NYSTCE Social Studies flashcards
NYSTCE Social Studies · Build recall with a focused review session.
33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Opportunity cost
- The value of the next-best alternative forgone when a choice is made; central to economic reasoning about scarcity and trade-offs.
- Federalism
- A system dividing power between a national government and state governments, with delegated, reserved, and concurrent powers defined by the Constitution.
- Checks and balances
- Constitutional mechanisms letting each branch limit the others, such as veto power, Senate confirmation, and judicial review of legislation.
- Primary source
- A document or artifact created during the period under study, such as letters, photographs, or laws, offering direct evidence of the past.
- Columbian Exchange
- The transatlantic transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases after 1492, reshaping diets, populations, and economies in both hemispheres.
- Great Compromise
- The 1787 agreement creating a bicameral Congress with representation by population in the House and equal state representation in the Senate.
- Reconstruction Amendments
- The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed equal protection and citizenship, and protected voting rights by race.
- Judicial review
- The power of courts to declare laws or executive actions unconstitutional, established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803.
- Demographic transition model
- A model describing population change through stages as birth and death rates fall with economic development and improved health care.
- Push and pull factors
- Conditions driving people from a place, such as war or poverty, and conditions attracting them elsewhere, such as jobs or safety.
- Cultural diffusion
- The spread of cultural traits, ideas, or practices between societies through migration, trade, conquest, or media contact.
- Ethnocentrism
- Judging another culture by the standards of one's own, often producing bias; contrasted with cultural relativism in anthropology.
- Classical conditioning
- Pavlov's learning process in which a neutral stimulus paired repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus comes to elicit a conditioned response.
- Operant conditioning
- Skinner's principle that behavior is shaped by consequences, with reinforcement increasing and punishment decreasing the likelihood of repetition.
- Piaget's stages
- Four cognitive development stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, marked by changing reasoning abilities.
- Social stratification
- The ranking of individuals or groups into hierarchical layers based on wealth, power, or prestige, affecting life chances and mobility.
- Supply and demand
- The interaction of sellers' willingness to supply and buyers' willingness to buy; equilibrium occurs where quantity supplied equals quantity demanded.
- Price ceiling
- A legally imposed maximum price, which when set below equilibrium creates shortages and may require rationing or black markets.
- Gross domestic product
- The total market value of final goods and services produced within a country in a period, used to measure economic output.
- Comparative advantage
- The ability to produce a good at a lower opportunity cost than another producer, the basis for mutually beneficial specialization and trade.
- Monetary policy
- Central bank actions managing money supply and interest rates, using open market operations, reserve requirements, and the discount rate.
- Inflation
- A sustained rise in the general price level, reducing purchasing power and commonly measured by changes in the consumer price index.
- Electoral College
- The body of electors chosen by states that formally elects the U.S. president, with votes apportioned by congressional representation.
- Bill of Rights
- The first ten amendments to the Constitution, protecting freedoms such as speech, religion, assembly, and fair trial procedures.
- Separation of powers
- The division of government authority among legislative, executive, and judicial branches to prevent concentration of power in one body.
- Silk Roads
- Ancient trade networks linking East Asia, Central Asia, and Europe that exchanged goods, technologies, religions, and diseases.
- Industrial Revolution
- The transition from agrarian to machine-based manufacturing beginning in eighteenth-century Britain, transforming labor, cities, and society.
- Cold War
- The post-1945 rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union, involving arms races, alliances, proxy wars, and ideological competition.
- Enlightenment
- An eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, natural rights, and limited government, influencing revolutions and constitutional thought.
- Choropleth map
- A thematic map using shaded colors or patterns to show variation in a value, such as population density, across regions.
- Plate tectonics
- The theory that Earth's lithosphere consists of moving plates whose interactions cause earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain building.
- Correlation and causation
- A research principle holding that two variables changing together does not prove one causes the other; confounding factors must be ruled out.
- Historical contextualization
- Placing a source in its time, place, and circumstances to interpret its meaning and limits accurately during document analysis.