Intro Psych Test 1

Front 1

Psychology

Back 1

the science of behavior and the mind

Front 2

2 themes

Back 2

1. We're all connected
2. It's all in your mind

Front 3

what are neurons?

Back 3

unit of computation

Front 4

Describe the 3 main parts of a neuron

Back 4

dendrite(s): receives info from other neurons
soma: cell body, decides what to do with the info, sends action potential to =>
axon: to other neurons

Front 5

synapse

Back 5

gaps between neurons through which chemicals,
not electricity can travel

Front 6

prosopagnosia

Back 6

not being able to recognize faces, usually b/c of damage to the fusiform gyrus

Front 7

fMRI

Back 7

deoxygenated hemoglobin is more paramagnetic than
oxygenated hemoglobin, active brain regions have a high ratio of oxygenated to
deoxygenated hemoglobin

Front 8

name 2 areas of the brain and what they process

Back 8

Parahippocampal Place
Area: scenes

Fusiform Face Area: faces

Front 9

attention blink

Back 9

display face and scene in the midst of scrambled images, we're bad at finding the second one

Front 10

False Memory Paradigm

Back 10

think you remember word that is close (can tell in parahippocampal gyrus, can't in hippocampus)

Front 11

Overt vs Aversive discrimination

Back 11

aversive is unintentional, eg: black and hispanic drivers pulled over in florida (5% on road, 80% of people pulled over)

Front 12

2 important aversive discrimination studies

Back 12

What's in a name? Tamika Jackson or Emily Sullivan
▪ by Sendhil Mullainathan, MIT
▪ same resume, different name
▪ 30% more callbacks

Shooter Bias: Targets of discrimination: Effects of race on responses to weapons holders (Diallo, street vendor, 41 bullets)
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, was conducted by Anthony G. Greenwald, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington

Front 13

Why is there prejudice?

Back 13

need to categorize, conditioning, in-group/out-group bias

Front 14

Academic Spurters Experiment:

Back 14

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)
▪ only thing that was different was that they were selected
▪ do better in classes

Front 15

Ways to test aversive discrimination:

Back 15

Implicit Association Test: Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald ('59)
young-negative, old-positive is difficult, can figure out implicit associations

conditioning: electric shock with butterfly and snake: how long until people stop responding to expectation of shock (extinction), takes longer outside of race

Front 16

stereotype threat

Back 16

people's perceived risk that they might do something that supports an unfavorable stereotype about their group
◦ eg. write race on the test, take it, more stress if minority, lowers score (Claude Steel, Stanford)
◦ suppresses test performance eg Asian woman (gender score down, race score up)

Front 17

What can reduce prejudice?

Back 17

familiar, well-liked faces reduce/negate IAT

common goal: Sherif's Robber's study

Front 18

Ben Barres

Back 18

transgender researcher: "Barres' work is much better than his sister's"

peer reviewers award lower competence scores to female scientists than to
similarly productive male scientists (Wenneras & Wold, 1997)

Front 19

What is intelligence?

Back 19

manufactured concept for practical goals (will change dependent on the
context)
"Goal-directed adaptive behavior" (Sternberg, 2001)
Spearman's g: a single, basic attribute (level of performance on one task correlated positively with level of performance on all of the others)

Front 20

Intelligence Tests

Back 20

Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale: oriented to skills required for school work

Stanford-Binet Scale: Intelligence Quotient = mental age/chronological age * 100

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III)
▪ Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III)
▪ Normed on data from large samples of individuals in various age groups, bell curve

Front 21

psychometric approach (to intelligence)

Back 21

▪ Measurement of individual differences in behaviors and
abilities

Front 22

Cattell's Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

Back 22

2 components to g:
fluid:the ability to process information
crystallized: the accuracy and amount of information available for processing

**higher fluid intelligence correlated with higher lateral
prefrontal cortex activity**

Front 23

Sternberg's Triarchic theory of Intelligence

Back 23

(MC's fav)
analytic (like fluid): learning planning and solving a problem

creative: identification of novel situations that require intelligence

practical: implement, adapt to, improve or leave an environment
▪ eg child street vendors in S. America, great at math, but don't understand it in a school setting

Front 24

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Back 24

1. Bodily-kinesthetic
2. Interpersonal
3. Verbal-linguistic
4. Logical-mathematical
5. Intrapersonal
6. Visual-spatial
7. Musical
8. Naturalistic

Front 25

Music & Intelligence/development

Back 25

Baby Einstein actually bad, Mozart negligible

American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no
screen media under 2 years

music lessons enhance IQ (Schellenberg, 2004,
Psychol. Sci)

Front 26

Role of heredity & environment in intelligence

Back 26

both contribute: (twin studies: mono together > mono apart > di > adopted)

Terman study (mena = 151, 77 over 170), Hunter College Elementary School (IQ>155)
▪ did well in school, professionally successful
▪ no Nobel laureates or anything

Front 27

Nature vs Nurture?

Back 27

"Nurture" group most articulated by john Locke- Babies come into the world
as blank slates

MC: interplay btwn the two

Front 28

How to test babies?

Back 28

measure how long baby looks at image: baby gets board, introduce new image

suck when they like something
◦ esp. mother's voice
◦ lang. discrimination (baba vs papa)

measure cries of babies: french crying is different from german
▪ french: rising melody
▪ germany: falling contours

violation of expectation
▪ if something weird is going on, baby will look at it longer
▪ Wynn Lab (Yale)

Front 29

dishabituation

Back 29

brief increase in attention when a new stimulus (or surprising outcome) is presented (used in babies)

Front 30

core knowledge of infants

Back 30

language
physics
math
psychology

Front 31

l/r : Japan, Steve Pinker "The Language Instinct"

Back 31

babies can hear distinctions up to 6 months

Mandarin study
▪ Mandarin chinese tutoring with live speaker preserved the
ability
▪ not just listening, tv ("baby mao") doesn't do it

Front 32

how do babies figure out speech?

Back 32

likely syllables:
study: 7-8months old, artificial nonsense language (Aslan, Safran and Newport 1998)
"pa bi ku"

Front 33

skin-to-skin contact

Back 33

Monkeys (Harry Harlow): cloth mother provides more comfort

Preemies & kangaroo care: less fussy, smarter

Front 34

Jean Piaget

Back 34

children are not mini adults (quantitative and qualitative differences in their thoughts)
construct new mental processes as child interacts with environment

1.Sensory Stage
2. Preoperational Stage
3. Concrete Operational Stage
4. Formal Operations Stage
(not as concrete as he thought)

Front 35

Sensory stage

Back 35

birth-18 months

use sensory-motor capabilities to explore and gain understanding of environments
(no object permanence...was wrong)

Front 36

Preoperational Stage

Back 36

18 months-6 years

ability to represent the world inside your head

Front 37

egocentric

Back 37

children only learn in the preoperational stage that the experimenter doesn't see what they see

Front 38

Keil's Transformation Experiments

Back 38

raccoon=> skunk-like

kindegarteners think it is a skunk, 2nd graders know it's a raccoon still

Front 39

theory of mind

Back 39

ability to represent and infer unobservable mental states such as desires, intentions and beliefs from the self and others

Lack this: autistic kids (probably), deaf kids with hearing parents

test with false belief task (where will he look for the $20)

Front 40

autism

Back 40

possibly lack theory of mind

symptoms: repetitive actions, narrow focus of interest, deficits in social interactions and language acquisition

(Yale Child Study Center)

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Concrete Operation Stage

Back 41

6-11 years

can perform mental operations on concrete objects and learn about numbers and relationships

Front 42

Formal Operations stage

Back 42

11 years on

abstract, hypothetical situations
logical, systematic, deductive reasoning, planning

Front 43

Delayed Gratification

Back 43

Marshmallow Experiment (Walter Mischel at Stanford)
measure of self-control and indicator of future success

Front 44

observational learning

Back 44

social referencing

Bobo dolls: learn aggression

Front 45

behavior

Back 45

observable actions of human beings and non-human animals

Front 46

structuralism

Back 46

analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind

Front 47

functionalism

Back 47

study of the purpose mental processes serve in enabling people to adapt to their environment

Front 48

behaviorism

Back 48

the scientific study of observable behavior (inner mental processes are private events that cannot be studied scientifically)

Front 49

cognitive psychology

Back 49

the scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thought, memory and reasoning

Front 50

mindbugs

Back 50

disruptions to the mind and behavior, allow us to better understand the normal functions of the mind and behavior

Front 51

cognitive neuroscience

Back 51

attempts to link the brain with the mind through studies of brain-damaged and healthy patients using neuroimaging techniques that allow glimpses of the brain in action

Front 52

evolutionary psychology

Back 52

adaptive value of the mind and behavior and seeks to understand current psychological processes in terms of abilities and traits preserved by natural selection

Front 53

Paul Broca

Back 53

had a patient who could only say "Tan", understood language but not speak it

Front 54

stimulus

Back 54

sensory input from the environment

Front 55

Gestalt psychology

Back 55

a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts
(Wertheimer)

Front 56

dissociative identity disorder

Back 56

involves the occurrence of two or more distinct identities within the same individual (Felida X)

Front 57

psychoanalysis

Back 57

bringing unconscious material into conscious awareness

Front 58

reinforcement

Back 58

the consequences of a behavior determine whether it will be more or less likely to happen again

Front 59

capgras syndrome

Back 59

close person replaced by an imposter

Front 60

empiricism

Back 60

(orig a greek school of medicine stressing observation)
any attempt to acquire knowledge by observing objects or events

Front 61

operational measures should be:

Back 61

valid, reliable, and powerful

Front 62

construct validity

Back 62

relationship between the operational definition and the property

Front 63

predictive validity

Back 63

does the score relate to what you want to measure?

Front 64

power

Back 64

ability of a measure to detect differences that do exist and not detect differences that don't exist

Front 65

factors that allow one to conclude that changes in an independent variable caused changes in a dependent variable (in an experiment)

Back 65

1. inferential statistics show that random assignment was unlikely to have failed

2. the experiment is internally valid (need random sample of participant)

Front 66

difficult to study people because:

Back 66

complexity, variability, reactivity (to being watched)

Front 67

electromyograph

Back 67

device that measures muscle contractions under the skin

Front 68

demand characteristics

Back 68

those aspects of a setting that cause people to behave as they think an observer expects them to behave (hinders observation of "normal behavior")

Front 69

example of expectation influencing results

Back 69

Rosenthal and Fode: maze-bright rats

Front 70

third-variable correlation

Back 70

two variables are correlated only because each is causally related to a third variable (can never rule it out entirely)

Front 71

independent variable

Back 71

variable that is measured

Front 72

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

Back 72

mimic brain damage

Front 73

3 main types of neurons

Back 73

sensory, motor, interneurons

Front 74

overflow of neurotransmitters in the synapse are dealt with by:

Back 74

reuptake, enzyme deactivation or the action of autoreceptors

Front 75

examples of neurotransmitters

Back 75

acetylcholine (voluntary muscle control),
norepinephrine (mood and arousal),
serotonin (sleep and wakefulness, eating and aggressive behavior),
dopamine (motor behavior, motivation, pleasure and emotional arousal)

Front 76

The nervous system is divided into:

Back 76

the central nervous system (brain+spinal cord)

the peripheral nervous system (somatic nervous system+autonomic nervous system)

Front 77

The autonomic nervous system is divided into:

Back 77

the sympathetic nervous system (prepare for action)

the parasympathetic nervous system (return to rest)

Front 78

the brain can be divided into :

Back 78

the hindbrain (life-sustaining)

the midbrain (orientation)

the forebrain (motivation and emotion)

Front 79

the forebrain can be divided into :

Back 79

the cerebral cortex (control over the body, higher level operations)

the subcortical structures (limbic system)

Front 80

the cerebral cortex can be divided into:

Back 80

two hemispheres

or

lobes (occipital, temporal, parietal and frontal)

Front 81

neurons

Back 81

cells in the nervous system that communicate with one another to perform information-processing tasks

Front 82

cell body (soma)

Back 82

coordinates information-processing tasks, and keeps the cell alive

Front 83

dendrites

Back 83

the part of a neuron that receives information from other neurons

Front 84

axon

Back 84

transmits information to other neuron, muscles or glands

Front 85

myelin sheath

Back 85

insulating fatty layer covering the axon

Front 86

glial cells

Back 86

support cells found in the nervous system, make up the myelin sheath

Front 87

synapse

Back 87

the region in between the axon of one neuron and the dendrite of the next

Front 88

action potential

Back 88

an electrical signal that is conducted along an axon to the synapse (all-or-nothing)

Front 89

terminal buttons

Back 89

knoblike structures that branch out from an axon (filled with vessicles filled with neurotransmitters)

Front 90

agonists

Back 90

drugs that increase the action of a neurotransmitter

Front 91

antagonists

Back 91

drugs that block the action of a neurotransmitter

Front 92

nervous system

Back 92

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interacting network of neurons that conveys electrochemical information throughout the body

Front 93

cerebellum

Back 93

large structure of the hindbrain that controls fine motor skills, fine-tunes, not initiates (Purkinje cell layer)

Front 94

contralateral control

Back 94

right controls left

Front 95

corpus callosum

Back 95

connects large areas of the cerebral cortex on each side and supports communication of information across hemispheres

Front 96

occipital lobe

Back 96

processes visual information

Front 97

parietal lobe

Back 97

processes info about touch

Front 98

temporal lobe

Back 98

responsible for hearing and lang

Front 99

thalamus

Back 99

(forebrain) relays and filters info from the senses (except smell) and transmits info to the cerebral cortex

Front 100

hypothalamus

Back 100

1. fighting
2. fleeing
3. feeding
4. mating

Front 101

hippocampus

Back 101

creating memories

Front 102

amygdala

Back 102

plays a central role in many emotional processes, esp formation of fear memories

Front 103

somatic nervous system

Back 103

set of nerves that carry info into and out of the CNS (under our control)

Front 104

autonomic nervous system

Back 104

carries involuntary commands to blood vessels, organs and glands

Front 105

heritability

Back 105

measure of the variability of behavioral traits among individuals that can be accounted for by genetic factors (0 -> 1)

Front 106

Wernicke's area

Back 106

opposite of Broca; can talk but not understand

Front 107

Gage

Back 107

had a metal bar stuck in his skull. turned from nice to rude

Front 108

electroencephalogram (EEG)

Back 108

used to record electric activity in the brain

Front 109

the retina is composed of three layers:

Back 109

photoreceptors (rods for low-light and cones for color)

bipolar cells

retinal ganglion cells (RGCs)

Front 110

sensation

Back 110

simple awareness due to the stimulation of a sense organ

Front 111

perception

Back 111

the organization, identification and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation

Front 112

transduction

Back 112

when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into neural signals sent to the CNS

Front 113

absolute threshold

Back 113

the minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus (vs jnd)

Front 114

just noticeable difference (JND)

Back 114

the minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected (Fechner)

Front 115

Weber's law

Back 115

the jnd of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations of intensity (eg weight = 2%)

Front 116

signal detection theory

Back 116

the response to a stimulus depends both on a person's
sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise and on a person's response criterion (cautious?)

Front 117

sensory adaptation

Back 117

sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions

Front 118

visual acuity

Back 118

ability to see fine detail (snellen chart)

Front 119

length, amplitude and purity are perceived as:

Back 119

color, brightness and saturation

Front 120

retina

Back 120

light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball

Front 121

blind spot

Back 121

contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light (where the optic nerve leaves the eye)

Front 122

fovea

Back 122

an area in the center of the retina where the vision is clearest and there are no rods at all

Front 123

area VI

Back 123

the part of the occipital lobe that contains the primary visual cortex

Front 124

template

Back 124

a mental representation that can be directly compared to a
viewed shape in the retinal images

Front 125

monocular depth cues

Back 125

aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with only one eye (distance and size)
▪ linear perspective
▪ familiar size
▪ relative size
▪ texture gradient
▪ interposition
▪ relative height in the image

Front 126

binocular disparity

Back 126

the difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provides information about depth

Front 127

motion parallax

Back 127

depth cue based on the movement of the head over time (far away objects don't appear to move, close ones zip by)

Front 128

sound

Back 128

frequency, amplitude and complexity (pitch, loudness and quality)

Front 129

cochlea

Back 129

a fluid filled tube that is the organ of auditory transduction

Front 130

basilar membrane

Back 130

a structure in the inner ear that undulates when vibrations from the ossicles reach the cochlear fluid

Front 131

hair cells

Back 131

specialized auditory receptor neurons embedded in the basilar membrane

Front 132

area A1

Back 132

a portion of the temporal lobe that contains the primary auditory cortex (mostly right rhythm/music, left lang)

Front 133

place code

Back 133

the cochlea encodes different frequencies at different locations along the basilar membrane

Front 134

temporal code

Back 134

registers low frequencies via the firing rate of action potentials entering the auditory nerve

Front 135

haptic perception

Back 135

active exploration of the environment by touching and grasping objects with our hands

Front 136

types of fibers that feel pain:

Back 136

A-delta fibers: initial sharp pain

c fibers: duller pain

Front 137

referred pain

Back 137

sensory info from internal and external areas converge on the same nerve cells in the spinal cord (eg heart attack felt in the left arm)

Front 138

gate-control theory

Back 138

signals arriving from pain receptors in the body can be stopped or gated by interneurons in the spinal cord via feedback from two directions

Front 139

olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs)

Back 139

receptor cells that initiate the sense of smells

Front 140

olfactory bulb

Back 140

a brain structure located above the nasal cavity beneath the frontal lobes

Front 141

pheromones

Back 141

biochemical odorants emitted by other members of their species that can affect the animal's behavior or physiology

Front 142

taste buds

Back 142

the organ of taste transduction (hundreds in each papillae)

Front 143

5 tastes

Back 143

salt, sour, sweet, bitter, umami (savory)

Front 144

illusory correlation

Back 144

seeing a strong pattern of relationship btwn two things when actually little or no relationship exists (think smaller group committed bad acts > 50% of time, when really 1/3)

Front 145

perpetual confirmation

Back 145

the tendency for observers to perceive what they expect to
perceive

Front 146

self-fulfilling prophecy

Back 146

phenomenon whereby observers bring about what they expect to perceive (students writing race/gender on SAT)

Front 147

subtype

Back 147

when a person clearly disconfirms the stereotype, create a substerotype

Front 148

ratio IQ

Back 148

a statistic obtained by dividing a person's mental age by the person's physical age and then multiplying it by 100

Front 149

deviation IQ

Back 149

a statistic obtained by dividing a person's test score by the average test score of people in the same age group and then multiplying the quotient by 100

Front 150

three-tiers

Back 150

g (general factor) => group factors (m) => specific factors (s)

Front 151

fluid intelligence

Back 151

the ability to process information

Front 152

crystallized intelligence

Back 152

the accuracy and amount of information available for
processing

Front 153

prodigies

Back 153

people of normal intelligence who have an extraordinary ability

Front 154

savants

Back 154

people of low intelligence who have an extraordinary ability

Front 155

heritability coefficient (h^2)

Back 155

statistic that describes the proportion of the difference
between people's scores that can be explained by differences in their genetic makeup

Front 156

shared environment

Back 156

those environmental factors that are experienced by all relevant members of a household

Front 157

zygote

Back 157

single cell that contains chromosomes from both a sperm and an egg

Front 158

stages of development in the womb:

Back 158

zygote
germinal stage (2 weeks from conception)
embryonic stage (2nd-8th week)
fetal stage (9th week - birth)

Front 159

teratogens

Back 159

agents that damage the process of development, such as drugs
and viruses (FAS)

Front 160

reflexes

Back 160

specific patterns of motor response that are triggered by specific patterns of sensory stimulation

Front 161

cephalocaudal rule ("Top-to-bottom" rule)
and
proximodistal rule ("inside-to-outside" rule):

Back 161

tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the head to the feet and from in to out

Front 162

cognitive development

Back 162

the emergence of the ability to understand the world (Jean Piaget! sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational)

Front 163

sensorimotor

Back 163

a stage of development that begins at birth and lasts
through infancy in which infants acquire information abotu the world by sensing it and moving around within it

Front 164

assimilation

Back 164

infants apply their schemas to novel situations

Front 165

accommodation

Back 165

infants revise their schemas in light of new information

Front 166

object permanence

Back 166

the idea that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible

Front 167

conservation

Back 167

the notion that quantitative properties of an object are
invariant despite changes in the object's appearance (can do this at concrete-operational, not preoperational)

Front 168

egocentrism

Back 168

the failure to understand that the world appears differently to
different observers

Front 169

strange situation

Back 169

a behavioral test used to determine a child's attachment's style: secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant/ambivalent, disorganized

Front 170

temperaments

Back 170

characteristic patterns of emotional activity

Front 171

preconventional stage

Back 171

a stage of moral development in which the morality
of an action is primarily determined by its consequences for the actor (going to jail, blamed for wife's death)

Front 172

Conventional stage

Back 172

a stage of moral development in which the morality of
an action is primarily determined by the extent to which it conforms to
social rules (breaking a law, failing to fulfill a duty)

Front 173

postconventional stage

Back 173

a stage of moral development at which the morality of an action is determined by a set of general principles that reflect core values (life is more important than shopkeeper's profits)

Front 174

primary sex characteristics

Back 174

bodily structures that are directly involved in reproduction (eg menstruation)

Front 175

socioemotional selectivity theory

Back 175

younger adults are generally oriented toward the acquisition of info that will be useful to them in the future, whereas older adults that are generally oriented toward information that brings emotional satisfaction in the present