CLEP Psych Review Flashcards
Who is the father of modern psychology?
Wilhelm Wundt
What is structuralism?
Attempt to understand structure or characteristics of the mind
Who believed in structuralism?
Wilhelm Wundt
What is functionalism?
Function of behavior in the world
Who believed in functionalism?
William James (James-Lange)
What is the psychoanalytic theory?
Role of a person’s unconscious mind and early childhood experiences
Who created the psychoanalytic theory?
Sigmund Freud
What did Ivan Pavlov do?
Created conditioned reflex (classical conditioning and operant conditioning)
What did John B. Watson believe in?
Behaviorism (observing and controlling behavior)
Why is Carl Rogers important?
He created client-centered therapy, believed in congruence, and focused on the humanistic approach
What did Gordon Allport study?
Personality psychology
What are the Big 5 Dimensions?
Openness
Consciousness
Extroversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Explain the significance of the pituitary gland
It is the master gland that is activated by the hypothalamus, it can then activate other glands in the body
What is etiology?
The study of origin and causes
What does the nervous system consist of?
Neurons - highly specialized, receive and transfer info across the body
Cell body - keeps cell alive and functioning
Dendrites - take in info from outside of the cell
Axons - pass info to other nerve cells, muscles, or glands
Explain sensory/afferent neurons
Take in info from tissues and sense organs then transmit info to CNS
Explain motor/efferent neurons
Send info from CNS to body tissues, muscles, and sense organs
Explain inter/association neurons
Communicate with other neurons (MOST COMMON)
What is the CNS composed of?
Brain and spinal cord
Reflexive behavior
Relies on sensory, motor, and interneuron communication
What is the PNS composed of?
Somatic nervous system
carries info from muscles, sense organs, and skin to CNS then from CNS to skeletal muscle
Autonomic nervous system
- sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight)
- parasympathetic nervous system (relaxes the body)
What is the function of the brainstem?
Controls basic functions (like swallowing)
What is the function of the cerebellum?
Controls voluntary movement
What is the function of the thalamus?
Receives info about taste, touch, sight, and hearing (5 senses)
What is the function of the reticular formation?
Controls arousal, sleep, and filters incoming stimuli and sends it to other parts of the brain
What is the limbic system composed of?
Hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, and thalamus
What is the function of the hypothalamus?
Controls pituitary gland
Associated with hunger, thirst, and sexual behavior
Main center of homeostasis
What are the physiological techniques to examine the brain?
EEG, MRI, CAT/PET scan, fMRI
What research design is most appropriate for establishing a cause-effect relationship?
Experimental
What are the components of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Highest to lowest
Self-actualization
Esteem
Social
Safety
Physiological (food)
What does the place theory explain?
The perception of HIGH frequency sounds
What does the frequency theory explain?
The perception of LOW frequency sounds
Neurons are polarized when?
In resting state
What happens when there is damage to the parietal lobe?
Reduced sensitivity to touch
What are the receptors for hearing?
Hair cells on the basilar membrane
What is the facial-feedback hypothesis?
Facial expressions can directly affect a person’s emotional experience
What is hypnosis most useful for?
Pain control
What do the brain waves during REM sleep look like?
Rapid low-amplitude waves
What is context-dependent memory?
Stronger recall in the same environment which the original memory was formed
What is operant conditioning?
Method of learning that uses rewards and punishments to modify behavior
What is priming?
A part of implicit memory because it occurs without conscious awareness
What will the stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus result in?
Increased in eating behavior
What levels of arousal lead to poor performance?
Low and high levels
What is the distinction between personality trait and attitude?
Durability
Schizophrenia is similar to Parkinson’s disease because…
Both involve imbalance of dopamine
What are similarity, proximity, and familiarity associated with?
Attraction
A test can be reliable without being valid (true/false)
True
What is transduction?
Conversion from sensory stimulus energy to action potential
What is the absolute threshold?
Minimum amount of stimulus that must be present for stimulus to be detected 50% of the time
What are subliminal messages?
Below the threshold for conscious awareness
Who proposed the theory of change in difference threshold?
Ernest Weber
What is bottom-up processing?
Perceptions built from sensory input
What is top-down processing?
How we interpret sensations influenced by available knowledge, experiences, and thoughts
Perception is built from sensations but not all sensations result in perception (true/false)
True
What is sensory adaptation?
When you don’t perceive a stimuli that has remained unchanged over a long time
What is inattentional blindness?
Failure to notice something because of lack of attention
Motivation affects perception (true/false)
True
What is the signal detection theory?
The ability to identify a stimulus when embedded in distracting background
High frequency and…
High pitch
Low frequency and…
Low pitch
Explain cones
Bright light (light detecting) and spatial resolution, colored vision
Explain rods
Low light
What is night blindness?
When rods do not transform light into nerve impulses as easily and efficiently (difficulty seeing in dim light)
What is the opponent-process theory?
Colors are coded in opponent pairs (black/white, red/green, blue/yellow)
What is Meinere’s disease?
Degeneration of inner ear structures that can lead to hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo, and an increase in pressure in the inner ear
Caused by sensorineural hearing loss
What does the pineal gland secrete?
Melatonin
What does the pons regulate?
REM sleep
What does the pituitary gland secrete during sleep?
FSH, LH, and growth hormone
What is in stage 1 of NREM?
Alpha waves (low frequency, high amplitude)
transitional (between wakefulness and sleep, hypnagogic)
Some theta waves
What is in stage 2 of NREM?
Theta waves (lower frequency, higher amplitude)
Deep relaxation
K-complexes (VERY high amplitude pattern of brain activity)
Sleep spindles (rapid burst of higher frequency brain waves that may be important in learning and memory)
What is in stages 3 and 4 of NREM?
Deep sleep or slow-wave sleep
Delta waves (low frequency, high amplitude)
Respiration and heart rate drop dramatically
Difficult to wake up
What is in the REM stage?
When dreams occur, paralysis of muscle systems in body with exception of circulation and respiration
Involved in emotional processing and regulation
What is manifest content of dreams?
Actual content, or storyline, of a dream
What is latent content of dreams?
Hidden meaning of a dream
What is the collective unconscious?
Theoretical repository of info to be shared by everyone
What are amphetamines usually prescribed to and for?
To children with ADHD
Why is slow-wave sleep important?
Enhance performance on recently learned tasks
How can depression be improved?
With REM deprivation
What does LSD affect?
Serotonin
What is the info-processing model?
Dreams are a way to consolidate info
What is classical conditioning?
Aka Pavlovian conditioning
Unconscious processing
Involuntary
What is operant conditioning?
Conscious processing
Voluntary
What is higher order conditioning?
Pairing a neutral stimulus with conditioned stimulus
What is extinction?
When there is a decrease in conditioned response because unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented with conditioned stimulus
What is spontaneous recovery?
Return of a previously extinguished conditioned response following a rest period
What is stimulus discrimination?
When an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar
What is stimulus generalization?
When an organism demonstrates conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to condition stimulus
What is positive reinforcement?
Rewarding a positive behavior for it to occur again the future
What is negative reinforcement?
Giving a reward in order to remove a negative behavior
What is positive punishment?
When you add consequences to unwanted behaviors
What is negative punishment?
When you remove pleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior (ex: taking away a toy from a child to punish them)
What is shaping?
The process of training a learned behavior that would not normally occur (like a baby crawling, then standing, then walking)
What is latent learning?
It occurs but is not observable in behavior until there is a reason to demonstrate it
What is a neutral stimulus?
Does not initially elicit a response in an organism
What is a role schema?
Assumes how individuals in certain roles behave
What is event schema?
Set of behaviors that can feel like a routine
What is anchoring bias?
When you focus on one piece of info when making a decision or solving a problem
What is confirmation bias?
The tendency to focus on info that confirms your existing beliefs
What is hindsight bias?
Makes you believe that the event you experienced was predictable even though it wasn’t
What is representative bias?
Unintentionally stereotyping somebody or something
What is crystallized intelligence?
Acquired knowledge and ability to retrieve it
What is fluid intelligence?
Ability to see complex relations and solve problems
What are the components of the theory of intelligence?
Analytical, practical, and creative
What is the Flynn Effect?
Observation that each generation has a higher IQ
What is the James-Lange theory?
Physiological arousal precedes experience of emotions
What is the smallest unit of language?
Morphemes
What is memory made up of?
Sensory memory (5 senses)
STM (working memory, 7 items + or - 2)
LTM (unlimited capacity, has to be transferred to STM to be recalled)
What is the overjustification effect?
Intrinsic motivation is diminished when extrinsic motivation is given
What is the Yerkes-Dodson law?
Simples tasks are best performed when arousal levels are high and complex tasks are best performed when arousal levels are low
What is the Schachter-Singer Two-Factor theory?
Emotions are composed of two factors: physiological and cognitive
What is the function of leptin?
Suppresses appetite
What are people with PTSD shown to have?
Reduced volumes of the hippocampus
What is the difference between continuous and discontinuous development?
Continuous = cumulative process
Discontinuous = occurs in stages
What are the 5 stages of psychosexual development according to Freud?
Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital
What did Erik Erikson believe in?
Psychosocial development
Each stage in life is associated with a struggle (development takes place throughout our life from birth to adulthood)
What is assimilation?
Process of fitting new information and experiences into existing schemas
What is accommodation?
Process of changing the existing schemas when new information cannot be assimilated
What were the 4 stages of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in children?
Sensorimotor (sensory and motor behaviors)
Preoperational (symbols to represent words, images and ideas)
Concrete operational (can think logically)
Formal operational (can deal with abstract ideas and hypothetical situations)
What is object permanence?
Children know that even when something is out of sight, it is still there
What are the 4 attachment styles of children?
Secure
Avoidant (unresponsive to parent)
Resistant (clingy but reject attachment)
Disorganized (freeze, run in an erratic manner, children who have been abused)
What are the 5 stages of grief?
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance
What is the main task of adolescent?
Forming an identity
Who created the 1st modern hospice?
Florence Nightingale
What were the 3 interacting systems that Freud created to understand conflicts?
id, superego (morals), and ego
What are some defense mechanisms?
Denial, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, sublimation
Who is Noam Chomsky?
Father of modern linguistics
Believed people are born with universal grammar hardwired into brain
What concepts did Albert Bandura create?
Reciprocal determinism (a person’s behavior is influenced by individual and environment), observational learning, and self-efficacy
What did Julian Rotter create?
The locus of control
What does DSM-V stand for?
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
What are the types of depression?
Major depressive disorder
Seasonal disorder
Postpartum
Persistent depressive disorder
What are the abnormal activities in the brain when someone has depression?
Overactive amygdala, reduced volume of prefrontal cortex, and lower levels of serotonin
What is the diathesis-stress model?
Some people are predisposed to depression due to genetics or biological features
What is generalized anxiety?
Free-floating anxiety
Excessive, uncontrollable worry
What are the positive symptoms of schizophrenia?
Hallucinations and delusions
What are the negative symptoms of schizophrenia?
Emotional flatness, nonresponsiveness, avolition, alogia, anhedonia, social withdrawal
What are the motor symptoms of schizophrenia?
Catatonia
What are the types of counterconditioning?
Exposure therapy
- systemic desensitization (gradual exposure)
- flooding (immediate exposure)
aversive conditioning
What is dispositional attribution?
Internal and trate reasons
What is situation attribution?
external and state reasons
What is the fundamental attribution error?
Not taking into account external factors
What is the actor-observer bias?
When you’re the actor, you’re quick to blame external factors
When you’re the observer, you’re quick to blame internal factors
