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Psych Midterm 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What do researchers use in order to describe and measure behaviour?

A

They make observations.

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2
Q

What are the 5 steps of the scientific method?

A

1) Observe what you want to investigate
2) Ask a research question and make predictions
3) Test your hypothesis and collect data
4) Examine the results and draw conclusions
5) Report and share the results.

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3
Q

What are biases?

A

To assign a disproportionate amount of evidence in favour of one outcome.
It’s an idea for or against an idea or group.

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4
Q

What are fallacies?

A

They’re errors in reasoning that can lead to incorrect conclusions.

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5
Q

What are heuristics?

A

They’re mental shortcuts, or rules of thumb.

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6
Q

What is a conformational bias?

A

Our tendency to seek out only the evidence that supports our claim, and to deny or dismiss evidence that doesn’t.
Example: We follow the news about what we believe in and ignore the stuff that goes against what we think.

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7
Q

What is belief perseverance?

A

Our tendency to stick to our initial belief, even if there’s really good opposing evidence.
Example: People believing that the earth is flat.

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8
Q

What are the 3 different biases?

A

Conformational bias
Belief perseverance
Anchoring bias

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9
Q

What is anchoring bias?

A

Our tendency to rely on the first piece of evidence we’ve received when making a decision.
Example: A first impression.

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10
Q

What is the not-me fallacy?

A

Our tendency to believe that we don’t fall into the same shortcomings that others do.
Example: I don’t need to wear a helmet, I won’t fall like other people do.

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11
Q

What are the 3 different fallacies?

A

The not-me fallacy
The appeal to authority
The slippery slope

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12
Q

What is the appeal to authority?

A

Our tendency to believe a claim if it’s given by an authority figure.
Example: A dentist suggests a certain toothpaste brand.

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13
Q

What is the slippery slope?

A

Our tendency to believe that a small change can lead to a bigger, disastrous, change.
Example: If we legalize marijuana, it’ll lead to the legalization of all drugs.

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14
Q

What are the 3 different heuristics?

A

Availability heuristic
Representativeness heuristic
Familiarity heuristic

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15
Q

What is the availability heuristic?

A

Our tendency to evaluate a claim based on how easy the evidence comes to mind.
Example: People may say a dog is a more common pet than a ferret because they can picture it easier.

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16
Q

What is the representativeness heuristic?

A

Our tendency to evaluate the likelihood of an outcome based on its likelihood in our past experiences. How common the occurrence is in general.
Example: Assuming someone who wears glasses is smart.

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17
Q

What is the familiarity heuristic?

A

Our tendency to choose the most familiar option.
Example: Going to a restaurant and ordering a burger even though everything else looks good.

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18
Q

What are the 3 reasons that the scientific method is used in psychology? Why?

A

Objectivity (to limit the influence of personal biases and beliefs on the outcome of the experiment).
Accuracy (to minimize the errors in the data).
Reproducibility (to ensure studies can be done again in order to verify the results).

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19
Q

What is empiricism?

A

Finding evidence through observation.
Believes that you can only get evidence for something if you can observe it.
This is how psychology studies behaviour.

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20
Q

What is science?

A

A systematic approach to retrieving evidence through empiricism.

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21
Q

What are scientific theories?

A

Explanations based on a large number of tested hypotheses.

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22
Q

What are the 6 scientific principles? (A little blurb and example)

A
  1. Rule out alternative hypotheses (Can different explanations fit the claim better? Ex: You fail an exam and blame it on the weather, but you never went to class).
  2. Correlation VS Causation (Does one cause the other or are they related through another variable? Ex: Shark attacks and ice cream sales are correlated.)
  3. Falsifiability (It has to be observable and able to potentially be proven false. Ex: If you study which eye colour is smarter and find evidence, there is still room for it to be proven false because it’s just a theory.)
  4. Replicability (Can the evidence be reproduced? Ex: Creating coke and having different tastes each time means it’s not replicable.)
  5. Extraordinary Claims (require extraordinary evidence Ex: If you claim to have seen a UFO, you need extraordinary evidence because we don’t believe in aliens).
  6. Occam’s Razor/Parsimony (Can a simpler explanation fit better?)
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23
Q

What is the placebo VS nocebo effect?

A

The placebo effect is believing that something will work positively causes it to work positively. The nocebo effect is believing that something won’t work/will work negatively will cause it not to work/work negatively.

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24
Q

What 2 things can pseudoscience cause people to waste?

A

Valuable resources, like money, and time.

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25
Q

What are the 8 warning signs of pseudoscience?

A
  1. Exaggerated claims
  2. Overreliance on anecdotes
  3. No connection to research
  4. No peer review
  5. Lack of self-correction
  6. Use of ad-hoc immunizing hypotheses (additional explanations added to the claim to protect it from being falsified by new evidence)
  7. Use of psychobabble (big, made up words)
  8. Proof rather than evidence.
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26
Q

What is reciprocal determinism?

A

People influence the behaviour of other people.

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27
Q

What are some difficulties with studying behaviour?

A

Variability
Replicability
Reciprocal determinism
Cultural differences
Nature vs nurture debate (what is causing behaviour?)

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28
Q

What are the 6 psychological perspectives? What does each focus on?

A
  1. Biological/neuroscience perspective (Focus on genetics in shaping human behaviour; believes that the CNS is a primary determinant of behaviour).
  2. Behaviourism perspective (Focus on learning and observable behaviour; says all behaviour is learned through conditioned interaction with the environment).
  3. Cognitive perspective (Focus on the role of mental processes in shaping behaviour; believes that our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes play a role in shaping our behaviour, emotions, and experiences).
  4. Evolutionary perspective (Argue that many of our behaviours and traits have been shaped by natural selection over time).
  5. Humanistic perspective (Focus on individual experiences and personal growth; believes that people strive to be the best person they can be).
  6. Psychodynamic perspective (Focus on unconscious processes and unresolved past experiences as influences on behaviour; based on the work of Freud).
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29
Q

What are the 8 different types of psychology?

A
  1. Structuralism (Study of the mind/consciousness; the parts are greater than the whole).
  2. Functionalism (Emphasizes the value of mental processes and behaviours. Created to fill in the gaps of structuralism. Looks at the parts as a complex whole.)
  3. Behaviourism (Says that only observable behaviours can be studied, and that cognition, emotions, and mood are too subjective).
  4. Gesalt (Emphasizes the importance of looking at the mind/behaviour as a whole; the whole is greater than the parts).
  5. Psychodynamic (Emphasizes the role of the unconscious mind and childhood in shaping personality and behaviour. Says there’s an unconscious influence on behaviour).
  6. Humanistic (Emphasizes looking at the whole individual and stresses concepts like free will; says people are generally good and want to improve themselves).
  7. Cognitive (Studies mental processes and cognitive structures).
  8. Biological-neuroscience (Studies brain function and behaviour; they used lesioning to study the brain).
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30
Q

What is data?

A

A set of behavioural responses to a sort of stimulus.

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31
Q

What are the 3 guiding principles to the scientific method?

A
  1. Random Selection of Participants.
  2. Evaluating Measures; considering the reliability and validity of your measurement.
  3. Openness in Science; researchers share their work.
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32
Q

What does generalizability say?

A

That the findings should apply to the population as much as possible.

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33
Q

What is reliability and validity?

A

Reliability is when your measurement gives consistent scores each time.
Validity is when your measurement is measuring what it claims to be.
Reliability is your arrows all landing in the same spot on the board, and validity is all of them landing on the bullseye.

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34
Q

What is reproducibility?

A

The ability of researchers to replicate the results of a study.

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35
Q

What is naturalistic observation?

A

When the researcher studies behaviour in its natural setting without intervention or manipulation. It’s a great way to study behaviour because we can see them in their natural context.

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36
Q

What are extraneous variables?

A

Variables that you are not investigating but that can potentially affect the outcomes of your study.

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37
Q

What is reciprocal determinism?

A

The mutual influence of behaviour, cognition, and environment.
This is an issue in naturalistic observation, because it can be hard to determine which factors are influencing the observed behaviour.

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38
Q

What is internal validity?

A

The extent to which a study is able to find a causal relationship between variables.

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39
Q

What is external validity?

A

The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other settings and populations.

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40
Q

What is ecological validity?

A

The extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other settings and populations.

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41
Q

What is external vs internal validity?

A

External is the extent to which a study can be generalized, and internal is the extent to which it can determine cause and effect.

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42
Q

What is a case study?

A

An in-depth investigation of an individual, group, community, or event. Often used to study rare/unique phenomena.

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43
Q

What is a self-report survey?

A

It’s a type of questionnaire that relies on an individual’s own report of their symptoms, behaviours, beliefs, or attitudes.

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44
Q

What are correlational studies?

A

They measure the relationship between 2 or more variables without manipulating them.
They’re non-experimental, meaning that the experimenter doesn’t touch any of the variables.

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45
Q

What are confounding variables?

A

Variables that aren’t being studied, but that can affect the relationship between the variables that are being studied.

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46
Q

What are experiments?

A

They involve manipulating one or more variables to determine their effect on another variable. (To determine cause and effect).

47
Q

What is the independent variable?

A

The variable that is being manipulated. (The cause of the behaviour).

48
Q

What is the dependent variable?

A

The variable that is being measured. (The behaviour that is being studied).

49
Q

What is the experimental condition group?

A

The group of participants who receive the experimental manipulation.

50
Q

What is the control group?

A

The participants who do not receive the experimental manipulation.

51
Q

What are the 2 parts of the independent variable?

A

The experimental condition and control groups.

52
Q

What is a between-subjects design?

A

When participants are assigned to one condition and only experience that condition throughout the study.

53
Q

What is a within-subjects design?

A

When each participant experiences all the experimental conditions throughout the study. It uses before and after measurements; the individual acts as their own control.

54
Q

What are the 3 weaknesses of experiments?

A
  1. The Placebo Effect (If people know the condition they’ve been assigned to, they will try to act in accordance to it).
  2. Experimenter Expectancy Effect (The ideas an experimenter has about the study can affect how the participants behave).
  3. Confounding Variables (Variables that’re unmeasured and unmanipulated may affect the dependent variable).
55
Q

Statistics are used to summarize the data we get from an experiment. True or false?

A

True.

56
Q

What is the mean?

A

The average of a set of scores.

57
Q

What is the median?

A

The mid-point of the scores; the middle value in a set of scores.

58
Q

What is the mode?

A

The most frequent number in a set of scores.

59
Q

What is central tendency?

A

The typical or central value of a set of data. It’s used to understand the distribution of data.

60
Q

What is standard deviation?

A

A measure of the average amount of variability in a set of scores.

61
Q

What do inferential statistics show us?

A

By examining the mean of a distribution while adjusting based on the distributions of the standard deviation, we can determine whether our manipulation is a result of chance.
They’re used to make inferences about a population based on data collected from a sample.

62
Q

In statistics, there’s always a 15% probability that the observed data is a result of chance, not experimental manipulation. True or false?

A

False, there’s a 5% probability.

63
Q

What is the nervous system made up of?

A

The Central nervous system and the Peripheral nervous system.

64
Q

What is the CNS made up of and what is it responsible for?

A

It’s made up of the brain and spinal cord and is responsible for processing and interpreting information from the rest of the body.

65
Q

What do nerves do?

A

They carry electrical impulses between your brain and the rest of your body.

66
Q

What are the 2 main types of nerves?

A

Sensory and motor nerves.

67
Q

What are neurons?

A

Cells in the nervous system.
They send, process, and receive information in the body.
They transmit information throughout the human body. They’re the basic units in the nervous system.

68
Q

What is responsible for coordinating all our necessary functions of life by using electrical and chemical signals?

A

Our neurons.

69
Q

What is the process by which neurons send and receive information throughout the body called?

A

Neural Communication.

70
Q

What are neurotransmitters?

A

Chemical messengers that’re released by neurons and transmit signals from one neuron to another, or from a neuron to a muscle cell or gland.
They can cause behaviour.

71
Q

What is essential for regulating many of our necessary functions of the body?

A

Our neurotransmitters.

72
Q

What is a neural pathway?

A

When a neuron communicates with a whole bunch of other neurons. These pathways are responsible for transmitting information throughout the body and coordinating all of the necessary functions of life.

73
Q

In which nervous system do the neurons have the ability to regenerate and heal themselves?

A

The Peripheral Nervous System.

74
Q

What are dendrites?

A

Thin filaments that carry information from other neurons to the soma. They are the ‘input’ part of the cell.

75
Q

What does the soma or cell body do?

A

It holds the genetic information of the cell. The part of the neuron that receives information.

76
Q

What does the axon hillock do?

A

It regulates the firing of a neuron.
It’s responsible for integrating the signals recieved from the dendrites and deciding whether or not to send an action potential down the axon.

77
Q

What is the axon?

A

It’s a long projection that carries information from the soma and sends it off to the other cells. It’s the ‘output’ part of the cell.

78
Q

What is the myelin sheath?

A

A protective layer of fatty material that surrounds the axons of many neurons. It acts as an insulator, allowing the electrical signal to travel faster down the axon.

79
Q

All neurons have myelin sheaths. True or false?

A

False, only the ones that’re responsible for transmitting information over long distances have them.

80
Q

What is a neurotoxin?

A

A poison that can interfere with the normal functioning of neurons and ion channels within the neuron’s membrane.

81
Q

What are ion channels?

A

They are responsible for allowing ions to flow in and out of the neuron, which is essential for generating and transmitting electrical signals.

82
Q

What is the node of Ranvier?

A

It’s a gap in the myelin sheath that allows the electrical signal to ‘jump’ from one node to the next, increasing the speed of the signal.
It causes a faster conduction of the action potential.

83
Q

What are terminal buttons?

A

They are responsible for transmitting signals to other neurons or cells in the body by releasing chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.

84
Q

What is a synapse?

A

The process by which neurons communicate with each other.
It’s a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or the the target effector cell.
It is the firing or the non-firing of an action potential.

85
Q

What are action potentials?

A

Electrical signals that neurons use to communicate with each other and with other cells in the body. It is how a neuron actually fires.

86
Q

What is a resting potential?

A

The electrical potential difference across the cell membrane when the neuron is not transmitting signals.

87
Q

What is a sodium-potassium transporter?

A

A protein that’s responsible for maintaining the concentration gradients of sodium and potassium ions across the cell membrane of a neuron.

88
Q

When sodium ions enter the inside of a neuron, does it cause a membrane potential to become more positive or negative?

A

Positive.

89
Q

What is the resting potential of a cell membrane?

A

-70 MV

90
Q

When neurons are stimulated and sodium rushes in, the electrical charge of the cell membrane becomes what MV?

A

+50 MV

91
Q

How does a membrane return to its resting state? What is the process called?

A

Through repolarization.
The potassium is released to the outside of a neuron, causing the membrane potential to become more negative.

92
Q

What happens once the membrane becomes more negative?

A

The refractory period comes, when the neuron becomes more negative and it reaches a minimum of -80 MV.

93
Q

How does a membrane restore itself after an action potential, after the refractory period?

A

The sodium-potassium transporter pump exchanges sodium and potassium and causes the electrical charge to return to its resting potential. -70 MV.

94
Q

What are synaptic vesicles? What role do they play in an action potential?

A

Small sacs inside the terminal buttons that contain the neurotransmitters.
When an action potential reaches the terminal button, it will stimulate the synaptic vesicles to migrate to the cell membrane, where they then open and release the transmitters into the synaptic cleft.

95
Q

What is an excitatory postsynaptic potential?

A

The depolarization of a membrane, making the neuron more likely to fire an action potential because positively charged ions, like sodium, have entered the cell.

96
Q

What is an inhibitory postsynaptic potential?

A

The hyperpolarization of a membrane, making the neuron less likely to fire an action potential because negatively charged ions, like chlorine, have entered the cell.

97
Q

What are glial cells?

A

Non-neuronal cells that provide physical and metabolic support to neurons in the central and peripheral nervous systems.
Sometimes called the ‘glue’ of the NS because they help maintain the environment in which neurons function.

98
Q

What are oligodendrocytes?

A

Glial cells that form the myelin sheath around the axons. They help speed up the transmission of electrical signals. They are only present in the CNS.
They cannot repair neurons.

99
Q

What are Schwann cells?

A

Glial cells that also form the myelin sheath around axons, and also helps speed up the transmission of electrical signals, but they’re only present in the PNS.
They work to myelinate and repair neurons.

100
Q

What are astrocytes?

A

Glial cells that have many different functions and are involved in neurotransmitter recycling; they reuptake the excess neurotransmitters from the synaptic cleft after an action potential.

101
Q

What are microglia’s?

A

Glial cells that’re located throughout the CNS, and are the cleaner-uppers after a neuron is destroyed.

102
Q

What is the peripheral nervous system?

A

A network of nerves that branch out from the brain and spinal cord and none of the nerves inside of the brain or spinal cord.
The primary job is to bring information from the spinal cord to the brain and then back to the body so that the information can be used.
It is capable of repairing itself because of Schwann cells.

103
Q

What are the subdivisions of the PNS?

A

The somatic and autonomic nervous systems. The autonomic is then subdivided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic NS.

104
Q

What is the somatic nervous system?

A

Also known as the voluntary NS; it connects the CNS with our body’s muscles and skin. It’s primary function is to control voluntary muscles via our skeletal muscles.

105
Q

Which nerves transmit signals from the brain and spinal cord to our muscles?

A

Our efferent nerves, because they’re outbound.
They carry signals away from the CNS.

106
Q

Which nerves carry sensory information from the body to the spinal cord and brain?

A

The afferent nerves, which are inbound.

107
Q

What are tracts?

A

Bundles of nerve fibers within the CNS that transmit information between different regions.
While nerves extend from the CNS to the rest of the body, tracts remain within the CNS itself.

108
Q

What does the autonomic NS do?

A

It plays a vital role in regulating various bodily functions, often without conscious effort.
It operates unconsciously and regulates functions like our heartrate and digestion.

109
Q

What are the 3 main branches of the autonomic NS?

A

The sympathetic and parasympathetic NS.

110
Q

What is the sympathetic NS in control of?

A

It’s our fight or flight system.
It prepares the body for action during stress or danger.

111
Q

What is the parasympathetic NS in control of?

A

It operates during times of rest, relaxation, and recovery.
It helps our body conserve energy and maintain a calm state.

112
Q

What are cranial nerves?

A

Nerves that originate from the brain and control structures in the head and neck.

113
Q

What are 2 types of cranial nerves? What do they control?

A

Facial Nerve: the 7th cranial nerve. It controls facial expressions, allowing us to smile, frown, raise eyebrows, wrinkle our nose, etc.
Trigeminal Nerve: the 5th, largest cranial nerve. It’s responsible for facial sensation and jaw movement and carries impulses related to pain, touch, heat, and cold from the face to the brain. It controls the muscles used to chew and swallow.

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