Final Exam Part 1 Flashcards
What was the first recorded psychological experiment?
an Egyptian king wanted to prove that Egyptians were the most ancient race on Earth, so he kidnapped two children who were never taught to speak and said that they would inherently start speaking Egyptian. He was proved wrong, Phrygians were older than Egyptians.
Wilhelm Wundt
the birth of contemporary psychology.
Gestalt psychology
opposed to structuralism - the whole is different from the sum of its parts.
Psychoanalysis
Freud, focused on the role of the unconscious and childhood experiences.
Behaviorism
John Watson, psychology as the scientific study of how behaviors are learned and modified.
B.F. Skinner
modern behaviorism’s most important and controversial figure.
Operational definition
turn a conceptual variable into a variable that can be measured or manipulated.
Control variable
a variable that is held constant during an experiment in order to reduce the risk for confounding impacts.
Sensory neurons
carry messages from the body’s tissues and sensory organs to the brain.
Motor neurons
carry messages from the brain to the body’s tissues and sensory organs.
Dendrites
receive messages from other cells.
Axon
passes messages away from cell body and to other neurons, muscles, or glands.
Terminal branches of axon
forms junctions with other cells.
Myelin sheath
covers the axon of some neurons and helps speed impulses.
Somatic nervous system
controls voluntary movements of skeletal muscles.
Autonomic nervous system
automatic things like heartbeat.
Sympathetic nervous system
arousing.
Parasympathetic nervous system
calming.
Reticular formation
part of the brainstem that filters incoming stimuli from the spinal cord and relays information to other parts of the brain.
Thalamus
receives information from all the senses (except smell) and routes it to higher brain regions.
Cerebellum
attached to the rear of the brainstem, helps coordinate voluntary movements/balance and plays a role in learning motor skills.
Hippocampus
part of the limbic system, responsible for the acquisition of memories.
Amygdala
part of the limbic system, regulates fear and aggression.
Hypothalamus
part of the limbic system, regulates the four F’s: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and reproduction.
Sensory cortex
receives information from skin surface and sense organs.
Motor cortex
area at the rear of the frontal lobe that controls voluntary movements.
What do twin and adoption studies demonstrate?
identical twins have a higher correlation of IQs than fraternal twins, even identical twins who were separated at birth still have more psychological similarities than fraternal twins who were reared together. Adopted children are more similar to their biological parents than their adoptive parents.
Four misunderstandings about evolutionary psychology
- Evolutionary theory does not mean our behavior can’t be changed.
- Evolutionary theory does not mean organisms can compute complex mathematical formulas.
- Does not claim that adaptive mechanisms are optimally designed.
- Not all about gene reproduction.
Gender differences in sexuality
men more likely to initiate than women, men look for fertile women and women look for financially stable men.
Individualist cultures
self as independent, emphasizes independence, autonomy, and self-reliance.
Collectivist cultures
self as interdependent, cooperation, and social harmony.
Some smokers will be given Nicorette for one week; they will be compared with other smokers not given any Nicorette. The independent variable in this experiment is
A.whether or not participants are given Nicorette.
B.how many cigarettes each participant smoked during the week before the experiment began.
C.how many cigarettes each participant smoked the week after the experiment ended.
D.There is not an independent variable.
A
Some smokers will be given Nicorette for one week; they will be compared with other smokers not given any Nicorette. The dependent variable in this experiment is
A.whether or not participants are given Nicorette.
B.how many cigarettes each participant smoked during the week before the experiment began.
C.how many participants quit smoking after the one week trial.
D.Both B and C are correct answers.
D
Axons are to ______ as dendrites are to ______.
speaking; hearing.
A segment of DNA that provides the code for creating protein molecules is called a(n)
gene.
You wish to survey a group of people who truly represent the country’s adult population. Therefore you need to ensure that you question a ______ sample.
representative.
Regression toward the mean
the tendency for extreme scores to return to normal after an unusual event.
When sample averages are ______ and the differences between them are ______, we can say the difference has statistical significance.
reliable; large.
Regarding a neuron’s response to stimulation, the intensity of the stimulus determines
whether or not an impulse is generated.
Endorphins are released in the brain in response to
pain or vigorous exercise.
The initial reward center discovered by Olds and Milner was located in the ______.
hypothalamus.
judging and planning are enabled by the ______ lobes.
frontal.
Plasticity is especially evident in the brains of
young children.
An experimenter flashes the word HERON across the visual field of a man whose corpus callosum has been severed. HER is transmitted to his right hemisphere and ON to his left hemisphere. When asked to indicate what he saw, the man says he saw _____ but points to _____.
ON; HER.
Studies of people with split brains and brain scans of those with undivided brains indicate that the left hemisphere excels in
processing language.
Damage to the brain’s right hemisphere is most likely to reduce a person’s ability to
make inferences.
From the very first weeks of life, infants differ in their characteristic emotional reactions, with some infants being intense and anxious, while others are easygoing and relaxed. These differences are usually explained as differences in
temperament.
______ is the proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes.
heritability.
Females and males are very similar to each other, But one way they differ is that
girls tend to play in small groups, while boys tend to play in large groups.
Primary sex characteristics relate to ______; secondary sex characteristics refer to ______.
reproductive organs; non-reproductive traits.
An individual who is born with sexual anatomy that differs from typical male or female anatomy has a ______ ______ ______.
disorder of sexual development.