UMD PSYC100 EXAM 1 (mod 1-4) Selterman Study Questions and Answers 2024

ABC's of Psychology - Affects, Behavior, Cognition (mental processes) Psychology as a discipline - Studies the relationship between the brain with its function, and the environment with behavior Fixed Mindset - The belief that intelligence is static Characteristics of Fixed Mindset - Avoids challenges, give up easily, see effort as fruitless or worthless, ignores useful negative feedback, feels threatened by success of others. In result, people with growth mindsets plateau early and achieve less than their full potential. Growth Mindset - The belief that intelligence can be developed Characteristics of Growth Mindset - Desire to learn, tendency to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the path of mastery, learn from criticism, and finds lessons and inspiration in the success of others. As a result, they reach even higher levels of achievement. Do learning styles exist? - People more strongly identify with different learning styles, but there is no scientific evidence that supports that there are truly fundamental differences in the way people learn. Worst ways to study - Highlighting, underlining, rereading, summarizing, cramming the night before Best ways to study - Spreading out information over time and learning a little bit each day is the best way to train your brain to hold and use information. Testing Effect - The most effective way to study in order to retain information for long periods of time is by testing yourself. Testing trains your brain to access stored information in the same format as you would on an exam. What can you do to have a healthy brain? - Eat healthy, get regular exercise, and get enough sleep Sleep effect on learning - Sleep is important for forming memories. Learning information before going to sleep will help you form more memories than you otherwise would of if you learned information earlier in the day. Sleep deprivation can have negative effects on mental performance and muscle control. Exercise effect on learning - Exercises benefits mental performance by providing short-term oxygen boosts to the brain as well as maintaining healthy and efficient blood supply to the brain, improving mental performance and learning capacity. Diet effect on learning - Health diets ensure than an organ as sensitive as the brain have all of the available resources to work at an optimal level Self-handicapping - An action / behavior that prevents people from being responsible for failure. A response to an anticipated loss of self-esteem. Stereotype threat - Performance in any given situation may be influenced by the treat of being negatively stereotyped. The fear that when faced with a negative stereotype, that one's performance with confirm that stereotype is true. (When told that a competition was based off of innate athleticism, african american subjects performed better than white subjects. When told that a competition was based off of strategy, white subjects performed better than african american subjects. In each case, stereotypes trigger beliefs and fears in the subjects that became self-fulfilling) Intentional Blindness - Lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects / deficits. When all of a persons attention is focused on one things, an individual will fail to recognize an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight. (become blind to other things going on - texting and walking) Cognition - Mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses (THINKING) Metacognition - thinking about thinking. Becoming more aware of the thought process itself. (Example - double checking your work) Automatic cognition - Requires little to no cognitive resources in order to perform a task. Automatic tasks be done at the same time as other tasks without compromising the performance of the two tasks. Done quickly and seem "automatic." (Experienced driver - talking and driving, listening to music and driving) Controlled cognition - Requires cognitive resources in order to perform a task. Since cognitive resources are limited, when someone does two things at the same time that both require conscious processing, the tasks will be perform not as well as performing a task individually. (Learning how to drive) Cognitive Load - the extend to which our minds our mind is engaged in controlled processing (things that require us to actually think about things). So the more load we have at the moment, the less we are capable to think about. Stroop Task - Experiment in which you read the words for colors in a assortment of colors. Reading the letter "blue" in blue ink is an automatic process and can be answered very quickly. Reading the letter "blue" in green is a controlled process because you actually have to think about it (and you're more prone to make errors) Motivation determines allocation - The importance of information will determine what amount of available cognitive resources will be allocated toward what. Cocktail party effect - Your brain may be subconsciously listening to a separate conversation while you're involved in your own, but as soon as you hear a word that trigger your attention (your name, name of your town, something you like) your brain shifts its motivation and focuses it's attention (and cognitive resources) on that different conversation. Heuristics - Mental shortcuts / rules of thumb that are utilized to make quick decisions that require minimal cognitive effort. Availability Heuristics - Mental shortcuts that rely on immediate examples that might come to mind (what thoughts are available to you at the time?). Based off of the number of related events or situations that might immediate spring into the forefront of your thoughts. EX - assuming that there are more plane crashes than car crashes per year because plane crashes are more publicized in the media and you don't often year about the amount of car crashes there are. EX - assuming that there are more murdered per year than suicides because you don't often hear about suicides in the news in comparison to murders Representative Heuristic - Mental shortcuts used when making judgements about the probability of something under uncertainty. When people rely on representativeness to make judgments, they are likely to judge wrongly because the fact that something is more representative does not actually make it more likely EX - is someone who went to an all women's college, is politically liberal, and an avid protestor more likely to be a bank teller or a feminist bank teller? The inclination is a feminist bank teller, although statistically she is more like to just be a bank teller. Confirmation Bias - Describes how people are more inclined to look for and remember information that confirms what they already believe, and to dismiss information that refutes our opinion. Backfire Effect - When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.