, rehabilitation psychologists, school psychologists, and sport psychologists work here

optic nerve

from it, the neural messages are transmitted to the thalamus ; where it leaves the eye, there are no receptor cells (this is known as the blind-spot)

mirror neurons

frontal lobe neurons that some scientists believe fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so ; the brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation and empathy ; gives a neural basis for observational learning ; physical basis for observational learning ; human examples of them are 1) yawning when others yawn may be explained by them 2) emotions can be contagious (seeing another person cry might make you cry {this may also be explained by them})

synaptic changes

given increased activity in particular neural pathways, neural interconnections are forming and strengthening (the logic behind studying) ; rapidly stimulating certain memory-circuit connections has increased their sensitivity for hours or even weeks to come (the sending neuron now needs less prompting to release its neurotransmitter and more connections exist between neurons)

social networking

has made it easier for people to affiliate with one another and feel a sense of belonging (for this reason, it's, at least somewhat, a positive psychological tool) ; has increased social isolation, meaning that people connect electronically instead of physically (this, overall, may not help people reach their affiliation needs) ; has been said to promote narcissism, which has negatively impacted many young generations (ends up tying into your self-worth {for example, if you don't get enough likes on your Instagram picture, then you might feel like a failure})

sensorineural hearing loss

hearing loss that's caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerves ; sometimes diseases causes this kind of hearing loss ; usually caused by age, heredity, and prolonged exposure to music or noise that's way too loud ; also known as nerve hearing loss

conduction hearing loss

hearing loss that's caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea (those 3 tiny bones in the middle ear {the hammer, anvil, and stirrup} are damaged in some way)

evolutionary success

helps explain similarities ; our emotions, drives, and reasoning have a common logic across all cultures and were shaped by natural selection across the course of human evolution ; similarities arise from our genome ; Darwin's theory of evolution has been an organizing principle for biology for a long time (it now lives on in the 2nd Darwinian revolution)

Darwin

his "On the Origin of Species" (1859) proposed his theory of evolution and natural selection

perceiving order in random events

humans have a natural eagerness to make sense of the world ; we categorize and sort whenever we can, which clouds our perception of random events (for example, a coin toss has a 50/50 chance of heads or tails the entire time and doesn't depend on which side won each time before) ; sometimes, we overanalyze ; causes anxiety and uncomfortableness because things are out of our control ; we don't like randomness (it's very rare for us to admit that something is random because we're always looking for facts)

recognition

identifying items that were previously learned ; for example, a multiple choice test ; not remembering information actively because the information is in front of you, so you just have to pick it out of a list

effects of stress on the immune system

immune system can respond too strongly and attack the body's own tissues, causing arthritis or an allergic reaction ; underreacting, it may allow a dormant herpes virus to erupt or cancer cells to multiply ; surgical wounds heal more slowly among those who're stressed (this is why doctors tell surgical patients to rest and not go right back to work after receiving surgery {they need time to heal without the daily stress in their life}) ; stressed people are more vulnerable to colds

Mary Whiton Calkins

in 1980, James admitted her into his graduate seminar, despite Harvard's president's request for him not to do so ; tutored by James alone after all of the male students dropped out of the program ; finished the program and did very well on her exams, but Harvard denied her the degree she earned ; went on to become the American Psychological Association's 1st female president in 1905

expectancy effects

in a study, some participants were given alcohol and others weren't (all participants believed that they were drinking alcohol ; most participants acted as though they'd been drinking {this response is because of the participants' expectation that they would get drunk in response to the alcohol}) ; can also influence a person to have a certain experience of a given drug (for example, someone feeling paranoid will often have worsened feelings of anxiety following the use of a hallucinogen)

discrimination

in classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that don't signal an unconditioned stimulus (knowing the difference between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus, but aren't the conditioned stimulus) ; for examples, 1) when confronted by a guard dog, your heart might race, but when confronted by a guide dog, it probably won't race 2) a parent might teach their child not to go up to any random man on the street if they're lost, but that a safe person to go up to is a "man with a badge", or a police officer ; in operant conditioning, deals with discriminative stimuli ; for example, pigeons can learn to distinguish between pictures of flowers, dogs, humans, etc. and only respond to certain images (certain images are the discriminative stimuli)

middle ear

in it, 3 tiny bones (the hammer, anvil, and stirrup) pick up the vibrations from the eardrum and transmit them to the cochlea

phonemes

in language, the smallest detectable sound unit ; for example, sounding out a world "bah-a-tuh" to say "bat"

morphemes

in language, the smallest unit that carries meaning ; may be a word or part of a word, such a prefix ; for examples, 1) "pre-" 2) "post" 3) "-ed" 4) "ing" 5) "s" (meaning plural) ; not necessarily a syllable because it has to mean something

repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories ; Freud proposed that we do this to painful memories to protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety ; not all psychologists believe that it's real

upside down

in the eye, things are perceived in this way instead of right side up ; once neural messages are relayed to the brain, the image is reassembled into an upright image

variables

includes independent variables, dependent variables, and confounding variables ; AP exam loves asking questions about the identification of them

misinformation effect

incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event ; for example, hearing a vivid retelling of an event can implant false memories ; not that the person is lying, but that their memory is now false

positive reinforcement

increasing behaviors by presenting positive reinforcers ; for example, rewards (1) candy for doing homework 2) praising someone for being polite 3) petting a dog that comes when you call it) ; adding a stimulus

negative reinforcement

increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli ; for examples, 1) taking painkillers to end pain 2) fastening a seatbelt to end the beeping 3) crossing the street so you don't have to talk to someone that you don't like ; taking away a stimulus

emotion

influences the way we hear other people's words ; for examples, 1) referees who know that a team has a history of violence are more likely to throw penalty flags on them 2) an angry spouse might be more likely to perceive the actions of their spouse to be bad, even if the actions are normal

top-down processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations (constructs perceptions from the sensory input by drawing on our experiences and expectations) ; for example, walking into a classroom and saying "oh there's a desk there"

Skinner's experiments

inspired by Edward L. Thorndike and his "law of effect" ; designed the operant chamber (Skinner Box) for them ; used shaping and discrimination

introspection

involved asking subjects to accurately describe their cognitive reactions/thoughts as they reacted to stimuli ; for example, people might be asked to describe their sensations/thoughts as they smelled a scent, tasted a substance, or looked at a dog ; method used by Titchener ; not a reliable method of study because it varies widely depending on the person and experience ; can't be called science

discerning true and false memories

it's extremely difficult to do this ; eyewitness testimonies can be faulty, especially because of leading questions, misinformation, framing, etc. (not the best tool in the criminal justice system because of this)

representativeness heuristic

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent or match particular prototypes ; may lead us to ignore other relevant information ; for example, a truck driver and a college professor (when asked if a "short slim man who likes poetry" is more likely to be an Ivy League classics professor or a truck driver, we tend to answer professor based on our prototypes of professors and truck drivers ; we totally ignore the fact that there're maybe 40 Ivy League classics professors and hundreds of thousands of truck drivers in the country)

inactive

junk DNA ; about 98.5% of the human genome

physical punishment in families

leads to more aggressive behavior in children (for example, kids who're spanked at home are more likely to hit at school when someone upsets them) ; teaches the children to fear the adult, which the child may generalize and then fear other adults (can lead to issues later in life)

observational learning

learning by observing others ; also called social learning ; for example, a child who watches his sister burn her fingers on a hot stove learns not to touch a stove ; can be applied as prosocial effects and antisocial effects

relearning

learning something more quickly when you learn it a 2nd time ; for example, studying for a midterm or a final ; information should come more easily this time because you've already been exposed to the material

statistical learning

learning statistical aspects of human speech ; they discern word breaks and statistically analyze which syllables often appear together ; babies can come with a built-in readiness to learn grammatical rules

associative learning

learning that certain events occur together ; the events can be 2 stimuli, as in classical conditioning, or a response and its consequences, as in operant conditioning

cognitive revolution

led by a group of psychologists in the 1960s ; basically rebelled against behaviorism ; renewed interest in mental processes, leading to the establishment of "cognitive psychology" ; cognitive neuroscience came along as a result of it

size constancy

lets us perceive objects as a constant size ; for example, we assume a car is large enough to carry people, even when we see a tiny image of a car that's 2 blocks away ; type of perceptual constancy

social-cultural level

level of analysis that deals with the experiences of people, etc. (for example, when asking the question "why do mass shootings happen," this level asks "is American culture too lenient on gun purchases?")

biological level

level of analysis that has to deal with our bodies' makeup, etc. (for example, when asking the question "why do mass shootings happen," this level asks "is there something genetically wrong with the shooter's brain?")

psychological level

level of analysis that has to deal with the kinds of experiences we've had, illnesses we're prone to, etc. (for example, when asking the question "why do mass shootings happen," this level asks "have people in the shooter's life rewarded bad behavior and led him to believe what he's doing is okay?")

bipolar cells

light energy triggers chemical changes in the buried receptor cells in the retina that spark the neural signals that activate these ; they then activate the neighboring ganglion cells

can hypnosis relieve pain?

light hypnosis can reduce fear, thus reducing hypersensitivity to pain ; hypnosis inhibits pain-related brain activity (it distracts the subject from their pain) ; nearly 10% of us can be hypnotized so deeply that major surgery can be performed without anesthesia ; 1/2 of us can gain at least some pain relief from hypnosis (relates to gate-control theory)

frontal lobes

lobes of the cerebral cortex that are involved in speaking, muscle movements, making plans, judgement, personality, etc.; located just behind the forehead ; contain the motor cortex and prefrontal cortex ; damage to them can alter personality and remove a person's inhibitions (for example, people with ones may have intact memories, high scores on intelligence tests, and great cake baking skills ; however, they wouldn't be able to plan ahead to begin baking a cake for a birthday party) ; Phineas Gage suffered massive damage to his ; other more recent patients have exhibited behavior that suggests their moral judgments seem unrestrained by normal emotions and their moral compasses seem to disconnect from their behavior after suffering damage to theirs ; deal with working memory processing ; the left and right ones process different types of memories (for example, recalling a password would activate the left one, whereas calling up a visual party scene would likely activate the right one) ; part of the explicit memory system

occipital lobes

lobes of the cerebral cortex that include areas that receive information from the visual fields ; lie at the back of your head ; contain the visual cortex

temporal lobes

lobes of the cerebral cortex that include auditory areas that primarily receive information from the opposite ear ; lie above the ears ; contain the auditory cortex ; parts of them allow us to recognize faces

parietal lobes

lobes of the cerebral cortex that receive sensory input for touch and body position ; located at the top of the head ; contain the somatosensory cortex ; parts of them control mathematical and spacial reasoning

pons

located above the medulla ; helps coordinate movements ; part of the brainstem

auditory cortex

located in the temporal lobes near the ears (for example, MRIs of schizophrenia patients during auditory hallucinations reveal active auditory areas in the temporal lobes)

biological psychologists

look for links between the brain and mind (try to learn more about the brain) ; involved with basic research

central nervous system

made up of the brain and spinal cord (they must be connected to function properly {reason why we have to be so careful and delicate when dealing with any injuries with your spinal cord}) ; the body's decision maker ; part of the nervous system

obesity

means a BMI of 30 or more ; increases the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, gallstones, arthritis, and certain types of cancer (in women, it's also been linked to cognitive decline) ; causes of it are 1) set point and metabolism 2) genetics 3) food choices 4) physical activity 5) social influence 6) sleep loss

positive correlation

means that as 1 variable increases, the other increases as well (for examples, 1) "the more I take these vitamins, the better I can see" 2) "the more I study, the better my grades turn out") ; slope points upward ; picture has a +1.0 correlation

negative correlation

means that as 1 variable increases, the other variable decreases (for examples, 1) "the more I use this shampoo, the fewer split ends I have" 2) "the more vegetables I eat, the smaller my chance for heart disease") ; slope points downward ; picture has a -1.0 correlation

no correlation

means that there's no correlation ; no slope at all ; picture has a 0 correlation

explicit memories

memories of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare" ; for example, knowledge that you have from school ; formed through effortful processing ; part of our dual-track memory ; system of them is made up of the frontal lobes and hippocampus

mnemonics

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices ; for examples, 1) "ROY G. BIV" to remember the colors of the rainbow 2) remembering that B. F. Skinner is associated with operant condioning because doctors operate on skin ; 1 of the effortful processing strategies

evolutionary explanation of human sexuality

men have a lower threshold for perceiving warm responses as a sexual come on (men are much more likely to see something as a sexual come-on even when it may not be one ; this misattribution helps explain men's greater sexual assertitiveness) ; while a woman usually incubates and nurses 1 infant at a time, a male can spread his genes through other females (women pair wisely while men pair widely) ; men who were drawn to healthy, fertile-appearing women stood a better chance of sending their genes into the future ; men are attracted to women with hourglass figures because in evolutionary history, it has been a sign of fertility ; men prefer the most fertile woman no matter what age the men themselves are (women in their early 20s are at an ideal time to have children {teenage boys want women in their early 20s ; men in their early 20s want women in their early 20s ; older men are attracted to women in their early 20s}) ; women are attracted to men who seem mature, dominant, bold, and affluent (want men who make us feel safe and protected) ; nature selects behaviors that increase the likelihood of sending ones' genes into the future ; we're designed to prefer whatever worked for our ancestors and we're similarly predisposed

imagined stimuli

mental erotic stimuli, such as imagined scenarios ; orgasms and nocturnal emissions (wet dreams) from men are often due to it

monism

mind and body are inseparable (once the body dies, the mind/spirit can't go on) ; Aristotle's view

dualism

mind and body are separate (once the body dies, the mind/spirit can go on) ; Socrates, Plato, and Descartes' view ; Catholics' view because we believe that our mind/spirit is independent from our body

antagonists

molecules that bind to receptors, but their effect is to block a neurotransmitter from functioning (for examples, 1) Botulin, a poison that forms in improperly cooked food, causes paralysis by blocking ACh release {small amounts of Botulin, Botox, are used to smooth wrinkles} 2) curare is a poison that some South American Indians have used on dart-tips when hunting animals that blocks ACh receptor sites on muscles, causing paralysis)

agonists

molecules that may be similar to neurotransmitters and can therefore mimic its effects ; some opiate drugs are ones and produce a temporary high by amplifying normal sensations of arousal and pleasure

echoic memory

momentary sensory memories of auditory stimuli ; sounds and words that can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds ; for example, if you haven't been playing close attention and your teacher says "what did I just say?", you may be able to recall the last few words, even though you weren't consciously listening to them

iconic memory

momentary sensory memories of visual stimuli ; lasts no more than a few tenths of a second ; for example, if you glance at a picture quickly and then turn away, you can immediately recall some details of the picture, but these details fade after a few seconds

monkey experiments

monkeys watching other monkeys or humans complete a task exhibited activity in their motor cortexes (for example, if 1 monkey raises a peanut to his mouth, the monkey that's watching him is essentially mirroring the same activity in his brain, but not psychically doing it) ; where the phrase "monkey see monkey do" comes from

relative motion

monocular cue that says as we move, objects that are actually stable appear to move ; for example, when you're riding in a car, it feels like the trees are moving with you even though they aren't

relative size

monocular cue that says if 2 objects are similar in size, most people perceive the one that casts the smaller retinal image as farther away ; for example, if you're standing in the courtyard with your friend and you see another friend that's far away from both of you, you know that the friend who appears to be smaller is farther away from you than the friend who appears to be bigger and is standing right next to you

linear perspective

monocular cue that says parallel lines appear to meet in the distance ; for example, if you're looking down a school hallway with wide lines and down a train track with less wide lines, the school hallway appears to have a shorter distance than the train track does ; the sharper the angle of convergence, the greater the perceived distance (the less wide the lines are, the farther away the point where the lines meet is)

light and shadow

monocular cue that says shading produces a sense of depth consistent with our assumption that light comes from above ; for example, you can tell where the projection of light is coming from based on where Ms. McGill's hand is in front of the screen

relative height

monocular cue that says we perceive objects higher in our field of vision as farther away ; for example, if we take a picture of outside through the window, the road is higher up in the picture than the grass is

shape constancy

more often, because of it, we perceive the form of familiar objects as constant even while our retinas receive changing images of them ; for example, we perceive an open door as rectangular even though it appears trapezoidal (we know that the shape of the door hasn't changed, but the angle that we're looking at it from has changed) ; type of perceptual constancy

experimental psychologists

most also identify with another subfield (many subfields rely on these psychologists to inform them) ; usually work in academic settings overseeing and doing research (colleges are the main funders of psychological research ; for example, LSU funds a lot of psychological experiments ; involved with basic research

pituitary gland

most influential endocrine gland (master gland) ; pea-sized structure that's located in the core of the brain ; controlled by the hypothalamus ; secretes growth hormones, oxytocin, which controls nursing, birthing, pair bonding, and orgasm, among other hormones (produces hormones that you can't live without) ; secretions also influence the release of hormones by other endocrine glands (the "head gland" in charge) ; located in the endocrine system

Pavlov's legacy

most psychologists now agree that classical conditioning is a basic form of learning ; many other responses to many other stimuli can be classically conditioned in many other organisms (earthworms, monkeys, dogs, fish, and people can all respond to classical conditioning) ; Pavlov's work also laid the groundwork for John B. Watson's work (Little Albert)

why do we forget?

most researchers would hypothesize that we do this to "clear the clutter" and make space for more valuable and productive memories ; in an evolutionary sense, it makes sense that we would only retain information that furthers our productivity and survival

ethics in human research

must obtain potential participants' informed consent ; must protect them from physical or emotional harm and discomfort ; have to keep information about individual participants confidential (no matter how small the study is, you can't violate confidentiality in any way ; especially important in sensitive cases {for example studying children that were abused}) ; must fully debrief people ; research proposals and participants' well-being are screened and protected by the IRB (Institutional Review Board) (ideal is for the researcher to be sufficiently informative and considerate so that the participants will leave feeling at least as good about themselves as when they came in)

convergent thinking

narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution ; in the box thinking (when doing this kind of thinking, you'll think of the known problem solutions and try to pick the most efficient and useful one)

endorphins

naturally occuring opiates that the body produces in response to pain and vigorus exercise ; help explain things like "runner's high" and the painkilling effects of acupunture ; we can't flood our bodies with artificial ones since they feel so good because the body stops producing naturally occurring opiates and if we stop taking artificial opiates (like heroin) the brain is deprived of all forms of opiates, which causes intense discomfort and pain (this can be long term)

handedness

nearly 90% of people are right handed ; left handedness is more common among musicians, mathematicians, professional baseball players, architects, artists, etc. ; only a small genetic influence on handedness has been found

neurons

nerve cells ; each has a cell body, bushy fibers called dendrites, an axon fiber, the axon's terminal branches, and myelin sheaths ; transmit messages when stimulated by signals from our senses or when triggered by chemical signals from neighboring ones ; in response to being stimulated, they fire an impulse, called the action potential ; generate electricity from chemical events like batteries ; when one fires, a cell's gates come flying open and positively charged ones come flooding in (this depolarizes the axon section and causes another 1 to open and then another and another like dominoes falling down {a chain reaction} ; slowly, the entire axon is depolarized) ; during the refractory period, it pumps the positively charged ions back outside the cell ; after this, it can fire again (if you hurt your hand, it feels numb) ; signals to it can be excitatory or inhibitory ; interwoven very intricately (even with a microscope, they're hard to distinguish from one another) ; neurotransmitters cross the synaptic gap, bind to receptor sites on the receiving one, and unlock the tiny channels in the receiving one, allowing ions to flow in ; the sending one absorbs the excess neurotransmitters in the process called reuptake ; can be sensory (afferent) ones, motor (efferent) ones, or interneurons

descending neural fibers

neural fibers that send back motor control information ; part of the spinal cord

ascending neural fibers

neural fibers that send up sensory information ; part of the spinal cord

all-or-none response

neuron has it ; like a gun because either it fires or it doesn't ; for example, if a class votes on something the excitatory signals are those who vote yes, and the inhibitory signals are those who vote no ; if the excitatory signals win, the result of the election is yes

motor (efferent) neurons

neurons that carry instructions from the central nervous system out to the body's muscles and glands (from the brain to the rest of the body {leave the brain})

sensory (afferent) neurons

neurons that carry messages from the body's tissues and sensory receptors inward to the brain and spinal cord for processing (from the body to the brain {come to the brain})

interneurons

neurons within the brain and spinal cord that communicate internally and intervene between the sensory inputs and motor outputs (in the brain and spinal cord)

serotonin

neurotransmitter that affects mood, hunger, sleep, and arousal ; undersupply of it is linked to depression ; some antidepressant drugs raise its levels

norepinephrine

neurotransmitter that helps control alertness and arousal ; undersupply of it can depress mood

dopamine

neurotransmitter that influences movement, learning, attention, and emotion ; oversupply of it is linked to schizophrenia ; undersupply of it is linked to tremors and decreased mobility in Parkinsons disease

daily hassles

not as severe as the other stressors, but the ones that we encounter the most ; for examples, 1) rush hour traffic 2) aggravating siblings 3) long lunch lines 4) too much homework ; prolonged stress, even at this level, has an effect on the cardiovascular system ; 1 of the stressors

Sir Charles Sherrington

noticed that neural impulses were taking an unexpectedly long time to travel a neuropathway ; inferred that there had to be an interruption in the transmission (named the meeting point between 2 neurons a synapse)

inferential statistics

numerical data that allow one to generalize, which is to infer from sample data the probability of something being true of a population (figures out what the probability is that something occurred by chance) ; want representative samples (not biased ones), less variable operations (consistency), and as many cases as possible (1) representatives need to be representative of the whole population 2) consistency in the experiment 3) multiple cases) ; point of it is to find out if something is scientifically accurate ; what you have to perform at the end of an experiment to make big cause and effect conclusions

descriptive statistics

numerical data used to measure and describe characteristics in groups ; displayed through histograms (bar graphs) ; includes measures of central tendency and measures of variations ; once researchers have gathered their data, they may use it to organize the data meaningfully

naturalistic observation

observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation (for examples, 1) undercover prison guard 2) day care worker watching and studying children 3) studying alcohol affects by attending parties and watching) ; mainly consists of watching and writing ; people don't know that you're a researcher because you're "under cover", so you can't try to change the situation in any way ; type of descriptive technique

latent learning

occurs when there are no rewards, reinforcers, or punishment there ; there's no immediate incentive to demonstrate the behavior, but learning has still occurred ; for examples, 1) rats in a maze (rats exploring a maze with no rewards make a cognitive map of the maze ; then, when food is placed at the end of the maze, they can run through the maze faster because of their previous knowledge) 2) children cursing (when a parent curses in front of their child, the child experiences this ; later, when a situation presents itself, the child may curse because of their previous observation of the adult cursing) ; accidental learning

double blind procedure

one in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant (blind) about whether the research participants have received the treatment or a placebo ; common procedure for drug trials ; can produce the placebo effect

problem-focused coping

one way of coping ; alleviating the stress directly ; confronting the problem head on ; changing the stressor or changing the way we deal with the stressor ; for example, you're mad at your friend and in order to fix the problem, you go and talk to your friend directly and attempt to resolve the issue

emotion-focused coping

one way of coping ; attempting to alleviate the stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to your emotional needs related to one's stress reaction ; for examples, 1) "I'm so stressed that I'm doing bad in school, so I'm going to watch 4 hours of Netflix to feel better." 2) you're mad at your friend, but you call your other friends to gossip or go to get frozen yogurt to make yourself feel better ; if you go to the issue and complain about it and get all up in your emotions but still don't address the actual issue, then it's still this type of coping

school

operant conditioning is applied here ; electronic adaptive quizzing lets students move at their own pace and receive immediate feedback on their efforts ; behaviors are reinforced or punished here (for examples, 1) small kids are given small rewards, such as gold stars, for putting their belongings in cubbies, bringing home their folders, etc. 2) SJA students who do something wrong in school receive a checklist as punishment)

home

operant conditioning is applied here ; parents use operant conditioning all of the time (they give their kids rewards when they enjoy their behavior ; they punish their kids when they don't like the behavior) ; when care-givers give a screaming or misbehaving child a reward or positive stimulus, they're positively reinforcing the behavior (means that the child will keep doing that behavior ; for example, giving a child a piece of candy so they'll stop screaming)

work

operant conditioning is applied here ; reinforcers influence productivity (giving employees incentives or goals to work for and rewarding them when they get there is operant conditioning {for examples, 1) if you hit a certain point in sales, you get a financial bonus for achieving that goal 2) you always have to work on Fridays, but if you hit a certain point in sales for the week before then, you can take that Friday off}) ; reinforcement should be immediate, but they don't have to be lavish (praise and approval can also be effective)

self-improvement

operant conditioning is applied here ; setting goals and shaping behaviors can help us better ourselves (for example, we might shape our studying behavior by gradually studying more and more and rewarding our behavior each step of the way {eventually, we should wean ourselves off of the rewards})

sports

operant conditioning is applied here ; shaping is popular in sports (for examples, 1) golfers putt at short distances and gradually lengthen the distance of their putts 2) softball players start hitting bigger balls and gradually use smaller balls) ; athletes form superstitious behaviors once they relate a conditioned stimulus with positive reinforcement (for example, tapping home plate with your bat can become related to getting a hit)

syntax

ordering words into sentences ; more about sentence structure

chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units ; often occurs automatically ; for example, when trying to memorize the digits of pi, one might find it easier to remember a chunks of numbers, learning a few at a time ; 1 of the effortful processing strategies

thinking in images

our ability to do this proves that Whorf was wrong ; for examples, 1) a soccer player doesn't recite words when he's about to kick a goal because he imagines the proper technique and then does it 2) dancers and choreographers also think in images and frequently teach dances by showing instead of telling 3) painters also do this instead of thinking in words while they paint

fitness

our ability to survive and reproduce

dual processing

our brains operate simultaneously on 2 levels (conscious and unconscious) ; for examples, 1) some brain damage patients can't distinguish objects from one another or "see" them, but they can reach out and touch them and perform tasks with them perfectly 2) patients with different brain damage can distinguish differences in objects, but they have difficulty pointing to them or moving them ; deals with the visual perception track and the visual action track (for example, a patient who's lost his left visual cortex {leaving him blind to objects presented on the right side of his field of vision} can still sense emotion expressed in faces on his right sight even though he doesn't consciously perceive them {he doesn't consciously perceive anything, but he unconsciously does perceive things}) ; we're usually on autopilot with our everyday routines so that our minds can face new challenges when they present themselves ; processing things consciously and unconsciously at the same time ; conscious awareness is one part of it (for example, when taking psychology notes, I'm consciously taking in the information, but I'm unconsciously thinking about homecoming memories)

unconscious

our cognitive processing that makes things make sense ; one of the levels that our brains operate simultaneously on in dual processing

touch

our sense of it is actually a mix of distinct skin senses for pressure, warmth, cold, and pain (not everything has all 4 of these sensations {for example, touching someone on the arm is a combination of warmth and pressure}) ; stroking adjacent pressure spots creates a tickle ; repeated gentle stroking of a pain spot creates an itching sensation ; touching adjacent cold and pressure spots triggers a sense of wetness, which you can experience by touching cold, dry metal ; stimulating nearby cold and warm spots produces the sensation of hot

language

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning ; gestures and body language can also be considered forms of it ; can be receptive or productive

serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first items (primacy effect) in a list

random assignment

participants are randomly assigned to 1 of the 2 groups in an experiment (either the experimental group or the control group) ; should eliminate many confounding variables

axon

passes/pushes the message through the axon's terminal branches to other neurons, muscles, or glands ; speak instead of listening ; some are encased in a myelin sheath ; fluid outside its membrane has mostly positively charged ions and its fluid interior has mostly negatively charged ions ; its surface is very selective about what it allows through its "gates" (selectively permeable) ; its gates come flying open when a neuron fires, which allows positively charged ions to flood in (this depolarizes the axon section and causes another one to open and then another and another in a chain reaction until, slowly, the entire one is depolarized) ; signals to it can be excitatory or inhibitory ; has an all-or-none response

situational influences on eating

people eat more when they're around others who're eating (for example, if your family eats huge portions of food at Thanksgiving, you're probably going to do the same thing) ; portion sizes offered in different cultures influence how much people eat ; food variety makes people eat more (for example, at a buffet, people feel a greater need to eat more and try some of everything)

supertasters

people who experience taste more intensely, especially bitterness ; for example, they may taste something with a normal level of salt and think that it's overly salty

nontasters

people who experience taste more mildly ; for example, they may be able to put a bunch of sauce over their Chinese food and think that it's good

color constancy

perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object ; for examples, 1) you can look at a turquoise swell and know that it's turquoise whether the lighting is high or low 2) if the lights are off, the whiteboard appears grey, but we know that it's actually white ; type of perceptual constancy

right hemisphere

perceptual tasks (high performance) are done primarily in this hemisphere of the brain ; if a surgeon injects a sedative into the neck artery feeding blood to this hemisphere, the left arm will be limp, but the person will still be unable to speak ; good at making inferences, modulating our speech so that our meaning is clear, and helping orchestrate our sense of self

Zajonc

performed the fruit experiment (he flashed a stimulus of a happy face or a sad face very quickly to participants ; the participants couldn't tell what the pictures were of, but they reacted to them by drinking more fruit drink when exposed to the happy face stimulus and less fruit drink when exposed to the sad/angry face stimulus) ; 1 of the creators of the Zajonc/LeDoux theory

significant life changes

personal life transitions ; for examples, 1) getting married 2) graduating from high school 3) having a loved-one die 4) losing a job ; 1 of the stressors

psychiatrists

physicians (doctors) who provide medical treatments (such as drugs) as well as psychological therapy (medical doctors that go to medical school) ; involved with applied research

hippocampus

processes conscious memories (memory center of your brain) ; humans who lose theirs to surgery or injury also lose their ability to form new memories of facts and events ; a temporal lobe neural center located in the limbic system ; the brain's equivalent of a "save" button for explicit memories (new, explicit memories or names, images, and events are laid down via it) ; different parts of it serve different functions (for example, one part associates names with faces and one part works on spatial memories) ; part of the explicit memory system

parasympathetic nervous system

produces the opposite effects of the sympathetic nervous system ; calms you down by decreasing your heart rate, conserving your energy, etc. ; takes longer than the sympathetic nervous system to take effect ; part of the autonomic nervous system that deals with emotions ; it 1) calms your body 2) stress hormones slowly leave your bloodstream 3) skin dries 4) heart slows 5) respiration decreases 6) pupils contract

Franz Gall

proposed phrenology in the early 1800s

cornea

protects the eye and bends light to provide focus ; light enters the eye through it

William James

psychologist that was influenced by the ideas of Darwin ; thought that thinking, like smelling or tasting, evolved and adapted to contribute to human survival ; school of thought was functionalism ; in 1980, went against Harvard's president in admitting Calkins into his graduate seminar ; continued to work with her alone following the male students dropping out

ethics in animal research

psychologists sometimes study animals because humans are animals too ; though there's a protest about using animals in research, animals used in research are only 1% of the billions killed for food (for every cat or dog used in research, 50 more are killed in shelters) ; animal research can be very helpful and beneficial for many people and animals (Louis Pasteur's experiments with rabies on animals led to the vaccine that prevents humans and animals from catching the disease and dying a slow, painful death) ; we place higher importance on primates and companions like dogs and cats, so reptiles and insects are less empathized with because we empathize more with animals that are similar to use and less with ones that aren't (for example, Harambe dies and everyone loses their minds, but if we kill lab rats, no one cares) ; guidelines from the APA (American Psychological Association) are 1) researchers must ensure the "comfort, health, and humane treatment" of animals and "minimize infection, illness, and pain" ; European parliament also mandates standards for animal care and housing ; goal of the guidelines for animal research is to ensure that we aren't hurting any animals ; animals sometimes benefit from being research participants (for example, stroking and handling methods to reduce stress and ease dogs' transitions into new homes were findings in research ; research animals are often rehomed after being used in studies)

nature-nurture issue

psychology's biggest question ; are our human traits present at birth or do they develop through experience? (is it genes or experience? is it nature or nurture?) ; psychologists today see our traits and behaviors as the product of both nature and nurture

basic research

pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base ; for example, "this is a new species. let's observe this animal and try to learn more about it." ; says that we need to know more about something, so let's study it

Phineas Gage

railroad worker who at age 25 in 1848 was injured when a tamping iron was shot through his left cheek and upwards out of his skull (his frontal lobes were massively damaged) ; he was immediately able to sit up and speak and he healed and returned to work ; however, his personality severely changed (he went from being friendly and honest to being profane, irritable, and dishonest ; his mental abilities and memories were intact, but his personality was permanently changed)

primacy effect

recalling best the first thing that you've encountered

recency effect

recalling best the most recent thing that you've encountered

dendrites

receive information and conduct it toward the cell body (soma) ; each neuron has these bushy fibers ; listen instead of speaking

experimental group

receives the treatment/condition in an experiment ; the situation that isn't "normal"

cones

receptor cells in the retina that enable color vision ; cluster in and around the fovea

rods

receptor cells in the retina that enable lines and black and white signals

shaping

reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior ; for example, if you're teaching your dog to roll over, you might give him a treat for sitting, then give him a treat for laying down, then give him a treat for rolling onto his back, and then give him a treat for rolling all the way over ; a series of baby steps ; used in Skinner's experiments

partial reinforcement

reinforcing a response only part of the time ; results in a slower acquisition of a response, but a much greater resistance to extinction than does continuous reinforcement (not very prone to extinction)

continuous reinforcement

reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs ; best and fastest way to master a behavior ; very prone to extinction (very easy to drop this type of reinforcement)

imagination effects

repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories ; digitally altered photos have produced imagination inflation (for example, people shown photos of their family taking a hot air balloon ride who'd never been in a hot air balloon became convinced that the picture was real ; they then formed false memories of being in a hot air balloon)

emotions

require a response of the whole organism, involving: 1) physiological arousal 2) expressive behaviors 3) conscious experience

recall

retrieving information that's not currently in your conscious awareness, but that was learned at an earlier time ; for example, a fill-in-the-blank test ; remembering information actively because the information isn't in front of you, so you have to pull it out of your own brain

Freud

says that dreams provide a "psychic safety valve that discharges unacceptable feelings" (thinks that our dreams reveal what our true intentions are and what we really want to happen) ; came up with manifest content and latent content ; thought that most dreams could be "traced back by analysis to erotic wishes" ; most modern researchers disagree with his dream theories

Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve

says that the course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time ; deals with storage decay

applied research

scientific study that aims to solve practical problems ; for example, "some people are developing a certain defect in their eyeballs. let's find a way to cure this defect." ; has an end goal in mind

motor functions

scientists found that stimulating a part of 1 half of the brain produced movement on the opposite side of the body (your right side is controlled by your left hemisphere and your left side is controlled by your right hemisphere) ; deals with the motor cortex ; there's no sensory receptors in the brain (people can be wide awake during brain surgery ; scientists can stimulate different parts of the brain while patients are wide awake without disturbing them) ; brain-computer interface says that clinical trials are happening for cognitive neural prosthetics with people who've suffered paralysis or an amputation (for example, a 25 year old man who's paralyzed has been able to mentally control a TV, draw shapes on a computer screen, etc.)

positive skew

scores are this if 1 score is much higher than the others ; goes in the positive direction ; throws off the measure of central tendency

normal (no skew)

scores are this if there's a perfectly symmetrical distribution of them

negative skew

scores are this is 1 score is much lower than the others ; goes in the negative direction ; throws off the measure of central tendency

IRB (Industrial Review Board)

screen research proposals and safeguard participants well-being ; deal with ethics in human research

accidents

selective attention greatly has to do with these ; when you're maintaining a sharp focus (like when you're driving and feel potentially threatened by another car), you blink less than when your mind is wandering ; as of 2010, the National Safety Council says that 28% of traffic accidents are caused when 1 or more drivers is using a cell phone (this percentage has probably gone up ; they can't always prove that you were on your phone because they don't have records of the driver's social media access times) ; fMRIs tell us that multitasking distracts from our brain resources associated to driving (when multitasking, you aren't giving your full attention to any of the tasks that you're doing ; brain activity in areas vital to driving decreases an average 37% when a driver is attending to a conversation ; even drivers using hands-free cell phone set-ups are much more at risk to have a crash)

peripheral nervous system

sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous system to the rest of the body ; responsible for gathering information and for transmitting CNS (central nervous system) decisions to other body parts ; broken down into the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system ; part of the nervous system

estrogens

sex hormones, such as estradiol, that're secreted in greater amounts by females than by males and contribute to female sex characteristics ; in nonhuman female mammals, levels of it peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity

external stimuli

sexually explicit material or sexual arousal from another person (sexually explicit material can have adverse effects {1 partner might start to de-value the other partner or habituate to sexually explicit material and find it hard to get aroused without increasingly stimulating material})

sleep spindles

short bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain-wave activity

excitatory signals

signals to the neuron that accelerate the signals along the neuron ; if they exceed the inhibitory signals by a minimum intensity, known as a threshold, the combined signals trigger an action potential ; have to outnumber the inhibitory signals and reach a certain "level" ; increasing the level of stimulation above the threshold will not increase the neural response's intensity because the neuron has an all-or-none response

inhibitory signals

signals to the neuron that slow the signals along the neuron

reflexes

simple, autonomic responses to a sensory stimulus (for examples, 1) knee-jerk response 2) hand-to-flame response)

measure of central tendency

single scores meant to represent a whole set of scores ; includes mode, mean, and median ; thrown off by skewed scores

effects of sleep loss

sleep loss is a predictor of depression (it's a factor that can contribute to depression ; especially for teenagers who're susceptible to depression, getting enough sleep is very important for your mental health) ; diminished productivity, irritability, fatigue (why you tend to have a bad day when you're really tired) ; sleep deprivation ; automobile accidents and huge disasters like the Exxon-Valdez, Chernobyl, airplane crashes, etc., often happen when the operators are sleep deprived

why do we sleep?

sleep protects us from entering dangerous situations caused by darkness (this is an evolutionary explanation {humans can't see very well in the dark}) ; sleep helps us recuperate (it helps to restore and repair brain tissue {sleeping gives neurons times to repair themselves}) ; sleep helps restore and rebuild fading memories of the day's experiences (involved in memory storage) ; sleep feeds creative thinking (sometimes, we need to step away from something for a while in order to make progress on it) ; sleep supports growth (during sleep, the pituitary gland releases a growth hormone necessary for muscle development {as we age, we release less of this hormone and spend less time in sleep})

NREM-1

sleep stage that lasts about 10 minutes ; stage between wakefulness and sleep (for examples, 1) falling asleep in class, but you can be very easily woken up if you're touched 2) going in between watching a TV show and taking a nap) ; alpha waves accompany this transition into sleep ; breathing becomes regular and heart rate begins to slow ; hypnagogic sensations (jerking, sensation that you're falling, etc.) are very common in this stage ; can experience hallucinations in this stage (more of a daydream than a dream) ; you're easily disrupted/awoken in this stage

NREM-2

sleep stage that lasts about 20 minutes ; relaxing more deeply ; you can still be awoken pretty easily, but are now clearly asleep (for example, falling asleep in class and laying on your arm, but you can still be woken up fairly easily) ; stage with sleep spindles ; as the night wears on, this sleep stage and REM periods get longer

NREM-3

sleep stage that lasts for about 30 minutes ; deep, slow-wave sleep with delta waves ; very hard to wake someone at this stage (for example, sleeping through a thunderstorm) ; children may wet the bed during this stage ; people might sleep through thunder or other loud noises

REM

sleep stage that lasts for about 30 minutes ; heart rate rises and breathing becomes rapid and irregular ; eyes dart around in momentary bursts of activity ; dreaming occurs in this stage (many dreams are hallucinatory, emotional, and story-like ; some people don't dream ; you don't necessarily dream every night {you can still reach this sleep level without dreaming} ; based on what you dream, you can feel after effects throughout the day {for example, having a really bad dream can leave you shook during the whole next day}) ; genitals often become aroused during this stage of sleep ; your brain's motor cortex is active, but your brainstem blocks its messages from getting to the rest of your body (this immobility sometimes lingers when people wake up after this sleep stage, causing temporary sleep paralysis {usually doesn't take very long for you to snap out of it} ; evolutionary advantage that helps keep us safe {for example, it keeps us from actually getting up to sprint if we're sprinting in our dream}) ; sometimes called paradoxical sleep because the body is internally aroused, but externally asleep and calm (your brain and your body are very active, but you're in a deep sleep) ; as the night wears on, this sleep stage and NREM-2 periods get longer ; you don't go right into this sleep stage when you first fall asleep

genes

small sections of the larger DNA molecules ; our codes for life ; our environment can affect how present they are ; DNA in chromosomes contains them ; can be active or inactive ; we share 96% of our DNA sequence with chimpanzees ; most of our traits are influenced by multiple ones (for example, height)

ostracism

social exclusion ; promotes feelings of loneliness and even physical pain ; increases activity in brain areas like the anterior cingulate cortex, which is also activated in response to pain

phantom limb sensations

some amputees feel pain or movement in non-existent limbs ; some people born without certain limbs sometimes perceive sensations from the missing arm or leg

arousal theory

some motivated behaviors actually increase arousal ; for example, curiosity in children and baby monkeys (their exploration of the world isn't serving a biological need or reducing a drive ; rather, it's increasing their arousal) ; with too much arousal comes stress and then we look for a way to decrease arousal (relates to the Yerkes-Dodson law)

skewed scores

sometimes, 1 score throws the measure of the central tendency off (for examples, 1) if you're averaging the incomes of people walking down the street and a homeless man with an income of 0 walks by, it skews the scores {negative skew} 2) if you're measuring the average income of people in a coffee shop and Bill Gates Walks in, he's going to have a much higher income than all of the other participants, so he'll throw the average off {positive skew and a skewed distribution}

storage decay

sometimes, after we encode something, we later forget it ; deals with Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve

retrieval failure

sometimes, forgetting isn't memories faded, but memories unretrieved ; for example, the tip of the tongue phenomenon (you know that you know something, but you just can't quite grasp it)

placebo effect

sometimes, participants who believe they're receiving the medication but aren't believe that they're experiencing positive effects (people experiencing this can experience positive effects because of the positive outlook they have from getting "treatment") ; can be involved in the double blind procedure

encoding failure

sometimes, we do this with what we notice or experience ; age can effect encoding efficiency (slower encoding helps explain age-related memory decline)

outer ear

sound waves enter it ; channels the waves through the auditory canal to the eardrum, causing it to vibrate

ear

sound waves enter the outer ear, which channels the waves through the auditory canal to the eardrum, causing it to vibrate ; in the middle ear, 3 tiny bones (the hammer, anvil, and stirrup) pick up the vibrations and transmit them to the cochlea ; the incoming vibrations cause the cochlea's membrane (the oval window) to vibrate, jostling the fluid that fills the tube (this motion causes ripples in the basilar membrane, bending the hair cells lining its surface) ; hair cell movement triggers impulses in adjacent nerve cells (where the sound wave becomes a neural impulse) ; axons of these nerve cells converge to form the auditory nerve, which sends signals, via the thalamus, to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe

non-verbals

sounds that we make that aren't necessarily words ; can indicate emotions

left hemisphere

speaking and calculating are done more so in this hemisphere of the brain ; if a surgeon injects a sedative into the neck artery feeding blood to this hemisphere which usually controls speech, their right arm is limp and they're unable to speak ; good at making quick, literal interpretations of language

feature detectors

specialized neurons in the visual cortex that receive information from individual ganglion cells in the retina (these cells pass information to other cortical areas where teams of cells, called supercell clusters, respond to more complex patterns)

myelin sheath

speed the impulses of the axon (good thing because it makes the axons faster than axons without them) ; as a human being grows, it grows, along with neural efficiency, judgement, and self-control (this ends at about 25) ; if it degenerates, the result is multiple sclerosis

excitement stage

stage 1 of the sexual response cycle ; genital areas become engorged with blood ; woman's vagina expands and secretes lubricant

plateau phase

stage 2 of the sexual response cycle ; breathing, pulse, and blood pressure continue to increase ; vaginal secretion continues and penis becomes fully engorged with fluid

orgasm

stage 3 of the sexual response cycle ; muscle contractions all over the body ; increases in breathing, pulse, and blood pressure ; woman's uterus is positioned to draw sperm further inward

resolution phase

stage 4 of the sexual response cycle ; male enters the refractory period wherein he's incapable of another orgasm ; women have a much shorter refractory period and can have multiple orgasms if re-stimulated during or soon after resolution

two-word stage

stage where a child speaks in mostly 2 word statements that're similar to telegraphic speech ; ages 2 and beyond ; for examples, 1) "want juice!" 2) "go doggie!" 3) "good sissy!"

babbling stage

stage where babies make a variety of possible sounds, but don't yet form words ; by 10 months, the baby's babbling has changed so that a trained ear can hear and identify the household language of the baby's family ; first part of productive language

one-word stage

stage where babies speak in 1 word segments, usually nouns ; ages 1-2 ; for examples, 1) "fish!" 2) "doggie!" 3) "mama!"

Hawthorne effect

states that individuals often modify or improve an aspect of their behavior in response to the awareness of being observed (for examples, 1) when your boss walks by, you make sure that you look like you're working hard 2) talking more openly to friends in your room with the door closed rather than having it open where anyone could hear more easily) ; may have an impact on psychological experiments because if the participants know that they're in an experiment, they may try to act how they think the researchers want them to act

statistical significance

statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance ; odds of the results having occurred by chance should be no more than 5% (means that there's a 95% or greater chance that the results didn't occur by chance) ; involved with inferential statistics

Atkinson-Shiffrin Model

steps of it are 1) we 1st record to-be-remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory (a very fast memory) 2) we process information into short-term memory, where we encode it through rehearsal (have to keep using the information in order to get to step 3 3) information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval (what we eventually want for important material) ; one of the memory models

cortisol

stimulates the body to make fat ; increased by sleep deprivation

AIDS

stress doesn't cause it, but stress and negative emotions can speed the transition from HIV to it and predict a faster decline in those with it

cancer

stress doesn't definitively cause it, but stress may affect the growth of its cells by weakening the body's natural defense against multiplying malignant cells

Edward Bradford Titchener

student of Wundt ; came back to America and joined the staff at Cornell University ; introduced structuralism, drawing on the ideas of Wundt ; goal was to identify what the mind and consciousness were ; used introspection to try and achieve his goal

community psychologists

study how people interact with their social environments and how social institutions affect individuals and groups ; work to create social and physical environments that are healthy for all ; involved with applied research ; deal with broad problems of mental healthy in community settings ; focus on preventative measures and crisis intervention ; frequently "stick up for" underrepresented minorities/ethnic groups ; more of a vague profession ; involved with applied research

educational psychologists

study influences on teaching and learning (look at all different kinds of ideas thinking and learning) ; involved with basic research ; develop innovative methods of teaching to enhance the learning process ; could be employed by a school or government to design and implement effective employee training programs (for example, could work with EBR schools as a whole)

developmental psychologists

study our changing abilities through life (compare people of different ages' growth over time) ; involved with basic research ; inform many applied fields ; affect educational psychology, child psychopathology, etc. (many of the concepts involved in this field are taught to people working with children)

behavior genetics

study our differences and weigh the effects of interplay of heredity and environment

sport psychologists

study psychological factors within sports and athletes ; usually employed with major athletic teams ; coach education and athlete preparation ; involved with applied research

neuropsychologists

study the relationships between neurological processes and behavior ; asses, diagnose, and treat nervous system disorders (for example, Alzheimer's disease) ; involved with applied research

clinical psychologists

study, asses, and treat people with psychological disorders ; separate education and degree level than counseling psychologists (must earn a doctorate from a clinical psychology program, which isn't the same thing as a medical degree ; have a Ph.D. not an M.D. ; must obtain a license to administer therapy or testing) ; can't prescribe drugs ; weekly appointments with someone would most likely be this kind of psychologist (stereotypical idea of a therapist treating someone) ; involved with applied research ; promote psychological health in individuals, groups, and organizations ; some specialize in specific psychological disorders (for example, psychologist treating someone with anxiety probably wouldn't treat someone with schizophrenia)

phrenology

studying the bumps on the human skull ; thought to reveal a person's mental abilities and character traits ; inaccurate and a hoax ; phrenologists were successful in focusing attention on the localization of function

posthypnotic suggestions

suggestions made during hypnosis sessions to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized ; have helped alleviate headaches, asthma, and stress-related skin disorders ; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors ; for example, "when you wake up, you will feel..."

iris

surrounds the pupil and controls its size ; each is so distinctive that a machine that scans it can verify your identity ; pretty part of the eye that determines your eye color

extinction

takes place when there's a diminishing of a conditioned response ; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (US) doesn't follow a conditioned stimulus (CS) ; occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced ; in Pavlov's experiments, if Pavlov were to repeatedly ring the bell (CS) but not put any food (US) out, the dog would no longer salivate ; when the response goes away

LeDoux

talked about emotions as more of an unconscious experience ; he argued that simple emotions, such as likes, dislikes, and fears, bypassed the thalamus and went straight to the amygdala (he called this neural shortcut a "bottom-up" emotion {this is the opposite of feelings that're "top-down" like more complex emotions, such as love and hatred}) ; 1 of the creators of the Zajonc/LeDoux theory

resistance

temperature, blood pressure, and respiration remain high ; adrenal glands pump hormones into your bloodstream ; 2nd phase of general adaptation syndrome

self-control

the ability to control impulses and delay short-term gratification for greater long term rewards ; for example, children can choose to have a bigger piece of candy tomorrow instead of having a small piece of candy right now

hypnotic ability

the ability to focus attention totally on a task, to become imaginatively absorbed in it, to entertain fanciful possibilities, etc.

creativity

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideals ; not necessarily the classic "creative" definition that we think of as painters, musicians, actors etc. ; means that you're able to come up with new and smart ideas that others can't come up with ; 5 components of it are 1) expertise (you need to have a lot of knowledge about something) 2) imaginative thinking skills (you have to have a pretty vivid imagination) 3) a venturesome personality (you can't be afraid to try something new) 4) intrinsic motivation (you're internally driven to make something better) 5) a creative environment (you need to be in the right setting that promotes creative thinking)

perceptual adaptation

the ability we have to adjust to radical changes to our vision/perception ; for example, we can get used to seeing things normally through a new pair of glasses

cognitive learning

the acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others, or through language ; for examples, 1) learning to hit a baseball by watching others 2) learning a language at school 3) having an idea of how to cook a certain dish that your mom makes just by watching her cook it

priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response (we can evaluate a stimulus even when we aren't aware of it) ; for examples, 1) if you had a babysitter that you really didn't like who used to always eat peppermints, you would become upset if your teacher was eating peppermints while talking to you and not be sure what the cause for your anger was 2) people with PTSD are triggered by any sound that reminds them of their traumatic event 3) after seeing a "missing child" poster or watching Law and Order, one might see a normal adult-child interaction as a kidnapping

intensity

the amount of energy in the light waves that's determined by a wave's amplitude, or height ; how we perceive brightness

relative luminance

the amount of light an object reflects relative to its surroundings ; brightness constancy depends on it

sound waves

the amplitude of them determines their loudness ; the length of them, which is the frequency, determines the pitch of sounds ; we measure sound in decibels

2nd Darwinian revolution

the application of evolutionary principles to psychology ; Darwin's theory of evolution lives on in this

medulla

the area where the spinal cord slightly swells after entering the skull ; controls your heartbeat and breathing ; part of the brainstem

mean

the average of a distribution ; obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores (for example, when given 7, 9, 15, 21, 13 and 6, add them all together and get 71 then divide 71 by 6 and get 11.83, so it's 11.83) ; 1 of the measures of central tendency

Little Albert

the baby who was classically conditioned to fear white rats because of an association between the rat and a loud noise ; he learned to generalize, so he feared any furry or white creatures, even a fur coat ; John B. Watson's work that Pavlov's work laid the groundwork for

basal metabolic rate

the body's resting rate of energy expenditure (how much energy your body is using when you're resting) ; after weeks of semi-starvation, humans stabilize at a fraction of their body's weight (this has adjusted, so they stop loosing weight {this is why dieters "plateau"})

nervous system

the body's speedy, electrochemical (work together) and communication network, consisting of all the nerve cells of the peripheral and central nervous systems ; broken down into the peripheral nervous system and central nervous system

perceiving loudness

the brain interprets loudness from the number of activated hair cells, not by the intensity of a hair cell's response (similar to the all-or-none response o a neuron) ; if a hair cell loses sensitivity to soft sounds, it may still respond to loud sounds ; we like sound compressed, meaning that harder to hear sounds are more amplified than loud sounds (modern hearing aids do this)

brainstem

the brain's oldest and innermost region ; begins where the spinal cord swells slightly after entering the skull ; controls the body's automatic survival functions (as some brain-damaged patients in a vegetative state illustrate, we need no higher brain or conscious mind to orchestrate our heart's pumping and lungs' breathing) ; can't live without it being intact ; contains the medulla and pons ; a crossover point where most nerves to and from each side of the brain connect with the body's opposite side (cross-wiring is in the brain stem) ; one of the older brain structures

thalamus

the brain's sensory control center ; a pair of egg-shaped structures located on top of the brainstem ; directs messages to the sensory receiving areas in the cortex and transmits replies to the cerebellum and medulla ; receives information from all senses except for smell and routes it to the higher brain regions that deal with seeing, hearing, tasting, and touching ; one of the older brain structures

fovea

the central focal point in the retina

coronary heart disease

the clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle ; the leading cause of death in many developed countries ; casual factors are 1) smoking 2) obesity 3) high-fat diet 4) physical inactivity 5) elevated cholesterol 6) stress responses 7) personality traits ; stress may increase vulnerability to heart disease

reliability

the consistency of a test's results (for example, giving psychology students a test with basic math problems on it and them doing well time after time = consistent) ; can compare 2 halves of a test, retest, and compare alternate forms of the test ; similar to consistency ; test may be very reliable (consistent), but not very accurate in what it's intended to measure

transduction

the conversion of 1 form of energy into another (usually chemical to electrical) ; in sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret ; there's 3 steps of our senses converting energy into neural impulses ( 1) receive sensory stimulation, often using specialized receptor cells 2) transform that stimulation into neural impulses 3) deliver the neural information to our brain) ; where transduction takes place for certain sense 1) vision - retina 2) hearing - hair cells in the inner ear 3) taste - taste receptors in the mouth (taste buds)

range

the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution (for example, when given 4, 8, 2, 9, 10, and 1, find the highest score, which is 10, and lowest score, which is 1, then subtract the lowest score from the highest score and get 9, so it's 9) ; 1 of the measures of variation

tolerance

the diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger doses before experiencing the drug's effect ; different for everyone

withdrawal

the discomfort and distress that follow discontinuing an addictive drug or behavior ; comes with undesirable side effects

retroactive interference

the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information ; for example, you just learned how to say the colors in French and now you can't remember how to say the colors in Spanish, which you learned in middle school

proactive interference

the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information ; for example, you just memorized the digits of pi last week and now you can't memorize your new locker combination

wavelength

the distance from 1 wave peak to the next ; determines the huge (color) that we see

personality

the environment shared by a family's children has no impact on theirs (it's predetermined for the most part in your prefrontal cortex ; can't change the key elements of their identity)

independent variable

the experimental factor that's manipulated ; thing that the researcher is changing ; variable whose effect is being studied (for example, in an experiment where the effect of coffee on how fast someone types is being studied, drinking coffee)

validity

the extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it's supposed to measure (for examples, 1) a driving test that makes you drive, parallel park, use your blinker, etc. = valid 2) a psychology test that has math problems on it = not valid 3) a PE test with art drawings on it = not valid) ; similar to accuracy

heritability

the extent to which differences in individuals can be attributed to genes (if 2 people are different, how much of that is due to genes) ; the proportion of variation attributed to genes ; doesn't mean hereditary ; as the environment becomes more similar, it increases because differences decrease (key idea that helps your understanding of it) ; genetic influence explains 50% of the observed variation among people ; for the barrel boys example, it would be nearly 100% ; for twins raised in 2 different environments, it would be nearly 0%

selective attention

the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus ; for example, the cocktail party effect (you have the ability to focus on only 1 voice even though you're surrounded by many voices ; in addition, you can detect your own name when said by a different voice that you're not currently attending to) ; not everyone is very good at doing this (for example, some people can't do homework in a room with the TV on)

glucose

the form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for blood tissue ; when its level is low, we feel hunger

neurogenesis

the formation of new neurons ; has sometimes been observed in humans and other animals ; deals with the brain's plasticity

genome

the genetic blueprint for an organism ; our common genetic profile

learned helplessness

the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events ; not a good state of mind ; for examples, 1) when people are faced with repeated traumatic events, they sometimes feel hopeless and depressed because they no longer feel that they can control the events around them or avoid aversive stimuli 2) deciding that I'm not going to ask questions in biology anymore because no matter how many questions I ask, I still don't understand the material or do well on the test

drive-reduction theory

the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need ; for example, the drive to eat causes us to eat, which we do to lessen the drive ; the aim of it is homeostasis ; doesn't explain why we perform some behaviors that increase arousal instead of decreasing it (says that we're doing things to lessen a state of attention, but people sometimes do things to purposely increase their state of attention)

localization of function

the idea that various brain regions have particular functions (different parts of the brain do different things)

action potential

the impulse that a neuron fires in response to being stimulated ; a brief electrical charge that travels down the neuron's axon ; sending of an impulse through a neuron ; depending on the type of fiber, a neural impulse travels at speeds as slow as 2 mph and as fast as 180 mph ; even the top speed is 3 million times slower than electricity passing through an electrical wire (our brains are much slower than computers) ; if a neuron's excitatory signals exceed the inhibitory signals by a minimum intensity (threshold), the combined signals trigger this ; when it reaches the end of the axon's terminals, it triggers the release of neurotransmitters

embodied cognition

the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgments (different things that we experience actually influence how we think) ; for examples, 1) holding a heavy clipboard rather than a lighter clipboard made job candidates seem more important to others and themselves 2) using props can help an actor to get into the scene and depict the character better than they would without a prop 3) when you're wearing an outfit that you feel really confident in, you end up feeling really good

acquisition

the initial stage when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response ; the process of becoming conditioned ; in Pavlov's experiments, the process of learning that the bell means food is coming so that the bell starts to trigger salivation

cognitive neuroscience

the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language) ; scientists don't know enough about what makes us "conscious" to duplicate in a robot or other form ; scientists have done demonstrations with non-responsive patients and found that some of them were, at least in terms of consciousness, responsive (for example, a nonresponsive 23 year old female patient was asked to imagine herself playing tennis ; her brain scan showed activity in the regions that control legs and arms)

interaction

the interplay that occurs when the effect of 1 factor, such as environment, depends on another factor, such as heredity ; some human traits are only expressed in particular environments (for examples, 1) if you go barefoot all summer, you'll form callouses/rough feet as a result of adaption 2) even though lizards are usually green, they can turn brown if they're sitting on a brown tree) ; genes are self-regulating (they react to external stimuli) ; environments trigger gene activity (nature and nurture are both equally important)

THC

the major active ingredient in marijuana ; triggers a variety of effects, including mild hallucinations ; impairs motor coordination, perceptual skills, and reaction time

synapse

the meeting point between 2 neurons ; found and named by Sir Charles Sherrington ; drugs and other chemicals affect brain chemistry at them (they either excite (increase the rate) or inhibit the neuron's firing

median

the middle score in a distribution ; half the scores are above it and half are below it (for examples, 1) for 5, 8, 4, 7, and 2, put them in order and get 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8, so it's 5, which is the middle score 2) for 6, 9, 3, 4, 8, and 1, put them in order and get 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9 then take the middle 2 scores, which are 4 and 6, and average them and get 5, so it's 5) ; put the scores in order 1st when finding it ; 1 of the measures of central tendency

difference thresholds

the minimum difference between 2 stimuli required for detection 50% of the time (we experience it as a "just noticeable difference") ; for example, we may not notice if someone cuts their hair an inch or 2, but we will notice if they chop it all off

absolute thresholds

the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time ; deals with our awareness to faint stimuli

mode

the most frequently occurring scores in a distribution (for example, out of 3, 6, 9, 12, 9, 1, 9, and 9, it's 9) ; possible to have more than 1 or be bimodal (for examples, 1) out of 4, 8, 5, 4, 5, 4, 8, 3, and 8, they're 4 and 8, so it's bimodal 2) out of 7, 6, 7, 5, 8, 13, 6, 1, and 5, they're 5, 6, and 7, so there's more than 1 of them) ; 1 of the measures of central tendency

figure ground

the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground) ; our 1st task in perceiving something is to perceive the object (the figure) as distinct from its surroundings (the ground)

dependent variable

the outcome factor ; variable that may change in response to the manipulations of the independent variable (depends on the independent variable) ; thing that the researcher wants to study (for example, in an experiment where the effect of coffee on how fast someone types is being studied, how fast you type)

illusory correlation

the perception of a relationship where none exists (for examples, 1) people think that being in the cold/wet can cause people to become ill {colds are caused by viruses and there's no special viruses traveling around in cold/wet air} 2) people think that sugar makes children hyperactive {sugar bogs them down and reduces their energy}) ; when we believe there's a relationship between 2 things, we're likely to notice and recall instances that confirm our belief

external locus of control

the perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate ; blaming others for the situation ; for examples, 1) "God has a specific plan for me! if I don't do my homework, it's because God didn't want me to." 2) "everything happens for a reason."

internal locus of control

the perception that you control your own fate ; taking the blame for the situation ; for examples, 1) "I'm going to college and trying to further myself in life because I feel that my choices have an impact on my life." 2) "I failed the test because I didn't study enough."

grouping

the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups ; for examples, 1) we group nearby figures together 2) we perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones 3) we fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object

memory

the persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information ; our minds don't work like video recorders (we don't encode every event or bit of knowledge {why we can't remember every one of them in our life} ; we sometimes can't retrieve what we encode) ; very imperfect

blind spot

the place where the optic nerve leaves the eye where there are no receptor cells

locating sounds

the placement of our ears allows us to enjoy stereophonic, or 3-dimensional, hearing ; it's an evolutionary advantage to have an ear on each side of your head (for example, if a car to the right of you honks, your right ear receives a more intense sound and it receives sound slightly sooner than your left ear {these slight differences give us clues about where a sound is coming from})

set point

the point at which an individual's "weight thermostat" is supposedly set ; when the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight ; not necessarily your healthiest or most ideal weight ; basically your "weight homeostasis"

resting potential

the positive-outside/negative-inside state of an axon

chain migration

the practice of immigrant families migrating together or migrating to a place where culturally similar families already live ; has been encouraged to aid in immigrants' adaptation

sensory interaction

the principle that 1 sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste ; for examples, 1) taste and smell work together to let us actually taste food {a) if you hold your nose while eating a food that you don't like, it'll actually help make the food taste less bad b) smell of a chocolate chip cookie makes you anticipate the taste of it} 2) physical warm promotes social warmth

Yerkes-Dodson law

the principle that performance increase with arousal only up to a point, beyond which performance increases ; for example, being "pumped up" before a test might help you to do well, but drinking 4 energy drinks will make you too aroused and, therefore, your performance will stink

natural selection

the principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations (we're going to pass on whatever helps reproduction and survival to our children) ; for example, each generation, giraffe necks get loner and longer as a result of reaching up into trees to get leaves to eat ; principle of "survival of the fittest" ; for most things, we can say "nurture works on what nature endows," meaning we're born with certain predispositions and traits, but our environment and experiences may change or influence our behavior (nature gives us certain things, but nurture has an impact on us also) ; Darwin's theory ; how traits change from generation to generation ; over time, selected traits confer a reproductive advantage on a species and will prevail (for example, breeders have created a domesticated breed of foxes by breeding the tamest 5% of males and 20% of females

sensation

the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment (what's actually happening) ; for examples, 1) I ate lunch 2) I'm touching my desk ; the same for everyone ; sensory information goes through the thalamus before it goes to the part of the brain that'll make sense of it

stress

the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging ; when short-lived, stressors can be perceived as challenges and can actually have positive effects (momentary stress can mobilize the immune system and arouse/motivate us to conquer problems) ; extreme or prolonged stress can harm us (severe stress can increase our susceptibility to disease, heart problems, and death) ; causes an outpouring of the stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine from the adrenal glands (on orders from the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, the adrenal gland also secretes glucocorticoid stress hormones, such as cortisol)

learning

the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors ; we do it by association (for example, if we touch something and it hurts, we learn not to touch that thing again)

encoding

the process of getting information into our brain ; 1st step in remembering any event

retrieval

the process of getting the information that you retain in your brain back out later ; 3rd step in remembering any event

modeling

the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior ; for example, teaching a child to brush his teeth by showing him on your own teeth ; kids respond really well to this ; where the term "role model" comes from

perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events (how your brain perceives what's happening) ; for examples, 1) that sound is a dog barking 2) touching a desk without looking at it and realizing that it's a desk ; not the same for everyone

storage

the process of retaining the information that you get into your brain ; 2nd step in remembering any event

parallel processing

the processing of many aspects of a problem/situation simultaneously ; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions ; for example, as you enter the lunchroom, you simultaneously process information about the people you see, the sounds of voices, and the smell of food ; taking in one scene or big picture (won't remember every little detail about it) ; one of the memory models ; the brain divides a scene into sub-dimensions (motion, form, depth, and color) ; these different dimensions are processed simultaneously (allows us to recognize different things at one time) ; to recognize a face, your brain integrates information projected by your retinas to several visual cortex areas, compares it with stored information, and enables you to recognize the face ; facial recognition requires 30% of the cortex

manifest content

the remembered storyline of a dream ; for example, you dream that you're in a very stressful situation ; Freud came up with it

psychology

the science of behavior and mental processes

cognitive psychology

the scientific study of all the mental activities associated with thinking, remembering, knowing, and communicating ; for examples, 1) how do we use information in remembering? reasoning? solving? 2) what's the best way to study for a test? ; looks at how we encode, process, store, and retrieve information ; studies the whole experience (figures out how the whole brain works and affects the person)

positive psychology

the scientific study of human functioning with the goals of discovering and promoting strengths and virtues that help individuals and communities to thrive ; started because of how poorly people with mental disorders were treated for a long time (usually killed or locked up with extremely poor conditions and no treatment) ; involved with applied research

behavioral psychology

the scientific study of observable behavior and its explanations by principles of learning ; for example, how do we learn to fear particular objects or situations? ; looks at patterns that people/animals pick up on from learning ; views everything as past conditioning

biological psychology

the scientific study of the links between biological (genetic, neural, hormonal) and psychology processes ; for examples, 1) how do pain messages travel from the hand to the brain? 2) to what extent are traits (intelligence, personality) attributed to our genes? ; looks at things in your physical body

psychometrics

the scientific study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits ; for examples, 1) IQ testing 2) personality testing 3) emergenetics 4) etc. ; tries to measure human traits and map them in some way

vestibular sense

the sense of body movement movement and position, including the sense of balance ; your balance center is located in the inner ear (the semicircular canals and the vestibular sacs affect your balance ; movement of fluid in the inner ear makes us feel dizzy if we have suddenly stopped moving)

audition

the sense or act of hearing

hearing

the sounds we hear best are those sounds with frequencies in a range corresponding to that of a human voice (less likely that we'll hear something with an extremely high pitch or an extremely low pitch) ; dogs and other animals can hear things that we can't hear ; the older you get, the less you can hear higher pitches (for example, a ringtone with a high pitch that students can hear but older teachers can't hear)

experimental psychology

the study of behavior and thinking using the experimental method ; Washburn is known for her involvement in this

epigenetics

the study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without a DNA change ; deals with epigenetic marks ; some experiences and actions can change the way your DNA works ; child abuse may similarly affect its victims (humans who've committed suicide exhibit the same epigenetic effect if they'd suffered a history of child abuse) ; might explain why 1 identical twin may develop a genetically influenced mental disorder

psychoneuroimmunology

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

social-cultural psychology

the study of how situations and cultures affect our own behavior and thinking ; for examples, 1) how are we alike as members of 1 human family? 2) why do women in our society think certain ways and do certain things? ; looks at society as a whole or simply a few people

psychophysics

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

evolutionary psychology

the study of the evolution of behavior and mind using the principles of natural selection ; for example, how does evolution predict or influence behavior? ; looks at how people evolve over time and adapt to different things

alarm

the sympathetic nervous system is suddenly activated (heart rate zooms, blood is diverted to skeletal muscles, feeling of shock) ; 1st phase of general adaption syndrome

kinesthesia

the system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts ; vision helps tremendously with it

grammar

the system of rules that enables us to communicate with one another ; involves semantics and syntax

REM rebound

the tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation

spacing effect

the tendency for distributed study, broken up over a few days perhaps, or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice, such as studying all in 1 night

facial feedback effect

the tendency of facial muscle states to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness ; our physical expressions have an impact on the emotions we feel (for example, smiling and sitting up straight can make us feel happier while frowning might make us feel sadder)

behavior feedback phenomenon

the tendency of physical movements to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness ; similar to facial feedback ; for example, walking around for a few minutes slumping and moving slowly might cause us to feel sad ; "going through the motions awakens the emotions"

overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct ; to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements ; for examples, 1) in class, Ms. McGill asked you to estimate the square mileage of the U.S., the length of the Mississippi River, etc. and we were all very, wildly wrong with our estimations (we like to think that we can estimate accurately, but we don't) 2) most adults think that they know more about the government than they actually do (it's so complex that it can take a lifetime for them to learn it all, so it's foolish for an everyday person to think that they're an expert on the government) ; refers to the fact that we think we know more than we actually do

hindsight bias

the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would've foreseen it (for examples, 1) the BP Oil Spill 2) when 2 friends break up, we say, "I knew they were going to break up...he wasn't right for her) ; "I knew it all along" phenomenon" ; saying we could've predicted the future after we knew what ended up happening

confirmation bias

the tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence (we only remember or pick up information that supports the way we already feel about something ; we're more likely to miss or ignore information that doesn't support us) ; for examples, 1) government officials that wanted Saddam Hussein to have weapons of mass destruction so that we could justify attacking him were much more in-tune to intelligence that supported this theory and missed the intelligence that suggested that he didn't have any WMDs 2) once some people decided that they were Trump supporters, they only acknowledged positive things about him and completely ignored things that were negative about him ; something that we do subconsciously

generalization

the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit a similar response ; for examples, 1) a child taught that a moving car could be dangerous to walk out in front of might also learn to be careful around moving trucks and motorcycles 2) an SJA student that knows that the bell signals the time to change classes will probably still assume that it's tine to change classes if the bell is slightly different on a random day

Cannon-Bard theory

the theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion ; says that neither of these cause the other because these things happening simultaneously is what we call emotion ; 1 of the historical emotion theories

Lazarus

the theory that our brain processes vast amounts of information without our awareness ; "to know whether a stimulus is good or bad, the brain must have some idea of what it is" ; says that emotions arise when we appraise an event as harmless or dangerous, whether we truly know it is or not ("it's all in the mind") ; 1 of the historical emotion theories

James-Lange theory

the theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli ; for example, "I feel my heart racing, then, shaking with fright, I feel the whoosh of emotion" (my feeling of fear followed my body's response) ; says that the body reacts first and then the mind catches on ; 1 of the historical emotion theories

Schachter-Singer two-factor theory

the theory that to experience emotion one must be physically aroused and cognitively label the arousal ; says that our physical reactions and our thoughts together create emotion (physical arousal and cognitive appraisal work together to create the sensation of emotion) ; 1 of the historical emotion theories

Zajonc/LeDoux

the theory that we have many emotional reactions apart from, or even before, our interpretation of a situation ; focuses more on the unconscious experience of emotion (not as concerned with the mind labeling emotion) ; 1 of the historical emotion theories

lymphocytes

the types of white blood cells that're part of the body's immune system ; types of them are B lymphocytes, T lymphocytes, and natural killer cells

latent content

the underlying meaning of a dream due to the unconscious wills and desires of the dreamer ; for example, because you've been stressed lately, your brain dreams about being stressed (even though you may not dream about the exact situation that's stressing you out, you understand where the stress in your dream is coming from) ; Freud came up with it

behaviorism

the view that psychology 1) should be an objective science that 2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes ; most modern psychologists agree with 1, but not 2

framing

the way an issue is posed ; how an issue is framed can significantly alter decisions and judgements ; for example, telling a patient that 90% of people survive an operation makes them more confident than saying 10% of people die during an operation (the information is the same, but the result is different)

ganglion cells

their axons twine together to form the optic nerve

opponent process theory

theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) enable color vision ; for examples, 1) some cells are stimulated by green and inhibited by red 2) others are stimulated by red and inhibited by green) ; explains why we can't see reddish green or bluish yellow

social influence theory of hypnosis

theory that states that hypnosis is a result of normal consciousness (perhaps under selective attention) and social influence (people are fully conscious) ; you need to be motivated to be hypnotized (for example, someone who wants to lose weight is motivated to try hypnosis and really wants it to work, so they have a greater chance of being hypnotized)

frequency theory

theory that the brain reads pitch by monitoring the frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory nerve ; the whole basilar membrane vibrates with the incoming sound wave, triggering neural impulses to the brain at the same rate as the sound wave ; best explains how we sense low pitches

Young-Helmholtz theory

theory that the retina contains 3 different color receptors, which are 1 most sensitive to red, 1 most sensitive to green, and 1 most sensitive to blue ; when stimulated in combination, they can produce the perception of any color

gate-control theory

theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass to the brain ; the "gate" is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain ; according to this theory, a way of managing pain is to stimulate (via massage, acupuncture, electric stimulation, etc.) "gate-closing" activity in the large neural fibers (for example, if you fall and scrape your knee, rubbing your calf really fast and trying to stimulate the whole leg will make it hurt less {confuses your spinal cord and tricks your body}

place theory

theory that we hear different pitches because different sound waves trigger activity at different places along the cochlea's basilar membrane ; the brain determines a sound's pitch by recognizing the specific place on the membrane that's generating the neural signal ; best explains how we sense high pitches

constraint-induced therapy

therapy where doctors restrain the functional limb, forcing the patients to use their "bad" limb ; aims to rewire brains and improve the dexterity of a brain-damaged child or adult stroke victim ; deals with the brain's plasticity

repressed or constructed memories of abuse

there's a lot of controversy surrounding people who "recover" memories of abuse in therapy and accuse abusers years after the abuse (many psychologists believe that therapists and hypnotists may be asking leading questions, framing, and misinforming their patients, leading to false accusations) ; memories recovered under the influence of any drug or during hypnosis are unreliable

adoptive children

they're more similar to their biological parents than their adoptive parents (nature is more prominent than nurture ; can be very hard to get children who had problem parents adopted) ; most of them thrive, especially when adopted as infants (the younger you can adopt a child, the better because it helps them feel like your own child) ; as children of self-giving parents, they grow up to be more self-giving and altruistic (for example, if your family goes to church often, they will learn to do the same) ; many of them score higher on intelligence tests and most grow up into happier adults than their biological parents

critical thinking

thinking that doesn't blindly accept arguments and conclusions ; rather, it makes assumptions, assesses the source, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions ; looks at evidence and considers the credibility of the source (especially on the internet because anybody can say anything) ; very important because it keeps us from being gullible and believing anything that we hear (positions of authority are susceptible to misusing this power {for example, teachers telling their students their personal views on things, such as political parties, and making them seem like the "right answer"})

Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow

thought that behaviorism and Freudian psychology were too narrow/limited in focus ; created humanistic psychology

chromosomes

threadlike structures made of DNA that contain genes ; each human has 46 of them (23 pairs)

can anyone experience hypnosis?

to an extent, everyone can experience hypnosis (there's varying degrees of strengths) ; highly hypnotizable people typically become deeply absorbed in imaginative activities

debrief

to explain the research afterward ; tell them the purpose of the research and what results you found

memory models

to remember any event, we must 1) encode 2) store 3) retrieve ; parallel processing ; Atkinson-Shiffrin Model

brains

today, we know that we fall in love with these, not our hearts

trial and error

trying to solve problems by randomly trying solutions ; for examples, 1) trying every key on a key ring to open a lock 2) taking a different route home to see if it's faster ; deals with the known solutions

identical (monozygotic) twins

twins that come from one egg that splits in two ; genetically identical ; 1 twin could be more predisposed to certain illnesses because of the number of genes (one twin can have a heavier amount of the gene than the other twin has) ; 1 out of every 3 sets of twins has a different placenta (this can provide better nourishment for 1 twin than the other ; deals with epigenetics in the womb) ; ones who've had their twin get divorced are 5.5 times more likely to get divorced themselves (correlational study) ; studies have shown that ones who were treated alike by their parents weren't psychologically more alike than ones who were treated less similarly (in this situation, nature is more prominent than nurture) ; ones raised separately were found to have similarities of tastes, physical attributes, personalities, abilities, attitudes, and fears ; separated twins are more alike if they're this than if they're fraternal ; ones raised in the same family have similar memories and reactions to their parents

fraternal (dizgotic) twins

twins that come from separate fertilized eggs ; no more similar than other siblings ; ones who've had their twin get divorced are 1.6 times more likely to get divorced themselves (environmental factors) ; separated twins are more alike if genetically identical than if they're this ; ones raised in the same family have differing recollections because of differing traits, not because of the family (have the same mindsight because of nature)

B lymphocytes

type of lymphocytes that form in the bone marrow and release antibodies to fight bacterial infections

T lymphocytes

type of lymphocytes that form in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances

natural killer cells

type of lymphocytes that pursue diseased cells, such as those infected by viruses or cancer

automatic processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency and of well-learned information, such as word meanings ; for examples, 1) being able to tell someone when you got home from school yesterday, even though you didn't necessarily try to remember this information 2) what the word "and" means 3) when you're studying, you often encode the place on the page where certain material appears (when you're taking the test, you can remember where the material appeared in your notebook, even though you didn't consciously try to memorize its position on the page) ; part of our dual-track memory

tend-and-befriend response

under stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend) ; for example, the outpouring of volunteers and help after Hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti

how do we acquire language?

universal grammar ; we aren't born with a built-in specific language, but all the children start to speak in mostly nouns, rather than in verbs and adjectives ; biology and experience work together to form language

catastrophes

unpredictable, large-scale events ; for examples, 1) wars 2) earthquakes 3) floods 4) wildfires 5) famines ; many people experience deteriorating well-being following these events (for example, people all over the U.S. had serious difficulty functioning after 9/11) ; 1 of the stressors

psychodynamic approach

updated, modern-day version of Freud's ideas

acetaminophen

used in Tylenol ; can lessen social and physical pain

structuralism

using introspection to reveal the structure of the human mind (deals with mapping the brain) ; Titchener, drawing on the ideas of Wundt, introduced this

motion perception

usually, the brain assumes that shrinking objects are retreating and enlarging objects are approaching (large objects, such as trains, appear to move more slowly than smaller objects, such as cars, moving the same speed) ; the brain also perceives continuous movement in a rapid series of slightly varying images (animated movies are basically very fast slideshows)

John B. Watson

very charismatic and provocative scientist who changed how the scientific community defined psychology, along with Skinner ; defined psychology as "the scientific study of observable behavior" ; totally uninterested in studying mental processes ; view was behaviorism ; Mary Watson, his wife, faked illness at a dinner party with Rosalie Rayner, his graduate student assistant and research partner, got into Rosalie's bedroom, where she discovered love letters that John had written to her, and had them published in the newspaper to embarrass him ; divorce became front-page news ; then married Rosalie and began working for an advertising agency

B.F. Skinner

very charismatic and provocative scientist who changed how the scientific community defined psychology, along with Watson ; defined psychology as "the scientific study of observable behavior" ; totally uninterested in studying mental processes ; view was behaviorism

empiricism

view that knowledge originates in experience and that science should rely on observation and experimentation (for things to be this, there has to be consistent scientific evidence proving that they're real) ; Bacon and Locke's ideas contributed to this

capacity of short-term memories

we can recall about 7 digits, 6 letters, or 5 words

can hypnosis enhance recall of forgotten events?

we don't encode everything around us (we only remember the important things ; most people think that we have a memory bank of everything that's happened to us, but we don't) ; we only permanently store some memories and some of these memories are unable to be retrieved ; "hypnotically refreshed" memories usually combine fact with fiction ; American, British, and Australian courts usually ban testimony obtained under hypnosis because it's unreliable (memories can become so distorted that you can't trust that they're true)

explicit vs. implicit

we encode memories on these 2 levels (some people can remember the explicit event, but not its implicit aspects ; some people can remember the unconscious, implicit conditioning, but not the explicit event)

limits on operant conditioning

we most easily learn and retain behaviors that reflect our biological predispositions ; biological constraints predispose organisms to learn associations that are naturally adaptive (for example, teaching a pigeon to peck to obtain food is much easier than teaching the pigeon to peck in order to avoid a shock) ; "never teach a pig to sing. it wastes your time and annoys the pig." - Mark Twain (it's a unnatural situation, so it won't work out as well as a natural situation will)

brightness constancy

we perceive an object as having constant brightness even when it's illumination varies ; depends on context ; this perception of constancy depends on relative luminance ; type of perceptual constancy

social-cultural influences on pain

we perceive pain more when others also seem to be experiencing pain (we often try to match the reaction of pain that someone else has when we're both in pain at the same time) ; when feeling empathy for another person's pain, we may begin mirroring their pain (why people start crying when someone else around them is crying)

fat

we store it as a reserve to carry the body through periods where food is scarce

nature and nurture reflections

we're formed by our genes (nature), but we're also influenced by our experiences (nurture) (everything is a combination of nature and nurture ; some things are more nature or more nurture) ; while we're the product of nature and nurture, we're also an open system (people can sometimes defy their genetics {for examples, 1) people who have a disease and are supposed to die live 2) people with a bad family history end up living happy lives}) ; in reality, we're both the creatures and the creators of the world ; our decisions today shape our environment tomorrow ; when Galileo offered the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun, he didn't offer proof (he offered a coherent explanation that organized observations logically ; Darwin did the same with the theory of evolution) ; everything that's psychological is simultaneously biological

light energy

what we see as light is actually electromagnetic energy ; other creatures see different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that aren't visible to us (for example, dogs don't see all of the colors that we see)

conscious

what we're currently aware of, experiencing, or perceiving ; one of the levels that our brains operate simultaneously on in dual processing

phi phenomenon

when 2 adjacent stationary lights blink on and off in quick succession, we perceive a single light moving back and forth between them ; for example, when looking at a construction sign, we perceive a blinking arrows when all that's really happening is a light is lighting up or not lighting up

neurotransmitters

when an action potential reaches the end of the axon's terminals, it triggers the release of these chemical "messengers" ; cross the synaptic gap and bind to receptor sites on the receiving neuron ; unlock the tiny channels in the receiving neuron and let the ions flow in ; in the process called reuptake, the sending neuron reabsorbs the excess ones ; acetlycholine (ACh), dopamine, serotin, norepinephrine, GABA, and glutamate are some of them ; scientists discovered that our body does produce its own naturally occuring opiates (our body releases several types of these molecules similar to morphine in response to pain and vigorous exercise ; these endorphins help explain things like "runner's high" and the painkilling effects of acupuncture)

multiple sclerosis

when communication to the muscles slows because the neurons aren't working properly, with eventual loss of muscle control following

postural sway

when people stand upright with their eyes closed and are told that they're swaying back and forth, most will, indeed, sway a little

informed consent

when research participants are given enough information about the experiment to choose whether or not to be involved and they agree to be involved ; don't have to tell them everything about the experiment, but do have to tell them enough for them to make an informed decision about their participation ; if you're studying children, must have this of the child and their parent

threshold

when the excitatory signals of a neuron exceed the inhibitory signals by a minimum intensity

retrieval cues

when you encode a target piece of information, such as the name of the person sitting next to you in class, you associate it with other bits of information about your surroundings, mood, seating position, etc. (certain ones might make it easier for you to retrieve a certain piece of information)

negative punishment

withdrawing a rewarding stimulus (taking away a positive stimulus) ; for examples, 1) taking away driving privileges 2) not letting a teenager go with their friends

gender, emotion, and nonverbal behavior

women are much more empathetic and sensitive to emotion then men (women are better at picking up on how people are feeling than men) ; women's increased adeptness to understand emotion is tied to their nurturing instincts ; anger strikes most people as a more masculine emotion

quantitative psychologists

work to analyze the results of tests that psychometric psychologists devise ; involved with basic research

rehabilitation psychologists

work with people who've lost optimal functioning after an accident, illness, or other event ; for example, could work with a car crash victim ; work in rehab facilities and hospitals ; involved with applied research

Dorethea Dix

worked very hard in the 1800s to improve the lives of the mentally ill ; prior to her involvement, most people with mental illnesses were housed in prisons with serious criminals (these facilities were usually inhumane and dangerous) ; worked to establish asylums, hospitals, and better prison conditions (places where people who have these disorders and are dangerous can still have humane conditions and live as fulfilling of a life as possible without being committed ; separated the criminals from the mentally ill)

environmental relatives

your adoptive parents and siblings

taste receptors

your taste buds ; produce themselves every week or 2 ; contain pores that catch the chemicals present in food ; as you grow older, they decrease