Exam 1 Flashcards
- The definition of psychology has evolved over the past 130 years to mean:
: The scientific study of behavior and mental processes
- The branch of psychology that studies the relationship between behavior and bodily processes and systems is known as:
: biological psychology
- The decision-making model known as the______, involves evaluating all the alternatives, one characteristic at a time, starting with the most important feature and scratching each alternative off the list of possible choices if it fails to meet the criterion
Elimination-by-aspects mode
- _______ is the scientific study of the nervous system.
Neuroscience
- Edward Titchener (1867–1927) started a school of thought in psychology called:
structuralism
- Louis forgot to bring his pillow when he went camping for the weekend, so he spent a very uncomfortable night. It didn’t occur to him that he could use his down-filled jacket as a pillow. This example best illustrates
functional fixedness
- Often resembling the branches of a tree, which of the following are the short fibers extending from the neuron’s cell body that receive information from other neurons or from sensory receptor cells?
dendrites
- Responsible for carrying information from the neuron to other cells in the body (including other neurons), the _____ is a single, elongated tube that extends from the cell body in most neurons.
axon
- The heuristic by which we estimate an event’s likelihood of happening by comparing how similar its essential features are to our prototype of the event is called the _____heuristic.
representative
- The brief electrical impulse by which information is transmitted along the axon of a neuron is called a(n)
action potential
the minimum level of stimulation required to activate a particular neuron is called the _____ threshold
stimulus
the early school of psychology called functionalsm was largely influenced by the ideas of
William James
- Functionalism differs primarily from structuralism in that functionalism emphasized
the function of behavior and mental experiences
- The decision-making strategy known as the _____model, involves basing a decision on one thing in order to simplify the choice among many alternatives.
single-feature
- In order for an action potential to begin, the neuron must ______, which has been preceded by a stimulation of other neurons or sensory receptors.
Depolarize
Freud believed that human behavior was motivated by unconscious conflicts that were almost always _____ or ______ in nature.
sexual;aggressive
- Behaviorism differs from psychoanalysis MOST notably in the behaviorists’ emphasis on:
that which is observable
- Devan is studying for his midterm and is quizzing himself on the topic of neurons. He is trying to figure out what that “tiny space” is where neurons connect. You tell him that he is correct if he guesses the:
synaptic gap
- The entire process through which neurotransmitters are released by one neuron, cross the synaptic gap, and then attach to receptor sites on the dendrites of surrounding neurons is known as:
Synaptic transmission
- Melissa has been asked to write a paper on the history of the school of psychology called behaviorism. She will MOST likely include work by which group of three psychologists?
Pavlov, Watson, Skinner
- The model known as the _________________model of decision making involves generating a list of the most important factors, then using an arbitrary rating scale to rate each alternative on each factor, and, finally, adding the ratings together for comparison purposes.
additive
- The process by which neurotransmitter molecules detach from a postsynaptic neuron and are reabsorbed by a presynaptic neuron so they can be recycled and reused is called:
reuptake
- The neuron responsible for communicating information from one neuron to the next is also known as a(n):
Interneuron
- In contrast to behaviorism’s focus on behavior as being shaped by external causes, humanistic psychology regarded which of the following as the important influences on human behavior?
Self-determination and free will