04/29/2014

Correlational research variations in measurements of two different variables

are compared
o Allows researchers to compare variables that cant be directly manipulated
o Does not imply causation
o Experimental research when an experimenter manipulates an IV in an
attempt to see if there is an effect on the DV
o Try to minimize confound
o Must be random assignment of participants
Hypothesis testable prediction consistent with theory
Dependent variables aspect of situation that is measured as the values of the
independent variable change, change depends on independent
Independent variable aspect of situation that is deliberately varied while
another aspect is measured
o Under control of researcher
Operational definition how you measured a variable
Random assignment
Sample
Action potential a charge that moves down the axon
o Either occurs or terminates doesnt occur
Autonomic nervous system
o Sympathetic nervous system
Part of the ANS that readies an animal to fight or flee
o Parasympathetic nervous system
Counteracts the sympathetic branchs effects

Axon sending end of the neuron; the long cable like structure extending from
the cell body
o Conducts info to other neurons
Dendrite - receives messages from the axons of other neurons
The Central Nervous System consists of the brain and spinal cord
Command central where all neural impulses to and from the brain is passed
through
Genotype the genetic code within an organism
Heritability - indicates how much of the variability in a characteristic or ability in
a population is due to genetics
o Statistic % of trait due to genes
o To what extent is different in trait due to difference of genes not
enviornment
Myelin fatty substance that helps impulses efficiently travel down the axon
Neurotransmitters are released into synapse
o Travel across gap (axon to dendrite)
o Bind to receptor sites
o Different terminals have different neurotransmitters
o Specialized neurotransmitter for specific receptor
Phenotype the observable structure and behavior of an organism part from
genes, part from environment
Resting potential negative charge within a neuron when it is at rest
Absolute threshold smallest amount of stimulation needed in order to detect
that the stimulus is present
Big Five - five super factors of personality extraversion, neuroticism,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness
Id exists at birth and houses sexual and aggressive drives, physical needs,
and simple psychological needs
o Most primitive

o Basic urges
o Unconscious
Superego formed during early childhood and houses the sense of right and
wrong, based on the internalization of parental and cultural morality
o Opposite of the ID
o Sense of the expectations of society
o Perfection
o Tries to prevent the expression of the ids inappropriate sexual and
aggressive impulses
Ego develops in childhood and tries to balance the competing demands of the
id, superego, and reality
Locus of control a persons perception of the source of control over lifes
events when the cause of events is ambiguous
Internals people who feel personally responsible for what happens to them
Externals people who feel less responsible for what happens to them
Psychosexual stages
o Oral stage
Babies get pleasure from sucking
If fixated on this stage we bite fingers, chew
o Anal stage
Get pleasure form excreting
o Phallic stage
When children become aware of differences in gender
Oedipus complex
Boys jealously love their mothers and view their fathers as
competitors for their mothers love, so they both fear and hate
their fathers

Castration anxiety - boy unconsciously fears that as

punishment for loving his mother and hating his father, his
father will cut his penis off
Boy must renounce love for mother and make peace with
father
Girls at this stage are preoccupied with the discovery that they
dont have penises penis envy
electra complex
girls unconsciously struggle with feelings of anger and
jealousy toward their mother
cannot completely escape phallic stage because they dont
have castration anxiety
o Latancy period
Children arent sexual
Children turn attention elsewhere
o Genital stage
Mature attraction to other sex
Defense mechanisms various unconscious processes that prevent
unacceptable thoughts or urges from reaching the conscious and thereby
decrease anxiety
Self-actualization innate drive to attain the highest possible emotional and
intellectual potential
Bottom-up processing - processing triggered by physical energy
o No expectations
Gestalt Laws of Organization
o Set of laws that describe how the brain organizes sensory characteristics:
proposed by Gestalt psychologists)
o Proximity
o Continuity
o Similarity
o Closure

o Good form
Just noticeable difference (JND) size of the difference in a stimulus
characteristic needed for a person to detect a difference or change in a single
stimulus
Top-down processing processing that is guided by knowledge, expectation, or
belief
Self-Efficacy - sense of having the ability to follow through and produce desired
behavior
Classical Conditioning
o A type of learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes
associated with a stimulus that causes a reflexive behavior, and, in time,
the neutral stimulus is sufficient to elicit that behavior
o Discounts biological influences
o No new behavior is learned
Operant Conditioning
o The process by which a stimulus and a response become associated with
the consequences of making the response
Observational learning learning that occurs through watching others, not
through reinforcement
Fixed Interval schedules partial reinforcement schedule based on time
Variable interval schedule animal is given reinforcement after a variable
interval of time
Fixed ratio schedules reinforcement given for responses only when they are
produced after a fixed interval of time
Variable ratio schedule animal is given reinforcement after a variable ratio of
responses
Positive punishment something aversive added that decreases frequency of
response
Negative punishment something pleasant removed that decreases frequency
of response
Primary reinforcers an event or object, such as food, water, or relief from
pain, that is inherently reinforcing
Secondary reinforcer an event or object (such as attention) that is not
inherently reinforcing but instead has acquired its reinforcing value through
learning
Positive reinforcement - something pleasant added that increases the frequency
of response
Negative reinforcement - something aversive removed that increases the
frequency of response

Encoding the process of organizing and transforming incoming information so

that it can be entered into memory, either to be stored or to be compare with
previously stored information
Storage process of retaining information in memory
Retrieval the process of accessing information stored in memory
Short-term memory a memory store that holds relatively little information for
only a few seconds
Working memory a memory system that uses STM to reason or solve
problems - refers to the processes we use when working with units of
information in STM
Semantic memories memories of the meanings of words, concepts, and
general facts about the world
Episodic memories memories of events that are associated with a particular
time, place, and circumstances
Explicit memories memories that can be retrieved voluntarily and brought
into STM; also called declarative memories
Implicit memories memories that cannot be retrieved voluntarily and brought
into STM but rather predispose a person to process information or behave in
certain ways in the presence of a specific stimuli; also called nondeclarative
memories
Recall the act of intentionally bringing explicit information to awareness,
which requires transferring the information from LTM to STM
Recognition the act of successfully matching an encoded stimulus to
information about that stimulus that was previously stored in memory
Concept the idea that underlies the meaning of a word of image; depending
on language, some concepts can be expressed with a single word or may
require a phrase or two to be fully expressed
Prototype the most typical example of a concept
Algorithm a set of steps that, if followed methodically, will guarantee the
correct solution to a problem
Heuristic a rule of thumb strategy that does not guarantee the correct
solution to a problem but offers a likely shortcut to it
Deductive reasoning that applies the rules of logic to a set of assumptions to
discover whether certain conclusions inevitably follow from those assumptions;
deduction goes from general to the particular
Inductive reasoning that uses examples to discover a rule that governs them;
induction foes from the particular (examples) to the general (a rule)
Representativeness heuristic the strategy in which we assume that the more
similar something is to a prototype stored in memory, the more likely it is to
belong to the prototypes category
Availability heuristic the strategy in which we judge objects or events as more
likely, common, or frequent if they are easier to retrieve from memory
Long-term memory a memory store that holds a huge amount of information
for a long time
Sensory memory a memory store that holds a large amount of perceptual
information for a very brief time, typically 1 second

Functional fixedness when solving a problem getting stuck on one

interpretation of an object or one aspect of the situation
Elaborative encoding encoding strategies that produce great breadth of
processing
Breadth of processing processing that organizes and integrates new
information into previously stored information, often by making associations
o If we connect new info to info we know already, it helps with memory
using prior connections
Temperament inclination to engage in a certain style of thinking, feeling, or
behaving; a temperament initially arises from the effects of genes and biology,
and an individuals environment moderates these effects
Psychological determinism view that all thoughts, feelings, and behavior
ultimately have an underlying psychological cause
Personality inventory lengthy questionnaire foe assessing personality that
requires the test takers to read statements and indicate whether is true or false
Projective Tests
o Based on psychodynamic theory
o Our personalities are rooted in unconscious
o Presents a person with ambiguous stimuli and asks the person to make
sense of it, blobs
Rorschach test
Thematic Appereception Test person is asked to tell story about a
picture
Role of expectancies what you expect to happen has a powerful influence on
your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and in turn on your personality
Complicated responses are acquired through shaping the process of
reinforcing an animal for responses that get closer to the desired response
o Shaping is used when the desired response is not one that the animal
would produce in the normal course of events
Sensation arises from neural responses that occur after physical energy
stimulates special cells in the sensing organ before the stimulus is organized
and interpreted by the brain
o Stimulation of sensory organs
Perception arises when the information conveyed by sensory signals is
organized into characteristics of objects or events and then interpreted
o How your brain processes the sensory information
Psychophysics relationship between physical environment and how one
senses and perceives this environment

Interference o ccurs when information disrupts encoding or retrieval of other

information
o Two types of interference:
o Retroactive interference interference that occurs when new learning
disrupts memory for something learned earlier
o Proactive interference interference that occurs when information already
stored in memory makes it difficult to learn something new
Primary effect increased memory for the first few stimuli in a set, reflecting
storage of information in LTM
Recency effect increased memory for the last few stimuli in a set, reflecting
storage of information in STM
Mental set - an approach to solving a problem that worked for a similar problem
in the past, which leads to a fixed way of thinking about how to solve a present
problem
Basic emotion an innate emotion that is shared by all humans - universality
o Surprise
o Happiness
o Anger
o Fear
o Disgust
o Sadness
Deprived reward reward that occurs when an animal lacks a substance or
condition necessary for survival and an action then produces this substance or
condition
o Depends on dopamine in brain
Non-deprived reward reward that occur when the animal does not lack a
substance or condition necessary for survival in other words, when you had a
want but not a need
Homeostasis the process of maintaining a steady state, in which bodily
substances and conditions are kept within the range in which the body functions
well
o We are motivated to correct the imbalance
Incentive a stimulus or event that draws animals to achieve a particular goal
in anticipation of a reward
Instinct an inherited tendency to produce organized and unalterable responses
to particular stimuli

o Instinct theory explains human behavior based on instinctual motivation

Motivation the set of requirements and desires that leads an animal to behave
in a particular time and place
Learned Helplessness
o the condition that occurs after an animal has an aversive experience in
which noting it does can affect what happens to it, and so it simply gives
up and stops trying to change the situation or to escape it
Need a condition that arises from the lack of a necessary substance or
condition needs; give rise to drives
o Internal
Want a state that arises when you have an unmet goal that does not arise
from a lack of a necessary substances or condition; wants turn goals into
incentives
o external
Need for achievement the need to reach goals that require skilled
performance or competence to be accomplished
Individualist cultures favor personal success and higher achievement motivation
o Strive for freedom and independence competition and conflict
o Emphasizes need for achievement
Collective cultures focus more of the wellbeing of family or group
o Deemphasize competition among individuals
Teratogen external agent, such as a chemical, virus, or type of radiation, that
can cause damage to the zygote, embryo, or fetus
o Overextension an overly broad use of a word to refer to a new object or
situation
Overtime children narrow their definitions
Underextensions an overly narrow use of a word to refer to a new object or
situation
o Overregularization errors a mistake that occurs in speech when the child
applies a newly learned rule even to cases where it does not apply
Assimilation allows the use of existing schemas to organize and interpret new
stimuli and respond accordingly
o Fit into existing schema

Accommodation the process that results in schemas changing or the creation

of new schemas, as necessary to cope with a broader range of situations
o Making new schema
Strange situation how a child reacts when left with a stranger or alone in
unfamiliar situation can be applied across cultures but % of different types
varies culture to culture
Object permanence the understanding that objects continue to exist when
they cannot be immediately perceived
egocentrism the inability to take another persons point of view
concrete operations a (reversible) manipulation of the mental representation
of an object that corresponds to an actual physical manipulation
conservation certain properties, such as amount or mass, remain the same
even when the appearance of the material or object changes, provided that
noting is added or removed
The imaginary audience adolescents view themselves as actors and everyone
else as the audience
o Lead them to be extremely self-conscious and easily embarrassed
Personal fable a story in which they are the star and, as the star, have
extraordinary abilities and privileges. Immune to possible consequences
drive recklessly, have unprotected sex
A mood disorder characterized by at least 2 weeks of depressed mood or loss of
interest in nearly all activities, along with sleeping or eating disturbances, loss
of energy, and feelings of hopelessness
Bipolar Disorders
o Manic episode a period of at least 1 week during which an abnormally
elevated, expansive, or irritable mood persists
o Bipolar disorders a set of mood disorders characterized either by one or
more episodes of mania, or by alternating episodes of hypomania an
depression
o Rapid cycling four or more shifts in mood in a year
Anxiety Disorders
o A category of disorders characterized by intense or pervasive anxiety or
fear, or extreme attempts to avoid the feelings
Schizophrenia
o A disorder that is characterized by symptoms of psychosis that profoundly
alter the patients affect, behavior and thoughts
Insight-Oriented Therapies
o A type of therapy in which the therapist aims to remove distressing
symptoms by leading the person to understand the psychological causes
of his symptoms through deeply felt personal insights

o Once someone truly understands the cause, the symptoms will begin to
diminish
Psychoanalysis an intensive form of therapy that is directly connected to
Freuds theory of personality and based on the idea that psychological
difficulties are caused by unconscious conflicts
Psychodynamic a less intensive form of psychoanalysis
Client-centered therapy type of insight-oriented therapy that focuses on
peoples potential for growth and the importance of an empathic therapist
Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
o Therapy designed to help patients both to reduce problematic behaviors
and irrational thoughts and to develop new, more adaptive behaviors and
beliefs
Behavior therapy base on well-researched learning principles, that focuses on
modifying observable, measureable behaviors
o Classical conditioning
o Operant conditioning
Cognitive Therapy
o Peoples thoughts, not just learning histories or unconscious conflicts,
influence their feelings and behavior
Electroconvulsive Therapy
o A treatment in which an electric current induces a controlled brain seizure