AP Psychology flashcards
AP Psychology · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Action potential
- A brief electrical impulse that travels down an axon when depolarization reaches threshold; it follows the all-or-none principle, so intensity is coded by firing rate.
- Myelin sheath
- A fatty layer wrapping axons that speeds up neural transmission by insulating the axon and allowing impulses to jump between nodes.
- Neurotransmitters
- Chemical messengers released into synapses that carry signals between neurons; examples include dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine.
- Amygdala
- A limbic-system structure involved in processing fear and emotional significance; damage can impair fear conditioning and emotional recognition.
- Cerebral lateralization
- The specialization of the two hemispheres; the left typically handles language and logic, while the right handles spatial and holistic processing.
- Sympathetic nervous system
- The division of the autonomic nervous system that mobilizes the body during stress, raising heart rate and releasing glucose for fight-or-flight responses.
- Working memory
- A limited-capacity system that holds and manipulates information for short periods, typically around seven items for about twenty seconds.
- Elaborative rehearsal
- A memory strategy that links new information to existing knowledge or meaning, producing deeper encoding and better long-term retention than rote repetition.
- Availability heuristic
- A mental shortcut in which the likelihood of an event is judged by how easily examples come to mind, often overestimating vivid or recent events.
- Functional fixedness
- A cognitive obstacle in which a person can only conceive of an object's usual function, blocking creative problem solving.
- Confirmation bias
- The tendency to seek out, interpret, and remember information that supports existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.
- Spreading activation
- A model of semantic memory in which activating one concept primes related concepts in a network, speeding retrieval of associated information.
- Object permanence
- The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, typically developing in Piaget's sensorimotor stage near eight months.
- Conservation
- The understanding that quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance, mastered in Piaget's concrete operational stage around age seven.
- Classical conditioning
- A learning process in which a neutral stimulus paired repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus comes to elicit a conditioned response, as in Pavlov's dogs.
- Operant conditioning
- Learning in which behavior is strengthened or weakened by its consequences, such as reinforcement increasing and punishment decreasing response frequency.
- Negative reinforcement
- A consequence that increases the likelihood of a behavior by removing or avoiding an unpleasant stimulus, distinct from punishment.
- Observational learning
- Learning by watching others and imitating their behavior, described by Bandura through attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation processes.
- Secure attachment
- An infant-caregiver bond in which the child uses the caregiver as a safe base, shows distress at separation, and is easily comforted on reunion.
- Fundamental attribution error
- The tendency to overestimate dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining other people's behavior.
- Cognitive dissonance
- The discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs or when behavior contradicts attitudes, often resolved by changing the attitude to match the behavior.
- Conformity
- Changing one's behavior or beliefs to match a group, as in Asch's line-judgment studies where group pressure produced incorrect responses.
- Bystander effect
- The finding that individuals are less likely to help when others are present, partly due to diffusion of responsibility among witnesses.
- Groupthink
- A mode of faulty decision making in cohesive groups where pressure for unanimity suppresses dissent and alternative viewpoints.
- Big Five traits
- The five-factor model of personality: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, assessed by self-report inventories.
- Locus of control
- A person's belief about whether outcomes are controlled by their own actions (internal) or by outside forces such as luck (external).
- General adaptation syndrome
- Selye's three-stage model of stress response: alarm (initial arousal), resistance (coping), and exhaustion (depleted resources).
- Major depressive disorder
- A mood disorder marked by at least two weeks of depressed mood or anhedonia plus symptoms such as sleep or appetite changes and fatigue.
- Dopamine hypothesis
- The theory that positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations, result from excess dopamine activity in certain brain pathways.
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy
- A structured treatment that targets maladaptive thoughts and behaviors, using techniques such as cognitive restructuring and behavioral exposure.
- Unconditional positive regard
- A Rogerian client-centered therapy condition in which the therapist accepts the client without judgment, fostering self-acceptance and growth.
- Biomedical therapy
- Treatment using biological interventions such as medication, electroconvulsive therapy, or brain stimulation to relieve psychological disorder symptoms.