What is operant conditioning?
Answer: Learning in which behavior is strengthened by reinforcement or weakened by punishment.
Explanation
Skinner's work with rats and pigeons.
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Introduction to Psychology: Core Concepts (University)
LearningDisordersSocialDevelopmentMemoryFoundationsBiologyResearch
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Learning
What is observational learning?
Answer: Learning by watching and imitating others.
Explanation
Bandura's Bobo doll experiments.
Positive vs negative reinforcement?
Answer: Positive adds something pleasant to increase a behavior; negative removes something unpleasant to increase a behavior.
Explanation
Both increase behavior; punishment decreases it.
What is classical conditioning?
Answer: Learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to trigger a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally produces it.
Explanation
Pavlov's dogs: bell (CS) → salivation (CR).
Disorders
What is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)?
Answer: A therapy that changes unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviors.
Explanation
Strong evidence for anxiety and depression.
What distinguishes major depressive disorder?
Answer: At least two weeks of depressed mood or loss of interest plus other symptoms such as sleep, appetite, energy, or concentration changes.
Explanation
Diagnosed with the DSM-5 criteria.
Social
What is cognitive dissonance?
Answer: Discomfort from holding conflicting thoughts or acting against one's beliefs, which motivates attitude change.
Explanation
Festinger's $1 vs $20 experiment.
What did Milgram's obedience study show?
Answer: Most participants obeyed an authority figure's orders to deliver what they believed were dangerous shocks.
Explanation
About 65% went to the maximum voltage.
What is the fundamental attribution error?
Answer: Overestimating personality and underestimating the situation when explaining others' behavior.
Explanation
We tend to explain our own behavior situationally.
Development
What are the attachment styles identified in the Strange Situation?
Answer: Secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant (ambivalent), and later disorganized.
Explanation
Ainsworth's work building on Bowlby.
What are Piaget's four stages of cognitive development?
Answer: Sensorimotor (0–2), preoperational (2–7), concrete operational (7–11), formal operational (12+).
Explanation
Object permanence develops in the sensorimotor stage; conservation in concrete operational.
Memory
What is retrieval practice (the testing effect)?
Answer: Actively recalling information strengthens memory more than rereading it.
Explanation
Flashcards are a form of retrieval practice.
What is the spacing effect?
Answer: Distributed practice over time produces better long-term retention than cramming.
Explanation
The reason spaced flashcard review works.
Explicit vs implicit memory?
Answer: Explicit (declarative) memories are consciously recalled facts and events; implicit memories are skills and conditioned responses retrieved without awareness.
Explanation
Explicit depends on the hippocampus; implicit on the cerebellum and basal ganglia.
What is the capacity of short-term memory?
Answer: About 7 ± 2 items (Miller), or closer to 4 chunks by newer estimates.
Explanation
Chunking expands effective capacity.
What are the three stages of memory in the information-processing model?
Answer: Encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Explanation
Sensory memory → short-term/working memory → long-term memory.
Foundations
What is psychology?
Answer: The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
Explanation
Covers biology, cognition, development, social behavior, and disorders.
What is the biopsychosocial approach?
Answer: Behavior is explained by interacting biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors.
Explanation
The dominant integrative view in modern psychology.
What did behaviorism claim?
Answer: Psychology should study only observable behavior, explained by learning from the environment.
Explanation
Watson and Skinner were leading behaviorists.
What is the difference between structuralism and functionalism?
Answer: Structuralism analyzed the elements of consciousness; functionalism (William James) asked what mental processes are for.
Explanation
Functionalism was influenced by Darwin.
Who founded the first psychology laboratory and when?
Answer: Wilhelm Wundt, in Leipzig in 1879.
Explanation
Used introspection to study conscious experience (structuralism).
Biology
What does the prefrontal cortex do?
Answer: Planning, decision-making, impulse control, and working memory.
Explanation
Matures into the mid-20s.
What are the functions of the hippocampus and amygdala?
Answer: Hippocampus: forming new explicit memories. Amygdala: processing emotions, especially fear.
Explanation
Both are in the limbic system.
Sympathetic vs parasympathetic nervous system?
Answer: Sympathetic arouses the body (fight or flight); parasympathetic calms it (rest and digest).
Explanation
Both are divisions of the autonomic nervous system.
What do neurotransmitters do?
Answer: Chemical messengers that cross the synapse to excite or inhibit the next neuron.
Explanation
Examples: dopamine (reward, movement), serotonin (mood), acetylcholine (muscle action, memory).
What is a neuron's action potential?
Answer: A brief electrical impulse that travels down the axon when the neuron is stimulated past its threshold.
Explanation
All-or-none: it either fires fully or not at all.
Research
What is a double-blind procedure?
Answer: Neither participants nor researchers know who received the treatment or placebo.
Explanation
Controls for placebo effects and experimenter bias.
Why use random assignment?
Answer: To make groups equivalent so differences can be attributed to the manipulation.
Explanation
Different from random sampling, which concerns who is in the study.
What is the independent variable in an experiment?
Answer: The factor the researcher manipulates.
Explanation
The dependent variable is what is measured.
Correlation vs causation?
Answer: Correlation means two variables change together; causation means one produces the other. Correlation alone cannot prove causation.
Explanation
Third variables and reverse causality are common problems.
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