AP Psych Vocab list 4

any strong bond between a person and another person/object that produces anxiety when separated.

• a continuing process where by an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her
• social position.

any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy

a critical bond between a child and its primary caregiver necessary for proper development

mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.

a measure of an individual or family’s relative economic and social ranking

any drug that if you stop using it quickly you will die

Will cause distress and anxiety when stopped being used.

an optimal period in an organism’s life when an organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

Freud’s theory of personality and therapeutic technique that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts

observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation

(Piaget) interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas

the type of abstract logic, in which people begin to think beyond concrete reasoning, that Piaget describes in the Formal Operational Stage of development

(IQ) defined originally as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100 (Average person for a given age is given a score of 100

(Kohlberg) Preconventional (obey to avoid punishment or gain rewards), conventional (upholds laws and rules because they are laws), and post conventional (follows what one personally believes to be ethically right)

learning by observing others; Albert Bandura

studying the same condition in distinctly different groups of people over the same period of time

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (around age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

(Piaget) adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

– (Piaget) the stage of cognitive development (about age 6-11) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events

the theory that humans are born like a “clean slate”; this favors the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate

the cognitive and physical response to a threatening or challenging stimulus

(Piaget) the principle (believed to be a part of concrete operational stage) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects

one’s sense of being male or female

the theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished

one of a family of designs in behavior genetics that aid the study of individual differences by highlighting the role of environmental and genetic causes on behavior

the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior

The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better loing-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

a baby’stendency, when touched on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth,and search for the nipple

(Piaget – Preoperational Stage) people’si deas about their own and others; mental states – about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict

– (Erikson) a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriateexperiences with responsive caregivers and attachment

psychologists who emphasize our tendency to perceive/integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes

An exceptionally clear recollection of an important emotion packed event. A very vivid episodic memory.

a school of psychology that focused on how mental and behavioral processes function- how they enable the organism to adapt, survive, and flourish

observation or examination of one's own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc.; the act of looking within oneself

suggests how we explain someone’s behavior – by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition

Social trend, and idea that spreads through a culture virally

Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when ovserving another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation and empathy.

the group of an experiment that exposes participants to the treatment, that is, to one version of the independent variable

– the symmetrical bell shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes; most scores fall near the mean, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes

– the measurement of the degree to which data clusters around a certain set of numbers (mean, median, mode)

the arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores

a statistical hypothesis that is tested for possible rejection under the assumption that it is true

middle score in a distribution; half the scores are above it and half are below it

a chance selection from a population that ensures the experimenter is testing a representative sample

small quantity of a group whose characteristics exemplify that of the population

a computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score

the ability of an experiment to have similar results after being repeated multiple times