Achievement Test

The SAT is the most prevalent, nationwide high school achievement test that we have all come to know and love. It is a staple of the college admission process, and measures how much Math, English, and Writing you have learned in high school. It was once also called an aptitude test, to assess how ready you are for college, but CollegeBoard has since dropped that name because of controversy.

Achievement Test - A test designed to assess what a person has learned

Culture

McDonalds has become a signature of American culture, and I hesitate to say, but also, arguably, a staple of the cornerstone of our culture, democracy. They are everywhere around us. If you travel around the world, you can see McDonalds in many different countries, a sign that American culture is spreading across the globe, even to places such as the Middle East.

Culture - The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next

Recall

Recall reminds me of Frank Fan, who could memorize a few hundred digits of pi. This is recall because he must retrieve information that he has stored in his memory. 

Recall - A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the blank test.

Conformity

Richard Orben once said 'graduation is when the commencement speaker tells thousands of students in identical caps and gowns that diversity is the key to success.' This was my senior quote. It fits well with conformity, because we forget that at graduation, everyone is the same as everyone else, except for the top 10 that get to graduate first and the officers, valedictorian, and salutatorian that get to make a speech. It's ironic that we're reminded about diversity when we all are dressed exactly the same for the most part, barring a few rebels that decide to wear sandals anyway even though the vice-principle specifically told everyone not to.

Conformity - Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coinicide with a group standard.

Social Facilitation

This is a picture of a slam dunk, one of the more flashy moves in the sport of  basketball. This reminds me of social facilitation because when there are people watching, you tend to try to outperform yourself and make yourself look good.

Social Facilitation - Improved performance of tasks in the presence of others; occurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered

Rorschach Inkblot Test

This is a picture that psychologists use in the Rorscach Inkblot Test. Depending on what you say you see, the psychologist will determine your personality and inner feelings.

Rorscach Inkblot Test -the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

Imprinting

This is the example of imprinting that our bio textbook uses. If a ducking sees a human at an early enough age, the duckling will imprint onto the human by becoming attached to him or her, and will believe that the human is their mother figure, and will take to following him or her around. 

Imprinting -The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.

Artificial Intelligence

This is a screenshot from the movie I, Robot. The movie deals with robots in the future that are able to think for themselves (artificial intelligence) and what can go wrong with them. In the future, machines will become more and more intelligence, and human control will become less of an important factor. Pop culture speculates about the fear of artificial intelligence becoming too powerful.

Artificial Intelligence -The science of designing and programming computer systems to do intelligent things and to simulate human thought processes such as intuitive reasoning, learning, and understanding language. Includes practical applications and efforts to model human thinking inspired by our current understanding of how the brain works.

Algorithm

Digital Fortress is about a group of scientists who crack codes for the government. One of their primary methods of cracking codes is called the brute force method. It is an algorithm because basically they try every possibility in order to eventually come up with the key to unlocking the code. For example, with a 3 digit key consisting of only 1s and 2s, the possibilities are 111, 112, 121, 122, 211, 212, 221, 222.

Algorithm - A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

Learning

When thinking about learning, this came to my mind. Given empty crates and a dangling banana, monkeys can learn to pile the crates up to use them to climb and reach the bananas. Learning from experience is something that enables animals to survive. 

Learning - A relative change in an organism's behavior due to experience.

Dream

This is a picture of Salvador Dali's famous painting, The Persistence of Memory. Salvador Dali was an important surrealist artists that created distorted landscapes and morphed versions of every day objects. Surrealism reminds me of dreams because like surrealism, dreams consist of every-day objects that we see and people we interact with, but we give them an unreal quality. In dreams, anything can happen and are often given a little twist, and things are not as they seem.

Dream - A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind. Dreams are notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities, and incongruities, and for the dreamer's delusional acceptance of the content and later difficulties remembering it.

Anorexia Nervosa

This is a picture of Mary-Kate Olsen. She was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa a few years ago, and it made headline news (what a sad, sad world we live in). Many hollywood stars are becoming role models for young people today. They are shown as very thin, which has led to teens across the country struggling to find the perfect body. This has led to many cases of anorexia nervosa, as teenagers try dieting and various other methods to try to reduce their weight. When they get this, they constantly think they are overweight, leading to a vicious cycle of weight-loss, where therapy becomes a necessity.

Anorexia Nervosa - An eating disorder in which a normal-weight person (usually an adolescent female) diets and becomes significantly (15% or more) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.

Motivation

This image is often associated with motivation. It shows a donkey that is motivated to pull a wagon in order to reach a goal, the carrot. Unfortunately for the donkey, it doesn't realize that the goal is unattainable, but it is enough motivation for the simple beast. We often need motivation to do things that we are unwilling to do. These can be shaped by our desires and needs, depending on what we want at the moment, and it can come in many forms, including food.

Motivation - A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior. 

Gender

These are the two symbols we commonly use to denote gender (besides the two humanoid symbols we see on bathroom doors.) The arrow represents male, and the cross represents female. This also uses colors to distinguish between the two, because blue is usually associated with boys, and pink is usually associated with girls.

Gender - In psychology, the characteristics, whether biologically or socially influenced, by which people define male and female.

Reflex

When asked to picture a reflex, this knee-jerk reflex is probably the first thing that comes to our minds. We all have experienced it in the doctors office, where the doctor hits your knee and makes sure your reflex is working.

Reflex - A simple, autonomic, inborn response to a sensory stimulus.