 | Term | Definition |
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(George) Mendel's Law |
Explains the fundamental laws that explain genetic inheritance |
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Phenotype |
The observable characteristics of an organism due to inheritance |
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Maturation |
The processes of biological development of bodily mechanisms that do the behaving. |
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Cross-modal transfer |
The recognition of an object as familiar when perceived with a sense other than that previously exposed to the object. |
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Sexual maturation |
The most significant form of maturation during puberty. |
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Genetic engineering |
Any technique by which genes are artificially manipulated, built, replaced, or altered outside of normal breeding. |
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Carrier |
An organism that carries a particular trait in its genes and, while not expressing the trait itself, is able to pass on the trait to its offspring. |
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Spinal reflexes |
The second major function of the spinal cord - the very simple automatic behaviors that occur without the conscious, voluntary actions of the brain. |
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Procedural memory |
The type of memory required to recall the skills necessary for object manipulation and learned physical activity. It is sometimes called a skill or motor memory, and are acquired slowly with practice. |
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Olfaction |
The sense of smell (which is well-developed within a newborn). |
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Teratogens |
Substances that are taken into the system that can produce fetal abnormalities. |
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Declarative memory |
Associated with cognitive skills that are not directly related to muscular or glandular responses such as breathing; that part of the learning process which is used to recall factual information, and is often referred to as fact memory. |
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Psychophysics |
The study of the relationships between the physical attributes of stimuli and the psychological experiences that they produce. It is the oldest subfield in psychology. |
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Absolute threshold |
The physical intensity of a stimulus that a subject reports detecting 50 percent of the time. An example of an approximate absolute threshold for smell is "one drop of perfume in a 3 bedroom apartment." |
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Difference threshold |
the minimal difference between stimulus attributes that can be detected. |
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Signal detection theory |
Stimulus detection involves a decision-making process of separating a signal from background noise. |
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Habituation |
Becoming accustomed to a sound, a sight, an object, or some other kind of stimulus. |
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wave amplitude |
Light travels in the form of waves of energy, and differences in intensity of light correspond to differences in the ______ ___________ of light. |
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Brightness |
The psychological experience of intensity of light. |
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wavelength |
A second characteristic of waves is ___________, which is the distance between any point in a wave and the corresponding point on the next cycle-the distance from peak to peak. |
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monochromatic |
Pure light is called _____________ because it is made up of light waves of all one length or hue. |
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saturation |
The physical purity of a light source determines the psychological characteristic that is known as __________. |
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constancy |
Visual _____________ refers to the tendency for objects to look the same to us despite fluctuations in sensory input - color constancy, size constancy, and shape constancy |
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perceptual |
Maximum _____________ development takes place between the ages of three and a half and seven years of age. |
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sensorimotor |
The four stages of cognitive development according to Jean Piaget include the __________ stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operations stage, and the formal operations stage. |
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