First-year courses · Social sciences

Intro psychology: foundations, brain and perception

Flashcards for first-term intro psychology: history, research methods, TCPS 2 ethics, neurons, brain regions, sensation, perception and sleep.

45 cards6 topicsAbout 20 minutes a roundTypical first-year Introduction to Psychology, first term (history, methods, biological bases, sensation, perception, consciousness)

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About this deck

This deck covers the first half of a typical Canadian introductory psychology course: where the field came from, how psychologists design studies, the research ethics rules that apply in Canada, how neurons send signals, what major brain regions do, and how we sense, perceive and move through states of consciousness such as sleep.

You do not need any background in biology or statistics to start. It helps to be comfortable with the idea of a variable (something that can change and be measured), because most of the research cards build on that. When a card names a researcher, focus on the idea first and the name second; exams usually test whether you can apply a concept to a new scenario.

A good way to study is to sort the cards by tag and work one tag per session. For the methods cards, invent your own mini study for each term: name the independent and dependent variables, say how you would assign people, and say what ethical steps you would take before starting. For the brain cards, sketch a rough side view of the brain and label it from memory.

Common mistakes: confusing random assignment (which group a participant joins) with random sampling (who gets into the study at all); treating a correlation as proof of cause; and mixing up sensation, the raw detection of energy by receptors, with perception, the brain's interpretation of that input.

Before you start: None beyond high school reading skills; Grade 12 biology is helpful but not required.

All 45 cards

Cover the definitions with a sheet of paper and test yourself, or use the study modes above.

History and approaches

Wilhelm Wundt: German researcher who opened the first laboratory devoted to experimental study of the mind in Leipzig in 1879, often treated as the start of scientific psychology.Example: His lab measured reaction times to sounds and lights under controlled conditions.
Structuralism: Early school that tried to break conscious experience into its basic elements, such as sensations and feelings, using trained introspection.Example: An observer describing the separate qualities of a single tone: pitch, loudness and duration.
Functionalism: Early school, linked to William James, that asked what mental processes are for and how they help people adapt to their environment.Example: Asking why we have habits at all, rather than listing what a habit feels like.
Behaviourism: Approach holding that psychology should study only observable actions and how the environment shapes them through learning, associated with Watson and Skinner.Example: Explaining a child's tantrums by the attention they earn rather than by inner feelings.
Psychodynamic perspective: View rooted in Freud's work that explains behaviour through unconscious motives, inner conflict and early childhood experience.Example: Interpreting a slip of the tongue as a sign of a hidden wish.
Humanistic psychology: Approach led by Maslow and Rogers that stresses free will, personal growth and each person's drive to reach their potential.Example: A counsellor offering unconditional positive regard so a client can grow.
Cognitive perspective: Approach that studies mental processes such as attention, memory, language and problem solving, often comparing the mind to an information processor.Example: Studying why people forget a phone number if they are interrupted before dialing.
Biopsychosocial model: Framework stating that behaviour and health come from interacting biological, psychological and social factors rather than any single cause.Example: Explaining depression through genes, negative thinking patterns and social isolation together.

Research methods

Hypothesis: A specific, testable prediction about the relationship between variables, usually derived from a broader theory.Example: Students who sleep 8 hours will score higher on a memory test than students who sleep 4 hours.
Operational definition: A precise statement of exactly how a variable will be measured or manipulated in a particular study.Example: Defining 'stress' as a score on a standard questionnaire plus cortisol level in saliva.
Independent variable: The factor a researcher deliberately changes or controls to see whether it causes an effect.Example: Hours of sleep allowed (4 or 8) in a sleep and memory experiment.
Dependent variable: The outcome a researcher measures to see whether it changes in response to the manipulated factor.Example: The number of words recalled on the memory test.
Random assignment: Placing participants into experimental conditions by chance so each person has an equal likelihood of ending up in any group, which balances out other differences.Example: Flipping a coin to decide whether each volunteer gets the caffeine pill or the placebo.
Random sampling: Choosing study participants so every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected, which helps results generalize.Example: Drawing 500 names at random from a full list of a college's enrolled students.
Correlation coefficient: A number from -1 to +1 showing the direction and strength of a linear relationship between two variables; 0 means no linear relationship.Example: r = -0.40 between nightly screen time and hours of sleep: more screen time goes with less sleep.
Third variable problem: The possibility that an unmeasured factor causes both of two correlated variables, which is why a correlation alone cannot show cause.Example: Ice cream sales and drownings rise together because hot weather drives both.
Case study: An in-depth investigation of one individual or a small group, useful for rare conditions but hard to generalize from.Example: Brenda Milner's work at McGill with patient H.M., who could not form new long-term memories after surgery.
Naturalistic observation: Watching and recording behaviour in its normal setting without the researcher interfering.Example: Recording how often shoppers use self-checkout versus a cashier at a grocery store.
Double-blind procedure: Study design in which neither the participants nor the researchers who interact with them know who received the real treatment, reducing expectation effects.Example: Pharmacy staff code the pills so nurses giving them cannot tell drug from placebo.
Placebo effect: Improvement that occurs because a person expects a treatment to work, even when the treatment has no active ingredient.Example: Headache relief after a sugar pill the person believed was a painkiller.
Reliability: The consistency of a measure: it gives similar results across repeated uses, different raters or different items.Example: A personality test that gives nearly the same score when taken two weeks apart.
Validity: The degree to which a measure or study actually captures the concept it claims to capture.Example: A bathroom scale can be consistent yet still wrong if it always reads 3 kg too heavy.

Research ethics

TCPS 2: Canada's joint policy on ethical conduct for research involving humans, issued by CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC; institutions receiving their funding must follow it.Example: A university psychology study with student volunteers must meet its requirements.
Core principles of the Tri-Council Policy: Respect for persons, concern for welfare, and justice: the three values that Canada's human research ethics policy is built on.Example: Justice means the burdens and benefits of research are shared fairly across groups.
Free, informed and ongoing consent: Agreement to take part that is voluntary, based on a clear understanding of purpose, risks and benefits, and that can be withdrawn at any point.Example: A participant may stop a survey halfway without losing promised course credit.
Research Ethics Board (REB): Committee at a Canadian institution that reviews and approves research with human participants before it begins and monitors it afterward.Example: A student's honours thesis survey needs approval before any data are collected.
Debriefing: Explaining the true purpose and any deception to participants after a study and answering their questions.Example: Telling participants the 'other student' who disagreed with them was actually part of the research team.

Neurons and the brain

Neuron: A nerve cell specialized to receive, integrate and transmit information using electrical and chemical signals.Example: Motor nerve cells carry commands from the spinal cord to muscles.
Action potential: A brief, all-or-none electrical impulse that travels along an axon once the cell's membrane is depolarized past a threshold.Example: A stronger stimulus causes more frequent impulses, not bigger ones.
Synapse: The tiny junction between the axon terminal of one nerve cell and the receiving cell, where chemical messengers cross.Example: Many antidepressants act by changing what happens at this junction.
Neurotransmitter: A chemical messenger released by a nerve cell that crosses a small gap and binds to receptors on another cell.Example: Dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and GABA.
Myelin sheath: Fatty insulating layer wrapped around many axons that speeds the conduction of electrical impulses.Example: In multiple sclerosis this coating is damaged, slowing signals.
Frontal lobe: Front region of the cerebral cortex involved in planning, decision making, impulse control and voluntary movement.Example: Phineas Gage's personality changed after an iron rod damaged this area.
Occipital lobe: Region at the back of the cerebral cortex that contains the primary visual cortex and processes visual information.Example: Damage here can cause blindness even when the eyes are healthy.
Hippocampus: Curved structure deep in the temporal lobe that is essential for forming new explicit memories.Example: Patient H.M. had the front part of this structure removed on both sides and could not form new lasting memories of events.
Amygdala: Small almond-shaped structure in the limbic system involved in detecting threats and processing fear and emotional memory.Example: It helps explain why a near collision on the highway is remembered vividly.
Neuroplasticity: The brain's ability to change its connections and organization in response to experience, learning or injury.Example: Donald Hebb at McGill proposed that cells that repeatedly fire together strengthen their connections.

Sensation and perception

Transduction: The conversion of physical energy, such as light or sound waves, into electrical signals the nervous system can use.Example: Rods and cones in the retina turn light into nerve signals.
Absolute threshold: The minimum intensity of a stimulus a person can detect 50 percent of the time.Example: The faintest tone you can hear in a quiet hearing test booth.
Weber's law: Principle that the smallest noticeable change in a stimulus is a constant proportion of the original intensity, not a fixed amount.Example: Adding 1 kg to a 2 kg backpack is noticeable; adding 1 kg to a 40 kg pack may not be.
Sensory adaptation: Reduced responsiveness of receptors to a constant, unchanging stimulus over time.Example: No longer noticing the smell of a hockey arena a few minutes after walking in.
Top-down processing: Interpreting sensory input using prior knowledge, expectations and context rather than only the raw features.Example: Reading a sloppy handwritten word correctly because the sentence makes the meaning clear.
Gestalt principles: Rules describing how the brain organizes parts into whole patterns, such as proximity, similarity, closure and continuity.Example: Seeing a full circle even though the drawn outline has small gaps.

Consciousness

Circadian rhythm: A roughly 24 hour biological cycle that regulates sleepiness, body temperature and hormone release.Example: Jet lag after flying from Vancouver to Halifax shifts this cycle out of step with local time.
REM sleep: Sleep stage with rapid eye movements, vivid dreaming, an active brain and near paralysis of the large muscles.Example: Periods of this stage get longer toward morning.