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Psychology Key Concepts Flashcards

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  • Behavioral Perspective

    Focuses on observed behavior and the idea that behavior is learned.

  • Correlation Types

    Positive: Both variables increase or decrease together.
    Negative: One variable increases while the other decreases.
    No correlation: No relationship between variables.

  • Experiment Groups

    Experimental group: Receives treatment.
    Control group: Receives no treatment or placebo.

  • Independent vs Dependent Variable

    Independent variable (IV): The factor manipulated.
    Dependent variable (DV): The factor measured.

  • Ethics in Psychological Research

    Includes informed consent, participant rights, and debriefing with mental health resources.

  • Central Nervous System Components

    Includes the brain and spinal cord, studied via lesioning, CT, MRI, EEG, PET, and fMRI.

  • Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic Nervous System

    Sympathetic: Fight, flight, or freeze responses.
    Parasympathetic: Rest and digest functions.

  • Four Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex

    Frontal: Personality, planning, impulse control.
    Occipital: Visual processing.
    Parietal: Touch, temperature.
    Temporal: Hearing.

  • Gestalt Principles of Perception

    Includes figure-ground, proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity.

  • Monocular Depth Cues

    Includes linear perspective, texture gradient, aerial perspective, relative size, and interposition.

  • Sleep Deprivation Effects

    Physical: shaky hands, droopy eyelids.
    Emotional: irritability, depression.
    Cognitive: poor memory, concentration, problem solving.

  • Theories of Sleep

    Adaptive theory: Sleep protects from predators.
    Restorative theory: Sleep repairs body and brain, supports memory.

  • Classical Conditioning

    Learning to make a reflex response to a previously neutral stimulus by pairing it with an unconditioned stimulus.

  • Operant Conditioning

    Learning controlled behavior through consequences: reinforcement increases behavior, punishment decreases behavior.

  • Types of Reinforcement

    Positive reinforcement: Adding a desirable stimulus.
    Negative reinforcement: Removing an aversive stimulus.

  • Schedules of Reinforcement

    Fixed interval: Reinforcement after fixed time.
    Variable interval: Reinforcement after varying time.
    Fixed ratio: Reinforcement after fixed responses.
    Variable ratio: Reinforcement after varying responses.

  • Memory Processes

    Encoding: Converting info to brain codes.
    Storage: Holding info.
    Retrieval: Accessing stored info.

  • Atkinson-Shiffrin Model Stages

    Sensory memory: Brief storage.
    Short-term memory: Holds info briefly.
    Long-term memory: Permanent storage.

  • Types of Long-Term Memory

    Declarative (explicit): Episodic and semantic memories.
    Nondeclarative (implicit): Motor skills and conditioned reflexes.

  • Piaget's Cognitive Development Stages

    1. Sensory-motor (0-2 yrs)
    2. Preoperational (2-7 yrs)
    3. Concrete operational (7-12 yrs)
    4. Formal operational (12+ yrs)

  • Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Development

    1. Preconventional: consequences determine morality.
    2. Conventional: conforming to social norms.
    3. Postconventional: based on higher principles.

  • Attachment Styles in Infants

    Secure, Avoidant, Ambivalent, and Disorganized, describing different patterns of caregiver bonding.

  • Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

    Eight stages from trust vs mistrust to integrity vs despair, each with a crisis and possible positive or negative outcome.

  • Gender vs Biological Sex

    Sex: Biological characteristics.
    Gender: Psychological and social aspects of being male, female, or other identities.

  • Sexual Orientation Categories

    Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual/pansexual, and asexual, based on sexual attraction.

  • Stress vs Stressor

    Stressor: Event causing stress.
    Stress: Reaction to the stressor, including physical, emotional, and cognitive responses.

  • Types of Stressors

    Catastrophes, major life changes, and daily hassles; classified as internal/external, pleasant/unpleasant, chronic/acute.

  • Coping Strategies

    Problem-focused: Eliminates stressor.
    Emotion-focused: Changes emotional response.

  • Social Psychology Concepts

    Includes conformity, compliance, obedience, social roles, attitudes, stereotypes, prejudice, and prosocial behavior.

  • Cognitive Dissonance

    Discomfort when attitudes and behaviors conflict; resolved by changing behavior or cognition.

  • Freud's Structure of Personality

    Id: Instinctual desires.
    Ego: Reality-based mediator.
    Superego: Moral conscience.

  • Freud's Psychosexual Stages

    Oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages, each with conflicts and erogenous zones.

  • Psychological Disorders Diagnosis

    Based on DSM-5-TR criteria including symptoms, duration, and cultural considerations.