Psychology Flashcards
The science of psychology is typically dated from the establishment of the late-nineteenthcentury Leipzig laboratory of
Wilhelm Wundt
Reasoning is: German father of Psych
The behavioral research perspective is similar to the sociocultural research perspective because both focus on how behavior and mental processes are explained by
the external environment
Reasoning: sociocultural perspective is awarness of behaviors affteded by their surroundings
Which of the following types of research design is most appropriate for establishing a cause-andeffect relationship between two variables?
Experimental
Reasoning: key words are variable, experiments use variables to affect the cause and effect
Frequency theory and place theory attempt to explain how the inner ear registers the pitch of sound
Place theory explains the perception of high-frequency sounds well, and frequency theory explains the perception of low-frequency sounds well. correct
Reasoning: just vocab,
The requirement that prospective participants know the general nature of a study so that they can decide whether to participate is a major part of
informed consent
Reasoning: informed, meaning understanding of the study, and consent is the deciding factor to go through with the study
The term “etiology” refers to the study of which of the following aspects of an illness?
Origins and causes
Reasoning: vocab
A neuron is said to be polarized when
it is in a resting state
Reasoning: vocab
How many pairs of chromosomes are contained in most human cells?
23
Reasoning: Knowledge
The release of a neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft is caused by which of the following?
an action potential
Reasoning: the neurons talk to each other across synapses
Damage to an individual’s parietal lobes is most likely to result in
reduced sensitivity to touch
Reasoning: processes sensory information relating to touch, taste, and temp.
Which of the following cortical areas is most closely associated with vision?
Occipital
Reasoning: Cortical areas in the brain include:
Occipital: vision
Frontal: movement and decision making
Parietal: sensory info (touch, pain, pressure, position, vibration, temp)
Temporal: language, memory, hearing, nonverbal cues, sound to visual image conversion
The receptors for hearing are the
hair cells on the basilar membrane
Reasoning: i just knew about the hair cells and went with gut feeling
Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the facial feedback hypothesis of emotion?
Ellen says that hanging up the laundry on a clothesline makes her feel happy; she holds the clothespins in her teeth as she hangs each piece of clothing.
Reasoning: deals with emotion, smiling makes you happy
According to current psychological research, hypnosis is most useful for which of the following purposes?
Pain control
Reasoning: Hypnosis isn’t about convincing you that you don’t feel pain; it’s about helping you manage the fear and anxiety you feel related to that pain. It relaxes you, and it redirects your attention from the sensation of pain.
Which of the following drugs is most likely to cause hyperalertness, agitation, and general euphoria?
stimulant
Reasoning: elevates mood, and increasing feelings of wellbeing, energy, and alertness
Brain waves during REM sleep generally appear as
rapid low-amp waves
reasoning: knowledge
According to the activation-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming, dreams serve which of the following purposes?
To make sense of random neural activity during sleep
REasoning: its a a hypothesis that explains dreams as a product of cortical interpretation of random neural activity rising from the brainstem
After initial conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented with the conditioned stimulus, and the conditioned response gradually stops occurring. This change in behavior is called
extinction
Reasoing: it occurs when a response is no longer reinforced following a discriminative stimulus
so not doing the same task, reinforcing it, your muscle memory weakens, becomes extinct
Research has shown that students generally perform better if tested in the same room where they originally learned the material. This shows the importance of which of the following in memory?
Context
Reasomong: memory performance is reduced when an individual’s environment differs from encoding to retrieval than if the two environments were the same. This effect is known as context-dependent forgetting.
Albert Bandura conducted a study in which a child viewed an adult playing with toys. The adult stood up and kicked and yelled at an inflated doll. The child was then taken to another room containing toys. When left alone, the child lashed out at a similar doll in the room. The child’s behavior toward the doll is most likely a result of
Observational learning
Reasoning: the child is learning from its observations of the older man
Making the amount of time a child can spend playing video games contingent on the amount of time the child spends practicing the piano is an illustration of
operant conditioning
reasoning: learning through rewards
the child will play video games more than the piano since it is more rewarding to learn about the video game than piano
Priming is considered part of implicit memory because it
occurs without conscious awarness
reasoing: implicit memory is when you dont know you are remembering something, priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.
In problem solving, which of the following approaches almost always guarantees a correct solution?
algorithm
reasoning: knowledge
Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus will result in which of the following behaviors in laboratory rats?
An increase in eating behavior
Reasoning: lateral hypothalamus links to food intake
Which of the following is a disadvantage of relying on external rewards to motivate behavior?
There is a potential to reduce intrinsic motivation
Reasoning: intrinsic motivation is the the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence.
so rewards reduces the motivation to do what you like for the fun and happiness of it
One theory of the effects of arousal holds that efficiency of behavior can be described as an inverted U-shaped function of increasing arousal. Which of the following accurately describes this relationship?
Low and high levels of arousal lead to poorest performance.
Reasoning: this answer has two low points
Which of the following presents a pair of needs from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchical need structure, in order from lower to higher need?
Physiological needs, safety correct
Reasoning: Low to high, key word a pair of needs
phys needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, self actualization
In which of the following areas does research show most clearly that girls develop earlier than boys?
Adolescent physical growth spurt
Reasoning: knowledge
Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas have classified temperament into which of the following clusters?
easy, difficult, slow to warm up
reasoning: knowledge
Developmental psychologists are most likely to prefer longitudinal research designs to cross-sectional research designs because longitudinal designs
utilize the participants as their own experimental controls
Reasoning: The main difference is that cross-sectional studies interview a fresh sample of people each time they are carried out, whereas longitudinal studies follow the same sample of people over time.
Researchers know that infants’ sense of smell is fairly well developed at birth because newborns prefer the smell of
a nursing pad from their mother to the smell of a pad from another mother
Reasoining: knowledge, just makes sense
A young child breaks her cookie into a number of pieces and asserts that ‘‘now there is more to eat.’’ In Jean Piaget’s analysis, the child’s behavior is evidence of
preoperational thought
Reasoning: leads to logical thinking, the child thought logically when saying we have more to eat
The use of projective tests is associated with which of the following psychological approaches?
Psychoanalysis
Reasoning: projective test are dealing with uncovering feelins desire and conflicts that are hidden, psycoanalysis is the awarness of the unconsous aspects of a persons emotions
The key distinction between a personality trait and an attitude is
durability
Reason: bc
An attribution that focuses on an individual’s ability or personality characteristics is described as
dispositional
Reasoinng: deals with personality traits, efforts, moods, judgements, abilities, motives, or beliefs
The case study method of conducting research is justifiably criticized because
the results are difficult to generalize to a larger population
Reasoning: cant create a general conclusion
A man’s life has been filled with misfortune and tragic experiences that were unexpected, unavoidable, and unpredictable. He is depressed and tells his therapist that he feels he cannot control the outcome of the events in his life. Which of the following best explains his depression?
learned helplessness
Reasoning: occurs after experince of a stressful situation repeatedly
Amy appears to have an irrational and maladaptive fear of flying. She will not fly to visit her children and grandchildren, and she has even lost a job because she refused to fly to meet clients. Amy would most likely be diagnosed with which of the following anxiety disorders?
specific phobia
Reasoning: aerophobia is a very specefic phobia
An obsession is defined as
an unwanted though
reasoning: obsessions are repeated, persistent, unwanted thoughts
Every day when Carlos leaves his apartment, he locks the door, walks to the corner, turns around, and returns to his apartment in order to check that the door is locked. He returns to check the door several times before finally crossing the street and going about his day. Carlos would most likely be diagnosed with which of the following conditions?
obsessive-compulsize disorder
reasoning
Every day when Carlos leaves his apartment, he locks the door, walks to the corner, turns around, and returns to his apartment in order to check that the door is locked. He returns to check the door several times before finally crossing the street and going about his day. Carlos would most likely be diagnosed with which of the following conditions?
obsessive-compulsize disorder
reasoning: feels compulsesd to make sure the door is locked
Personality disorders are characterized by which of the following?
Problematic social relationships and inflexible and maladaptive responses to stress
resoning: causes problems in personal, social, and work sis=tuations
Schizophrenia is similar to Parkinson’s disease because both disorders
invloves an imbalance of the neurotransmitter dopamine
Reasoning: deals with dopamine
A diagnosis of schizophrenia typically includes which of the following symptoms?
delusions
Reasoning: knowledge
A somatization disorder is characterized chiefly by
physical complaints
reasoung: situaltional and temorary
Erik Erikson’s and Sigmund Freud’s theories of personality development are most similar in that both
are based on stages
reaspmomg” bc
A treatment technique, often used to treat phobias, that builds upon the principles of classical conditioning is
systematic desensitization
resoning: imaginary exposure to feared situations
Systematic desensitization is a type of exposure therapy based on the principle of classical conditioning
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are used primarily in the treatment of which of the following?
depression
resaoning: SSRIs increase seritinin levels in the brain
Which of the following kinds of therapy attempts to correct irrational beliefs that lead to psychological distress?
cognitive
resoning: cognitive deals with mental processes, and psychological distess impairs mental health
A psychologist using Carl Rogers’ person-centered therapy strives to ensure that clients
recieve unconditional positive regard
resoning:
each client has value and should be viewed as a person of unconditional self-worth no matter their condition, behavior, or feelings
When insulted by a friend, Sally’s first impulse was to strike him. Instead, she yelled loudly and kicked a door several times. This means of reducing aggressive impulses exemplifies which of the following?
displacement
reasponong: transfering negative feelings to someone not involved
Tameka regularly sets goals, plans for attaining those goals, and monitors her progress. Her activities are most closely associated with
high achievement motivatin]on
reasoning: knowledge
Tom fails his math exam. If he explains his failure by using an internal attribution, his reason for failing might be which of the following?
tom is not smart or good at math
reasong: when an individual uses a personal reason as the cause for a situation or event instead
Which of the following terms refers to the strategy of making a small request to gain listeners’ compliance, then making a larger request?
foot-in-the-door
reasoning: slow entrance then big
Similarity, proximity, and familiarity are important determinants of
attraction
resoning: attraction is through mutual interestes familar
Which of the following is a measure of central tendency that can be easily distorted by unusually high or low scores?
mean
resoning: knowledge
Which of the following statistics indicates the distribution with the greatest variability?
standard deviation 11.2
Which of the following is a true statement about the relationship between test validity and test reliability?
a test can be reliable without being valid
reasoning: validity tels how good a test will be at testing, reliability is how trustworthy a score is
If the null hypothesis is rejected, a researcher
treatment effect was significant
resoning:
It doesn’t mean the new one isn’t better just that there isn’t enough data to prove that it is.
In order to illustrate how often a particular score occurs in a given data set, researchers use
a freqeuncy distribution
reasongin: how often is frequency
blind children’s finger sensory cortex increase bc?
Plasticity
Reson: brain’s malleability, which is defined as being “easily influenced, trained, or controlled.
studying infant perception and cognition involves measuring a decreased response to a stimulus
habituation
reasoning: a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations.
the opponent-process theory in vision best expains which of the following?
color afterimages
resoning: you see things, depends on the receptors it hits
the cocktail party phenomenon
the brain’s ability to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.
Primary and Secondary reinforcers
Primary reinforcement involves a reward that fulfils a biological need. Secondary reinforcers are learned and work via association with primary reinforcers.
Pri: food drink pleasure
Seco: money grades tokens
seeign a dog refered as a four legged anumal, they think a cow is a dog
overextension
reasonin: the tendency of very young children to extend the use of a word beyond the scope of its specific meaning,
rembering the first and last thing in a sequence
serial position effect
The serial position effect is the psychological tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle.
Proactive interference
Proactive interference refers to the interference effect of previously learned materials on the acquisition and retrieval of newer materials. An example of proactive interference in everyday life would be a difficulty in remembering a friend’s new phone number after having previously learned the old number.
general forgetting curve
decreases rapidly then levels off
information processing theory
Stages: sensory, short term, long term
Explicit memory vs implicit
Implicit memory and explicit memory are both types of long-term memory. Information that you remember unconsciously and effortlessly is known as implicit memory, while information that you have to consciously work to remember is known as explicit memory
drive reduction
Drive-reduction theory is based on the idea that the primary motivation behind all human behaviour is to reduce ‘drives. ‘ A ‘drive’ is a state of arousal or discomfort which is triggered by a person’s physiological or biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and the need for warmth.
negative reinforcement
Negative reinforcement occurs when a certain stimulus (usually an aversive stimulus) is removed after a particular behavior is exhibited
Theory of mind
he branch of cognitive science that investigates how we ascribe mental states to other persons and how we use the states to explain and predict the actions of those other persons.
reasoning: she predicted that her brother has taken her toy
Structuralism Functionalism Gestalt Psychology Behaviorism Psychoanalysis Humanism Cognitive Psychology
Structuralism:
Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener.
used techniques such as introspection to analyze the inner processes of the human mind
Functionalism
William James
the focus would be on understanding the function that those mental states serve
purpose of thoughts and behaviors, whereas structuralism was concerned with the elements that make up consciousness.
Gestalt Psychology
Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka.
believed that you must look at the whole of experience. According to Gestalt thinkers, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, a philosophy known as holism
Behaviorism
John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and B. F. Skinner.
that all behavior can be explained by environmental causes rather than by internal forces. Behaviorism is focused on observable behavior.
classical and operant conditioning
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior.
the id, ego, and superego.
Humanism
Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Clark Moustakas.
centered on abnormal human behavior, humanistic psychology differed considerably in its emphasis on helping people achieve and fulfill their potential.
Cognitive Psychology
Stages of cognitive development: A theory proposed by Jean Piaget, children go through a series of progressive stages of intellectual development.
studies mental processes, including how people think, perceive, remember and learn
Projective tests
it is a psychoanaysis test
Big Five Theory of Personality
Neuroticism Worried, nervous, emotional
Extroversion Sociable, fun-loving, active
Openness Imaginative, creative, artistic
Agreeableness Good-natured, softhearted, sympathetic
Conscientiousness Reliable, hardworking, punctual
histrionic
Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) is a mental health condition marked by unstable emotions, a distorted self-image and an overwhelming desire to be noticed. People with HPD often behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention.
psychotherapy
s a way to help people with a broad variety of mental illnesses and emotional difficulties.
altruism
motivational state that a person possesses with the goal of increasing the welfare of another person.
more inherited
social loafing
t’s what happens when someone puts in less effort when they’re judged as part of a group
James-Lange theory
The James-Lange theory states that stimulating events trigger a physical reaction. The physical reaction is then labeled with a corresponding emotion. For example, if you run into a snake, your heart rate increases. James-Lange theory suggests that the increase in heart rate is what makes us realize we’re afraid.
cannon bard theory
he Cannon-Bard theory of emotion states that stimulating events trigger feelings and physical reactions that occur at the same time. For example, seeing a snake might prompt both the feeling of fear (an emotional response) and a racing heartbeat (a physical reaction).
schachter singer theory
Schacter–Singer theory, emotion results from the interaction between two factors: physiological arousal and cognition.
latent
What is latent learning in psychology example?
In psychology, latent learning refers to knowledge that only becomes clear when a person has an incentive to display it. For example, a child might learn how to complete a math problem in class, but this learning is not immediately apparent.
chaining
an operant conditioning technique in which a complex behavioral sequence is learned. Animals, both human and nonhuman, can be taught to perform relatively elaborate sequences of activities by this method, which makes primary reinforcement contingent on the final response in the series.
rooting reflex
an automatic, unlearned response of a newborn to a gentle stimulus (e.g., the touch of a finger) applied to the corner of the mouth or to the cheek, in which the infant turns his or her head and makes sucking motions.
narcolepsy
Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder characterized by overwhelming daytime drowsiness and sudden attacks of sleep.
Sleep apnea
Sleep apnea is a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts.
representativeness heuristic
he representativeness heuristic is a mental shortcut that we use when estimating probabilities. When we’re trying to assess how likely a certain event is, we often make our decision by assessing how similar it is to an existing mental prototype.
top down and bottom up processing
So, bottom-up processing is data-driven, and your perception of what it is that you’re looking at directs your cognitive awareness of the object. So, in contrast, top-down processing basically uses your background knowledge, so uses your background knowledge to influence perception.
shaping
What does shaping mean in psychology?
Shaping is the use of reinforcement of successive approximations of a desired behavior. Specifically, when using a shaping technique, each approximate desired behavior that is demonstrated is reinforced, while behaviors that are not approximations of the desired behavior are not reinforced.
fast mapping
the ability of young children to learn new words quickly on the basis of only one or two exposures to these words.
