Biologic Basis of Behavior
What is homeostasis?
Homeostasis is the body’s tendency to maintain a stable internal balance, such as regulating body temperature or blood sugar levels.
What is a schema?
A schema is a mental framework that organizes and interprets information based on prior knowledge and experience.
What is observational learning?
Observational learning occurs when behavior is learned by watching and imitating others.
What is a trait?
A relatively stable and enduring characteristic that influences how a person thinks, feels, and behaves across different situations.
What is stress?
Stress is the body’s response to perceived challenges or threats.
Explain the difference between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The sympathetic nervous system activates the body during stress, while the parasympathetic nervous system calms the body and restores balance.
Explain how proactive interference can make studying difficult.
Proactive interference occurs when older information interferes with learning or remembering newer information.
Explain the difference between classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
Classical conditioning involves learning associations between stimuli, while operant conditioning involves learning through rewards and punishments.
Explain the difference between prejudice and discrimination.
Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a group, while discrimination is unfair behavior toward members of that group.
Explain one symptom commonly associated with major depressive disorder.
Major depressive disorder often involves persistent sadness or loss of interest in activities.
A person cannot form new explicit memories after a brain injury. Identify the brain structure likely damaged and explain why.
The hippocampus is likely damaged because it helps form new explicit memories.
Explain the availability heuristic and give an example.
The availability heuristic occurs when people judge likelihood based on how easily examples come to mind, such as fearing plane crashes after seeing news coverage.
Compare secure attachment and insecure attachment.
Secure attachment involves trust and comfort with caregivers, while insecure attachment may involve anxiety, avoidance, or difficulty trusting others.
A person behaves aggressively in a large crowd but would not normally act that way alone. Explain this using deindividuation.
Deindividuation occurs when people lose self-awareness and personal responsibility in group settings, increasing impulsive behavior.
Compare problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping.
Problem-focused coping addresses the source of stress directly, while emotion-focused coping attempts to manage emotional reactions to stress.
Compare the roles of Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area in language processing.
Broca’s area controls speech production, while Wernicke’s area controls language comprehension. Damage to either area affects communication differently.
Compare working memory and long-term memory.
Working memory temporarily holds and processes current information, while long-term memory stores information for extended periods.
Explain one major characteristic of Piaget’s concrete operational stage of cognitive development.
During the concrete operational stage, children begin thinking logically about concrete events and understand concepts such as conservation and reversibility.
Compare psychodynamic theory and humanistic theory of personality.
Psychodynamic theory emphasizes unconscious conflicts and childhood experiences, while humanistic theory focuses on free will, growth, and self-actualization.
Explain how cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps treat psychological disorders.
CBT helps individuals identify and change harmful thought patterns and behaviors that contribute to psychological distress.
A person becomes addicted to a drug that increases dopamine activity. Explain how this addiction could affect both brain chemistry and behavior over time.
Repeated dopamine surges overstimulate the brain’s reward pathway, causing the brain to rely on the drug for pleasure. Over time, the person may develop tolerance, cravings, and compulsive behaviors despite negative consequences.
A student spends hours rereading notes for a test but remembers very little during the exam. Explain this outcome using both encoding failure and retrieval failure.
Encoding failure may have occurred because the student passively reread information without deeply processing it, making the memories weak. Retrieval failure may have occurred during the test because the student could not effectively access the stored information under pressure or without appropriate retrieval cues.
A teenager consistently studies hard because they value academic success and personal achievement, even without rewards or punishments from others. Explain this behavior using cognitive processes in learning rather than operant conditioning.
Cognitive approaches to learning emphasize internal thought processes such as goals, expectations, and motivation. The teenager’s studying is driven by personal beliefs and values rather than external reinforcement or punishment.
A student is confident and outgoing with friends but quiet during class presentations. Explain this behavior using the social-cognitive perspective of personality.
The social-cognitive perspective states that behavior results from interactions between personal traits and situations. Different environments can trigger different behaviors depending on expectations and experiences.
A person experiences chronic stress from work, develops high blood pressure, and begins feeling emotionally exhausted. Explain this using the biopsychosocial model.
The biopsychosocial model explains that biological factors (high blood pressure), psychological factors (emotional exhaustion), and social factors (work stress) all interact to influence health and well-being.