AP Psychology — Biology, Sensation & Learning flashcards
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Research methods, neurons and neurotransmitters, brain structures, the nervous system and hormones, sleep and dreaming, sensation and perception, and classical, operant and cognitive learning, with applied scenarios in the style of the AP Psychology exam.
Learn deck · part of AP Psychology · written against: College Board AP Psychology Course and Exam Description (2024 five-unit revision). Updated 2026-10-10.
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A study finds that students who sleep more earn higher grades. Why can the researchers not conclude that sleep causes better grades?It is a correlational study: nothing was manipulated, so a third variable (a lighter workload, say) could drive both, and the direction could run the other way. Only an experiment with random assignment supports a causal claim.Research Methods
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What is an operational definition, and why does a study need one?A precise statement of how a variable will be measured or manipulated (defining aggression as the number of shocks a participant chooses to deliver); it lets other researchers replicate the study and judge whether the measure is valid.Research Methods
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What is a confounding variable, and how does random assignment deal with it?A confounding variable is any factor other than the independent variable that differs between groups and could explain the result; random assignment spreads such factors roughly evenly across conditions, so the groups differ, apart from chance, only in the treatment.Research Methods
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What does it mean that an action potential is all-or-none?Once depolarization reaches threshold, the neuron fires at full strength every time; a stronger stimulus does not produce a bigger action potential — it produces more frequent firing instead.Biological Bases › Neurons and Neurotransmitters
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How does the myelin sheath affect neural transmission, and which disease illustrates its loss?Myelin insulates the axon so the impulse jumps between the gaps (nodes), greatly speeding conduction; in multiple sclerosis the myelin degenerates, so signals slow or fail and the person suffers weakness and loss of coordination.Biological Bases › Neurons and Neurotransmitters
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What is reuptake, and how do SSRI antidepressants make use of it?Reuptake is the sending neuron reabsorbing neurotransmitter from the synapse; SSRIs block the reuptake of serotonin, leaving more of it in the synapse to act on the receiving neuron.Biological Bases › Neurons and Neurotransmitters
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How does bottom-up processing differ from top-down processing in perception?Bottom-up processing builds a perception from the raw sensory input upward; top-down processing uses expectations, context and experience to interpret the input — which is why you can read a sentence with missing letters.Cognition › Perception
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What does the Gestalt principle of closure say, and how does a logo drawn with broken lines illustrate it?The brain fills in gaps to perceive a complete object, so a circle drawn with gaps is still seen as a circle. Gestalt psychologists argued that the perceived whole is more than the sum of its sensory parts.Cognition › Perception
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In Pavlov's experiment, identify the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus and conditioned response.US: the food; UR: salivating to the food; CS: the tone after it has been paired with food; CR: salivating to the tone alone.Development and Learning › Classical Conditioning
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What is extinction in classical conditioning, and does it mean the learning has been erased?Extinction is the fading of the conditioned response when the CS is presented repeatedly without the US; the learning is not erased — after a rest the CR often reappears, which is called spontaneous recovery.Development and Learning › Classical Conditioning
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Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Checked against Myers' Psychology for the AP Course (reference only; no text copied).
- Topic coverage follows the five-unit AP Psychology course framework taught from 2024–25 (the AP name is used nominatively; no exam or course material reproduced).
- APA Dictionary of Psychology (dictionary.apa.org), NIH and MedlinePlus pages and the original studies, consulted as references; no text copied.
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