Quizlet
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| A critical period | ______________ is a limited time shortly after birth during which an organism must be exposed to certain stimuli or experiences if it is to develop properly, (p. Ill) |
| A double-blind procedure | _____________ is an experimental procedure in which neither the experimenter nor the research participants are aware of which condition is in effect. It is used to prevent experimenters' and participants' expectations from influencing the results of an experiment, (p. 23) |
| A hypothesis | _____________ is a testable prediction, often implied by a theory; testing the hypothesis helps scientists to test the theory, (p. 14) |
| A population | _____________ consists of all the members of a group being studied, (p. 17) |
| A psychophysiological illness | is any genuine illness such as hypertension and some headaches that is apparently linked to stress rather than caused by a physical disorder, (p. 402) |
| A random sample | _____________ is one that is representative because every member of the population has an equal chance of being included, (p. 17) |
| A sexual disorder | is a problem—such as erectile disorder, premature ejaculation, and orgasmic dysfunction—that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning, (p. 352) |
| A stereotype | __________ is a generalized (sometimes accurate but often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people, (p. 545) |
| A theory | _____________is an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes observations and predicts behaviors or events, (p. 14) |
| Accommodation | ____________ is the process by which the lens of the eye changes shape to focus near objects on the retina, (p. 145) |
| Achievement motivation | is a desire for significant accomplishment; for mastery of things, people, or ideas; and for attaining a high standard, (p. 366) |
| Achievement tests | __________ measure a person's current knowledge, (p. 317) |
| Active listening | _________ is a nondirective technique of Rogers' client-centered therapy, in which the listener echoes, restates, and seeks clarification c but does not interpret, clients' remarks, (p. 501) |
| Adolescence | ______________ refers to the life stage from puberty to independent adulthood, denoted physically by a growth spurt and maturation of primary and secondary sex characteristics, cognitively by the onset of formal operational thought, and socially by the formation of identity, (p. 116) |
| Aerobic exercise | is any sustained activity such as running, swimming, or cycling that promotes heart and lung fitness and may help alleviate depression and anxiety, (p. 410) |
| Aggression | __________ is any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy, (p. 551) |
| Aggression | _______________ is physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone, (p. 88) |
| Alpha waves | ____________ are the relatively slow brain waves characteristic of an awake, relaxed state, (p. 188) |
| Altruism | __________ is unselfish regard for the welfare of others, (p. 546) |
| Amnesia | _______ is the loss of memory, (p. 265) |
| Amphetamines | ____________ are a type of stimulant and, as such, speed up body functions and neural activity, (p. 208) |
| An experiment | _____________is a research method in which a researcher manipulates one or more factors (independent variables) in order to observe their effect on some behavior or mental process (the dependent variable); experiments therefore make it possible to establish cause-effect relationships, (p. 22) |
| An instinct | is a complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned. (p. 336) |
| An operational definition | _____________ is a precise statement of the procedures (operations) used to define research variables, (p. 15) |
| Anorexia nervosa | is an eating disorder, most common in adolescent females, in which a person restricts food intake to become significantly underweight and yet still feels fat. (p. 342) |
| Anxiety disorders | __________ involve distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety, (p. 466) |
| Aphasia | _____________ is an impairment of language as a result of damage to any of several cortical areas, including Broca's area and Wernicke's area. (p. 56) |
| Applied research | _____________ is scientific study that aims to solve practical problems, (p. 8) |
| Aptitude tests | __________ are designed to predict future performance. They measure your capacity to learn new information, rather than measuring what you already know. (p. 317) |
| Attachment | ______________ is an emotional tie with another person, shown in young children by their seeking closeness to a caregiver and showing distress on separation, (p. Ill) |
| Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) | __________ is a psychological disorder characterized by one or more of three symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. (p. 461) |
| Attitudes | __________ are feelings, often based on beliefs, that may predispose a person to respond in particular ways to objects, people, and events, (p. 531) |
| Attribution theory | __________ deals with our causal explanations of behavior. We attribute behavior to the individual's disposition or to the situation, (p. 529) |
| Audition | ____________ refers to the sense of hearing, (p. 151) |
| Autism | ______________is a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind. (p. 109) |
| Automatic processing | _______ refers to our unconscious encoding of incidental information such as space, time, and frequency and of well-learned information, (p. 255) |
| Aversive conditioning | _________ is a form of counterconditioning in which an unpleasant state becomes associated with an unwanted behavior, (p. 504) |
| Barbiturates | ____________ are depressants, sometimes used to induce sleep or reduce anxiety, (p. 207) |
| Basal metabolic rate | is the body's base rate of energy expenditure when resting, (p. 341) |
| Basic research | _____________ is pure science that focuses to increase psychology's scientific knowledge base rather than to solve practical problems, (p. 8) |
| Behavior genetics | _______________ is the study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior, (p. 67) |
| Behavior therapy | _________ is therapy that applies learnin principles to the elimination of problem behav iors. (p. 502) |
| Behaviorism | _____________ is the view that psychology should 1 focus only on the scientific study of observable behaviors without reference to mental phenomena, (p. 4) |
| Behaviorism | ___________ is the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies only observable behaviors without reference to mental processes, (p. 223) |
| Belief perseverance | __________ is the tendency for people to cling to a particular belief even after the information that led to the formation of the belief is discredited, (p. 295) |
| Binocular cues | ____________ are depth cues that depend on information from both eyes. (p. 165) |
| Biofeedback | refers to a system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, (p. 411) |
| Biological psychology | _____________ is the study of the links between biology and behavior, (p. 35) |
| Biomedical therapy | _________ is the use of prescribed medications or medical procedures that act on a patient's nervous system to treat psychological disorders, (p. 497) |
| Bipolar disorder | __________ is the mood disorder in which a person alternates between depression and the euphoria of a manic state, (p. 477) |
| Bottom-up processing | ____________ is analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information, (p. 139) |
| Broca's area | _____________, located in the left frontal lobe, is involved in controlling the motor ability to produce speech, (p. 56) |
| Bulimia nervosa | is an eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise, (p. 342) |
| Catharsis | is emotional release; according to the catharsis hypothesis, by expressing our anger, we can reduce it. (p. 387) |
| Chromosomes | _______________ are threadlike structures made of DNA molecules, which contain the genes. In conception, the 23 chromosomes in the egg are paired with the 23 chromosomes in the sperm, (p. 67) |
| Chunking | _______ is the memory technique of organizing material into familiar, meaningful units, (p. 259) |
| Client-centered therapy | _________ is a humanistic nondi-rective therapy developed by Carl Rogers, in which growth and self-awareness are facilitated in an environment that offers genuineness, acceptance, and empathy, (p. 500) |
| Clinical psychology | _____________is the branch of psychology concerned with the study, assessment, and treatment of people with psychological disorders, (p. 8) |
| Cognition | ______________ refers to all the mental processes associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating, (p. 104) |
| Cognition | __________ refers to the mental activity associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information, (p. 289) |
| Cognitive dissonance theory | __________ refers to the theory that we act to reduce the psychological discomfort we experience when our behavior conflicts with what we think and feel, or more generally, when two of our thoughts are inconsistent. This is frequently accomplished by changing our attitude rather than our behavior, (p. 533) |
| Cognitive therapy | _________ focuses on teaching people new and more adaptive ways of thinking and acting. The therapy is based on the idea that our feelings and responses to events are strongly influenced by our thinking, or cognition, (p. 506) |
| Cognitive-behavior therapy | _________ is an integrated therapy that focuses on changing self-defeating thinking (cognitive therapy) and unwanted behaviors (behavior therapy), (p. 508) |
| Collectivism | _______________ is giving priority to the goals of one's group, and defining one's identity accordingly, (p. 85) |
| Color constancy | ____________ is the perception that familiar objects have consistent color despite changes in illumination that shift the wavelengths they reflect, (p. 167) |
| Companionate love | __________ refers to a deep, enduring, affectionate attachment, (p. 563) |
| Complementary and alternative medicine is a | collection of health care remedies and treatments that have not been accepted by medical science or verified by controlled research trials, (p. 412) |
| Conditioned reinforcers | ___________ are stimuli that acquire their reinforcing power through their association with primary reinforcers. (p. 235) |
| Conflict | __________ is a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas between individuals or groups, (p. 566) |
| Conformity | __________ is the tendency to change one's thinking or behavior to coincide with a group standard, (p. 536) |
| Conservation | ______________ is the principle that properties such as number, volume, and mass remain constant |
| Continuous reinforcement | ___________ is the operant procedure of reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs. In promoting the acquisition of a new response it is best to use continuous reinforcement, (p. 236) |
| Correlation | _____________is a measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other. The correlation coefficient is a statistical measure of the relationship; it can be positive or negative, (p. 18) |
| Counseling psychology | _____________ is the branch of psychology that helps people cope with challenges in their daily lives, (p. 8) |
| Counterconditioning | _________ is a category of behavior therapy in which new responses are classically conditioned to stimuli that trigger unwanted behaviors, (p. 502) |
| Critical thinking | _____________is careful reasoning that examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions, (p. 13) |
| Crystallized intelligence | ______________refers to those aspects of intellectual ability, such as vocabulary and general knowledge, that reflect accumulated learning. Crystallized intelligence tends to increase with age. (p. 128) |
| Culture | _____________is the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. (p. 25) |
| DNA | _______________ (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a complex molecule containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes, (p. 68) |
| DSM-IV | __________ is a short name for the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition, Text Revision), which provides a widely used system of classifying psychological disorders, (p. 463) |
| Deindividuation | __________ refers to the loss of self-restraint and self-awareness that sometimes occurs in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity, (p. 542) |
| Deja vu | _______ is the false sense that you have already experienced a current situation, (p. 270) |
| Delta waves | ____________ are the large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep, (p. 188) |
| Delusions | __________ are false beliefs that often are symptoms of psychotic disorders, (p. 486) |
| Depressants | ____________ are psychoactive drugs, such as alcohol, opiates, and barbiturates that reduce neural activity and slow body functions, (p. 206) |
| Depth perception | ____________ is the ability to see objects three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; it allows judge distance, (p. 165) |
| Developmental psychology | ______________ is the branch of psychology concerned with physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span. (p. 99) |
| Discrimination | __________ is unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group or its members (p. 545) |
| Discrimination | ___________ in classical conditioning refers to the ability to distinguish the CS from similar stimuli that do not signal a US. In operant conditioning, it refers to responding differently to stimuli that signal a behavior will be reinforced or will not be reinforced, (p. 227) |
| Displacement | _________ is the defense mechanism in which a sexual or aggressive impulse is shifted more acceptable object other than the one originally aroused the impulse, (p. 426) |
| Dissociation | ____________ is a split between different levels of consciousness, allowing a person to divide attention between two or more thoughts, (p. 202) |
| Dissociative disorders | __________ involve a separation of conscious awareness from one's previous memories, thoughts, and feelings, (p. 472) |
| Down syndrome | A common cause of severe retardation and associated physical disorders, __________ is usually the result of an extra chromosome in the person's genetic makeup, (p. 318) |
| Dreams | ____________ are vivid sequences of images, emotions, and thoughts, the most vivid of which occur during REM sleep, (p. 196) |
| Drive-reduction theory | attempts to explain behavior as arising from a physiological need that creates an aroused tension state (drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need. (p. 336) |
| Echoic memory | _______ is the momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli, lasting about 3 or 4 seconds, (p. 261) |
| Ecstasy (MDMA) | Classified as both a (synthetic) stimulant and a mild hallucinogen, ____________produces short-term euphoria by increasing serotonin lev els in the brain. Repeated use may permanently damage serotonin neurons, suppress immunity and disrupt cognition, (p. 210) |
| Effortful processing | _______ is encoding that requires attention and conscious effort, (p. 256) |
| Emotion | is a response of the whole organism involving three components: (1) physical arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience, (p. 371) |
| Emotional intelligence | __________ is the ability to perceive, manage, understand, and use emotions, (p. 314) |
| Encoding | _______ is the first step in memory; information is translated into some form that enables it to enter our memory system, (p. 254) |
| Endorphins | _____________ are natural, opiatelike neurotrans-mitters linked to pain control and to pleasure, (p. 38) |
| Equity | __________ refers to the condition in which there is mutual giving and receiving between the partners in a relationship, (p. 546) |
| Estrogen | is a sex hormone secreted in greater amounts by females than by males. In mammals other than humans, estrogen levels peak during ovulation and trigger sexual receptivity, (p. 352) |
| Evolutionary psychology | _______________ is the study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using the principles of natural selection, (p. 74) |
| Explicit memories | _______ are memories of facts, including names, images, and events. They are also called declarative memories, (p. 266) |
| Exposure therapies | _________ treat anxiety by exposing people to things they normally fear and avoid. Among these therapies are systematic desensitization and virtual reality exposure therapy, (p. 503) |
| External Validity | The extent to which the data collected from a sample can be gerenralized to the entire population |
| External locus of control | _________ is the perception that one's fate is determined by forces not under personal control, (p. 445) |
| Extinction | ___________ refers to the weakening of a CR when the CS is no longer followed by the US; in operant conditioning extinction occurs when a response is no longer reinforced, (p. 226) |
| Extrasensory perception (ESP) | ____________ refers to the controversial claim that perception can occur without sensory input. |
| Extrinsic motivation | ___________ is the desire to perform a behavior in order to obtain a reward or avoid a punishment, (p. 239) |
| Family therapy | _________ views problem behavior as partially engendered by the client's family system and environment. Therapy therefore focuses on relationships and problems among the various members of the family, (p. 508) |
| Feature detectors | ____________, located in the visual cortex of the brain, are nerve cells that selectively respond to specific visual features, such as movement, shape, or angle. Feature detectors are evidently the basis of visual information processing, (p. 147) |
| Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) | ______________refers to the physical and cognitive abnormalities that heavy drinking by a pregnant woman may cause in the developing child, (p. 101) |
| Figure-ground | ____________refers to the organization of visual field into two parts: the figure, which stands out from its surroundings, and the surroundings, or background, (p. 163) |
| Fixation | __________ is an inability to approach a problem in a new way. (p. 292) |
| Fluid intelligence | Fluid intelligence refers to a person's ability to reason speedily and abstractly. Fluid intelligence tends to decline with age. (p. 128) |
| Framing | Presenting information either positively or negatively in order to change the influence it has on an individual or group |
| Framing | __________ refers to the way an issue or question is posed. It can affect people's perception of the issue or answer to the question, (p. 295) |
| Fraternal twins | _______________ develop from two separate eggs fertilized by different sperm and therefore are no more genetically similar than ordinary siblings, (p. 69) |
| Free association | _________ is the Freudian technique in which the person is encouraged to say whatever comes to mind as a means of exploring the unconscious, (p. 422) |
| Frequency | ____________ is directly related to wavelength: longer waves produce lower pitch; shorter waves produce higher pitch. The pitch of a sound is determined by its frequency, that is, the number of complete wavelengths that can pass a point in a given time. (p. 152) |
| Functional fixedness | __________ is a type of fixation in which a person can think of things only in terms of their usual functions, (p. 292) |
| GRIT (Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction) | __________ is a strategy of conflict resolution based on the defusing effect that conciliatory gestures can have on parties in conflict, (p. 569) |
| Gender | _______________refers to the biological and social characteristics by which people define male and female. (p. 76) |
| Gender identity | _______________ is one's sense of being male or female, (p. 92) |
| Gender-typing | _______________ is the acquisition of a traditional feminine or masculine role. (p. 92) |
| General intelligence | __________, according to Spearman and others, is a general factor that underlies each of the more specific mental abilities identified through factor analysis, (p. 310) |
| Generalization | ___________ refers to the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the original CS to evoke a CR. (p. 227) |
| Genes | _______________ are the biochemical units of heredity that make up the chromosomes; they are segments of the DNA molecules capable of synthesizing a protein, (p. 68) |
| Gestalt | ____________ means "organized whole." The Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaning wholes, (p. 163) |
| Glucose | or blood sugar, is the major source of energy for the body's tissues. Elevating the level of glucose in the body will reduce hunger, (p. 340) |
| Group polarization | __________ refers to the enhancement of a group's prevailing tendencies through discussion, which often has the effect of accentuating the group's differences from other groups, (p. 543) |
| Grouping | ____________ is the perceptual tendency to organ stimuli into coherent groups. Gestalt psychologists identified various principles of grouping. 163) |
| Groupthink | __________ refers to the unrealistic thought processes and decision making that occur within groups when the desire for group harmony overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives, (p. 543) |
| Hallucinations | ____________ are false sensory experiences that occur without any sensory stimulus, (p. 188) |
| Hallucinogens | ____________ are psychoactive drugs, such as LSD and marijuana, that distort perception and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input, (p. 211) |
| Heirarchy of Needs | Maslow |
| Heritability | __________ is the proportion of variation in a trait among individuals that can be attributed to genetic factors, (p. 322) |
| Hindsight bias | _____________ refers to the tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it; also called the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon, (p. 10) |
| Homeostasis | refers to the body's tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state, (p. 336) |
| Hormones | _____________ are chemical messengers, mostly those manufactured by the endocrine glands, that are produced in one tissue and circulate through the bloodstream to their target tissues, on which they have specific effects, (p. 44) |
| Humanistic psychology | _____________ is the branch of psychology that emphasizes the growth potential of healthy people, (p. 4) |
| Hypnosis | _________ is a social interaction in which one person suggests to another that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur, (p. 200) |
| Iconic memory | _______ is the visual sensory memory consisting of a perfect photographic memory, which lasts no more than a few tenths of a second, (p. 261) |
| Identical twins | _______________ develop from a single fertilized egg that splits in two and therefore are genetically identical, (p. 68) |
| Illusory correlation | _____________is the perception of a relationship where none exists, (p. 20) |
| Imagery | _______ refers to mental pictures and can be an important aid to effortful processing, (p. 256) |
| Implicit memories | _______ are memories of skills, preferences, and dispositions. These memories are evidently processed, not by the hippocampus, but by a more primitive part of the brain, the cerebellum. They are also called procedural or nondedara-tive memories, (p. 266) |
| Imprinting | ______________ is the process by which certain animals form attachments during a limited critical period early in life. (p. Ill) |
| Inattentional blindness | ____________ is a perceptual error in which we fail to see a visible object when our attention is directed elsewhere, (p. 184) |
| Incentives | are positive or negative environmental stimuli that motivate behavior, (p. 336) |
| Individualism | _______________ is giving priority to personal goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identification, (p. 84) |
| Informational social influence | __________ results when one goes along with a group when one is willing to accept others' opinions about reality, (p. 537) |
| Insight | __________ is a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem, (p. 290) |
| Insomnia | ____________ is a sleep disorder in which the person regularly has difficulty in falling or staying asleep, (p. 194) |
| Intelligence tests | __________ measure people's mental aptitudes and compare them to others' through numerical scores, (p. 315) |
| Internal locus of control | _________ is the perception that, to a great extent, one controls one's own destiny, (p. 445) |
| Interneurons | _____________ are the neurons of the central nervous system that link the sensory and motor neurons in the transmission of sensory inputs and motor outputs, (p. 41) |
| Interpretation | _________ is the psychoanalytic term for the analyst's helping the client to understand resistances and other aspects of behavior, so that the client may gain deeper insights, (p. 499) |
| Intrinsic motivation | ___________ is the desire to perform a behavior for its own sake, rather than for some external reason, and to be effective, (p. 239) |
| Kinesthesis | Kinesthesis is the sense of the position I movement of the parts of the body. (p. 161) |
| LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) | ____________ is a powerful hallucinogen capable of producing vivid false perceptions and disorganization of thought processes. LSD produces its unpredictable effects partially because it blocks the action of the neuro transmitter serotonin. (p. 211) |
| Language | __________ refers to spoken, written, or signed words and how we combine them to communicate meaning, (p. 299) |
| Latent learning | ___________ is learning that occurs in the absence of reinforcement but only becomes apparent when there is an incentive to demonstrate it. (p. 239) |
| Learned helplessness | _________ is the passive and perceived lack of control that a person or animal develops from repeated exposure to inescapable aversive events, (p. 445) |
| Learning | ___________ is any relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior due to experience, (p. 221) |
| Linguistic determinism | __________ is Benjamin Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think, (p. 303) |
| Long-term memory | _______ is the relatively permanent and unlimited capacity memory system into which information from short-term memory may pass. It includes knowledge, skills, and experiences, (p. 254) |
| Long-term potentiation (LTP) | _______ is an increase in a synapse's firing potential following brief, rapid stimulation. LTP is believed to be the neural basis for learning and memory, (p. 264) |
| Lymphocytes | are the two types of white blood cells of the immune system that fight bacterial infections (B lymphocytes) and viruses, cancer cells, and foreign substances in the body (T lymphocytes), (p. 402) |
| MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) | _____________ uses magnetic fields and radio waves to produce computer-generated images that show brain structures more clearly, (p. 47) |
| Major depressive disorder | __________ is the mood disorder that occurs when a person exhibits the lethargy, feelings of worthlessness, or loss of interest inJ family, friends, and activities characteristic of depression for more than a two-week period andH for no discernible reason. Because of its relative frequency, depression has been called the "common cold" of psychological disorders, (p. 477) |
| Mania | __________ is the wildly optimistic, euphoric, hyperactive state that alternates with depression in the bipolar disorder, (p. 477) |
| Maturation | ______________ refers to the biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience or other environmental factors, (p. 102) |
| Memory | _______ is the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information, (p. 253) |
| Menarche | ______________ is the first menstrual period, (p. 117) |
| Menopause | Menopause is the cessation of menstruation and typically occurs in the early fifties. It also refers to |
| Methamphetamine | ____________ is a powerfully addictive stimulant that speeds up body functions and is associated with energy and mood changes. |
| Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) | Consisting of 10 clinical scales, the _________ is the most widely researched and clinically used personality inventory, (p. 437) |
| Mnemonics | _______ are memory aids (acronyms, peg-words, etc.), which often use vivid imagery and organizational devices, (p. 258) |
| Modeling | ___________ is the process of watching and the imitating a specific behavior and is thus an important means through which observation learning occurs, (p. 244) |
| Monocular cues | ____________ are depth cues that depend on information from either eye alone, (p. 166) Memory aid: Mono- means one; a monocle is an eyeglass for one eye. A monocular cue is one that is available to either the left or the right eye. |
| Mood disorders | __________ are characterized by emotional extremes, (p. 476) |
| Mood-congruent memory | _______ is the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with our current mood. (p. 271) |
| Motivation | is a need or desire that energizes and I directs behavior, |
| Motor neurons | _____________ carry information and instructions for action from the central nervous system to muscles and glands, (p. 41) |
| Mutations | _______________ are random errors in gene replication that are the source of genetic diversity within a species, (p. 75) |
| Narcolepsy | ____________ is a sleep disorder in which the victim suffers sudden, uncontrollable sleep attacks, often characterized by entry directly into REM. (p. 195) |
| Natural selection | _______________ is the evolutionary principle that traits that contribute to reproduction and survival are the most likely to be passed on to succeeding generations, (p. 74) |
| Naturalistic observation | _____________ involves observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation, (p. 17) |
| Nerves | _____________ are bundles of neural axons, which are part of the PNS, that connect the central nervous system with muscles, glands, and sense organs. (p. 41) |
| Neurotransmitters | _____________ are chemicals that are released into synaptic gaps and so transmit neural messages from neuron to neuron, (p. 37) |
| Normative social influence | __________ refers to the pressure on individuals to conform in order to avoid rejection or gain social approval, (p. 537) |
| Norms | _______________ are understood rules for accepted and expected behavior, (p. 83) |
| Object permanence | ______________, which develops during the sensorimotor stage, is the awareness that things do not cease to exist when not perceived, (p. 105) |
| Observational learning | ___________ is learning by watching and imitating the behavior of others, (p. 244) |
| Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) | __________ is an anxiety disorder in which the person experiences uncontrollable and repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and actions (compulsions), (p. 469) |
| Oedipus complex | According to Freud, boys in the phallic stage develop a collection of feelings, known as the _________, that center on sexual attraction to the mother and resentment of the father. Some psychologists believe girls have a parallel Electra complex, (p. 424) |
| Operant behavior | ___________ is behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences, (p. |
| Operant conditioning | ___________ is a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. (p. 232) |
| Opiates | ____________ are depressants derived from the opium poppy, such as opium, morphine, and heroin; they reduce neural activity and temporarily lessen pain and anxiety, (p. 207) |
| PET (positron emission tomography) | The _____________ scan measures the levels of activity of different areas of the brain by tracing their consumption of a radioactive form of glucose, the brain's fuel. (p. 46) |
| Parallel processing | ____________ is information processing in which several aspects of a stimulus, such as light or sound, are processed simultaneously, (p. 148) |
| Parapsychology | ____________ is the study of ESP, psychokinesis, and other paranormal forms of interaction between the individual and the environment, (p. 176) |
| Partial (intermittent) reinforcement | ___________ is the operant procedure of reinforcing a response intermittently. A response that has been partially reinforced is much more resistant to extinction than one that has been continuously reinforced, (p. 236) |
| Passionate love | __________ refers to an aroused state of intense positive absorption in another person, especially at the beginning of a relationship, (p. 563) |
| Perception | ____________ is the process by which we select, organize, and interpret sensory information, (p. 139) |
| Perceptual adaptation | ____________ refers to our ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field. Given distorting lenses, we perceive things accordingly but soon adjust by learning the relationship between our distorted perceptions and the reality, (p. 172) |
| Perceptual constancy | ____________ is the perception that objects have consistent lightness, color, shape, and size, even as illumination and retinal images change, (p. 167) |
| Perceptual set | ____________ is a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another, (p. 173) |
| Person Centered Therapy | The therapeutic technique based on humanistic theory which is non-directive and empathic |
| Personal control | _________ refers to a person's sense of controlling the environment, (p. 445) |
| Personal space | _______________ refers to the buffer zone that people like to maintain around their bodies, (p. 83) |
| Personality | _________ is an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting, (p. 421) |
| Personality disorders | __________ are characterized by inflexible and enduring maladaptive character traits that impair social functioning, (p. 474) |
| Personality inventories | _________, associated with the trait perspective, are questionnaires used to assess personality traits, (p. 437) |
| Persuasion | The deliberated attempt to influence the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors of another |
| Physical dependence | ____________ is a physiological need for a drug that is indicated by the presence of withdrawal symptoms when the drug is not taken, (p. 204) |
| Plasticity | _____________ is the brain's capacity for modification, as evidenced by brain reorganization following damage (especially in children), (p. 58) |
| Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) | __________ is an anxiety disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, and/or insomnia lasting four weeks or more following a traumatic experience, (p. 469) |
| Predictive validity | __________ is the extent to which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; also called criterion-related validity, (p. 319) |
| Prejudice | __________ is an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members, (p. 545) |
| Priming | _______ is the activation, often unconscious, of a web of associations in memory in order to retrieve a specific memory, (p. 269) |
| Priming | ____________ is the activation, often unconsciously, of an association by an imperceptible stimulus, the effect of which is to predispose a perception, memory, or response, (p. 141) |
| Proactive interference | _______is the disruptive effect of something you already have learned on your efforts to learn or recall new information, (p. 275) |
| Projective tests | _________, such as the TAT and Rorschach present ambiguous stimuli onto which people (supposedly project their own inner feelings, (p 427) |
| Psychiatry | _____________ is the branch of medicine concerned with the physical diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders, (p. 8) |
| Psycho active drugs | ____________—which include stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens—are chemical substances that alter mood and perceptions. They work by affecting or mimicking the activity of neurotransmitters. (p. 204) |
| Psychoanalysis | _________, the therapy developed by Sigmund Freud, attempts to give clients self-insight by bringing into awareness and interpreting previously repressed feelings, (p. 498) |
| Psychoanalysis | _________ is Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; also, the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret the tensions within a patient's unconscious, (p. 422) |
| Psychology | _____________ is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes, (p. 4) |
| Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) | is the study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes affect the immune system and resulting health, (p. 402) |
| Psychopharmacology | _________ is the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior, (p. 518) |
| Psychophysics | ____________ is the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience of them, (p. 140) |
| Psychosurgery | _________ is a biomedical therapy that attempts to change behavior by removing or destroying brain tissue. Since drug therapy became widely available in the 1950s, psycho-surgery has been infrequently used. (p. 523) |
| Psychotherapy | _________ is an interaction between a trained therapist and someone who suffers from psychological difficulties or wants to achieve personal growth, (p. 497) |
| Puberty | ______________is the early adolescent period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproduction, (p. 116) |
| REM rebound | __________ is the tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation, (p. 199) |
| REM sleep | ____________ is the sleep stage in which the brain and eyes are active, the muscles are relaxed, and vivid dreaming occurs; also known as paradoxical sleep, (p. 188) |
| Random assignment | _____________ is the procedure of assigning participants to the experimental and control conditions by chance in order to minimize preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups, (p. 22) |
| Rationalization | _________ is the defense mechanism which one devises self-justifying but incorrect reasons for one's behavior, (p. 426) |
| Reaction formation | _________ is the defense mechanism i which the ego converts unacceptable impulse into their opposites. (p. 426) |
| Recall | _______ is a measure of memory in which the person must remember, with few retrieval cues, information learned earlier, (p. 268) |
| Recognition | _______ is a measure of memory in which one need only identify, rather than recall, previously learned information, (p. 268) |
| Regression | _________ is the defense mechanism in which person faced with anxiety reverts to a less mature pattern of behavior, (p. 425) |
| Rehearsal | _______ is the conscious, effortful repetition of information that you are trying either to maintain in consciousness or to encode for storage, (p. 256) |
| Relearning | _______ is also a measure of memory in that the less time it takes to relearn information, the more that information has been retained, (p. 268) |
| Reliability | __________ is the extent to which a test produces consistent results, (p. 317) |
| Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) | _________ is the delivery of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to stimulate or suppress brain activity, (pp. 522-523) |
| Replication | _____________ is the process of repeating an experiment, often with different participants and in different situations, to see whether the basic finding generalizes to other people and circumstances, (p. 15) |
| Repression | _______ is an example of motivated forgetting in that painful and unacceptable memories are prevented from entering consciousness. In psychoanalytic theory, it is the basic defense mechanism, (p. 277) |
| Resistance | _________ is the psychoanalytic term for the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden memories. Hesitation during free association may reflect resistance, (p. 499) |
| Respondent behavior | ___________ is that which occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus, (p. 232) |
| Retinal disparity | ____________ refers to the different between the images received by the left eye and the right eye as a result of viewing the world from slightly different angles. It is a binocular depth cue, since the greater the difference between the two images, the nearer the object, (p. 165) |
| Retrieval | _______ is the process of bringing to consciousness information from memory storage, (p. 254) |
| Retroactive interference | _______ is the disruptive effect of something recently learned on old knowledge, (p. 275) |
| Rorschach inkblot test | The _________, the most widely used projective test, consists of 10 inkblots that people are asked to interpret; it seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots, (p. 428) |
| SQ3R | _____________ is a study method consisting of five steps: Survey, Question, Read, Rehearse, and Review, (p. 29) |
| Schizophrenia | __________ refers to the group of severe disorders whose symptoms may include disorganized and delusional thinking, inappropriate emotions and actions, and disturbed perceptions, (p. 485) |
| Selective attention | ____________ is the focusing of our awareness on a particular stimulus, (p. 184) |
| Self-concept | _________ refers to one's personal awareness of "who I am." In the humanistic perspective, the self-concept is a central feature of personality; life happiness is significantly affected by whether the self-concept is positive or negative, (p. 433) |
| Self-disclosure | __________ refers to a person's sharing intimate feelings with another, (p. 564) |
| Self-esteem | _________ refers to an individual's sense of self-worth, (p. 451) |
| Sensation | ____________ is the process by which we detect physical energy from the environment and encode it as neural signals, (p. 139) |
| Sensory adaptation | ____________ refers to the decreased sensitivity that occurs with continued exposure to an unchanging stimulus, (p. 142) |
| Sensory interaction | ____________ is the principle that one sense may influence another, (p. 159) |
| Sensory memory | _______ is the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system, (p. 254) |
| Sensory neurons | _____________ carry information from the sense receptors to the central nervous system for processing, (p. 41) |
| Set point | is an individual's regulated weight level, which is maintained by adjusting food intake and energy output, (p. 340) |
| Sexual orientation | refers to a person's enduring attraction to members of either the same or the opposite gender, (p. 356) |
| Shaping | ___________ is the operant conditioning procedure for establishing a new response by reinforcing successive approximations of the desired behavior, (p. 233) |
| Short-term memory | _______ is activated memory, which can hold about seven items for a short time. (p. 254) |
| Sleep | ____________ is the natural, periodic, reversible loss of consciousness, on which the body and mind depend for healthy functioning, (p. 188) |
| Sleep apnea | ____________ is a sleep disorder in which the person ceases breathing while asleep, briefly arouses to gasp for air, falls back asleep, and repeats this cycle throughout the night, (p. 195) |
| Social facilitation | __________ is stronger performance of simple or well-learned tasks that occurs when other people are present, (p. 541) |
| Social loafing | __________ is the tendency for individual effort to be diminished when one is part of a group working toward a common goal. (p. 542) |
| Social psychology | __________ is the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another, (p. 529) |
| Split brain | _____________ is a condition in which the major connections between the two cerebral hemispheres (the corpus callosum) are severed, literally resulting in a split brain, (p. 60) |
| Spontaneous recovery | ___________ is the reappearance of an extinguished CR after a pause, (p. 226) |
| Standardization | __________ is the process of defining meaningful scores by comparison with a pretested standardization group, (p. 317) |
| Statistic | An observed characteristic of a sample |
| Stereotype threat | __________ is the phenomenon in which a person's concern that he or she will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype (as on an aptitude test, for example) is actually followed by lower performance, (p. 323) |
| Stimulants | ____________ are psychoactive drugs, such as caffeine, nicotine, amphetamines, and cocaine, that excite neural activity and speed up body functions, (p. 208) |
| Storage | _______ is the process by which encoded information is maintained over time. (p. 254) |
| Stranger anxiety | ______________ is the fear of strangers that infants begin to display by about 8 months of age. (p. 110) |
| Stress | refers to the process by which people perceive and react to events, called stressors, that they perceive as threatening or challenging, (p. 396) |
| Subjective well-being | refers to a person's sense of satisfaction with his or her life. (p. 389) |
| Superordinate goals | __________ are mutual goals that require the cooperation of individuals or groups otherwise in conflict, (p. 567) |
| Systematic desensitization | _________ is a type of exposure therapy in which a state of relaxation is classically conditioned to a hierarchy of gradually increasing anxiety-provoking stimuli, (p. 503) |
| T-Score | A standard score that sets the mean to fifty and standard deviation to ten. Used on a number of tests including the MMPI |
| THC | The major active ingredient in marijuana, ____________ is classified as a mild hallucinogen, (p. 212) |
| Telegraphic speech | __________ is the economical, telegram-like speech of children in the two-word stage. Utterances consist mostly of nouns and verbs; however, words occur in the correct order, showing that the child has learned some of the language's syntactic rules, (p. 300) |
| Temperament | _______________ refers to a person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity, (p. 72) |
| Teratogens | ______________(literally, poisons) are any chemicals and viruses that cross the mother's placenta and can harm the developing embryo or fetus, (p. 100) |
| Testosterone | is a sex hormone secreted in greater amounts by males than by females. In males, higher testosterone levels stimulate the prenatal growth of the male sex organs and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty, (p. 352) |
| Testosterone | _______________ is the principal male sex hormone. During prenatal development, testosterone stimulates the development of the external male sex organs, (p. 90) |
| The Cannon-Bard theory | states that the subjective experience of an emotion occurs at the same time as the body's physical reaction, (p. 372) |
| The James-Lange theory | states that emotional experiences are based on an awareness of the body's responses to emotion-arousing stimuli: a stimulus triggers the body's responses that in turn trigger the experienced emotion, (p. 372) |
| The Stanford-Binet | __________ is Lewis Terman's widely used revision of Binet's original intelligence test, (p. 315) |
| The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) | _________ is a projective test that consists of ambiguous picture! about which people are asked to make up story which are thought to reflect their inner feelings and interests, (p. 427) |
| The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) | __________ is the most widely used intelligence test. It is individually administered and contains 11 subtests broken into verbal and performance areas, (p. 316) |
| The adaptation-level phenomenon | refers to our tendency to judge things relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience, (p. 393) |
| The babbling stage | __________ of speech development, which begins around 4 months, is characterized by the spontaneous utterance of speech sounds. During the babbling stage, children the world over sound alike, (p. 300) |
| The case study | _____________ is an observation technique in |
| The collective unconscious | _________ is Jung's concept o an inherited unconscious shared by all people and deriving from our species' history, (p. 426) |
| The embryo | ______________ is the developing prenatal organism from about 2 weeks through 2 months after conception, (p. 100) |
| The experimental | _____________ condition of an experiment is one in which participants are exposed to the independent variable being studied, (p. 23) In the study of the effects of a new drug on reaction time, participants in the _____________ would actually receive the drug being tested. |
| The feel-good, do-good phenomenon | is the tendency of people to be helpful when they are in a good mood. (p. 389) |
| The fetus | ______________ is the developing prenatal human from 9 weeks after conception to birth, (p. 100) |
| The foot-in-the-door phenomenon | __________ is the tendency for people who agree to a small request to comply later with a larger request, (p. 532) |
| The fundamental attribution error | __________ is our tendency to underestimate the impact of situations and to overestimate the impact of personal dispositions upon the behavior of others, (p. 530) |
| The general adaptation syndrome (GAS) | is the three-stage sequence of bodily reaction to stress outlined by Hans Selye. (p. 397) |
| The intelligence quotient (IQ) | __________was defined originally as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100. Contemporary tests of intelligence assign a score of 100 to the average performance for a given age and define other scores as deviations from this average, (p. 316) |
| The intensity | ____________ of light and sound is determined by the amplitude of the waves and is experienced as brightness and loudness, respectively, (p. 144) Example: Sounds that exceed 85 decibels in amplitude, or intensity, will damage the auditory system. |
| The normal curve | __________ is a bell-shaped curve that represents the distribution (frequency of occurrence) of many physical and psychological attributes. The curve is symmetrical, with most scores near the average and fewer near the extremes, (p. 317) |
| The placebo effect | _____________occurs when the results of an experiment are caused by a participant's expectations about what is really going on. (p. 23) |
| The polygraph | or lie detector, is a device that measures several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion, (p. 376) |
| The refractory period | is a resting period after orgasm, during which a male cannot be aroused to another orgasm, (p. 351) |
| The retina | ____________ is the light-sensitive, multilayered inner surface of the eye that contains the rods and cones as well as neurons that form the beginning of the optic nerve, (p. 145) |
| The rods and cones | ____________are visual receptors that convert light energy into neural impulses. |
| The sexual response cycle | described by Masters and Johnson consists of four stages of bodily reaction: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. (p. 351) |
| The survey | _____________is a technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a representative, random sample of people, (p. 16) |
| The two-factor theory | of emotion proposes that emotions have two ingredients: physical arousal and a cognitive label. Thus, physical arousal is a necessary, but not a sufficient, component of emotional change. For an emotion to be experienced, arousal must be attributed to an emotional cause, (p. 373) |
| The zygote | ______________ (a term derived from the Greek word for "joint") is the fertilized egg, that is, the cluster of cells formed during conception by the union of sperm and egg. (p. 100) |
| Tolerance | ____________ is the diminishing of a psychoactive drug's effect that occurs with repeated use, requiring progressively larger doses in order to produce the same effect, (p. 204) |
| Top-down processing | ____________ is information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, (p. 139) |
| Traits | _________ are people's characteristic patterns of behavior, (p. 435) |
| Transference | _________ is the psychoanalytic term for a patient's redirecting to the analyst emotions from other relationships, (p. 499) |
| Type A personality | is Friedman and Rosenman's term for the coronary-prone behavior pattern of competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people, (p. 400) |
| Type B personality | is Friedman and Rosenman's term for the coronary-resistant behavior pattern of easygoing, relaxed people, (p. 400) |
| Unconditional positive regard | _________ is, according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person, (p. 432) |
| Validity | __________ is the degree to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. (p. 318) |
| Virtual reality exposure therapy | _________ progressively exposes people to simulations of feared situations to treat their anxiety, (p. 503) |
| Wavelength | ____________, which refers to the distance from the peak of one light (or sound) wave to the next, gives rise to the perceptual experiences of hue, or color, in vision (and pitch in sound), (p. 144) |
| Weber's law | ____________ states that the just noticeable difference between two stimuli is a constant minimum proportion of the stimulus, (p. 142) |
| Wernicke's area | _____________, located in the left temporal lobe, is involved in language comprehension and expression, (p. 57) |
| Withdrawal | ____________ refers to the discomfort and distress that follow the discontinued use of addictive drugs, (p. 204) |
| Working memory | _______ is the newer way of conceptualizing short-term memory as a work site for the active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory, (p. 254) |
| X chromosome | The_______________is the sex chromosome found in both men and women. Females inherit an X chromosome from each parent, (p. 90) |
| Y chromosome | The _______________ is the sex chromosome found only in men. Males inherit an X chromosome from their mothers and a Y chromosome from their fathers, (p. 90) |
| Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory | The ____________maintains that the retina contains red-, green-, and blue-sensitive color receptors that in combination can produce the perception of any color. This theory explains the first stage of color processing, (p. 150) |
| absolute threshold | The ____________ is the minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50 percent of the time. (p. 140) |
| accommodation | In Piaget's theory, ______________ refers to changing an existing schema to incorporate new information that cannot be assimilated, (p. 105) |
| acquisition | In a learning experiment, ___________ refers to the initial stage of conditioning in which the new response is established and gradually strengthened. In operant conditioning, it is the strengthening of a reinforced response, (p. 225) |
| action potential | An _____________ is a neural impulse generated by the movement of positively charged atoms in and out of channels in the axon's membrane, (p. 36) |
| addiction | An ____________ is a compulsive craving for a drug despite adverse consequences and withdrawal symptoms, (p. 205) |
| adrenal glands | The _____________ produce epinephrine and norepinephrine, hormones that prepare the body to deal with emergencies or stress, (p. 44) |
| algorithm | An __________ is a methodical, logical procedure that, while sometimes slow, guarantees success, (p. 290) |
| amygdala | The _____________ is part of the limbic system and influences the emotions of fear and aggression, (p. 49) |
| antisocial personality disorder | The __________ is a personality disorder in which the person is aggressive, ruthless, and shows no sign of a conscience that would inhibit wrongdoing, (p. 474) |
| assimilation | In Piaget's theory, ______________ refers to interpreting a new experience in terms of an existing schema, (pp. 104-105) |
| association areas | Located throughout the cortex, _____________ of the brain are involved in higher mental functions, such as learning, remembering, and abstract thinking, (p. 55) |
| associative learning | In ___________, organisms learn that certain events occur together. Two variations of associative learning are classical conditioning and operant conditioning, (p. 222) |
| autonomic nervous system | The _____________ is the division of the peripheral nervous system that controls the glands and the muscles of internal organs and thereby controls internal functioning; it regulates the automatic behaviors necessary for survival, (p. 41) |
| availability heuristic | The __________ is based on estimating the probability of certain events in terms of how readily they come to mind. (p. 293) |
| axon | The _____________ of a neuron is the extension that sends impulses to other nerve cells or to muscles or glands, (p. 36) |
| basic trust | According to Erikson, ______________ is a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy—a concept that infants form if their needs are met by. responsive caregiving. (p. 113) |
| biopsychosocial approach | The _____________ is an integrated approach that focuses on biological, psychological, and social-cultural levels of analysis for a given behavior or mental process, (p. 6) |
| blind spot | The ____________ is the region of the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye. Because there are no rods or cones in this area, there is no vision here. (p. 146) |
| brainstem | The _____________, the oldest and innermost region of the brain, is an extension of the spinal cord and is the central core of the brain; its structures direct automatic survival functions, (p. 46) |
| bystander effect | The __________ is the tendency of a person to be less likely to offer help to someone if there are other people present, (p. 566) |
| central nervous system (CNS) | The _____________consists of the brain and spinal cord; it is located at the center, or internal core, of the body. (p. 41) |
| cerebellum | The _____________ processes sensory input and coordinates movement output and balance, (p. |
| cerebral cortex | The _____________ is a thin intricate covering of interconnected neural cells atop the cerebral hemispheres. The seat of information processing, the cortex is responsible for those complex functions that make us distinctively human, (p. 52) |
| circadian rhythm | A ____________ is any regular bodily rhythm, such as body temperature and sleep-wakefulness, that follows a 24-hour cycle, (p. 186) |
| classical conditioning | Also known as Pavlovian conditioning, ___________ is a type of learning in which an organism learns to associate stimuli; a neutral stimulus becomes capable of triggering a conditioned response after having become associated with an unconditioned stimulus, (p. 223) |
| cochlea | The ____________ is the coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube of the inner ear through which sound waves trigger neural impulses, (p. 153) |
| cognitive map | A ___________ is a mental picture of one's environment, (p. 239) |
| concept | A __________ is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, or people, (p. 289) |
| concrete operational stage | During the______________, lasting from about ages 6 or 7 to 11, children can think logically about concrete events and objects, (p. 108) |
| conditioned response (CR) | In classical conditioning, the ___________ is the learned response to a previously neutral conditioned stimulus, which results from the acquired association between the CS and US. (p. 225) |
| conditioned stimulus (CS) | In classical conditioning, the ___________is an originally neutral stimulus that comes to trigger a CR after association with an unconditioned stimulus, (p. 225) |
| cones | The ____________have excellent sensitivity, enable color vision, and function best in daylight or bright light. |
| confirmation bias | The __________ is an obstacle to problem solving in which people tend to search for information that validates their preconceptions, (p. 291) |
| consciousness | For most psychologists, ____________ is our awareness of ourselves and our environment, (p. 183) |
| content validity | The __________ of a test is the extent to which it samples the behavior that is of interest, (p. 318) |
| control condition | The _____________ of an experiment is one in which the treatment of interest, or independent variable, is withheld so that comparison to the experimental condition can be made. (p. 23)Example: The __________ for an experiment testing the effects of a new drug on reaction time would be a group of participants given a placebo (inactive drug or sugar pill) instead of the drug being tested. |
| coronary heart disease | The leading cause of death in North America today, ___________ results from the clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle, (p. 400) |
| corpus callosum | The _____________ is the large band of neural fibers that links the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Without this band of nerve fibers, the two hemispheres could not interact, (p. 59) |
| creativity | Most experts agree that __________ refers to an ability to produce novel and valuable ideas. People with high IQs may or may not be creative, which indicates that intelligence is only one component of creativity, (p. 313) |
| culture | A _______________ is the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. (p. 82) |
| defense mechanisms | In Freud's theory, _________ are the ego's methods of unconsciously protecting itself against anxiety by distorting reality, (p. 425) |
| dendrites | The _____________ of a neuron are the bushy, branching extensions that receive messages from other nerve cells and conduct impulses toward the cell body. (p. 36) |
| dependent variable | The dependent variable of an experiment is the factor being measured by the investigator, (p. 23) Example: In the study of the effects of a new drug on reaction time, the participants' reaction time is the __________. |
| difference threshold | The ____________ (also called the just noticeable difference, or jnd), is the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time. (p. 142) |
| dissociative identity disorder | The __________ is a dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities; also called multiple personality disorder, (p. 473) |
| eclectic approach | With an _________, therapists are not locked into one form of psychotherapy, but draw on whatever combination seems best suited to a client's needs, (p. 497) |
| ego | In psychoanalytic theory, the _________ is the conscious division of personality that attempts to mediate between the demands of the id, the superego, and reality. It operates on the reality principle, (p. 423) |
| egocentrism | In Piaget's theory, ______________ refers to the difficulty that preoperational children have in considering another's viewpoint. Ego means "self," and centrism indicates "in the center"; the preoperational child is "self-centered." (p. 107) |
| electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) | In _________, a biomedical therapy often used to treat severe depression, electric shock is passed through the brain, (p. 521) |
| electroencephalogram (EEG) | An _____________ is an amplified recording of the waves of electrical activity of the brain. Encephalo comes from a Greek word meaning "related to the brain." (p. 46) |
| empirically derived test | An _________ is one developed by testing many items to see which best distinguish between groups of interest, (p. 437) |
| endocrine system | The _____________ , the body's '''slower" chemical communication system, consists of glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream, (p. 44) |
| environment | In behavior genetics, _______________ refers to every nongenetic, or external, influence on our traits and behaviors, (p. 67) |
| fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) | In a _____________ , MRI scans taken less than a second apart are compared to reveal blood flow and, therefore, brain anatomy and function, (p. 47) |
| fixation | In Freud's theory, _________ occurs when development becomes arrested, due to unresolved conflicts, in an immature psychosexual stage, (p. 425) |
| fixed-interval schedule | In operant conditioning, a ___________ is one in which a response is reinforced after a specified time has elapsed, (p. 236) |
| fixed-ratio schedule | In operant conditioning, a ___________ is one in which reinforcement is presented after a set number of responses, (p. 236) |
| flashbulb memory | A _______ is an unusually vivid memory of an emotionally important moment or event, (p. 265) |
| formal operational stage | In Piaget's theory, the ______________ normally begins about age 12. during this stage people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.(p.108) Memory aid:To help differentiate Piaget's stages remember that "operations" are mental transforms. Preoperational children who lack the ability to perform transformations are "before this development milestone. Concrete operational children can operate on real,or concrete". objects Formal operational children can perform logical transformations on abstract concepts |
| fovea | The ____________ is the retina's point of central focus. It contains only cones; therefore, images focused on the fovea are the clearest, (p. 146) |
| frontal lobes | Located at the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, the _____________ are involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making plans and judgments, (p. 53) |
| frustration-aggression principle | The __________ states that aggression is triggered when people become angry because their efforts to achieve a goal have been blocked, (p. 553) |
| gate-control theory | Melzack and Wall's ____________ mantains that a "gate" in the spinal cord determines whether pain signals are permitted to reach the brain. Neural activity in small nerve fibers opens the gates; activity in large fibers or information from the brain closes the gate. (p. 157) |
| gender role | A_______________ is a set of expected behaviors for males and females, (p. 91) |
| gender schema theory | According to _______________, children acquire a cultural concept of what it means to be female or male and adjust their behavior accordingly, (p. 92) |
| generalized anxiety disorder | In the __________, the person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal for no apparent reason, (p. 467) |
| genome | A _______________ is the complete genetic instructions for making an organism, (p. 68) |
| heuristic | A __________ is a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently. Although heuristics are more efficient than algorithms, they do not guarantee success and sometimes even impede problem solving, (p. 290) |
| hierarchy of needs | Maslow's ______________ proposes that human motives may be ranked from the basic, physiological level through higher-level needs for safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization; until they are satisfied, the more basic needs are more compelling than the higher-level ones. (p. 337) |
| hippocampus | The _______ is a neural center located in the limbic system that is important in the processing of explicit memories for storage, (p. 266) |
| hypothalamus | Also part of the limbic system, the _____________ regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature, and sex; helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland; and contains the so-called reward centers of the brain, (p. 50) |
| id | In Freud's theory, the _________ is the unconscious system of personality, consisting of basic sexual and aggressive drives, that supplies psychic energy to personality. It operates on the pleasure principle. (p. 423) |
| identification | In Freud's theory, _________ is the process by which the child's superego develops and incorporates the parents' values. Freud saw identification as crucial, not only to resolution of the Oedipus complex, but also to the development of gender identity, (p. 424) |
| identity | In Erikson's theory, establishing an ______________, or one's sense of self, is the primary task of adolescence, (p. 120) |
| independent variable | The _____________ of an experiment is the factor being manipulated and tested by the investigator, (p. 23) Example: In the study of the effects of a new drug on reaction time, the drug is the __________. |
| ingroup | The __________ refers to the people and groups with whom we share a common identity, (p. 549) |
| ingroup bias | The __________ is the tendency to favor one's own group, (p. 549) |
| inner ear | The ____________ contains the semicircular canals and the cochlea, which includes the receptors that sound energy into neural impulses. Because also contains the vestibular sac, the inner ear plays an important role in balance, as well as audition, (p. 153) |
| intelligence | Most experts define __________ as the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations, (p. 310) |
| interaction | An _______________ occurs when the effects of one factor (such as environment) depend on another factor (such as heredity), (p. 74) |
| intimacy | In Erikson's theory, ______________, or the ability to establish close, loving relationships, is the primary task of late adolescence and early adulthood, (p. 121) |
| just-world phenomenon | The __________ is a manifestation of the commonly held belief that good is rewarded and evil is punished. The logic is indisputable: "If I am rewarded, I must be good." (p. 550) |
| latent content | In Freud's theory of dreaming, the ____________ is the underlying but censored meaning of a dream, (p. 197) |
| lesion | A _____________ is destruction of tissue; studying the consequences of lesions in different regions of the brain—both surgically produced in animals and naturally occurring—helps researchers to determine the normal functions of these regions, (p. 46) |
| levels of analysis | Psychologists analyze behavior and mental processes from differing complementary views, or _____________ (p. 6) |
| limbic system | A doughnut-shaped neural system, the _____________ is associated with emotions such as fear and aggression and basic physiological drives, (p. 49) |
| lobotomy | Once used to control violent patients, the _________ is a form of psychosurgery in which the nerves linking the emotion centers of the brain to the frontal lobes are severed, (p. 523) |
| manifest content | In Freud's theory of dreaming, the ____________ is the remembered story line. (p. 197) |
| medical model | The __________holds that psychological disorders are illnesses that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a psychiatric hospital, (p. 461) |
| medulla | Located in the brainstem, the _____________ controls breathing and heartbeat, (p. 46) |
| mental age | A concept introduced by Binet, __________ is the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance, (p. 315) |
| mental retardation | The two criteria that designate __________ are an IQ below 70 and difficulty adapting to the normal demands of independent living, (p. 318) |
| mere exposure effect | The __________ refers to the fact that repeated exposure to an unfamiliar stimulus increases our liking of it. (p. 559) |
| middle ear | The ____________ is the chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing the three bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) that concentrate the eardrum's vibrations on the cochlea's oval window, (p. 153) |
| mirror neuron | Found in the brain's frontal lobe, ___________ may be the neural basis for observational learning. These neurons generate impulses when certain actions are performed or when another individual who performs those actions is observed (p. 244) |
| misinformation effect | The _______ is the tendency of eyewitnesses to an event to incorporate misleading information about the event into their memories, (p. 278) |
| motor cortex | Located at the back of the frontal lobe, the _____________ controls voluntary movement, (p. 53) |
| nature-nurture | The _____________ issue is the controversy over the relative contributions that genes (nature) and experience (nurture) make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors, (p. 5) |
| near-death | The ____________ experience is an altered state of consciousness that has been reported by some people who have had a close brush with death (p. 212) |
| negative reinforcement | In operant conditioning, ___________ strengthens a response by removing an aversive stimulus after that response, (p. 234) |
| nervous system | The _____________ is the speedy, electrochemical communication system, consisting of all the nerve cells in the peripheral and central nervous systems, (p. 41) |
| neuron | The _____________, or nerve cell, is the basic building block of the nervous system, (p. 36) |
| night terrors | A person suffering from ____________ experiences episodes of high arousal with apparent terror. Night terrors usually occur during Stage 4 sleep, (p. 195) |
| occipital lobes | Located at the back and base of the brain, the _____________ contain the visual cortex, which receives information from the eyes. (p. 53) |
| one-word stage | Between 1 and 2 years of age children speak mostly in single words; they are therefore in the __________ stage of linguistic development, |
| operant chamber | An ___________ (Skinner box) is an experimental chamber for the operant conditioning of an animal such as a pigeon or rat. The controlled environment enables the investigator to present visual or auditory stimuli, deliver reinforcement or punishment, and precisely measure simple responses such as bar presses or key pecking, (p. 232) |
| opponent-process theory | The ____________ maintains that color vision depends on pairs of opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, and white-black). This theory explains the second stage of color processing, (p. 150) |
| optic nerve | Comprised of the axons of retinal ganglion cells, the ____________ carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain, (p. 146) |
| outgroup | The __________ refers to the people and groups that are excluded from our ingroup. (p. 549) |
| overconfidence | Another obstacle to problem solving, __________ refers to the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgments, (p. 294) |
| panic disorder | A __________ is an episode of intense dread accompanied by chest pain, dizziness, or choking. It is essentially an escalation of the anxiety associated with generalized anxiety disorder, (p. 467) |
| parasympathetic nervous system | The _____________ is the division of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body, conserving its energy, (p. 42) |
| parietal lobes | Situated between the frontal and occipital lobes, the _____________ contain the sensory cortex, (p. 53) |
| peripheral nervous system (PNS) | The _____________ includes the sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous system to the body's sense receptors, muscles, and glands; it is at the periphery of the body relative to the brain and spinal cord. (p. 41) |
| phobia | A __________ is an anxiety disorder in which a person has a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object or situation, (p. 467) |
| pituitary gland | The _____________ , under the influence of the hypothalamus, regulates growth and controls other endocrine glands; sometimes called the "master gland." (p. 45) |
| positive psychology | Focusing on positive emotions, character virtues such as creativity and compassion, and healthy families and neighborhoods, _________ is the scientific study of optimal human functioning. (p. 448) |
| positive reinforcement | In operant conditioning, positive reinforcement strengthens a response by presenting a typically pleasurable stimulus after that response, (p. 234) |
| posthypnotic suggestion | A ____________ is a suggestion made during a hypnosis session that is to be carried out when the subject is no longer hypnotized, (p. 201) |
| preoperational stage | In Piaget's theory, the ______________ lasts from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age. During this stage, language development is rapid, but the child is unable to understand the mental operations of concrete logic, (p. 100) |
| primary reinforcers | The powers of ___________ are inborn and do not depend on learning, (p. 235) |
| primary sex characteristics | The ______________ are the body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that enable reproduction, (p. 116) |
| projection | In psychoanalytic theory, _________ is the unconscious attribution of one's own unacceptable feelings, attitudes, or desires to others, (p. 426) |
| prosocial behavior | The opposite of antisocial behavior, ___________ is positive, helpful, and constructs and is subject to the same principles of observational learning as is undesirable behavior, such as aggression, (p. 246) |
| prototype | A __________ is a mental image or best example of a category, (p. 290) |
| psychological dependence | The psychological need to use a drug is referred to as ____________, (p. 204) |
| psychological disorder | In order to be classified as a __________, behavior must be deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional, (p. 459) |
| psychosexual stages | Freud's _________ are developmental periods children pass through during which the id's pleasure-seeking energies are focused on different erogenous zones, (p. 424) |
| punishment | In operant conditioning, ___________is the presentation of an aversive stimulus, such as shock, which decreases the behavior it follows, (p. 237) |
| reciprocal determinism | According to the social-cognitive perspective, personality is shaped through _________, or the interaction between personality and environmental factors, (p. 443) |
| reflex | A _____________ is a simple, automatic, inborn response to a sensory stimulus; it is governed by a very simple neural pathway, (p. 43) |
| reinforcer | In operant conditioning, a ___________ is any event that strengthens the behavior it follows, (p. 234) |
| relative deprivation | The principle of ___________ is the perception that we are worse off relative to those with whom we compare ourselves, (p. 393) |
| representativeness heuristic | The __________ is the tendency to judge the likelihood of things in terms of how well they conform to one's prototypes, (p. 293) |
| repression | The basis of all defense mechanisms, _________ is the unconscious exclusion of anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from the conscious mind. Repression is an example of motivated forgetting: One "forgets" what one really does not wish to remember, (p. 425) |
| reticular formation | Also part of the brainstem, the _____________ is a nerve network that plays an important role in controlling arousal, (p. 48) |
| rods | The ____________ are concentrated in the periphery of the retina, the cones in the fovea. The ____________ have poor sensitivity; detect black, white, and gray; function well in dim light; and are needed for peripheral vision. |
| role | A_______________ is a cluster of prescribed behaviors expected of those who occupy a particular social position, (p. 91) |
| role | A __________ is a set of explanations (norms) about how people in a specific social position ought to behave, (p. 532) |
| savant syndrome | A person with __________ has a very low intelligence score, yet possesses one exceptional ability, for example, in music or drawing, (p. 310) |
| scapegoat theory | The __________ proposes that prejudice provides an outlet for anger by finding someone to blame, (p. 550) |
| schemas | In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, ______________ are mental concepts or frameworks that organize and interpret information, (p. 104) |
| secondary sex characteristics | The ______________ are the nonre-productive sexual characteristics, for example, female breasts, male voice quality, and body hair, (p. 116) |
| self-actualization | In Maslow's theory, _________ describes the process of fulfilling one's potential and becoming spontaneous, loving, creative, and self-accepting. Self-actualization is at the very top of Maslow's need hierarchy and therefore becomes active only after the more basic physical and psychological needs have been met. (p. 432) |
| self-serving bias | The _________ is the tendency to perceive oneself favorably, (p. 453) |
| sensori-motor stage | In Piaget's theory of cognitive stages, the sensori-motor stage lasts from birth to about age 2. During this stage, infants gain knowledge of the world through their senses and their motor activities, (p. 105) |
| sensory cortex | The _____________ is located at the front of the parietal lobes, just behind the motor cortex. It registers and processes body touch and movement sensations, (p. 54) |
| serial position effect | The _______ is the tendency for items at the beginning and end of a list to be more easily retained than those in the middle. |
| social clock | The______________ refers to the culturally preferred timing of social events, such as leaving home, marrying, having children, and retiring, (p. 129) |
| social learning theory | According to _______________, people learn social behavior (such as gender roles) by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished, (p. 92) |
| social-cognitive perspective | According to the _________, behavior is the result of interactions between people (and their thinking) and their social context. (p. 443) |
| somatic nervous system | The _____________ is the division of the peripheral nervous system that enables voluntary control of the skeletal muscles; also called the skeletal nervous system, (p. 41) |
| source amnesia | At the heart of many false memories, _______ refers to attributing an event to the wrong source, (p. 280) |
| spacing effect | The _______is the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than massed study or practice, (p. 256) |
| spotlight effect | The _________ is the tendency of people to overestimate the extent to which other people are noticing and evaluating them. (p. 451) |
| subliminal | A stimulus that is ____________ is one that is below the absolute threshold for conscious awareness, (p. 140) |
| superego | In Freud's theory, the _________ is the division of personality that contains the conscience and develops by incorporating the perceived moral standards of society, (p. 423) |
| sympathetic nervous system | The _____________ is the division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations. (P-42) |
| synapse | A _____________ is the junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron. The tiny gap at this junction is called the synaptic gap or cleft, (p. 37) |
| temporal lobes | Located on the sides of the brain, the _____________ contain the auditory areas, which receive information from the ears. (p. 53) |
| thalamus | Located atop the brainstem, the _____________ routes incoming messages to the appropriate cortical centers and transmits replies to the medulla and cerebellum, (p. 47) |
| theory of mind | Our ideas about our own and others' thoughts, feelings, and perceptions and the behaviors these might predict constitute our ______________. (p. |
| threshold | A neuron's _____________ is the level of stimulation that must be exceeded in order for the neuron to fire, or generate an electrical impulse, (p. 36) |
| token economy | A _________ is an operant conditioning procedure in which desirable behaviors are promoted in people by rewarding them with tokens, or positive reinforcers, which can be exchanged for privileges or treats. For the most part, token economies are used in hospitals, schools, and other institutional settings, (p. 505) |
| two-word stage | Beginning about age 2, children are in the __________and speak mostly in two-word sentences, (p. 300) |
| unconditioned response (UR) | In classical conditioning, the ___________ is the unlearned, involuntary response to the unconditioned stimulus, (p. 224) |
| unconditioned stimulus (US) | In classical conditioning, the ___________is the stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers the reflexive unconditioned response, (p. 224) |
| unconscious | In Freud's theory, the _________ is the repository of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, it is a level of information processing of which we are unaware, (p. 422) |
| variable-interval schedule | In operant conditioning, a ___________ is one in which responses are reinforced after varying intervals of time. (p. 236) |
| variable-ratio schedule | In operant conditioning, a ___________ is one in which reinforcement is presented after a varying number of responses, (p. 236) |
| vestibular sense | The sense of body movement and position including the sense of balance, is called the ____________, (p. 162) |
| visual cliff | The ____________ is a laboratory device for testing| depth perception, especially in infants and young animals. In their experiments with the visual! Gibson and Walk found strong evidenced depth perception is at least in part innate, |
Drag corresponding items onto each other to make them disappear.
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