CH1 Introduction to Psychology
The scientific study of behavior & mental processes.
What is psychology?
A type of neuron that communicates information to the muscles & glands of the body.
What is a motor neuron?
The process of detecting a physical stimulus, such as light, sounds, heat, or pressure.
What is sensation?
Personal awareness of mental activities, internal sesations, and external environment.
What is consciousness?
A process that produces a relatively enduring change in behavior or knowledge as a result of an individual's experience.
What is learning?
The systematic procedure to collect empirical evidence.
What is the scientific method?
The study of the nervous system, especially the brain.
What is neuroscience?
The smallest possible strength of a stimulus that can be detected half the time.
What is absolute threshold?
A roughly 24-hour-long cycle of fluctuations in biological & psychological processes.
What is the circadian rhythm?
The basic learning process that involves repeatedly pairing a neutral stimulus with a response-producing stimulus until the neutral stimulus elicits the same response.
What is classical conditioning?
A precise descriptions of how the variable in a study will be measured, manipulated, or changed.
What is operational definition?
This man had a railroad tapping rod go through his head and lived which started studies in neuroscience.
Who is Phineas Gage?
The theory that color vision is the product of opposing pairs of color receptors: red-green, blue-yellow, & black-white; when one pair is stimulated, the other is inhibited.
What is the opponent-process theory of color vision?
A time when the brain becomes more active during sleep, generating smaller and faster brain waves, & when we think most of people dream.
What is REM (rapid eye movement) sleep?
A formerly neutral stimulus that acquires the capacity to elicit a reflexive response.
What is a conditioned stimulus (CS)?
What is cross-sectional design?
A tiny fluid-filled space between the presynaptic & postsynaptic neurons.
What is the synaptic gap?
A psychological disorder in which the ability to function is impaired by severely distorted beliefs, perceptions, & thought processes.
What is schizophrenia?
The theory that brain activity during sleep produces dream images which are combined by the brain into a dream story.
What is the activation-synthesis model of dreaming?
The gradual weakening & apparent disappearance of conditioned behavior.
What is extinction (in classical conditioning)?
A representative segment that very closely parallels the larger population being studied on relevant characteristics.
What is a representative sample?
The minimum level of stimulation required to activate a particular neuron.
What is the stimulus threshold?
The process of integrating, organizing, & interpreting sensations.
What is perception?
Category of sleep disorders characterized by undesirable physical arousal, behaviors, or events during sleep or sleep transitions; including sleepwalking and sleep terrors.
What is parasomnias?
A classically conditioned dislike or an avoidance of a particular food that develops when an organism becomes ill after eating the food.
What is taste aversion?