Your FREE AP Psychology Flashcards 2026 – 200+ Cards

A neuron fires a full-strength action potential once its threshold is crossed, or it does not fire at all. Stimulus intensity is coded by firing frequency, not impulse size.

The brief electrical impulse that travels down a neuron's axon when threshold is reached; involves a rapid reversal of charge (depolarization).

The stable negative charge inside a neuron at rest (about −70 mV), maintained by the distribution of ions across the membrane.

The level of stimulation a neuron must reach to fire an action potential.

A brief recovery phase after firing during which a neuron cannot fire again.

The tiny gap between two neurons across which neurotransmitters carry a signal.

A chemical messenger released into the synapse to carry a signal from one neuron to the next.

The reabsorption of leftover neurotransmitter molecules by the sending neuron. SSRIs work by blocking serotonin reuptake.

A neurotransmitter for reward, pleasure, and voluntary movement. Excess is linked to schizophrenia; depletion to Parkinson's disease.

A neurotransmitter affecting mood, sleep, and appetite. Low levels are linked to depression.

A neurotransmitter for muscle movement and memory; its loss is associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter; it calms neural activity. Too little is linked to anxiety and seizures.

The brain's main excitatory neurotransmitter, important for memory and learning.

Natural opioid neurotransmitters that reduce pain and produce pleasure.

The fatty layer wrapped around many axons that insulates them and speeds neural transmission.

The brain and spinal cord — the body's command center.

All the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord; it splits into the somatic and autonomic systems.

The division of the PNS that controls voluntary skeletal-muscle movement.

The division of the PNS that controls automatic functions; it splits into the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions.

Arouses the body for 'fight or flight' — raising heart rate, dilating pupils, and releasing energy.

Calms the body and conserves energy — 'rest and digest' — after a stressor passes.

The body's slower chemical communication system, using glands to release hormones into the bloodstream.

A brain structure that regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature, and the endocrine system.

A brain structure essential for forming new long-term (explicit) memories.

A brain structure that processes fear, aggression, and emotional memory.

The 'little brain' at the rear that coordinates balance, movement, and procedural memory.

A brainstem structure that controls automatic survival functions like heartbeat and breathing.

The cortical lobe responsible for judgment, planning, decision-making, and voluntary movement.

The cortical lobe at the back of the brain that processes vision.

The cortical lobe that processes hearing and language comprehension.

The thick band of fibers connecting the brain's left and right hemispheres.

The brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections, especially after learning or injury.

The roughly 24-hour biological clock that governs the sleep-wake cycle.

Rapid eye movement sleep, when most vivid dreaming occurs; the body is largely paralyzed but the brain is active.

Reduced sensitivity to a constant, unchanging stimulus over time.

A drug that mimics or increases a neurotransmitter's action.

A drug that blocks or reduces a neurotransmitter's action.

The 'master gland' of the endocrine system; it releases hormones that control other glands.

Endocrine glands that release epinephrine and norepinephrine to trigger the body's stress response.

Broca's area (frontal lobe) controls speech production; Wernicke's area (temporal lobe) controls language comprehension.

Sensation is detecting raw stimuli through the senses; perception is organizing and interpreting that information.

Building perception from raw sensory features upward, assembling the whole from the parts.

Using prior knowledge, context, and expectations to interpret sensory information.

The minimum stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time.

The smallest detectable difference between two stimuli; also called the just-noticeable difference.

The principle that two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion (not a constant amount) to be perceived as different.

Rules describing how we group visual elements into wholes: figure-ground, proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity.

The Gestalt tendency to organize a scene into a main object (figure) and its background (ground).

A readiness to perceive something in a particular way, shaped by expectations and experience.

A momentary, exact record of sensory information that lasts a fraction of a second before fading.

The active store holding about 7±2 items for roughly 15–30 seconds; rehearsal and chunking extend it.

The relatively permanent, large-capacity store of knowledge, skills, and experiences.

The process of getting information into memory; deeper, more meaningful processing encodes more durably.

Grouping items into meaningful units to expand short-term memory capacity (e.g., a phone number in segments).

The tendency to recall the first (primacy) and last (recency) items in a list better than the middle.

Better recall of items at the start of a list, because they were rehearsed into long-term memory.

Better recall of items at the end of a list, because they are still in short-term memory.

When old information disrupts the recall of newly learned information.

When newly learned information disrupts the recall of older information.

When misleading information after an event distorts a person's memory of it (Loftus).

The principle that retrieval is easier when cues present at learning are also present at recall (context- and state-dependent memory).

Explicit (declarative) memory is consciously recalled facts and events; implicit memory includes skills and conditioned associations.

A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution, though it can be slow.

A fast mental shortcut for problem-solving that is efficient but can lead to errors.

Judging how likely an event is by how easily examples come to mind, making vivid events seem more common.

Judging likelihood by how well something matches a prototype, often ignoring base rates.

The tendency to seek and favor information that confirms one's existing beliefs.

How the wording or presentation of a choice influences the decision made.

The 'I knew it all along' tendency to see an outcome as predictable after it has occurred.

The tendency to see objects only in their usual use, which can block a solution.

The tendency to approach a problem in a way that worked before, even when a better method exists.

Convergent thinking narrows to one best answer; divergent thinking generates many possible solutions (creativity).

A mental 'best example' of a category used to classify new items quickly.

The component of working memory that holds and rehearses verbal and auditory information.

The component of working memory that holds and manipulates visual and spatial information.

The finding that information is retained better when study is distributed over time rather than crammed.

Improved recall when one's physical or emotional state at retrieval matches the state at encoding.

Recognition identifies previously learned material (multiple choice); recall retrieves it without cues (fill-in-the-blank).

Focusing conscious awareness on one stimulus while filtering out others (e.g., the cocktail-party effect).

Baddeley's model of short-term memory with a central executive directing the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad.

Knowing an object still exists even when out of sight; gained in Piaget's sensorimotor stage.

Birth to ~2 years: infants learn through senses and actions and gain object permanence.

~2–7 years: symbolic thought develops but reasoning is egocentric and lacks conservation.

~7–11 years: logical thought about concrete events; the child masters conservation.

~12+ years: abstract, hypothetical, and systematic reasoning becomes possible.

The understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in shape or appearance.

The preoperational child's difficulty taking another person's point of view.

A mental framework that organizes and interprets information, built through experience.

Fitting new information into an existing schema (calling a cat a 'dog').

Changing an existing schema to fit new information (learning cats differ from dogs).

The gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with guidance.

Providing just enough support to help a learner accomplish a task, then gradually removing it.

Eight lifespan stages, each a crisis (e.g., trust vs mistrust in infancy; identity vs role confusion in adolescence).

Erikson's first stage (infancy): the infant learns whether the world is reliable and safe.

Erikson's adolescent stage: forming a coherent sense of self.

Three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional (rewards/punishment), conventional (social rules), and postconventional (ethical principles).

The enduring emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver.

An experiment classifying infant attachment as secure or insecure (avoidant/anxious) based on reactions to separation and reunion.

An infant who explores freely with a caregiver present and is comforted on reunion after distress.

Showed infant monkeys preferred a soft cloth 'mother' for contact comfort over a wire one that fed them.

Learning by association: a neutral stimulus paired with one that triggers a reflex comes to trigger that response (Pavlov).

A stimulus that naturally triggers a response (food causing salivation).

A formerly neutral stimulus that, after pairing, triggers a learned response (a bell causing salivation).

The learned response to a previously neutral, now conditioned, stimulus.

The initial stage of learning a conditioned response by pairing the CS and UCS.

The weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response when the CS is repeatedly presented without the UCS.

The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response after a pause.

Responding to stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus.

Learning to respond only to the specific conditioned stimulus and not to similar ones.

Learning in which voluntary behavior is strengthened by reinforcement or weakened by punishment (Skinner).

Adding a pleasant stimulus after a behavior to make it more likely.

Removing an unpleasant stimulus after a behavior to make it more likely — not punishment.

Adding an unpleasant stimulus after a behavior to make it less likely.

Removing a pleasant stimulus after a behavior to make it less likely.

Reinforcement after an unpredictable number of responses (like a slot machine); it produces high, persistent response rates.

Reinforcement after a set number of responses (e.g., every 10th sale earns a bonus).

Reinforcing successive approximations of a target behavior to gradually train it.

Learning by watching and imitating others; demonstrated in Bandura's Bobo doll study.

Showed children imitate aggressive behavior they observe in adult models.

Learning that occurs without reinforcement and stays hidden until there is a reason to use it (Tolman).

Overestimating personality and underestimating the situation when explaining others' behavior.

Attributing one's successes to internal factors and failures to external ones.

The discomfort felt when actions clash with attitudes; people often change the attitude to match (Festinger).

Adjusting behavior or thinking to match a group standard, shown in Asch's line studies.

Found people often gave an obviously wrong answer to match a unanimous group.

Milgram's study showed people will obey an authority figure even to the point of harming another person.

Gaining compliance with a large request by first getting agreement to a small one.

When a group's desire for harmony overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives.

The tendency for group discussion to strengthen members' already-held attitudes.

The more onlookers present, the less likely any one of them is to help (diffusion of responsibility).

Performing a well-learned task better in the presence of others.

Exerting less effort on a task when working in a group than when alone.

The belief that the world is fair, so people get what they deserve.

Favoring one's own group over out-groups.

A generalized belief about a group of people.

The five trait dimensions of personality: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

The view that personality is made of stable characteristics (traits) that can be measured along continuums.

Freud's structure of personality: the id seeks pleasure, the superego enforces morality, and the ego mediates with reality.

The id's drive to seek immediate gratification of needs and wants.

Freud's unconscious strategies (repression, projection, displacement, denial) the ego uses to reduce anxiety.

Attributing one's own unacceptable thoughts or impulses to someone else.

Redirecting an impulse from its real target onto a safer one.

The view that people are driven toward growth and self-actualization (Maslow, Rogers).

A pyramid of needs from physiological to safety, belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization at the top.

The realization of one's full potential, at the top of Maslow's hierarchy.

Rogers's idea of accepting and valuing a person without conditions, central to client-centered therapy.

A person's belief in their ability to succeed at a specific task (Bandura).

Bandura's idea that behavior, thoughts, and environment continuously influence one another.

Whether a person believes outcomes depend on their own actions (internal) or on luck and fate (external).

The idea that a physiological need creates a drive that motivates behavior to reduce it and restore balance.

Performance peaks at a moderate level of arousal; too little or too much arousal lowers it.

The theory that emotion follows from awareness of a physiological response (we feel afraid because we tremble).

The theory that a stimulus triggers a physiological response and an emotion simultaneously.

The theory that emotion requires physiological arousal plus a cognitive label for that arousal.

Intrinsic motivation comes from internal satisfaction; extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards or pressures.

Persuasion through careful consideration of the strength of an argument's evidence.

Persuasion through superficial cues like attractiveness or emotion rather than the argument itself.

The tendency to develop a preference for things simply because we are repeatedly exposed to them.

Gaining compliance with a moderate request by first making a large request that is refused.

The reduced sense of personal accountability when others are present, underlying the bystander effect.

Disorders arise when a predisposition (diathesis) interacts with environmental stress.

The view that biological, psychological, and social factors together shape health and disorder.

Persistent, free-floating worry and tension most days for six months or more.

Recurrent, unexpected panic attacks with intense fear and physical symptoms.

An intense, persistent, irrational fear of a particular object or situation.

At least two weeks of deep sadness, loss of interest, and low energy that impair functioning.

A mood disorder alternating between depressive episodes and manic, high-energy episodes.

Intrusive, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors (compulsions) performed to reduce anxiety.

Flashbacks, nightmares, and hypervigilance lasting more than a month after a traumatic event.

A disorder marked by disturbed thinking, hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech or behavior.

Added experiences not normally present — hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech.

Reduced or absent normal functions — flat affect, social withdrawal, and reduced speech.

A firmly held false belief that persists despite contrary evidence.

A sensory experience without an external stimulus, such as hearing voices that are not there.

A disorder in which a person shows two or more distinct identities or personality states.

An eating disorder marked by self-starvation and a distorted body image despite being underweight.

An eating disorder marked by cycles of binge eating followed by compensatory purging.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: persistent inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that impairs functioning.

A neurodevelopmental disorder marked by challenges in social communication and restricted, repetitive behaviors.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard classification system for diagnosing disorders.

A widely supported therapy that challenges distorted thoughts and changes maladaptive behavior.

A behavioral therapy pairing relaxation with a gradual hierarchy of feared situations to reduce anxiety.

A behavioral technique that reinforces desired behaviors with tokens exchangeable for rewards.

Treating anxiety by gradually exposing a person to the feared stimulus until the fear subsides.

Freud's therapy aiming to surface unconscious conflicts through techniques like free association.

Rogers's humanistic therapy using empathy, active listening, and unconditional positive regard.

Treating disorders with medication or medical procedures such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, or ECT.

Medications that relieve depression by blocking the reuptake of serotonin, raising its availability.

Medications that reduce psychotic symptoms, often by blocking dopamine activity.

A psychoanalytic technique in which a patient says whatever comes to mind to reveal unconscious material.

Selye's three-stage stress response: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

Reducing stress by directly addressing and changing the stressor itself.

Reducing stress by managing one's emotional response rather than changing the stressor.

Any event or condition that the body perceives as a threat or challenge, triggering the stress response.

The scientific study of human strengths, well-being, and what helps people thrive.

Needing increasing amounts of a substance to achieve the same effect over time.

The unpleasant physical and psychological symptoms that follow stopping a dependent substance.

The view that psychological disorders have physical causes that can be diagnosed and treated.

The presence of two or more disorders in the same person at the same time.

The ability to recover and adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, or significant stress.