AP Psychology Semester One Final (Units 1-5)

• reconsolidation


  a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again
• episodic memory


  explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is semantic memory)
• deep processing


  encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention
• shallow processing


  encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words
• testing effect (retrieval practice effect/test-enhanced learning)


  enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information
• heritability


  the proportion of variation among individuals in a group that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of the population and environments studied
• longitudinal study


  research that follows and retests the same people over time
• cross-sectional study


  research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time
• fluid intelligence


  our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood
• crystallized intelligence


  our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age
• cohort


  a group of people sharing a common characteristic, such as from a given time period
• grit


  passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals
• stereotype threat


  a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype
• Down Syndrome


  a condition of intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21
• intellectual disability


  a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to prefound
• predictive validity


  the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the ctiteriob behavior
• content validity


  the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
• validity


  the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to
• reliability


  the extent to which a test yields consistent redults, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, or on retesting
• normal curve


  the symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many pyhsical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes
• standardization


  defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretest
• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)


  most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests
• aptitude tests


  tests designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn
• achievement test


  tests designed to assess what a person has learned
• intelligence quotient (IQ)


  originally (ma/ca x 100 = IQ); now the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100
• Stanford-Binet


  the widely used American version (Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test
• mental age


  Binet - a measure of intelligence test performance - a child who does as well as a 8 year old has that mental age
• emotional intelligence


  the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions
• savant sydrome


  a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an expectional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing
• factor analysis


  a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of realted items (factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score
• general intelligence (g)

  Spearman - a general intelligence factor that underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test
• intelligence


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


  a method for assessinf an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores
• telegraphic speech


  early speech stage in which a child speaks like a tetlgram - "go car"
• two-word stage


  beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements
• one-word stage


  the stage in speech development, from about 1-2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words`
• intuition


  an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with eplicit, conscious reasoning
• availability heuristic


  estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability on memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common
• representativeness heuristic


  judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information
• prototype


  a mental image or best example of a category