AP Psychology Vocab (IMPORTANT) Flashcards
(110 cards)
1
Q
Who sought to reverse patient’s catastrophizing beliefs using cognitive therapy?
A
Aaron Beck
2
Q
What is the absolute threshold?
A
The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.
3
Q
Define accommodation in the context of cognitive psychology.
A
Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
4
Q
What are achievement tests designed to assess?
A
What a person has learned.
5
Q
What does accommodation refer to in vision?
A
Changes in shape of the ocular lens for various focal distances.
6
Q
What is acoustic encoding?
A
The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words.
7
Q
What is acquisition in classical conditioning?
A
The initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.
8
Q
What is an action potential?
A
A neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon.
9
Q
Define active listening.
A
Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies.
10
Q
What is the adaptation-level phenomenon?
A
Our tendency to form judgments relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.
11
Q
Define addiction.
A
Compulsive drug craving and use, despite adverse consequences.
12
Q
What is adolescence?
A
The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.
13
Q
What do adrenal glands secrete?
A
Hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine) that help arouse the body in times of stress.
14
Q
Define aggression.
A
Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
15
Q
What is an algorithm?
A
A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
16
Q
What are Alpha waves?
A
The relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state.
17
Q
Define altruism.
A
Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.
18
Q
What is amnesia?
A
The loss of memory.
19
Q
What do amphetamines do?
A
Stimulate neural activity, causing speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes.
20
Q
What is the function of the amygdala?
A
Linked to emotion.
21
Q
Define anorexia nervosa.
A
An eating disorder in which a person diets and becomes significantly underweight, yet continues to starve.
22
Q
What are antianxiety drugs used for?
A
To control anxiety and agitation.
23
Q
What do antidepressant drugs treat?
A
Depression; also prescribed for anxiety.
24
Q
What are antipsychotic drugs used to treat?
A
Schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder.
25
Define Antisocial Personality Disorder.
A personality disorder where the person exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing.
26
What are Anxiety Disorders characterized by?
Distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety.
27
What is aphasia?
Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage.
28
Define applied research.
Scientific study that aims to solve practical problems.
29
What are aptitude tests designed to predict?
A person's future performance.
30
What does assimilation refer to in psychology?
Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.
31
What are association areas?
Areas of the cerebral cortex involved in higher mental functions like learning and thinking.
32
Define associative learning.
Learning that certain events occur together.
33
What is attachment in psychology?
An emotional tie with another person.
34
What is Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)?
Psychological disorder marked by extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
35
Define attitude.
Feelings that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.
36
What is attribution theory?
Theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition.
37
What is audition?
The sense or act of hearing.
38
Define autism.
A disorder marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of minds.
39
What is automatic processing?
Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.
40
What is the autonomic nervous system?
The part of the peripheral nervous system that controls the glands and the muscles of the internal organs, with sympathetic division arousing and parasympathetic division calming.
41
Define availability heuristic.
Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common.
42
What is aversive conditioning?
A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior.
43
What is an axon?
The extension of a neuron, ending in branching terminal fibers through which messages pass to other neurons or to muscles or glands.
44
What is the babbling stage?
Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.
45
Define barbiturates.
Drugs that depress the activity of the central nervous system, reducing anxiety but impairing memory and judgement.
46
What is the basal metabolic rate?
The body's resting rate of energy expenditure.
47
What is basic research?
Pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base.
48
Define basic trust according to Erik Erikson.
A sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy, formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
49
What is behavior genetics?
The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior.
50
What is behavior therapy?
Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.
51
Define behavioral medicine.
An interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease.
52
What is behavioral psychology?
The scientific study of observable behavior, and its explanation by principles of learning.
53
What is behaviorism?
The view that psychology should be an objective science that studies behavior without reference to mental processes.
54
What is belief perseverance?
Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
55
Define binge-eating disorder.
Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging, fasting, or excessive exercise that marks bulimia nervosa.
56
What are binocular cues?
Depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes.
57
Define biofeedback.
A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle psychological state.
58
What is biological psychology?
A branch of psychology that studies the links between biological processes and psychological processes.
59
What is biomedical therapy?
Prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient's nervous system.
60
What is the biopsychological approach?
An integrated approach that incorporates biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis.
61
Define Bipolar Disorder.
A mood disorder in which the person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania.
62
What is a blind spot?
The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a blind spot because no receptor cells are located there.
63
What is bottom-up processing?
Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.
64
What is the brainstem?
The oldest part and central core of the brain, responsible for automatic survival functions.
65
What is Broca's area?
An area, usually in the left frontal lobe, that controls language expression and directs the muscle movements involved in speech.
66
Define bulimia nervosa.
An eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise.
67
What is the bystander effect?
The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to help a victim when other bystanders are present.
68
What is the Cannon-Bard theory?
The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers physiological responses and the subjective experience of emotion.
69
What is a case study?
An observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles.
70
Define catharsis.
Emotional release; the catharsis hypothesis maintains that 'releasing' aggressive energy relieves aggressive urges.
71
What is the central nervous system (CNS)?
The brain and spinal cord.
72
What is the central route of persuasion?
Attitude change in which interested people focus on the actual argument and respond with favorable thoughts.
73
What is the cerebellum?
The 'little brain' at the rear of the brainstem; functions include processing sensory input and coordinating movement output and balance.
74
What is the cerebral cortex?
The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells covering the cerebral hemispheres; the body's ultimate control and information-processing center.
75
What is change blindness?
The tendency to fail to detect changes in any part of a scene to which we are not focusing our attention.
76
Define chromosomes.
Threadlike structures made of DNA molecules that contain the genes.
77
What is chunking?
Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.
78
What is a Circadian rhythm?
The biological clock; regular bodily rhythms that occur on a 24-hour cycle.
79
Define classical conditioning.
A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events.
80
What is client centered therapy?
A humanistic therapy developed by Carl Rogers, using techniques such as active listening in an empathic environment to facilitate growth.
81
What does clinical psychology study?
It studies, assesses, and treats people with psychological disorders.
82
What is the cochlea?
The fluid-filled, coiled tunnel in the inner ear that contains the receptors for hearing.
83
What is a cochlear implant?
A device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve.
84
Define cognition.
The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
85
What is cognitive behavioral therapy?
An integrative therapy that combines cognitive therapy with behavior therapy.
86
What does cognitive dissonance theory explain?
We act to reduce discomfort when two thoughts are inconsistent; we change our attitudes rather than behaviors.
87
Define a cognitive map.
A mental representation of the layout of one's environment.
88
What is cognitive neuroscience?
The interdisciplinary study of brain activity linked with cognition, including perception, thinking, memory, and language.
89
Define cognitive psychology.
The scientific study of all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
90
What is cognitive therapy?
Therapy that teaches new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and emotions.
91
What is the collective unconscious?
Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history.
92
Define collectivism.
Giving priority to the goals of one's group and defining one's identity accordingly.
93
What is color constancy?
Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color despite changes in illumination.
94
What is companionate love?
The deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.
95
Define concept.
A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
96
What is the concrete operational stage in Piaget's theory?
The stage of cognitive development from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age, where children gain the ability to think logically about concrete events.
97
What is a conditioned reinforcer?
A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer.
98
Define conditioned response.
The learned response to a previously neutral stimulus in classical conditioning.
99
What is a conditioned stimulus?
An originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, triggers a conditioned response.
100
What is conduction hearing loss?
Hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.
101
Define cones in the context of vision.
Retinal receptor cells concentrated near the center of the retina that function in daylight, detecting fine detail and color sensations.
102
What is confirmation bias?
A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and ignore contradictory evidence.
103
Define conflict in psychology.
A perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas.
104
What is conformity?
Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
105
What is a confounding variable?
A factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment.
106
Define consciousness.
Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.
107
What is conservation in Piaget's theory?
The principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.
108
What is content validity?
The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.
109
What is continuous reinforcement?
Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.
110
What is a control group in an experiment?
The group that is not exposed to the treatment; contrasts with the experimental group.
