Development
What are one of the three issues that developmental psychologists have engaged in?
Nature vs. Nurture, Continuous v. Discontinuous, Stable vs. Unstable change
What is sensation and bottom-up processing?
The detection of sensory stimuli; percieving things by working up from exploration (Specific to general)
What is perception and top-down processing?
The organization of sensory stimuli; percieving things by working down from expectations (General to specific)
What is learning?
Learning is adapting to our enviorments, in that we aquire new knowledge, behavior, habits, and attitudes by interacting with our enviorment.
Why was Pavlov's research so important?
Because it demonstrated how we could learn about events in our enviorment, kickstarting all sorts of research behind the psychology of learning.
What is the difference between puberty and adolescence, and what are some the challenges teens face during adolescence?
Puberty is the maturation of sexual characteristics, and adolescence is the time period between puberty and adulthood. Teenagers deal with awkward development, self-esteem issues, and dealing with society™
What is the purpose of sensory adaption, and what's the difference between absolute threshold and difference threshold?
The purpose of sensory adaption is to get us "use" to new enviorments. Absolute threshold refers to the the absolute minimum of stimuli it takes for you to detect something (How much do you need to turn the volume up until you can actually hear it?), and difference threshold refers to the minimum amount of change needed for you to notice a difference in a stimuli (How much do you need to turn the volume down before it actually sounds like it's going down?)
How do expectations, contexts, motivation, and emotions influence our perceptions?
They alter our perceptual sets. For example, if we're angry, then we're more likely to view otherwise benign things as provoking. Because our anger altered our perceptual set, so that we viewed everyday interactions through a lens of provocation.
What are some basic forms of learning?
Associative learning, observational learning, and oberservational learning.
What are the basic components of classical conditioning?
Unconditioned stimulis (US), unconditioned response (UR), neutral stimulus (NS), conditoned stimulis (CS), conditioned response (CR).
What marks our social journey from early adulthood to death, and what are the challenges we face during this journey?
Emerging adulthood (Establishing a life), middle years (Dealing with life), and old age (Accepting death).
How are olfaction and gustation similar?
They are both chemical senses, requiring chemical recoptors to be stimulated.
How do perceptual contancies help up construct meaningful perceptions?
By stabilizing our perceptions of things as they shift or change within our enviorments.
What is the difference between classical conditioning and operant conditioning?
classical: focused on associations between stimuli, behavior is involuntary and elicited
operant: focused on associations between behaviors and consequences, behavior is voluntary and emitted
How is Pavlov's research still applied to this day?
To study fears, to explain reactions to medical treatment, and to help with advertisment
How do fetuses develop and what dangers do they face in the womb?
Development: Germinal (implantation), embryonic (organ development), fetal (brain activity); Dangers: teratogens
How do we detect loudness, discriminate pitch, and locate sounds?
Loudness: number of activated hairs. Pitch: place theory (different pitches hits different places along the cochlear) and frequency theory (the brain reads the neural impulse activated by different pitches). Sound location: intensity and time lag of sound.
How do we percieve color?
We percieve the color(s) reflected off an object, while the rest are absorbed by that object.
What's the idea of shaping?
Reinforcing various behaviors that are approximate to the desired behavior.
What is acquisition, extinction, and spontaneous recovery? What is generalization and discrimination?
acquisition: learning and establishing a conditoned response
extinction: weakening of a conditoned response spontaneous recovery: the re-appearence of a conditioned response after exinction
generalization: responding to stimuli similar to the conditioned stimuli as it was also conditioned
discrimination: the differentiation between a conditioned stimuli and stimuli similar to that
What are the four stages of Piaget's theory of cognitive childhood development, and what happens during each of these stages?
Sensorimotor (Sensory exploration), Preoperational (Symbolism play), Concrete (Facts), Formal (Hypotheticals)
How do we see color?
Colors we see: varying shades of blue, green, red. Structures that help: cornea, iris, pupil, lens, retina, optic nerve.
Other visual receptors that help: rods and cones.
Theories of color: trichromatic theory and the opponent process theory
What are Gestalt's 5 principles/theories of grouping?
Similarity, proximity, common fate, continuity, closure. Also remember: figure-ground. Not a grouping principle/theory, just something to remember : )
Focusing on operant conditioned, what is the difference between reinforcment and punishment? What does it mean for a reinforcment and punishment to be positive and negative?
Reinforcement strengthens the response, and punishment weakens the response. If it's positive, then something's being applied. If it's negative, then something's being taken.
Refer to the little Albert experiment. What is the unconditioned stimuli (US), unconditioned response (UR), neutral stimuli (NS), conditioned stimuli (CS), and conditioned response (CR)?
US: loud sound
UR: fear/crying
NS: white, fluffy animals
CS: white, fluffy animals
CR: fear/crying