Ch 1-4 Flashcards
Hindsight Bias
The belief that you “knew” the thing was going to happen despite not being able to guess it beforehand.
Peer Review
When the experts in your field review your research before you publish it.
Measures of central tendency
the mean median and mode
Which measure of central tendency is most sensitive to extreme scores
The mean
Replication in research
The process by which people take a research paper and see if they can recreate the same results
Psychology
Study of the mind and behavior. Explanation for life
Difference between values and facts
Values are personal statements, facts are objective statements determined through empirical study.
Three levels of explanation
Lower; biological. Middle; interpersonal. Higher; cultural and social
Challenges of studying psychology and which one did Freud explore
Predictions are only probabilistic, behavior is multiply determined, and much of human behavior is caused by factors outside or conscious awareness. Freud said many psychological disorders are caused by repressed memories.
Basic questions of psychology
Nature versus nurture, Free Will versus determination, conscious versus unconscious, accuracy versus inaccuracy, and differences versus similarities.
Schools of psychology
Structuralism, functionalism, psychodynamic, behaviorism, cognitive, social cultural.
Structuralism
Uses introspection to figure out the structures of psychological experience
Functionalism
Tries to understand why animals and humans have developed the particular psychological aspects that they currently possess
Psychodynamic
Focuses on the role of our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories and our early childhood experiences in determining Behavior
Behaviorism
Based on the idea that it’s not possible to study the mind therefore psychologists should limit their attention to study only Behavior itself
Cognitive psychology
The study of mental processes, including perception, thinking, memory, and judgments.
Social-cultural
The study of how the social situations and the cultures in which people find themselves influence their thinking and behavior
Three types of descriptive research
Descriptive, correlational, and experimental
Naturalistic observation
Research based on the observation of everyday events
Theory
A general, falsifiable idea as to why something is the way it is
Hypothesis
A specific and falsifiable prediction about the relationship between or among two or more variables
Physical and social sciences in terms of laws
There are many physical laws but only one law in psychology
Laws
A basic principle, generalization, or rule that holds true universally under particular conditions
Difference between a sample and a population
A sample is a small group or portion of a population that is meant to represent the population as a whole
What do measures of central tendency tell us
The point around which the data is centered and how that data is dispersed or spread. It gives you the most common value.
Correlation coefficient
The most common statistical measure of the strength of linear relationships among variables
Scatter plot
A visual image of the relationship between two variables
Negative correlation
When the data on one variable goes up the other one goes down
Variable
A thing that can be measured
Operational definition
A precise statement of how a conceptual variable is turned into a measured variable
Independent variable
The thing that you change, that is believed to have an effect on the dependent variable
Dependent variable
The thing you are looking to change
Experimental research
To assess the causal impact of one or more experimental manipulations on a dependent variable, allowing the drawing of conclusions about the causal relationships among variables
Random assignments to conditions and experimental research
The attempt to make two or more research groups as average and as same as possible
Placebo
A fake medicine or sugar pill given to a subject believing they are getting a real thing
Double blind procedure
Where both neither the people taking part in an experiment or the people conducting the experiment know who’s getting what
Reliability in research
How consistently a method measures something
Construct validity
The extent to which the variables used in the research adequately assess the conceptual variables they were designed to measure
Neuron
Fundamental unit of the nervous system
Neurotransmitter
Chemical used to communicate between neurons
Thalamus
Primary relay station for sensory information in the brain
Cerebral cortex
The outer squishy wrinkly gray area of the brain where all thinking processes happen
Lobes of the brain
Frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal
Frontal lobe
Responsible for thinking, planning, memory, and judgment
Parietal lobe
Responsible primarily for processing information about touch
Occipital lobe
Processes visual information
Temporal lobe
Responsible primarily for hearing and language
Neuroplasticity
The brain’s ability to change its structure and function in response to experience or damage. Our brains are most plastic when we are young children.
Corpus callosum
The region that connects the two hemispheres of the brain together
Parasympathetic nervous system
The part of the autonomic nervous system designed to calm the body by slowing the heart and breathing and by allowing the body to recover from activities the sympathetic nervous system causes.
Sympathetic nervous system
The part of the autonomic nervous system involved in preparing the body for behavior, particularly in response to stress, by activating the organs and the glands in the endocrine system.
Difference between sensation and perception
Sensation is awareness resulting from the stimulation of a sense organ. Perception is the organization and interpretation of sensation.
Absolute threshold
The intensity of the stimulus that allows an organism to just barely detect it
Subliminal stimuli
Events that occur below the absolute threshold and of which we are not conscious.
Relationship between the electromagnetic spectrum and visible light
The electromagnetic spectrum is all the frequencies of light. Visible light is the very small section that we can detect with our own eyes.
Gestalt principles
The principal that when you look at a piece of something or an incomplete part of something, your brain is going to fill it in to make a hole. Figure and ground, similarity, proximity, continuity, and closure.
What did the ‘visual cliff’ studies of depth perception teach us?
Very young children who cannot get crawl are afraid of heights, and depth perception is a learned thing.
How many basic types of tastes do we have?
Six. Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, piquancy or spicy, and unami or savory.
Proprioception
Our sense of body position and movement
Selective attention
The ability to focus on some sensory inputs while tuning out others
Ponzo and Mueller-Lyer
Illusions caused by a failure of the monocular depth cues of linear perspective.
