AP Psychology – Semester 1
Final Review Guide
Unit 1: History, Perspectives, and Methods
Psychological perspectives/schools of
thought (both historical and contemporary)
Figures in the development of psychology
Research methods
Elements of an experiment
Statistically significant
Careers in psychology
APA ethical guidelines
Percentile
Inferential v. descriptive Statistics
Nature v. nurture
Unit 2: The Biological Basis of Human
Behavior
Nervous System and its Divisions
Parts and functions of a neuron
Three phases of neural activity
Common neurotransmitters
Agonists v. antagonists
Neural chain
Brain parts + functions
Neural plasticity
Parts and function of endocrine system
Brain imaging/structuring techniques
Split brain patients
Unit 3: Sensation and Perception
Selective attention
Sensory adaptation
Thresholds
Nature of light
Eye parts + functions (including layers of retina)
Theories of color vision
Transduction
Nature of sound
Ear parts
Semicircular canals
Vestibular v. Kinesthetic Sense
Theories of pain
Gestalt Organizing Principles
Perceptual constancy
Feature detectors
Binocular v. Monocular Depth Cues
Unit 4: States of Consciousness
Circadian rhythms
Biological basis of sleep
Stages of sleep
Sleep disorders
Tolerance
Withdrawal
Types of drugs
Common psychoactive drugs
Theories of hypnosis
Unit 5: Learning
Elements of classical conditioning
Taste Aversion
Cognition and classical conditioning
Higher order conditioning
Principles of operant conditioning
Law of Effect
Shaping
Generalization and discrimination
Spontaneous recovery
Extinction
Learned helplessness
Biological predispositions and learning
Continuous v. partial reinforcement
Schedules of reinforcement
Latent Learning
Overjustification Effect
Observational Learning
Unit 6: Cognition
Information processing model
Three stage processing model of memory
Memory systems
Repressed memories
Types of memories
Serial position effect
Why we forget
Priming
Language development
Phonemes v morphemes
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis
Heuristics v algorithms
Functional fixedness, fixation, mental set
Availability heuristic, representativeness heuristic
Belief perseverance, confirmation bias
Framing, overconfidence
Unit 7: Motivation and Emotion and Stress
Theories of Motivation (and related concepts)
Polygraph
Ventromedial and Lateral Hypothalamus
Theories of Emotion
Universal emotions
Display Rules
General Adaptation Syndrome
Stress and the immune system
Type A personality
Names
John B. Watson
David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel
Robert Rescorla
Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer
Abraham Maslow
Edward L. Thorndike
Albert Bandura
AP Psychology – Semester 1
Final Review Guide
Ivan Pavlov
B.F. Skinner
Wilhelm Wundt
William James
E.B. Tichener
Sigmund Freud
Michael Gazzaniga
Helmholtz and Young
Ernst Weber
Ernest Hilgard
Herman Ebbinghaus
Elizabeth Loftus
Noam Chomsky
Kahnerman and Tversky
Benjamin Whorf
Abraham Maslow
Paul Ekman
Walter Cannon and Philip Bard
William James and Carl Lange
Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer
Hans Selye