Final Exam Flashcards
Social-Cultural Perspective
Emphasizes the role of cultural context as an influence on behavior and mental processes within society.
Biological Perspective
Emphasizes how the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory experiences; how genes combine with the environment to influence individual differences.
Cognitive Perspective
Mental processes that allow the encoding, storing, and retrieval of information, and problem-solving.
Psychodynamic Perspective
Emphasizes the influence of unconscious drives and conflicts from a person’s past.
Humanistic Perspective
Emphasizes how healthy individuals meet their needs, with concerns about love, acceptance, and trying to reach their full potential.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Bottom to Top)
- Physical needs (Food and water)
- Safety & Security (Protection from danger)
- Love & Acceptance (Sense of connection)
- Self-Esteem (Respect and status)
- Self-Actualization (Achieving your goals)
Parietal Lobe
Parietal Lobe: (Located: Upper Middle) Processes and coordinates sensory messages, such as touch.
Occipital Lobe
Occipital Lobe: (Located: Back Right Side) Processes light and other visual information to allow us to know what we’re seeing.
Frontal Lobe
Frontal Lobe: (Located Top Left Side) Does the work of complex thinking, like planning, imagining, making decisions, and reasoning.
Temporal Lobe
Temporal Lobe: (Located Bottom Left/Middle) Lets us understand sounds and language, allows us to recognize objects and faces, and helps us create memories.
Cerebellum
Cerebellum: (Located at the Bottom, to the right of the brain stem) Coordinates movement and balance.
Myelination
- Process of producing a myelin sheath around neurons (acts as an insulator)
- Myelin sheath is essential for the proper functioning of the nervous system
Cerebral Laterizatrion
- The functional specialization of the two cerebral hemispheres
- Left (Logical and Sequential)
- Right (Intuitive and Creative)
Synapses
The neurons connect and communicate with each other through a bridge (synapses)
Synaptic Pruning
- Synapses are created with astonishing speed in the first 3 years of life
- Children’s brains have twice as many synapses as adults’ brains
- As a child gets older the brain removes unnecessary information which is synaptic pruning
Dopamine
Acts on areas of the brain to give you feelings of pleasure, satisfaction and motivation.
Amygdala
A major processing center for emotions. It also links your emotions to many other brain abilities, especially memories, learning and your senses.
Brain plasticity
The ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization
Gross Motor Skills
Involve large muscle activities, such as moving one’s arms and walking
Gross motor changes are the most dramatic and observable changes in the first year
The month at which gross motor milestones occur varies by as much as 2-4 months
The sequence of milestones is uniform
In the 2nd year of life toddlers become more motorically skilled and mobile
Fine Motor Skills
Involve more finely tuned movements, such as finger dexterity
Infants have hardly any control over fine motor skills at birth
They do have many components of what slater become finely coordinated hand and finger movements
Reaching and grasping become more refined during the first 2 years of life
Memory
The process of maintaining information over time.
Memory encoding
Memory encoding is how the brain changes sensory input into a way that we can understand. It relates to short term memory because our brain needs to quickly do this so we can understand what is going on in the moment. It relates to long-term memory because we have to recall things that we have not thought about as much.
Memory storage
How memory is stored. It is the process our brain uses to store memories effectively and in a way that we can easily retrieve it. In short term memory our brain needs to keep the information closely stored and ready. In long term memory our brain can move it further back but keep it ready to be called on.
Memory retrieval
Getting information out of storage. Short term memory relates to this because as I stated before it has to be ready to be called on since it recently happened. Long term memory needs to be ready to be called on but not as quickly and can get stored in a way that is effective.
Sensory memory
Earliest stage of memory. Sensory information from the environment is stored very briefly. We attend to only certain parts of the sensory information.
Short-term memory
Also known as active memory. The information that we are currently thinking about is mostly stored for 20-30 seconds. Most of this information is forgotten but attending to it helps it move into the next stage.
Long-term memory
The continuing storage of memory. Preconscious and unconscious memory in Freudrian psychology. Largely outside of our awareness unless called upon.
Solitary play
Usually under 2 years old and children play with toys by themselves and do not make an effort to speak to others
Parallel play
Between 2-3 years old and children play independently near other children
Associative play
3-4 years old and children borrow and lend toys to each other
Cooperative play
Usually 5 years or older and children integrate their play activities with different roles and think of themselves as belonging to a group
