Research Methods
The research method where a researcher watches and records behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate or control the situation.
What is Naturalistic Observation?
The part of a neuron that receives messages and conducts impulses toward the cell body.
What are the Dendrites?
The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus $50% of the time.
What is the Absolute Threshold?
The body's internal biological clock, a 24-hour cycle of body temperature and wakefulness that influences the sleep-wake cycle.
What is the Circadian Rhythm?
The tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.
What is Confirmation Bias?
The experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant about whether the participants have received the treatment or a placebo.
What is a Double-Blind Study?
The process by which the brain creates new neural connections in response to damage or experience.
What is Brain Plasticity?
The process by which sensory receptors convert physical energy, like light or sound waves, into neural impulses the brain can understand.
What is Transduction?
This stage of sleep is characterized by delta waves and is crucial for physical rest and growth.
What is NREM-3 (or Deep Sleep)?
A simple thinking strategy that allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently, but can sometimes lead to errors.
What is a Heuristic?
The term for a factor other than the independent variable that might produce an effect in an experiment.
What is a Confounding Variable?
The "little brain" at the rear of the brainstem that processes sensory input, coordinates voluntary movement and balance, and enables nonverbal learning and memory.
What is the Cerebellum?
The theory that states the retina contains three different color receptors (one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue) which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color.
What is the Trichromatic Theory (or Young-Helmholtz Theory)?
Drugs that depress neural activity, temporarily lessening pain and anxiety, such as morphine and heroin.
What are Opiates (or Narcotics)?
The sudden realization of a problem's solution, often contrasting with strategy-based solutions.
What is Insight?
The ethical principle that requires that participants be told enough to enable them to choose whether they wish to participate.
What is Informed Consent?
This gland is often called the "master gland" and is located in the core of the brain; it regulates growth and controls other endocrine glands.
What is the Pituitary Gland?
The way we organize fragments of information into meaningful whole objects, such as the principles of proximity, continuity, and closure.
What are the Gestalt Principles (of Grouping)?
The theory that proposes dreams are the brain's attempt to make sense of random neural firings in the brainstem during sleep.
What is the Activation-Synthesis Theory?
The type of intelligence proposed by Howard Gardner that includes the ability to understand oneself (intrapersonal) and the ability to understand others (interpersonal).
What is Emotional Intelligence?
A measure of the extent to which two variables change together, and thus how well either one predicts the other, ranging from $-1.0$ to $+1.0$.
What is a Correlation Coefficient?
The period immediately following an action potential where the neuron cannot generate another action potential, which ensures the impulse travels in one direction.
What is the Refractory Period?
The binocular cue for perceiving depth that is caused by the difference in the images received by the two eyes.
What is Retinal Disparity (or Binocular Disparity)?
The term for a persistent inability to fall or stay asleep.
What is Insomnia?
The phenomenon of rising scores on intelligence tests over the past 100 years, requiring that the tests be periodically restandardized.
What is the Flynn Effect?