Biology
Cognition
Development & Learning
Social Psychology
Mental & Physical Health
100
This is the main receiving end of a neuron, which takes in messages from other nerve cells.
What are dendrites?
100
This temporary memory system is also known as your "active" memory, holding a few items briefly before the information is either stored or forgotten.
What is short-term memory (or working memory)?
100
This parenting style is characterized by low demands and high responsiveness, often resulting in parents being viewed more as a friend than an authority figure.
What is permissive parenting?
100
This personality trait, represented by the letter 'O' in the OCEAN acronym, describes an individual's level of imagination, curiosity, and willingness to try new things.
What is Openness (to Experience)?
100
This is the most common category of mental disorders, characterized by excessive, persistent fear and worry, which can lead to physical symptoms like a racing heart and muscle tension.
What is Anxiety?
200
Often called the "feel-good" neurotransmitter, imbalances of this substance are strongly associated with depression, affecting mood, sleep, and appetite.
What is Serotonin?
200
This phenomenon describes your ability to focus your auditory attention on one conversation (like hearing your name) while filtering out a surrounding sea of noise.
What is the Cocktail Party Effect?
200
This type of learning, demonstrated by Albert Bandura's famous Bobo doll experiment, occurs when a person acquires new behaviors simply by watching and imitating another person.
What is observational learning?
200
This common cognitive bias is the tendency to attribute other people's behavior to their personality (dispositional factors) rather than to external, situational causes.
What is the Fundamental Attribution Error?
200
Often the first line of pharmacological defense for depression and some anxiety disorders, this class of drugs works by increasing the availability of a specific "feel-good" neurotransmitter in the synapse.
What is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI)?
300
This branch of the autonomic nervous system is activated to conserve energy, sometimes described by the phrase "rest and digest."
What is the Parasympathetic Nervous System?
300
Named after a New Zealand researcher, this describes the significant and sustained increase in scores on standardized intelligence tests observed across generations globally.
What is the Flynn effect?
300
When a teenager's curfew is extended because they consistently complete their chores on time, this specific consequence of adding a desirable outcome to increase a behavior is known as this.
What is positive reinforcement?
300
The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint that occurs when a person is anonymous and highly aroused within a large group, often leading to impulsive behavior.
What is Deindividuation?
300
Individuals with this personality disorder often display a lack of conscience, engage in repeated criminal acts, and lack empathy or remorse for their actions.
What is Antisocial Personality Disorder?
400
This is the process by which a persistent increase in synaptic strength occurs following high-frequency stimulation of a chemical synapse, and is considered the biological basis for learning and memory.
What is Long-term Potentiation (LTP)?
400
According to the levels of processing model, this type of processing—which involves analyzing information based on its meaning and connections to existing knowledge—leads to the most durable long-term memory.
What is deep processing?
400
This cognitive understanding, typically mastered by an infant around 8 months of age, allows them to search for a favorite toy even after it has been hidden under a blanket.
What is object permanence?
400
A student who is denied admission to their top-choice college explains to friends that they didn't want to go to a "school that far away" anyway. This is an example of creating a socially acceptable but false explanation for an unacceptable feeling.
What is Rationalization?
400
Characterized by a complex set of symptoms that may include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and catatonia, this severe disorder is often treated with antipsychotic medication.
What is Schizophrenia?
500
A decreased effect of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA or an increase in the activity of the excitatory neurotransmitter Glutamate is a common underlying cause of this neurological phenomenon, which can lead to seizures.
What is reduced inhibition?
500
This decision-making error describes the tendency to continue investing in a project or relationship because of the time, money, or effort already sunk into it, rather than making a rational decision based on future costs and benefits.
What is the sunk-cost fallacy?
500
A professor stops giving a pop quiz (an aversive stimulus is removed) to increase student attendance, which makes this an example of Negative Reinforcement, a process often confused with punishment.
What is negative reinforcement?
500
This belief system, often contributing to victim-blaming, suggests that the world is a fair place and that people ultimately get what they deserve, implying bad things only happen to bad people.
What is the Just-World Hypothesis?
500
This controversial but effective biomedical therapy, sometimes used for severe, treatment-resistant depression, involves administering a brief electric current to the patient's brain while they are under general anesthesia.
What is Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)?