AP PSYCHOLOGY COMPLETE STUDY GUIDE
Overview:
➢ Here are the concepts listed in Mr. Dinneen’s study guide. Overall, majority of questions are about
learning/processing:
❖ history and approaches
❖ Research methods (variety)
❖ Correlations - scatter plots
❖ Perceptual skills
❖ The brain (know functions/characteristics) - around 5 questions6
❖ Sensation and Perception (especially the eyes)
❖ Thinking and Intelligence (the way the brain organizes and thinks about textbook info)
❖ Uniqueness of algorithms/heuristics
❖ Information processing
❖ Language processing
❖ Influence of genetics on decision making, behavior, addiction, etc.
❖ Classification of drugs and their related challenges
❖ Reinforcements vs. punishers
❖ Learning process
❖ Intelligence: inherited or acquired/developed
❖ Difference between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and their related
characteristics
❖ Pain phenomenon
❖ Influence of brain diseases/trauma on memory
❖ Experimentation terms related to learning
❖ Darwinian theory applied to science/nature
❖ Memory
❖ Different types of bias involved in science/learning
❖ Genetics: advantages and disadvantages
❖ Famous scientists/psychologists
==Helpful sources:
✓ https://library.fiveable.me/ap-psych/unit-1/introducing-psychology-historical-progression-
psychology/study-guide/otxzARc5V0Z9ABNEG3jI
✓ https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-psychology
✓ https://blog.prepscholar.com/ap-psychology-notes
✓ www.worthpublishers.com/myers
Chapter 1: ………………Approaches to Psychology completed notes
Chapter 2: …………..Research Methods - case study etc/ethics
,Chapter 3: …………….Biological Bases of Behavior(brain/endocrine/evolutionary)
Chapter 4:…………… Sensation and Perception:
Chapter 5: …………Learning (Classical conditioning etc)
Chapter 6: ……………..Memory/Cognition TILL 297
■ Chapter 1: Approaches to Psychology/Psychology’s History
✓ IMPORTANT TERMS HIGHLIGHTED^
✓ ACCORDING TO BOSIEGER, WE ONLY NEED TO KNOW APPROACHES TO
PSYCHOLOGY
- Behaviorism - the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies
behavior without reference to mental process(0bservation)
o Behaviorism is the theory that human or animal psychology can be objectively
studied through observable actions (behaviors.)
o B.F. Skinner - “father of behaviorism”
- Empiricism- the view that knowledge originates in experience and that science, should
therefore, rely on observation and experimentation
o Simplified: Science should rely on observation/experimentation
- Structuralism: - an early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the
structural elements of the human mind
o Introspection: looking inward
o Wilhelm Wundt’s student Edward Titchener - “father of structuralism”-
o Structuralism says that structure is more important than function. Structuralists
believed that the mind must be broken into elements to understand the brain and its
functions.
- Functionalism: a school of psychology that focused on how our mental and behavioral
processes function - how they enable us to adapt, survive and flourish
o Simplified: how the conscious mind is related to behavior
- Experimental psychology: the study of behaivour and thinking using the experimental
method
- Humanistic psychology - historical significant perspective that emphasized the growth
potential of healthy people and the individual’s potential for personal growth
- Cognitive neuroscience - the interdisplinary study of the brain activity linked with
cognition(including perception, thinking, memory and knowledge)
- Psychology - the study of behavior and mental processes
- Nature vs nurture: Controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience
make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors
o Simplified: controversy over relative contributions of biology vs experience
- Natural selection - survival of the fittest
■ APPROACHES TO PSYCHOLOGY
- Biological - How the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory
experiences; how genes combine with environment to influence individual differences
o The biological perspective states that behavior is based on physical processes
, such as those relating to the brain, hormones, and other chemicals.
o KEY WORD :Physical processes?
- Evolutionary - How the natural selection of traits promoted survival of genes
• KEY WORD: Natural selection
- Psychodynamic - how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts
• KEY WORD – Unconscious
- Behavioral - how we learn observable responses
• KEY WORD – Observation
- Cognitive - how we encode,process, store, retrieve information
• KEY WORD: Encode/process information
- Humanistic - How we meet our needs for love and acceptance and achieve self-
fulfillment
• KEY WORD: Love
- Social-cultural - How behaivour and thinking vary across situations and cultures
• KEY WORD: Culture
- Biopsychosocial approach - an integrated approach that incorporates biological,
psychological and social-cultural levels of analysis
• KEY WORD- combination of multiple approaches/factors
Chapter 2: Research Methods
- Hindsight bias- the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one
would have foreseen it
- Critical thinking - smart thinking, don't jump to conclusions, asses the situation
- Theory - explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and
predicts behaviors or events
- Hypothesis - testable prediction implied by a theory
- Operational definition -statement of procedures to define research variables
- Replication - its the meaning of the word, to replicate a research study to see whether the
basic finding extends to other participants or circumstances
Research Methods Chart
Type of Study Description Example Pros Cons
Overview:
➢ Here are the concepts listed in Mr. Dinneen’s study guide. Overall, majority of questions are about
learning/processing:
❖ history and approaches
❖ Research methods (variety)
❖ Correlations - scatter plots
❖ Perceptual skills
❖ The brain (know functions/characteristics) - around 5 questions6
❖ Sensation and Perception (especially the eyes)
❖ Thinking and Intelligence (the way the brain organizes and thinks about textbook info)
❖ Uniqueness of algorithms/heuristics
❖ Information processing
❖ Language processing
❖ Influence of genetics on decision making, behavior, addiction, etc.
❖ Classification of drugs and their related challenges
❖ Reinforcements vs. punishers
❖ Learning process
❖ Intelligence: inherited or acquired/developed
❖ Difference between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and their related
characteristics
❖ Pain phenomenon
❖ Influence of brain diseases/trauma on memory
❖ Experimentation terms related to learning
❖ Darwinian theory applied to science/nature
❖ Memory
❖ Different types of bias involved in science/learning
❖ Genetics: advantages and disadvantages
❖ Famous scientists/psychologists
==Helpful sources:
✓ https://library.fiveable.me/ap-psych/unit-1/introducing-psychology-historical-progression-
psychology/study-guide/otxzARc5V0Z9ABNEG3jI
✓ https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-psychology
✓ https://blog.prepscholar.com/ap-psychology-notes
✓ www.worthpublishers.com/myers
Chapter 1: ………………Approaches to Psychology completed notes
Chapter 2: …………..Research Methods - case study etc/ethics
,Chapter 3: …………….Biological Bases of Behavior(brain/endocrine/evolutionary)
Chapter 4:…………… Sensation and Perception:
Chapter 5: …………Learning (Classical conditioning etc)
Chapter 6: ……………..Memory/Cognition TILL 297
■ Chapter 1: Approaches to Psychology/Psychology’s History
✓ IMPORTANT TERMS HIGHLIGHTED^
✓ ACCORDING TO BOSIEGER, WE ONLY NEED TO KNOW APPROACHES TO
PSYCHOLOGY
- Behaviorism - the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies
behavior without reference to mental process(0bservation)
o Behaviorism is the theory that human or animal psychology can be objectively
studied through observable actions (behaviors.)
o B.F. Skinner - “father of behaviorism”
- Empiricism- the view that knowledge originates in experience and that science, should
therefore, rely on observation and experimentation
o Simplified: Science should rely on observation/experimentation
- Structuralism: - an early school of psychology that used introspection to explore the
structural elements of the human mind
o Introspection: looking inward
o Wilhelm Wundt’s student Edward Titchener - “father of structuralism”-
o Structuralism says that structure is more important than function. Structuralists
believed that the mind must be broken into elements to understand the brain and its
functions.
- Functionalism: a school of psychology that focused on how our mental and behavioral
processes function - how they enable us to adapt, survive and flourish
o Simplified: how the conscious mind is related to behavior
- Experimental psychology: the study of behaivour and thinking using the experimental
method
- Humanistic psychology - historical significant perspective that emphasized the growth
potential of healthy people and the individual’s potential for personal growth
- Cognitive neuroscience - the interdisplinary study of the brain activity linked with
cognition(including perception, thinking, memory and knowledge)
- Psychology - the study of behavior and mental processes
- Nature vs nurture: Controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience
make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors
o Simplified: controversy over relative contributions of biology vs experience
- Natural selection - survival of the fittest
■ APPROACHES TO PSYCHOLOGY
- Biological - How the body and brain enable emotions, memories, and sensory
experiences; how genes combine with environment to influence individual differences
o The biological perspective states that behavior is based on physical processes
, such as those relating to the brain, hormones, and other chemicals.
o KEY WORD :Physical processes?
- Evolutionary - How the natural selection of traits promoted survival of genes
• KEY WORD: Natural selection
- Psychodynamic - how behavior springs from unconscious drives and conflicts
• KEY WORD – Unconscious
- Behavioral - how we learn observable responses
• KEY WORD – Observation
- Cognitive - how we encode,process, store, retrieve information
• KEY WORD: Encode/process information
- Humanistic - How we meet our needs for love and acceptance and achieve self-
fulfillment
• KEY WORD: Love
- Social-cultural - How behaivour and thinking vary across situations and cultures
• KEY WORD: Culture
- Biopsychosocial approach - an integrated approach that incorporates biological,
psychological and social-cultural levels of analysis
• KEY WORD- combination of multiple approaches/factors
Chapter 2: Research Methods
- Hindsight bias- the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one
would have foreseen it
- Critical thinking - smart thinking, don't jump to conclusions, asses the situation
- Theory - explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and
predicts behaviors or events
- Hypothesis - testable prediction implied by a theory
- Operational definition -statement of procedures to define research variables
- Replication - its the meaning of the word, to replicate a research study to see whether the
basic finding extends to other participants or circumstances
Research Methods Chart
Type of Study Description Example Pros Cons
