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AP Psych
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Behavioral Perspective | Psychology as an observable science that studies behaviors that can be seen. This perspective believes that almost all behaviors are learned. Often time seen in terms of rewards and punishments. |
| Biological Perspective | The link between biological (neural, genetic, hormonal) and psychological processes. |
| Cognitive Perspective | The study of mental processes involved in perception, learning, memory, communication, problem solving, etc. Also considers the effects on disorders. |
| Evolutionary Perspective | The study of evolution of behavior and the mind using principles of natural selection. |
| Humanistic Perspective | Focuses on the potential for personal growth. Emphasizes the ways people strive for self-determination and self-realization. |
| Psychodynamic Perspective | Influence on unconscious motivation and childhood experiences on human behavior and disorders. How someone’s traits can be explained by unconscious drives and childhood traumas. |
| Social-Cultural Perspective | Many psychological studies based on western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic participants. Both biology and culture shape human beings. Understanding our own cultural biases can prevent us from making assumptions about others. |
| Case Study | Examines one individual or group in depth in the hope of revealing things true of us all. |
| Meta Analysis | Examination of data from a number of independent studies of the same subject, in order to determine overall trends. |
| Naturalistic Observation | Records behavior in natural environments. |
| Correlational Research | Investigates the relationships between two or more variables without manipulating them. |
| Experimental group | Receives the treatment. |
| Generalizability | When the results of your study can be applied to a larger population outside of the study. |
| Random assignment | To divide participants into groups. Controls confounding variables. |
| Control group | Control group does not (or receives a placebo). |
| Independent variable | The factor that is manipulated. |
| Dependent variable | The outcome that is measured. |
| Illusory Correlation | The tendency to perceive a relationship or connection between two variables when, in reality, no such relationship exists or it's much weaker than believed, often leading to superstitions or stereotypes by overestimating how often unusual events co-occur. |
| Measures of Central Tendency | The single value that best represents the center or typical score of a data set, primarily measured by the Mean (average), Median (middle score), and Mode (most frequent score). |
| Measures of Variability | Describe the spread or dispersion of scores in a dataset, showing how much they differ from each other and the center (mean/median). |
| Random sample | Every person from the population has an equal chance of being selected. Allows you to generalize results. |
| Reliability | A psychological test or measure consistently produces similar results under the same conditions, indicating its stability and repeatability. |
| Sampling Bias | A type of systematic error where the selection of participants for a study results in a sample that is not representative of the entire population, leading to skewed results and flawed conclusions. |
| Standard Deviation | A statistical measure that quantifies the average amount of variation or spread of a data set around its mean. |
| Statistical Significance | The probability that an experimental result happened by chance is very low suggesting the findings aren't random but reflect a real effect or relationship, allowing researchers to reject the null hypothesis (that there's no difference). |
| Validity | Goal in experiment design. |
| Survey | Looks at many cases in less depth, asking people to report their behavior or opinions. |
| Correlation Coefficient | A number of the strength of the relationship between two variables. |
| Empirical Evidence | Data gathered through direct, objective observation, measurement, or experimentation, forming the basis for scientific conclusions, rather than relying on theory or intuition alone, essentially proving knowledge comes from experience. |
| Agonists | Increases or mimics a neurotransmitters action. |
| Antagonist | Decreases or blocks a neurotransmitters action. |
| Brain Lateralization | The concept that the brain's two hemispheres specialize, with each side handling certain functions more dominantly, like language (left) or visual-spatial tasks/emotion (right), increasing cognitive efficiency by dividing labor. |
| Cerebellum | “Little brain” that processes sensory information, coordinates movements and balance, and enables nonverbal learning and skill memory. |
| Cerebral Cortex | The thin, outer surface layer of interconnected neural cells; the body, and the brain’s ultimate control and information processing center. |
| Frontal Lobes | Behind the forehead; involved in complex actions such as speaking, muscle movement, planning, judging, and critical thinking. |
| Parietal Lobes | Top of the head toward the rear; receives sensory input for touch and body position. |
| Occipital Lobes | Back of the head; processes visual information. |
| Temporal Lobes | On the side above the ears; processes auditory information. |
| Endorphins | Regulates the perception of pain, enhances mood, and can reduce the body’s stress response. |
| Fight-or-Flight Response | An automatic, physiological reaction to a perceived threat, activating the sympathetic nervous system to prepare the body for either fight or flight danger, involving adrenaline release, and heightened senses to provide energy for survival. |
| Hemispheric Specialization | The brain's left and right hemispheres have different functions. The left hemisphere is dominant for language, logic, and analytical thought, while the right hemisphere is more specialized for spatial abilities, creativity, and emotional processing |
| Hippocampus | A critical neural structure in the limbic system, vital for forming new explicit memories (facts and events) and spatial navigation, acting as a temporary memory hub before consolidation into long-term storage, and connecting emotions to memories. |
| Spinal Reflexes | An involuntary, automatic response to a stimulus, processed primarily in the spinal cord without needing the brain's conscious input. |
| Wernicke’s Area | A crucial brain region, typically in the left temporal lobe, responsible for language comprehension, allowing us to understand spoken and written words. |
| NREM-1 | Theta electrical waves. May experience hallucinations (false sensory experiences). |
| NREM-2 | Theta electrical waves with sleep spindles (bursts of rapid activity). |
| NREM-3 | Delta electrical waves. Deepest stage of sleep; body is extremely relaxed. |
| R-Sleep (REM) | Vivid dreams occur and can periodically be recalled upon waking up. The motor cortex is active, but the brainstem blocks these messages. |
| Afterimages | Staring at a yellow, green, and black flag and when looking away, you see red, white, and blue. |
| Cocktail Party Effect | The ability to focus your hearing on one specific thing even though noise is all around you. Your brain helps you selectively focus on the person you are talking to and 'mutes' the other conversation, music, and general noise around you. |
| Depth Perception | The ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance. |
| Gestalt Principles | Our brain does more than register information about the world. We filter incoming information and construct perceptions. |
| Figure-ground | Organizing the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings. |
| Grouping | Organizing stimuli into coherent groups. |
| Proximity | Grouping nearby figures together. |
| Continuity | Perceiving smooth continuous patterns. |
| Closure | Fill in gaps to perceive the complete, whole objects. |
| Similarity | Elements sharing similar visual characteristics. |
| Frequency | The number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time. Frequency determines the pitch. |
| Pitch | A tone’s highness or lowness. The shorter the waves, the higher the pitch; the longer the waves, the lower the pitch. |
| Olfaction | The sense of smell. |
| Selective Attention | Directing awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in the environment |
| Sensory Adaptation | Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation. |
| Sensory Interaction | The principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste. |
| Algorithm | A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. |
| Availability Heuristic | Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory. |
| Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve | The course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time. |
| Encoding Failure | If we fail to encode sensations to our long-term memory, we will never remember it. |
| Episodic Memory | Types of memory that are events of your life. |
| Functional Fixedness | You are fixated on one use/function of a tool. |
| Iconic vs Echoic Memory | Iconic memory is the brief visual sensory memory (lasts <1 sec) for images, while echoic memory is the auditory sensory memory (lasts 3-4 secs) for sounds. |
| Implicit Memory | Skips the conscious encoding track and is stored right away through automatic processing conscious encoding of incidental information and of well-learned information. |
| Levels of Processing (Shallow vs Deep) | Shallow processing involves superficial features (appearance, sound) for poor recall (e.g., font), while Deep processing involves meaningful analysis, connecting to existing knowledge (semantic encoding), creating stronger, more durable memories. |
| Memory Storage | The crucial stage in the memory process where encoded information is retained over time. |
| Proactive Interference | Prior learning disrupts the recall of new information. |
| Retroactive Interference | New learning disrupts the recall of old information. |
| Recall | Retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time. |
| Serial Position Effect | The tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list. |
| Aptitude Tests | Designed to predict a person’s future performance. |
| Criterion-Related Validity | A test accurately predicts or correlates with an external, established criterion (a real-world outcome or standard), showing if scores align with actual performance. |
| Crystallized Intelligence | Accumulated knowledge and verbal skills, tends to increase with age. |
| Fluid Intelligence | Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly, tends to decrease with age. |
| Flynn Effect | Every generation sees an increase in IQ scores. |
| Standardized Tests | An assessment administered and scored in a consistent manner to ensure fair and comparable results, measuring knowledge or skills in a uniform way. |
| Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Studies | A Cross-Sectional Study observes different age groups at one specific time (a snapshot) to compare traits, while a Longitudinal Study follows the same group over a long duration to track individual changes. |
| Sensorimotor Stage | The stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities. |
| Preoperational Stage | The stage (from about 2-7 years) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. |
| Concrete Operational Stage | The stage of cognitive development (from about 7-11 years) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. |
| Formal Operational Stage | The stage of cognitive development during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. |
| Trust vs Mistrust (infancy) | If needs are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust. |
| Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt (toddlerhood) | Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about their efforts to be independent. |
| Initiative vs Guilt (3-6 years) | Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about their efforts to be independent. |
| Competence vs Inferiority (6 years to puberty) | Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks, or they feel inferior. |
| Identity vs Role Confusion (teen years into 20s) | Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are. |
| Intimacy vs Isolation (20s to early 40s) | Young adults struggle to form close relationships and gain the capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated. |
| Generativity vs Stagnation (40s to 60s) | In middle age, people discover a sense of contributing to the world, usually through family and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose. |
| Integrity vs Despair (late 60s and up) | Reflecting on his or her life, an older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure. |
| Secure Attachment | Demonstrated by infants who comfortably explore environments in the presence of their caregiver, show only temporary distress when caregiver leaves, and finds comfort when caregiver returns. |
| Insecure Attachment | Demonstrated by infants who display either a clinging, anxious attachment or an avoidant attachment that resists closeness. |
Created by:
hh_8971