Experiments
This variable is manipulated in an experiment to study its effects (Example: Sleep in an experiment about the effects of sleep on an exam score)
What is an independent variable?
Usually, when dreaming happens, there is the most brain activity among the stages of sleep. Helps us consolidate memory.
What is REM sleep?
This part of the brain connects the left and right hemispheres. May be severed in some severe cases to help with seizures.
What is the corpus callosum?
This school of thought focuses on observable actions that participants perform as a measurement of their thoughts. John Watson was a prominent figure.
What is Behaviorism?
The idea that a hypothesis can be proven untrue
What is falsifiable?
This lobe of the brain processes sound stimuli, memory, language, emotions, and object/facial recognition. Contains the what stream.
What is the temporal lobe? (What stream: Think of when you hear something unclear and say "what?")
Includes insomnia, sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and sleepwalking.
What are sleep disorders?
This area helps with speech production. If it is damaged it can create non-fluent aphasia.
What is Broca's area? (Think broken speech)
George Miller was a prominent scientist in this school of thought. Likens thinking to that of a computer, focuses on the process of thinking, learning, memory, etc.
What is cognitive psychology?
Studying one particular person (or a group of people) in-depth over time. (Example: Patient HM and his memory or a split brain patient)
What is a case study?
This lobe of the brain processes sensory input (such as touch), knowing where you are in space, and learned movements (such as writing). Contains the where stream.
What is the parietal lobe? (Think parrot on your head, you can feel the parrot on your head and know its location) (Where stream: Parietal is focused on WHERE you are in space)
This experiment showed that it is much harder to name the color of a word when the spelling of the word is a different color (Ex: Blue written in yellow ink)
What is the stroop effect/task?
This area of the brain helps with speech comprehension. Damage to it results in fluent aphasia.
What is Wernicke's area?
Focuses on the unconscious mind and past experiences. Freud was a leader of these ideas and introduced the concept of talk therapy.
What is psychoanalysis?
When an experimenter intentionally or unintentionally affects data, participants, or results in an experiment.
What is experimenter/observer/researcher bias?
This part of the brain helps with balance and smooth motor movement.
What is the cerebellum?
All of us have a subjective way of interpreting stimuli. What I see as pink, you might see as red, but it is still the same stimuli.
What is qualia?
Some would argue this is one of the most important parts of the brain. It regulates breathing, heart rate, sleep, arousal, and balance.
What is the hindbrain, or the brainstem and cerebellum?
This school of thought focuses on individual potential and personal growth. A pioneer of this way of thinking was Abraham Maslow.
What is humanistic psychology?
This group reviews all experiments proposed, ensures that harm/discomfort is minimized, that informed consent is present, that confidentiality will be kept, and that the process of debriefing will be followed.
What is the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?
This lobe of the brain helps with higher level thinking (reasoning, judgement), attention span, voluntary muscle movements, and personality.
What is the frontal lobe?
This part of the brain helps with the sleep-wake cycle. Produces norepinephrine when light is present, and melatonin when light isn't present.
What is the suprachiasmatic nucleus?
Contains the hippocampus, thalamus, hypothalamus, and amygdala. Regulates emotions, behavior, motivation, and memory.
What is the limbic system? (Hippocampus- memory, thalamus- relaying senses, hypothalamus- hunger, thirst, motivation, and amygdala- emotions)
One of the first schools of psychology, aimed to identify the basic building blocks of thinking (sensation, images, feelings), required introspection. Wilhelm Wundt paved the way.
What is structuralism?