GRE Psychology


 Social Psychology Aronson and Linder’s gain-loss principle:

An evaluation that changes will have more of an impact than an evaluation that remains constant. Therefore we will like someone more if their liking for us has increased (shown a gain) than someone who has consistently liked us. And vice versa. Social exchange theory: Assumes that a person weighs the rewards and costs of interacting with another. The more the rewards outweigh the costs, the greater the attraction to the other person. People attempt to maximize rewards and minimize costs. Basically states that altruism does not exist unless benefits outweigh the costs Equity theory: Proposes that we consider not only our own costs and rewards, but the costs and rewards of the other person. We prefer that our ratio of costs to rewards be equal to the other person’s ratio. If one person feels that s/he is getting less, or more, out of the relationship than the other, there’ll be an instability due to the perceived inequality. Need complementarity: Claims that people choose relationships so that they mutually satisfy each other’s needs. In this case, the person who likes to talk is complemented by the person who likes to listen; the dominant is attracted to the submissive… Physical attractiveness: Is a potent determinate of attraction. Attractiveness stereotype: The tendency to attribute positive qualities and desirable characteristics to attractive people. Spatial proximity: People will generally develop a greater liking for someone who lives within a few blocks than for someone who lives in a different neighborhood. Even small differences in proximity can have an effect. One possibility is the closer people live to each other, the more accessible they are to each other, so potential friendships have a better opportunity to develop. Proximity may also increase the intensity of initial interactions. Maybe you’d think it was fate that you are so close to one another. Mere exposure hypothesis: The mere repeated exposure — one’s familiarity with — to a stimulus leads to enhanced liking for it, or rather an attitude change. —
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The more you see something, the more you like it. Robert Zajonc: Polish-born American who was a key player in the mere-exposure research. Also, in 1975, developed the Confluence Model, providing a mathematical model of the effect of birth order and family size on IQ scores. Suggests that children are born into intellectual environments that affect intelligence; as families increase in size, the overall IQ of the family drops; children from larger families have slightly lower IQs. Helping behavior; altruism: Prosocial behavior, or behaviors that benefit other individuals or groups of people. A form of helping behavior in which the person’s intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to himself. Also includes behaviors that may be motivated by egoism or selfishness. John Darley & Bibb Latane, bystander intervention: Best known for looking at why people do not always intervene (ie. Offer aid) at the scene of an emergency, a research interest largely stemming from the tragic case of Kitty Genovese, the New Yorker who was murdered in a New York suburb in March 1964 in the presence of 38 witnesses. More people present at a scene of an emergency can lead to a reduced likelihood that anyone would help, for three reasons: Social Influence Pluralistic ignorance, the assumption that because no one is helping, everything must be all right; “no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes;” the behavior of others leads others to a definition of an event as a nonemergency and Diffusion of responsibility, a diminished sense of personal responsibility when others are present. Later developed a very different interpretation: the bystanders weren’t monsters; they weren’t even apathetic. Rather, they were engaged in the normal problem-solving process—trying to figure out what was going on and what to do about it, which included evaluation of deterrents, led to not helping. Empathy: The ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another; a strong influence on helping behavior. Batson’s empathy-altruism: Disagrees with social exchange theory, stating that people help others in need out of genuine concern for the well-being of the other person. If you feel empathy towards another person you will help them, regardless of what you can gain from it (1991). Relieving their suffering becomes the most important thing. When you do not feel empathy, the social exchange theory takes control. Batson recognized that people sometimes helped out of selfish reasons. —
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 Claims that the prosocial motivation evoked by empathy is directed toward the ultimate goal of increasing the welfare of the person in need. 1) Empathy Specific Reward: Empathy triggers the need for social reward which can be gained by helping. 2) Empathy Specific Punishment: Empathy triggers the fear of social punishment which can be avoided by helping. Frustration-aggression hypothesis: A theory of aggression proposed by John Dollard and Neal E. Miller; states that aggression is the result of blocking, or frustrating, a person’s efforts to attain a goal. Aka, frustration-aggression-displacement theory, attempts to explain why people scapegoat; also, to give an explanation as to the cause of violence. Frustration causes aggression, but when the source of frustration cannot be challenged, the aggression gets displaced onto an innocent target. Used to explain riots and revolutions caused by poorer and more deprived sections of society who may express their bottled up frustration and anger through violence. Frustration: A condition that exists when a goal-response suffers interference. Aggression: The condition which exists when a goal-response is injury to an organism (or organism surrogate). Not always the response to frustration, but rather a substitute response… Is aggression innate? Social learning theory: Aggression is learned through modeling (direct observation), observational learning, or through reinforcement. Bandura’s social learning theory: His approach emphasized cognitive and information-processing capabilities that facilitate social behavior. Observational learning may occur in relation to 3 models: live model; verbal instruction; symbolic. He emphasized reciprocal determinism, stating than an individual’s behavior is influenced by the environment and characteristics of the person. Modeling process involves several steps: attention; retention; reproduction; motivation. Children who were made to feel frustrated and were left alone in a room of toys behaved aggressively toward the Bobo doll, similarly to the adult they saw taking their frustration out on it, than those who had not observed the aggressive model. Response feedback influences also serve an important function. Following a response, the reinforcements, by experience or observation, will greatly impact the occurrence of the behavior in the future. Autokinetic effect; autokinesis: —
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 Phenomenon of visual perception (illusionary movement) in which a stationary, small point of light in an otherwise dark or featureless environment appears to move. 1st recorded by a Russian officer keeping watch who observed illusory movement of a star near the horizon. It presumably occurs because motion perception was always relative to some reference point. In darkness or in a featureless environment there is no reference point, so the movement of the single point is undefined. Muzafer Sherif: Through research discovered that individuals conformed to the group; the judgments converged on some group norm. Solomon Asch’s conformity study; Asch Paradigm: Still used in present day psychology. The aim of his research (show cards with lines on it and have fake participants say the wrong answer) was to see whether the real participant would change his answer and respond in the same way as the confederates, despite it being the wrong answer. Once the experiment was completed, the "real" participant was individually interviewed; towards the end of the interview, the participant was debriefed about the true purpose of the study. Participants' responses to interview questions were a valuable component of Asch's study because it gave him a glimpse of the psychological aspects of the experimental situation. Subjects gave the wrong answer 37% of the time, having switched from the right answer to the norm’s wrong answer. There were three main reactions: confidence in perception and experience; withdrawn, sticking with the perception despite others; and doubtful, experienced doubt and tension but nonetheless stuck with their correct responses because they felt a need to adequately take part in the task. There was no pressure to conform. STANLEY MILGRAM’S EXPERIMENT: Influenced by Asch’s use of lines and the Holocaust. Also, took part in the small world phenomenon or the six degrees of separation. In this experiment, 26 out of 40 participants administered the full range of shocks up to 450 volts, the highest obedience rate Milgram found in his whole series. Thus, according to Milgram, the subject shifts responsibility to another person and does not blame himself for what happens. This resembles real-life incidents in which people see themselves as merely cogs in a machine, just "doing their job", allowing them to avoid responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The shocks themselves were fake; the participant who took the place as the "learner" in the experiment was in fact a paid actor who would simulate the effects of the shock depending on the voltage. Milgram became notorious for this tactic, and his experiment was soon classed as highly unethical as it caused stress to the participants in the study. The study soon became one of the most talked about psychological experiments in recent history, making headlines across the world, and resulted in Milgram finding himself in the centre of public attention. More recent tests of the experiment have found that it only works under certain conditions; in particular, when participants believe the results are necessary for the "good of science". Foot-in-the-door effect/technique; FITD: Essentially, the more a subject goes along with small requests or commitments, the more likely that subject is to continue in a desired direction of attitude or behavioral change and feel obligated to go along with larger requests. Works by first getting a small 'yes' and then getting an even bigger 'yes.' —
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The principle involved is that a small agreement creates a bond between the requester and the requestee. Even though the requestee may only have agreed to a trivial request out of politeness, this forms a bond which when a future request is made, the requestee will feel obliged to act consistently with the earlier one. Compliance: A change in behavior that occurs as a result of situational or interpersonal pressure. Door-in-the-face effect: People who refuse a large initial request are more likely to agree to a later small request. Self-perception: How our social lives influence our perspectives of ourselves. Self-perception theory (SPT): Is an account of attitude formation developed by psychologist Daryl Bem. It asserts that people develop their attitudes by observing their own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused it. The theory is counterintuitive in nature, as the conventional wisdom is that attitudes determine behaviors. Furthermore, the theory suggests that people induce attitudes without accessing internal cognition and mood states. The person interprets their own overt behaviors rationally in the same way they attempt to explain others’ behaviors. Clark and Clark: African-American psychologists who as a married team conducted important research among children and were active in the Civil Rights Movement. The Clarks testified as expert witnesses in Briggs v. Elliott, one of the cases rolled into Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). The Clarks' work contributed to the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in which it determined that de jure racial segregation in public education was unconstitutional. Subsequent research, since the 1960s, using improved methodologies, and perhaps partially due to changes in society, has shown that black children in fact hold positive views of their own ethnicity. Dimensions of Personal Identity: The more salient (noticeable; prominent) the identity, the more we conform to the role expectations of the identities. Primacy Effect: Those occasions when 1st impressions are more important than subsequent impressions. Recency effect: The most recent information we have about an individual is most important in forming our impressions. Attribution theory: Focuses on the tendency for individuals to infer the causes of other people’s behavior. —
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 Fritz Heider: Is one of the founding fathers of attribution theory. Also, of balance theory fame. We are all naïve amateur psychologists who attempt to discover causes and effects in events, dividing these causes into: dispositional and situational. Dispositional causes: Those that relate to the features of the person whose behavior is being considered. Including the beliefs, attitude, and personality characteristics of the individual. Situational causes: Are external and those that relate to the features of the surroundings. Ie. Threats, $$, social norms, and peer pressure. Fundamental attribution error; correspondence bias; attribution effect: The tendency to overestimate the effect of disposition or personality and underestimate the effect of the situation in explaining the social behavior; the tendency to look for personality flaws rather than looking for situational influences that may have caused their behavior. Most visible when people explain the behavior of others. Does not explain interpretations of one’s own behavior — where situational factors are more easily recognized. Halo effect/error: A cognitive bias in which one’s judgment of a person’s character can be influenced by one’s overall impression of him. Edward Thorndike named it; it’s the tendency to allow a general impression about a person to influence other, more specific evaluations about a person. Why people are often inaccurate in evaluations of people. M.J. Lerner A pioneer in the psychological field of justice, studied the tendency of individuals to believe in a just world aka BJW. A strong belief in a just world increases the likelihood of “blaming the victim” since such a world denies the possibility of innocent victims. Groups: How being a member of a group affects individual behavior. Theodore Newcomb’s Study: Bennington College Study looked at the influence of the college experience on social and political beliefs. He was also the first to document the effects of proximity on acquaintance and attraction. —
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 Even though more than 2/3rds of the students’ parents were Republican, the college itself had a liberal atmosphere which the student’s year-by-year increasingly adapted to/an increase in liberalism. Overtime, students increasingly accepted the norms of their community. Edward Hall: Suggests there are cultural norms that govern how far away we stand from the people we’re speaking to. In the US, the norm for intimacy is a foot; whereas with a stranger is several feet apart. Proxemics: The study of how individuals space themselves in relation to others. Zajonc’s Theory: Polish-born American, argued the presence of others increases arousal and consequently enhances the emission of dominant responses. Ie. If a person is learning a new dance step, the wrong movements are likely to be dominant. The presence of others would enhance the wrong movements. For expert dancers, however, where the correct moves are likely to be dominant, the presence of others improves performance. Social loafing: A group phenomenon referring to the tendency for people to put forth less effort when part of a group effort than when acting individually. Ie. Rope-pulling or clapping at a sporting event. This is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes less productive than the combined performance of their members working as individuals. Philip Zimbardo: People are more likely to commit antisocial acts when they feel anonymous within a social environment. Prison simulation/The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE): Philip Zimbardo’s study, a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed and excerpts of footage are publicly available. Deindividuation: Refers to a loss of self-awareness and of personal identity. The subjects in the experiment lost their sense of who they really were. Their sense of self was overwhelmed by the roles they were playing, and they began acting out those roles, forgetting that they were actually university students participating in an experiment. Irving Janis:




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Studied the ways that group decisions often go awry, engaged others in what he called “groupthink”. Groupthink: Refers to the tendency of decision-making groups to strive for consensus by not considering discordant information. A psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences. Loyalty to the group requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. Risky shift Refers to the finding that group decisions are riskier than the average of the individual choices. Aka Group polarization is the phenomenon that when placed in group situations, people will make decisions and form opinions to more of an extreme than when they are in individual situations. The phenomenon has shown that after participating in a discussion group, members tend to advocate more extreme positions and call for riskier courses of action than individuals who did not participate in any such discussion. Value hypothesis Suggests that the risky shift occurs in situations in which riskiness is culturally valued. James Stoner 1968 experiment by presenting dilemmas to couples to examine the risky shift in controversial situations. Group decisions shifted toward caution instead of risk. The content of the item can determine the direction of the shift. Group polarization A tendency for group discussion to enhance the group’s initial tendencies toward riskiness or caution. Leadership Researchers found that by artificially increasing the amount a person speaks, that person’s perceived leadership status also increases. Kurt Lewin Conducted research to determine the effects of different leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, and laissezfaire. The quantity of work in autocratic groups was greater than in the other groups, but work motivation and interest were stronger in the democratic groups. Cooperation Persons act together for their mutual benefit so that all of them can obtain a goal. Competition




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A person acts for his or her individual benefit so that he can obtain a goal that has limited availability. Prisoner’s dilemma Classic method of investigating people’s choices to compete or cooperate. Muzafer Sherif Created hostilities through competition and then reduced the hostilities through cooperation. It is in the Robbers Cave experiments that he showed that superordinate goals (goals so large that it requires more than one group to achieve the goal) reduced conflict significantly more effectively than other strategies (e.g., communication, contact). Superordinate goals Are where two or more people or groups must be involved to achieve a specific goal. Muzafer Sherif (1954) performed a study at a camp involving two groups of boys, the Eagles and the Rattlers, that were in opposition to one another in a zero-sum situation. The opposing groups had strong negative feelings towards each other, resulting in hostile actions such as 'garbage wars'. Sherif was able to successfully bring these two groups together by using superordinate goals, such as solving the problems of a breakdown of the water supply and the breakdown of a food delivery truck. The cumulative effect of these incidents was friendship formation across group boundaries. On the last day, both groups elected to ride home together on the same bus. -- Developmental Psychology -Developmental Psychology The task is to describe and explain changes in human behavior over time. British empiricist school of thought In the 17th & 18th centuries, these influential social philosophers helped broaden the public’s views about children: John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley, David Hume, James Mill, John Stuart Mill. They believed that all knowledge was gained through experience. Tabula rasa A blank slate which Locke asserted that a child’s mind is at birth which means that children are born without predetermined tendencies and child development is completely reliant on experiences with the environment. Whose role is it to model the child to fit into society? The parents and society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Proposed an opposing view a century after Locke. Believed that society was not unnecessary but also a detriment to optimal development. —
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 Charles Darwin Most often linked to the concept of evolution, he also kept a baby biography concerning the sequence of physical and psychological development. Evolutionary theory Stressed the importance of studying the mind as it functioned to help the individual adapt to the environment, a central characteristic of the functionalist system of thought. G. Stanley Hall A pioneering American psychologist and educator. his interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association, and the found of child and adolescent psychology. John Watson American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. he promoted a change in psychology through his address, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it, which was given at Columbia University in 1913. Through his behaviorist approach, he conducted research on animal behavior, child rearing, and advertising. In addition, he conducted the controversial "Little Albert" experiment. He criticized the field of psychology in being too focused on mentalistic concepts; he believed in the importance of environmental influences and accepted Locke’s view of the tabula rasa.; placed a great deal of responsibility on parents for raising competent children. He believed the only methods in the study of behavior were objective methods, and that the field of psychology should never consider concepts such as consciousness, mental, will, imagery, etc; he believed the goal of psychology should be to predict behavioral responses given particular stimuli, and vice versa. Arnold Gesell A “nativist” in that he believed that much of development was biologically based and that the developmental blueprint existed from birth. Psychodynamic orientation Came out of clinical, rather than academic or research settings, and originated in the work of Freud (18561939), these theories stress the role of subconscious conflicts in the development of functioning and personality. Cognitive structuralists In contrast to the beliefs of psychoanalytic and psychosocial theories, this theory emphasizes the thinking ability of people. In opposition to the behaviorists were these structuralists, an orientation most strongly influenced by the work of the late Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896-1980). Jean Piaget Most influential psychologist of the cognitive structuralists. He saw children as more actively involved in their development—constructing knowledge of the world through their experiences with the environment. Cross-sectional studies




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Compare groups of subjects at different ages. Longitudinal studies Compare a specific group of people over an extended period of time. Sequential cohort studies Combine cross-sectional & longitudinal research methods; in this approach, several groups of different ages are studied over several years. Clinical method/case study method More detailed approach to the development of a particular child. This method attempts to collate facts about a particular child and his environment in order to gain a better perspective. Nature/nurture controversy Debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences ("nurture," i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits. Gregor Mendel A German-speaking Silesian[2][3] scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance; if both parents have blue eyes, their offspring must have blue eyes because blue eyes is a recessive trait and therefore can only contribute these recessive genes to their children. Allele One of a number of alternative forms of the same gene. Dominant and recessive gene A relationship between alleles of a single gene. Genotype The total genetic complement (genetic makeup) of an individual. Phenotype The total collection of expressed traits that is the individual’s observable characteristics. Chromosomes Genes are located on these; an organized structure of DNA, protein, and RNA found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. R.C. Tryon —
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 An American behavioral psychologist, who pioneered the study of hereditary trait inheritance and learning in animals. His series of experiments with laboratory rats showed that animals can be selectively bred for greater aptitude at certain intelligence tests, but that this selective breeding does not increase the general intelligence of the animals. In 1942, he tested the ability of laboratory rats to navigate a maze: rats who took fewer wrong turns to get through the maze and reach the food at the end were termed "maze-bright," while those who took many wrong turns were termed "maze-dull." Tryon then interbred the maze-bright rats with other maze-brights, and mazedull rats with other maze-dulls. With each successive generation, the ability to navigate the maze increased in the brights and decreased in the dulls. Known as Tryon's Rat Experiment, this study was highly influential in the field of psychology for showing that specific behavioral traits may be hereditary. Twin studies; monozygotic (MZ) v. dizygotic (DZ) MZ twins are genetically identical and are treated more similarly and that they tend to imitate each other more than DZ twins; DZ share 50% of their genes (ALT & CLT); MZ and DZ do not necessarily share their environments to the same degree. Lewis Terman His study was the first to focus on “gifted” children; a large-scale longitudinal study that followed the development of the group over time, observing them every 5 years. Best known as the inventor of the Standord-Binet IQ test and the initiator of the longitudinal study of children with high IQs called the Genetic Studies of Genius. A prominent eugenicist: the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding. Down’s syndrome A genetic anomaly in which the individual has an extra 21st chromosome. Varying levels of mental retardation; the age of the biological parents can affect this. Phenylketonuria (PKU) A genetic disorder, degenerative disease of the nervous system; results when the enzyme needed to digest phenylalanine, an amino acid found in milk and other foods, is lacking; was the 1st genetic disease that could be tested in large populations; Untreated PKU can lead to mental retardation, seizures, and other serious medical problems. Klinefelter’s syndrome In males, possession of an extra X chromosome; these males have an XXY configuration. Turner’s syndrome Females with only one X chromosome; a failure to develop secondary sex characteristics; often have physical abnormalities such as short fingers and unusually shaped mouths. Conception Gametes Zygote




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Fertilized egg Germinal period Embryonic stage Fetal period Neonatal reflexes: Rooting Moro Babinski Grasping Jean Piaget A Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children; his theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Placed great importance on the education of children; as the Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in 1934 that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual." Believed cognitive growth is a continuous process that begins at birth and proceeds through four sages, each stage being qualitatively different from the others; during infancy, he believed, children learning from interacting with their environment through reflexive behaviors so by repeatedly grasping, infants learn that they can grasp things; considered the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing. Believed that how we use language depends on which cognitive stage we are in; that just because linguistic abilities improve does not cause improvements in their thinking abilities; he preferred observation to statistical measures. Schema/ta Organized patterns of behavior and/or thought; infants develop these behavioral patterns which are characterized by action tendencies; older children develop operational patters characterized by more abstract representations of cognition. Adaptation Takes place through 2 complementary processes, assimilation & accommodation. Assimilation The process of interpreting new information in terms of existing schemata. Accommodation —
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 Occurs when new information doesn’t really fit into existing schemata; the process of modifying existing schemata to adapt to this new information. Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development: Sensorimotor Primary and secondary circular reactions which means the infanct begins to coordinate separate aspects of movement; this is the advent of goal-oriented behavior; ie. When hungry, the infant will suck on its thumb, trying to gain satisfaction because of the repetition of the behavior, it is called circular; primary circular reactions are restricted to motions concerned with the body while secondary reactions are directed toward manipulation of objects in the environment; object permanent develops; birth to 2 years of age. Object permanence Occurs when the child realizes that objects continue to exist even though the child cannot perceive their existence; “out of sight, out of mind,” is no longer true for infants who have developed into this stage which is the beginning of representational thought; the child has begun to make mental representations of external objects and events. Preoperational Once the child has begun representational thought; lasts from 2 years to 7 years of age; children have the capacity to understand the concept that objects continue to exist even though they cannot perceive the existence; child has not mastered conservation Centration The tendency to be able to focus on only one aspect of a phenomenon. Ie. Cannot understand that relationships are reciprocal and cannot take the perspective of other people. Egocentrism A girl, for example, in the centration stage of the preoperational stage may be able to say she has a sister, but not whether her sister has a sister. Conservation Children are unable to understand this stage, the notion that physical properties of matter do not change simply b/c the appearance of the matter changes Concrete operational Child masters conservation and take the perspective of others into account but are limited to working with concrete objects or information that is directly available; children have difficulty with abstract thought; approximately ages 7 to 11. Formal operational With the approach of adolescence, the child enters this stage and has the ability to “think like a scientist,” that is, think logically about abstract ideas. Lev Vygotsky —
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 Contributed to our understanding of cognitive development; the engine driving cognitive development is the child’s internalization of various aspects of the culture—rules, symbols, language, and so on; the internalization of various interpersonal and cultural rules and processes that drives cognitive development in children. Known for his concept of the zone of proximal development, referring to those skills and abilities that have no yet fully developed but are in the process of development; the child needs guidance to demonstrate those skills and abilities. 4 basic components of language: Phonology The actual sound stem of language; there are about 40 speech sounds in English. Semantics The branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. Syntax The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language. Pragmatics A subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning; encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction Categorical perception The ability to distinguish between differences in sound that do not denote differences in meaning and those differences in sound that do denote differences in meaning. Babbling An important precursor to language; children—including deaf children— spontaneously begin to during their 1st year. Lenneberg, Rebelsky, and Nichols 1965, showed that the age babbling begins is about the same for hearing children with hearing parents, hearing children with deaf parents, and deaf children; however, for hearing children, babbling continues and becomes more frequent, reaching its highest frequency between 9 and 12 months; for deaf children, verbal babbling ceases soon after it begins. Petitto and Marentette 1991 study suggested that deaf children with parents using sign language appear to babble using their hands. Errors of growth A child who once said, “I ran” will now say “I runned to the store.” Many of these errors are universal and are not the result of environmental influence; it is thought that children are generalizing some internalized rule; this suggests that language acquisition is not the result of imitation and reinforcement, but the active application of —
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 a dynamic internalized set of linguistic rules; ie. Hisself vs himself; for the most part language is substantially mastered at the age of 5. Transformational grammar Chomsky is known for this study; he focused on syntactic transformations, or changes in word order that differ with meaning; believed this ability is innate since children have the capacity for it at an early age. Language acquisition device (LAD) The innate capacity for language acquisition is thought to be triggered by exposure to language; this device enable infants to listen to and process sounds; critical period between 2 and 13. Sigmund Freud A pioneer in charting personality and emotional growth; for him, human psychology and human sexuality are inextricably linked. Libido Sex drive or life drive is present at birth. Believed that this energy and the drive to reduce this tension were the underlying dynamic forces that accounted for human psychological process. Fixation Occurs when a child is overindulged or overly frustrated during a stage of development, 1 of the 5. In response, the child then forms a personality pattern based on that particular stage, which persists into adulthood. Oral Stage The first psychosexual development stage (0-1 year); during this stage, gratification is obtained primarily through the putting of objects into the mouth by biting and sucking. Libidinal energy is centered on the mouth as it is the infant’s primary erogenous zone. Anal Stage The second stage in Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, lasting from age 18 months to 3 years. Pleasure is derived from controlling bladder and bowel movement; the major conflict during this stage is toilet training; a fixation at this stage can result in a personality that is too rigid or one that is too disordered. Oedipal stage From 3 to 5, the child passes through the, otherwise known, phallic stage. Oedipal conflict Denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrates upon a child's desire to sexually possess the parent of the opposite sex (e.g. males attracted to their mothers, whereas females are attracted to their fathers). Electra conflict Introduced by Jung in regards to the Oedipus complex manifested in young girls. This occurs is the third stage, the phallic stage, ages 3-6. —
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Latency Because the latency stage is less of a stage and more of period between stages, it may begin at any time between the ages of 3 and 7 (whenever the child goes to school) and may continue until puberty, anywhere from the ages of 8 to 15. The age range is affected by childrearing practices; a stage of relative stability; no new organization of sexuality develops, and Freud did not pay much attention to it; it originates during the phallic stage as the child’s Oedipus complex begins to dissolve, realizing that his wishes and longings for the parents of the opposite sex cannot be fulfilled, the child turns away from these desires and starts to identify with the parent of the same sex; the libido is transferred from parents to friends of the same sex, clubs and her/rolemodel figures. The sexual and aggressive drives are expressed in socially accepted forms through the defense mechanisms of repression and sublimation.; the energy, no longer on the Oepidus, can use used for developing the self; thus, the ever present superego becomes more organized and principled. The child acquires culturally regarded skills and values. Genital Stage The final stage of human psychosexual development; this stage begins at the start of puberty when sexual urges are once again awakened. Through the lessons learned during the previous stages, adolescents direct their sexual urges onto opposite sex peers, with the primary focus of pleasure of the genitals. The less energy the child has left invested in unresolved psychosexual developments, the greater their capacity will be to develop normal relationships with the opposite sex. If, however, they remain fixated, particularly on the phallic stage, their development will be troubled as they struggle with further repression and defenses. Erik Erickson A German-born American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychosocial development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. Psychosocial theory Erikson’s theory holds that development is a sequence of central life crises. In each of these crises, there is a possible favorable outcome and a possible unfavorable outcome. Emphasizes emotional development and interactions with the social environment; Erikson believed that development occurred through resolutions of conflicts between needs and social demands; these conflicts occur in stages. Trust vs. mistrust Occurs in the first year of life; if resolved successfully, the child will come to trust his environment as well as himself; if unresolved, the child will often be suspicious of the world, possibly through his life. Autonomy vs shame and doubt 2nd stage, 1-3 years old. The favorable outcome here is a feeling of will and an ability to exercise choice as well as self-restraint; a child will have a sense of competence and autonomy; the unfavorable outcome is a sense of doubt and lack of control—the feeling that what happens to one is the result of external influences rather than one’s own volition. Purpose. Initiative vs guilt 3-6 years. Favorable outcomes include purpose, the ability to initiate activities, and the ability to enjoy accomplishment. If guilt wins out, the child will be so overcome by the fear of punishment that the child may either restrict himself, or may overcompensate by showing off. —
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 Competence. Industry vs inferiority School years, 6-12 years. Resolved favorably, the child will feel competent, will be able to exercise his abilities and intelligence in the world, and to affect the world in the way that the child desires. Unfavorable results in a sense of inadequacy, a sense of inability to act in a competent manner, and a low self-esteem. Child comparing self-worth to others (such as in a classroom environment). Child can recognize major disparities in personal abilities relative to other children. Erikson places some emphasis on the teacher, who should ensure that children do not feel inferior. Fidelity. Identity vs role confusion. Adolescent, 12 years till 18. Questioning of self. Who am I, how do I fit in? Where am I going in life? Encompasses what Erikson termed “physiological revolution.” The favorable outcome is fidelity, the ability to see oneself as a unique and integrated person with sustained loyalties. Unfavorable outcomes are confusion of one’s identity and a kind of amorphous personality that shifts from day to day. Erikson believes, if parents allow the child to explore, they will conclude their own identity. Otherwise, the teen will face identity confusion. Intimacy vs isolation The main crisis of young adulthood, 18-35. Favorable outcomes are love, the ability to have close, candid relationships with others, the ability to commit oneself to another person and to one’s own goals. If this crisis is not favorably resolved, there will be an avoidance of commitment, a kind of alienation and distancing of oneself from others and one’s ideals. Isolated individuals are either withdrawn or only capable of superficial relationships with others. Loving and lasting relationships vs isolated alienation. Generativity versus stagnation Stage 7, 2nd stage of adulthood, middle age. 35-64 Successful resolution = an individual capable of being productive, caring, contributing member of society. If this crisis is not overcome, one acquires a sense of stagnation and may become self-indulgent, bored, and self-centered with little care for others. If a person is not comfortable with the way their life is progressing, they're usually regretful about the decisions and feel a sense of uselessness. Ego integrity vs despair This stage affects the age group of 65 and on. During this time an individual has reached the last chapter in their life and retirement is approaching or has already taken place. Many people, who have achieved what was important to them, look back on their lives and feel great accomplishment and a sense of integrity. We will then see wisdom as a result, a detached concern in life itself, assurance in the meaning of life, dignity, and an acceptance of the fact that one’s life has been worthwhile; the individual is ready to face death. Conversely, those who had a difficult time during middle adulthood may look back and feel a sense of despair, a bitterness about one’s life, a feeling that life is worthless, and at the same time, fear over one’s own impending death. Temperament Considered to be the central aspect of an individual’s personality. It refers to individual differences as well as an individual’s pattern of responding to the environment. Thought to be somewhat heritable, to emerge early in life (during infancy), to be stable over time, and to be pervasive across situations. Core concepts: activity level, negative emotionality, and sociability. Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess Research by Thomas and Chess used the following nine temperament traits in children: activity, regularity, initial reaction, adaptability, intensity, mood, distractibility, persistence and attention span, sensitivity; based —
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 upon their study, they proposed 3 categories of infant emotional and behavioral style: easy, slow-to-warm-up, and difficult. Approximately 65% of children fit one of the patterns. Of the 65%, 40% fit the easy pattern, 10% fell into the difficult pattern, and 15% were slow to warm up. Each category has its own strength and weakness and one is not superior to another. Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig and Korn showed that Easy babies readily adapt to new experiences, generally display positive moods and emotions and also have normal eating and sleeping patterns. Difficult babies tend to be very emotional, irritable and fussy, and cry a lot. They also tend to have irregular eating and sleeping patterns. Slow-to-warm-up babies have a low activity level, and tend to withdraw from new situations and people. They are slow to adapt to new experiences, but accept them after repeated exposure. Temperament is measured in 3 ways: Parental reports of child behavior, observations in naturalistic settings (at home), and observations in lab settings which are controlled conditions and ultimately artificial situations that may not be indicative of infant behavior during normal conditions. Crying One way infants are equipped to communicate their needs. Wolff Conducted research with newborn babies, using spectrograms, he identified 3 distinct patterns of crying: basic cry, angry cry, pain cry. Will cry when who they are looking at leaves the room and cease to when the person returns. Social smiling One of the earliest and communicative signals that appears in infants. Associated with facelike patterns. At about 5 months, only familiar faces tend to elicit this reaction. Fear response Follows a certain developmental course from the undifferentiated to increasingly specific. Evoked through any sudden change in level of stimulation. Vry often, after 1 year, the emotional response is context-dependent, situational. Harry Harlow An American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which demonstrated the importance of care-giving and companionship in social and cognitive development; conducted most of his research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow worked for a time with him. John Bowlby British psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory; was sent away to boarding school and ended up, during the first half of the 40s, studying children who were brought up in institutions such as foster homes and orphanages; they were well-cared for but lacked intimate bodily contact, and tended to be timid and antisocial. —
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 Separation anxiety (SAD) A psychological condition in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment; for Bowlby, it is in the children’s 2 year that they reacted to their mother’s absence with strong protest; by the third year, however, the child could separate from the mother without prolonged distress. Mary Ainsworth A study of Ugandan infants, she devised a lab experience to study the quality of the parent (mother)-child attachment relationship. “Strange Situation Procedure” During the experiment, the attachment figure (the mother) brings the child into an unfamiliar room with many tows. A series of three-minute episodes follow. Ainsworth observed and assessed infant behavior, focusing on the infant’s reaction to separation and reunion behavior. Insecure/avoidant attachment Type A; not distressed when left alone with the stranger, avoid contact with the mother upon her return. Secure attachment Type B; mildly distressed during separations from the mother but greet her positively when she returns. Insecure/resistant attachment Type C; are distressed during the separation and are inclined to resist physical contact with her mother upon her return. Konrad Lorenz Ethologist, studying from a biological perspective, studying imprinting which is the rapid formation of an attachment bond b/w an organism and an object in the environment; led him to believe that all imprinting takes place during certain critical periods. Lawrence Kohlberg A psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development; work reflected and extended not only Piaget's findings but also the theories of philosophers G.H. Mead and James Mark Baldwin. At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology: "moral development"; his approach begins with the assumption that humans are intrinsically motivated to explore, and become competent at functioning in, their environments. In social development, this leads us to imitate role models we perceive as competent and to look to them for validation. Preconventional morality During which right and wrong are defined by the hedonistic consequences of a given action (punishment or reward). The orientation during this phase is toward punishment and obedience. Orientation toward reciprocity In stage two, there is, for an example, an “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” orientation. —
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Instrumental relativist stage Stage 2, phase 1, of Kohlberg’s moral thought theory includes orientation toward reciprocity. Conventional phase of morality The 2nd phase is based on social rules. “Good girl, nice boy orientation” The 3rd stage is in which one is looking for approval of others. Law-and-order orientation 4th stage, 2nd phase, sees morality defined by the rules of authority. Post conventional morality The 3rd phase of Kohlberg’s moral theory has 2 phases as well. Social contract orientation Moral rules are seen as convention that is designed to ensure the greater good. Universal ethical principles Stage 6, according to Kohlberg, consists of acting according to a set of these principles. Carol Gilligan An American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics; asserts that males and females adopt different perspectives on moral issues and that these differences stem from the different ways in which boys and girls are raised; points out that Kohlberg’s research was done solely with boys and should not speak on behalf of female moral development; argues that women’s morality tends to be focused on caring and compassion, and that they are concerned with relationships and social responsibilities. Gender labeling The 1st stage of Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental theory of self-socialization; 2-3 years of age, children achieve gender identity; that is, they realize that they are a member of a particular accept and are able to label themselves as such and also able to label others in terms of their sex as well. Gender stability The 2nd stage of Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental theory of self-socialization; 3-4 years of age marks the period when children can predict that they will still be a boy or girl when they grow up, but this understanding is superficial and dependent upon a physical notion of gender. Gender consistency The 3rd stage of Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental theory of self-socialization, 4-7 years of age, children understand permanency of gender, regardless of what one wears or how one behaves. —
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Gender schematic processing theory Proposed by Martin & Halverson, builds on Kohlberg’s theory, holding that as soon as children are able to label themselves, they begin concentrating on those behaviors that seem to be associated with their gender and paying less attention to those they believe are associated with the opposite gender. Maring & Halverson Proposed the gender schematic processing theory which built on Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental theory of self-socialization. Diana Baumrind A clinical and developmental psychologist known for her research on parenting styles, discipline, and for her critique of deception in psychological research; by measuring parental control, nurturance, clarity of communication, and maturity demands, she proposes 3 distinct parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. Authoritarian Tend to use punitive (inflicting or intended as punishment) control methods and lack emotional warmth; children tend to have difficulties in school and in peer relations. Authoritative Have high demands for child compliance, but score low on punitive control methods, utilize positive reinforcement, and score high on emotional warmth; children reported to be more socially and academically competent. Permissive Parents score low on control/demand measures; children tend to have difficulties in school and in peer relations. Fatherhood v motherhood Fathers tend to play more vigorously with their children than mothers do, while mothers tend to stress verbal over physical interactions.

Personality and Abnormal Psychology William Sheldon His early theory of personality defined physical/biological variables that he related to human behaviors. He characterized people by body type, relating body type (somatotypes) to personality type. Endomorphy Body types that were soft and spherical. Mesomorphy —
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 Body types that were hard, muscular, and rectangular. Ectomorphy Body types that were thin, fragile and lightly muscled. E.G. Boring Suggested that the development of psychology is due not primarily to the efforts of great people, but to Zeitgeist, or the changing spirit of the times. Edward Titchener A British psychologist who studied under Wilhelm Wundt for several years. Titchener is best known for creating his version of psychology that described the structure of the mind; structuralism. He created the largest doctoral program in the United States (at the time). Edward Titchener’s method of introspection Formed the system of psychology called structuralism. The main tool that Titchener used to try to determine the different components of consciousness was introspection. Unlike Wundt’s method of introspection, Titchener had very strict guidelines for the reporting of an introspective analysis. The subject would be presented with an object, such as a pencil. The subject would then report the characteristics of that pencil (color, length, etc.). The subject would be instructed not to report the name of the object (pencil) because that did not describe the raw data of what the subject was experiencing. He referred to this as stimulus error. Due to Zeitgeist, these other major systems of psychology have developed: Functionalism, behaviorism, gestalt psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and humanism. Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality 1856-1939, was the first comprehensive theory on personality and abnormal psychology. Most of his predecessors emphasized consciousness and the power of reason in human behavior; based upon his experience treating neurosis, he reversed this thinking and opened up a whole new perspective on personality. He pioneered the psychoanalytic system of thought in psychology. Humanism Developed as a system in the mid-20th century; arose in opposition to both psychoanalysis and behaviorism; opposed the pessimism of the psychoanalytic perspective and robotic concepts of behaviorism. They believe in the notion of free will and the idea that people should be considered as wholes rather than in terms of stimuli and responses (behaviorism) or instincts (psychoanalysis). A group of philosophies and ethical perspectives which emphasize the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers individual thought and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or faith (fideism). The term humanism can be ambiguously diverse, and there has been a persistent confusion between several related uses of the term because different intellectual movements have identified with it over time. Abraham Maslow 1908-1970, a humanistic theorist, known for his hierarchy of human motives and for his views on selfactualization. Proposed that needs were organized hierarchically ascending from basic needs to complex —
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 psychological needs. The highest order of need was self-actualization, that is the need to realize one’s fullest potential. Most people do not reach this need. Peak experiences Profound and deeply moving experiences in a person’s life that have important and lasting effects on the individual. Carl Rogers 1902-1987, identified himself with humanistic psychology, although his personality theory is basically phenomenological. Most known for his client-centered therapy, person-centered therapy, or nondirective therapy. He believed that people have the freedom to control their own behavior, and are neither slaves to the unconscious (as the psychoanalyst would suggest), nor subjects of faulty learning (as the behaviorists would suggest); the client is seen as being able to reflect upon his own problems, make choices, take positive action, help determine his destiny. Philippe Pinel 1792; a French physician who was instrumental in the development of a more humane psychological approach to custody and care of psychiatric patients, referred to today as moral therapy; also has made notable contributions to the classifications of mental disorders and has been referred to as “the father of modern psychiatry”; made sure mental illness was treated with consideration and kindness; in an asylum in Paris, he unshackled patients and made sure they could go outside and gave them beds to sleep in, such reforms spread to other asylums; wrote on insanity, dementia, and schizophrenia. Dorothea Dix An important reformer in the USA who created the first generation of American mental asylums; from 18411881, she was a zealous advocate/activist on behalf of the indigent insane to be treated in a humane way; her campaign was instrumental in improving the lives of the mentally ill in this country. General paresis A disorder characterized by delusions of grandeur, mental deterioration, eventual paralysis, and death; due to brain deterioration caused by syphilis (untreatable until 1909), and that the mental disorder seen in the syndrome was caused by organic brain pathology; the idea that physiological factors could underlie mental disorders was an important advance in our understanding of abnormal psychology. Cerletti & Binni 1939, introduced the use of electroshock for the artificial production of convulsive seizures in psychiatric patients; they believed epileptic-like convulsions could cure schizophrenia (they were wrong); the convulsions were so violent, the patients were in danger of fracturing vertebrae and other bones. Prefrontal lobotomies 1935-1955, treated 10s of 1000s of patients for schizophrenia, a surgical treatment the severed the frontal lobes of the brain from the brain tissue; ultimately, the procedure also destroyed parts of the frontal lobe—the lobe of the brain responsible for most of the traits that make us distinctly human; didn’t cure schizophrenia—just made the patient easier to deal with since, for the most part, the patient became tranquil and showed an absence of feeling. Emil Kraepelin




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A German psychiatrist, the founder of psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics; believed the chief origin of psychiatric disease to be biological and genetic malfunction; published a textbook in which he noted that some symptoms of mental disorders occurred together regularly enough that the symptom patterns could be considered specific types of mental disorders; he worked out a scheme to classify these disorders integrating clinical data and this became the precursor to our current classification system, DSM-IV (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Can categorize theories of personality into 4 areas: Psychodynamic (psychoanalytic); behaviorist; phenomenological; type and trait. Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic theory: An approach to psychology that emphasises systematic study of the psychological forces that underlie human behaviour, feelings and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation; Freud’s model of personality was the structural dynamic model. Freud’s model of personality/model of the psyche involved 3 major systems: Id: the reservoir of all psychic energy and consists of everything psychological that’s present at birth; a set of uncoordinated/innate instinctual trends & primary processes (response to frustration, “obtain satisfaction now, not later” i.e., can’t get food he is hungry for, so he pictures food to alleviate the frustration experience; this mental object is known as wish-fulfillment) are manifest; functions according to the pleasure principle, whose aim is to immediately discharge any energy build up, i.e., relieve tension. Ego: The organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id & the super-ego; operates according to the secondary process, which includes the reality principle, taking into account objective reality as it guides or inhibits the activity of the id and the id’s pleasure principle; suspends the workings of the primary process. The mutual give and take of this mode of functioning and secondary process with reality promotes the growth and elaboration of the psychological processes of perception, memory, problem-solving, thinking, & reality testing; receiving its power from the id, it can never really be independent of the id. Reality principle The goal is to postpone the pleasure principle until the actual object that will satisfy the need has been discovered or produced. Superego: Like the id, it’s never directly in touch with reality; it strives for the ideal rather than the real; however, it represents the moral branch of personality, striving for perfection; acts as a self-critical conscience, reflecting social standards learned from parents or teachers… There are two subsystems: conscience, all that is told to be improper, all punishable acts go here, the wrong; ego-ideal contains whatever is approved of and which will reward the child, the right. Instinct An innate psychological representation (wish) of a bodily (biological) excitation (need); the propelling aspects of Freud’s dynamic theory of personality; the life and death instincts, sometimes called Eros & Thantos. Eros




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The life instinct which serves the purpose of individual survival (hunger, thirst, sex). Libido The form of energy by which the life instincts perform their work. Thantos The death instincts represent an unconscious wish for the ultimate absolute state of quiescence (state or period of inactivity or dormancy, physical functions slowed down or suspended). Defense mechanisms The ego’s recourse to releasing excessive pressures due to anxiety; they all have 2 common characteristics: 1) they deny, falsify, or distort reality; 2) they operate unconsciously. 8 main defense mechanisms Repression; suppression; projection; reaction formation; rationalization; regression; sublimation; displacement. Repression The unconscious forgetting of anxiety-producing memories. Suppression A more deliberate, conscious form of forgetting. Projection When a person attributes his forbidden urges to others. I.e., not I hate my uncle but my uncle hates me as it breeds less anxiety. Reaction formation A repressed wish is warded off by its diametrical opposite. I.e., a young boy who hates his brother and is punished for his hostile acts may turn his feelings into the exact opposite, that is, showering his brother with affection. Rationalization The process of developing a socially acceptable explanation for inappropriate behavior or thoughts. Regression A person reverting to an earlier stage of development in response to a traumatic event. Sublimation Transforming unacceptable urges into socially acceptable behaviors. I.e., hurt and anger into humor, comedian. Displacement —
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 Pent-up feelings (often hostility) are discharged on objects and people less dangerous than those objects or people causing the feelings. I.e., someone is harassed by his boss and goes home and provokes an argument with his wife. Carl Jung A Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist whose central concept of analytical psychology is individuation – the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy; considered individuation to be the central process of human development. Collective unconscious Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species; shared amongst all humans and considered to be a residue of the experiences of our early ancestors. Archetypes A thought or image that has an emotional element; universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct. Persona A mask that is adopted by a person in response to the demands of social convention. Anima Feminine, help us understand gender, the feminine behaviors in males. Animus Masculine, help us understand gender, the masculine behaviors in females. Shadow Consists of the animal instincts that humans inherited in their evolution from lower forms of life; responsible for the appearance in consciousness and behavior of unpleasant and socially reprehensible thoughts, feelings, and actions. Self The person’s striving for unity, the point of intersection between the collective unconscious and the conscious; Jung symbolized this as a mandala, a Sanskrit word meaning magic circle, the reconciler of opposites and as the promoter of harmony. Extroversion An orientation toward the external, objective world. Introversion An introversion toward the inner, subjective world. One dominants the personality. —
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 Alfred Adler’s theory Turned the attention to immediate social imperatives of family & society (social variables) and their effects on unconscious factors; the originator of the concept of the inferiority complex—that is, the individual’s sense of incompleteness, sense of imperfection, physical inferiorities, as well as social disabilities; it is the striving toward superiority that drives the personality; this striving enhances the personality when it is socially oriented, that is, when the striving leads to endeavors that benefit all people; when otherwise selfish, it becomes the root of personality disturbances. Creative self The force by which each individual shapes his uniqueness and makes his own personality. Style of life Represents the manifestation of the creative self and describes a person’s unique way of achieving superiority (as opposed to inferiority); the family environment is crucial in molding the person’s style of life. Fictional finalism Adler’s theory went on to say that an individual is motivated more by his expectations of the future than by past experiences. Karen Horney German psychoanalyst; postulated that the neurotic personality is governed by 1 of 10 needs; each of these needs is directed toward making life and interactions bearable. I.e., need for affection and approval, the need to exploit others, the need for self-sufficiency and independence. The difference with a neurotic is the needs are amplified, and are not healthy. Her basic concept is that of anxiety, based on the premise that a child’s early perception of the self is important. A sense of helplessness as a child confuses the child, makes the child feel insecure and produces basic anxiety in the child. To overcome the basic anxiety, the child uses 3 strategies: moving toward people to obtain the good will of people who provide security; moving against people, or fighting them to obtain the upper hand; and moving away, or withdrawing, from people. Healthy people use all 3, whereas a highly threatened child will use 1 of these rigidly and exclusively, and this carries over into adult personality. Anna Freud She may be considered the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology (alongside Melanie Klein), and is usually considered the founder of ego psychology. Ego psychology The school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind; an individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces; proponents of this psychology focus on the ego’s normal and pathological development, its management of libidinal and aggressive impulses, and its adaptation to reality. Erik Erikson Another ego psychologist who provided a direct extension of psychoanalysis to the psychosocial realm; he expanded and reworked Freud’s stages to cover the entire lifespan and in doing showed how even negative events or conflicts could have positive effects on adult personality; describe the healthy person. —
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 Object-relations theory Describes the process of developing a psyche as one is growing up, in relation to others in the environment; based on psychodynamic theory, the theory object relations suggests that people relate to others and situations in their adult lives as shaped by family experiences during infancy; internalized objects in young children. Important object-relations theorists Melanie Klein D.W. Winnicott Margaret Mahler Otto Kernberg Psychoanalysis Best known type of psychotherapy developed by Freud; an intensive, long-term treatment for uncovering repressed memories, motives, and conflicts stemming from problems in psychosexual development; by gaining insight into the repressed material, the energy being utilized to deal with the repressed conflict would be freed up and made available for further development. Hypnosis To free repressed thoughts from the patient’s unconscious, but he later dropped that method in favor of alternative methods. Free association A technique whereby the client says whatever comes to his conscious mind regardless of how personal, painful, or seemingly irrelevant it may appear to be; reconstruct the nature of the client’s original conflict. Dream interpretation Freud believed that the defenses are relaxed and the mind is freer to express forbidden wishes and desire during this state; therefore understanding this leads to an understanding of their unconscious conflicts. Resistance An unwillingness or inability to relate to certain thoughts, motives, or experiences; such things as forgetting dream material or missing a therapy session, blocking associations, and switching topics rapidly are indications of this and are subject to analysis. Transference Involves attributing to the therapist attitudes and feelings that developed in the patient’s relations with significant others in the past; it is also through this that the analyst can help recreate the patient’s experiences so that the patient has the opportunity to understand his relationships with others. Countertransference The emotions that an analyst feels toward a patient. —
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 Neo-Freudian approaches Places more emphasis on current interpersonal relationships and life situations than on childhood experience and psychosexual development. Behaviorist theories of personality Focus on behavior first rather than unconscious instincts, this is because they theory supports the notion that personality develops as people learn their behavior through interaction with their environment. John Dollard & Neal Miller Blended psychoanalytic concepts in a behavioral stimulus-response reinforcement learning theory approach; focused on conflicting motives or conflicting tendencies in the development of personality. B.F. Skinner Considered personality to be a collection of behavior that happens to have been sufficiently reinforced to persist. That is to say, “personality” is the result of behavioral development of an organism. Albert Bandura Contended that learning principles are sufficient to account for personality development; developed social learning theory. Social Learning Theory The initial phase of Bandura's research analyzed the foundations of human learning and the willingness of children and adults to imitate behavior observed in others, in particular, aggression. He found that according to his theory, models are an important source for learning new behaviors and for achieving behavioral change in institutionalized settings. Vicarious reinforcement/learning One’s own behavior is learnt but observing other people’s behaviors being reinforced. Martin Seligman Conducted classic studies of “learned helplessness” in the 60s. He placed dogs in a cell with relatively high walls and administered a shock to the floor of the cell; over time, the dogs stopped jumping since they were unable to escape the cell; even when he replaced the walls with low walls, they were shocked and did not try to break free. He developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation — usually after experiencing some inability to avoid an adverse situation — even when it actually has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Him and others extrapolated this to the realm of human depression and locus of control; those from which one has not be able to escape causes them to feel powerless to overcome their problems. Beck’s cognitive therapy for depression Might be asked to write down negative thoughts about himself, figure out why they are unjustified, and come up with more realistic and less destructive cognitions. —
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Albert Ellis’s rational-emotive therapy (RET) Basic assumption is that people develop irrational ways of thinking; therefore, the therapist may challenge an irrational believe that the client has, helping him recognize these beliefs and change them to more rational ones. Symptom Substitution Because the underlying cause is still there, psychoanalysts suggest that new symptoms will develop to replace the old one. Phenomenological theorists Emphasize internal processes rather than overt behavior. Sometimes called humanistic because they focus on that which distinguishes us from animals. Similar concepts to existential theorists. Kurt Lewin’s field theory Puts very little stock in constraints on personalities such as fixed traits, habits, or structures (id, ego, and superego). His theory was heavily influenced by Gestalt psychology. He saw personality as being dynamic and constantly changing. Believed personality could be divided up dynamically into ever-changing regions that he called systems. George Kelly Used himself as a model to theorize about human nature, and set aside the traditional concept of motivation, drive, unconscious emotion, and reinforcement. Hypothesized the notion of the individual as scientist, a person who devises and tests predictions about the behavior of significant people in his life. The anxious person, instead of being the victim of inner conflicts and dammed-up energy (as in psychodynamic theory), is one who is having difficulty constructing and understanding the variable is his environment. Psychotherapy, to him, was a process of insight whereby the individual acquires new constructs that will allow him to successfully predict troublesome events. Humanist-existential therapies Tend to emphasize the process of finding meaning in one’s life by making one’s own choices. Mental disorders tend to be viewed as stemming from problems of alienation, depersonalization, loneliness, and a lack of meaningful existence. Facilitates exploration into a client’s thoughts and feelings; approaches include empathy toward the client, as well as understanding, affirmation, and positive regard. Viktor Frankl A survivor of Nazi concentration camps is closely identified with the human search for meaning to existence. Mental illness and maladjustment stems for a life of meaninglessness. Type theorists Attempt to characterize people according to a specific type of personality. Trait theorists Attempt to ascertain the fundamental dimensions of personality. Type A personalities




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Behavior tends to be competitive and compulsive; more prone to heart disease and are most prevelant among middle- and upper-class men. Type B personalities Generally laid-back and relaxed. Raymond Cattell A trait theorist who used factor analysis to measure personality in a more comprehensive way, attempting to account for the underlying factors that determine personality. Identified 16 basic traits, or relatively permanent reaction tendencies in individuals, that constitute the building blocks of personality. Hans J. Eysenck Used factor analysis to develop a theory of personality; types followed by more specific traits; distinguished 3 dimensions from which human personalities differed from that of Jung’s hypothesis: introversion and extroversion, emotional stability-neuroticism, psychoticism; his P-E-N model (psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism) model of personality; psychoticism refers to a personality pattern typified by aggressiveness and interpersonal hostility. Gordon Allport Primarily a trait theorist, listed 3 basic types of traits or dispositions: Cardinal: traits around which a person organizes his life. I.e., Mother Teresa, self-sacrifice. Not everyone develops these. Central: represent major characteristics of personality that are easy to infer, such as honesty or fatalism. Secondary: more personal characteristics that are more limited in occurrence but, nonetheless, is found in everyone. Functional autonomy Gordon Allport’s concept means that a given activity or form of behavior may become an end or goal in itself, regardless of its original reason for existence. I.e., a hunter who began because he needed food, has food but continues to hunt simply because of the enjoyment. Idiographic An approach to personality that focuses on individual case studies; Gordon Allport supported this approach; Allport later called this approach morphogenic. Nomothetic An approach to personality that focuses on groups of individuals and tries to find the commonalities between individuals; Allport later called this approach dimensional. David McClelland Identified a personality trait that is referred to as the need for achievement (nAch). —
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Herman Witkin Endeavored to draw a relationship b/w an individual’s personality and his perception of the world. Classified people according to their degree of field-dependence (i.e., field-dependent people are more likely to be influenced by the opinions of others because they respond in a diffuse manner, not distinguishing separate ideas or even distinguishing their own ideas from those of others). Julian Rotter Did work on internal and external locus of control. Internal locus of control Tend to believe that they can control their own destiny; i.e., attribute success to their ability and tend to have higher self-esteem. External locus of control Tend to believe that outside events and chance control their destiny; tend to attribute success to luck or task ease. High self-esteem attribute Failures to bad luck or task difficulty, external locus of control. Low self-esteem attribute Failures to lack of ability, internal locus of control. Machiavellian A personality trait that refers to someone who is successfully manipulative and deceitful, from the book The Prince; “most people don’t really know what’s best for them,” “the best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear,” “anyone who completely trusts someone else is asking for trouble.” Androgyny The state of being simultaneously very masculine and very feminine; Sandra Bem’s theory on gender identity is related to personality theory; holds that because people can achieve high scores on measures of both masculinity and femininity on personality inventories, then masculinity and femininity must be 2 separate dimensions. Walter Mischel Challenged the concept of stable personality traits; believed that human behavior is largely determined by the characteristics of the situation rather than by those of the person. DSM-IV

Multiaxial assessment Axis I




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Axis II Axis III Axis IV Axis V Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD/HD) Developmentally atypical inattention and/or impulsivity-hyperactivity. Autistic disorder Essential features are lack of responsiveness to others (impairment in social skills), gross impairment in communication skills, and repetitive behaviors; 2to5 out of 10,000 individuals, and can be chronic. Tourette’s disorder A tic disorder is characterized by multiple motor tics (eye-blinking, for ex) and one or more vocal tics (grunts, barks, etc); sudden, recurrent, and stereotyped; lifelong disorder, but periods of remission may occur. Schizophrenia Coined in 1911 by Eugen Bleuler, he renamed this disorder from dementia praecox. Literally means split mind; gross distortions of reality and disturbances in the content and form of thought, perception, and affect; not split off into different personalities, but the mind is split off from reality: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thought, inappropriate affect, and catatonic behavior. Positive symptoms Symptoms of schizophrenia divided into the behaviors, thoughts, or affects added to normal behavior. Negative symptoms Symptoms of schizophrenia that involve the absence of normal or desired behavior. I.e., flat affect, where the individual’s emotional expression in blunted. Delusions False beliefs, discordant with reality, maintained in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. Delusions of reference Involve the belief of an individual that others are talking about him or her; or that common elements in an environment are directed at him or her. Delusions of persecution Involve the belief that the person is being deliberately interfered with, discriminated against, plotted against, or threatened. —
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Delusions of grandeur Involve the belief that he is a remarkable person, such as an inventor, historical figure, or even the Queen of England. Thought broadcasting Delusion involving the belief that ones thoughts are broadcast directly from one’s head to the external world. Hallucinations Perceptions that are not due to external stimuli but have a compelling sense of reality. Disorganized thought Characterized by the loosening of associations; speech in which ideas shift from one subject to another or to unrelated subjects or to be without structure, word salad; or neologisms, having created new words. Blunting Severe reduction in the intensity of affect expression. Flat affect Virtually no signs of affective expression. Inappropriate affect The affect is clearly discordant with the content of the individual’s speech or ideation. I.e., laughing hysterically at someone’s death. Catatonic motor behavior Various extreme behaviors characteristic of some people with schizophrenia. Spontaneous movement or activity may be greatly reduced or the patient may maintain a rigid posture, refusing to be moved. Prodromal phase A phase prior to schizophrenia diagnosis, a phase characterized by poor adjustment; clear evidence of deterioration, social withdrawal, role functioning impairment, peculiar behavior, inappropriate affect, and unusual experiences. Active phase Following the prodromal phase of schizophrenia, this phase is that of symptomatic behavior. Process schizophrenia If schizophrenia is slow and insidious; prognosis for recovery is especially poor. Reactive schizophrenia If the onset of symptoms is intense and sudden; prognosis for recovery is better. —
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 Catatonic The primary symptom is a disturbance in motor behavior; an alternation between extreme withdrawal of behavior and excitement or excessive movement. Paranoid Characterized by a preoccupation with one or more delusions or frequent auditory hallucinations; a relative preservation of cognitive and affective functioning. Disorganized Formerly called hebephrenic schizophrenia is characterized by flat or inappropriate affect and disorganized speech and behavior. Undifferentiated Diagnosed with the general criteria for the other categories are no met. Residual Used for a diagnosis when there has been a previous schizophrenic episode, but positive psychotic symptoms are not currently displayed, although patients may still show disturbances and often negative symptoms. Dopamine Hypothesis The leading biochemical explanation for schizophrenia; suggests that the delusions, hallucinations, and agitation associated with schizophrenia arise from the excess of dopamine activity at certain sites of the brain; or, another hypothesis is that the levels are normal but there is an oversensitivity to dopamine in the brain, or that there are too many receptors that receive the dopamine. Double-bind hypothesis As a child, the person with schizophrenia received contradictory and mutually incompatible messages for primary caregiver (usually the mother); torn b/w these contradictory messages, the child may begin to feel anxious, and these disorganized messages become internalized; from this point, the child begins to see his perceptions of reality as unreliable; faulty communication may play some role in explaining the origins of some forms of schizophrenia. Major depressive disorder Essential feature is at least a 2-week period during which there is a prominent and relatively persistent depressed mood, or loss of interest in all or almost all activities. Other symptoms: appetite disturbances, substantial weight changes, sleep disturbances, decreased energy, feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt, difficulty concentrating or thinking, thoughts of death, attempt at suicide… must cause significant distress or impairment in functioning. 15% die by suicide. Bipolar disorders Formerly known as manic-depression, major type of mood disorder characterized by both depression and mania. Bipolar I has these manic episodes. Hypomania —
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 Bipolar II disorder does not have significantly impaired functioning, nor are there psychotic features, although the individual may be more energetic and optimistic. Dysthymic & cyclothymic disorders Do not quite meet the criteria for major depressive and bipolar disorders, respectively, but essentially are characterized by similar, less severe symptoms. Norepinephrine & serotonin Neurotransmitters implicated in mood disorders. Catecholamine theory of depression Links norepinephrine and serotonin together in what is called a monoamine theory of depression. These theories hold that too much norepinephrine and serotonin leads to mania, while too little leads to depression.; some research has shown that it’s not that simple. Phobia An irrational fear of something that results in a compelling desire to avoid it. Specific phobias One in which anxiety is produced by a specific object or situation. I.e., claustrophobia, an irrational fear of closed places; cynophobia, irrational fear of dogs. Agoraphobia A more complicated phobia, the fear of being in open places or in situations where escape might be difficult; tend to be uncomfortable going outside their homes alone. Social phobia Characterized by anxiety that is due to social situations; persistent fear when exposed to social/performance situations that may result in embarrassment. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) Characterized by repeated obsessions (persistent irrational thoughts) that produce tension and/or compulsions (irrational and repetitive impulses to perform certain acts) that cause significant impairment in a person’s life. Obsessions are thoughts, compulsions are behaviors; a person may obsess about dirt and compulsively wash his hands (to neutralize the anxiety produced by the obsession). Somatoform disorders Involve the presence of physical symptoms that suggest a medical condition but which are not fully explained by a medical condition; the person afflicted is not faking but really believes he has a medical disorder. Conversion disorders Characterized by unexplained symptoms affecting voluntary motor or sensory functions. I.e., paralysis where there is no neurological damage or even blindness when there is no evidence of damage to the visual system or brain; used to be referred to as hysteria. —
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Hypochondriasis The person is preoccupied with fears that he has a serious disease; these fears are based on a misinterpretation of one or more bodily signs or symptoms; even after complete medical exams have proven that the person doesn’t have the disease he claims to have, the fears persist. Dissociative amnesia Characterized by an inability to recall past experience. Dissociative means that amnesia is not due to a neurological disorder. Dissociative fugue Involves amnesia that accompanies a sudden, unexpected move away from one’s home or location of usual daily activities; a person in this state is confused about his identity and may even assume a new identity. Dissociative identity disorder Formerly multiple personality disorder, there are 2 or more personalities that recurrently take control of a person’s behavior; results when the components of an identity fail to integrate; Sybil-15 separate personalities & Truddi Chase, who had 92 separate personalities; in most cases, patients have suffered severe physical and/or sexual abuse as young children; after much therapy, the personalities can usually be integrated into one. Depersonalization disorder The person feels detached, like an outside observer of his mental processes and/or behavior; even during these times, the person still has an intact sense of reality. Anorexia nervosa Characterized by a refusal to maintain a minimal normal body weight; has a distorted body image, and believes that he is overweight even when emaciated; amenorrhea (the cessation of menstruation) is usually present in females; 10% of hospitalized cases result in death due to starvation, suicide, or electrolyte imbalance. Bulimia nervosa Involves binge-eating accompanied by excessive attempts to compensate for it by purging, fasting, or excessive exercise; the person tends to maintain a minimally normal body weight; 90% of cases are female. How many personality disorders are there?; and what are the 4 most common? 10; schizoid, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial. Schizoid personality disorder A pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationship and a restricted range of emotional expression; have few, if any, close friends; poor social skills; not the same as schizophrenia. Narcissistic personality disorder A grandiose sense of self-importance or uniqueness, preoccupation with fantasies of success, an exhibitionistic need for constant admiration and attention, and characteristic disturbances in interpersonal relationships such —
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 as feelings of entitlement; very fragile self-esteem; marked with feelings of rage, inferiority, shame, humiliation, emptiness when they are not viewed favorably by others. Antisocial personality disorder Previously referred to as a psychopathic disorder and sociopathic disorder; a pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others; repeated illegal acts, deceitfulness, aggressiveness, and/or lack of remorse for said actions; serial killers who show no remorse for their actions, imposters, many career criminals. Diathesis-stress model A framework that can be used to examine the causes of mental disorders; a diathesis is a predisposition toward developing a specific mental disorder; reminds us that casual factors at the biological and psychological levels interacts with each other. Primary prevention Efforts to seek out and eradicate conditions that foster mental illness and to establish the conditions that foster mental health. I.e., access to good prenatal and postnatal care, providing training in psychosocial skills… David Rosenhan 1973, studied whether or not it was possible to be judged sane if you are in an “insane place” (a psychiatric hospital); because they had already been labeled mentally ill, even normal activities were interpreted by the staff as evidence of mental illness. I.e., when discussing their situation in a rational way, they were reported to be using the defense mechanism of intellectualization. Thomas Szasz Outspoken critic of labeling people “mentally ill,” argues that most of the disorders treated by clinicians are not really illnesses; rather they are traits or behaviors that differ from the cultural norm; labeling is a way of forcing them to change and conform to societal norms rather than allowing them to attack the societal causes of their problems; his book is The Myth of Mental Illness.

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 Cognitive Psychology A broad and diverse field dealing with topics as varied as memory, language, creativity, problem solving, decision making, and intelligence. Hermann Ebbinghaus He used meaningless strings of letters to study the capacity of our memory system. Edward Tichener 1867-1927, belonged to the system of thought referred to as structuralism; to accomplish this he used the method of introspection: he asked subjects to report on their current conscious experiences; Wundt-trained psychologist and Wundt also relied on the method of introspection. Structuralism The goal was to break consciousness down into its elements, or specific mental structures. What were the 3 other systems of thought which structuralism spawned? Functionalism; behaviorism; Gestalt therapy. Noam Chomsky Distinguished between the surface structure and deep structure of a sentence; studied transformational rules that could be used to transform one sentence into another. A linguist that paved the way for modern cognitive psychology with an eloquent critique of B.F. Skinners 1957 book, Verbal Behavior; opposed the behaviorist’s position that speech is best explained by operant conditioning, that language is acquired by reinforcement; argued that since children say things that they could not have heard adults say (e.g., errors in growth via developmental psychology), and that since even adults use language in novel and creative ways, speech could not possibly be due to reinforcement; believed that language study is the most viable route to understanding the mind; inspired much research on cognition. Reaction Time Elapsed time between stimulus presentation and the subject’s response to it. Eye movements An “on-line” measure of information processing Brain imaging “Used to associate various cognitive processes with various parts of the brain. Hermann Ebbinghaus’ experiment Used nonsense syllables (for ex, QAS and CEG) to study memory using himself as subject; he would memorize the items in the list, one at a time and in the order they appeared on the list; after one list he distracted himself by trying to learn many other such lists; he measured how much of the original list he remembered by using what he called the methods of savings. —
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 Methods of savings Ebbinghaus way of testing what he remembered from an original list; after memorizing the initial list, he compared the number of times he had to read the list in order to memorize it; if he memorized the list faster than he originally memorized it, he conclude that he had remembered something from the first time; to quantify the amount of savings, he subtracted the number of trials it took to rememorize the list from the number of trials it originally took to memorize the list; then he divided this quantity by the original number of trials and multiplied everything by 100 to come up with a percent. I.e., takes you 20 trials to memorize a list; the next day, you rememorize the list, but it only takes you 8 trials; you would subtract 8 from 20 and divide the result by 20, and multiply by 100; your savings in this case would be 60 percent. Forgetting curve Ebbinghaus came up with this graph but the study of memory for meaningful material didn’t really begin until the 1950s. Encoding process Putting information into memory. Storage Retaining information in memory. Retrieval Recovering the information in memory. Recall Reproducing information you have previously been exposed to. Recognition Realizing that a certain stimulus event is one you’ve seen or heard before. Generation-recognition An attempt to explain why you can usually recognize more than you can recall; model suggests that recall involves the same mental process involved in recognition plus another process not required for recognition. Recency effect Words presented at the end of a list are remembered second-best. Clustering When asked to recall a list of words, people tend to recall words belonging to the same category. Sensory memory Contains fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli. Visual memory




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Sometimes called iconic memory Echoic memory Another name for auditory memory; information does not last long here, only a few seconds. Whole-report procedure Used to find out how much information could be retained in sensory memory; required participants to recall as many elements from the original display in their proper spatial locations as possible. Participants were typically able to recall three to five characters from the twelve character display (~35). This suggests that whole report is limited by a memory system with a capacity of four-to-five items. George Sperling Through several experiments, he showed support for his hypothesis that human beings store a perfect image of the visual world for a brief moment, before it is discarded from memory. He was in the forefront in wanting to help the deaf population in terms of speech recognition. Partial Report Procedure Developed by Sperling to measure the time course of visual persistence (sensory memory). Short-term memory Information that you attend to goes from your sensory memory into this; can be thought of as the link between our rapidly changing sensory memory and the more lasting long-term memory; based on phonology (sounds). Maintenance rehearsal If nothing is done with the info, it will remain in short-term memory for only about 20 seconds; however, if the info is rehearsed, it can stay in short-term memory for a relatively long time, as long as you keep rehearsing the info (as when you repeat a phone number you want to remember). Long-term memory Considered to be the permanent storehouse of your experiences, knowledge, and skills. Can be brief or can last a lifetime; likely based on meaning. Elaborative rehearsal A way of getting information into long-term memory, which involves organizing the material and associating it with info you already having in long-term memory. Procedural memory Remembering how to do things. Declarative memory Remembering explicit information. Semantic memory




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Remember general knowledge. Episodic memory Remembering particular events you have personally experienced. Semantic verification task Subjects are asked to indicate whether or not a simple statement presented is true or false. The experimenter measures the time it takes to respond, or the respond latency. Response latency The experimenter measures the times it takes the subject to respond, the idea being that the pattern of response latencies will provide info on how semantic knowledge is stored in memory. Collins & Loftus Devised the spreading activation model of semantic memory. Spreading activation model Organized into map of interconnected concepts; the key is the distance between the concepts. Remember that the shorter the distance between two words, the closer the words are related in the semantic memory; subjects will respond to questions about ambulances and fire engines quicker than questions about ambulances and streets. Semantic feature-comparison model Semantic memory contains feature lists of concepts; the key is the amount of overlap in the feature of the concepts. Levels-of-processing theory/depth-of-processing theory Proposed by Craik & Lockart, suggests that what determines how long you will remember material is not what memory system it gets into (they suggest there is only one memory system), but the way in which you process the material; postulated that an item entering into memory is analyzed in stages. 3 ways/levels in which info can be processed: Physical: focusing on appearance, size, and shape of the info. Acoustical: focusing on the sound combinations words have. Semantic: focusing on the meaning of the word. Paivio’s dual-code hypothesis According to his theory, information can be stored (or encoded) in 2 ways: visually or verbally. Abstract info tends to be encoded verbally, whereas concrete information tends to be encoded visually (i.e., as an image) and verbally. For instance, the word virtue would be encoded verbally while the word elephant would be encoded both visually and verbally. —
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 Schema/ta Conceptual frameworks we use to organize our knowledge; we interpret our experiences, and therefore remember them in terms of our existing schemata; trying to make our experiences fit into our existing schemata can lead to distortions in our memories, and further, if we have a tough time matching up our experiences with a schema, we will have difficulty remembering it. Decay theory Holds that if the info in long-term memory is not used or rehearsed, it will, eventually be forgotten. Inhibition theory Suggests that forgetting is due to the activities that have taken place between original learning and the later attempted recall. Two types: retroactive and proactive. Retroactive inhibition Occurs when you forget what you learned earlier as you learn something new. If you learn list A, then learn list B, you won’t be able to remember list A anymore. Proactive inhibition What you learned earlier interferes with what you learn later. If you learn French as a second language and then Spanish as a third, you may find that you are learning Spanish, and occasionally speak in French. Encoding specificity The assumption that recall will be best if the context at recall approximates the context during the original encoding. If you know that you’re going to be taking a test in a classroom, you should try to study, if not in that particular classroom, at least in a room with features of that particular classroom. State-dependent learning Suggests that recall will be better if your psychological or physical state at the time of recall is the same as your state when you memorized the material. If you were upset when you memorized the material, you will probably have better recall of it if you are upset at the time of the recall. Mnemonic devices Techniques that we use to improve our likelihood that we will remember something. The method of loci A system of associating info with some sequence of places with which you are familiar; people can remember things for months this way. Sir Frederick Barlett Prior knowledge and expectations influence recall; in his study he found that subjects reconstructed the story in line with their own expectations and schema for a ghost story, for instance. Elizabeth Loftus —
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 Studied eyewitness memories and the tendency for eyewitnesses to be influenced or confused by misleading information (ie. By presenting new information or by asking misleading questions); her work has been influential in both legal and psychological fields; recently she has studied the accuracy of repressed memories that return later in life. Zeigarnik effect States that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks; people can remember chores they haven’t completed better than the chores they have. Luchins water-jar problem Studied the effect of mental sets on problem-solving; in this task, subjects are presented with 3 empty jars and a list of the capacities of each jar, and they are asked to obtain a particular amount of water in one of the jars; you will probably discover a problem that will help you solve the other problems. Mental sets Tendency to keep repeating solutions that worked in other situations. Functional fixedness The ability to use a familiar object in an unfamiliar way. Creativity Cognitive psychologists think of this as a cognitive ability that results in new ways of viewing problems or situations; often these solutions are thought of in the moment you are thinking of something else, a “eureka” experience. Guilford’s test of divergent thinking Devised divergent thinking test to measure creativity; thinking that involves producing as many creative answers to a question as possible; an individual’s thoughts diverge along multiple paths of possibilities. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky Investigated the use of heuristics (enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves) and how our decision-making process can sometimes go awry; studied the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic. Heuristics Short-cuts and rules of thumb we can use in making decisions. Availability heuristic Making decisions about frequencies based upon how easy it is to imagine the terms involved. Representativeness heuristic Categorizing things on the basis of whether they fit the prototypical image of the category. Base-rate fallacy




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Ignoring the numerical information about the items being referred to when categorizing them. Phonemes The smallest units of language. Field consists of 4: the f sound, e sound, l sound, and d sound. Morphemes Smallest units of meaning in a language. Walked consists of 2: walk, indicating action and ed, indicating that the action took place in the past. Troubleshooter consists of three: trouble, shoot, er. Semantics Deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Syntax Deals with the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences. Learning theory Theorists believe that language is acquired through classical conditioning, operant conditioning and/or modeling. B.F. Skinner is a proponent of this perspective. Cognitive development theory Theorists believe that language has to do with the child’s capacity for symbolic thought, which develops toward he end of the sensorimotor period; language continues to develop according to the child’s cognitive level; Jean Piaget. Nativist theory Critiquing the behaviorist perspective on language, Chomsky proposed this theory, believing that there must be some sort of innate, biologically based mechanism for language acquisition. Language acquisition device (LAD) First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is component of the nativist theory of language; unless children have significant innate knowledge of grammar they would be unable to learn language as quickly as they do, given that they never have access to negative evidence and rarely received direct instruction in their first language. Chomsky has gradually abandoned the idea of a LAD in favour of Universal Grammar and a parameter-setting model of language acquisition. Surface structure The actual order of words in a sentence. Deep structure An underlying form that specifies the meaning of the sentence. Transformational rules




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Tell us how we can change from one sentence form to another (e.g., from a sentence in the active voice to a sentence in the passive voice). Whorfian hypothesis The hypothesis that language determines how reality is perceived; Benjamin Whorf proposed this, also called the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which suggests that our perception of reality, the way that we think about the world, is determined by the content of language; language affects the way we think, not the other way around. Eleanor Macoby & Carol Jacklin Found evidence of better verbal abilities in girls in their studies; found support for gender differences in verbal ability. Charles Spearman Suggested that individual differences in intelligence are largely due to variations in the amount of a general, unitary factor, which he called g. Louis Thurstone Identified 7 abilities which he called primary mental abilities. Primary mental abilities Independent group factors of intelligence that different individuals possessed in varying degrees. He opposed the notion of a singular general intelligence that factored into the scores of all psychometric tests and was expressed as a mental age; e.g., verbal comprehension, # ability, perceptual speed, general reasoning. Robert Sternberg’s triarchic theory Suggests that there are 3 aspects to intelligence: componential (e.g., performance on tests), experiential (creativity), and contextual (street smarts/business sense). Howard Gardner’s theory Called the theory of multiple intelligences with 7 defined: linguistic ability, logical-mathematical ability, spatial ability, musical ability, bodily-kinesthetic ability, interpersonal ability, and intrapersonal ability; Gardner argues that Western culture values the 1st two abilities over the others; linguistic ability and logical-mathematical ability are tested by traditional IQ tests. Raymond Cattell Divided intelligence into fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence and looked at how they change through the lifespan. Fluid intelligence Increases throughout childhood and adolescence, levels off in young adulthood, and begins a steady decline with advanced age. Crystallized intelligence




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Increases throughout the lifespan. Arthur Jensen A prominent educational psychologist who studied intelligence; he claimed that intelligence as measured by IQ tests was almost entirely genetic in nature and that you could not teach someone to score higher on IQ tests; he also focused on differences in IQ scores across racial lines, provoking controversy with his line of inquiry. McClelland & Rumelhart Published a 2-volume book in the mid 80s about parallel distributed processes (PDP), proposing that info processing is distributed across the brain and is done in a parallel fashion. Metacognition Refers to a person’s ability to think about and monitor cognition. Metamemory Refers to a person’s ability to think about and monitor memory. Meta Refers to the ability to reflect upon something.

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 Learning & Ethology Ethology The study of animal behavior under natural conditions, and is radically different from behaviorism; tended to concern themselves with behaviors that are characteristic of a particular species; the goal is to test hypotheses about the effect of social behavior on fitness. Edward Thorndike An American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on animal behavior and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism and helped lay the scientific foundation for modern educational psychology; considered to be apart of the functionalist system of thought, focusing on how the mind functioned in adapting to the environment. Proposed the law of effect; used puzzle boxes to study problem solving in cats. Functionalist Rose as an alternative to structuralism; refers to a general psychological philosophy that considers mental life and behavior in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment; not based on controlled experiences. William James is considered the founder. Law of effect If a response is followed by an annoying consequence, the animal will be less likely to emit the same response in the future; states that “responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation.” This notion is very similar to that of the evolutionary theory, if a certain character trait provides an advantage for reproduction then that trait will persist. Usually associated with the connectionism of Edward Thorndike, who said that if an association is followed by a “satisfying state of affairs” it will be strengthened and if it is followed by an “annoying state of affairs “ it will be weakened. Classical conditioning/Pavlovian conditioning/respondent conditioning One of the original experiments on learning that founded the behaviorist system of thought. A result of learning connections between different events; for instance, that thunder follows lightning, the smell of food is followed by dinner, and darkened lights in a theater mean that the movie is about to begin. John Watson Was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism; through his behaviorist approach, he conducted research on animal behavior, child rearing, and advertising. In addition, he conducted the controversial "Little Albert" experiment. Ivan Pavlov Discovered the basic principles of classical conditioning; noticed that through experience, stimuli that previously had no relation to a specific reflex could come to trigger that reflex; made this discovery while he was studying the reflex of salivation of dogs in response to food. —
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 Behaviorism An approach to psychology that combines elements of philosophy, methodology, and theory; emerged in the early 20th century to about the ‘60s, as a reaction to mentalistic psychology; premise is that psychology should concern itself with the observable behavior of people and animals, not w/unobservable events that take place in their minds. Clark Hull’s theory of motivation/drive-reduction theory Refer to a diverse set of motivational theories is psychology; this was the first theory for motivation; drive is an excitatory state produced by a homeostatic disturbance; based on the principle that organisms are born with certain psychological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied. When a need is satisfied, drive is reduced and the organism returns to a state of homeostasis and relaxation. According to the theory, drive tends to increase over time and operates on a feedback control system, much like a thermostat. Edwin Guthrie B.F. Skinner Konrad Lorenz Often regarded as one of the founds of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation; studied unlearned, instinctual behaviors in the natural environment; by observing the animal in its natural environment, he was able to describe the animal’s behavior in great detail, and by studying the context in which a particular behavior took place, he could begin to analyze the function that the behavior served. Ethology Is the scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, and is a sub-topic of zoology. The focus of ethology is on animal behaviour under natural conditions, as opposed to behaviourism, which focuses on behavioural response studies in a laboratory setting. Reflex An unlearned response that is elicited by a specific stimulus; the dogs don’t learn this, it is reflexive. Unconditioned stimulus A stimulus that can reflexively elicit a response. Unconditioned response A response reflexively elicited by an unconditional stimulus. Conditioned stimulus A stimulus that, after conditioning, is able to elicit a nonreflexive response. Conditioned response A response that, after conditioning, is elicited by a conditioned stimulus. Acquisition




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Used to describe the period during which an organism is learning the association of stimuli. Extinction Once classical conditioning occurs, it can be unlearned through this process; by repeatedly presenting the CS without the UCS. I.e., ring the bell, but not give the dog any food powder…do this repeatedly, and the dog will eventually stop salivating in response to the bell ring. Spontaneous recovery After extinction and a period of rest, presenting the CS without the USC will actually elicit a weak CR of salivation. Generalization The tendency for stimuli similar to the CS to elicit the CR. Ex, the dog might begin to salivate to bells of a different pitch and/or timbre, or maybe even to chimes. Second-order conditioning A neutral stimulus is paired with a CS rather than a UCS. Sensory preconditioning Two neutral stimuli are paired together and then one of the neutral stimuli is paired with an UCS. Robert Rescorla In the late 1960s, he performed some brilliant experiments that suggested classical conditioning was a matter of learning signals for the UCS; sometimes called contingency explanation of classical conditioning. Blocking The conditioning of an association between two stimuli, a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) is impaired if, during the conditioning process, the CS is presented together with a second CS that has already been associated with the unconditioned stimulus. Operant conditioning/instrumental conditioning/reward learning Learning the relationship between one’s actions and their consequences. The behavior is controlled by consequences. Positive reinforcement Behavior is rewarded; increases probability of response Negative reinforcement The probability that the desired response will be performed is increased by taking away or preventing something undesirable whenever the desired response is made. Escape —
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 Behavior removes something undesirable; increases probability of response. Avoidance Behavior avoids something undesirable; increases probability of response. Punishment Behavior causes something undesirable; decreases probability. Extinction Behavior that used to bring reward no longer does so; decreases probability of response. Discriminative stimulus (SD) A stimulus condition that indicates that the organism’s behavior will have consequences. Generalization A concept from classical conditioning that also applies to operant conditioning. Train an animal to peck for food when a green light is on; the green light is the SD. After the training occurs, the animal will peck not only when the green light is on, but also when similar colored lights are on. The closer the color of light is to green, the more likely it is that the animal will peck. Partial reinforcement effect Gambling is an example of this effect; once you sit down and begin gambling, it’s hard to stop, even though your behavior is reinforced by only an occasional win. Fixed-ratio Behavior will be reinforced after a fixed number of responses. I.e., piecework Variable-ratio Behavior will be reinforced after a varying number of responses. I.e., slot machines Fixed-interval Behavior will be reinforced for the 1st response after a fixed period of time has elapsed since the last reinforcement. I.e., going to the office to pick up bimonthly paycheck. Variable-interval Behavior will be reinforced for the first response after a varying period has elapsed since the last reinforcement. I.e., parent responding crying child (from child’s perspective) Continuous reinforcement schedule (CRF) Behavior will be reinforced for every response. Shaping/Differential reinforcement —
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 You reinforce successive approximations to the desired behavior/you reinforce the desired response while extinguishing others. Behavior therapies/behavior modification Edward Thorndike first used the term in 1911. A broad term referring to either psycho-, behavior analytical, or a combination of the two therapies. In its broadest sense, the methods focus on either just behaviors or in combination with thoughts and feelings that might be causing them. Those who practice behavior therapy tend to look more at specific, learned behaviors and how the environment has an impact on those behaviors. Those who practice behavior therapy are called behaviorists. The traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation. It is an application of behavior analysis that does not search for the behavioral antecedent. Behavior modification is now known as Applied behavior analysis (ABA, including Positive behavior support (PBS)) which is more analytical than it used to be. Flooding Form of behavior therapy based on the principles of respondent conditioning. It is sometimes referred to as exposure therapy or prolonged exposure therapy. As a psychotherapeutic technique, it is used to treat phobia and anxiety disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder. It works by exposing the patient—so they directly experience the feared object (the CS)—to their painful memories, with the goal of reintegrating their repressed emotions with their current awareness. Flooding was invented by psychologist Thomas Stampfl in 1967. Implosion A therapeutic technique based on classical conditioning in which clients imagine and re-live aversive scenes associated with their anxiety; a form of behavior therapy involving intensive recollection and review of anxietyproducing situations or events in a patient's life in an attempt to develop more appropriate responses to similar situations in the future. Difference b/w implosion and flooding; flooding deals with the actual stimulus or its image, while in implosion a much higher anxiety is evoked as the imagined scenes are exaggerated by the therapist who also introduces commentaries on the worst of the persons fears. So while in flooding you might be asked to picture spider, perhaps at various distances so the you become desensitized to the image in implosive therapy you might be asked to imagine the spider entering your mouth as you sleep if that was an anticipated fantasy aspect of your fear. Systematic desensitization/graduated exposure therapy Process uses a hierarchy of anxiety-producing situations coupled with the use of relaxation techniques; a type of behavioral therapy used in the field of psychology to help effectively overcome phobias and other anxiety disorders. More specifically, it is a type of Pavlovian therapy developed by a South African psychiatrist, Joseph Wolpe. To begin the process, one must first be taught relaxation skills in order to control fear and anxiety responses to specific phobias. Once the individual has been taught these skills, he or she must use them to react towards and overcome situations in an established hierarchy of fears. The goal of this process is that an individual will learn to cope and overcome the feared object (the CS) in each step of the hierarchy, which will lead to overcoming the last step of the fear in the hierarchy; this is called counter-conditioning Conditioned aversion —
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 Pairing a desired CS with an aversive UCS; another therapy based on classical conditioning; used when the client is attracted to a behavior that the client and/or therapist finds undesirable; used to help addicts; the stimulus that attracts the client becomes paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus associated with a punishment; the negative feelings will be associated to the undesirable behavior and the client will therefore no longer be attracted to the behavior. Contingency management A general name for therapies that attempt to change the client’s behavior by altering the consequences of the behavior. Behavioral contract A written agreement that explicitly states the consequences of certain acts; useful in resolving interpersonal conflicts. Time-out Removing the client from the potentially reinforcing situation before he can receive reinforcement for the undesirable behavior; behavior will eventually cease. Premack principle Using a more preferred activity to reinforce a less preferred activity. Token economies A system of behavior modification based on the principles of operant conditioning; the original proposal for such a system emphasized reinforcing positive behavior by awarding “tokens” for meeting positive behavioral goals; tokens themselves were not reinforcers; tokens were accumulated and “spent” in order to obtain a reinforcer; patients earn tokens, which they exchange for privileges, such as time watching tv or walks on the hospital grounds. Wolfgang Kohler Cofounder of the school of Gestalt therapy disagreed with Thorndike; studied insight in problem solving. Insight The perception of the inner relationships between factors that are essential to solving a problem. Looked at problem solving in chimpanzees. Edward Tolman Conducted experiments with rats in mazes to show that behavior isn’t always simply a matter of stimulusresponse reinforcement learning; he was able to show that rats were able to form cognitive maps of various mazes in order to adopt alternative routes through mazes. Biological constraints Investigates why organisms or parts of organisms are sometimes apparently resistant to evolutionary change; has played an important role in the development of such ideas as homology and body plans. The Garcia effect




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Discovered by John Garcia, studied conditioned taste aversion learning to thirsty rats; proposed that some species are biologically prepared to learn connections between certain stimuli. Preparedness Rats seem to have an in-born tendency to associate certain stimuli with certain consequences/prepared to learn connections between certain stimuli; also, people tend to associate illness with something they’ve eaten. Instinctual drift Believed by Keller & Marion Breland; instinctual ways of behaving are able to override behaviors learned through operant conditioning. Species-specific behaviors Tend to have an instinctual basis which contrasts with the behaviorists who concerned themselves with learned behavior. Niko Tinbergen Introduced experimental methods into the field, enabling the construction of controlled conditions outside of a laboratory. Fixed-action pattern (FAP) A stereotyped behavior sequence that does not have to be learned by the animal. Sign stimuli Features of a stimulus sufficient to bring about a particular FAP. Releaser A sign stimulus that triggers social behaviors between animals. Supernormal stimulus A model more effective at triggering a FAP than the actual sign stimulus found in nature. Innate releasing mechanism (IRM) A mechanism in the animal’s nervous system that connects sign stimuli with the correct FAPs. Reproductive isolating mechanisms Behaviors that prevent animals of one species from attempting to mate with animals of a closely related specie; i.e., a species specific call given by black-headed gull males, enabling black-headed gull females to find them. Karl von Frisch Ethologist who studied communication in honeybees. Natural selection




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The key to evolution; believed by Charles Darwin; his theory is based on the premise that not every member of a species is equally successful at surviving and reproducing; there is a variation between individual members of the same species, and at least some of this variation has a genetic basis. Reproductive fitness Takes into account the number of offspring that live to be old enough to reproduce; altruism is problematic. Altruism If the animal’s behavior decreases its reproductive fitness; the altruist is putting itself in danger, and if doing so does not help its offspring (or potential offspring), the behavior will actually decrease its reproductive fitness; however, animals are known to put themselves as risk for fellow species-members. Theory of kin selection Suggests that animals act to increase their inclusive fitness, rather than reproductive fitness, which takes into account not only the number of offspring who survive to reproduction age, but also the number of other relatives who survive to reproductive age. Sociobiology Studies how various social behaviors increase fitness; E.O. Wilson is most associated with this discipline. E.O. Wilson Developed sociobiology; adamant in his belief that behavior is due to a complex and dynamic interplay between genetics and the environment.

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 Sensation and Perception Ernest Weber A German physician considered a founder of experimental psychology; one of the first people to approach the study of the human response to a physical stimulus in quantitative fashion; published a book called De Tactu, which was an investigation of muscle sense; his book introduced the notion of just noticeable difference (jnd) in sensation, an important concept to the field of psychophysics. The Weber-Fechner law Attempts to describe the relationship between the physical magnitudes of stimuli and the perceived intensity of stimuli; Gustav Fechner formulated this after Weber. Sir Francis Galton Half-cousin of Charles Darwin; one of the first researchers interested in individual differences; maintained an anthropometric lab in which he measured the sensory abilities of nearly 10,000 people; his work contributed to what we know about how people differ in their sensory abilities. Max Wertheimer One of 3 founders of Gestalt psychology; a theory of mind and brain which proposes that the operational principles of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies; or that the whole is different from the sum of its parts; classic example is a soap bubble; the Gestalt effect refers to the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves. Phi phenomenon The optical illusion of perceiving continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. The phenomenon was defined by Max Wertheimer in the Gestalt psychology in 1912 and along with persistence of vision formed a part of the base of the theory of cinema, applied by Hugo Munsterberg in 1916. Absolute threshold One main type of thresholds; the minimum amount of stimulation required for a person’s sense organs to detect a stimulus 50% of the time/needed to activate a sensory system; it is the amount of stimulus that a person can perceive; the eye can detect the light of one candle burning 30 miles away. Difference threshold The amount of stimulus energy that needs to be added to or subtracted from a stimulus for a person to say that she notices a difference. Just noticeable difference (jnd) One jnd needs to be added to or subtracted from a stimulus for a person to say that she notices a difference. Weber’s fraction/Weber’s constant The constant K. Fechner’s law




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Expresses the relationship between the intensity of the sensation and the intensity of the stimulus; Fechner derived his law from Weber’s law and determined the sensation increases more slowly as intensity increases. Stevens’ power law S.S. Stevens performed experiments suggesting Fechner’s law may be incorrect; this too relates the intensity of the stimulus to the intensity of the sensation. Signal detection theory Suggests that other, nonsensory factors influence what the subject says she senses; nonsensory factors include experiences, motives, and expectations; gives us a way to measure how well the subject can sense the stimulus (sensitivity) and response bias. Response bias Refers to the tendency of subjects to respond in a particular way due to nonsensory factors. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) Graphically summarize a subject’s responses by measuring the operating (sensitivity) characteristics of a subject receiving signals. John A. Swets Refined the use of ROC curves; played a key role in adaptation of signal detection theory to first the psychology of perception and later as a central tool in medical diagnostics. Reception The first step in all sensory information processing; react to physical external energy. Transduction 2nd step; the translation of physical energy into neural impulses or action potentials. Projection areas Brain areas that further analyze sensory input. Neural pathways A neural tract, made up of nerve fibres connecting one part of the nervous system with another, usually consisting of bundles of elongated, myelin insultated neurons, known collectively as white matter. Neural pathways serve to connect relatively distant areas of the brain or nervous system, compared to the local communication of grey matter. Cornea The transparent layer forming the front of the eye; gathers and focuses incoming light. Pupil The hole in the iris, contracts in bright light, and expands in dim light to let more light in. —
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Iris The colored part of the eye, has involuntary muscles and autonomic nerve fibers. It controls the size of the pupil and therefore, the amount of light entering the eye. Lens Lies right behind the iris, helps control the curvature of the light coming in and can focus near or distant objects on the retina. Retina The back of the eye and is like a screen filled with neural elements and blood vessels. It is the image-detecting part of the eye. Duplexity/duplicity theory of vision States that the retina contains two kinds of photoreceptors. Rods Photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye that can function in less intense light than can the other type of photoreceptor, cone cells. Best in reduced illumination; responsible for night vision; allow perception only of achromatic (without color) colors; low sensitivity to detail; concentrated at the outer edges of the retina and are used in peripheral vision; about 120 million cells in the human retina. Cones Photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye which function best in relatively bright light; gradually become sparser towards the periphery of the retina; basically used for color vision and for perceiving fine detail. Most effective in bright light, and allow us to see chromatic and achromatic colors. Fovea A part of the eye located in the center of the macula region of the retina; responsible for sharp central vision, which is necessary in humans reading, watching tv or movies, driving, and any activity where visual detail is of primary importance. Optic chiasm The part of the brain where the optic nerves partially cross. The nerves connected to the right eye that attend to the right temporal visual field (located in the right retina) cross to the left half of the brain, while the nerves from the left eye that attend to the left temporal visual field (located in the left retina) cross to the right half of the brain. Nasal fibers Temporal fibers Lateral geniculate nucleus  Thalamus Occipital lobe  Visual cortex




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Superior colliculus Often called the optic tectum; a pair structure that forms a major component of the vertebrate midbrain; the general function of the tectal system is to direct behavioral responses toward specific points in egocentric ("body-centered") space. Hubel & Wiesel Earned a Nobel Prize in 1981 for their work on the visual cortex; and found a neural basis for feature detection theory; measured cell responses, sometimes called recording from single nerve fibers. Feature detection theory Suggests that certain cells in the cortex are maximally sensitive to certain features of stimuli. 3 different types of cells: Simple: Orientation Complex: Movement Hypercomplex: Shape Brightness The subjective impression of the intensity of a light stimulus. Illumination A physical, objective measurement that is simply the amount of light falling on a surface. Adaptation When your eyes adapt to the environment to be able to see; such as walking into a dark movie theater; the ability of the eye to adjust to various levels of darkness and light. Dark adaptation Caused by the regeneration of rhodopsin, the photopigment in the rods. Rhodopsin The only photopigment that rods have; it’s a photochemical made up of a vitamin A derivative called retinal and a protein called opsin; also known as visual purple is expressed vertebrate photoreceptor cells; responsible for both the formation of the photoreceptor cells and the first events in the perception of light; belong to the class of G-protein coupled receptors; the chemical that allows night-vision, and is extremely sensitive to light. Retinal A light-sensitive retinene molecule found in the photoreceptor cells of the retina. Retinal is the fundamental structure involved in the transduction of light into visual signals, i.e. nerve impulses, in the occular system of the central nervous system. —
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 Opsin Involved in vision, mediating the conversion of a photon of light into an electrochemical signal, the first step in the visual transduction cascade. Simultaneous brightness contrast When a target area of a particular luminance appears brighter when surrounded by a darker stimulus than when surrounded by a lighter stimulus. Lateral inhibition Explains the simultaneous brightness contrast; adjacent retinal cells inhibit one another; sharpens and highlights borders between light and dark areas. Color perception Related to the wavelength of the light entering the eye; human eye can see wavelengths from about 400 – 800 nanometers. Subtractive color mixture Occurs when we mix pigments; like blue and yellow make green. Additive color mixing The primary colors are blue, green, and red, not yellow, blue, and red of subtractive color mixture; mix red and green to get yellow lights. Young-Helmhotz theory/trichromatic theory Suggests that the retina contains 3 different types of color receptors (cones), which are differentially sensitive to different colors. Red, blue, and green. Ewald Hering Developed opponent process theory of color vision; 3 opposing pairs: red-green, blue-yellow, black-white. Afterimages Hering was led to his theory of opponent process color vision by this; it is a visual sensation that appears after prolonged or intense exposure to a stimulus; if you stare at a red square for several minutes and then transfer your gaze to a white sheet of paper, you will see a green square, not a red square. This supports Hering’s theory since the afterimage will be the “opposite” of the original color. Interposition/overlap If one object covers another, the partially hidden object is seen as farther away. Depth perception The visual ability to perceive the world in 3 dimensions; trait common to many higher animals; allows the beholder to accurately gauge the distance to an object. Combines several types of depth clues grouped into: —
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 monocular cues (available from the input of just one eye) and binocular clues (clues that require input from both eyes). Relative size Comparison of retinal size of object to actual size of objects gives cue to depth. Linear perspective Parallel lines appear to converge as they recede into the distance. J.J. Gibson Studied depth cues (especially texture gradients) that help us perceive depth; In his classic work The Perception of the Visual World (1950) he rejected the fashionable behaviorism for a view based on his own experimental work, which pioneered the idea that animals 'sampled' information from the 'ambient' outside world. He also coined the term 'affordance', which refers to the opportunities for action provided by a particular object or environment. Texture gradients As scene recedes from viewer, the surface texture of the object appears to change. Motion Parallax When observer moves, objects in a stationary environment appear to move relative to distance from observer. Kinetic depth effect When an object rather than the perceiver moves, the motion of that object gives us cues about the relative depth of parts of the objects. Binocular disparity/stereopsis Each eye sees a slightly different scene; when the brain combines the scenes, we get perception depth. Binocular parallax The degree of disparity between the retinal images of the eyes due to the slight differences in the horizontal position of each eye in the skull. Binocular depth cue Stereopsis, the only depth cue that requires two eyes. Monocular depth cues Other depth cues, which require the use of only one eye. Figure The integrated visual experience that stands out at the center of attention. Ground




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The background against which the figure appears. I.e., if you are looking at a ball that is resting on a field of grass, the ball is the figure and the ground consists of many elongated shapes (the blades of grass). Sometimes figure and ground can change, as in the famous “face-vase”. Proximity Elements close to one another tend to be perceived as a unit. Similarity Elements that are similar to one another tend to be grouped together. Good continuation Elements that appear to follow in the same direction tend to be grouped together. Closure The tendency to see the incomplete figures as being complete. Pragnanz Perceptual organization will always be as “good” (i.e., regular, simple, symmetrical, etc.) as possible. Subjective contours Have to do with perceiving contours, and therefore, shapes, that are not present in the physical stimulus. Wolfgang Kohler Developed theory of isomorphism. Theory of isomorphism Addressed by Kohler, suggesting that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the object in the perceptual field and the pattern of stimulation in the brain. Bottom-up processing Data-driven processing; refers to object perception that responds directly to the components of incoming stimulus on the basis of fixed rules. It then sums up the components of incoming stimulus on the basis of fixed rules. It then sums up the components to arrive at the whole pattern (as in feature detection) Top-down processing Conceptually driven processing; object perception that is guided by conceptual processes such as memories and expectations that allow the brain to recognize the whole object and then recognize the components. If we only did top-down processing, we would see only what we expected to see. Real motion Involves actually moving the light. —
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 Apparent motion (stroboscopic movement/phi phenomenon) When two or more stationary lights flicker in succession they tend to be perceived as a single moving light. Induced motion A stationary point of light appears to move when the background moves. Autokinetic effect A stationary point of light when viewed in an otherwise totally dark room appears to move; probably caused by involuntary eye movements. Motion aftereffect/waterfall illusion If a moving object is viewed for an extended period of time, it will appear to move in an opposite direction when the motion stops. Size constancy Tendency for the perceived state of an object to remain constant despite variations in the size of its retinal image. Shape constancy Tendency for the perceived shape of an object to remain constant despite variations in the shape of its retinal image. Lightness constancy Tendency for he perceived lightness of an object to remain constant despite changes in illumination. Color constancy Tendency for the perceived color of an object to remain constant despite changes in the spectrum of light falling on it. Emmert’s law Ames room Moon illusion Illusion An erroneous percept. Muller-Lyer Hering Ponzo Wundt




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Poggendorff Reversible figure Preferential looking Habituation A stimulus is presented to infant, infant eventually stops attending to it; a different stimulus is presented, if the infant attends to it, it is inferred that the infant can perceive the difference between the old and new stimuli. Visual cliff An apparatus designed by Gibson and Walk to assess infant depth perception. Animal experiments Sometimes used to assess contributions of nature and nurture to the development of vision. Frequency The number of cycles per second; measured in Hertzes Intensity The amplitude of the sound wave; measured in decibels. Pitch The subjective experience of the frequency of the sound. Loudness The subjective experience of the intensity of the sound. Timbre Refers to the quality of the sound. The 3 main parts of the ear: Outer ear; Middle ear; Inner ear Pinna The visible part of the ear that resides outside of the head (this may also be referred to as auricle); collects sound, by acting as a funnel, amplifying the sound and directing it to the ear canal. Tympanic membrane Colloquially known as the eardrum, is a thin membrane that separates the external ear from the middle ear. Its function is to transmit sound from the air to the ossicles inside the middle ear; the malleus bone bridges the gap between the eardrum and the other ossicles. —
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Ossicles Also called auditory ossicles are the 3 smallest bones in the human body; they are contained within the middle ear space and serve to transmit sounds from the air to the fluid filled labyrinth (cochlea); the absence of these would constitute a moderate to severe hearing loss. Hammer (malleus)  anvil (incus)  stirrup (stapes) (named because of the shape of the bones). Oval window Where the edge of the stirrup rests; the entrance to the inner ear. Cochlea The inner ear which is filled with a saltwater-like fluid. Cochlear fluid The saltwater-like fluid inside the inner ear. Basilar membrane The most important membrane running the length of the cochlea. Organ of Corti Rests on the basilar membrane along its entire length; the organ of Corti is composed of thousands of hair cells; these hair cells are the receptors for hearing, analogous to the rods and cones in the eye; when the hair cells bend, the bending is transduced into electrical charges in some way not fully understood. Auditory nerve Found in higher vertebrates; a sensory nerve, i.e., one that conducts info about the environment (in this case, acoustic energy that impinges on the external ear) to the brain. Place theory Operative for tones higher than about 4,000 Hz, and operative between 500-4,000 Hz; a theory of hearing which states that our perception of sound depends on where each component frequency produces vibrations along the basilar membrane; therefore, the pitch of a pure tone would be determined by where the membrane vibrates; it states that frequency is encoded according to the tonotopic organization of the neurons; first discovered by Helmholtz; competes with the rate theory of hearing, which instead states that pitch is signaled by the rate at which the neurons fire. Helmholtz and Young Developed Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color vision; developed place-resonance theory of pitch perception. Frequency theory Suggests that the basilar membrane vibrates as a whole, and that the rate of vibration equals the frequency of the stimulus; operative for tones up to 500 Hz, and between 500-4,000 Hz. —
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Von Bekesy In early 1960s, found that the movement of the basilar membrane is maximal at a different place along the basilar membrane for each different frequency (although the whole basilar membrane vibrates for any given stimulus. High frequencies maximally vibrate the membrane near the part of the cochlea close to the oval window; low frequencies maximally vibrate near the apex, or tip of the cochlea, sometimes called Bekesy’s traveling wave theory. Found that low frequency tones, less than 400 Hz, maximally displaced a very broad part of the basilar membrane. Papillae A nipple like anatomical structure; found in little bumps on the tongue. Smell receptors In the upper nasal passage of the nose called the olfactory epithelium. Olfactory epithelium A specialized epithelial tissue inside the nasal cavity that is involved in smell; in humans, lies on the roof of the nasal cavity about 3 in above and behind the nostril; part of the olfactory system directly responsible for detecting odors. Taste buds Small structures/little bumps on the upper surface of the tongue, soft palate, and epiglottis that provide info about the taste of food being eaten. The human tongue has 10,000. Taste center Where taste info travels to in the thalamus. Thalamus The main part of the diencephalon, a portion of the brain. Smell travels to where? The olfactory bulb in the brain. Where is the olfactory bulb? In the brain. Somatosensory cortex Two-point thresholds The minimum distance necessary between two points of stimulation on the skin such that the points will be felt as two distinct stimuli. —
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 Physiological zero A neutral temperature perceived to be neither hot nor cold. Gate theory of pain The theory that there is a gating mechanism in the spinal cord that turns pain signals on and off. Proprioception Means “one’s own” and perception; one’s sense of the (bodily) position of parts of the body, relative to other neighboring parts of the body; includes aspects of both the vestibular and kinesthetic senses. Vestibular sense Has to do with our sense of balance and of our bodily position relative to gravity; these receptors are in the inner ear, above and behind the cochlea. Kinesthetic sense Has to do with the awareness of body movement and position; specifically, with muscle, tendon, and joint position since the receptors are at or near them. Filter Donald Broadbent proposed that selective attention acts as this between sensory stimuli and our processing systems; if a stimulus is attended to, it will be passed through the filter and analyzed further; if it is not, it will be lost; according to him, selection attention is an all-or-nothing process, but recent evidence indicates otherwise. Dichotic listening Used to study selective attention in the lab; in this technique, two ears are simultaneously presented with different messages; generally, listeners are asked to shadow, that is, to repeat one of the messages as it is presented; using this method, it has been demonstrated that observers can indeed attend to one message and dampen out the other one.

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