AAMC MCAT Psych/Soc Study Guide Exam Review Questions Containing 530 Terms with Certified, Exams of Social Psychology

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AAMC MCAT Psych/Soc Study Guide

Exam Review Questions Containing 530

Terms with Certified Answers 2024.

shadowing task - Answer: two different sounds projecting into different ears. You're asked to repeat the sounds heard by one ear Selective attention - Answer: ability to maintain attention while being presented with masking or interfering stimuli

divided attention - Answer: attention is a limited resource. Can't split it very well. Doing 2x at once, you end up switching between tasks rather than doing them simultaneously. Occurs when an individual must perform two tasks which require attention, simultaneously Joint attention - Answer: focusing of attention on an object by two separate individuals directed attention - Answer: allows attention to be focused sustainably on a single task, in case a single orientation of the Necker cube attention - Answer: focus/concentrating on something at the exclusion of the other stimuli in the environment Exogenous/external cues - Answer: Used in selective attention don't have to tell ourselves to look for them in order for them to capture our attention ex: bright colors, loud noises exogenous attention - Answer: bottom-up processing/ external events

endogenous cues/ internal cues - Answer: require internal knowledge to understand the cue and the intention to follow it Driven by top-down or internal events ex: cocktail effect - ability to concentrate on one voice amongst a crowd. When someone calls your name) covert orienting - Answer: the act of bringing the spotlight of attention on an object or event without body or eye movement Overt orienting - Answer: a person turns all or part of the body to alter or maximize the sensory impact of an event Sensory memory - Answer: The first stage of input where you first interact with information in your environment. You have two types: iconic - what you see.... echoic - what you hear) hypothalamus - Answer: part of the limbic system; it regulates the ANS (fight or flight vs rest and digest). It controls endocrine system by triggering hormones like epinephrine/norepinephrine; responsible for hunger, sleep, thirst, sex It regulates many of the body's metabolic processes, thirst, hunger, and body temperature

Essentially deals with homeostatic equilibrium hippocampus - Answer: part of the temporal lobe; involves in memory formation Convert short term memory to long term memory. If it is destroyed, you cannot form new memories (this is known as anterograde amnesia) frontal lobe - Answer: Motor cortex (body movements) This is where complex thinking occurs Thalamus - Answer: sensory relay station, everything you hear/taste/etc. **Smell is only one that bypasses the thalamus and goes to areas closer to amygdala Why is continuous reinforcement the best for the beginning of the acquisition phase of operant conditioning? - Answer: The schedule unambiguously informs the subject which behavior is correct; Continuous reinforcement - Answer: becomes less reinforcing so there is a need for alterior reinforcement. It occurs on a 1:1 ratio which means that for each behavior there is a reward

This is part of operant conditioning Fixed-ratio - Answer: rewards behavior after a specific number of responses Fixed-interval schedule - Answer: rewards behavior after a specific amount of time Two male children with different biological parents are adopted in infancy and raised together. Which observation best supports the idea that heredity is an important determiner of intelligence? The two boys' IQs ..... - Answer: are less similar to each other than their own biological siblings Which phenomenon will an animal trainer most likely try to avoid when training a rabbit for a television commercial? - Answer: Instinctual drift; is the phenomenon whereby established habits, learned using operant techniques, eventually are replaced by innate food-related behaviors Learned behavior "drifts" to the organism's species-specific (instinctual) behavior Instinctual/instinctive drift - Answer: established habits, learned using operant techniques, eventually replaced by innate food-related behaviors. So the learned behavior drifts to the organism species-specific instinctual behavior.

It is the tendency of an animal to revert to instinctive behaviors that interfere with a conditioned response Token economy - Answer: system of behavior modification based on systematic reinforcement of target behavior; reinforcers are "tokens" that can be exchanged for other reinforcers such as prizes Primary reinforcers - Answer: innately satisfying/desirable, like food water and sexual behavior Secondary reinforcers - Answer: those learned to be reinforcers, such as previously neutral stimuli.... It requires a pairing or association with a primary reinforcer for it to have value ex: money Operant extinction - Answer: in operant conditioning, it results from some response by the organism no longer being reinforced getting your dog to sit on command, but you stop giving it a treat or any type of reinforcement. Overtime, the dog may not sit every time you give the command Variable-interval - Answer: responses are reinforced after a variable amount of time has passed, regardless on amount

ex: bonus can come randomly on different days Partial reinforcement schedule - Answer: behavior is reinforced only some of the time. More resistant to extinction than continuous reinforcement. Behavior is shaped through a process of successive reinforcement of approximations of target behavior serial position effect - Answer: Primacy and recency effects can't recall the middle of the list dual coding hypothesis - Answer: it's easier to remember words associated with images than either one alone method of loci - Answer: imagine moving through a familiar place and in each place leaving a visual representation of topic to be remembered explicit memory (declarative memory) - Answer: events you can clearly/explicitly describe It is a type of long term memory that focuses on recalling previous experiences and information two types:

Episodic - event related memories Semantic - words and facts Negative priming - Answer: a type of implicit memory effect in which prior exposure to a stimulus unfavorably influences the response to the same stimulus. Caussed by experiencing the stimulus, and then ignoring it It usually lowers the speed to slower than un-primed levels Positive priming - Answer: speeds up processing caused by simply experiencing the stimulus. Thought to be caused by spreading activation - the firs stimulus activates parts of a particular association in memory Hindsight bias - Answer: also known as the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism, is the inclination, after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, despite there having been little or no objective basis for predicting it Normalcy bias - Answer: "can't happen to me" bias causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a distaster occurring and its possible effects chunking - Answer: we group information into meaningful categories

Research on cognitive aging has demonstrated that, in general, aging does not diminish a person's - Answer: ability to retrieve general information The capacity for retrieving general information such as semantic memory, crystallized intelligence, is unaffected by aging reminiscence effect - Answer: which people aged 40 and over remember more autobiographical memories from between ages 10 to 30 than from adjacent periods, producing a "bump" in lifespan distributions, is a highly robust effect. is the tendency for older adults to have increased recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. implicit memory (non-declarative) - Answer: type of memory in which previous experiences aid the performance of a task without conscious awareness of these previous experiences They are formed unconsciously Ex: All habits are procedural memories Habits/implicit memory is stored in the basal ganglia where is implicit memory stored - Answer: basal ganglia

socialization - Answer: process of learning the norms and values in a society cultural transmission - Answer: addresses how culture is learned. Culture is passed along from generation to generation through various childrearing practices, including when parents expose children to music Culture lag - Answer: culture takes time to catch up with technological innovations, resulting in social problems material culture - Answer: changes rapidly; physical and technological aspects of our daily lives, like food and houses, and phones Culture shock - Answer: feelings of disorientation, uncertainty, or even fear when they encounter unfamiliar culture practices ex: Moving countries, move social environments, or travels to another type of life (urban to rural) Culture assimilation - Answer: interpenetration of fusion of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture proximal stimulus - Answer: Physical stimulation that is available to be measured by an observer's sensory apparatus. It can also refer to the neural activity that results form sensory transduction of the physical stimulus (eyes, ears, etc)

the stimulation that actually occurs when your sensory receptors are activated... the neural activity Stimulus registered by the sensory receptors (e.g., the pattern of light falling on the retina) Sensory stimulus - Answer: refers to the type of information being received by your receptors which elicits a response ex: light, heat, touch, sound etc distal stimulus - Answer: Are the objects and events out in the would about you actual stimulus or object in the real world that you end up sensing and then perceiving, which results in the proximal stimulus Law of similarity - Answer: items similar to one another grouped together ex: alternating lines of squares and circles are seen as individual columns

Law of pragnanz - Answer: reality organized reduced to simplest form possible ex: olympic rings Law of Proximity - Answer: objects that are close are grouped together - we are naturally group the closer things together rather than things that are farther apart Law of continuity - Answer: lines are seines following the smoothest path Law of closure - Answer: objects groups together are seen as a whole and the mind fills in the missing information Gestalt - Answer: theoretical approach that emphasized that idea that the ways in which people's perceptual experience is organized result form how human brains are organized Tried to explain how we perceive things the way we do Humanistic theory (carl rogers) - Answer: focuses on healthy personality development and humans are seen as inherently good. The most basic motive of all people is the actualizing tendency, innate drive to maintain and enhance oneself to full potential. People have freewill

Learning (behaviorist) theory - Answer: children aren't born with anything, they only acquire language through operant conditioning. Child learns to say "mama" because every time they say that, mom reinforces child. Language is learned method of limits - Answer: directly assesses our perception of stimuli in relation to their true physical properties Context Effects - Answer: the context in which stimuli are presented and the processes of perceptual organization contribute to how people perceive those stimuli (and also that the context can establish the way in which stimuli are organized) Recall cues - Answer: having extra clues to remember the words. Still have to produce an answer but still get more cues to help you. The added cues help you retrieve the informaiton from your long term memory feature detection - Answer: when looking at an object, you need to break it down into its component features to make sense of what you are looking at. There are 3 things to consider when looking at any object: color, form, and motion Practice effects - Answer: influences on performance that arises from a practicing a task. Even after practice trials are performed in/for a study, participants have a tendency to perform initial trials poorly because they are still not warmed up to it

Under certain circumstances, such as having received new about something traumatic on a particular day, many people claim that they remember every detail of what they were doing when they received the news... this is known as - Answer: Flashbulb memory Flashbulb memory - Answer: people claim to remember detail of what they were doing when they received new about an emotionally arousing sent recency effect - Answer: remembering that last few items on a list retrograde amnesia - Answer: loss of all memory before an accident Anterograde amnesia - Answer: individuals can recall memory that was formed before an incident but cannot form new memory after accident According to Kohlberg's theory of moral development, a person giving which reason for moral behavior is at the highest level? - Answer: To promote social welfare; this indicates moral reasoning at the post conventional level In operant conditioning studies, the subject's motivational state is most typically operationally defined by - Answer: depriving the subject of some desirable stimulus item for a period of time Life course approach - Answer: a holistic perspective that calls attention to developmental processes and other experiences across a person's life

Sick role - Answer: expectation in society that allows you to take a break from responsibilities. But if you don't get better or return, you're viewed as deviant and harmful to society Social epidemiology - Answer: looks at health disparities through social indicators like race, gender, and income distribution, and how social factors affect a person's health Focuses on the contribution of social and cultural factors to disease patterns in populations Social facts - Answer: Durkheim and functions; they are ways of thinking and acting formed by society that existed before any one individidual and will still exist after any individual is dead critical period (sensitive period) - Answer: Period of time a child is most able to learn a language. A point in early development that can have a significant influence on physiological or behavioral functioning in later life Incentive theory - Answer: refers to how factors outside of individuals, including community values and other aspects of culture, can motivate behavior

Exchange theory/Exchange-Rantional choice theory - Answer: Decision making via cost-benefit analysis Social constructionism - Answer: argues that people actively shape their reality through social interactions/agreement - its something constructed, not inherent. Things are social products made of the values of the society that created it Social construct - Answer: concept/practice everyone in society agrees to treat a certain way regardless of its inherent value money Weak social constructionism - Answer: dependent on brute facts and institutional facts Strong social constructionism - Answer: whole of reality is dependent on language and social habits; all knowledge is social construct and there are no brute facts Symbolic interactionism - Answer: examines small scale (micro level) social interactions, focusing attention on how shared meaning is established among individuals or small groups cultural capital - Answer: non-financial social assets that promote social mobility beyond economic means.

ex: knowledge, skills, education, things that are associated with difference in social status Social reproduction - Answer: means we are reproducing social inequality across generations (people with rich parents end up wealthy themselves) Social capital - Answer: the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively social networks Hidden curriculum - Answer: standard behaviors that are deemed acceptable that are subtly taught by teachers cognitive dissonance - Answer: discomfort experienced when holding 2 or more conflicting cognitions (ideals, beliefs, emotional reactions) People want to rid themselves of the inconsistencies so they change their cognitions Self-fulfilling prophecy - Answer: stereotypes can lead to behaviors that affirm the original stereotypes "City dwellers are rude"

I don't like them I will avoid them fundamental attribution error - Answer: focuses only on actions of others, tendency to believe that others in out-groups behave a certain way based on inherent personalities/flaws. actor-observer bias - Answer: we are victims of, but others are willful actors refers to a tendency to attribute one's own actions to external causes, while attributing other people's behaviors to internal causes self-serving bias - Answer: Mechanism of preserving our self-esteem, more common in individualistic cultures We succeed = internal qualities We fail = external factors that were out of our control Optimism bias - Answer: bad things happen to others, but not to us social cognitive/learning theory - Answer: suggests that behaviors are learned through observing others and modeling their actions.

An example of intersectionality is the relationship between - Answer: race/ethnicity and social class Intersectionality - Answer: how identity categories intersect in systems of social stratification Individual's position within a social hierarchy is determined not only by his or her social class, but also by his or her race/ethnicity McDonaldization - Answer: policies of fast food organizations have come to dominate other organizations in society; Efficiency, calculability, predictability, uniformity, and control Conflict theory - Answer: Macro perspective; idea society is made of institutions that benefit powerful and create inequalities. Large groups are at odds until conflict resolved Demographic transition theory - Answer: addresses changes in the birth rate and the death rate that are associated with economical development (industrialization). The typical pattern begins with a drop in the death rate, leading to population growth followed by a drop in the birth rate, leading to population stabilization

fMRI - Answer: imaging technique that measures brain activity by detecting associated changes in blood flow Structural MRI - Answer: describes the shape, size and integrity of gray and white matter structures in the brain. CAT scans - Answer: a detailed X-ray. Takes cross sectional images of bones for example, to provide detailed information superior to that of a regular x ray what are MRI's used for? - Answer: soft tissue- brain, ligaments, tendons etc What are CAT scans used for? - Answer: bone injuries, cancer detection, lung and chest imaging Stage 1 of sleep - Answer: Theta waves; strange sensations (hypnagonic hallucinations); hypnic jerks Stage 2 of sleep - Answer: Theta waves; sleep spindles and K-complexes Stage 3 of sleep - Answer: Delta waves; sleep walking/talking; declarative memory consolidation Stage 4 of sleep (REM) - Answer: MUSCLES ARE PARALYZED; DREAMING ACCURS; MEMORY CONSOLIDATION; FORMATION OF EPISODIC MEMORIES;

Based on the looking glass self, which reaction is most likely for a person who acquires a stigmatized illness? - Answer: The person will internalize the perceived stigmatization against her/himself Looking-glass self = our self concept is influenced by how we perceive that others are viewing us. A person who acquires a stigmatized illness is likely to internalize the stigmatization directed against him/herself state-dependency effect - Answer: your state at the moment you encode. When you are in a certain mood when you encode you can then remember it when you in the same mood method of loci - Answer: good for remembering things in order, link info to locations. Tie information you need to remember certain stops along a route that you already know rote rehearsal - Answer: say the same thing over and over against to remember Least effective technique for memory encoding specificity - Answer: enhanced memory when testing takes place under the same conditions as learning

mass hysteria - Answer: behavior that occurs when groups react emotionally or irrationally to real or perceived threats strain theory - Answer: if a person is blocked from attaining a culturally accepted goal, may become frustrated/strained and turn to deviance ex: athlete attends a school that doesn't have proper training equipment/no coach/funding so the athlete turns to deviant behavior such as steroids to get LARGE AND IN CHARGE Primary deviance - Answer: no big consequences, reaction to deviant behavior is very mild and does not affect person's self-esteem. Individual is able to continue to behave in same way without feeling immoral/wrong ex: all athletes of team use steroids, so the act of a play is not labeled as deviant and his actions go unnoticed Secondary deviance - Answer: serious consequences, characterized by severe negative reaction that produces a stigmatizing label and results in more deviant behavior taboos - Answer: behaviors completely forbidden/wrong in any circumstances, and violation results in consequences far more extreme than a "more"

Often punishable by law and results in severe disgust by members of community ex: incest or cannibalism Laws - Answer: norms still based on right and wrong, but have formal/consistent consequences ex: public figure lies under oath; j-walking; murder Mores - Answer: norms based on some moral value/belief (depends on groups values of right and wrong) ex: truthfulness folkways - Answer: mildest type of norm.... they are common rules/manners we are supposed to follow daily ex: openning the door, helping a person who dropped something or saying thank you Formal norms - Answer: written down informal norms - Answer: they are understood, less precess, and have no specific punishments

What are norms reinforced by? - Answer: sanctions - these are rewards/punishments for behaviors in accord with or against norms Positive sanction - Answer: reward for conforming to norms Negative sanction - Answer: punishment for violating norms formal sanction - Answer: officially recognized and enforced informal sanction - Answer: unofficially recognized and does not result in specific punishment spreading activation - Answer: all ideas in your brain are connected together. Pulling up one memory pulls form others as well ex: saying fire engine activates truck, fire, red which makes it easier to identify/retrieve those items when a concept is activated, the activation spreads to concepts that are semantically or associatively related to it. People often retrieve unpresented things of a category when tested on their memory fora seniors or presented concepts from that category

Piaget's stages of cognitive development - Answer: 1. Sensorimotor - ages: 0-2; learning to perceive the world using senses. During this stage they learn object permanence, the concept that even if you hide a ball under the rug, the ball continues to exist

2. Preoperational stage - ages: 2-7; the child learns that objects and ideas can be shown using symbols, such as images and words. They also learn to speak. During this period of time the child is very egocentric, and do not understand other people's perspectives
3. Concrete operational stage: ages: 7-11; during this period of time the child learns the principle of conservation, which is the concept that a tall slender cup can hold the same amount of fluid as a short wider cup, even though the cups are different. The child is also able to think logically about actual events
4. Formal operational stage - ages: 12+; during this period of time people learn how to reason based on morals, how to form hypotheses; and other forms of abstract reasoning Piaget's water conservation task: Kids are shown two identical beakers, containing equal amounts of water. The water form one of the containers is poured into a thinner and taller beaker. What will most likely be conformed from this task? - Answer: Majority of 11 year old kids state that the amount of water in the taller beaker is the same as the original beaker