What is the bushy, branching extensions of a neuron that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body.
100
Hindsight Bias
What is the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it.
100
Cognition
What is the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
100
Fundamental Attribution Error
What is the tendency for observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
100
Habituation
What is decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation.
As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.
200
Threshold
What is a level of stimulation required to trigger a neural impulse.
200
Hypothesis
What is a testable prediction, often implied by a theory.
200
Heuristic
What is a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently
200
Role
What is a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave.
200
Schema
What is a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
300
Neurotransmitters
What is chemical messengers that cross the synaptic gaps between neurons.
300
Correlation
What is a measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other.
300
Encoding
What is the processing of information into the memory systems
300
Just-World Phenomenon
What is the tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
300
Object Permanence
What is the awareness that things continue to exist when not perceived.
Why peek a boo isn’t any fun after you turn 10
400
Brainstem
What is the oldest part of the central core of the brain, beginning where the spinal cord swells as it enters the skull; the brainstem is responsible for automatic survival functions.
400
Independent Variable
What is the experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied.
(IV) = the variable the researcher changes to make the (DV)
400
Parallel Processing
What is the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions. Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving.
400
Groupthink
What is the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
400
Concrete Operational Stage
What is Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
500
Aphasia
What is impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).
500
Experimental Group
What is the group that is exposed to the treatment, that is, to one version of the independent variable.
500
Retroactive Interference
What is the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.
500
Culture
What is the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
500
Social Learning Theory
What is the theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished.