AP Psychology Test 1: Chapters 1 and 2

Structuralism

Wilhelm Wundt: father of psychology, first psychology lab, used introspections
Structure of the human mind?
Early Approach

Functionalism

William James: stream of consciousness
How our mind allows us to function?
Early Approach

Gesalt

Whole greater than the sum of its parts"
Sensation and perception
Early Approach

Psychoanalytic

Behavior determined by early childhood experiences and unconscious desires
Sigmund Freud
B/W Early and Modern Approaches

Biological

How biology underlies behavior, thought, and emotion
Explained by brain chemistry, genetics, glands, ect.

Developmental

Nature v. nuture
Interaction of genetic and environmental factors

Cognitive

Thought processes and memory languages
How a person thinks about and interprets the situation

Psychodynamic

Unconscious desires and conflict
Psychoanalysis -> inner conflicts and motivation

Humanistic

Free will, self actualization, and self esteem
Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
Determined striving for your full potential and self-esteem

Behavioral

How we learn through rewards, punishment, and observation
Pavlov/Watson: Classic conditioning
Skinner: Operant conditioning
Learning through experiences

Sociocultural

How thinking/behavior change depending on setting, situation, and culture
Influence of others present and social norms

Evolutionary

Innate, adaptive behavioral patterns
Explained how it may have helped our ancestors survive, based on Darwin's idea of natural selection

Trait

Underlying patterns of stable characteristics
Explained by a person's set of traits, based on ancient Greek's idea of humans and the body

Case Study

An in depth examination of a rare phenomenon that occurred with an individual, small group, or situation
Can study things that would be impossible otherwise
Non representative sample, may not apply to everyone

Ex-Post Facto

Subjects are chosen on a pre-existing condition
Can study things that would be impossible otherwise, keeps it ethical
Non representative sample, confounding variables

Survey

The use of questionnaires or interviews
Can get data quickly from a large sample population
People can lie, very hard to write questions without bias

Naturalistic Observation

Observing participants in their natural environment
People do not change their behaviors, can see all natural, experimenters not able to manipulate
May not see/hear something you thought you did

Longitudinal

One group of subjects is followed and studied for a long period of time
Get a full picture of changes in an individual
Small sample size, goes on for an extensive period of time, confidentiality, examples can drop out of experiment

Cross Sectional

Examines a cross-section and studies them at one time
Shorter, less money
Comparing different people, too many confounding variables

Cohort Sequential

Researchers take a cross section and follow each group for a period of time
Shorter than longitudinal, longer than cross sectional, have chance to see some change in the person
Comparing different people, too many confounding variables

Operational definition

specific definition of how the variable will be setup/measured

correlational research

shows the relationship entre de two plus variables

measures of variability

how does the data differ
range, standard deviation

internal validity

measure of how well the study demonstrates a casual relationship entre de los variables
poor operationalization of variables, lack of standardization, presence of confounding variables, expectancy effects, confirmation bias

external validity

how well the results can be applied to the general population
non-representative sample, setting a task that is too artificial compared to the real world

inferential statistics

used to compare the data b/w control and experimental groups, assess the validity of the results