Intro to Psych
Define Psychology
The scientific study of behavior and mental processes in both humans and animals
The type of learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an unconditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response
classical conditioning
Which lobe is directly behind your forehead?
Frontal lobe
What part of the brain is not yet fully developed in teens that is responsible for executive functioning, risk assessment, and problem solving?
prefrontal cortex
Why is correlation not causation?
It's incorrect to say that correlation implies causation. For A to cause B, we tend to say that, at a minimum:
A must precede B.
The two must covary (vary together)
No competing explanation can better explain the covariance of A and B
Every time this app sends a notification sound, Sarah's heart races because it always preceded bad news from her ex. What is the conditioned stimulus?
Notification sound
This lobe integrates sensory information to give you awareness of your own body in space
Parietal Lobe
Teens are wired to seek thrills, break rules, and chase the next new thing because your reward circuits mature faster. What neurotransmitter is especially active in teens and is responsible for motivation, pleasure, curiosity, and focus?
dopamine
What is the difference between a case study and an naturalistic observation study?
Case study: in-depth examination of a single individual, group, or phenomenon. (can be done in a non-natural context)
Naturalistic Observation: observe the behavior in its natural context
A teacher stops nagging a teenager to put their phone away during class, making the teen more likely to put it away at the start of class in the future
Negative Reinforcement
This brain structure at the base of the skull coordinates balance and smooth movement
Cerebellum
Research shows teens are actually capable of sound, logical reasoning, but only when they find themselves in this context
when given time and absence of peers
What kind of research method produces results that prove cause and effect?
Experiment
A pigeon is rewarded with food when it pecks a key, but only every 30 seconds. What kind of reinforcement schedule is this?
Fixed interval
interval = time
This strip of cortex, located at the rear of the frontal lobe, sends signals that initiate voluntary muscle movements
Motor Cortex
What is adolescence?
Adolescence is a process with a definitive purpose to integrate the known and the unknown. It has also been defined as the time between the onset of puberty to age 18/25/32 or adulthood
What does the correlational coefficient of -.3 mean?
It is a weak negative correlational coefficient where one variable is increasing as the other variable decreases.
The closer the correlation coefficient is to +1 or -1, the stronger the relationship between the variables. A correlation coefficient of -1 indicates a perfect negative relationship, meaning that as one variable increases, the other variable decreases.
Stronger = Predictable
Weaker = Less Predictable
Despite not seeing any interesting posts on instagram for 30 minutes, a man continues to scroll for hours, because funny videos were once unpredictable and frequent. What type of reinforcement schedule is this?
Variable Ratio
ratio = quantity
The right cerebral hemisphere primarily controls what side of the body?
the left
During adolescence, the brain reinforces its most important neural connections by wrapping them in this fatty insulating sheath, which shows up as increased 'white matter' in brain scans. What is the fatty insulating sheath called?
myelin