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.
Competent newborn
newborns come into the world equipped with automatic responses ideally suited for survival, show habituation
Habituation
decreased response to a stimulus after repeated exposure.
Jean Piaget
the driving force of cognitive development is our desire to make sense of our experiences.
Sensorimotor stage
birth-2 years, experiencing the world through senses and actions, object permanence, stranger anxiety.
Preoperational stage
2-6/7 years, representing things with words and images, using intuitive rather than logical reasoning, pretend play, egocentrism.
Concrete operational stage
7-11 years, thinking logically about concrete events, grasping concrete analogies, performing arithmetical operations, conservation.
Formal operational stage
12-adulthood, abstract reasoning, potential for mature moral reasoning.
Secure attachment
infants play comfortably and happily in their mother’s presence, become distressed when she leaves, and seek contact with her when she returns.
Insecure attachment
infant either cries loudly or remains indifferent when their mother leaves and returns.
High road
conscious, deliberate processing of which we are aware.
Low road
unconscious, automatic processing of which we are unaware.
Selective attention
a mental spotlight that focuses conscious awareness on a very limited aspect of all that you experience.
NREM-1
early, light sleep with hallucinations, near-waking, transition from alpha waves to theta waves, muscles are active.
NREM-2
theta waves, sleep spindles, harder to awaken, conscious awareness of external environment disappears, occupies 45-55% of sleep in adults.
NREM-3
deep sleep, slow delta waves, hard to awaken, night terrors and sleep walking occur during this stage.
REM
low-amplitude, fast and regular beta waves, not easily awakened, essentially paralyzed, when most dreams occur.
Why do we sleep? (3)
protection, recuperation, and consolidation of memories.
Bottom-up processing
analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information.
Top-down processing
information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
Transduction
the transforming of stimulus energies into neural impulses our brain can interpret.
Absolute threshold
the minimum stimulation necessary to detect physical stimulation half the time.
Perceptual set
a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that greatly affects what we perceive.
Lens
changes shape to help focus images on the retina.
Retina
light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, begins the processing of visual information.
Rods
retinal receptors that detect black, white, and grey; necessary for peripheral vision and twilight vision when cones don’t respond.
Cones
retinal receptor cells that function in daylight or well-lit conditions, detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.
Optic nerve
the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.
Middle ear
the chamber between the eardrum and the cochlea containing bones that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea’s oval window.
Cochlea
a tube in the inner ear, sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger nerve impulses.
Inner ear
contains the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs.
Neutral stimulus
a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.
Unconditioned stimulus
the stimulus that elicits an automatic/natural response before conditioning.
Unconditioned response
the automatic/natural response to a stimulus before conditioning.
Conditioned stimulus
the stimulus that is paired with the US, has to come before the US.
Conditioned response
the response to the CS, usually the same or very similar to the UR.
Acquisition
the initial stage of learning when a neutral stimulus is linked to an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response.
Extinction
the diminished responding that occurs when the conditioned stimulus no longer signals an upcoming unconditioned stimulus.
Spontaneous recovery
the reappearance of a weakened conditioned response after a pause.
Generalization (conditioning)
the tendency for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.
Discrimination (conditioning)
the learned ability to discriminate between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.
Operant conditioning
a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher.
Positive reinforcement
increasing behaviors by presenting positive reinforcers.
Negative reinforcement
any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response.
Positive punishment
addition of an aversive stimulus.
Negative punishment
removing a desirable stimulus.
Continuous schedule of reinforcement
every target behavior results in reinforcement.
Fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement
reinforcement after an exact number of target behaviors.
Variable ratio schedule
reinforcement after variable number of target behaviors (i.e. 1-10).
Based on research into the responses of infants immediately after birth, we can be MOST certain that the human fetus is aware of and learns to recognize
the sound of the mother singing.
David is 8 years old and is telling his mother that she should not drive too fast and should make a complete stop at the light in order to avoid getting a ticket. Kohlberg would suggest that this illustrates _____________ morality.
preconventional.
You wake up early in the morning and your room is fairly dark. You look over and see your shirt hanging on a hook. You know it’s your red shirt because you hung it up there before you went to bed, but in the dark you can’t see its color. It looks dark gray to you. Why is that?
in the dim light, the cones in your eyes are not effective.
Visual information is processed by ganglion cells _____ it is processed by rods and cones and ______ it is processed by bipolar cells.
after; after.
Nicole’s parents are often inconsistent in terms of their behaviors and what they say. For example, they often tell Nicole how important it is to be polite, but are not very polite themselves when it comes to letting other people off airplanes or giving up seats on public buses. How would you expect this contradiction would impact Nicole’s behavior?
she would act rude and talk about how being polite is not important.
The three major issues that interest developmental psychologists are nature/nurture, stability/change, and ______/______.
continuity/stages.
An 8-month-old infant who reacts to a new babysitter by crying and clinging to his father’s shoulder is showing _____ _____.
stranger anxiety.
Some developmental psychologists now refer to the period that occurs from age 18 to the mid-twenties and beyond as _____ _____.
emerging adulthood.
Freud defined the healthy adult as one who is able to love and work. Erikson agreed, observing that the adult struggles to attain intimacy and ______.
generativity.
Contrary to what many people assume, people of all ages report _______ levels of happiness.
similar.
Failure to see visible objects because our attention is occupied elsewhere is called ______ ______.
inattentional blindness.
The tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation is referred to as ______ ______.
REM rebound.
Another term for difference threshold is ______ ______ ______.
just noticeable difference.
Our tendencies to fill in the gaps and to perceive a pattern as continuous are two different examples of the organizing principle called
grouping.
In listening to a concert, you attend to the solo instrument and perceive the orchestra as accompaniment. This illustrates the organizing principle of
figure-ground.
Two examples of _______ depth cues are interposition and linear perspective.
monocular.
In experiments, people have worn glasses that turned their visual fields upside down. After a period of adjustment, they learned to function quite well. This ability is called ______ ______.
perceptual adaptation.
_______ theory explains how we hear high-pitched sounds, and ______ theory explains how we hear low-pitched sounds.
place; frequency.
The gate-control theory of pain proposes that
small spinal cord nerve fibers conduct most pain signals, but large-fiber activity can close access to those pain signals.
______ is your sense of body position and movement. Your ______ ______ specifically monitors your head’s movement, with sensors in the inner ear.
kinesthesia; vestibular sense.
Learning is defined as “the process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring ______ or ______.”
information; behaviors.
Thorndike’s law of effect was the basis for ______ work on operant conditioning and behavior control.
Skinner’s.
One way to change behavior is to reward natural behaviors in small steps, as the organism gets closer and closer to a desired behavior. This process is called ______.
shaping.
Garcia and Koelling’s ______-______ studies showed that conditioning can occur even when the unconditioned stimulus does not immediately follow the neutral stimulus.
taste-aversion.
Evidence that cognitive processes play an important role in learning comes in part from studies in which rats
develop cognitive maps.
Rats that explored a maze without any reward were later able to run the maze as well as other rats that had received food rewards for running the maze. The rats that had learned without reinforcement demonstrated _______ _______.
latent learning.
Children learn many social behaviors by imitating parents and other models. This type of learning is called ______ ______.
observational learning.
According to Bandura, we learn by watching models because we experience ______ reinforcement or ______ punishment.
vicarious; vicarious.
Some scientists believe that the brain has ______ neurons that enable empathy and imitation.
mirror.
Most experts agree that repeated viewing of media violence
dulls viewers’ sensitivity to violence.
