Quizlet AP Psychology Exam Review

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  1. (cerebral) cortex: wrinkled outer portion of brain; center for higher order brain functions such as thinking, planning, judgment; processes sensory information and directs movement
  2. ACTH (arenocorticotropic hormone): released by adrenal glands; triggered by norepinephrine to prolong the response to stress (used in the sympathetic nervous system)
  3. Aaron Beck: pioneer in Cognitive Therapy. Suggested negative beliefs cause depression.
  4. Abnormal Behavior: Behavior characterized as atypical, socially unacceptable, distressing to the individual or others, maladaptive, and/or the result of distorted cognitions
  5. Abnormal psychology: The field of psychology concerned with the assessment, treatment, and prevention of maladaptive behavior.
  6. Abraham Maslow: humanistic psychology; hierarchy of needs-needs at a lower level dominate an individual's motivation as long as they are unsatisfied; self-actualization, transcendence
  7. Absolute threshold: The statistically determined minimum level of stimulation necessary to excite a perceptual system.
  8. Accommodation: According to Piaget, the process by which existing mental structures and behaviors are modified to adapt to new experiences
  9. Actor-observer Effect: The tendency to attribute the behavior of others to dispositional causes but to attribute one's own behavior to situational causes.
  10. Adolescence: The period of extending from the onset of puberty to early adulthood
  11. Ageism: Prejudice against the elderly and the resulting discrimination against them
  12. Aggression: Any behavior intended to harm another person or thing.
  13. Agoraphobia: anxiety disorder characterized by marked fear and avoidance of being alone in a place from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing
  14. Albert Bandura: pioneer in observational learning (AKA social learning), stated that people profit from the mistakes/successes of others; Studies: Bobo Dolls-adults demonstrated 'appropriate' play with dolls, children mimicked play
  15. Albert Ellis: pioneer in Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), focuses on altering client's patterns of irrational thinking to reduce maladaptive behavior and emotions
  16. Alfred Adler: neo-Freudian, psychodynamic; Contributions: inferiority complex, organ inferiority; Studies: birth order influences personality
  17. Alfred Binet: pioneer in intelligence (IQ) tests, designed a test to identify slow learners in need of help-not applicable in the U.S. because it was too culture-bound (French)
  18. Algorithm: Procedure for solving a problem by implementing a set of rules over and over again until the solution is found.
  19. Altruism: Behaviors that benefit other people and for which there is no discernable extrinsic reward, recognition, or appreciation.
  20. Alzheimer's Disease: A chronic and progressive disorder of the brain that is the most common cause of degeneration dementia
  21. Anal Stage: Freud's second stage of personality development, from about age 2 to about age 3, during which children learn to control the immediate gratification they obtain through defecation and to become responsive to the demands of society.
  22. Androgynous: Having both stereotypically male and stereotypically female characteristics
  23. Anna Freud: child psychoanalysis; emphasized importance of the ego and its constant struggle
  24. Anna O.: Austrian-Jewish woman (real name: Bertha Pappenheim) diagnosed with hysteria, treated by Josef Breuer for severe cough, paralysis of the extremities on the right side of her body, and disturbances of vision, hearing, and speech, as well as hallucinations and loss of consciousness. Her treatment is regarded as marking the beginning of psychoanalysis.
  25. Anorexia Nervosa: An eating disorder characterized by an obstinate and willful refusal to eat, a distorted body image, and an intense fear of being fat
  26. Antisocial personality disorder: Personality disorder characterized by egocentricity, and behavior that is irresponsible and that violates the rights of other people, a lack of guilt feelings, an inability to understand other people and a lack of fear of punishment.
  27. Anxiety: a generalized feeling of fear and apprehension that may be related to a particular situation or object and is often accompanied by increased physiological arousal.
  28. Appraisal: the evaluation of the significance of a situation or event as it relates to a person's well-being
  29. Approach-approach conflict: Conflict that results from having to choose between two attractive alternatives
  30. Approach-avoidance conflict: Conflict that results from having to choose an alternative that has both attractive and unappealing aspects
  31. Archetypes: In Jung's theory, the emotionally charged ideas and images that are rich in meaning and symbolism and exist within the collective unconscious.
  32. Aristotle: Ancient Greek philosopher. Wrote "Peri Psyches" ("About the Mind").
  33. Arousal: Activation of the central nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, and the muscles and glands
  34. Assessment: Process of evaluating individual differences among human beings by means of tests interviews, observations, and recordings of physiological.
  35. Assimilation: According to Piaget, the process by which new ideas and experiences are absorbed and incorporated into existing mental structures and behaviors
  36. Attachment: The strong emotional tie that a person feels toward special other persons in his or her life
  37. Attitudes: Patterns of feelings and beliefs about other people, ideas, or objects that are based on a person's past experiences, shape his or her future behavior, and are evaluative in nature.
  38. Attributions: The process by which a person infers other people's motives or intensions by observing their behavior.
  39. Aversive counterconditioning: A counterconditioning technique in which an aversive or noxious stimulus is paired with a stimulus with the undesirable behavior.
  40. Avoidance-avoidance conflict: Conflict that results from having to choose between two distasteful alternatives
  41. B.F. Skinner: behaviorism; pioneer in operant conditioning; behavior is based on an organism's reinforcement history; worked with pigeons
  42. Babinski reflex: Reflex in which a newborn fans out the toes when the sole of the foot is touched
  43. Backward search: Heuristic procedure in which a problem solver works backward from the goal or end of a problem to the current position, in order to analyze the problem and reduce the steps needed to get from the current position to the goal.
  44. Behavior therapy: A therapy that is based on the application of learning principles to human behavior and that focuses on changing overt behaviors rather than on understanding subjective feelings, unconscious processes, or motivations; also known as behavior modification.
  45. Benjamin Whorf: language; his hypothesis is that language determines the way we think
  46. Biofeedback: A process through which people receive information about the status of a physical system and use this feedback information to learn to control the activity of that system
  47. Bipolar disorder: mood disorder originally know as manic-depressive disorder because it is characterized by behavior that vacillates between two extremes; mania and depression.
  48. Blood-Brain Barrier: A mechanism that prevents certain molecule from entering the brain but allows others to cross
  49. Body Language: Communication of information through body positions and gestures.
  50. Bonding: Special process of emotional attachment that may occur between parents and babies in the minutes and hours immediately after birth
  51. Brainstorming: Problem-solving technique that involves considering all possible solutions without making prior evaluative judgments.
  52. Brightness: The lightness or darkness of reflected light, determined in large part by the light's intensity.
  53. Broca's area: located in left frontal lobe; controls production of speech
  54. Bulimia Nervosa: An eating disorder characterized by repeated episodes of binge eating (and a fear of not being able to stop eating) followed by purging
  55. Burnout: State of emotional and physical exhaustion, lowered productivity, and feelings of isolation, often caused by work-related pressures
  56. Bystander Effect: Unwillingness to help exhibited by witnesses to an event, which increase when there are more observers.
  57. Cannon-Bard theory of emotion: conscious experience of emotion and physiological arousal occur at the same time
  58. Carl Jung: neo-Freudian, analytic psychology; archetypes; collective unconscious; libido is all types of energy, not just sexual; dream studies/interpretation
  59. Carl Rogers: humanistic psychology; Contributions: founded client-centered therapy, theory that emphasizes the unique quality of humans especially their freedom and potential for personal growth, unconditional positive regard,
  60. Carol Gilligan: moral development studies to follow up Kohlberg. She studied girls and women and found that they did not score as high on his six stage scale because they focused more on relationships rather than laws and principles. Their reasoning was merely different, not better or worse
  61. Case study: a descriptive study that includes an intensive study of one person and allows an intensive examination of a single case, usually chosen for its interesting or unique characteristics
  62. Catatonic type of schizophrenia: Type of schizophrenia characterized either by displays of excited or violent motor activity or by stupor.
  63. Charles Darwin: biologist; developed theory of evolution; transmutation of species, natural selection, evolution by common descent; "The Origin of Species" catalogs his voyage on The Beagle
  64. Charles Spearman: intelligence; found that specific mental talents were highly correlated, concluded that all cognitive abilities showed a common core which he labeled 'g' (general ability)
  65. Child abuse: physical, emotional, or sexual mistreatment of a child.
  66. Circadian Rhythms: Internally generated patterns of body functions, including hormonal signals, sleep, blood pressure, and temperature regulation, which have approximately a 24-hour cycle and occur even in the absence of normal cues about whether it is day or night
  67. Clark Hull: motivation theory, drive reduction; maintained that the goal of all motivated behavior is the reduction or alleviation of a drive state, mechanism through which reinforcement operates
  68. Classical Conditioning: Conditioning process in which an originally neutral stimulus, by repeated pairing with a stimulus that normally elicits a response, comes to elicit a similar or even identical response; aka Pavlovian conditioning
  69. Client-centered therapy: An insight therapy, developed be Carl Rogers, that seeks to help people evaluate the world and themselves from their own perspective by providing them with a nondirective environment and unconditional positive regard; also known as person-centered therapy.
  70. Cognitive Dissonance: A state of mental discomfort arising from a discrepancy between two or more of a person's beliefs or between a person's beliefs and overt behavior.
  71. Cognitive Psychology: The study if the overlapping fields of perception, learning, memory, and thought, with a special emphasis on how people attend to, acquire, transform, store, and retrieve knowledge.
  72. Cognitive theories: In the study of motivation, an explanation of behavior that asserts that people actively and regularly determine their own goals and the means of achieving them through thought.
  73. Collective Unconscious: In Jung's theory, a shared storehouse of primitive ideas and images that reside in the unconscious and are inherited from one's ancestors.
  74. Collective Unconscious: Jung's theory of a shared storehouse of primitive ideas and images that are inherited ideas and images, called archetypes, are emotionally charged and rich in meaning and symbolism
  75. Color Blindness: The inability to perceive different hues.
  76. Concept: Mental category used to classify an event or object according to some distinguishing property or feature.
  77. Concordance rate: The degree to which a condition or traits shared two or more individuals or groups
  78. Concrete operational stage: Piaget's thrid stage of cognitive development (lasting from approximately age 6 or 7 to age 11 or 12), during which the child develops the ability to understand constant factors in the environment, rules, and higher-order symbolic systems
  79. Conditioned Response: Response elicited by a conditioned stimulus
  80. Conditioned Stimulus: Neutral stimulus that, through repeated association with an unconditioned stimulus, begins to elicit a conditioned response
  81. Conditioning: Systematic procedure through which associations and responses to specific stimuli are learned
  82. Conflict: The emotional state or condition that arises when a person must choose between two or more competing motives, behaviors, or impulses
  83. Conformity: People's tendency to change attitudes or behaviors so that they are consistent with those of other people or with social norms.
  84. Consciousness: The general state of being aware of and responsive to events in the environment, as well as one's own mental processes
  85. Consciousness: Freud's level of mental life that consists of those experiences that we are aware of at any given time.
  86. Conservation: Ability to recognize that objects can e transformed in some way, visually or phycially, yet still be the same in number, weight, substance, or volume
  87. Convergent thinking: In problem solving, the process of narrowing down choices and alternatives to arrive at a suitable answer.
  88. Coping: Process by which a person takes some action to manage, master, tolerate, or reduce environmental or internal demands that cause or might cause stress and that tax the individual's inner resources
  89. Counterconditioning: Process of reconditioning in which a person is taught a new, more adaptive response to a familiar stimulus.
  90. Creativity: A feature of thought and problem solving that includes the tendency to generate or recognize ideas considered to be high-quality, original, novel, and appropriate.
  91. Critical Period: The time in to development of an organism when it is especially sensitive to certain environmental influences; outside of that period the same influences will have far less effect
  92. Cross-sectional Studies: A type of research design that compares individuals of different ages to determine how they differ
  93. Cross-sectional study: A type of research design that compares individuals of different ages to determine how they differ on an important dimension
  94. DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid; genetic formation in a double-helix; can replicate or reproduce itself; made of genes
  95. Daniel Goleman: emotional intelligence
  96. Dark adaptation: The increase in sensitivity to light that occurs when the illumination level changes from high to low, causing chemicals in the rods and cones to regenerate and return to their inactive state.
  97. Darley & Latane: social psychology; bystander apathy, diffusion of responsibility
  98. David McClelland: achievement motivation; developed scoring system for TAT's use in assessing achievement motivation
  99. David Rosenhan: did study in which healthy patients were admitted to psychiatric hospitals and diagnoses with schizophrenia; showed that once you are diagnosed with a disorder, the label, even when behavior indicates otherwise, is hard to overcome in a mental health setting
  100. David Weschler: established an intelligence test especially for adults (WAIS); also WISC and WPPSI
  101. Debriefing: Informing participants about the true nature of a experiment after its completion.
  102. Decentration: Process of changing from a totally self-oriented point of view to one tha recognizes other people's feelings, ideas, and viewpoints
  103. Decision making: Assessing and choosing among alternatives.
  104. Defense Mechanism: An unconscious way of reducing anxiety by distorting perceptions of reality.
  105. Deindividuation: The process by which individuals lose their self-awareness and distinctive personality in the context of a group, which may lead them to engage in antinormative behavior.
  106. Delusions: False beliefs that are inconsistent with reality but are held in spite of evidence that disproves them.
  107. Demand characteristics: Elements of an experimental situation that might cause a participant to perceive the situation in a certain way or become aware of the purpose of the study and thus bias the participant to behave in a certain way, and in so doing, distort results.
  108. Dementia: Impairment of mental functioning and global cognitive abilities in otherwise alert individuals, causing memory loss and related symptoms and typically having a progressive nature
  109. Denial: Defense mechanism by which people refuse to accept reality.
  110. Dependence: The situation that occurs when the drug becomes part of the body's functioning and produces withdrawal symptoms when the drug is discontinued
  111. Depressive disorders: general category of mood disorders in which people show extreme and persistent sadness, despair, and loss of interest in life's usual activities.
  112. Descriptive Studies: A type of research method that allows researchers to measure variables so that they can develop a description of a situation or phenomenon
  113. Developmental Psychology: The study of the lifelong, often age-related, processes of change in the physical, cognitive, moral, emotional, and social domains of functioning; such changes are rooted in biological mechanisms that are genetically controlled, as well as in social interactions
  114. Deviation IQ: A standard IQ test score whose mean and standard deviation remain constant for all ages
  115. Dichromats: People who can distinguish only two of the three basic colors.
  116. Discrimination: Behavior targeted at individuals or groups and intended to hold them apart and treat them differently.
  117. Disorganized type of schizophrenia: type of schizophrenia characterized by severely disturbed thought processes, frequent incoherence, disorganized behavior, and inappropriate affect.
  118. Displacement: Defense mechanism by which people divert sexual or aggressive feelings for one person onto another person.
  119. Dissociative amnesia: Dissociative disorder characterized by the sudden and extensive inability to recall important personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature.
  120. Dissociative disorders: psychological disorders characterized by a sudden but temporary alteration in consciousness, identity, sensorimotor behavior, or memory
  121. Dissociative identity disorder: dissociative disorder characterized by the existence within an individual of two or more distinct personalities, each of which is dominant at different times and directs the individual's behavior at those times; commonly known as multiple personality disorder.
  122. Divergent thinking: In problem solving, the process of widening the range of possibilities and expanding the options for solutions.
  123. Double bind: a situation in which an individual is given two different and inconsistent messages.
  124. Double-blind techniques: A research technique in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the control and experimental groups.
  125. Dream: A state of consciousness that occurs during sleep, usually accompanied by vivid visual, tactile, or auditory imagery.
  126. Dream analysis: Psychoanalytic technique in which a patient's dreams are described in detail and interpreted so as to provide insight into the individual's unconscious motivations.
  127. Drive: an internal aroused condition that directs an organism to satisfy a physiological need
  128. Drive theory (aka, drive-reduction theory): an explanation of behavior that assumes that an organism is motivated to act because of a need to attain, reestablish, or maintain some goal that helps with survival
  129. Drug: Any chemical substance that, in small amounts, alters biological or cognitive processes or both
  130. EEG (electroencephalogram): shows brain's electrical activity by positioning electrodes over the scalp
  131. ESP: the controversial claim that sensation can occur apart from sensory input
  132. Edward Bradford Titchener: Student of Wilhelm Wundt; founder of Structuralist school of psychology.
  133. Edward Thorndike: behaviorism; Law of Effect-relationship between behavior and consequence
  134. Ego: In Freud's theory, the part of personality that seeks to satisfy instinctual needs in accordance with reality.
  135. Egocentrism: Inability to perceive a situation or event except in relation to oneself; also know as self-centeredness
  136. Ekman & Friesen: Universal Emotions (based upon facial expressions); Study Basics: Constants across culture in the face and emotion
  137. Elaboration Likelihood Model: Theory suggesting that there are two routes to attitude change: the central route, which focuses on thoughtful consideration of an argument for change, and the peripheral route, which focuses on less careful, more emotional, and even superficial evaluation.
  138. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT): A treatment for severe mental illness in which an electric current is briefly applied to the head in order to produce a generalized seizure.
  139. Electroencephalogram (EEG): Graphical record of brain-wave activity obtained through electrodes placed on the scalp and forehead
  140. Electromagnetic Radiation: The entire spectrum of waves initiated by the movement of charged particles.
  141. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross: developmental psychology; wrote "On Death and Dying": 5 stages the terminally ill go through when facing death (1. denial, 2. anger, 3. bargaining, 4. depression, 5. acceptance)
  142. Elizabeth Loftus: cognition and memory; studied repressed memories and false memories; showed how easily memories could be changed and falsely created by techniques such as leading questions and illustrating the inaccuracy in eyewitness testimony
  143. Embryo: The prenatal organism from the 5th through the 49th day after conception
  144. Emotion: A subjective response, usually accompanied by a physiological change, which is interpreted n a particular way by the individual and often leads to a change in behavior
  145. Equity Theory: Social psychological theory that states that people attempt to maintain stable, consistent interpersonal relationships in which the ratio of member's contributions is balanced.
  146. Erik Erikson: neo-Freudian, humanistic; 8 psychosocial stages of development: theory shows how people evolve through the life span. Each stage is marked by a psychological crisis that involves confronting "Who am I?"
  147. Ernst Weber: perception; identified just-noticeable-difference (JND) that eventually becomes Weber's law
  148. Ex Post Facto Design: A type of design that contrasts groups of people who differ on some variable of interest to the researcher.
  149. Excitement phase: the first phase of the sexual response cycle during which there are increases in heart rate blood pressure and respiration
  150. Expectancy Theories: Explanations of behavior that focus on people's expectations about reaching a goal and their need for achievement as energizing factors
  151. Experimental design: A design in which researchers manipulate an independent variable and measure a dependent variable to determine a cause-and-effect relationship
  152. Extinction (classical conditioning): The procedure of withholding the unconditioned stimulus and presenting the conditioned stimulus alone, which gradually reduces the probability of the conditioned response
  153. Extinction (operant conditioning): The process by which the probability of an organism's emitting a response is reduced when reinforcement no longer follows the response
  154. Extrinsic motivation: Motivation supplied by rewards that come from the external environment
  155. Factor analysis: Statistical procedure designed to discover the independent elements (factors) in any set of data
  156. Family therapy: A type of therapy in which two or more people who are committed to one another's well-being are treated at once, in and effort to change the ways the interact.
  157. Fetus: The prenatal organism from the 8th week after conception until birth
  158. Fixation: An excessive attachment to some person or object that was appropriate only at an earlier stage of development
  159. Fixed-interval Schedule: A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer (reward) is delivered after a specified interval of time, provided that the required response occurs at least once in the interval
  160. Fixed-ratio Schedule: A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer(reward) is delivered after a specified number of responses has occurred
  161. Formal operational stage: Piaget's fourth and final stage of cognitive development (beginning at about age 12), during which the individual can think hypothetically, can consider future possibilites, and can use deductive logic
  162. Francis Galton: differential psychology AKA "London School" of Experimental Psychology; Contributions: behavioral genetics, maintains that personality & ability depend almost entirely on genetic inheritance; compared identical & fraternal twins, hereditary differences in intellectual ability
  163. Free association: Psychoanalytic technique in which a person is asked to report to the therapist his or her thoughts and feelings as they occur, regardless of how trivial, illogical, or objectionable their content may appear.
  164. Fulfillment: In Roger's theory of personality, an inborn tendency directing people toward actualizing their essential nature and thus attaining their potential.
  165. Functional fixedness: Inability to see that an object can have a function other than its stated or usual one.
  166. Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to attribute other people's behavior to dispositional (internal) causes rather than situational (external) causes.
  167. GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid): neurotransmitter that inhibits firing of neurons; linked with Huntington's disease
  168. Gazzaniga or Sperry: neuroscience/biopsychology; studied split brain patients
  169. Gender: A socially and culturally constructed set of distinctions between masculine and feminine sets of behaviors that is promoted and expected by society
  170. Gender Identity: A person's sense of being male or female
  171. Gender Schema Theory: The theory that children and adolescents use gender as an organizing theme to classify and interpret their perceptions about the world and themselves
  172. Gender stereotype: A fixed, overly simple, sometimes incorrect idea about traits, attitudes, and behaviors of males or females
  173. Generalized anxiety disorder: An anxiety disorder characterized by persistent anxiety occurring on more days than not for at least 6 months, sometimes with increased activity of the autonomic nervous system, apprehension, excessive muscle tension, and difficulty in concentrating
  174. Genital Stage: Freud's last stage of personality development, from the onset of puberty through adulthood, during which the sexual conflicts of childhood resurface (at puberty) and are often resolved during adolescence).
  175. Gestalt psychology: school of psychological thought that argued that behavior cannot be studied in parts but must be viewed a s whole
  176. Gibson & Walk: developmental psychology; "visual cliff" studies with infants
  177. Gordon Allport: trait theory of personality; 3 levels of traits: cardinal, central, and secondary
  178. Grammar: The linguistic description of how a language functions, especially the rules and patterns used for generating appropriate and comprehensible sentences.
  179. Grasping reflex: Reflex that causes a newborn to grasp vigorously any object touching the palm or fingers or placed in the hand
  180. Group: Two or more individuals who are working with a common purpose or have some common goals, characteristics, or interests.
  181. Group Polarization: Shifts or exaggeration in group members' attitudes or behavior as a result of group discussion.
  182. Group therapy: Psychotherapeutic process in which several people meet as a group with a therapist to receive psychological help.
  183. Groupthink: The tendency of people in a group to seek concurrence with one another when reaching a decision, rather than effectively evaluating options.
  184. Halo effect: The tendency for one characteristic of an individual to influence a tester's evaluation of other characteristics
  185. Hans Eysenck: personality theorist; asserted that personality is largely determined by genes, used introversion/extroversion
  186. Harry Harlow: development, contact comfort, attachment; experimented with baby rhesus monkeys and presented them with cloth or wire "mothers;" showed that the monkeys became attached to the cloth mothers because of contact comfort
  187. Harry Stack Sullivan: interpersonal psychoanalysis; groundwork for enmeshed relationships, developed the Self-System, a configuration of personality traits
  188. Health psychology: Subfield concerned with the use of psychological ideas and principles to enhance health, prevent illness, diagnose and treat disease, and improve rehabilitation
  189. Henry Murray: personality assessment; created the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) with Christina Morgan, stated that the need to achieve varied in strength in different people and influenced their tendency to approach and evaluate their own performances
  190. Heritability: The genetically determined proportion of a trait's variation among individuals in a population
  191. Herman von Helmholtz: Theorist who both aided in the development of the trichromatic theory of color perception and Place theory of pitch perception.
  192. Hermann Ebbinghaus: memory; studied memorization of meaningless words
  193. Hermann Ebbinghaus: the first person to study memory scientifically and systematically; used nonsense syllables and recorded how many times he had to study a list to remember it well
  194. Hermann Rorschach: developed one of the first projective tests, the Inkblot test which consists of 10 standardized inkblots where the subject tells a story, the observer then derives aspects of the personality from the subject's commentary
  195. Heuristics: Sets of strategies, rather than strict rules, that act as guidelines for discovery-oriented problem solving.
  196. Higher-order Conditioning: Process by which a neutral stimulus takes on conditioned properties through pairing with a conditioned stimulus
  197. Hobson & McCarley: sleep/dreams/consciousness; pioneers of Activation-Synthesis Theory of dreams; sleep studies that indicate the brain creates dream states, not information processing or Freudian interpretations
  198. Holmes & Rahe: stress and coping; used "social readjustment scale" to measure stress
  199. Homeostasis: Maintenance of a constant state of inner stability or balance
  200. Howard Gardner: devised theory of multiple intelligences: logical-mathematic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, linguistic, musical, interpersonal, naturalistic
  201. Hue: The psychological property of light referred to as color, determined by the wavelengths of reflected light.
  202. Humanistic theory: An explanation of behavior that emphasizes the entirety of life rather than individual components of behavior and focuses on human dignity, individual choice, and self-worth
  203. Hyperopic: Able to see objects at a distance clearly but having trouble seeing things up close; farsighted
  204. Id: In Freud's theory, the source of a person's instinctual energy, which works mainly on the pleasure principle.
  205. Ideal Self: In Roger's theory of personality, the self a person would ideally like to be.
  206. Imaginary Audience: A cognitive distortion experienced by adolescents, in which they see themselves as always "on stage" with an audience watching
  207. Impression Formation: The process by which a person uses behavior and appearance of others to form attitudes about them.
  208. Insight therapy: Any therapy that attempts to discover relationships between unconscious motivations and current abnormal behavior.
  209. Insomnia: Problems in going to sleep or maintaining sleep
  210. Intelligence: The overall capacity of an individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with the environment
  211. Interpersonal Attraction: The tendency of one person to evaluate another person (or a symbol or image of another person) in a positive way.
  212. Interpretation: In Freud's theory, the technique of providing a context, meaning, or cause for a specific idea, feeling, or set of behaviors; the process of tying a set of behaviors to its unconscious determinant.
  213. Intimacy: A state of being or feeling in which each person in a relationship is willing to self-disclose and to express important feelings and information to the other person.
  214. Intrinsic motivation: Motivation that leads to behaviors engaged in for no apparent reward except the pleasure and satisfaction of the activity itself
  215. Ivan Pavlov: discovered classical conditioning; trained dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell
  216. James-Lange theory of emotion: conscious experience of emnotion results from one's awareness of physiological arousal
  217. Jean Piaget: cognitive psychology; created a 4-stage theory of cognitive development, said that two basic processes work in tandem to achieve cognitive growth (assimilation and accommodation)
  218. John B Watson: behaviorism; emphasis on external behaviors of people and their reactions on a given situation; famous for Little Albert study in which baby was taught to fear a white rat
  219. John Garcia: Researched taste aversion. Showed that when rats ate a novel substance before being nauseated by a drug or radiation, they developed a conditioned taste aversion for the substance.
  220. John Locke: 17th century English philosopher. Wrote that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, people are born without innate ideas. We are completely shaped by our environment .
  221. Judith Langlois: developmental psychology;: social development & processing, effects of appearance on behavior, origin of social stereotypes, sex/love/intimacy, facial expression
  222. Karen Horney: neo-Freudian, psychodynamic; criticized Freud, stated that personality is molded by current fears and impulses, rather than being determined solely by childhood experiences and instincts, neurotic trends; concept of "basic anxiety"
  223. Karl Wernicke: "Wernicke's area"; discovered area of left temporal lobe that involved language understanding: person damaged in this area uses correct words but they do not make sense
  224. Kenneth Clark: social psychology; research evidence of internalized racism caused by stigmatization; doll experiments-black children chose white dolls
  225. Konrad Lorenz: ethology (animal behavior); studied imprinting and critical periods in geese
  226. Kurt Lewin: social psychology; German refugee who escaped Nazis, proved the democratic style of leadership is the most productive; studied effects of 3 leadership styles on children completing activities
  227. Langer & Rodin: Social Psychology; Helping behavior, personal responsibility; studied the effects of enhanced personal responsibility and helping behavior
  228. Language: A system of symbols, usually words, that convey meaning and a set of rules for combining symbols to generate an infinite number of messages.
  229. Latency Stage: Freud's fourth stage of personality development, from about age 7 until puberty, during which sexual urges are inactive.
  230. Latent Content: The deeper meaning of a dream, usually involving symbolism hidden meaning, and repressed or obscured ideas and wishes
  231. Latent Learning: Learning that occurs in the absence of direct reinforcement and that is not necessarily demonstrated through observable behavior
  232. Law of Effect: behaviors followed by pleasant consequences are strengthened while behaviors followed by unpleasant consequences are weakened (Thorndike)
  233. Lawrence Kohlberg: moral development; presented boys moral dilemmas and studied their responses and reasoning processes in making moral decisions. Most famous moral dilemma is "Heinz" who has an ill wife and cannot afford the medication. Should he steal the medication and why?
  234. Learned Helplessness: The behavior of giving up or not responding to punishment, exhibited by people or animals exposed to negative consequences or punishment over which they have no control
  235. Learned helplessness: the behavior of giving up or not responding, exhibited by people and animals exposed to negative consequences or punishment over which they feel they have no control.
  236. Learning: Relatively permanent change in an organism that occurs as a result of experiences in the environment
  237. Leon Festinger: social cognition, cognitive dissonance; Study Basics: Studied and demonstrated cognitive dissonance
  238. Lev Vygotsky: child development; investigated how culture & interpersonal communication guide development; zone of proximal development; play research
  239. Lewis Terman: revised Binet's IQ test and established norms for American children; tested group of young geniuses and followed in a longitudinal study that lasted beyond his own lifetime to show that high IQ does not necessarily lead to wonderful things in life
  240. Libido: In Freud's theory, the instinctual (and sexual) life force that, working on the pleasure principle and seeking immediate gratification, energizes the id.
  241. Light: The small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye.
  242. Linguistics: The study of language, including speech sounds, meaning, and grammar.
  243. Little Albert: subject in John Watson's experiment, proved classical conditioning principles, especially the generalization of fear
  244. Lloyd and Margaret Peterson: did work on short-term memory
  245. Logic: The system of principles of reasoning used to reach valid conclusions or make inferences.
  246. Longitudinal Study: A research method that focuses on a specific group of individuals at different ages to examine changes that have occurred over time
  247. Longitudinal Study: A research approach that follows a group of people over time to determine change or stability in behavior.
  248. Lucid Dream: Dream in which the dreamer is aware of dreaming while it is happening
  249. Mainstreaming: Practice of placing children with special needs in regular classroom settings, with the support of professionals who provide special education services
  250. Major depressive disorder: Depressive disorder characterized by loss of interest in almost all of life's usual activities; a sad, hopeless, or discourage mood, sleep disturbance; loss of appetite; loss of energy; and feelings of unworthiness and guilt.
  251. Manifest Content: The overt story line, characters, and setting of a dream-the obvious, clearly discernible events of the dream
  252. Martin Seligman: learning; Positive Psychology; learned helplessness theory of depression; Studies: Dogs demonstrating learned helplessness
  253. Mary Ainsworth: developmental psychology; compared effects of maternal separation, devised patterns of attachment; "The Strange Situation": observation of parent/child attachment
  254. Mary Cover-Jones: behaviorism/learning; pioneer in systematic desensitization, maintained that fear could be unlearned
  255. Masters & Johnson: motivation; human sexual response—studied how both men and women respond to and in relation to sexual behavior
  256. Means-ends analysis: Heuristic procedure in which the problem solver compares the current situation with the desired goal to determine the most efficient way to get from one to the other.
  257. Mediation: The use of a variety of techniques including concentration, restriction of incoming stimuli, and deep relaxation to produce a state of consciousness characterized by a sense of detachment.
  258. Metal retardation: Below-average intellectual functioning, as measured on an IQ test, accompanied by substantial limitations in functioning that originate before age 8
  259. Model:: an analogy or a perspective that uses a structure from one field to help scientists describe data in another field
  260. Monochromats: People who cannot perceive any color, usually because their retinas lack cones.
  261. Morality: A system of learned attitudes about social practices, instituations, and individual behavior used to evaluate situations and behavior as right or wrong, good or bad
  262. Moro reflex: Reflex in which a newborn strectches out the arms and legs and cries in response to a loud noise or an abrupt change in the environment
  263. Morpheme: A basic unit of meaning in a language.
  264. Motivation: any internal condition, although usually an internal one, that initates, activates, or maintains an organism's goal directed behavior
  265. Motive: a specific (usually internal) condition, usually involving some form of arousal, which directs an organism's behavior toward a goal.
  266. Myopic: Able to see clearly things that are close but having trouble seeing objects at a distance; nearsighted.
  267. Naturalistic observation: A descriptive research method in which researchers study behavior in its natural context.
  268. Need: State of physiological imbalance usually accompanied by arousal
  269. Need for achievement: A social need that directs a person to strive constantly for excellence and success
  270. Negative Reinforcement: Removal of a stimulus after a particular response to increase the likelihood that the response will recur
  271. Noam Chomsky: language development; disagreed with Skinner about language acquisition, stated there is an infinite # of sentences in a language, humans have an inborn native ability to develop language
  272. Non-rapid Eye Movement Sleep: Four distinct stages of sleep during which no rapid eye movements occur.
  273. Nonverbal Communication: The communication of information by cues or actions that include gestures, tone of voice, vocal inflections, and facial expressions.
  274. Normal curve: A bell-shaped graphic representation of data showing what percentage of the population falls under each part of the curve
  275. Norms: The scores and corresponding percentile ranks of a large and representative sample of individuals from the population for which a test was designed
  276. Obedience: Compliance with the orders of another person or group of people.
  277. Object permanence: The realization of infants that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight
  278. Observational Learning Theory: Theory that suggests that organisms learn new responses by observing the behavior of a model and then imitating it; aka. Social learning theory
  279. Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Anxiety disorder characterized by persistent and uncontrollable thoughts and irrational beliefs that cause the performance of compulsive rituals that interfere with daily life.
  280. Oedipus Complex: Feelings of rivalry with the parent of the same sex and sexual desire for the parent of the other sex, occurring during the phallic stage and ultimately resolved through identification with the parent of the same sex.
  281. Operant Conditioning: Conditioning in which an increase or decrease in the probability that a behavior will recur is affected by the delivery of reinforcement or punishment as a consequence of the behavior;
  282. Opponent-process theory: Visual theory, proposed by Herring, that color is coded by stimulation of three types of paired receptors; each pair of receptors is assumed to operate in an antagonist way so that stimulation by a given wavelength produces excitation (increased firing) in one receptor of the pair and also inhibits the other receptor.
  283. Optic chiasm: Point at which half of the optic nerve fibers from each eye cross over and connect to the other side of the brain.
  284. Oral Stage: Freud's first stage of personality development, from birth to about age 2, during which the instincts of infants are focused on the mouth as the primary pleasure center.
  285. Orgasm phase: the third phase of the sexual response cycle, during which autonomic nervous system activity reaches its peak and muscle contractions occur in spasms throughout the body, but especially in the genital area
  286. Overjustification effect: Decrease in likelihood that an intrinsically motivated task, after having been extrinsically rewarded, will be performed when the reward is no longer given.
  287. Panic Attack: Anxiety disorders characterized as acute anxiety, accompanied by sharp increases in autonomic nervous system arousal, that is not triggered by a specific event.
  288. Paranoid type of schizophrenia: type of schizophrenia characterized by hallucinations and delusions of persecution or grandeur (or both), and sometimes irrational jealousy.
  289. Paul Ekman: emotion; found that facial expressions are universal
  290. Percentile score: A score indicating what percentage of the test population would obtain a lower score
  291. Perception: Process by which an organism selects and interprets sensory input so that it acquires meaning.
  292. Personal Fable: A cognitive distortion experienced by adolescents, in which they believe they are so special and unique that other people cannot understand them and risky behaviors will not harm them
  293. Personality: A pattern of relatively permanent traits, dispositions, or characteristics that give some consistency to people's behavior.
  294. Personality disorders: psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and longstanding maladaptive behaviors that typically cause stress and/or social or occupational problems.
  295. Phallic Stage: Freud's third stage of personality development, from about age 4 through age 7, during which children obtain gratification primarily from the genitals.
  296. Phillip Zimbardo: social psychology; Stanford Prison Study; college students were randomly assigned to roles of prisoners or guards in a study that looked at who social situations influence behavior; showed that peoples' behavior depends to a large extent on the roles they are asked to play
  297. Phineas Gage: railroad worker who survived a severe brain injury that dramatically changed his personality and behavior; case played a role in the development of the understanding of the localization of brain function
  298. Phineas Gage: Vermont railroad worker who survived a severe brain injury that changed his personality and behavior; his accident gave information on the brain and which parts are involved with emotional reasoning
  299. Phobic disorders: Anxiety disorders characterized by excessive and irrational fear of, and consequent attempted avoidance of, specific objects or situations.
  300. Phoneme: A basic or minimum unit of sound in a language.
  301. Phonology: The study of the patterns and distributions of speech sounds in a language and the tacit rules for their pronunciation.
  302. Photoreceptors: The light-sensitive cells in the retina- the rods and cones.
  303. Placebo effect: A nonspecific improvement that occurs as a result of a person's expectations of change rather than as a direct result of any specific therapeutic treatment.
  304. Placenta: A mass of tissue that is attached to the wall f the uterus and connected to the developing fetus by the umbilical cord; it supplies nutrients and eliminates waste products
  305. Plateau phase: the second phase of the sexual response cycle, during which physical arousal continues to increase as the partners bodies prepare for orgasm
  306. Positive Reinforcement: Presentation of a stimulus after a particular response in order to increase the likelihood that the response will recur
  307. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Psychological disorder that may become evident after a person has undergone extreme stress caused by some type of disaster; common symptoms include vivid, intrusive recollections or reexperiences of the traumatic event and occasional lapses of normal consciousness
  308. Preconscious: Freud's level of the mind that contains those experiences that are not currently conscious but may become so with varying degrees of difficulty.
  309. Prejudice: Negative evaluation of an entire group of people, typically based on unfavorable (and often wrong) stereotypes about groups.
  310. Premack principle: commonly occurring behavior can reinforce a less frequent behavior
  311. Preoperational stage: Piaget's second stage of cognitive development (lasting from about age 2 to age 6 or 7), during which the child begins to represent the world symbolically
  312. Prevalence: the percentage of a population displaying a disorder during any specified period.
  313. Primary Punisher: Any stimulus or event that is naturally painful or unpleasant to an organism
  314. Primary Reinforcer: Reinforcer that has survival value for an organism; this value does not have to be learned
  315. Problem Solving: The behavior of individuals when confronted with a situation or task that requires insight or determination of some unknown elements.
  316. Projection: Defense mechanism by which people attribute their own undesirable traits to others.
  317. Projective Tests: Devices or instruments used to assess personality, in which examinees are shown a standard set of ambiguous stimuli and asked to respond to the stimuli in their own way.
  318. Prosocial Behavior: Behavior that benefits someone else or society but that generally offers no obvious benefit to the person performing it and may even involve some personal risk or sacrifice.
  319. Prototype: An abstraction, an idealized pattern of an object or idea that is stored in memory and used to decide whether similar objects or ideas are members of the same class of items.
  320. Psychoactive Drug: A drug that alters behavior, thought, or perception by altering biochemical reactions in the nervous system, thereby affecting consciousness
  321. Psychoanalysis: A lengthy insight therapy that was developed by Freud and aims at uncovering conflicts and unconscious impulses through special techniques, including free association, dream analysis, and transference.
  322. Psychodynamically: Therapies that use approaches or techniques derived from Freud, but that reject or modify some elements of Freud's theory.
  323. Psycholinguistics: The study of how language is acquired, perceived, understood, and produced.
  324. Psychoneuroimmunology: An interdisciplinary area of study that includes behavioral, neurological, and immune factors and their relationship to the development of disease
  325. Psychophysics: Subfield of psychology that focuses on the relationship between physical stimuli and people's conscious experiences of them.
  326. Psychosurgery: Brain surgery used in the past to alleviate symptoms of serious mental disorders.
  327. Psychotherapy: The treatment of emotional or behavior problems through psychological techniques.
  328. Psychotic: suffering from a gross impairment in reality testing that interferes with the ability to meet the ordinary demands of life.
  329. Puberty: The period during which the reproductive system matures; it begins with an increase in the production of sex hormones, which signals the end of childhood
  330. Punishment: Process of presenting an undesirable or noxious stimulus, or removing a desirable stimulus, to decrease the probability that a preceding response will recur
  331. REM (rapid eye movement) sleep: sleep stage when the eyes move about, during which vivid dreams occur; brain very active but skeletal muscles paralyzed
  332. Rape: Forcible sexual assault on an unwilling partner.
  333. Rapid Eye Movement Sleep: Stage of sleep characterized by high-frequency, low-amplitude brain-wave activity, rapid and systematic eye movements, more vivid dreams, and postural muscle paralysis
  334. Rational-emotive therapy: A cognitive behavior therapy that emphasizes the importance of logical, rational thought processes.
  335. Rationalization: Defense mechanism by which people reinterpret undesirable feelings or behaviors in terms that make them appear acceptable.
  336. Raw score: A test score that has not been transformed or converted in any way
  337. Raymond Cattell: intelligence: fluid & crystal intelligence; personality testing: 16 Personality Factors (16PF personality test)
  338. Reactance: The negative response evoked when there is an inconsistency between a person's self-image as being free to choose and the person's realization that someone is trying to force him or her to choose a particular occurrence.
  339. Reaction Formation: Defense mechanism by which people behave in a way opposite to what their true but anxiety-provoking feelings would dictate.
  340. Reasoning: The purposeful process by which a person generates logical and coherent ideas, evaluates situations, and reaches conclusions.
  341. Receptive fields: Areas of the retina that, when stimulated, produce a change in the firing of cells in the visual system.
  342. Reflex: Automatic behavior that occurs involuntarily in response to a stimulus and without prior learning and usually shows little variability from instance to instance
  343. Regression: A return to a prior stage after a person has progressed through the various stages of development; caused by anxiety.
  344. Reinforcer: Any event that increases the probability of a recurrence of the response that preceded it
  345. Reliability: Ability of a test to yield very similar scores for the same individual over repeated testings
  346. René Descartes: 17t century French philosopher. Famously known for writing "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"). Wrote about concept of dualism.
  347. Representative sample: A sample of individuals who match the population with whom they are being compared with regard to key variables such as socioeconomic status and age
  348. Representative sample: A sample that reflects the characteristics of the population from which it is drawn
  349. Repression: Defense mechanism by which anxiety-provoking thoughts and feelings are forced to the unconscious.
  350. Residual type of schizophrenia: a schizophrenic disorder in which the person exhibits inappropriate affect, illogical thinking, and/or eccentric behavior but seems generally in touch with reality.
  351. Resilience: The extent to which people are flexible and respond adaptively to external or internal demands
  352. Resistance: In psychoanalysis, an unwillingness to cooperate, which a patient signals by showing a reluctance to provide the therapist with information or to help the therapist understand or interpret a situation.
  353. Resolution Phase: the fourth phase of the sexual response cycle, following orgasm, during which the body returns to its resting, or normal state
  354. Robert Rosenthal: social psychology; focus on nonverbal communication, self-fulfilling prophecies; Studies: Pygmalion Effect-effect of teacher's expectations on students
  355. Robert Sternberg: intelligence; devised the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (academic problem-solving, practical, and creative)
  356. Robert Yerkes: intelligence, comparative; Yerkes-Dodson law: level of arousal as related to performance
  357. Robert Zajonc: motivation; believes that we invent explanations to label feelings
  358. Rooting reflex: Reflex that causes a newborn to turn the head toward a light touch on lips or cheek
  359. Rosenhan: Psychopathology and Social Psychology; effects of labeling; Rosenhan and colleagues checked selves into mental hospitals with symptoms of hearing voices say "empty, dull and thud." Diagnosed with schizophrenia. After entered, acted normally. Never "cleared" of diagnosis. Roles and labels in treating people differently.
  360. Rosenthal & Jacobson: Intelligence and learning, self-fulfilling prophecy; Study Basics: Researchers misled teachers into believing that certain students had higher IQs. Teachers changed own behaviors and effectively raised the IQ of the randomly chosen students
  361. Saccades: Rapid voluntary movements of the eyes.
  362. Saturation: The depth and richness of a hue determined by determined by the homogeneity of the wavelengths contained in the reflected light; also known as purity.
  363. Schachter-Singer theory of emotion: we determine our emotion based on our physiological arousal, then label that emotion according to our explanation for that arousal
  364. Schema: In Piaget's view, a specific mental structure; an organized way of interacting with the environment and experiencing it- a generalization a child makes based on comparable occurences of various actins, usally physical, motor actions
  365. Schizophrenic disorders: a group of psychological disorders characterized by a lack of reality testing and by deterioration of social and intellectual functioning and personality beginning before age 45 and lasting at least 6 months
  366. Secondary Punisher: Any neutral stimulus that initially has no intrinsic negative value for an organism but acquires punishing qualities when linked with a primary punisher
  367. Secondary Reinforcer: Any neutral stimulus that initially has no intrinsic value for an organism but that becomes rewarding when linked with a primary reinforcer
  368. Secondary Sex Characteristics: The genetically determined physical features that differentiate the sexes but are not directly involved with reproduction
  369. Self: In Roger's theory of personality, the perception an individual has of himself or herself and of his or her relationships to other people and to various aspects of life.
  370. Self-actualization: In humanistic theory, the final level of psychological development, in which one strives to realize one's uniquely human potential-to achieve everything one is capable of achieving
  371. Self-actualization: The process of growth and the realization of individual potential; in the humanistic view, a final level of psychological development in which a person attempts to minimize ill health, be fully functioning, have a superior perception of reality, and feel a strong sense of self-acceptance.
  372. Self-efficacy: A person's belief about whether he or she can successfully engage in and execute a specific behavior.
  373. Self-efficacy: The belief that a person can successfully engage in and execute a specific behavior
  374. Self-fulfilling prophecy: The creation of a situation that unintentionally allows personal expectancies to influence participants
  375. Self-perception Theory: Approach to attitude formation that assumes that people infer their attitudes and emotional states from their behavior.
  376. Self-serving Bias: People's tendency to ascribe their positive behaviors to their own internal traits, but their failures and shortcomings to external, situational factors.
  377. Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome: three-stage process which describes the body's reaction to stress: 1) alarm reaction, 2) resistance, 3) exahaustion
  378. Semantics: The analysis of the meaning of language, especially of individual words.
  379. Sensation: Process in which the sense organs' receptor cells are stimulated and relay initial information to higher brain centers for further processing.
  380. Sensorimotor stage: The first of Piaget's four stages of cognitive development (covering roughly the first 2 years of life), during which the child develops some motoer coordination skills and a memory for past events
  381. Sex: The biologically based categories of male and female
  382. Shaping: Selective reinforcement of behaviors that gradually approach the desired response
  383. Signal Detection Theory: Theory that holds that an observer's perception depends not only on the intensity of a stimulus but also on the observer's motivation, the criteria he or she sets for determining that a signal is present, and on the background noise.
  384. Size constancy: Ability of the visual perceptual system to recognize that an object remains constant in size regardless of its distance from the observer or the size of its image on the retina.
  385. Skinner Box: Named for its developer, B.F. Skinner, a box that contains a responding mechanism and a device capable of delivering a consequence to an animal in the box whenever it makes the desired response
  386. Social Categorization: The process of dividing the world into "in" groups and "out" groups.
  387. Social Cognition: The process of analyzing and interpreting events, other people, oneself, and the world in general.
  388. Social Facilitation: Change in behavior that occurs when people believe they are in the presence of other people.
  389. Social Influence: The ways people alter the attitudes or behaviors of others, either directly or indirectly.
  390. Social Interest: In Adler's theory, a feeling of openness with all humanity.
  391. Social Loafing: Decrease in effort and productivity that occurs when an individual works in a group instead of alone.
  392. Social Need: An aroused condition that directs people to behave in ways that allow them to feel good about themselves and others and to establish and maintain relationships
  393. Social Psychology: The scientific study of how people think about, interact with, influence, and are influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of other people.
  394. Social phobia: Anxiety disorder characterized by fear of, and desire to avoid, situations in which the person might be exposed to scrutiny by others and might behave in an embarrassing or humiliating way.
  395. Sociobiology: A discipline based on the premise that even day-to-day behaviors are determined by the process of natural selection – that social behaviors that contribute to the survival of a species are passed on via the genes from one generation to the next.
  396. Socrates: Ancient Greek philosopher. Promoted introspection by saying, "Know thyself."
  397. Solomon Asch: conformity; showed that social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously incorrect ; in a famous study in which participants were shown cards with lines of different lengths and were asked to say which line matched the line on the first card in length
  398. Specific phobia: Anxiety disorder characterized by irrational and persistent fear of a particular object or situation, along with a compelling desire to avoid it.
  399. Spontaneous Recovery: Recurrence of an extinguished conditioned response, usually following a rest period
  400. Standard score: A score that expresses an individual's position relative to the mean, based on the standard deviation
  401. Standardization: Process of developing uniform procedures for administering and scoring a test and for establishing norms
  402. Stanford-Binet intelligence tests: constructed by Lewis Terman, originally used ratio IQ (MA/CA x 100); now based on deviation from mean
  403. Stanley Milgram: obedience to authority; had participants administer what they believed were dangerous electrical shocks to other participants; wanted to see if Germans were an aberration or if all people were capable of committing evil actions
  404. Stanley Schachter: emotion; stated that in order to experience emotions, a person must be physically aroused and know the emotion before you experience it
  405. Stereotypes: Fixed, overly simple and often erroneous ideas about traits, attitudes, and behaviors of groups of people; stereotypes assume that all members of a given group are alike.
  406. Stimulant: A drug that increases alertness, reduces fatigue, and elevates mood
  407. Stimulus Discrimination: Process by which an organism learns to respond only to a specific stimulus and not to other stimuli
  408. Stimulus Generalization: Process by which a conditioned response becomes associated with a stimulus that is similar but not identical to the original conditioned stimulus
  409. Stress: A nonspecific, emotional response to real or imagined challenges or threats; a result of a cognitive appraisal by the individual
  410. Stressor: An environmental stimulus that affects an organism in physically or psychologically injurious ways, usually producing anxiety, tension, and physiological arousal
  411. Subgoal analysis: Heuristic procedure in which a problem is broken down into smaller steps, each of which has a subgoal.
  412. Sublimation: Defense mechanism by which people redirect socially unacceptable impulses toward acceptable goals.
  413. Subliminal perception: Perception below the threshold of awareness.
  414. Substance Abuser: A person who overuses and relies on drugs to deal with everyday life
  415. Sucking reflex: Reflex that causes a newborn to make sucking motions when a finger or nipple if placed in the mouth
  416. Superego: In Freud's theory, the moral aspect of mental functioning comprising the ego ideal (what a person would ideally like to be) and the conscience and taught by parents and society.
  417. Superstitious Behavior: Behavior learned through coincidental association with reinforcement
  418. Survey: One of the descriptive methods of research; it requires construction of a set of questions to administer to a group of participants
  419. Symptom substitution: The appearance of one overt symptom to replace another that has been eliminated by treatment.
  420. Syntax: The way words and groups of words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.
  421. Systematic desensitization: A three-stage counterconditioning procedure in which people are taught to relax when confronting stimuli that forming elicited anxiety.
  422. Temperament: Early-emerging and long-lasting individual differences in disposition and in the intensity and especially the quality of emotional reactions
  423. Teratogen: Substance that can produce developmental malformations (birth defects) during the prenatal period
  424. Thanatology: The study of the psychological and medical aspects of death and dying
  425. Theory of mind: An understanding of mental states such as feelings, desires, beliefs, and intentions and of the causal role they play in human behavior
  426. Time-out: An operant conditioning procedure in which a person is physically removed from sources of reinforcement to decrease the occurrence of undesired behaviors.
  427. Token economy: An operant conditioning procedure in which individuals who display appropriate behavior receive tokens that they can exchange for desirable items or activities.
  428. Tolerance: The characteristic of requiring higher and higher doses of a drug to produce the same effect.
  429. Tolman: cognition; studied rats and discovered the "cognitive map" in rats and humans
  430. Trait: Any readily identifiable stable quality that characterizes how an individual differs from other individuals.
  431. Transduction: Process by which a perceptual system analyzes stimuli and converts them into electrical impulses; also known as coding.
  432. Transference: Psychoanalytic phenomenon in which a therapist becomes the object of a patient's emotional attitudes about an important person in the patient's life, such as a parent.
  433. Trichromatic theory: Visual theory, stated by Young and Helmholtz that all colors can be made by mixing the three basic colors: red, green, and blue; a.k.a the Young-Helmholtz theory.
  434. Trichromats: People who can perceive all three primary colors and thus can distinguish any hue.
  435. Type A behavior: Behavior pattern characterized by competitiveness, impatience, hostility, and constant efforts to do more in less time
  436. Type B behavior: Behavior pattern exhibited by people who are calmer, more patient, and less hurried than Type A individuals
  437. Types: Personality categories in which broad collections of traits are loosely tied together and interrelated.
  438. Unconditioned Response: Unlearned or involuntary response to an unconditioned stimulus
  439. Unconditioned Stimulus: Stimulus that normally produces a measurable involuntary response
  440. Unconscious: Freud's level of mental life that consists of mental activities beyond people's normal awareness.
  441. Undifferentiated type of schizophrenia: a schizophrenic disorder that is characterized by a mixture of symptoms and does not meet the diagnostic criteria of any one type.
  442. Validity: Ability of a test to measure what it is supposed to measure and to predict what it is supposed to predict
  443. Variable-interval Schedule: A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer (reward) is delivered after predetermined but varying amounts of time, provided that the required response occurs at least once after each interval
  444. Variable-ratio Schedule: A reinforcement schedule in which a reinforcer (reward) is delivered after a predetermined but variable number of responses has occurred
  445. Vasocongestion: In the sexual response cycle, engorgement of the blood vessels, particularly in the genital area, due to increased blood flow
  446. Visual cortex: The most important area of the brain's occipital lobe, which receives and further processes information from the lateral geniculate nucleus; also known as the striate cortex.
  447. Von Restorff effect: occurs when recall is better for a distinctive item, even if it occurs in the middle of a list
  448. Vulnerability: A person's diminished ability to deal with demanding life events.
  449. Walter B. Cannon: motivation; believed that gastric activity as in empty stomach, was the sole basis for hunger; did research that inserted balloons in stomachs
  450. Wechsler intelligence tests: three age individual IQ tests: WPPSI (children), WISC (children), WAIS (adults)
  451. Wernicke's area: located in left temporal lobe; plays role in understanding language and making meaningful sentences
  452. Wilhelm Wundt: structuralism; in 1879 founded first psychology laboratory in world at University of Leipzig; introspection, basic units of experience
  453. William Dement: Sleep researcher who discovered and coined the phrase "rapid eye movement" (REM) sleep.
  454. William James: founder of functionalism; studied how humans use perception to function in our environment
  455. William Sheldon: personality; theory that linked personality to physique on the grounds that both are governed by genetic endowment: endomorphic (large), mesomorphic (average), and ectomorphic (skinny)
  456. Withdrawal Symptoms: The Reaction experienced when a substance abuser stops using a drug with dependence properties
  457. Wolpe: learning; systematic desensitization
  458. Working through: In psychoanalysis, the repetitive cycle of interpretation, resistance to interpretation, and transference.
  459. Zajonc & Markus: intelligence and development; discovered that first born and only children tend to have higher IQs than latter born children
  460. Zygote: A fertilized egg
  461. acetylcholine (ACh): neurotransmitter that causes contraction of skeletal muscles; lack of Ach linked with Alzheimer's disease;
  462. achievement test: test designed to determine a person's level of knowledge in a given subject area
  463. action potential: an electrical current sent down the axon of a neuron and is initiated by the rapid reversal of the polarization of the cell membrane
  464. adaptation: a trait or inherited characteristic that has increased in a population because it solved a problem of survival or reproduction
  465. adrenal glands: endocrine glands located above the kidney and secretes epinephrine and norepinephrine, which prepare the body for "fight or flight"
  466. afferent neuron: nerve cell that sends messages to brain or spinal cord from other parts of the body; also called sensory neurons
  467. agonist: chemical that mimics or facilitates the actions of a neurotransmitter
  468. all-or-none principle: the law that the neuron either fires at 100% or not at all
  469. amnesia: inability to remember information (typically, all events within a specific period), usually due to physiological trauma
  470. amygdala: part of the limbic system; influences emotions such as aggression, fear, and self-protective behaviors
  471. anorexia nervosa: eating disorder most common in adolescent females characterized by weight less than 85% of normal, restricted eating, and unrealistic body image
  472. antagonist: chemical that opposes the actions of a neurotransmitter
  473. anterograde amnesia: loss of memory for events and experiences occurring from the time of an amnesia-causing event forward
  474. aphasia: inability to understand or use language
  475. aptitude test: a test designed to predict a person's future performance
  476. association areas: areas of the cerebral cortex that are not involved in primary motor or sensory functions, rather, they are involved in higher mental processes such as thinking, planning, and communicating
  477. audition: the sense of hearing
  478. authoritarian parenting: style of parenting marked by emotional coldness, imposing rules and expecting obedience
  479. authoritative parenting: parenting style characterized by emotional warmth, high standards for behavior, explanation and consistent enforcement of rules, and inclusion of children in decision making
  480. autonomic nervous system: a division of the peripheral nervous system that regulates involuntary functions; made up of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
  481. aversive conditioning: learning involving an unpleasant or harmful stimulus or reinforcer
  482. axon: a single long, fiber that carries outgoing messages to other neurons, muscles, or glands
  483. axon terminal: terminal button, synaptic knob; the structure at the end of an excellent terminal branch; houses the synaptic vesicles and neurotransmitters
  484. behavior: an observable action
  485. behavioral genetics: study of hereditary influences and how it influences behavior and thinking
  486. behaviorism: perspective that defines psychology as the study of behavior that is directly observable or through assessment instruments
  487. binocular cues: depth cues that are based on two eyes
  488. blind spot: area on retina with no receptor cells (where optic nerve leaves the eye)
  489. bottom-up processing: information processing that begins at the sensory receptors and works up to perception
  490. brain: portion of the CNS above the spinal cord; consists of hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain
  491. brainstem: top of the spinal column
  492. bulimia nervosa: eating disorder characterized by pattern 9of eating binges followed by purging (e.g., vomiting, laxatives, exercise)
  493. case study: a highly detailed description of a single individual or a vent
  494. central nervous system: the brain and spinal cord
  495. cerebellum: part of the brain that coordinates balance, movement, reflexes
  496. chromosome: threadlike structure within the nucleus of cells that contain genes
  497. chunks: manageable and meaningful units of information organized in such a way that it can be easily encoded, stored, and retrieved
  498. clinical psychologist: psychologist who treats people serious psychological problems or conducts research into the causes of behavior
  499. cochlea: snail-shaped fluid-filled tube in the inner ear involved in transduction
  500. cognitive psychology: perspective that focuses on the mental processes involved in perception, learning, memory, and thinking
  501. cognitive-appraisal theory of emotion: our emotional experience depends on our interpretation of the situation we are in
  502. cohort effect: observed group differences based on the era when people were born and grew up, exposing them to particular experiences that may affect the results of cross-sectional studies
  503. computerized axial tomography (CT scan): creates a computerized image using x-rays passed through the brain
  504. cones: photoreceptors that detect color and fine detail in bright-light conditions; not present in peripheral vision
  505. confounding variable: anything that causes a difference between the IV and the DV other than the independent variable
  506. consolidation: the process of changing a short-term memory to a long-term one
  507. control group: subjects and not exposed to a changing variable in an experiment
  508. conventional level of moral development: morality based on fitting in to the norms of society
  509. convolutions: the folds in the cerebral cortex that increase the surface area of the brain
  510. cornea: transparent covering of the eye
  511. corpus callosum: large band of white neural fibers that connects to to brain hemispheres and carries messages between them; myelinated; involved in intelligence, consciousness, and self-awareness; does it reach full maturity until 20s
  512. correlation coefficient: a number that expresses the degree and direction of the relationship between 2 variables, ranging from -1 to +1
  513. correlational research: establish the relationship between two variables
  514. counseling psychologist: psychologist who treats people with adjustment problems
  515. crystallized intelligence: learned knowledge and skills such as vocabulary, which tends to increase with age
  516. debriefing: a procedure to inform participants about the true nature of an experiment after its completion
  517. decay: loss of information from memory as a result of disuse and the passage of time
  518. declarative memory: memory for specific information
  519. demand characteristics: clues participants discover about the purpose of a study that suggest how they should respond
  520. dendrites: branching extensions of neuron that receives messages from neighboring neurons
  521. dependent variable: the variable in a controlled experiment that is expected to change due to the manipulation of the independent variable
  522. depressants (AKA sedative-hypnotics): Any of a class of drugs that relax and calm a user and, in higher doses, induce sleep; also known as a depressant
  523. descriptive statistics: general set of procedures used to summarize, condense, and describe sets of data
  524. developmental psychologist: studies psychological development across the lifespan
  525. difference threshold: minimum difference between any two stimuli that person can detect 50% of the time
  526. dominant genes: member of a gene terror that controls the appearance of a certain trait
  527. dopamine: neurotransmitter that influences voluntary movement, attention, alertness; lack of dopamine linked with Parkinson's disease; too much is linked with schizophrenia
  528. double-blind procedure: technique in which neither the persons involved for those conducting the experiment know in what group to participate is involved
  529. dualism: seeing mind and body as two different things that interact
  530. eclectic: use of techniques and ideas from a variety of approaches
  531. educational psychologist: focuses on how effective teaching and learning take place
  532. efferent neuron: nerve cell that send messages from brain and spinal cord to other parts of body; also called motor neurons
  533. elaborative rehearsal: rehearsal involving repletion and analysis, in which a stimulus may be associated with (linked to) other information and further processed
  534. emotional intelligence: the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions
  535. empiricism: the view that knowledge should be acquired through observation and often an experiment
  536. encoding: organizing sensory information so it can be processed by the nervous system
  537. encoding specificity principle: retrieval cues that match original information work better
  538. endocrine glands: the bodies "slow" chemical communication by secreting hormones directly into the bloodstream
  539. endocrine system: glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream, which regulate body and behavioral processes
  540. endorphins: chemical similar to opiates that relieves pain; may induce feelings of pleasure
  541. engineering psychologist: does research on how people function best with machines
  542. epinephrine: adrenaline; activates a sympathetic nervous system by making the heart beat faster, stopping digestion, enlarging pupils, sending sugar into the bloodstream, preparing a blood clot faster
  543. episodic memory: memory of specific personal events and situations (episodes) tagged with information about time
  544. ethics: rules of proper and acceptable conduct that investigators use to guide psychological research
  545. ethnocentrism: tendency to believe that one's own group is the standard, the reference point by which other people and groups should be judged
  546. evolutionary psychology: perspective that seeks to explain and predict behaviors by analyzing how the human brain developed over time, how it functions, and how input from the environment affects human behaviors
  547. ex post facto study: describes differences between groups of participants that differ naturally on a variable such as race or gender
  548. ex post facto study: a type of design that contrasts groups of people who differ on some variable of interest to the researcher
  549. excitatory neurotransmitter: chemical secreted at terminal button that causes the neuron on the other side of the synapse to fire
  550. experiment: a procedure in which a researcher systematically manipulates and observes elements of a situation in order to test a hypothesis and make a cause-and-effect statement
  551. experimental group: in an experiment, the group of participants to whom a treatment is given
  552. experimenter bias: expectation of the person conducting an experiment which may be affect the outcome
  553. explicit memory: conscious memory that a person is aware of
  554. family studies: studies of hereditability on the assumption that if a gene influences a certain trait, close relatives should be more similar on that trait in distant relative
  555. fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS): group of abnormalities that occur in the babies of mothers who drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy
  556. flashbulb memories: detailed memory for events surrounding a dramatic event that is vivid and remembered with confidence
  557. fluid intelligence: cognitive abilities requiring speed or rapid learning that tends to diminish with age
  558. forebrain: largest, most complicated, and most advanced of the three divisions of the brain; comprises the thalamus, hypothalamus, limbic system, basal ganglia, corpus callosum, and cortex
  559. forebrain: top of the brain which includes the thalamus, hypothalamus, and cerebral cortex; responsible for emotional regulation, complex thought, memory aspect of personality
  560. forensic psychologist: applies psychological concepts to legal issues
  561. fovea: small area of retina where image is focused
  562. fraternal twins: twins from two separate fertilized eggs (zygotes); share half of the same genes
  563. frequency: number of wavelengths that pass a point in a given amount of time; determines hue of light and the pitch of a sound
  564. frequency distribution: a chart or array of scores, usually arranged from highest to lowest, showing the number of instances for each score
  565. frequency polygon: graph of a frequency distribution that shows the number of instances of obtained scores, usually with the data points connect by straight lines
  566. frontal lobes: control emotional behaviors, make decisions, carry out plans; speech (Broca's area); controls movement of muscles
  567. functional MRI (fMRI): shows brain activity at higher reolution than PET scan when changes in oxygen concentration in neurons alters its magnetic qualities
  568. functionalism: school of psychological thought that was concerned with how and why the conscious mind works
  569. gate control theory: pain is only experienced in the pain messages can pass through a gate in the spinal cord on their route to the brain
  570. gene: a DNA segment on a chromosome that controls transmission of traits
  571. genetic mapping: dividing the chromosomes into smaller fragments that can be characterized and ordered so that the fragments reflect their respective locations on specific chromosomes
  572. genetics: study of how traits are transmitted from one generation to the next
  573. genotype: an individual's genetic make-up
  574. glial cells: supportive cells of nervous system that guide growth of new neurons; forms myelin sheath; holds neuron in place; provides nourishment and removes waste
  575. gonads: reproductive glands-male, testes; female, ovaries
  576. graded potential: shift in electrical charge in a tiny area of the neuron (temporary); transmits a long cell membranes leaving neuron and polarized state; needs higher than normal threshold of excitation to fire
  577. gustation: sense of taste
  578. habituation: decreased responsiveness with repeated presentation of the same stimulus
  579. hallucinogens (AKA psychedelic drugs): Consciousness-altering drugs that affect moods, thoughts, memory, judgment, and perception and that are consumed for the purpose of producing those results
  580. health psychologist: focuses on psychological factors in illness
  581. heritability: the proportion of variation among individuals that is due to genetic causes
  582. hindbrain: the most primitive of the three functional divisions of the brain, consisting of the pons, medulla, reticular formation, and cerebellum
  583. hindbrain: division which includes the cerebellum, Pons, and medulla; responsible for involuntary processes: blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, breathing, sleep cycles
  584. hippocampus: part of the limbic system and is involved in learning and forming new long-term memories
  585. hormone: chemical that carries messages that travel through the bloodstream to help regulate bodily functions
  586. human genomes: 30,000 genes needed to build a human
  587. humanistic psychology: perspective that emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual and the idea that humans have free will
  588. hypnosis: state with deep relaxation and heightened suggestibility
  589. hypothalamus: area of the brain that is part of the limbic system and regulates behaviors such as, eating, drinking, sexual behaviors, motivation; also body temperature
  590. hypothesis: a tentative statement or idea expressing a causal relationship between two events or variables that is to be evaluated in a research study
  591. identical twins: twins from a single fertilized egg (zygote) with the same genetic makeup; also called monozygotic (MZ) twins
  592. imagery: the creation or re-creation of a mental picture of a sensory or perceptual experience
  593. implicit memory: memory a person is not aware of possessing
  594. independent variable: the variable in a controlled experiment that the experimenter directly and purposefully manipulates to see how the other variables under study will be affected
  595. industrial/organizational psychologist: applies psychological principles to the workplace to improve productivity and the quality of work life
  596. inferential statistics: procedures used to draw conclusions about larger populations from small samples of data
  597. informed consent: the agreement of participants to take part in an experiment and their acknowledgement that they understand the nature of their participation in the research, and have been fully informed about the general nature of the research, its goals, and methods
  598. inhibitory neurotransmitter: chemical secreted at terminal button that prevents (or reduces ability of) the neuron on the other side of the synapse from firing
  599. instinct: inherited, automatic species-specific behaviors
  600. insulin: hormone backpacks in the regulation of blood sugar by acting in the utilization of carbohydrates; released by pancreas; too much-hypoglycemia, too little-diabetes
  601. interference: the suppression of one bit of information by another
  602. interneurons: nerve cell that transmits messages between sensory and motor neurons
  603. introspection: a person's description and analysis of what he or she is thinking and feeling or what he or she has just thought about
  604. ions: electrically charged particles found both inside and outside a neuron; negative ions are found inside the cell membrane in a polarized neuron
  605. iris: colored part of the eye that regulates size of pupil
  606. just noticeable difference (JND): experience of the difference threshold
  607. kinesthesis: body sense that provides information about the position and movement of individual parts of the body
  608. lens: structure behind pupil that changes shape to focus light rays onto the retina
  609. levels-of-processing approach: brain encodes information in different ways or on different levels; deeper processing leads to deeper memory
  610. limbic system: a donut ring-shaped of loosely connected structures located in the forebrain between the central core and cerebral hemispheres; consists of: septum, cingulate gyrus, endowments, hypothalamus, and to campus, and amygdala; associated with emotions and memories
  611. long-term memory: storage mechanism that keeps a relatively permanent record of memory
  612. long-term potentiation: the biochemical processes that make it easier for the neuron to respond again when it has been stimulated
  613. magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): creates a computerized image using a magnetic field and pulses of radio waves
  614. maintenance rehearsal: repetitive review of information with little or no interpretation
  615. mean: the arithmetic average of a set of scores
  616. measure of central tendency: a descriptive statistic that tells which result or score best represents an entire set of scores
  617. median: the measure of central tendency that is the data point with 50% of the scores above it and 50% below it
  618. medulla (also medulla oblongata): part of the brain which controls living functions such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature
  619. memory: the ability to recall past events, images, ideas, or previously learned information or skills; the storage system that allows a person to retain and retrieve previously learned information
  620. memory span: the number of items a person can reproduce from short-term memory, usually consisting of one or two chunks
  621. menarche: first menstrual period
  622. menopause: the cessation of the ability to reproduce
  623. midbrain: the second level of the three organizational structures of the brain that receives signals from other parts of the brain or spinal cord and either relays the information to other parts of the brain or causes the body to act immediately; involved in movement
  624. midbrain: the middle division of brain responsible for hearing and sight; location where pain is registered; includes temporal lobe, occipital lobe, and most of the parietal lobe
  625. mode: the most frequently occurring score in a set of data
  626. monism: seeing mind and body as different aspects of the same thing
  627. monocular cues: depth cues that are based on one eye
  628. moral development: growth in the ability to tell right from wrong, control impulses, and act ethically
  629. motivated forgetting: occurs when frightening, traumatic events are forgotten because people want to forget them
  630. motive: a need or want that causes someone to act
  631. motor neurons: efferent neurons; neurons that carry messages from spinal cord/brain to muscles and glands
  632. motor projection areas: primary motor cortex; areas of the three boat cortex for response messages from the brain to the muscles and glands
  633. mutation: unexpected changes in the gene replication process that are not always evident in phenotype and create unusual and sometimes harmful characteristics of body or behavior
  634. myelin sheath: a white, fatty covering of the axon which speeds transmission of message
  635. natural selection: the principle that those characteristics and behaviors that help organisms adapt, be fit, and survive will be passed on to successive generations, because flexible, fit individuals have a greater chance of reproduction
  636. naturalistic observation: observing and recording behavior naturally without trying to manipulate and control the situation
  637. nature: a person's inherited traits, determined by genetics
  638. nature-nurture controversy: deals with the extent to which heredity and the environment each influence behavior
  639. nerve: bundles of axons
  640. nervous system: the structures and organs that facilitate electrical and chemical communication in the body and allow all behavior and mental processes to take place
  641. neural impulse: action potential; the firing of a nerve cell; the entire process of the electrical charge (message/impulse) traveling through inner on; can be as fast as 400 fps (with myelin) or 3 fps (no myelin)
  642. neural plasticity: Ability of the brain to change their experience, both structurally and chemically
  643. neurogenesis: production of new brain cells; November 1988: cancer patients proved that new neurons grew until the end of life
  644. neuron: individual cells that are the smallest unit of the nervous system; it has three functions: receive information, process it, send to rest of body
  645. neuropsychologist: concerned with the relationship between brain/nervous system and behavior
  646. neuroscience: study of the brain and nervous system; overlaps with psychobiology
  647. neurotransmitters: chemical messengers released by terminal buttons into the synapse
  648. nonconscious: the level of consciousness devoted to processes completely unavailable to conscious awareness (e.g., fingernails growing)
  649. norepinephrine: noradrenaline; chemical which is excitatory, similar to adrenaline, and affects arousal and memory; raises blood pressure by causing blood vessels to become constricted, but also carried by bloodstream to the anterior pituitary which relaxes ACTH thus prolonging stress response
  650. normal distribution: approximate distribution of scores expected when a sample is taken from a large population, drawn as a frequency polygon that often takes the form of a bell-shaped curve, called the normal curve
  651. nurture: a person's experiences in the environment
  652. observer bias: expectations of an observer which may distort an authentic observation
  653. occipital lobes: primary area for processing visual information
  654. olfaction: sense of smell
  655. operational definition: a definition of a variable in terms of the set of methods or procedures used to measure or study that variable
  656. opiates (AKA narcotics): Drugs derived from the opium poppy, including opium, morphine, and heroin
  657. opponent-process theory of emotion: following a strong emotion, an opposing emotion counters the first emotion, lessening the experience of that emotion; on repeated occasions, the opposing emotion becomes stronger
  658. optic nerve: carries impulses from the eye to the brain
  659. pancreas: organ lying between the stomach and small intestine; regulates blood sugar by secreting to regulating hormones insulin and glucagon
  660. parallel processing: simultaneously analyzing different elements of sensory information, such as color, brightness, shape, etc.
  661. parasympathetic nervous system: a branch of the autonomic nervous system that maintains normal body functions; it calms the body after sympathetic stimulation
  662. parathormone: hormone that controls imbalances levels of calcium and phosphate in the blood and tissue fluid; influences levels of excitability; secreted by parathyroids
  663. parathyroid: for glands embedded in the thyroid; secretes parathormone; controls announces level of calcium and phosphate (which influence levels of excitability)
  664. parietal lobes: processes sensory information including touch, temperature, and pain from other body parts
  665. participant: an individual who takes part in an experiment and whose behavior is observed as part of the data collection process
  666. percentile score: the percentage of scores at or below a certain score
  667. peripheral nervous system: division that connects the central nervous system to the rest of the body; includes all sensory and motor neurons; divided into somatic nervous system and autonomic nervous system
  668. phenotype: the expression of genes
  669. photoreceptors: light sensitive cells (rods and cones) that convert light to electrochemical impulses
  670. pineal gland: endocrine gland that produces melatonin that helps regulate sleep/wake cycle
  671. pitch: the highness or lowness of a sound
  672. pituitary gland: endocrine gland that produces a large amount of hormones; it regulates growth and helps control other endocrine glands; located on underside of brain; sometimes called the "master gland"
  673. placebo: typically a pill that is used as a control in the experiment; a sugar pill
  674. placebo effect: response to the belief that the IV will have an effect, rather than the IV's actual effect, which can be a confounding variable
  675. polarization: when the neuron is at rest; condition of neuron when the inside of the neuron is negatively charged relative to the outside of Enron; is necessary to generate the neuron signal in release of this polarization
  676. polygenic inheritance: process by which several genes interact to produce a certain trait; responsible for most important traits
  677. pons: part of the brain involved in sleep/wake cycles; also connects cerebellum and medulla to the cerebral cortex
  678. population: all of the individuals in the group to which a study applies
  679. positive psychology: in emerging Theo psychology that focuses on positive experiences; includes subjective well-being, self-determination, the relationship between positive emotions and physical health, and the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to boorish
  680. positron emission tomography (PET scan): shows brain activity when radioactively tagged glucose rushes to active neurons
  681. postconventional level of moral development: morality based on one's own individual moral principles (i.e., conscience)
  682. preconscious: level of consciousness that is outside awareness but contains feelings and memories that can easily be brought into conscious awareness
  683. preconventional level of moral development: morality based on consequences to self
  684. prenatal development: period of development from conception until birth
  685. primacy effect: the more accurate recall of items presented at the beginning of a series
  686. proactive interference: previously learned information interferes with the ability to learn new information
  687. procedural memory: memory for skills, including perceptual, motor, and cognitive skills required to complete tasks
  688. pseudoscience: an unscientific system which pretends to discover psychological information that his means are unscientific or deliberately fraudulent
  689. psychiatrist: a medical doctor who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders
  690. psychoanalyst: one who uses psychoanalysis to treat psychological problems
  691. psychoanalytic: perspective developed by freud, which assumes that psychological problems are the result of anxiety resulting from unresolved conflicts and forces of which a person might be unaware
  692. psychobiology: study that focuses on biological foundations of behavior and mental processes; overlaps with neuroscience
  693. psychologist: professional who studies behavior and uses behavioral principles in scientific research or in applied settings
  694. psychology: the scientific study of behavior and mental processes
  695. psychometrician: focuses on methods of acquiring and analyzing data
  696. pupil: small opeing in iris that is smaller in bright light and larger in darkness
  697. random sample: selection of a part of the population without reason; participation is by chance
  698. range: the spread between the highest and the lowest scores in a distribution
  699. recency effect: the more accurate recall of items presented at the end of a series
  700. receptor site: a location on a receptor neurons which is like a key to a lock (with a specific nerve transmitter); allows for orderly pathways
  701. recessive gene: member of the gene terror that controls the appearance of a certain trait only if it is paired with the same gene
  702. refractory period: after firing when a neuron will not fire again no matter how strong the incoming message may be
  703. rehearsal: process of repeatedly verbalizing, thinking about, or otherwise acting on or transforming information in order to keep that information active in memory
  704. relative refractory period: a period after firing when a neuron is returning to its normal polarize state and will only fire again if the incoming message open parentheses impulse) is stronger than usual; returning to arresting state
  705. replication: the repetition of an experiment to test the validity of its conclusion
  706. representative sample: selection of a part of the population which mirrors the current demographics
  707. response bias: preconceived notions of a person answering [a survey] which may alter the experiments purpose
  708. resting potential: when a neuron is in polarization; more negative ions are inside the neuron cell membrane with a positive ions on the outside, causing a small electrical charge; release of this charge generates a neuron's impulse (signal/message)
  709. reticular formation (RF) (RES): netlike system of neurons that weaves through limbic system and plays an important role in attention, arousal, and alert functions; arouses and alerts higher parts of the brain; anesthetics work by temporary shutting off RF system
  710. retina: light-sensitive surface on back of eye containing rods and cones
  711. retrieval: process by which stored information is recovered from memory
  712. retroactive interference: newly learned information interferes with the ability to recall previously learned information
  713. retrograde amnesia: loss of memory of events and experiences that preceded an amnesia-causing event
  714. rods: photoreceptors that detect black, white, and gray, and movement; used for vision in dim light
  715. sample: a group of participants who are assumed to be representative of the population about which an inference is being made
  716. schema: framework of basic ideas about people, objects and events based on past experience in long-term memory
  717. schema: a conceptual framework that organizes information and allows a person to make sense of the world
  718. school psychologist: assesses and counsels students, consults with educators and parents, and performs behavioral intervention when necessary
  719. science: way of getting knowledge about the world based on observation
  720. scientific method: in psychology, the techniques used to discover knowledge about human behavior and mental processes
  721. selection studies: studies that estimate the hereditability of a trait by breeding animals with another animal that has the same trait
  722. selective attention: focused awareness of only a limited amount of all you are capable of experiencing
  723. self-actualization: the human need to fulfill one's potential
  724. self-fulfilling prophecy: when a researcher's expectations unknowingly create a situation that affects the results
  725. semantic memory: memory of ideas, rules, words, and general concepts about the world
  726. sensory adaptation: temporary decrease in sensitivity to a stimulus that occurs when stimulation is unchanging
  727. sensory memory: performs initial encoding; provides brief storage; also called sensory register
  728. sensory neurons: afferent neurons; neurons that carry messages from sensory organs to the brain and spinal cords
  729. serotonin: neurotransmitter that affects sleep, arousal, mood, appetite; lack of it is linked with depression
  730. set point: preset natural body weight, determined by the number of fat cells in the body
  731. shaping: positively reinforcing closer and closer approximation of a desired behavior to teach a new behavior
  732. short-term storage: holds information for processing; fragile; also called short term memory or working memory
  733. significant difference: in an experiment, a difference that is unlikely to have occurred because of chance alone and is inferred to be most likely due to the systematic manipulations of variables by the researcher
  734. social psychologist: focuses on how the individual's behavior and mental processes are affected by interactions with other people
  735. sociocultural psychology: perspective concerned with how cultural differences affect behavior
  736. somatic nervous system: division of peripheral nervous system; controls voluntary actions
  737. sound localization: the process by which the location of sound is determined
  738. spinal cord: portion of the CNS that carries messages to the PNS; connects brain to the rest of the body
  739. split brain patients: people whose corpus callosum has been surgically severed
  740. sports psychologist: helps athletes improve their focus, increase motivation, and deal with anxiety and fear of failure
  741. standard deviation: a descriptive statistic that measures the variability of data from the mean of the sample
  742. state-dependent learning: the tendency to recall information learned while in a particular physiological state most accurately when one is in that physiological state again
  743. statistics: branch of mathematics that deals with collecting, classifying, and analyzing data
  744. storage: the process of maintaining or keeping information readily available; the locations where information is held
  745. strain studies: studies of hereditability it be a behavioral traits using animals that have been inbred to produce strains that are genetically similar to one another
  746. structuralism: school of psychological thought that considered the structure and elements of conscious experience to be the proper subject matter of psychology
  747. survey research: the measurement of public opinion through the use of sampling and questioning
  748. sympathetic nervous system: a branch of the autonomic nervous system and prepares the body for quick action in emergencies; "fight or flight"
  749. synapse: the space between two neurons where neurotransmitters are secreted by terminal buttons and received by dendrites
  750. synaptic cleft: synaptic gap or synaptic space; tiny gap between the terminal of one neuron and the dendrites of another neuron (almost never touch); location of the transfer of an impulse from one neuron to the next
  751. synaptic vesicles: tiny oval-shaped sacs in a terminal of one neuron; assist in transferring mineral impulse from one neuron to another neuron by releasing specific neurotransmitters
  752. temporal lobes: main area for hearing, understanding language (Wernicke's area), understanding music; smell
  753. terminal buttons (axon terminals): ends of axons that secrete neurotransmitters
  754. thalamus: motor sensory relay center for four of the five senses; and with a brain stem and composed of two egg-shaped structures; integrates in shades incoming sensory signals; Mnemonic-"don't smell the llamas because the llamas smell bad"
  755. theory: a collection of interrelated ideas and facts put forward to describe, explain, and predict behavior and mental processes
  756. thyroid gland: located in neck; regulates metabolism by secreting thyroxine
  757. thyroxine: released by thyroid; hormone that regulates the body's metabolism; OVERACTIVE-over-excitability, insomnia, reduced attention span, fatigue, snap decisions, reduced concentration (hyperthyroidism); UNDERACTIVE-desire to sleep, constantly tired, weight gain (hypothyroidism)
  758. timbre: the quality of a sound determined by the purity of a waveform
  759. token economy: operant training system that uses secondary reinforcers (tokens) to increase appropriate behavior; learners can exchange tokens for desired rewards
  760. top-down processing: information processing guided by pre-existing knowledge or expectations to construct perceptions
  761. transfer appropriate processing: occurs when initial processing of information is similar to the process of retrieval; the better the match, the better the recall
  762. triarchic theory of intelligence: Robert Sternberg's theory that describes intelligence as having analytic, creative and practical dimensions
  763. twin studies: studies as identical and rhetorical twins to determine relative influence of heredity and environment on human behavior
  764. unconscious: level of consciousness that includes unacceptable feelings, wishes, and thoughts not directly available to conscious awareness
  765. variability: the extent to which scores differ from one another
  766. variable: a condition or characteristic of a situation or a person that is subject to change (it varies) within or across situations or individuals
  767. vestibular sense: body sense of equilibrium and balance
  768. visual acuity: sharpness of vision
  769. working memory: Temporarily holds current or recent information for immediate or short-term use; Information is maintained for 20–30 seconds while active processing (e.g., rehearsal) takes place
  770. zone of proximal development: the range between the level at which a child can solve a problem working alone with difficulty, and the level at which a child can solve a problem with the assistance of adults or children with more skill