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VCU Psychology 101 Exam 1 Questions
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What is Psychology? ✔✔Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
goals of psychology ✔✔To accurately measure and describe, explain, predict, and control/alter behavior and mental processes
William Wundt ✔✔first person to call himself a psychologist, opened first psych lab in Germany (Univ of Leipzig), called his approach Structuralism. He looked inward on experiences and how they related to one another.
William James ✔✔American, influenced by Darwin, FUNCTIONALISM, interested in the adaptive functions served by behavior and thought, not a question of whether we smell or not, but what it does for us, more practical, also first classroom teacher of psychology (Darwinism- animals and humans have certain traits that are functional or not functional) interested in how the things we do allow us to get along in the world, what's the function of a peacock having a huge tail? Wrote the textbook "Principles of Psychology"
John Watson ✔✔Championed psychology as the science of behavior and demonstrated conditioned responses on a baby, behaviorist (science rooted in observation)
B.F. Skinner ✔✔Behaviorist, he rejected introspection and studied how consequences shape behavior.
Sigmund Freud ✔✔emphasized the ways emotional responses to childhood experiences and our unconscious thought processes affect our behavior, thus psychology till the 1920's was defined as the "the science of mental life"
Neuro-biological/Physiological ✔✔behavioral and mental processes are ultimately explained by the activities of the nervous system, especially the brain, and the action of hormones, neurotransmitters and other chemicals
psychodynamic ✔✔how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts
Horney, Erikson, Freud (psychoanalytic) ✔✔*behavior and mental processes are largely determined by unconscious mental and emotional conflicts. Usually put instincts or desires for sex, aggression, security, and power against environmental obstacles to fulfillment of those desires,
Behavioral ✔✔Psychology can be studied scientifically by examining the overt behavior of humans and animals. Behavior is largely shaped by the patterns & punishments that each person has experienced in his/her environment
Cognitive ✔✔Behavior is determined by how information is encoded, stored, retrieved, or otherwise processed by the brain
Humanistic ✔✔historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people and the individual's potential for personal growth. Humans make choices by thinking, rather than by simple influence from the environment
biopsychosocial model ✔✔the integrated viewpoint that incorporates various levels of analysis and offers a more complete picture of any given behavior or mental process
Hindsight bias ✔✔The feeling that 'I knew it all along' and you feel confident after you hear the results, that you would have been able to foresee it
Overconfidence ✔✔Similar to hindsight bias. Once you find out the answer, hindsight makes it seem obvious and you become overconfident.
Steps in Scientific Method ✔✔Identify a question of interest from experience, the literature, or theory
Pose a testable hypothesis (define hypothesis)
Conduct a study to test hypothesis
Descriptive Methods ✔✔Benefits; lets us observe and describe things in everyday life. Drawbacks; can not change factors and data can be misrepresented. Does not explain behavior but describes it. No control of variables. Can be used to generate hypotheses
Correlational ✔✔Benefits; helps us figure out how closely two things vary together and helps us predict. Drawback; correlation indicates the possibility of a cause-effect relationship, but it does not prove causation.
Experimental ✔✔Benefits: Can draw cause and effect infererences. Manipulate one or more factors in the experiment and control other variables. Must have control group. Drawbacks; Not ethical to manipulate certain variables, and may not generalize to other contexts.
Random Assignment ✔✔By random assignment of participants, the experimenter aims to control other relevant factors. Random assignment is the assigning of participants to experimental and
Operational Definition ✔✔statement of procedures (operations) used to define research variables, select research method, collect and analyze data, interpret and publish results.
Experiment ✔✔an organized way to prove or disprove a hypothesis derived from observations.
Be able to identify the IV and DV if presented a study example.
Function of Nervous system ✔✔To allow rapid, specific communication throughout the body
Neuron ✔✔a nerve cell; the basic building block of the nervous system
Axon ✔✔also known as a nerve fiber; conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body; "Axon's Announce"--are cell's transmitter
Dendrite ✔✔Multiple, usually shorter fibers which receive signals from the axons of other neurons, are cells "receivers"
Myelin sheath ✔✔a fatty substance that insulates the axon from other neurons, makes nerve conduction- faster
Terminal branches ✔✔form junctions with other cells
Terminal buttons ✔✔area at the end of an axon fiber which holds inside of it small sacks called synaptic vesicles
Cell body/Soma ✔✔The largest part of a cell, the cell body holds all of the general parts of a cell as well as the nucleus and supports the entire neuron.
Vesicle ✔✔sacs of neurotransmitters at the terminal buttons of axons
Neural impulse ✔✔electrical discharge that travels along a nerve fiber
Threshold ✔✔the level of stimulation required to "fire" a neuron.
Action potential ✔✔a neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon.
MRI- "magnetic resonance imaging" ✔✔- technique for revealing blood flow and, therefore, brain activity by comparing successive MRI scans. Shows brain function
fMRI- "functional magnetic resonance imaging ✔✔technique for revealing blood flow and, therefore, brain activity by comparing successive MRI scans. Shows brain function.
Brainstem ✔✔oldest part of the brain, beginning where the spinal cord swells and enters the skull.
Medulla ✔✔base of the brain stem that controls heartbeat and breathing
Reticular formation ✔✔- a nerve network in the brainstem that plays an important role in controlling arousal.
Thalamus ✔✔the brain's sensory switchboard, directs messages to the sensory areas in the cortex and transmits replies to the cerebellum and medulla.
Cerebellum ✔✔the "little brain" attached to the rear of the brainstem. Helps coordinate voluntary movements and balance
Limbic system ✔✔A doughnut shaped system of neural structures at border of brainstem and cerebrum, associated with emotions such as fear, aggression, and drives for food and sex. Includes the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus.
Amygdala ✔✔consists of two lima bean-sized neural clusters linked to the emotions of fear/anger.
Hypothalamus ✔✔lies below the thalamus and directs several maintenance activities like eating, drinking, body temperature, and control of the emotions. Helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland. helps keep body in homeostasis.
Hippocampus ✔✔processes conscious memories.
Frontal lobes ✔✔portion of the cerebral cortex lying just behind the forehead; involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making plans and judgements.
Corpus callosum ✔✔the large band of neural fibers that connects the two brain hemispheres and carries messages between them
Split-brain ✔✔a condition resulting from surgery that isolates the brain's two hemispheres by cutting the fibers (mainly those of the corpus callosum) connecting them.
Neural plasticity ✔✔the brain's ability to change, especially during childhood, by reorganizing after damage or by building new pathways based on experience
Neurosurgery ✔✔The medical specialty concerned with prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.
Central Nervous system ✔✔Consists of the brain and spinal
Peripheral Nervous System ✔✔Consists of all other neurons
Somatic nervous system ✔✔enables voluntary control of our skeletal muscles
Autonomic nervous system ✔✔controls our glands and the muscles of our internal organs
Endocrine system ✔✔Systems of glands and ducts throughout body. Excretes hormones in the body
Left hemisphere ✔✔o Regulation of positive emotion
o Understanding writing and speech
o Memory for words and numbers
o Spontaneous speaking and writing
o Control of sequencing of movements
Right hemisphere ✔✔o Regulation of negative emotion
o Responses to simple commands
o Memory for shapes and music
o Recognition of faces
o Interpreting spatial relationships and visual images
Normal waking consciousness: Stage 2 ✔✔During early, light sleep the brain enters a low- amplitude, regular wave form called theta waves (5-8cps).
Normal waking consciousness: Stage 3-4 ✔✔During deepest sleep, brain activity slows down. There are large-amplitude, slow delta waves (1.5-4cps). High and low waves.
Alpha waves ✔✔the relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state (9-14cps)
Delta waves ✔✔The brain emits large, slow delta waves first, in stage three, then four. brain waves associated with deep sleep (1.5-4cps)
Hallucinations ✔✔false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of visual stimulus; MRI indicates brain activity in visual cortex during hallucinations.
Narcolepsy ✔✔Overpowering urge to fall asleep that may occur while talking or standing up.
Sleep apnea ✔✔Failure to breathe when asleep.
Night terrors ✔✔The sudden arousal from sleep with intense fear accompanied by physiological reactions (e.g., rapid heart rates, perspiration) which occur during Stage 4 sleep.
Dream ✔✔a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind. Dreams are notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities and incongruities, and for the dreamers delusional acceptance of the content and the later difficulties of remembering it.
Hypnosis ✔✔a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur.
Posthypnotic suggestion ✔✔A suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors
Psychoactive drug ✔✔a chemical substance that alters perceptions and moods
Tolerance ✔✔the diminishing effect with regular use of the same drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drugs effect.
Stimulants ✔✔drugs that excite and stimulate neural activity and speed up body functions (caffeine, cocaine, powerful amphetamines)
Amphetamines ✔✔- drugs that stimulate neural activity, causing accelerated body functions and associated energy and mood changes. (examples: cocaine, amphetamines, nicotine, caffeine)
Methamphetamine ✔✔a powerfully addictive drug that stimulates the CNS, with accelerated body functions and associated energy and mood changes over time, appears to reduce baseline dopamine levels.
Hallucinogens ✔✔psychedelic drugs such as LSD that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input.
Antidepressants/SSRIs (prescription medication ✔✔Drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety. different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters.
