| Question | Answer |
| what is psychology? | the science of behavior and mental process |
| what is psychiatry? | the study of the medical treatment of psychological disorders |
| what did Rene Descartes think about the soul? | thought the soul was separate from the body, and was not subject to physical laws |
| what was the main research technique of structuralism? | using only introspection |
| who opened the first psychology laboratory and in what country was it opened? | Wilhelm Wundt, Germany |
| who was the founder of structuralism who opened the first psychology laboratory in america? | Edward titchner |
| what are the two reasons why introspection was a bad method for studying mental events? | cannot be replicated across individuals, not conscious |
| how did functionalists try to understand the mind | determining its purpose |
| who was the founder of functionalism and what book did he write | William James. the principles of psychology |
| what scientific theory influenced the functionalists? | Darwins theory of evolution |
| what is psychoanalysis? | studying mental illness |
| what did Sigmund freud think caused mental illnesses? | subconscious conflicts |
| what is behaviorism? | relationship between behavior and reinforcement |
| who was the founder of behaviorism who conditioned little Albert? | John Watson |
| what was the name of the behaviorist who studied operant conditioning? | B.F. Skinner |
| what is operant conditioning? | behavior being changed through reinforcements |
| why did behaviorism decline in popularity? | inability to provide explanations for psychological phenomena (like language) |
| what is the cognitive approach to studying psychology? | to determine how information is encoded, stored, transformed, and retrieved by the brain |
| what is the metaphor upon which the cognitive approach relies? | computer metaphor |
| what is the evolutionary approach to studying psychology? | developing theories by speculating about the brain structures that would have been useful in the environment when the human brain is evolving |
| what does physiological psychology study? | brain mechanisms underlying behavior |
| what do sensation and perception psychologists study? | how the nervous system receives / interprets informations from the senses |
| what does cognitive psychology study? | attention, memory, language, and problem solving |
| what does social psychology study? | how people influence and relate to one another |
| what does counseling and clinical psychology study? | mental health problems and vocational guidance |
| what is a scientific theory? | an explanation for a phenomenon that can be falsified and that involved entities that cannot be directly observed |
| what does it mean for a scientific theory to be falsifiable? | can be proven false |
| what is a hypothesis? | a prediction of observable events |
| what is a case study? | a description of the behavior or abilities of a single individual; good for generating hypothesis, bad for testing theories |
| which school of psychology used case studies as their primary research technique? | psychoanalysis |
| what research technique in psychology is most subject to the problem of confirmation bias? | case studies |
| what is naturalistic observation? | observes and describes behavior |
| what research technique did Jane Goodall use to study chimpanzees? | naturalistic observation |
| what are naturalistic observations good for? | answering simple questions |
| what is the correlational approach? | the relationship between variables without variables without manipulating them |
| what are the two circumstances when a psychologist would use the correlational approach? | when ethical or very difficult to impossible |
| what is causation? | a causal relationship exists if a change in one variable results in a change in the other |
| can the correlational approach be used to determine if two variables have a causal relationship? | correlation does not mean causation. |
| if two variables have a perfect positive relationship, what would be the value of the correlation coefficient for those variables? | +1 |
| what does it mean if the correlation coefficient between two variables is near 0? | it would be very weak |
| what two characteristics must an experiment possess? | independent variable and random assignment |
| what is an independent variable? | the variable the researcher manipulates in an experiment (measures) |
| what is a dependent variable? | the variable the researcher measures to determine the effects of the independent variable |
| what is random assignment? | every person in the experiment has an equally likely chance of being assigned to each level of the independent variable |
| in contrast to all other research techniques, what does an experiment allow a researcher to do? | we can come up with a causal relationship between the variables |
| what is an operational definition? | defining in terms of the variables being measured |
| what is the name of an individual nerve cell? | neuron |
| what are the four parts of a neuron and what are their functions? pt 1 | dendrites: receive electrical signals from other neurons
soma (body): contain the nucleus and provides for the life processes of the cell |
| what are the four parts of a neuron and what are their functions? pt 2 | axon: carries the electrical signal from the soma to the terminal buttons
terminal buttons: release neurotransmitters that cause electrical changes to the next neuron in the chain |
| what is an action potential? | magnetic fields that block the nerves to stop action potentials |
| what is the space between the terminal buttons and one neuron and the dendrites of another neuron called? | synapse |
| what is a neurotransmitter? | binds to receptors in the dendrites of the next neuron in the chain thereby electrically exciting or inhibiting the next cell |
| which part of the brain (hindbrain, midbrain, or forebrain) contains the medulla oblongata and the pons? | hindbrain |
| what does the medulla oblongata do? | controls breathing, heart rate, and vomiting |
| what does pons do? | regulates sleep and arousal |
| what part of the brain (hindbrain, midbrain, forebrain) contains the superior colliculus, the inferior colliculus, and the substantia nigra? | midbrain |
| what do the superior colliculus and the inferior colliculus do? | superior colliculus: controls visual reflexes
inferior colliculus: controls auditory reflexes |
| what disease involves the death of neurons in the substantia nigra? | Parkinson's disease |
| what part of the brain (hindbrain, midbrain, forebrain) contains the cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and basal ganglia? | forebrain |
| what does the hypothalamus regulate? | the "four F's": feeding, fighting, fleeing, and mating |
| what does the amygdala do? | controls emotional responses, particularly fear |
| what does the hippocampus do? | encodes long term memory |
| what part of the brain was missing in HM that led to his problems transferring information from short term to long term memory? | hippocampus |
| what do the basal ganglia do? | reward system of the brain |
| according to burnham and phelan's theory of how the basal ganglia work, what happens when people have a gain in their material success? | we will continue to strive to improve our material situation |
| according to burnham and phelan's theory of how the basal ganglia work, what happens when people experience negative events? | the emotional pain fades question quickly with time so we won't be debilitated by grief |
| what is humanistic psychology? | |
