Assam HS Class 11-12 Psychology flashcards

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

Definition of psychology

The scientific study of behaviour and mental processes, covering observable actions as well as internal states such as thought, emotion, memory and motivation.

Wundt's contribution

Wilhelm Wundt set up the first experimental psychology laboratory at Leipzig in 1879, marking psychology's emergence as an independent experimental discipline.

Structuralism

An early school associated with Wundt and Titchener that analysed conscious experience into its basic elements using trained introspection.

Functionalism

A school linked to William James and John Dewey that asked how mental processes help organisms adapt to their environment rather than what they are made of.

Gestalt psychology

A school holding that perception and thinking are organised wholes; the whole pattern cannot be reduced to a sum of separate parts.

Behaviourism

A perspective associated with Watson and Skinner that restricts psychology to observable behaviour and explains it through learning and environmental consequences.

Humanistic perspective

An approach associated with Maslow and Rogers that emphasises free will, personal growth, self-actualisation and the person's subjective view of the world.

Goals of psychological enquiry

Description, explanation, prediction, control and application; each goal demands different designs, evidence and standards of proof in research.

Independent variable

The variable that the experimenter deliberately manipulates or varies in order to observe its effect on the measured outcome, the dependent variable.

Confounding variable

An extraneous variable that varies systematically with the independent variable and can therefore distort the observed effect, threatening internal validity.

Correlation coefficient

A statistic ranging from -1.00 to +1.00 that expresses the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables; it does not establish causation.

Reliability and validity

Reliability is the consistency of a measure across occasions or items; validity is the extent to which it measures the construct it is intended to measure.

Case study method

An in-depth investigation of a single individual or small group using multiple sources of data; rich in detail but weak for generalisation.

Informed consent

The ethical requirement that participants be told the purpose and procedures of a study and agree to take part voluntarily before data collection begins.

Piaget's concrete operational stage

Ages roughly 7 to 11, when children master conservation, classification and seriation but still reason mainly about concrete rather than abstract situations.

Object permanence

The understanding, developing in the sensorimotor stage, that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight.

Erikson's identity crisis

The psychosocial task of adolescence, identity versus role confusion, in which the person forms a coherent sense of self and direction.

Zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can do alone and what can be done with guidance from a more capable person.

Stages of prenatal development

The germinal stage (first two weeks), embryonic stage (weeks three to eight) and foetal stage (week nine to birth).

Kohlberg's moral levels

Preconventional (punishment and self-interest), conventional (social approval and rules) and postconventional (universal ethical principles) levels of moral reasoning.

Sensation versus perception

Sensation is the detection of stimulus energy by receptor cells; perception is the selection, organisation and interpretation of that information into meaning.

Absolute threshold

The minimum intensity of a stimulus that can be detected about fifty per cent of the time under specified conditions.

Weber's law

The just noticeable difference is a constant fraction of the original stimulus intensity, so the ratio of change to background stays roughly fixed.

Rods and cones

Rods in the retina serve dim-light and movement vision; cones serve colour and fine detail and are concentrated in the fovea.

Gestalt law of closure

The tendency to perceive incomplete figures as complete wholes by filling in gaps in the visual pattern.

Binocular depth cues

Retinal disparity and convergence, both depending on the two eyes receiving slightly different views, provide depth information for near objects.

Perceptual constancy

The tendency to perceive an object as remaining the same in size, shape or brightness despite changes in the retinal image.

Classical conditioning

A learning procedure in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after repeated pairing with an unconditioned stimulus that already produces it.

Extinction in conditioning

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus.

Negative reinforcement

The removal or avoidance of an unpleasant stimulus after a behaviour, which increases the likelihood that the behaviour will be repeated.

Variable-ratio schedule

A partial reinforcement schedule in which a response is rewarded after an unpredictable number of responses, producing high and persistent rates of responding.

Observational learning

Bandura's account of learning by watching models, requiring attention, retention, reproduction and motivation rather than direct reinforcement of the learner.