AP PSYCH CONFUSING PAIRS WORKSHEET

Independent Variable: a condition or event that an experimenter varies in order to see its impact on another variable

Dependent variable: the variable that is thought to be affected by manipulation of the independent variable

Experimental Group: consists of the subjects who receive some special treatment in regard to the independent variable

Control group: consists of similar subjects who do not receive the special treatment given to the experimental group

Left brain: speaking occurs

Right brain: when a person performs a perceptual task I

Corpus callosum: the large band of neural fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres and carrying messages between them.

Cerebral cortex: the intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells that covers the cerebral hemispheres; the body's ultimate control and information-processing center.

Cerebellum: The part of the hindbrain whose main functions include controlling finely coordinated movements and storing memories about movement, but which may also be involved in impulse control. emotion, and language.

Cerebrum: The principal and most anterior part of the brain in vertebrates, located in the front area of the skull and consisting of two hemispheres

Motor cortex: an area at the rear of the frontal lobes that controls voluntary movements

Sensory cortex: the area at the front of the parietal lobe that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations

Afferent neuron: a neuron that carries information from the senses to the central nervous system

Efferent neuron: a neuron that carries messages from the central nervous system to the muscles of the body

Sympathetic nervous system: (fight-or-flight system); part of the ANS that is responsible for reacting to stressful events and bodily arousal

Parasympathetic nervous system: part of the ANS that restores the body to normal functioning after arousal and is responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the organs and glands

Neurotransmitters: chemical found in the synaptic vesicles that, when released, has an effect on the next cell

Hormones: A regulatory substance produced in an organism and transported in tissue fluids such as blood or sap to stimulate specific cells

Agonist medication: A chemical that mimics the action of a neurotransmitter

Antagonist medication: drug which blocks the activity of neurotransmitters

Broca’s area: controls language expression-an area of the frontal, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech

Wernicke’s area: controls language reception-a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

Lateral Hypothalamus: The part of the hypothalamus that produces hunger signals

Ventromedial Hypothalamus: part of the hypothalamus involved in suppressing hunger

Authoritarian Parenting: Parents who enforce rigid rules and demand strict obedience to authority.

Authoritative parenting: Parents who supply firm and consistent guidance combined with love and affection.

Secure attachment: An infant will happily explore a strange environment in the presence of their mother.

Insecure attachment: Infants will be less likely to explore their surroundings, even resulting in clinging to their mother.

Monozygotic twins: identical twins; Genetically siblings who share 100% of their genes because they developed from a single fertilized egg in utero.

Dizygotic twins: siblings that share about half of the same genes because they develop from the same zygote

Assimilation: interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Accommodation: adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

Concrete operations: in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events

Formal operations: in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

Egocentric: in Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view

Ethnocentric: The belief that one's culture is superior to others

Sensation: detecting physical energies emitted by the environment external physical energies are detected by receptors in the sense organs

Perception: processes allowing neurons of the brain to interpret and organize sensory neural impulses around the world

Rods: retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond

Cones: retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. They detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations

Classical conditioning: a type of learning in which an organism comes to associate stimuli.

Operant conditioning: a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher

UCS: In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally—naturally and automatically—triggers a response.

CS: In classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS).

UCR: In classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus (UCS).

CR: In classical conditioning, the learned response to a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS).

Positive reinforcement: increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response.

Negative reinforcement: increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli, such as shock. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response.

Primacy effect: tendency to remember words at the beginning of a list especially well

Recency effect: tendency to remember words at the end of a list especially well

Iconic memory: a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Echoic memory: a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds

Proactive interference: The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.

Retroactive interference: The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

Retrograde amnesia: Loss of memories for events that occurred prior to a head injury.

Anterograde amnesia: Loss of memories for events that occur after a head injury.

Implicit memory: retention independent of conscious recollection. (Also called no declarative or procedural memory.)

Explicit memory: memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and " declare." (Also called declarative memory.)

Recall memory: a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test

Recognition memory: a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test

Representativeness heuristics: judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to match particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.

Availability heuristics: estimating the likelihood of events based on their presence in our memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common.

Phonemes: in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

Morphemes: in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).

Belief bias: the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid

Belief perseverance: clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Fluid intelligence: one's ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood

Crystalized intelligence: one's accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

Validity: the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to

Reliability: extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting

Achievement test: a test designed to assess what a person has learned

Aptitude test: a test designed to predict a person's future performance

Theory X: assumes that workers are basically lazy, error-prone, and extrinsically motivated by money and thus should be directed by above.

Theory Y: assumes that given challenge and freedom, workers are motivated to achieve self-esteem and to demonstrate their competence and creativity.

Intrinsic motivation: Engaging in activities because they are personally rewarding or because they fulfill our beliefs and expectations

Extrinsic motivation: a desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment

External locus: the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate

Internal locus: the perception that one controls one's own fate.

Lithium: the drug treatment of choice for bipolar disorder

Type A: Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people

Type B: Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people

Schizophrenia: a group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions.

DID: a rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities.

Mary cover jones: behaviorism/learning; pioneer in systematic desensitization, maintained that fear could be unlearned

Mary lee smith: a psychologist

Rosenhan: study in which colleagues were admitted into separate mental hospitals after telling each they were hearing voices.

Rosenthal: Suggested that experiment bias may lead researches to unintentionally influence the behavior of their subjects.

Delusions: False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders

Hallucinations: false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus.

Prejudice: An undeserved, usually negative, attitude toward a group of people

Stereotype: Ideas about what members of different groups are like in which our expectations may influence the way we interact with members of these groups

Discrimination: When one acts on one's prejudice

Self-fulfilling prophecy: The creation of a situation that unintentionally allows personal expectancies to influence participants

Learned helplessness: the behavior of giving up or not responding, exhibited by people and animals exposed to negative consequences or punishment over which they feel they have no control.

Normative social influence: results from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.

Informative: results from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality.

Groupthink: occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

Group polarization: the enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.

Barnum effect: the tendency to consider a personal description accurate if it it is stated in very general terms

Hawthorne effect: when people know that they are being observed, they change their behavior to what they think the observe expects or to make themselves look good.

William Wundt: Experimental psychologist in the late 1870s. Studied conscious awareness of perception. Think about experiment: once you hear a tone press the button--once you perceive the tone press the button.

William James: Functionalist who supported Charles Darwin. Believed consciousness serves a function. It enables us to consider our past, adjust to our present circumstances, and plan out future.

Little Albert: subject in John Watson's experiment, proved classical conditioning principles, especially the generalization of fear

Peter:

Mary Calkins: 1st women President of the American Psychology Association

Mary Ainsworth: developmental psychology; compared effects of maternal separation, devised patterns of attachment; "The Strange Situation": observation of parent/child attachment