Psych Terms

Ainsworth Strange Situation (Paradigm)- With infants and presence

of mother. Secure attachment- explore surroundings; insecure attachment- cling to mothers

Albert Bandura: major vire on learning & Bobo Doll Experiment- Children watched adults beat Bobo Doll; taken to room with lots of toys, but we separated from them; taken into room with Bobo Doll and children reinacted what they had seen adults do.

Albert Ellis- Rational Emotive Theraoy (RET)- One of the first forms of cognitive therapy...cognitive, emotive, and behavioral methods... a direct effect of internal messages with self

Alfred Adler- inferiority complex- behavior driven by wanting to overcome childhood inferiority... Social tensions crucial for personality formation.

all-or-nothing law (all-or-none) of neural firing- how energy moves through the body... A synapse response either fires of it doesn't

Aaron Beck’s view of depression:

Based on dreams of those who are depressed. Beck noticed negative themes that haunted depressed people even after they were awake. He said that they saw life through “dark glasses”. Beck’s theory was that gentle questioning could help those glasses to become clearer.

Absolute threshold:

The minimum amount of stimulus energy that can be detected 50% of the time. Basically, the highest, longest, farthest, etc that a person or his mind can stretch itself.

Achievement tests vs. Aptitude tests:

Achievement tests measure what a person has learned or accomplished in a particular area, such as an algebra test in school. Aptitude tests are designed to measure a person’s CAPACITY to learn or perform certain things, such as the “differentiated testing” several of you went through in elementary school to see if you could handle more rigorous studies.

Action vs. Resting potential:

Imagine this happening in the brain. An electric impulse is fired by a neuron and travels down the axon. This would be considered action, as it happens. Resting potential occurs in an axon, the interior of which is fluid and negatively charged, and the outside of which has positively charged ions. There is potential for action there, but since nothing has happened yet, it is considered to be resting.

Acuity (vision):

Basically, this is clarity of things you literally see with your eyes.

31. Bystander Intervention: Factors That Influence It

The best odds of our helping someone occur when:

-We have just observed someone else being helpful.

-We are not in a hurry.

-The victim appears to need and deserve help.

-The victim is in some way similar to us.

-We are in a small town or rural area.

-We are feeling guilty.

-We are focused on others and not preoccupied.

-We are in a good mood.

32. Cannon’s Critique of James-Lange Theory

Cannon thought the body’s responses were not distinct enough to evoke the different emotions, and concluded that physiological arousal and our emotional experience occur simultaneously: The emotion-triggering stimulus is routed simultaneously to the brain’s cortex, causing the subjective awareness of emotion, and to the sympathetic nervous system, causing the body’s arousal.

33. Carl Rogers: Person (Client Centered Therapy)

A humanistic therapy in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening with a genuine, accepting, empathetic environment to facilitate clients’ growth.

34. Carol Gilligan’s Critique of Kohlberg’s Theory

Gilligan didn’t believe women are less capable of developing moral reasoning, and argued that Kohlberg was gender biased.

35. Chaining

Putting various new resources together, in order to learn a new skill.

26. Blind Spot: The point at which the optic nerve