Chapter 1
Method of acquiring knowledge based on observation, including experimentation.
What is the Empirical method?
Observable realities (in science only evidence collected through empirical research).
What are facts?
the genetic makeup of an individual.
What is the Genotype?
a consistent difficulty in falling or staying asleep for at least three nights a week over a month’s time.
What is insomnia?
The way sensory information is organized, interpreted, and consciously experienced.
What is perception?
a stimulus that elicits a reflexive response in an organism.
What is an unconditioned stimulus (UCS)?
Is thinking, and it encompasses the processes associated with perception, knowledge, problem solving, judgement, language and memory.
What is cognition?
A temporary storage system that processes incoming sensory information.
What is short-term memory?
This area focuses on studying cognitions (thoughts) and their relationship to our experiences or actions.
What is Cognitive psychology?
personal judgments, conclusions, or attitudes that may or may not be accurate.
What are opinions?
the individuals inherited physical characteristics, a combination of genetic and environmental influences. of genetic and environmental influences.
What is the phenotype?
a person does not get sufficient sleep on a chronic basis.
What is sleep debt?
the length of a wave from one peak to the next.
What is wavelength?
a stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus.
What is a conditioned stimulus?
created “naturally” through your experiences and can be developed from either direct or indirect experiences.
What are natural concepts?
The continuous storage of information.
What is long-term memory?
This area studies how biology influences behavior, how the structure and function of the nervous system is related to behavior.
What is Biopsychology?
Some other factor that causes the effect that only appears to be caused by the variable being looked at.
What is a confounding variable?
interconnected information processors that are essential for all tasks of the nervous system.
What are neurons?
Waves associated are very similar to those when a person is awake and is when dreaming occurs.
What is REM?
We don’t perceive stimuli that remain relatively constant over prolonged periods of time.
What is Sensory adaptation?
always decreases a behavior.
What is punishment?
A general problem-solving framework. Shortcuts to guide one's response to specific situations.
What are heuristics?
your feelings and view of the world can distort your memory of past events.
What is bias?
These people work with diverse populations, typically in one country.
Who are multicultural psychologists?
look for evidence that supports what you believe and ignore evidence that tells you otherwise
What is confirmation bias?
equilibrium, or balance of biological conditions (temperature) maintained at optimum levels.
What is homeostasis?
has an emotional need for the drug and may use it to relieve psychological distress.
What is psychological dependence?
a logarithmic unit of sound intensity that measures loudness.
What are decibels (DB)?
behaviors that are followed by consequences that are satisfying are more likely to be repeated while unpleasant consequences lead to less chance a behavior will be repeated.
What is the Law of Effect?
you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now.
What is a mental set?
knowledge about words, concepts, and language-based knowledge and facts.
What is semantic memory?
This area studies the ultimate biological causes of behavior. How behavior is impacted by genetics and adaptations to surroundings, including physical and social surroundings.
What is evolutionary psychology?
provides a written description of what the participant can expect during the experiment, risks and implications of the research. Involvement is voluntary and can be discontinued at any time. Data will be confidential. Parents or legal guardians sign for minors.
What is informed consent?
a state marked by relatively low levels of physical activity and reduced sensory awareness.
What is sleep?
A variety of negative symptoms when drug is discontinued.
What is withdrawl?
Small area that reflected light is not seen. Spot in each eye does not overlap and our brain fills it in, bur we can not respond to information in it.
What is the blind spot?
organism receives reinforcement each time it displays a behavior.
What is Continuous reinforcement?
you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for.
What is functional fixedness?
tendency to have better memory for information that relates to oneself in comparison to material that has less personal relevance.
What is the self-reference effect?