Psychology Ch. 1-4

Front 1

Psychology

Back 1

science of behavior and the ind

Front 2

behavior

Back 2

observable actions of a person or an animal

Front 3

mind

Back 3

an individual's sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams...

Front 4

science

Back 4

all attempts to answer questions through the systematic collection of logical analysis of objectively observable data

Front 5

materialism

Back 5

the spirit, or soul, is a meaningless concept and nothing exists but matter and energy...hobbes

Front 6

dualism

Back 6

human beings consist of two distinct but conjoined entities, a material body and an immaterial soul...descartes

Front 7

empiricism

Back 7

idea that human knowledge and thought derive ultimately from sensory experience (vision, hearing, touch...) John Locke, James Mill...

Front 8

nativism

Back 8

opposite of empiricism-some knowledge and rules of operation are native to the human mind (they are inborn and do not have to be acquired from experience)

Front 9

Charles Darwin

Back 9

theory of evolution and natural selection

Front 10

level of analysis

Back 10

used in psychology and other sciences, refers to the level, or type, of causal process that is studied

Front 11

fact or observation

Back 11

an objective statement usually based on direct observation, that reasonable observers agree is true

Front 12

theory

Back 12

an idea or conceptual model that is designed to explain existing facts and make predictions about new facts that might be discovered

Front 13

hypothesis

Back 13

any prediction about new facts that is made from a theory

Front 14

independent variable

Back 14

the variable that is hypothesized to cause some effect on another variable

Front 15

dependent variable

Back 15

variable that is hypothesized to be affected

Front 16

experiment

Back 16

a procedure in which a researcher systematically manipulates (varies) one or more independent variables and looks for changes in one or more dependent variables

Front 17

neural explanations

Back 17

all mental experiences and behavior acts are products of the nervous system...behavioral neuroscientists

Front 18

genetic explanations

Back 18

genes are the units of heredity that provide the codes for building the entire body, including the brain...behavioral geneticists

Front 19

evolutionary explanations

Back 19

all the basic biological machinery underlying behavior and mind, coded by genes, is a product of evolution by natural selection...evolutionary psychologists

Front 20

learning explanation

Back 20

essentially all forms of human behavior and mental experience are modifiable by learning; that is, they can be influenced by prior experiences...learning psychologists

Front 21

cognitive explanations

Back 21

cognition refers to information in the mind-that is, to information that is somehow stored and activated by the workings of the brain...cognitive psychologists

Front 22

social explanations

Back 22

we are social animals...for this reason our behavior is strongly influenced by our perceptions of others...social psychologists

Front 23

cultural explanations

Back 23

we can predict some aspects of a person's behavior by knowing what culture that person grew up in...cultural psychologists

Front 24

developmental explanations

Back 24

can predicts some aspects of behavior by knowing his or her age...developmental psychologists

Front 25

Clever Hans

Back 25

the horse that could "answer" questions according to owner Mr. von Osten

Front 26

Oskar Pfungst

Back 26

discovered Hans could not really answer questions but only did so b/c questioners would unconsciously produce movements to hint at the answers

Front 27

correlational study

Back 27

a study in which the researcher does not manipulate any variable but observes or measures two or more variables to find relationships between them

Front 28

Diana Baumrind

Back 28

studied relationship between parents' disciplinary styles and children's development (correlational)

Front 29

descriptive study

Back 29

describes the behavior of an individual or a set of individuals without systematically investigation relationships between specific variables

Front 30

laboratory study

Back 30

any research study in which the subjects are brought to a specially disgnated area that has been set up to facilitate the researcher's collection of data or control over environmental conditions

Front 31

field study

Back 31

any research study conducted in a setting other than a laboratory

Front 32

self-report methods

Back 32

procedures in which people are asked to rate or describe their own behavior or mental state in some way

Front 33

observational methods

Back 33

all procedures by which researchers observe and record that behavior of interest, rather than rely on subjects' self-reports

Front 34

naturalistic observation

Back 34

subcategory in which researcher avoids interfering with the subject's behavior

Front 35

tests

Back 35

another subcategory in which the researcher deliberately presents stimuli or problems to which the subject responds

Front 36

descriptive statistcs

Back 36

summarize sets of data

Front 37

inferential statistcs

Back 37

help researchers decide how confident they can be in judging that the results observed are not due to chance

Front 38

error

Back 38

refers to random variability in results

Front 39

bias

Back 39

refers to nonrandom (directed) effects caused by some factor or factors extraneous to the research hypothesis

Front 40

autism

Back 40

congenital disorder of development, characterized principally by a deficit in the ability to form emotional bonds and to communicate with other people