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AP Psych Midterms
Midterm study guide vocabulary.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Tendency to think we would have foreseen future events. | Hindsight bias |
| Tendency to overestimate abilities or future success (exceptions: about to be judged, depression) | Overconfidence |
| Experimental factor that is manipulated and being studied | Independent variable |
| Experimental factor that is being measured; changes | dependent variable |
| Selected segment of the population under study | Random sample |
| Process in which participants are selected randomly from the larger group such that the sample will be representative | Random assignment |
| Perceived correlation that doesn't really exist | Illusory correlation |
| Testable prediction, often implied by a theory | Hypothesis |
| Tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs/behaviors | False-consensus effect |
| Condition of an experiment that contrasts with the experimental condition and serves as a comparison | Control treatment |
| Statement of the procedures used to define research variables | Operational definition |
| One person is studied in depth | Case study |
| Observing/recording behavior in natural situations without trying to manipulate/control it | naturalistic observation |
| Statistical measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well each factor predicts the other | Correlation |
| Any effect on behavior caused by a placebo | Placebo effect |
| Questionnaire/interview designed to investigate the opinions, behaviors, or characteristics of a particular group | Survey |
| Both participants and staff are unaware of placebo vs. drug | Double blind |
| Either the participants or staff are unaware of placebo vs. drug | Single blind |
| Computed measure of how much scores vary around mean | Standard deviation |
| Average | Mean |
| Middle | Median |
| Most frequent | Mode |
| Graphs points on a coordinate grid to look for a correlation | Scatterplot |
| Symmetrical distribution across a bell curve | Normal distribution |
| Negatively skewed (hump towards right side) vs. positively skewed (hump towards left side) | Skewed distribution |
| Gap between highest and lowest data points | Range |
| Chemical messengers that traverse synaptic gaps | Neurotransmitters |
| Chemical messengers produced in one tissue that affect another | Hormones |
| Bushy, branching extensions of a neuron that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body | Dendrites |
| Natural, opiate-like transmitters linked to pain control & pleasure | Endorphins |
| Specialized cell transmitting nerve impulses; a nerve cell | Neurons |
| Connective tissue of the nervous system, consisting of several different types of cells associated with neurons | Glial cells |
| Glands that secrete hormones or other products into the blood | Endocrine glands |
| Extension of a neuron, ending in branching terminal fibers through which messages are sent to neurons/muscles/glands | Axons |
| Junction between two nerve cells over which neurotransmitters travel | Synapse |
| Reabsorption of a neurotransmitter by transport of a pre-synaptic neuron after it has performed its function of transmitting a neural impulse | Reuptake |
| Level of stimulation required to trigger a neural impulse | Threshold |
| Neural impulse; a brief electrical charge traveling down an axon | Action potential |
| Layer of fatty tissue segmentally encasing the fibers of many neurons; speeds up transmission | Myelin sheath |
| Soma; contains all of the cell body structures of normal cells | Cell Body |
| Stores various transmitters that are released at the synapse | Synaptic vesicle |
| Period of time during which an organ or cell is incapable of repeating an action potential | Refractory period |
| Tissue destruction | Lesion |
| Transmits impulses between other neurons, especially as a reflex | Interneuron |
| Neurons that carry incoming information from senses to the Central Nervous System | Affector neuron (sensory) |
| Neurons that carry outgoing information from the Central Nervous System to muscles | Effector neuron (motor) |
| Positron emitting tomography; brain performs specific task and the image shows areas of brain ACTIVITY | PET scan |
| Magnetic resonance imaging; measures response of atomic nuclei to high-frequency radio waves in a magnetic field; shows brain STRUCTURE | MRI |
| Areas of cerebral cortex that aren't involved in primary motor or sensory functions; higher mental functioning | Association areas |
| Change of a cell's membrane potential to positive until reaching threshold (resulting in an action potential) | Depolarization |
| Return of membrane potential to negative after depolarization | Repolarization |
| Simple, automatic, inborn response to a sensory stimulus | Reflex |
| If the signal hits threshold, the signal is sent at the same strength regardless of the initial stimulus | All-or-none |
| Involved in muscle action, learning, and memory; those with Alzheimer's have reduced amounts of this neurotransmitter | Acetylcholine |
| Influences movement, learning, attention, and emotion; excessive amounts of this neurotransmitter is linked with schizophrenia | Dopamine |
| Affects mood, hunger, sleep, and arousal; antidepressant drugs raise levels of this neurotransmitter | Serotonin |
| This neurotransmitter helps control alertness and arousal | Norepinephrine |
| Serves inhibitory functions and is sometimes implicated in eating and sleep disorders | GABA |
| Substance that mimics or has a similar effect to a neurotransmitter | Agonist |
| Substance that blocks the effect of a neurotransmitter | Antagonist |
| Paralyzes the motor nerves by blocking dopamine/acetylcholine | Curare |
| Loss of dopamine causing tremors, muscular rigidity, and slow, imprecise movement | Parkinson's disease |
| Brain disorder characterized by deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and finally, physical functioning | Alzheimer's disease |
| Characterized by disorganized/delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions/actions | Schizophrenia |
| Lowered serotonin leading to a state of low mood | Depression |
| Part of peripheral nervous system that controls the glands and the muscles of internal organs | Autonomic nervous system |
| Part of peripheral nervous system that controls skeletal muscles | Somatic nervous system |
| Division of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body, conserving its energy; homeostasis | Parasympathetic nervous system |
| Division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations | Sympathetic nervous system |
| Brain and spinal cord | Central Nervous System |
| Sensory and motor neurons that connect the CNS to the body | Peripheral Nervous System |
| Associated with emotions such as fear and aggression and drives desires such ass those for food and sex; includes hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus | Limbic system |
| Two neural clusters in the limbic system that influence fear and aggression | Amygdala |
| Neural structure below the thalamus; the reward center, directs many maintenance activities, helps govern endocrine, regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature, sex, and flight-or-flight, triggers the pituitary gland | Hypothalamus |
| "Little brain" attached to the rear of the brainstem; helps coordinate voluntary movement and balance | Cerebellum |
| Sensory switchboard; directs messages to the sensory receiving areas in the cortex and transmits replies to cerebellum/medulla | Thalamus |
| Nerve network in brainstem; helps control arousal | Reticular formation |
| Base of the brainstem; controls heartbeat and breathing | Medulla |
| Involved in speaking, muscle movements, planning/judgement | Frontal Lobe |
| Includes the sensory cortex and the angular gyrus | Parietal Lobe |
| Includes the auditory areas and Wernicke's area | Temporal Lobe |
| Includes the visual areas | Occipital Lobe |
| Registers and processes body sensations | Sensory cortex |
| Area at rear of the frontal lobes; controls voluntary movements | Motor cortex |
| Area of the left temporal lobe involved in language comprehension | Wernicke's area |
| Area of the left frontal lobe that allows for speech | Broca's area |
| Large band of neural fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres and carrying messages between them | Corpus callosum |
| Neural center in the limbic system that PROCESSES explicit memories for storage | Hippocampus |
| Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area or Wernicke's area | Aphasia |
| Brain's capacity for modification | Plasticity |
| Tendency for observers to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition | Fundamental attribution error |
| Tendency for people who agree to a small request to comply later with a larger one | Foot-in-the-door phenomenon |
| Having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes as relating to behavioral decisions and causing attitudes to change | Cognitive dissonance |
| Central (person ponders the content and logic of message) vs. peripheral (individual is encouraged not to look at the content of the message, but at the source; knowledge of source, number of arguments, stimuli, scarcity) | Central vs. peripheral routes to persuasion |
| Decision must be made between two attractive choices | Approach-approach conflict |
| Decision must be made between two unattractive choices | Avoidance-avoidance conflict |
| Decision must be made about whether or not to pursue a single goal that has both attractive and unattractive aspects | Approach-avoidance conflict |
| Conformity influenced by social norms | Normative social influence |
| Conformity influenced by other's opinions about reality | Informational social influence |
| Improved performance of tasks in the presence of others | Social facilitation |
| Tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when trying to attain a common goal | Social loafing |
| Loss of self-awareness/self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal/anonymity | Deindividuation |
| Enhancement of a group's prevailing attitudes | Group polarization |
| Desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives | groupthink |
| Generalized belief about a group of people | stereotype |
| "Us" - people with whom one shares a common identity | ingroup |
| Prejudice provides an outlet for ager by providing a scapegoat | Scapegoat theory |
| Tendency of people to believe the world is just | Just-world phenomenon |
| Frustration creates anger, then aggression | Frustration-aggression principle |
| Perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, ideas | conflict |
| Repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them | Mere exposure effect |
| Theory that altruism does not exist; helpful behavior occurs when the benefits outweigh the costs | Social exchange theory |
| Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction; conflicting parties grant small conciliatory acts that gradually increase until peace is achieved | GRIT |
| Overall goal for the betterment of the group | Superordinate goals |
| Biochemical units of heredity that make up the chromosomes | Genes |
| Threadlike structures of DNA molecules that contain genes | Chromosomes |
| Complex molecule containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes | DNA |
| Forms the basic structural unit of nucleic acids such as DNA | Nucleotide |
| We learn social behavior by observing and imitating | Social learning theory |
| Characteristics by which people define male and female | gender |
| Acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role | gender-typing |
| Set of expected behaviors for males and for females | Gender role |
| Study of the evolution of behavior and the mind | Evolutionary psychology |
| Person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity | Temperament |
| Understood rule for accepted and expected behavior | Cultural norms |
| Twins who develop from separate eggs; share fetal environment | Fraternal twins |
| Twins who develop from a single fertilized egg | Identical twins |
| Studies which attempt to tease apart genetic and environmental components of a behavior or disorder by comparing the outcomes of twins ("nature" and "nurture") | Adoption studies |
| Those trait variations contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations | Natural Selection |
| Change in an organism's behavior due to experience | Learning |
| Promising a reward for doing what one already likes to do | Overjustification effect |
| Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it | Latent learning |
| Tendency to respond to any stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus | Generalization |
| Reinforcers guide behavior closer to a desired goal | Shaping |
| Involuntary learning, determined by what precedes it | Classical conditioning |
| Behavior is strengthened if followed by reinforcement or diminished if followed by punishment | Operant conditioning |
| Learning by observing others | Observational learning |
| Innately reinforcing stimulus (food) vs. symbolically reinforcing stimulus (money) | Primary vs. Secondary reinforcers |
| Initial learning of the stimulus-response relationship | Acquisition |
| Diminished response to the conditioned stimulus when it is no longer coupled with the unconditioned stimulus | Extinction |
| Reappearance of an extinguished response after a rest | Spontaneous recovery |
| Ability to distinguish between conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli | Discrimination |
| An event that decreases the behavior that it follows | Punishment |
| Fixed = specific time/interval; variable = unspecified | Fixed vs. variable reinforcers |
| Ratio = number of responses; interval = time elapsed | Ratio vs. interval reinforcers |
| Stimulus that unconditionally triggers a response | unconditioned stimulus |
| Originally irrelevant stimulus that comes to trigger a response | conditioned stimulus |
| Naturally occurring response to a unconditioned stimulus | unconditioned response |
| Learned response to a previously neutral conditioned stimulus | conditioned response |
| Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs | Continuous reinforcement |
| Mental representation of the layout of one's environment | Cognitive map |
| Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering | Cognition |
| Developing human from about 2 weeks through the 2nd month | Embryo |
| Fertilized egg before developing into an embryo | Zygote |
| Developing human from 9 weeks to birth | Fetus |
| Organ in the uterus of pregnant women, nourishing and maintaining the fetus through the umbilical cord | Placenta |
| Agents that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm (ex. chemicals and viruses) | Teratogens |
| Physical/cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking | Fetal alcohol syndrome |
| Baby's tendency to search for a nipple | Rooting reflex |
| Properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects | conservation |
| Emotional tie with another person | attachment |
| Certain animals forming attachments during a critical period | Imprinting |
| Adapting one's current schema's to incorporate new information | Accommodation |
| Interpreting one's new experience in terms of existing schemas | Assimilation |
| Concept/framework that organizes and interprets information | Schema |
| Ability to reason speedily and abstractly; decreases with age | Fluid intelligence |
| Accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; increases with age | Crystallized intelligence |
| Awareness that things continue to exist when not perceived | Object permanence |
| Fear of strangers that infants commonly display (8 months) | Stranger anxiety |
| Inability of preoperational children to take another's point of view | Egocentrism |
| Infants know the world mostly in terms of sensory impressions and motor activities (birth-2 years) | Sensorimotor stage |
| Child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic (2-7 years) | Preoperational stage |
| Children gain mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events (7-11 years) | Concrete operational stage |
| People begin to think logically about abstract concepts (>12 years) | Formal operational stage |
| Kohlberg's theory; before age 9, children obey rules to avoid punishment or gain rewards | Preconventional |
| Kohlberg's theory. adolescents care for others and uphold laws and social rules simply because they are laws and rules; maintain social order | Conventional |
| Kohlberg's theory; affirms people's agreed-upon rights; follows what one personally perceives as basic ethical principles | Postconventional |
| Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think | Linguistic relativity |
| Optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development | Critical period |
| Rules for combining words into grammatically sensible phrases | Syntax |
| Set of rules by which we derive meaning from words | Semantics |
| In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit | Phoneme |
| In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning | Morpheme |
| Secure = less extreme reactions to stress, more willing to try new things, be better problem solvers, form better relationships. Insecure = refuse to interact with others, avoid others, exaggerate distress, show anger, anxiety, or fear | Secure vs. Insecure attachment |
| Parenting style that is demanding but not responsive; strict | Authoritarian |
| Parenting style that is responsive but not demanding; lenient | Permissive |
| Parenting style that is demanding and responsive; balanced and expects maturity | Authoritative |
| People's ideas about their own and others' mental states | Theory of mind |
| Predicts how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation | Signal detection theory |
| One sense may influence another (ex. smell influences taste) | Sensory interaction |
| Below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness | Subliminal |
| Sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment | sensation |
| Organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events | Perception |
| Minimum difference a person can detect between two stimuli | Difference threshold |
| Minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time | Absolute threshold |
| To perceive their difference, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage | Weber's law |
| Conversion of one form of energy into another | Transduction |
| Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation | Sensory adaptation |
| Nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain | Optic nerve |
| In hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone | Frequency theory |
| Our perception of sound depends on where each component frequency produces vibrations along the basilar membrane | Place theory |
| Visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from cones and rods in an antagonistic manner | Opponent-process theory |
| The release of substance P in the spinal cord produces the sensation of pain | gate control theory |
| Processing many things at once | Parallel processing |
| Adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters | Pupil |
| Transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to focus images on the retina | Lens |
| Light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information | Retina |
| Central focal point in the retina, around which cones cluster | Fovea |
| Point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye; no receptor cells | Blind spot |
| Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond | Rods |
| Receptor cells concentrated near the center of the retina; function in daylight/well-lit conditions; fine detail and color | Cones |
| Transmit signals from photoreceptors to ganglion cells | Bipolar cells |
| Transmit visual information from the retina to the brain | Ganglion cells |
| Ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of the pupil opening | Iris |
| Smell | Olfactory |
| Taste | Gustatory |
| System for sensing the position and movement of body parts | Kinesthesis |
| Sense of body movement and position | Vestibular sense |
| Sensory neurons located in muscles, joints, and the inner ear; part of kinesthesis | Proprioceptors |
| Canals in the inner ear that control the vestibular sense | Semicircular canals |
| Coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear through which sound waves trigger nerve impulses | Cochlea |
| Tiny cells located on the basilar membrane | Hair cells |
| Three bones in the middle ear, collectively called ossicles; help to amplify sound waves | Hammer, anvil, and stirrup |
| membrane of the middle ear that vibrates in response to sound waves (aka tympanic membrane) | ear drum |
| Part of the outer ear; focuses sound waves to middle ear | Pinna |
| Impression of a vivid sensation retained after the stimulus has ceased | Afterimage |
| Stimulus neurons in the spinal cord which send messages of pain via the thalamus to the cortex | Substance P |
| Membrane at the base of the cochlea that vibrates in certain frequencies | oval window |
| Membrane inside the cochlea covered in hair cells | Basilar membrane |
| Capacity for the process of reacting to certain stimuli selectively when several occur simultaneously | Selective attention |
| Slight difference in lateral separation between two objects as seen by the left eye and the right eye | Retinal disparity |
| Tendency to perceive the size of a familiar object despite differences in distance (and consequent differences in the size of the patter projected on the retina of the eye) | Size constancy |
| Blinking lights in succession create the perception of movement | Phi phenomenon |
| Monocular cue; if one object partially blocks the view of another, we perceive it as closer | Interposition |
| Tendency for vision to dominate the other senses | Visual capture |
| perception of motion from slightly varying images | Stroboscopic movement |
| Binocular cue; extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object | Convergence |
| Organized whole perceived as more than the sum of its parts | Gestalt |
| Monocular cue; gradual change from course, distinct texture to fine, indistinct textures signals increasing distance | Texture gradient |
| Ability to see objects in 3D although the images that strike our retina are 2D; allows us to judge distance | Depth perception |
| Monocular cue; parallel lines seem to converge with distance | Linear perspective |
| Monocular cue; objects higher in our field of vision are perceived as farther away | Relative height |
| Monocular cue; light from distant objects passes through more atmosphere so they are perceived as hazy and farther away | Relative clarity |
| Mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another; determined by our schemas and experiences | Perceptual set |
| Influence of environmental factors on perception of a stimulus | Context effect |
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