NCEA L3 Psychology flashcards

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

Operational definition

A precise statement of how a variable is measured or manipulated in a study, allowing replication. Example: aggression measured as number of hits in ten minutes.

Independent variable

The variable the researcher deliberately manipulates or changes in an experiment, to observe whether it produces a change in the dependent variable.

Dependent variable

The variable that is measured in an experiment; its value is expected to depend on the level of the independent variable the researcher sets.

Internal validity

The extent to which an observed change in the dependent variable is genuinely caused by the independent variable rather than confounding variables or bias.

Ecological validity

The extent to which findings from a study generalise to real-world settings, tasks and everyday behaviour outside the controlled research environment.

Reliability versus validity

Reliability means a measure gives consistent results on repetition; validity means it measures what it claims to measure. A measure can be reliable but invalid.

Correlation coefficient

A statistic between minus one and plus one describing the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two variables; it does not prove causation.

Informed consent

An ethical requirement that participants understand the purpose, procedures, risks and right to withdraw before agreeing to take part, without coercion.

Counterbalancing

A procedure in repeated-measures designs where participants complete conditions in different orders, spreading order effects evenly across conditions rather than eliminating them.

Neuron structure

Dendrites receive signals, the soma integrates them, the axon carries the impulse, myelin speeds conduction, and terminal buttons release neurotransmitter into the synapse.

Neurotransmitter

A chemical released from a neuron's terminal buttons into the synaptic gap, binding to receptors on the next neuron to excite or inhibit it.

Frontal lobe function

The brain region responsible for planning, decision-making, voluntary movement, and aspects of personality and impulse control; damage can alter behaviour markedly.

Occipital lobe

The rear brain lobe containing the primary visual cortex; damage can produce blindness or visual field deficits despite healthy eyes.

Amygdala

A limbic system structure central to processing fear and emotional salience; damage can impair recognition of threat and emotional learning.

Hippocampus

A limbic structure crucial for forming new long-term declarative memories; damage causes anterograde amnesia while older memories often remain intact.

Broca's area

A region in the left frontal lobe controlling speech production; damage causes non-fluent speech while comprehension is relatively preserved.

Neuroplasticity

The brain's ability to reorganise its synaptic connections in response to experience, learning or injury; strongest in childhood but present throughout life.

Split-brain research

Studies of patients with a severed corpus callosum showing each hemisphere processes information independently; left-visual-field input cannot be verbally reported.

Short-term memory limits

Short-term memory holds roughly seven plus or minus two items for about eighteen to thirty seconds without rehearsal, encoding mainly acoustically.

Chunking

Grouping separate items into meaningful larger units so more information fits within short-term memory capacity, such as remembering digits as dates.

Levels of processing

The finding that deeper, meaning-based (semantic) encoding produces better long-term retention than shallow acoustic or visual processing of the same material.

Proactive interference

Older learning disrupts the recall of newer material; retroactive interference is the reverse, where new learning disrupts older memories.

Schema

A mental framework built from experience that guides how information is encoded, interpreted and recalled, sometimes causing systematic memory distortion.

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, typically developing in Piaget's sensorimotor stage before about age two.

Conservation

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

Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can achieve with skilled guidance or scaffolding.

Classical conditioning

Learning in which a neutral stimulus repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus comes to elicit a conditioned response on its own.

Conformity

Changing behaviour or beliefs to match a group, as in Asch's line studies where participants endorsed clearly incorrect answers to avoid standing out.

Obedience

Compliance with an authority figure's commands, studied by Milgram, where proximity, legitimacy and peer defiance affected whether participants continued.

Bystander effect

The finding that individuals are less likely to help in an emergency when more people are present, explained partly by diffusion of responsibility.

Cognitive dissonance

The discomfort felt when holding conflicting beliefs or when behaviour contradicts attitudes, which motivates changing the attitude to restore consistency.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to over-attribute other people's behaviour to personality and under-attribute it to situational factors, while judging our own behaviour situationally.