| Term | Definition |
|---|
| addiction | compulsive drug craving and use. |
| alpha waves | brain wave of awake relaxed person |
| amphetamines | drugs that increase energy and stimulate neural activity |
| barbiturates | drugs that reduce anxiety and depress central nervous system activity |
| consciousness | Our awareness Of ourselves and our environment |
| delta waves | the large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep. |
| depressants | drugs (such as alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates) that reduce neural activity and slow body functions. |
| dissociation | a split between different levels of consciousness |
| dream | a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind. are notable for their hallucinatory imagery, discontinuities, and incongruities, and for the dreamer’s delusional acceptance of the content and later difficulties remembering it. |
| Ecstasy | a synthetic stimulant and mild hallucinogen. Produces euphoria and social intimacy, but with short-term health risks and longer-term harm to serotonin-producing neurons and to mood and cognition. |
| endorphin | natural painkiller produced by the brain |
| Freud's theory | theory that dreaming reflects our erotic drives |
| hallucinations | false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus. |
| hallucinogens | psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") drugs, such as LSD, that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input. |
| hypnosis | a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur. |
| insomnia | recurring problems in falling or staying asleep. |
| latent content | deeper meaning of dreams |
| LSD | a powerful hallucinogenic drug; also known as acid (lysergic acid diethylamide). |
| manifest content | surface meaning of dreams |
| mesmerism | early name for hypnosis |
| methamphetamine | a powerfully addictive drug that stimulates the central nervous system, with speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes; over time, appears to reduce baseline dopamine levels. |
| monism | the presumption that mind and body are different aspects of the same thing. |
| narcolepsy | disorder in which sleep attacks occur |
| night terrors | a sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified; unlike nightmares, night terrors occur during Stage 4 sleep, within two or three hours of falling asleep, and are seldom remembered. |
| opiates | opium and its derivatives, such as morphine and heroin; they depress neural activity, temporarily lessening pain and anxiety. |
| physical dependence | a physiological need for a drug, marked by unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when the drug is discontinued. |
| posthypnotic suggestion | a suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors. |
| psychoactive drug | a chemical substance that alters perceptions and mood. |
| psychological dependence | a psychological need to use a drug such as to relieve negative emotions. |
| REM | sleep stage associated with dreaming |
| REM rebound | the tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation (created by repeated awakenings during REM sleep). |
| REM sleep | stage of sleep associated with muscular relaxation |
| serotonin | neurotransmitter that LSD resembles |
| sleep | periodic, natural, reversible loss of consciousness—as distinct from unconsciousness resulting from a coma, general anesthesia, or hibernation. (Adapted from Dement, 1999.) |
| sleep apnea | sleep disorder in which breathing stops |
| sleep spindle | brain-wave activity during Stage 2 sleep |
| Stages 3 and 4 sleep | stage of sleep associated with delta waves |
| stimulants | drugs (such as caffeine, nicotine, and the more powerful amphetamines, cocaine, and Ecstasy) that excite neural activity and speed up body functions. |
| THC | the major active ingredient in marijuana; triggers a variety of effects, including mild hallucinations. |
| tolerance | the diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drug’s effect. |
| withdrawal | the discomfort and distress that follow discontinuing the use of an addictive drug. |
| binocular cues | depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes. |
| convergence | a binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object. the greater the inward strain, the closer the object. |
| depth perception | the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance. |
| extrasensory perception | the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input. Said to include telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. |
| figure-ground | the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground). |
| gestalt | an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes. |
| grouping | the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups. |
| human factors psychology | a branch of psychology that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made safe and easy to use. |
| inattentional blindness | failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere. |
| monocular cues | depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone. |
| parapsychology | the study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis. |
| perceptual adaptation | in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field. |
| perceptual constancy | perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change. |
| perceptual set | a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another. |
| phi phenomenon | an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession. |
| retinal disparity | a binocular cue for perceiving depth: By comparing images from the two eyeballs, the brain computes distance-the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object. |
| selective attention | the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus, as in the cocktail party effect. |
| visual capture | the tendency for vision to dominate the other senses. |
| visual cliff | a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals. |
| operant conditioning | a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. |
| respondent behavior | behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus; Skinner’s term for behavior learned through classical conditioning. |
| operant behavior | behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences. |
| law of effect | Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely. |
| operant chamber | a chamber also known as a Skinner box, containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer, with attached devices to record the animal’s rate of bar pressing or key pecking. Used in operant conditioning research. |
| shaping | an operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior. |
| reinforcer | in operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows. |
| positive reinforcement | increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response. |
| negative reinforcement | increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli, such as shock. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. (Note, this is not the same thing as punishment.) |
| primary reinforcer | an innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need. |
| conditioned reinforcer | a stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as secondary reinforcer. |
| continuous reinforcement | reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs. |
| partial reinforcement | reinforcing a response only part of the time; results in slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction than does continuous reinforcement. |
| punishment | an event that decreases the behavior that it follows. |
| cognitive map | a mental representation of the layout of one’s environment. |
| latent learning | learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it. |
| intrinsic motivation | a desire to perform a behavior for its own sake. |
| extrinsic motivation | a desire to perform a behavior due to promised rewards or threats of punishment. |
| observational learning | learning by observing others. |
| modeling | the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior. |
| mirror neurons | frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation, language learning, and empathy. |
| prosocial behavior | positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior. |
| unconditioned stimulus | in classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally—naturally and automatically—triggers a response. |
| conditioned stimulus | in classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to trigger a conditioned response. |
| conditioned response | in classical conditioning, the learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS). |
| unconditioned response | in classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus (US), such as salivation when food is in the mouth. |
| learning | a relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due to experience. |
| associative learning | learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning). |
| classical conditioning | a type of learning in which an organism comes to associate stimuli. A neutral stimulus that signals an unconditioned stimulus (US) begins to produce a response that anticipates and prepares for the unconditioned stimulus. Also called Pavlovian or respondent conditioning. |
| behaviorism | the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2). |
| acquisition | the initial stage in classical conditioning; the phase associating a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus comes to elicit a conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response. |
| extinction | the diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (US) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS); occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced. |
| spontaneous recovery | the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response. |
| generalization | the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses. |
| discrimination | in classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus. |
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