psyc Flashcards
psychology
scientific study of behavior and mental process
consciousness
is a person awareness of yourself and their surroundings
difference threshold
The smallest change in a stimulus necessary for a person to detect it at least half of the time
sensory adaptation
The tendency of a person’s sensation of a stimulus to decrease when the stimulus remains constant.
selective interaction
The idea that the senses can influence each other.
sensory memory
selective attention
When the brain pays more attention to one sensory channel than others.
observational learning
A type of learning that occurs as a result of observing others’ behavior and consequences rather than our own.
latent learning
A type of learning that has taken place but cannot be directly observed.
learned helplessness
The absence of any attempt to help oneself that results from previously learning that such attempts are useless.
cognition
What the brain does with information, including understanding it, organizing it, analyzing it, and communicating it.
concept
A mental representation of a category of similar things, actions, or people.
heuristic
An educated guess or rule-of-thumb method of problem solving.
algorithm
A formula-like method of problem solving.
emotion regulation
The ability to manage the type, intensity, length, and expression of one’s own emotions.
clinical psychology
- is an applied specialization in which psychologists focus on psychological disorders.
- Also do psychological assessment, including intelligence tests and personality tests, often to diagnose people with psychological disorders.
cognitive psychology
- is a perspective in psychology that emphasizes processes such as thinking, language, attention, memory, and intelligence.
counseling psychology
An applied specialization in which psychologists focus on improving the functioning of people who are struggling through difficult times in their lives.
developmental psychology
A basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on how people change throughout the life span.
Educational psychology
An applied specialization in which psychologists focus on learning and teaching.
ego
forensic psychology
An applied specialization in which psychologists focus on legal and criminal justice issues.
neuroscience
A psychological perspective that emphasizes the link between behavior and the biological functioning of the brain.
personality
A basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on people’s personality traits.
social psychology
A basic research specialization in which psychologists focus on how people think about, influence, and relate to each other.
sensation
The ability of the sensory organs to pick up energy in the environment around the body and transmit it to the brain.
perception
The ability of the brain to interpret the raw sensations it has taken in.
short-term
A limited amount of new information being held briefly until it is either discarded or encoded into long-term memory.
long term
A seemingly limitless amount of information being held for extensive periods of time.
working memory
A type of memory in which processing, or work, is done on briefly held information.
explicit
Memory of which one is consciously aware.
implicit
Memory of which one is consciously aware.
divergent thinking
A problem-solving strategy in which a person comes up with lots of different possible solutions
convergent thinking
A problem-solving strategy in which a person uses logic to deduce the single best solution.
general intelligence
Overall intelligence that applies across all tasks and situations.
multiple intelligence
