A.P. Psychology
First Quarter Cumulative Review
Be familiar with the following terms/concepts listed below. The students who are most prepared
will review any handouts, notes, and all reading assigned during this unit. The list below is NOT
comprehensive – anything covered during the unit is fair game and may not necessarily be listed
below.
Unit 1 - Introduction
 Definition of psychology
 Big issues in psychology (nature vs. nurture, stability vs. change, rationality vs.
irrationality)
 Historical names and accomplishments (these are some of the main players but NOT a
comprehensive list)
o Rene Descartes
o John Locke
o Wilhelm Wundt
o William James
o G. Stanley Hall
o Sigmund Freud
o James Watson
o B.F. Skinner
 7 perspectives of psychology
 fields of study in psychology (family tree)
 historical roots of psychology – contributing fields, successes and setbacks
Unit 2 – Studies and Experimentation
 The Scientific Attitude (critical thinking, hindsight bias, overconfidence, false consensus
effect)
 The Scientific Method (theory, hypothesis, replication)
 Descriptive Studies (case study, survey, naturalistic observation) – know strengths and
weaknesses of each!
 Correlational Studies (correlation does not prove causation!)
 Experimentation (hypothesis, IV, DV, Experimental Group, Control Group, Random
Assignment)
 Pitfalls of Experimentation (placebo, placebo effect, single-blind procedure, double-blind
procedure, self-fulfilling prophecy)
 Experimental Ethics (do’s and don’ts, animal ethics, Stanley Milgram’s study of
obedience, Philip Zimbardo’s study of situational effect)
 Statistical Reasoning (mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, statistical
significance)
Unit 3 – Learning
 Definition of Learning
 Classical Conditioning (UCS, UCR, NS, CS, CR)
 Classical Conditioning Extensions (acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery,
generalization, discrimination)
 Operant Conditioning (Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Positive
Punishment, Negative Punishment)
 Operant Conditioning Extensions (acquisition, extinction)
 Operant Conditioning Terms (Thorndike’s Law of Effect, Skinner Box, Shaping, Primary
and Secondary Reinforcers, Cognitive Map, Latent Learning, Overjustification Effect)
 Schedules of Reinforcement (Continuous vs. Partial, Fixed Ratio, Variable Ratio, Fixed
Interval, Variable Interval)
 Cognition and Biological Predispositions
 Observational Learning
 Know the key players for CC, OC, and OL
Unit 4 – Memory
 Information Processing Model (external events, sensory memory, encoding, short-term
memory storage, long-term memory storage, retrieval)
 Encoding (flashbulb memory, automatic vs. effortful processing, rehearsal, spacing
effect, serial position effect, methods of encoding [visual, acoustic, semantic],
mnemonics, chunking, hierarchies)
 Storage (sensory memory [iconic and echoic], short-term vs. long-term memory,
forgetting curve, storing memories in the brain, long-term potentiation, implicit vs.
explicit memories, amnesia, hippocampus)
 Retrieval (recall vs. recognition, priming, context effects, déjà vu, mood-congruent
memory, proactive vs. retroactive interference, forgetting and repression)
 Memory Construction (Misinformation effect, imagination effect, source amnesia,
repression, applications memory construction)
Unit 5 – Cognition and Language
 Definition of Concept
 Thinking (concept, prototype, category hierarchy)
 Solving Problems (algorithm, heuristic, insight)
 Obstacles to Problem Solving (confirmation bias, fixation [mental set and functional
fixedness])
 Making Decisions and Forming Judgments (representativeness heuristic, availability
heuristic, anchoring heuristic, overconfidence, framing)
 Belief bias and belief perseverance
 Language structure (phoneme, morpheme, grammar, semantics, syntax)
 Learning language (babbling stage, one-word stage, two-word stage, telegraphic speech)
 Skinner vs. Chomsky theories of language development
 Critical periods, support
 Whorf’s Linguistic relativity / determinism
 Biology of language – aphasia, Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area
 Animal Thinking and Language