A condensed rapid review pass over the highest yield MCAT psychology and sociology terms for final week review.
40 cards · basic cards · AI-written, checked twice. Edit anything.
- What is the absolute threshold in sensory perception?
- The minimum stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus 50 percent of the time.
- According to Weber's law, the just noticeable difference between two stimuli is a constant ____ of the original stimulus intensity.
- proportion
- What is sensory adaptation?
- Decreased sensitivity to a constant, unchanging stimulus over time.
- In classical conditioning, what is an unconditioned stimulus?
- A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response without prior learning.
- What is extinction in classical conditioning?
- The gradual weakening of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus.
- What is positive reinforcement?
- Adding a desirable stimulus after a behavior to increase the frequency of that behavior.
- What is negative reinforcement?
- Removing an aversive stimulus after a behavior to increase the frequency of that behavior.
- What reinforcement schedule produces the highest, most steady response rate and is most resistant to extinction?
- Variable ratio schedule.
- What did Bandura's Bobo doll experiment demonstrate?
- That children can learn new behaviors, including aggression, simply by observing and imitating a model.
- What is the primacy effect in memory?
- Better recall of items presented at the beginning of a list.
- What is the recency effect in memory?
- Better recall of items presented at the end of a list.
- What is proactive interference?
- When previously learned information interferes with the ability to recall newly learned information.
- What is retroactive interference?
- When newly learned information interferes with the ability to recall previously learned information.
- What is the primary role of the hippocampus in memory?
- Consolidating new explicit (declarative) memories into long-term storage.
- What is the primary role of the amygdala?
- Processing emotional responses, especially fear, and forming emotional memories.