WACE Psychology flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Action potential

A rapid electrical impulse generated when a neuron's membrane depolarises past threshold, propagating along the axon in an all-or-nothing fashion followed by a brief refractory period.

Neurotransmitter

A chemical released from synaptic vesicles into the synaptic cleft that binds to receptors on the postsynaptic neuron, exciting or inhibiting it and enabling communication between neurons.

Autonomic nervous system

The division of the peripheral nervous system controlling involuntary functions, comprising the sympathetic branch that arouses the body and the parasympathetic branch that calms it.

Corpus callosum

The thick bundle of nerve fibres connecting the two cerebral hemispheres, allowing them to exchange information; severing it produces split-brain effects studied by Sperry.

HPA axis

The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal pathway that governs the stress response, culminating in cortisol release that mobilises energy but can impair immunity and memory when chronically activated.

Working memory

Baddeley's system for temporarily holding and manipulating information, comprising a central executive plus phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad and episodic buffer.

Chunking

Grouping separate items into larger meaningful units so that more information can be held in short-term memory, effectively expanding its limited capacity.

Serial position effect

The tendency to recall the first items (primacy, long-term storage) and last items (recency, short-term storage) of a list better than those in the middle.

Classical conditioning

Pavlov's learning process in which a neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus comes to elicit a conditioned response on its own.

Operant conditioning

Skinner's account of learning in which consequences shape behaviour: reinforcement increases and punishment decreases the likelihood of a response recurring.

Variable ratio schedule

A reinforcement schedule delivering reward after an unpredictable number of responses, producing high, steady response rates that resist extinction.

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, developing during Piaget's sensorimotor stage and typically established by around eighteen to twenty-four months.

Conservation

The understanding that quantity, mass or volume stays the same despite changes in appearance, typically achieved in Piaget's concrete operational stage around age seven.

Theory of mind

The ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs and desires to others and recognise they may differ from one's own, tested by false-belief tasks around age four.

Secure attachment

An attachment pattern in which an infant uses the caregiver as a safe base, shows distress on separation and is readily comforted on reunion, assessed in the Strange Situation.

Authoritative parenting

Baumrind's style combining high warmth with high but reasoned control, setting clear expectations while encouraging autonomy; associated with the most positive developmental outcomes.

Kohlberg moral stages

A sequence from preconventional (obedience, self-interest) through conventional (social approval, law and order) to postconventional (universal ethical principles) moral reasoning.

Conformity

Asch's finding that individuals adjust their judgments to match a unanimous majority, even when the majority is clearly wrong, increasing with group size and unanimity.

Obedience

Milgram's finding that ordinary people follow authority instructions to harm others, influenced by authority legitimacy, proximity to the victim and presence of dissenting peers.

Bystander effect

The finding that the likelihood of helping in an emergency decreases as the number of bystanders increases, explained by diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance.

Cognitive dissonance

Festinger's state of discomfort arising from holding inconsistent cognitions, which motivates people to change attitudes or rationalise behaviour to restore consistency.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overattribute others' behaviour to dispositional qualities such as personality while underestimating situational influences on that same behaviour.

Group polarisation

The tendency for group discussion to shift members' decisions toward a more extreme position in the direction of their initial leaning.

Independent variable

The variable deliberately manipulated by the researcher in an experiment to observe its effect on the measured dependent variable.

Confounding variable

An extraneous variable that varies systematically with the independent variable, providing an alternative explanation for results and threatening internal validity.

Reliability versus validity

Reliability is consistency of a measure across occasions or items; validity is whether it measures the intended construct. A measure can be reliable yet invalid.

Counterbalancing

A procedure in repeated-measures designs where the order of conditions is varied across participants to control order effects such as practice and fatigue.

Correlation coefficient

A statistic ranging from -1 to +1 describing the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two variables; it does not by itself demonstrate causation.

Informed consent

The ethical requirement that participants voluntarily agree to take part after receiving adequate information about procedures, risks and their right to withdraw at any time.

Diathesis-stress model

An explanation of mental disorder in which a pre-existing vulnerability interacts with environmental stressors, so disorder emerges only when both factors are present.

Statistical infrequency

A criterion of abnormality defining behaviour as disordered when it deviates markedly from the statistical norm, though rare behaviours are not necessarily harmful.

Positive versus negative symptoms

In schizophrenia, positive symptoms add experiences such as hallucinations and delusions, while negative symptoms subtract normal functioning, as in flat affect and withdrawal.

Heritability

The proportion of variance in a trait within a given population attributable to genetic differences, not the proportion of an individual's trait that is inherited.