What Are the Best Quizlet Decks for AP Psychology?

Unit 1 Key Terms (10-14%)

Scientific Foundations of Psychology

• 🧪Experimental Psychology – A psychological approach based around experimentation and scientific studies.
• Humanistic Psychology – Focuses on the celebratory aspects of individuals, such as personal growth and potential for improvement. One of the more optimistic approaches.
• Psychodynamic Psychology – Analyzes the different levels of consciousness and the components of the personality (id, ego, and superego) to determine how they affect aspects of behavior.
• Structuralism – Uses introspection to discover structural elements behind the human mind and thought.
• Empiricism – The foundation of knowledge should revolve around experience opposed to theories. 
• Functionalism – Each part of the brain serves a function to fulfill primary desires such as reproduction and survival. If it has no function, it adapts or becomes extinct.

Unit 2 Key Terms (8-10%)

Biological Basis of Behavior

• 💊Neurotransmitters – A chemical substance released by neurons to send signals to various parts of the body. Transmitted by neurons, hence the name.
• 🧠Plasticity – The brain has the ability to change and is molded by damage, experience, trauma, and aging.
• Corpus Callosum – Connects the left and right brain hemisphere, permitting communication between the two. These fibers can be cut during surgery, resulting in a split brain.
• Neuron – A nerve cell capable of communicating and transferring information to other parts of the body. An important part of the nervous system. 

Unit 3 Key Terms (6-8%)

Sensation & Perception

• 🍷Cocktail Party Effect – Oftentimes, we may not pay attention to a conversation (auditory stimuli) until we hear our names. Ties into selective attention.
• Absolute Threshold – Lowest level of stimulation necessary for the detection of a stimulus half of the time.
• ⬆️ Bottom-Up Processing – Processing the “raw” information collected from a stimulus before the brain’s analysis.
• ⬇️ Top–Down Processing – Interpretation is made only after the brain connects the stimulus to existing information.

Unit 4 Key Terms (7-9%)

Learning

• Unconditioned & Conditioned Response (UR/CR) – The response to stimuli, which can either be naturally occurring (unconditioned), or learned (conditioned).
• Unconditioned & Conditioned Stimuli (US/CS) – A stimulus that naturally provokes a response (unconditioned), or one that has gone through conditioning to provoke an unnatural response.
• 🔔 Neutral Stimulus (NS) – During conditioning, the NS and US are combined to provoke a UR. Eventually, the NS is associated with the US and becomes a CS.
• 🐶 Classical Conditioning – Demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov’s famous dog experiment. The US leads to a UR, and the NS leads to no response. Conditioning occurs, which results in the NS and US provoking a UR. The NS becomes a CS, provoking the CR.
• ➕ ➖ Reinforcement – Positive and negative reinforcement both serve the purpose of increasing behavior, but through different methods. Positive stimuli is presented in positive reinforcement, while negative stimuli is increased or decreased depending on the intended result in negative reinforcement.
• Learned Helplessness – Discovered by Martin Seligman during his famous shocking experiment using dogs, animals can be conditioned into complete helplessness.

Unit 5 Key Terms (13-17%)

Cognitive Psychology

• Misinformation Effect – Incorrect information is capable of influencing memories and even creating false (implanted) memories.
• Episodic Memory – Events related to an individual’s life. Can be remembered by thinking of your life in terms of episodes.
• ⏰ Semantic Memory – Specific details about something, the semantics of it.
• Implicit Memory – A memory you’re unaware of due to habituation.
• Explicit Memory – A memory you’re aware of. It’s explicitly there.
• 🗃 Chunking – The categorization of information for ease of memory. Phone numbers are chunked into groups of 3, 3, and 4 which affect memorization.
• 🔊 Sensory Memory – Echoic is auditory (think of echoing) and can be stored for 3-4 seconds. Iconic is visual (computer icons) and only able to be stored for 1/10th of a second. Haptic involves the sense of smell, and is stored for up to 2 seconds.

Unit 6 Key Terms (7-9%)

Developmental Psychology

• 👑 Authoritarian – Authoritarian parents have a “my way or the highway” outlook on parenting, with high demands/expectations and low freedom due to the controlling nature. Authoritarian parenting is linked to lower self-esteem and higher reliance on authority figures.
• 👁 Authoritative – Not to be confused with authoritarian (think libertarian and authoritarian to remember), discipline and love are both high, but the foundational structure involves the rules and democratic approach. The parents have a say, but the children can also comment (unlike permissive or authoritarian parenting).
• 🖤 Uninvolved – The parent has little to no interaction with the child. There is no give and take in this kind of relationship, just apathy and nearly unlimited freedom. Also called neglectful parenting.
• ✅ Permissive – The dynamic in permissive parenting is that a parent gives plenty of freedom while expecting very little in return. Freedom and love are high, while discipline is often low.
• 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development – A modified version of Freud’s psychosexual theory created by Erik Erikson. Each stage serves as a challenge for an individual to put conflicting ideas to rest. Check out our Unit 6 Guide for more information!
• 👶 Strange Situation – An experiment performed by Mary Ainsworth with the purpose of determining attachment style. The mother, the child, and a stranger are in a room, alternating who stays and goes. The baby’s reaction is an indicator of attachment style.
• Stages of Cognitive Development – Invented by Jean Piaget. Consists of the sensorimotor stage (0-2), preoperational stage (2-7), concrete operational stage (7-11), and the formal operational stage (12+). Check out our Unit 6 Guide for more information!

Unit 7 Key Terms (11-15%)

Motivation, Emotion, & Personality

• Big 5 Personality Traits – You can remember these traits with the acronym OCEAN. Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
• 🛡Defense Mechanisms – Another acronym! Remember RRDDP. Regression, repression, denial, displacement, and projection.
• Intrinsic Motivation – An internal motivator, such as love.
• Extrinsic Motivation – An external motivator, such as scoring well on a test.
• 🔺 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Where a person is located in life based on the needs they have fulfilled. 

Unit 8 Key Terms (12-16%)

Clinical Psychology

• Bipolar Disorder – Extreme mood fluctuation between depressive symptoms and manic symptoms. Several types of Bipolar Disorder exist. 
• DSM 5 – Used to classify psychological disorders, created by the American Psychiatric Association. 
• Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – Repetitive thoughts and actions are present and often uncontrollable. OCD is an anxiety disorder. 
• Schizophrenia – Often characterized by delusions, auditory and visual hallucinations, and disorganized patterns of behavior, speech, and thought. 
• Personality Disorders – Divided into three different clusters; A, B, and C.

Unit 9 Key Terms (8-10%)

Social Psychology

• 👥 Conformity – People tend to think and behave in similar ways when they’re within a group setting. 
• Bystander Effect – If more people are present during a situation, they are less likely to intervene. 
• 🦶Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon – If a person agrees to a small favor, a person is more likely to agree to a larger favor later. 

Closing