Psychology Exam Chapters 1-5

Psychology 830 with Ingate at Rutgers University - New Brunswick/Piscataway

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By: Monnish Choudhary
Created: 2010-10-07
Size: 80 flashcards
Views: 362

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Cerebellum

Part of the brain, near the back of the head, important for motor coordination

Central Nervous System

Consists of the spinal cord and brain

Case Studies

Study focusing on one person
Disadvantage due to researcher bias and can't confidently generalize to other situations from the study of one person

Brain Stem (Medulla)

Part of the brain closest to the spinal cord that serves basic functions

Pons

Part of the brain anterior to the brainstem that includes the locus coeruleus

Reticular Activating System

A brain system important for sleep and wakefulness

Amygdala

Brain area involved in processing info about emotions, particularly fear
located in the temporal lobe

Substantia Nigra

Brain region important in fluidity of movement and inhibiting movements
Produces a neurotransmitter called dopamine

Sympathetic Nervous System

The division of the autonomic nervous system activated under conditions of stress
"fight or flight" reaction

Parasympathetic Nervous System

The division of the autonomic nervous system active during restful times

Teratogens

Environmental risks to a fetus's development during gestation

Thalamus

An area of the brain that serves as a relay station for incoming sensory information
in front of the substantia nigra

2 Major Components

Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

relay info about visual stimuli

Medial Geniculate Nucleus

relay info about auditory stimuli

Vygotsky

Interested in how social interactions w/parents might drive the development of children
Believed constructive interactions w/parents, and others help the child develop ways of thinking about functioning
Believed in Scaffolding and language is crucial to cognitive development
Labeled the Zone of Proximal Development
Believed in Private Speech

Scaffolding

Developmental adjustments that adults make to give children the help that they need, but not so much that they fail to move forward

Zone of Proximal Development

The gap between what a child could accomplish alone and what the child can accomplish with help from others

Private Speech

A child's self-talk, which Vygotsky believed the child uses to regulate behavior and internal experiences

Wundt

Believed experimental methods of other sciences were the best way to study the mind and behavior
Clock & Pendulum experiment = famous
Studied content & processes of consciousness
interested in idea of will & how it influences choices
Voluntarism - Branch of investigation
Said social context of someone must be taken into account in order to fully explain behavior

Consciousness

Personal awareness of ongoing mental processes, behaviors, & environmental events

Voluntarism

Belief that much of behavior is motivated and that attention is focused for an explicit purpose

Clock-Pendulum Experiment

William Wundt performed it
when finding exact point of pendulum at a specific time => always 1/10 off a second
Believed humans had a limited attention capacity & it required 1/10 of a second to shift focus

Clinical Psychologist

Provide psychotherapy - involves helping people to modify thoughts, feelings, & behaviors that are causing them distress or inhibiting their functioning
administer psychological tests to provide further info relevant to treatment
earn a Ph.D - requires training in therapeutic practices and in the conduct and interpretation of research

Corpus Callosum

bundle of axons that allows communication from one side of neocortex to the other
connects two relatively equal halves of the brain

Correlation Coefficients

Statistic expressing the strength and nature of a relationship between two variables

Frontal Cortex

lobe of the neocortex involved in many functions including movement and speech production
contains the Broca's area

Prefrontal cortex

portion of the frontal cortex involved in higher-order thinking, such as memory, moral reasoning, and planning

Parietal Cortex

lobe of the neocortex involved in processing information related to touch and complex visual information, particularly about locations
contains the somatosensory strip
contains a system known as the "where pathway" that enables us to see and respond to visual information in a spatially appropriate way

Somatosensory Strip

an area of the parietal cortex that processes tactile information coming from our body parts

Temporal Cortex

part of the neocortex important in processing sounds, in speech comprehension, and in recognizing complex visual stimuli, such as faces
wraps around the hippocampus and amygdala
contains the Wernicke's area
plays important role in learning and memory as well as in recognition of objects via visual cues

Occipital Cortex

lobe of the neocortex at the back of the skull, important for processing very visual information
located in the back of the skull
integrate information about color, complex patterns, and motion
well developed in humans

Motor Cortex

stimulation of different parts of the primary motor strip invokes movement in specific groups of muscles
coordinates the use of these muscles in complex movements

Broca's Area

brain region located in the frontal lobe that's important for speech production
if damaged, hard to generate speech, despite normal language comprehension

Wernicke's Area

an area of the temporal cortex important in helping us understand language
recognizes appropriate language and the production of speech

Double-Blind Design

Study in which neither the participant nor the researcher knows what treatment or procedure the participant is receiving
help researchers from observing or creating what they want to observe and participants from intentionally acting in ways that confirm a researcher's hypothesis

Evolutionary Psychology

Field of study believing that the body and brain are products of evolution and the genetic inheritance plays an important role in shaping the complete range of thoughts and behaviors

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Pattern that can include mental retardation, hyperactivity, head and face deformities, heart defects, and slow growth

Freud - Psychoanalytic approach

believed that many of our thoughts and feelings exist beyond the realm of awareness, in the unconscious
saw mental life as a competition among forces that strive to reach the upper levels of awareness
Psychological theory that human mental processes are influenced by the competition between unconscious forces to come into awareness

An approach to defining intelligence that attempts to measure intelligence with carefully constructed psychological tests

Hippocampus

brain region important for certain types of learning and memory
damage to the hippocampus - incapable of forming new episodic memories
important for learning about one's spatial environment
organized in regions and layers
major site of plasticity

Humanism

focussed on the potential of individuals and highlighted each person's subjectivity, consciousness, free will, and other special human qualities
believed that behaviorism was too limited to the objective realm and the psychoanalysis failed to acknowledge the free will and autonomy of individuals
triggered an increased interest in mental process

Carl Rogers

rejected approach of behaviorists
developed a humanistic alternative called client-centered therapy

Abraham Maslow

rejected approach of behaviorists
proposed that each of us has a basic, broad motive to fulfill our special potential as human beings - self-actualization
Maslow's hierarchy of needs: Self-actualization, esteem, belonging and love, safety, physiological

Client-Centered Therapy

approach to therapy based on the notion that the client is an equal and positive gains are made by mirroring clients' thoughts and feelings in an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard

Hypothalamus

brain structure important for motivation and control of the endocrine (hormonal) system
collection of nuclei sits beneath the thalamus

Hypothesis

a general statement about the way variables relate that is objectively falsifiable

Kohlberg

developed a method to evaluate the moral reasoning processes of children
theory of how children come to their decisions about what is right and wrong
created Theory of Moral Development

Stages of Moral Development

Drug Example
Pre-conventional: Morality centers on what you can get away with

ex. to steal: he can get away with it/ not to: Jail

Conventional: Morality centers on avoiding others' disapproval and obeying society's rules

ex. to steal: If he doesn't will people think poorly of him/ not to: Will people think he's a criminal

Post-conventional: Morality is determined by abstract ethical principles

ex. to steal: sometimes it is right to break the law/ not to: won't live up to own standards

Myelin Sheath

a fatty, white substance, formed from glial cells, that insulates the axons of many neurons

Neuron

nerve cell
fundamental unit of the nervous system
communication among neurons is necessary for normal functioning of the brain and spinal cord
contain organelles that enable the cell to make proteins and other molecules, produce energy
have dendrites and axons

Dendrites

the parts of neurons that collect input from other neurons
collect inputs from other neurons to cell body

Axon

the part of the neuron that carries information away from the cell body toward other neurons
have a region called the axon terminal

Axon Terminal

the end of a neuron's axon, from which neurotransmitters are released

Operations

Piagetian description of a child's ability to hold an idea in his or her mind and mentally manipulate it

Parkinson's Disease

neurological condition that involves the death of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra
can be treated with drugs that replace the dopamine that is lost but is temporary

Perception

recognition and identification of a sensory stimulus

Bottom-Up

perception that proceeds by transducing environmental stimuli into neural impulses that move onto successively more complex brain regions

ex. eyes converting light to recognize your grandmother's face

Top-Down

perception processes led by cognitive processes, such as memory or expectations

ex. when looking at your grandmother's face, recognizing the specific visual stimuli

Phineas Gage

experienced severe brain damage with a metal railroad spike penetrated his frontal lobes during an explosion
recovered physically; however, personality was never the same
became hot- tempered and prone to outbursts of anger
proved that prefrontal cortex was important for personality

Place Theory

holds that differences in sound frequency activate different regions on the basilar membrane
regions along the basilar membrane send inputs to the brain that are encoded according to the place along the membrane where the inputs originated

Frequency Theory

suggests that different sound frequencies are converted into different rates of action potentials or firing in our auditory nerves
high-frequency sounds produce a more rapid firing than do low-frequency sounds

Piaget's Pre-operational Stage

children move into this stage and become able to hold memories, or representations, of objects in their imaginations and to work with them as ideas
children still think rather simplistic ways about the relationships between those concepts and objects

Piaget's Concrete Operations

children demonstrate the ability to think about ideas
start to talk authoritatively about complex relationships => cause & effect
they can reverse other perspectives
have difficult with abstract mathematical relationships and hypothetical questions

Piaget's Formal Operations

around age 12
ability to think about ideas conceptually without needing concrete referents from the real world

Sensorimotor

first stage of cognitive development
babies can think by using senses and motor skills - no thought beyond immediate experience

Object Permanence

around 8 months, during the sensorimotor stage
the realization that objects continue to exist even when they are out of a baby's immediate sensory awareness

Accommodation

the alteration of pre-existing mental frameworks to take in new information

Assimilation

the inclusion of new information or experiences into pre-existing schemata

Zygote

single cell resulting from successful fertilization of the egg

Random Sampling

identifying a sample in such a way that everyone in the population of interest has an equal chance of being involved in the study

Retina

a specialized sheet of nerve cells in the back of the eye containing the sensory receptors for vision

Rods

photoreceptors most responsive to levels of light and dark
rods are more than cones

Cones

photoreceptors responsive to colors
respond to light of different wavelengths

Ganglion Cells

axons of these cells are bundled together to form the optic nerve

Fovea

center of the retina, containing only cones
vision is the clearest here

Sensory Receptors

specialized cells that convert a specific form of environmental stimuli into neural impulses

Mary Ainsworth

student of Bowlby
supported idea that mother attachment is universal
highly sensitive mothers formed stronger attachments
used procedure Strange Situation

Categories of Attachment

Secure - infant uses mom as secure base - mother leaves - infant moderately distressed and happy when returns
Anxious/Avoidant - infant is unresponsive with mother and doesn't care when she leaves the room and when she returns
Anxious/Ambivalent - reacts strongly when mom leaves - seeking close contact and then squirming away angrily when return
Disorganized/Disoriented - confused when mom returns - ex. ignoring mom crying out

Behaviorism

branch of psychological thought arguing that psychology should study only directly observable behaviors rather than abstract mental processes

Pavlov

discovered conditioning linked various animal behaviors to events in the animals' environments

Thorndike

a functionalist who helped transition the field of psychology toward behaviorism
proposed that animal findings could help explain human behavior

Watson

pioneered the school of behaviorism
agreed with Thorndike
disagreed with psychoanalysis and disagreed the notion of unobservable mental processes

B.F. Skinner

leading behaviorist after WWII
helped expand behaviorism's perspective by acknowledging the internal, mental processes may indeed be at work in some situations
argued that empirical, observable, information should be gathered first and then theories about causation could be made

About this deck

By: Monnish Choudhary
Created: 2010-10-07
Size: 80 flashcards
Views: 362

About StudyBlue

“I have used this website for three exams, and I see a huge difference in my test results.”
Naj