Test 1 Flashcards
Biological psychology
Also called behavioral neuroscience, brain and behavior, and psychological psychology. The study of the biological bases of psychological processes and behavior.
Neuroscience
The scientific study of the nervous system.
Dualism
The notion, promoted by Rene Descartes, that the mind has an immaterial aspect that is distinct from the material body and brain.
Phrenology
The belief that bumps on the skull reflect enlargements of brain regions responsible for certain behavioral facilities.
Localization of function
The concept that different brain regions specialize in specific behaviors.
Ontogeny
The process by which an individual changes in the course of its lifetime- that is, grows up and grows old.
Neuron
Also called nerve cell. The basic unit of the nervous system.
Neuroplasticity / neural plasticity
The ability of the nervous system to change in response to experience or the environment.
Adult neurogenesis
The creation of new neurons in the brain of an adult.
Social neuroscience
A field of study that uses the tools of neuroscience to discover the biological bases of social behavior, and the effects of social circumstances on brain activity.
Evolutionary psychology
A field of study devoted to asking how natural selection has shaped behavior in humans and other animals.
Eppi genetics
The study of factors that affect gene expression without making any changes in the. Nucleotide sequence of the genes themselves.
Gene expression
The turning on or off of specific genes.
Neuroeconomics
The study of brain mechanisms that. Work during economic decision making.
Consciousness
The state of awareness of one’s own existence, thoughts, emotions, and experiences.
Somatic intervention
An approach to finding relations between body variables and Behavioral variables that involve manipulating body structure or function and looking for resultant changes in behavior.
Independent variable
The factor that is manipulated by an experimenter.
Dependent variable
The factor that the experimenter measures to monitor a change in response to changes in an independent variable.
Control group
A group of research subjects that are identical to an experimental (or test) group in every way except that they do not receive the experimental treatment or manipulation. The experimental group is then compared to the control group to assess the effect of the treatment.
Within-subjects experiment
An experiment in which the same set of subjects is compared before and after an experimental manipulation. The subjects thus serve as their own controls.
Between-subjects experiment
An experiment in which a group of experimental subjects is compared with a control group of individuals who have been treated identically in every way except that they haven’t received the experimental manipulation.
Behavioral interventions
An approach to finding relations between body variables and behavioral variables that involves intervening in the behavior in an organism and looking for resultant changes in body structure and function.
Correlation
The covariant ion of two measures.
Negative correlation
A covariant ion of two measures in which one of the two usually goes up when the other gooses down (and vise versa).
Positive correlation
A covariant ion of two measures in which they both usually increase together, or always decrease together.
Causality
The relation of cause and effect, such that we can conclude that an experimental manipulation has specifically caused an observed result.
Reductionism
The scientific strategy of dreaming a system down into increasingly smaller parts in order to understand it.
Level of analysis
The scope of experimental approaches. A scientist may try to understand behavior by monitoring molecules, nerve cells, brain regions, or social environments, or using some combination of these levels of analysis.
