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CH 1 - History, Approaches, and Methods. / Although earlier philosophers made important contributions, ____ is known to have believed in more than the souls or mind of the person, and interested in the function of the human body as an integral part of ps
Rene DesCartes. DesCartes was a French philosopher (1596-1650) who envisioned an elaborate mechanical scheme for mind/body operations.
DesCartes suggested that the human _____ operates according to laws that are knowable, but are different from those that affect the body.
Mind. DesCartes proposed that the mind and body interact, although their processes are completely different from each other.
DesCartes saw the mind and body as different, but they interact with each other, which is a concept known as interactive __________.
Dualism. This is a belief in the understanding of the inner workings of the mind, and how it works with the body.
__________ (1632-1704) was an Englishman who brought philosophy to the threshold of psychology.
John Locke. Locke was an English philosopher, founder of British empiricism. Locke summed up the Enlightenment in his belief in the middle class and its right to freedom of conscience and right to property, in his faith in science, and in his confidence in the goodness of humanity.
British __________ focused on the content of the mind and claimed that it is acquired through experience.
Empiricism. Locke and other empiricists believed that we are each born into this world with our minds empty, essentially like blank slates.
______________, 1832-1920, German physiologist and psychologist.
Wilhelm Wundt. From 1875 he taught at Leipzig, where he founded the first laboratory for experimental psychology. Wundt stressed the use of scientific methods in psychology, particularly through the use of introspection.
_____________ was a theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material things in themselves.
Structuralism. This method found wide use from the early 20th century in a variety of fields, and is notably based upon the developments by Wilhelm Wundt’s psychology (advanced by Englishman Edward Titchener) of the structure of the mind.
Titchener was responsible for the refinement of __________.
Introspection. This is a method for studying consciousness first used in Wundt’s laboratory. Introspection literally means to look within.
_______________ was an American philosopher at Harvard University who first opened the formal study of psychology within the classroom.
William James. Although James performed research and demonstration within the classroom, he never truly founded a formal school of psychology, and preferred to be known as a philosopher, and not a psychologist.
________________ was a new type of psychology that was largely American. It was well-established by the 1920’s, and was most popular at the University of Chicago.
Functionalism. A theory stressing the importance of interdependence among all behavior patterns and institutions within a social system to its long-term survival.
Structuralism involves the use of a technique called ____________.
Introspection. Introspection is the process of examining what is happening in one's mind and what one is thinking and feeling.
_____________ psychology developed from German psychologist, Max Wertheimer. It was a departure from the general intellectual climate, which emphasized a scientific approach characterized by a detachment from basic human concerns.
Gestalt. A school of psychology that interprets phenomena as organized wholes rather than as aggregates of distinct parts, maintaining that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
__________________ is a school of psychology which seeks to explain animal and human behavior entirely in terms of observable and measurable responses to environmental stimuli.
Behaviorism. Behaviorism was introduced (1913) by the American psychologist John B. Watson, who insisted that behavior is a physiological reaction to environmental stimuli. He rejected the exploration of mental processes as unscientific.
__________ epitomized the behaviorist approach more than any other psychologist.
B.F. Skinner. Skinner was the leading exponent of the school of psychology known as behaviorism, which explains the behavior of humans and other animals in terms of the physiological responses of the organism to external stimuli. Like other behaviorists, he rejected unobservable phenomena of the sort that other forms of psychology, particularly psychoanalysis, had studied, concerning him only with patterns of responses to rewards and stimuli.
___________ is a type of psychology that was in many ways a reaction to behaviorism.
Humanism. Humanism’s leader was Carl Rogers (1902-1987). Humanistic psychologists believe that the individual or self should be the central concern of psychology. It is their argument that we need to get the "person" back into psychology.
_____________ is the tendency of the human body to maintain internal equilibrium, or balance, by adjusting its physiological processes.
Homeostasis.
Another shift away from Behaviorism was the emergence of __________ psychology.
Cognitive. Cognitive psychology is a school of psychology that examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language.
______________ (1822-1911) was a first cousin of Charles Darwin, and was greatly influenced by him.
Sir Francis Galton. Galton was intrigued by the theory of evolution and by the possibilities of improving the human race. He reasoned that before one could improve the human condition, one first needed to measure and catalog the range of human abilities and aptitudes as they exist at the moment. Hew devised countless tests and measurements of individual differences.
_________________ (1857-1911), was a French psychologist. From 1894 he was director of the psychology laboratory at the Sorbonne. He is known for his research and innovation in testing human intelligence.
Alfred Binet. Binet, along with Théodore Simon, devised a series of tests that, with revisions, came into wide use in schools, industries, and the army.
____________________ was the name of this psychological approach given by Sigmund Freud to a system of interpretation and therapeutic treatment of psychological disorders.
Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis began after Freud studied (1885-86) with the French neurologist J. M. Charcot in Paris and became convinced that hysteria was caused not by organic symptoms in the nervous system but by emotional disturbance.
Sensory __________ occurs when you are exposed to a stimulus that doesn’t change over a period of time—i.e. when someone in the same room has a strong scent of perfume, you will smell it strongly at first, but eventually you will not be able to smell
Adaptation. Sensory adaptation occurs with other senses as well. For example, a loud noise in the background will eventually become less irritating as you adapt to it.
__________________ was the father of psychoanalysis.
Sigmund Freud. Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian psychiatrist, founder of psychoanalysis.
___________________ psychology is concerned with the physical and psychological development of the individual from conception through death.
Developmental. Though many developmental psychologists focus only on the growth and development of children, others focus on adolescence, adulthood, old age, or a broader life span approach. A developmental psychologist searches for biological and environmental influences on patterns of growth and development.
__________ involves the development of psychological tests and the statistical interpretation of data.
Psychometrics.
_______________ Psychology is the branch of psychology that uses experimental methods to discover principles of behavior, such as those underlying sensation and perception, learning and memory, motivation and emotion.
Experimental. This is a very general term that can be applied to any approach to the study of psychological issues that uses experimental or scientific procedures. Once the term was limited to "laboratory" psychology.
_________________ methods in psychology are designed primarily to help us discover relationships between responses.
Observational. These relationships that observational psychology observes may be behavioral or mental, and are called R-R relationships. They do not explain cause and effect, but such relationships can provide predictions about repetitive patterns in mood and behavior.
A trick one uses to help memorize something is known as a __________ device.
Mnemonic. Mnemonic devices can be acronyms, rhymes, or any other trick you use to remember something. Common mnemonic devices are ROY G BIV (for the colors of the rainbow), "30 Days has September, April, June, and November..." for the number of days per month, and "In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
The methodological approach called _________________ observation involves carefully watching behaviors.
Naturalistic. This is the observation of natural processes of the subject, or person, being observed without any outside response or influence by the observer.
Observer ______ occurs when an observer allows their own motives and expectations to interfere with the objectivity of their observations.
Bias. One solution to this problem may be to have observers note behaviors as they occur without full knowledge of the particular relationships they are looking for.
______________ methods involve a set of operations used to investigate relationships between manipulated events and measured events, while other events are controlled.
Experimental. Experiments also involve making observations, and involve the control and manipulation of events.
The conditions that the experimenter manipulates are called ____________ variables.
Independent. The hope of the experimenter is that the manipulation of the independent variable will produce consistent, predictable changes in the dependent variable.
Extraneous variables are usually referred to as "__________ variables" by psychologists.
Control. They are referred to as "control" because they are the very factors that need to be controlled.
Clinical psychology includes those psychologists whose concern is with the psychological well-being of the ________________.
Individual. The training and experience of clinicians provide them with the means to diagnose and treat individuals with psychological disorders.
The _____________ method in psychology is utilized as a statistical procedure that can tell us if observations are related to each other.
Correlational. Saying that there is a correlation between two observations simply is another way of saying the two observations are related to each other.
In most sciences, ____________ concerns center on the application of knowledge.
Ethical. Psychology has a unique problem in that ethical issues often involve the accumulation of knowledge. After all, the objects of study in psychology are living organisms. Their physical and psychological welfare must be protected.
_______________ is the scientific study of behavior and mental process.
Psychology. Psychology is the science or study of the thought processes and behavior of humans and other animals in their interaction with the environment. Psychologists study processes of sense perception, thinking, learning, cognition, emotions and motivations, personality, abnormal behavior, interactions between individuals, and interactions with the environment.
_____________ is the sensing, perceiving, knowing, judging, and problem-solving skills involved in the processing of information about the world in which we live.
Cognition. Cognitions are mental events that include our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.
CH 2 -Biological Bases of Behavior /
____________ are individual nerve cells.
Neurons. They are unimaginably small, and are considered the building blocks of the nervous system. They exist throughout the nervous system in the billions.The three important things to notice are the dendrites, the axon, and the presynaptic terminals at the tips of the axon.
One structure that all neurons have is a ______.
Cell Body. The cell body is the largest concentration of mass of the cell. It contains the nucleus of the cell, which, in turn, contains the genetic information that keeps the cell functioning.
Extending away from the cell body are a number of tentacle-like structures called ____________.
Dendrites. The dendrite extensions reach out to receive messages from other nearby neurons and send them towards the cell body.
The __________ gland's main function is regulating the body's metabolism.
Thyroid. The thyroid gland regulates metabolism.
_______ is a white, fatty substance that is found on about half the neurons in an adult’s nervous system.
Myelin. It is the presence or absence of myelin that allows us to tell the difference between gray matter (cell bodies) and white matter.
Once receptor cells have become activated, impulses are relayed by ____________ neurons toward the brain or spinal cord.
Sensory neurons.
The neurons that carry impulses away from the brain or spinal cord toward our muscles and glands are called __________ neurons.
Motor neurons.
Those nerve cells that transmit impulses from one part of the brain or spinal cord to another are called _____________.
Interneurons. Therefore, it’s a matter of toward the brain or spinal cord on sensory neurons, within on interneurons, or away on motor neurons.
The function of a neuron is to transmit _________ ________ from one place in the nervous system to another.
Neural impulses.
The development of new ________ treatments has played a big role in reducing the number of patients who have to be placed in institutions for the mentally ill.
Drug. Formerly hospitalized mental patients are now treated with psychoactive drugs and other therapies in their homes and communities.
Neurons do not necessarily fire every time they are stimulated. Each neuron has a level of stimulation that must be surpassed in order to get it to transmit an impulse. The minimum level of stimulation required to get a neuron to fire is called the neura
Threshold.
In ________'s developmental theory, Eros represents the life instinct sourcing from the libido, and Thanatos represents the death instinct.
Freud. Freud's theory consisted of Eros and Thanatos as opposing instincts.
Individual neurons do not accomplish much by themselves. Neural impulses must be transmitted from neuron to neuron. This transmission takes place at the _________.
Synapse. The synapse is the point of connection between two neurons or a neuron and a muscle or gland. Here is a close-up of two neurons close to each other:
At the very end of the axon are a large number of axon terminals. These terminals contain small packets of chemical molecules. These packets are called __________.
Vesicles. When a neural impulse reaches the axon terminal, some of the vesicles release the chemical molecules they are holding.
Chemicals released by vesicles when a neural impulse reaches the axon terminal are called ___________.
Neurotransmitters. Once released from their vesicles, they flood out in the space between the axon of one neuron and the dendrite of the next neuron.
The principle of __________ predicts that we will perceive objects that are close together as a group.
Proximity. For example, given 'p e for m', you would see p, e, and m as distinct units, and for as one unit.
At the synapse, neurotransmitters pass through the membrane of the _______.
Axon. And then they cross the synaptic cleft, and slip into the spaces of the membrane of the next neuron. The message is passed along by the neurotransmitters from one neuron pass to the next neuron, activating it and causing it to pass on the message:
The first major division of the nervous system is determined largely on the basis of anatomy. The ___________ Nervous System includes all of the neurons and nerve fibers found in the spinal cord and the brain.
Central. In many ways, this system of nerves is the most important, complex, and the most intimately involved in the control of our behaviors and mental processes.
The _______________ Nervous System is divided into two parts, based largely on the part of the body being served.
Peripheral.
___________ psychology focuses on the totality of a perception--the understanding of conscious experience does not rely on breaking the experience into components.
Gestalt. Gestalt psychology focuses on the sum of the parts, not the individual parts themselves. Max Wertheimer is a big name associated with Gestalt psychology.
The _______________ Nervous System includes those neurons outside the CNS that serve the skeletal muscles and that pick up impulses from the major receptors-the eyes, the ears, and so forth.
Somatic. The Somatic, also known as the Sensory-Somatic Nervous System, is one of the two parts of the Peripheral Nervous System. The other part is known as the Autonomic Nervous System.
The other of two main components of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) is the ________________ nervous system.
Autonomic. This implies that the activity of the ANS is in a large measure independent of CNS (Central Nervous System) control.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is made up of two parts, the _______________ division and the parasympathetic division.
Sympathetic. The two divisions of the ANS commonly work in opposition to each other. That means the sympathetic becomes active when a person is in a state of emotional excitement, and the parasympathetic is activated when the body is relaxed and quiet.
Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) is used to measure of a subject’s level of __________.
Anxiety. GSR is a measure of activity in the autonomic nervous system, and is used to measure anxiety.
The __________ system is affected by the central nervous system, and can, in turn, affect nervous system activity, yet is not itself a system of nerves.
Endocrine. The endocrine system is an interconnected network of glands that affect behavior through the secretion of hormones into the bloodstream.
The endocrine system’s glands and __________ are controlled by both the brain and the autonomic nervous system.
Hormones. Hormones are a variety of chemical compounds, which are secreted by the endocrine glands, and carried through the bloodstream.
The _________ ______ is a massive collection of neurons within the spine that looks rather like a section of rope or a thick cord.
Spinal cord. The spinal cord is surrounded and protected by the hard bone and cartilage of the vertebrae.
The spinal cord has two major functions; the first is to rapidly transmit neural impulses to the __________.
Brain. Whenever sensory messages originate below the neck and go to the brain, they do so through the spinal cord.
The second major function of the spinal cord is its involvement in the spinal ____________.
Reflexes. These are very simple automatic behaviors that occur without the conscious, voluntary actions of the brain.
The most important of our endocrine glands is the ___________ gland.
Pituitary. It is often referred to as the master gland, reflecting the fact that it directly controls the activity of many other glands in the system. The pituitary is nestled just under the brain. Another reason this gland is so important is the massive amounts and varieties of hormones that it secretes.
A ___________ reinforcer is a substance or situation that is universally rewarding or punishing.
Primary. A primary reinforcer is something like food, or shelter. In any society or situation, it could be considered a reward. On the other hand, things like getting a letter grade of 'A,' or getting a pat on the back, are secondary reinforcers—they have acquired reward or punishment value, but are not universal.
The _______ is an endocrine gland located in the neck. It produces a hormone called thyroxin.
Thyroid. Thyroxin regulates the pace of the body’s functioning-the rate at which oxygen is used and the rate of body function and growth.
The __________ glands, located on the kidneys, secrete a variety of hormones into the bloodstream.
Adrenal. The hormone adrenalin is very useful in times of stress or threat, and its effects are felt throughout the body.
One of the most significant advances in technology that has aided the study of the brain was the development of the ____________ for stimulating and/or recording the activity of individual cells.
Electrodes. Electrodes are very fine wires that can be eased into certain areas of the brain, and once in position, the electrode can be used to deliver a mild electric current to stimulate the brain.
There is no abrupt line separating the two components of the CNS (Central Nervous System). Just above the spinal cord, at the very base of the brain, there are two important structures that together form what is called the _________ ______.
Brain stem. The brain and the spinal cord are the two components of the Central Nervous System. They are separated by the brain stem, which is made up of the medulla, and nuclei.
According to research done in bystander intervention, you are more likely to go to someone's aid if that person is ________.
Alone. If a person is standing on the street and needs help, you are more likely to come to his aid if he is alone. Two big possible reasons to explain this: 1> a reluctance to act in front of others 2> the larger the group of people, the smaller the responsibility you feel to take action.
The very lowest structure in the brain stem is the _______.
Medulla. The medulla acts like the spinal cord in that its major functions involve involuntary reflexes. Involuntary reflexes are reflexes that you do not have to consciously think about for them to happen.
There are all sorts of important little structures in the brain stem called ________.
Nuclei. Nuclei are collections of neural cell bodies. These nuclei control such functions as reflexive eye and tongue movements.
CH 3 - Sensation and Perception / ______is the study of the relationships between the physical attributes of stimuli and the psychological experiences that they produce. It is the oldest subfield in psychology.
Psychophysics. The two attempts of psychophysics: to assess sensitivity of one’s senses and on a theoretical level provides a means relating to the physical outside world to that of the inner psychological world.
The absolute ________ is the physical intensity of a stimulus that a subject reports detecting 50 percent of the time, and the intensities above the threshold are detected more than 50 percent of the time.
Threshold. This sort of result occurs for all senses, and the results would have the same general result with the testing of sound, smell, touch or taste.
_________ ____________ theory takes the position that stimulus detection involves a decision-making process of separating a signal from background noise.
Signal detection. This occurs when one needs to judge whether or not a stimulus has been presented. That judgment is made in the context of a shifting background noise created by other stimuli in the environment and by one’s own nervous system activity.
______ came up with the Hierarchy of Needs. Needs towards the bottom of the hierarchy must be fulfilled before needs towards the top become a motivator.
Maslow. Abraham Maslow is known for his hierarchy of needs. At the bottom are the basic physiological needs, such as food and water. We may lack many things in life, but if we lack food, we will probably choose to eat before doing anything else--like work or study.
____________ is the psychological experience of intensity of light.
Brightness. The difference between a dim light and a bright light is due to the difference in wave amplitude.
Pure light is called ___________ because it is made up of light waves of all one length or hue.
Monochromatic.
_______________ is the sense of smell.
Olfaction.
______________ is the sense of taste.
Gustation. There are four basic sensations of taste: sweet, salt, sour and bitter. All the other flavors are odors produced as food is crushed by the teeth.
The ________________ system is designed to detect the position and motion (or acceleration) of the head in space. As a sensory system we are hardly aware of it.
Vestibular. It does not enter consciousness as does vision, audition (hearing), somesthesis (touch), olfaction (smell) and taste. Even though we are not usually aware of the sensations produced by the vestibular apparatus, the normal functioning of it is essential for motor coordination, eye movements and posture.
Maximum _____________ development takes place between the ages of three and a half and seven years of age.
Perceptual. A child perceives differently from an adult, and although utilizing the same sense of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, they possess different approaches to processing the information.
General Adaptation Syndrome consists of a series of reactions a person’s body progresses through in response to stress. There are three stages: alarm reaction, resistance, and finally ____________.
Exhaustion. Exhaustion is the final stage of General Adaptation Syndrome. Exhaustion occurs if the first two stages fail to reduce the stress.
Piaget’s Theory of _____________ Development discusses the development of schemas.
Cognitive. This is the approach children take to organizing the world into an interrelated network of schemas by which they can categorize and identify people and things for recognition and further understanding.
_____________ are organized mental representations of the world.
Schemas. Schemas assist children, and others, to categorize information and develop subgroups for linking past knowledge with that learned in the future for the process of distinction.
_________________ involves changing and revising existing schemas in the face of new experiences or new information.
Accommodation. Piaget proposed that children assimilate new ideas into existing schemas and modify or accommodate the old ones by which they progress through the four identifiable stages of development.
The four stages of cognitive development include the __________ stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operations stage, and the formal operations stage.
Sensorimotor.
In the ____________ stage, children discover by sensing and by doing.
Sensorimotor. This stage includes causality, by which each child gradually comes to know that some events have knowable causes and that some behaviors cause predictable reactions.
By the end of the sensorimotor experience, children have established that although physical objects may not be present, they still exist, and will at times await their reappearance. This awareness is called __________ permanence.
Object. For example, before a child develops object permanence, if you hide a toy under a blanket, it will no longer exist to the child.
The _____________ stage is a time where the child’s thinking is self-centered.
Preoperational. It is during this stage that the child comes to understand that he/she is an independent and separate person in the world.
In the __________ operational stage, children begin to develop many concepts and show that they can manipulate those concepts.
Concrete. It is in this period that we may say that rule-governed behavior begins. The concrete, observable objects of the child’s world can be classified, ranked, ordered, or separated into one or more category.
Behaviorism emerged as a reaction against functionalism, and states that psychology should focus only on ___________ behavior.
Observable. Behaviorists believe that psychology should primarily study only observable behavior.
______________ involves the cognitive awareness that changing the form or the appearance of something does not necessarily change what it is.
Conservation. With an ability to solve concrete observational problems, a marker is reached that signals the beginning of the concrete operational stage.
The logical manipulation of abstract, symbolic concepts does not appear until the last of Piaget’s stages- __________ operations.
Formal. The key to this stage, usually begun at adolescence, is abstract, symbolic reasoning.
Light first enters the eye through the _______.
Cornea. The cornea is the tough, round, virtually transparent outer shell of the eye.
Having passed through the cornea, light then travels through the pupil, which is an opening in the _________.
Iris. The iris is the part of the eye which is pigmented or colored.
The "Visual Cliff" experiment showed that infants are capable of depth perception at an age as early as _____ months.
Six. Depth perception seems to develop earlier than that, but it is definitely well-developed by six months of age. In the Visual Cliff experiment, a glass table-top was laid across a checkerboard-covered floor with a shallow side and a deep side. The infant refused to crawl across the glass table-top over what it perceived as a cliff, even though it could feel through its hands that the surface was level.
____________ is the frequency and wavelength, involves mind and sense organ.
Audition. Audition, essentially, is the act of hearing.
_________ amplitude depicts intensity or the force with which air strikes the ear.
Wave. The physical intensity of a sound determines our psychological experience known as loudness.
Loudness is a psychological characteristic which is measured by people, not instruments. The __________ scale of sound intensity has been constructed so that it reflects perceived loudness in humans.
Decibel.
The wave __________ is a measure of the number of times a wave repeats itself within a given period of time, usually one second.
Frequency. For sound, frequency is measured in terms of how many waves of pressure are exerted every minute.
_______________ can be defined as the awareness, or perception, of the environment and of one’s own mental processes.
Consciousness. Consciousness is a state of mind, as well as a state of awareness. Normal, waking, or immediate consciousness is the awareness of those thoughts, ideas, feelings, and perceptions that are active in one’s mind.
__________ alters the consciousness of people by gradually reducing alertness, awareness, and perception of events occurring around us.
Sleep. Sleep is a very normal process, but is still not understood well. It is indicated that people are not even aware of their sleeping.
____________ is the chronic inability to sleep.
Insomnia.
The _____________ sense allows us to locate parts of our bodies without having to see them.
Kinesthetic. The Kinesthesis system consists of sensory receptors that signal the position and movement of the parts of the body.
Sleep ____________ are brief, but high amplitude bursts of electrical energy/activity that occur with regularity.
Spindles. This occurs when a person is falling asleep, but is still easily awakened.
_______ was discovered in the early 1950’s by Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky.
REM (Rapid Eye Movement). They noticed that as their subjects slept and began their second sleep cycle, their eyes darted back and forth under their closed eyelids. The most noteworthy aspect of their discovery is that when sleeping subjects are awakened during REM sleep, they report they are having significantly fewer dreams, and those they had were fragmented.
_____________ is an altered state of consciousness that one enters voluntarily.
Hypnosis. It is characterized by a marked increase in suggestibility, a focusing of attention, an exaggerated use of imagination, an inability or unwillingness to act on one’s own, and an unquestioning acceptance of the distortion of reality.
______________ is a self-induced state of altered consciousness characterized by an extreme focusing of attention and relaxation.
Meditation. Meditation is usually associated with ancient or Eastern cultures and has been practiced for many centuries.
A major criticism of Freud’s _____________ perspective is that it is extremely difficult to test in the laboratory, making it a theory that no one can prove or disprove.
Psychoanalytic. Freud is known for coming up with psychoanalysis, which emphasizes the existence and influence of the unconscious mind.
Chemicals that alter the consciousness of a person by inducing changes in perception, mood, and/or behavior are known as ______________ drugs.
Psychoactive. They are called this because of their effect on basic psychological processes.
____________ is a state of consciousness in which an individual’s attention is highly focused, and the individual is more suggestible and willingly and uncritically accepts many illogical situations.
Hypnosis. Hypnosis is defined differently by different psychologists. However, there are three basic characteristics—highly focused attention, suggestibility and a willingness to do what the hypnotist tells him or her to do, and a willingness to accept illogical situations (i.e. petting an imaginary rabbit).
Chemical _________ stimulate, or activate, the nervous system.
Stimulants. They are known to produce a heightened sense of arousal, an increase in activity, and the elevation of one’s mood.
________________ are the opposite of stimulants.
Depressants. They reduce one’s awareness of external stimuli, slow normal bodily functions, and decrease the level of overt behavior.
Those chemicals known as _____________ have the most predictable effects on consciousness. One of the main reactions to these drugs is the formation of hallucinations, usually visual.
Hallucinogens. Users often report seeing things when there is nothing there to see, or they tend to see things in ways that others do not.
On some occasions, LSD (a hallucinogenic drug) gives rise to the experience of ______________.
Synesthesia. In this condition, a stimulus of one modality is perceived in a different modality, a crossing-over of sensory processing. Fr example, the individual may hear colored lights.
The _______ of control is a personality construct referring to an individual's perception of events as determined internally by his/her own behavior vs. fate, luck, or external circumstances.
Locus. For example, a guy with an external locus of control often will not accept responsibility for his failure, and instead blame it on something else. A person with an internal locus of control is the opposite--blames everything on himself, even if it's not his fault.
_________________ is a consciousness-altering drug that we’ll consider as a special case because it does not fit into a special drug category very neatly.
Marijuana. It often acts as a depressant, yet in high doses can act as a hallucinogen.
Sleep __________ can result in altered states of consciousness, including hallucinations, mood alterations, and bodily changes.
Deprivation. The deprivation (or loss of sleep) that one may suffer is almost always made up immediately with additional sleep.
______________ drugs include cocaine, caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamines.
Stimulant. Many of these drugs are legal for consumer consumption, and are use to enhance or elevate mind/body activity.
CH 4 -States of Consciousness

_______________ can be defined as the awareness, or perception, of the environment and of one’s own mental processes.
Consciousness. Consciousness is a state of mind, as well as a state of awareness. Normal, waking, or immediate consciousness is the awareness of those thoughts, ideas, feelings, and perceptions that are active in one’s mind.
CH 5-The Sociological Perspective / ____ is demonstrated by a relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as the result of practice or experience.
Learning.
_______________ and learning are synonymous terms and can be used interchangeably.
Conditioning. Conditioning is known as the most basic and fundamental type of learning.
Psychology was just beginning to emerge as a science late in the nineteenth century. At this time, Ivan _________ was using his skills as a physiologist to try to understand the basic processes of digestion. In his research he discovered a basic principl
Pavlov. Pavlov is famous for his experiment in which he conditioned a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. Originally, the dog would salivate when it saw food. The sound of a bell was always followed by food, and eventually, the dog would salivate when it heard the bell, whether there was food or not.
A _________ is defined as an unlearned, automatic response that occurs in the presence of specific stimuli.
Reflex. These are mental and physical reactions to the environment around a person.
Pavlov’s study is now known as ____________ conditioning.
Classical. This is a type of learning in which an originally neutral stimulus comes to evoke a new response after having been paired with another stimulus that reflexively evokes the same response. In Pavlov's experiment, the dog's reflex--salivating, became a conditioned response to the bell. Salivating is an unconditioned response to food, but a conditioned response to the sound of a bell.
_____________ stimulus is a term for a stimulus that produces a response, even in the absence of conditioning.
Unconditioned. An example is the unconditional stimulus of food in the classic studies of Ivan Pavlov, which always produces the unconditional response of salivation.
To get classical conditioning under way, a second stimulus, which is neutral, must be presented, and initially produces a minimal response or a response of no particular interest. This stimulus is known as the ____________ stimulus.
Conditioned. This process is technically referred to as habituation.
A ____________ response is the recurring result of action that indicates a behavior is learned or conditioned.
Conditioned. A conditioned response is a response that normally is not associated with a stimulus. For example, in Pavlov's experiment, a dog was conditioned to salivate every time it heard a bell ring, even if there was no food. Normally, dog's do not salivate at the sound of a bell, so salivating was a conditioned response to the ringing sound.
Skinner used the term ________ to refer to behavior that an organism may use to operate on its environment.
Operant. Operants, or behaviors used to operate on an environment, are said to be controlled by their consequences-they will maintain or increase their rate if they are reinforced; they will decrease their rate if they are not reinforced or if they are punished.
_____________ involves reinforcing successive approximations of the response that one ultimately wants to condition.
Shaping.
For Harry Harlow, a ___________ ____ was developed with the study of his monkeys, which is a prepared, expected approach to solving problems.
Learning set.
___________ learning is a hidden learning that is not demonstrated in performance until that performance is reinforced.
Latent.
__________ psychology was in many ways a reaction to behaviorism and psychoanalysis.
Humanistic. Humanistic psychology views behaviorism and psychoanalysis as excessively mechanistic in that they view behavior as primarily controlled by the environment. Humanistic psychologists place greater importance on an individual’s own will.
A __________ map is a mental representation of the learning situation or physical environment.
Cognitive. This is also known as purposive behaviorism, and is developed by introducing the notion of purpose and drawing a distinction between performance and what was actually learned.
Albert Bandura’s approach to learning is also cognitive in nature, but he added a decidedly social aspect to the process and for that reason it is often referred to as the ___________ theory.
Social. The central idea of this theory is that learning takes place through the observation and the imitation of models. What makes social learning theory social is the notion that we often learn from others.
A _______________ is a stimulus that decreases the rate or probability of a response that precedes it.
Punisher.
In operant conditioning, _________________ occurs when a response reinforced in the presence of one stimulus also occurs in the presence of another, similar stimulus.
Generalization. Therefore, the person responds equally to both stimuli, as he/she recognizes a close relationship between the two stimuli.
An Instinctive _________ is the term used by the Brelands to note that some behaviors are more difficult to condition than others.
Drift. That is, in spite of conditioning efforts, an organism will "drift" toward doing something that comes naturally.
When it comes to _________, a lot more women try, but a lot more men actually succeed.
Suicide. Women try to commit suicide more often, but men succeed more often.
A _____________ reinforcer is a stimulus presented to an organism that increases the rate of a response that precedes it.
Positive. Positive reinforcers are similar to rewards. Reinforcers are stimuli that encourage the desired response. Positive reinforcers increase the likeliness of a response by rewarding the desired response. Negative reinforcers increase the likeliness of a response by removing something painful or undesireable once the desired response occurs.
A ______________ reinforcer is a stimulus that increases the rate of response that precedes its removal.
Negative. Although it seems a bit contradictory, a negative reinforcer exists to increase the rate of response to a certain stimuli. BUT--a negative reinforcer is something that the person wants to go away. For example, a seat belt buzzer is a negative reinforcer. It goes away once you buckle your seat belt. This is in contrast to a positive reinforcer, which would be rewarding you for doing the right response, instead of removing an irritation.
_________________ conditioning is a part of operant conditioning and demonstrates negative reinforcement.
Escape. Here, an organism learns to escape from a painful situation. If an appropriate response is made for the situation and the escape is successful, the organism is reinforced and will tend to make the same response again in the future with a similar situation. The negative reinforcement (the painful situation) is removed upon the correct response.
Another negative reinforcement in action is ________________ conditioning. Here, an organism learns to avoid unpleasant and painful situations before it occurs.
Avoidance. The major difference between avoidance and escape conditioning is the addition of a cue or signal that precedes the negative reinforcer. Responding appropriately to the signal allows the organism to prevent the painful, unpleasant situation before it occurs.
Learned __________________ is a condition in which a subject does not attempt to escape from a painful or noxious situation after learning in a previous, similar situation that escape is not possible.
Helplessness.
_______________ reinforcers are stimuli (usually biologically or physically based) that increase the rate of a response with no previous experience required.
Primary.
A _______________ reinforcer contains stimuli that increase the rate of a response because of their being associated with other reinforcers; also called conditioned, or learned, reinforcers.
Secondary.
When determining traits in a new child—i.e. hair color or eye color, each parent contributes a gene for that trait, whether it is dominant or ___________.
Recessive. A gene can be either dominant or recessive. For example, blue eyes are a recessive trait. That means both the mother and the father would have to pass the gene for blue eyes for the child to have blue eyes. If the mother passes down brown eyes (dominant) and the father passes down blue eyes (recessive), the child will have brown eyes.
A ______________ reinforcement schedule is a reinforcement schedule in which each and every response is followed by a reinforcer.
Continuous. One problem with the CRF schedule is that earning a reinforcer after each response may soon reduce the reinforcing nature of that reinforcer--in other words, the reinforcer eventually loses effectiveness.
Alternatives to reinforcing each and every response are called ________________ reinforcement schedules.
Intermittent. These are strategies for reinforcing a desired behavior less frequently than each and every time it occurs.
__________________ is the process of differential reinforcement wherein one (positive) stimulus is reinforced while another (negative) stimulus is not.
Discrimination. This essentially occurs when only the positives are reinforced and the negatives are ignored.
CH 6 - Cognition
_______ is the cognitive ability to encode, store, and retrieve information.
Memory.
_______________ is the active process of putting information into memory.
Encoding. It is during this stage of gathering and sorting that memories are related and interrelated under subtopics and subcategories based on time, emotion, people involved, and places of event.
______________ is the process of holding the encoded information in the memory until the time of retrieval.
Storage.
The process of locating, removing and using information stored in one’s memory is known as ______________.
Retrieval. Retrieval allows a person to use past experiences to make new decisions and associations based on information gathered and stored in the past.
A view that states that there is but one memory, but that information can be processed within that memory at different degrees, levels, or depths is known as the levels of ____________ model of memory.
Processing.
__________ memory is a type of memory that holds large amounts of information registered at the senses for very brief periods of time.
Sensory. This memory process is full of information gathering and encoding. It can be utilized through any of the five senses, and can pertain to significant events in one’s life. It only stores information for seconds, before it discards the data or passes it on to a different memory process.
Once information gets to the sense memory, it then moves to the ______-______ memory.
Short-term. Short-term memory has a limited capacity and typically a brief duration.
________-_______ memory is the storage of an abundance of memory, and is held for long periods of time.
Long-term (LTM). The long-term memory storage bank is almost limitless in its capacity to hold information.
_______________ rehearsal is a mechanism for processing information into long-term memory that involves the meaningful manipulation of the information to be remembered.
Elaborative. In other words, the stored memory needs to be elaborated upon to make sense of the information given.
_______________ memory is stored in the long-term memory, and is where associations and skilled patterns of responses are stored.
Procedural. Procedural memory is a type of memory for storing procedures. Examples are learning how to ride a bike, tie a neck-tie, etc.. Such memories usually last a long time or for the rest of your life once learned.
A more complex memory, which is where vocabulary, simple concepts and rules are stored, is known as ______________ memory.
Semantic. The semantic memory holds information about ourselves, our world, and the way in which we live.
A ___________ is a repetitive behavior or mental activity that one feels compelled to do, even against one’s will.
Compulsion. An example of a compulsion is constantly checking door locks, or constantly going to the bathroom to wash your hands. A compulsion is something you feel that you have to do, as opposed to an obsession, which involves unsolicited reoccurrence of disturbing thoughts. Obsessions and compulsions both fall under obsessive-compulsive disorder.
_______________ memory stores our life events and experiences.
Episodic. It is a time-related memory, and is very much autobiographical. For example, a memory of your tenth birthday would be episodic--you remember it as an event or associated with a specific time. On the other hand, remembering the meaning of 'justice' would go into semantic memory--you probably don't remember when or where you learned what that word means.
________________ is a long-term memory, and is responsible for storing knowledge of how our own memory systems work.
Metamemory. It essentially directs all long-term memory searches.
________________ clustering is the recall one experiences through the process of grouping words together into categories even if they are presented in a random order.
Category. Typically this categorization is done through conceptual processes.
_____________ proposed that many adult characteristics are produced by attempts to deal with basic anxiety.
Karen Horney. Karen Horney is known for her Ten Neurotic Needs, which describe causes of anxiety and depression.
_____________ is a measure of retrieval in which an individual is provided with the fewest possible cues to aid retrieval.
Recall. This process allows an individual to quickly pull information from a database stored in the memory.
A measure of retrieval in which an individual is required to identify material previously learned as being familiar is known as ________________.
Recognition. Recognition is the remembrance process that aids in the association and comparison between old and new information.
_________________ is a measure of memory in which one notes the improvement in performance when learning material for a second time.
Relearning. Relearning is a building upon of prior knowledge, and is used within educational settings to command a higher sense of memory recognition for important items.
A _____________ is a mental event used to represent a category or class of events or objects.
Concept. Concepts represent groups of things, classes, or categories, and not just individual cases.
________________ is a hybrid discipline of psychologists trained in psychology and linguistics.
Psycholinguistics. Psycholinguists are interested in the underlying knowledge and abilities which people must have in order to use language and to learn language in childhood.
_____________ is a large collection of arbitrary symbols that have significance for a language-using community that follow certain rules of combination.
Language. The symbols that make up language are commonly referred to as words, and words are the expressions that relay information from one person to another.
_____________ observation is a research approach in which people or animals are observed in their everyday behaviors.
Naturalistic. People or animals are observed in their natural environment, as opposed to an artificially created situation. An example is observing lions in the natural surroundings in Africa, instead of at the zoo. Or watching children at play during school recess, instead of in a lab environment.
The smallest unit of sound in the spoken language is known as a __________.
Phoneme. Phonemes themselves have no meaning, but when they are placed together in proper order, they result in meaningful utterances; also known as words.
____________ is the study of the meaning of words and sentences.
Semantics. In general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings.
A __________________ is the smallest unit of meaning in a language.
Morpheme. Words are minimal free forms, but a word may contain more than one morpheme.
In ___________, units larger than morphemes, such as phrases and sentences, are isolated in manner that reflects a hierarchical structure.
Syntax. Each primary constituent then may be broken down into a series of hierarchical secondary constituents. The analysis of syntax is also concerned with the ordering of the grammatical sequences within the phrase.
_____________ is the study of how context affects the meaning of linguistic events.
Pragmatics.
A ______________ is the best or most typical member of a category or concept.
Prototype. It is the member of the concept class that has most of the attributes that define the concept and few attributes that cause it to be confused with other concepts.
A ___________ in problem solving is a systematic plan for generating possible solutions that can be tested to see if they are correct.
Strategy. The main advantage of a strategy is the control they provide a person in the task or situation at hand.
An _______________ is a problem solving strategy that guarantees that you will eventually arrive at a correct solution.
Algorithm. It involves systematically exploring and evaluating all possible solutions until the correct one is found. For example, math problems have algorithms which allow you to find the correct answer. For most real-life problems, however, you use strategies, not algorithms, and a strategy is just an approach to trying to find a solution to a problem. For example, if you're unemployed, you may develop a strategy for finding a job, not an algorithm.
____________ strategies are problem solving in nature, and allow for a hypothesis about a problem’s solutions to be generated and tested in a time-saving and systematic way, but does not guarantee an acceptable solution.
Heuristic.
Divergent thinking is the creation of many ideas or potential problem solutions from one idea. One of the most popular techniques used to stimulate divergent thinking is ______________.
Brainstorming.
A ______________ set is the tendency to perceive or respond to something in a predetermined or set way.
Mental.
The phenomenon of ___________ fixedness is very similar to a mental set.
Functional. This process was defined as the inability to discover new and appropriate uses in a new function because of experiences of using the same object in some other function.
____________ thinking is the creation of many ideas or potential problem solutions from one idea.
Divergent.
_______________ thinking is the reduction or focusing of many different ideas into one possible problem solution.
Convergent.
The first component of any problem is the ________ state.
Initial. It is the preliminary situation that arises and shows the developed problem. This is usually a point of convolution for the person involved in the problem situation.
Carl Jung created a variation of psychoanalytic theory, called __________ psychology.
Analytical. Carl Jung broke away from Freud, and formed his own variation of the psychoanalysis theory.
__________________ is the capacity to understand the world and the resourcefulness to cope with its challenges.
Intelligence. This is also defined as the ability to learn and generate new concepts on one’s own and successfully implement or express those new ideas. Researchers cannot agree on a definition of intelligence--if you ask ten different scientists what indicates intelligence, you will probably get ten different answers.
A ____-Score is a measure of one’s overall, general intellectual abilities, commonly thought of as "IQ".
G (general).
CH 7 - Motivation and Emotion
The chromosomes that determine a person’s _______ are called the X and Y chromosomes.
Sex. Neither can do much by itself; these chromosomes have their effect by working in pairs. Being genetically female results from receiving an X chromosome from each parent, which forms a XX pair. Being male is determined by having one X chromosome and one Y chromosome, an XY pair.
________________ are the sex glands (testes) in males, and in females the sex glands are the ovaries.
Gonads.
_____________ are the male sex hormones that are produced by the testes.
Androgen.
The most important of the male sex hormones are known as ________________.
Testosterone.
____________ is the female sex hormone produced by the ovaries.
Estrogen. As women age and go through a period of decreased estrogen, it is called menopause.
The most important sex hormone for women is known as ______________.
Progesterone.
The stage of physical development at which one becomes capable of sexual reproduction is known as _______________.
Puberty.
_______________ is indicative of one’s level of activation or excitement, and will represent motivational state.
Arousal.
______________ are special chemicals that enable neurons to pass messages to one another.
Neurotransmitters. Neurons are very close to each other, but not actually touching. When one neuron tries to pass on a message to the next, it releases neurotransmitters which cross this gap and bind with the receptors of the next neuron.
Unlearned, complex patterns of behavior that occur in the presence of particular stimuli are known as _____________.
Instincts.
A state of tension resulting from a need that arouses and directs an organism’s behavior is known as a ______________.
Drive. A drive is a state of activation that occurs as a response to a need or desire for something.
Abraham ________ is associated with the humanism movement in psychology. He combined his concerns for the person with Hull’s drive-reduction theory and proposed that human behavior does in fact respond to needs, yet not all are physiological needs.
Maslow.
Maslow’s approach is essentially a __________ theory.
Stage. It proposes that the first thing to motivate us is the physiological needs, followed by needs of safety, love and belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization. Whatever is lowest on his hierarchy that has not been fulfilled is what will motivate us--for example, the need for love will not motivate us unless the need for safety and physiological needs have been satisfied:
External stimuli that an organism may be motivated to approach or avoid are known as _______________.
Incentives. Incentives are consequences that trigger feelings that are positive or negative, and often dictate future behavior.
One of the first references to a need to maintain a balanced state is found in the work of Walter Cannon. Cannon was concerned with our internal physiological reactions, and the term he used to describe a state of balance or equilibrium within those reac
Homeostasis. It is a state of balance among internal, physiological conditions.
A ______ ________ is a normal, optimum level of equilibrium or balance among physiological or psychological reactions.
Set Point. Whenever something happens to upset one’s balance, the individual becomes motivated, and thus, driven to do whatever he/she can to return to the set point, or optimum, homeostatic level.
Cognitive _____________ is a motivating discomfort or tension caused by a lack of balance or consonance among one’s cognitions.
Dissonance.
Another approach to motivation that relies on the notion of balance and equilibrium is called the ___________-process theory.
Opponent. The basic idea here is that one’s emotional reactions to affect-arousing stimuli naturally produce opposite emotional reactions in order to maintain a balanced level of affect or emotion. Remember, an "affect" refers to the feelings or mood associated with emotional responses, so an affect-arousing stimuli is a stimuli that produces a response in feeling or mood.
The ________________ is a small brain structure involved in many drives, including thirst, hunger, sex, and temperature regulation.
Hypothalamus.
______________, physiological cues are signals from the (inside) physiological aspect of an individual that indicate something is desired as a result of a physical need.
Internal.
_______________, psychological cues are triggered when a person desires a thing that is not driven at a biological level. There is no physical need for such a desire, yet the person still craves the thing psychologically.
External.
By the ________ year of life, a child has a unique personality.
Third. Just-born infants already show differences in temperament, which is the foundation of personality. However, it is generally around age three that you can really get a sense of a unique personality for a child.
__________________ control is an internal, personal process that controls or motivates an individual’s behavior.
Intrinsic.
____________ control is an external, environmental process that exercises control over an individual’s behavior or motivations.
External.
An ___________ is a reaction involving subjective feelings, physiological response, cognitive interpretation, and behavioral expression.
Emotion.
_________________, also known as Adrenalin, is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands that is involved in emotional activity, mostly affecting heart activity.
Epinephrine.
_________________ is a hormone that is secreted by the adrenal glands, and is involved in emotional arousal.
Norepinephrine. These hormones are released directly into the bloodstream and can result in powerful emotional and physical effects.
The _________ glands are located on the kidneys, and are part of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and are very involved in emotional reactions.
Adrenal.
The ____________ system is a set of small structures located low in the brain. They are involved in motivational and emotional stress.
Limbic. The limbic system is often associated with the emotional response to the threat of attack.
_____________ is a source of stress in which some goals can be satisfied only at the expense of others.
Conflict. Conflict usually requires an individual to identify several issues or problems simultaneously, and determine strategies for resolution accordingly.
A general feeling of tension or apprehension accompanied by a perceived threat to well-being is known as _________________.
Anxiety.
____________ Mechanisms are techniques, beyond one’s conscious control, employed to protect against the feelings of stress.
Defense. These are used in a variety of situations to keep one from experiencing pain or stress, and the situations avoided need not be related.
_______________, or motivated forgetting, in which stressful events are forced from awareness and cannot be remembered.
Repression. Repression often leads to the latency for certain feelings and thoughts.
A very basic mechanism of defense against stress is known as ____________.
Denial. In denial, a person simply refuses to acknowledge the realities of a stressful situation. This can lead intelligent and knowledgeable people to reject acceptance about the most basic information if it is something that they do not wish to accept.
____________________ is the act of seeing in others those very characteristics and/or motives that cause stress in for an individual.
Projection. To project allows an individual to see the actions and behaviors of an individual played out in another, even if the other person is not necessarily behaving in the projected manner.
_______________ is a return to earlier, childish levels of previously productive behaviors as an escape from stress.
Regression. Although regression does not necessarily indicate that the earlier child-like behaviors were at all constructive, just comfortable and familiar for the individual under stress.
CH 8-Developmental Psychology

Most of the data gathered on age differences in IQ scores have been gathered through a _______-___________ method.
Cross-sectional. Cross-sectional methods are IQ tests given at roughly the same time, to a large number of subjects of different ages. When this is done, the results seem to indicate that overall, global IQ peaks in the early 20s, stays rather stable for about 20 years, and then declines rather sharply.

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