GEN PSYCH FINAL- UCA

Extinction

Disappearance of memories or behaviors from storage in brain

explanation

Explains why behavior occurs

long term memory

Memory of past events and facts about the world

Nature vs Nurture

Nature is your genes.The physical and personality traits determined by your genes stay the same irrespective of where you were born and raised. Nurture refers to your childhood, or how you were brought up

objective personality test

a self-report questionnaire that clearly asks about a wide range of behaviors and feelings and assesses several traits at once

axon

a single long wire that sends electrical signal from the soma to other neurons

Deviation

a statistic obtained by dividing a person's test score by the average test score of people in the same age group and then multiplying the quotient by 100

location & function of the corpus callosum

a thick bundle of fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.

Biological/ Evolutionary

a way of looking at psychological issues by studyibg physical basis for animal and human behavior

perceptual constancy

is perceiving objects as having constant shape, size, and color regardless of changes in perspective, distance, and lighting.

stimulus generalization

learning that occurs when stimuli that are similar but not identical to the conditioned stimulus produce the conditioned response

Sensorimotor

learns world through their movements and sensations

Receptors

locations where neurotransmitters fit like a key in a lock to activate postsynaptic neurons

culture-fair

meaning that the score is not biased by the test taker's cultural and social background

anxiety disorders

mental disorders characterized by excessive worry, fears, or avoidance

Cognitivism

mental processes involved in different aspects of thinking

how communication by neurons is accomplished

neurons communicate through synapses, neurotransmitters and receptor sites all working together.

partial reinforcement

the process of randomly rewarding an organism for making a response on only some of the occasions it makes it

Minimizing physical or psychological pain to subjects

subjects cannot be harmed.

Cognitive

the perspective that is concerned with understanding

How many animals are weighed against benefits to society in research on animals

-there has to be a balance between the 2. -animals rights cannot be compromised past a certain line

Correlation Research

-Determines if a relationship exists between two or more variables, if so, to what degree. -Can be used as the first step before an experiment begins.

sensory memory

-Sensory information is stored -allows individuals to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has ceased.

Survey

-a data collection tool used to gather information about individuals. -Commonly used in psychology research to collect self report data from study participants.

alfred binets contribution to the study of intelligence

-published the first modern intelligence test.. -goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum

What an action potential is and how it is accomplished

-the change in electrical potential associated with the passage of an impulse along the membrane of a muscle cell or nerve cell. -accomplished by the movement of chemicals

Gestalt principles (figure/ground)

-visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. -These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied.

Attachment

A deep and enduring emotional bond the connects one person to another across time and space. This does not have to be reciprocal; the first development is usually between child and caregiver

Case Study

A detailed observation of a single individual or group

working memory

A form of memory that contains both storage and processing mechanisms

short term memory

A memory store containing whatever currently inhabits the conscious mind

Conditioned stimulus (CS)

A previously neutral stimulus that begins to elicit the unconditioned response after being paired with an unconditioned stimulus.

temporal lobe

A region of the cerebral cortex responsible for hearing and language.

Attitude

A set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors toward a particular object, person, thing, or event

Cognitive Dissonance

A situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance

discontinuity theory

A theory of personality that suggests that in the course of development an organism experiences genuine transformations or changes so that it reaches successively higher levels of organization

Attribution

Action of regarding something as being caused by a person or things

debriefing

After the study has been completed, the researchers should inform the participants of its purpose and the methods they used.

Control

Applying behavior to make a behavior occur or not occur

Psychoanalysis/Psychodynamic

Argued that our psychological experience is the product of the conflict between our id and the superego.

Fundamental Attribution Error

Concept that, in contrast to interpretations of their own behavior, people tend to emphasize the agent's internal characteristics, rather than external factors, in explaining other people's behavior.

Asch's research on conformity

He demonstrated conformity using a line discrimination task. The results demonstrated that the social pressure of the majority influenced the behavior of the individual participants, despite the ability of the participants to correctly perform the line-comparison task. This is an normative influence

Milgram's research on obedience

He was trying to distinguish between the personal and situational attributions in administering punishment. Milgram's participants believed that they were actually causing physical pain to the learner

Gestalt

Human experience is more than the sum of the component parts.

How crystalized abilities change over time

Increase throughout young adulthood and middle age, and then plateaus, showing little or no growth into old age

Situational Attribution

People infer that a person's behavior is due to situational factors such as the weather

Personal Attribution

People infer that an event or a person's behavior is due to personal factors such as traits, abilities, or feelings.

continuity theory

People try to maintain same basic structure throughout their lives. As they age, they make decision to adapt to external changes and internal changes of aging

the major functions of the right hemisphere

Recognizes faces, expresses emotions, is creative and controls the left side of the body

Gender-Typing

Refers to any association of objects, activities, roles, or traits with one sex or the other in ways that conform to cultural stereotypes. Types can be either masculine and/or feminine

variable interval

Reward after a changing/random amount of time passes

variable ratio

Reward after a randomly chosen instance of targeted behavior

fixed interval

Reward based on fixed amount of time that has passed.

fixed ratio

Reward for a certain ratio of instances of desired behavior. Award given for desired number of instances of behavior.

Paiget's stages of cognitive development theory (in order)

Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational

how transduction is accomplished by the ear

Takes sound vibration and transducts it into electrical energy that moves the eardrum so you can hear.

retrieval

The act of obtaining information placed in storage

Multicultural Diversity

The culture and diversity has to be taken into account because studies can only make sense and be valid when context is taken into account.

How transduction is accomplished by the eye

The eye projects an image onto the retina which changes the projected image into a collection of electrical signals.

sensation

The process of converting sensory information into neural information.

perception

The processing of neural sensory information.

Positive psychology

The scientific study of the things that makes people strive as individuals

encoding

The transformation of real-world energy such as light and sound into an electrical code that can be stored and processed by the brain

sociocultural therapy

Therapy based on family structure and communication Treatments include: Family Therapy, Group Therapy, Self-Help

Terman's contributions to intelligence testing in the U.S.

Using a system of scoring proposed by the German psychologist William Stern, Terman's Stanford-Binet test assigned each test taker a numerical score that could be used to make direct comparisons across individuals with normal, below normal, and above normal mental abilities: the IQ or intelligence quotient.

Self-serving bias

We accept our successes as a product of personal characteristics and losses as due to situational variables

Prediction

When and what circumstances does the behavior occur and not occur

storage

Where information is placed to be later retrieved

amnesia

a deficit in memory caused by brain damage, disease, or psychological trauma

stimulus discrimination

a differentiation between two similar stimuli when only one of them is consistently associated with the unconditioned stimulus

Limbic system

a group of midbrain structure that contributes to our emotional experience

mental age

a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance

continuous reinforcement

a method of learning that compels an individual or an animal to repeat a certain behavior

Hypothalamus

a midbrain structure that is essential to motivated behaviors such as feeding or fighting.

semantic memory

a network of associated facts and concepts that make up our general knowledge of the world

psychotic disorder

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

peripheral nervous system

all nerves outside the cns (autonomic and somatic)

conditioned response (CR)

an unconditioned response to that was elicted by the presentation of a conditioned stimulus

unconditined stimulus (US)

any stimulus that can evoke a response without the organism going through any previous learning

behaviorism

argues that psychology's goal should be to study directly observable behavior and to understand how the events in the external environment produce behavior.

projective personality test

assessment instruments based on the psychodynamic perspective that are sensitive to the examiner's beliefs and are a way to examine the unconscious

Concrete

begin to think logically, concept of conservation

Preoperational

begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects

Formal

begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems

humanistic

believes the goal of psychology to be understanding human strengths, aspirations, conscious experience, free will, and potential.

External Validity

believing the world is responsible for everything

Internal Validity

believing you have control over your life and successes.

Central nervous system

brain and spinal cord

dendrites

branching neural fibers that collect inputs from other neurons

Neurotransmitters

chemical messengers manufactured by one neuron that communicate with other neurons via synapses

description

clear understanding of when & where behavior occurs

difference between correlation and causation

correlation does not equal causation. Causation indicates that one event is the result of the occurrence of the other event.

problem-solving strategies

creativity, algorithms, heuristics, insight a process in which a person begins at an initial state and moves through a series of intermediate states to arrive at a desired state

Extinction (operant conditioning)

decreases in the frequency of a behavior when the behavior is no longer reinforced

Goals of science

description, explanation, prediction, control

punishment

doing something to detract that person from repeating that action

Medical Therapies

drug therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and psychosurgery - generally designed to correct a physical condition that is believed to be the cause of a psychological disorder.

spearmans g factor

existence of a broad mental capacity that influences performance on cognitive ability measures

difference between an experimental condition and a controlled condition

experimental condition is one in which variables are changed to see the effects while a control condition is one in which nothing changes so that normal conditions are observed.

situational attribution

factors outside the person doing the action, such as peer pressure

the major functions of the left hemisphere

has to do with math and logic and controls the right side of the body.

multifactor models

implies the presence of a single continuous variable, which can cause a trait to manifest itself

reconstructive memory

in which the act of remembering is influenced by various other cognitive processes including perception, imagination, semantic memory and beliefs, amongst others.

monocular cues

include size, any depth cue that can be processed by using one eye alone.

how fluid abilities change over the life span

increase in development throughout young adulthood, but slowly declines beginning in middle-adulthood

difference between independent variable and dependent variable

independent variables do not change while dependent ones do as they are manipulated

self-actualization

involves making "the full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities"

Experimental Research

involves manipulating one variable to determine if changes in one variable cause changes in another variable.

stereotype

is a belief about a certain group of people

prejudice

is a feeling about a person based on their membership in a group

diffusion of responsibility

is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present

unconditioned response (UR)

is an unlearned response that occurs naturally in reaction to the unconditioned stimulus

Validity

of an exam is determined by how well it measures or predicts what it was intended to assess.

Big Five Theory of Personality

openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

soma

part of the neuron that contains machinery to keep the neuron alive and functioning (cell body)

difference between a positive and negative correlation

positive correlation is when variables all increase or decrease together. Negative correlation is when variables differ.

defense mechanisms

processes by which the ego reduces anxiety

mood disorders

psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes

personality disorders

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

Thalamus

receives incoming sensory information passes the information onto the limbic system and the cortex

informed consent

subject must know what they are participating in before.

Reliability

refers to the consistency of a test across the entire measurement and different test-taking occasions.

reinforcement

reinforces the behavior and influences it to continue

naturalistic observation

research method in which behavior is studied in natural settings without intervention or manipulation

What is psychology?

scientific study of individual behaviors and influencing factors

ego

seeks compromise

bystandard effect

social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present

frontal lobe

the area of the front of the brain that is implicated in impulse control and personality

discrimination

the behavior is observed in the presence of stimuli used during training, but not in their absence

generalization

the behavior occurs in the presence of stimuli not present during training

self-efficacy

the beliefs an individual holds concerning his or her skills and ability to perform certain acts.

episodic memory

the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place

id

the desire to find physical satisfaction and fulfill biological needs

Separation Anxiety

the excessive fear or anxiety about separation from the home or attachment figure

endocrine system

the glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream

occipital lobe

the lobe at the posterior corner of the brain, concerned primarily with basic visual processing

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

the most widely-used objective personality inventory, primarily utilized to help diagnose psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

superego

the need to meet demands of society

parietal lobe

the part of the cortex that contains the primary somatosensory cortex . center of the brain

external locus of control

the perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your fate.

internal locus of control

the perception that you control your own fate

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)

the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals. It has been revised many times with the most recent including post-traumatic stress disorder, under trauma and stressor-related disorders

classical conditioning

the training of a biologically inherited behavior that is triggered by a specific evolutionarily important environmental event to occur in the presence of a new stimulus.

transduction

the transformation of one kind of energy into another kind of energy

substance-related disorders

the use of psychoactive drugs for months or years in ways that harm the user or others

psychological therapy

therapy based on psychological principles (rather than on the biomedical approach); often called "psychotherapy" i.e. cognitive, behavioral, client-centered

the synapse

tiny gap between two neurons where chemical transmission of neural messages occur

binocular cues

visual information taken in by two eyes that enable us a sense of depth perception