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Psychology AP Terms
Terminology Final Exam Review
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time. | Absolute Threshold |
| Process of reaching conclusions associations or generalizations rather than concrete, factual information. | Abstract Reasoning |
| Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information. | Accommodation |
| The process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina. | Accommodation |
| A neurotransmitter. It is used by spinal cord neurons to control muscles and by many other neurons in the brain as well. Nicotine binds to one type of this receptor. | Acetylcholine |
| A test designed to asses what a person has learned. | Achievement Test |
| A neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon. | Action Potential |
| According to this theory, circuits in the brain become activated during REM sleep, the brain synthesizes and interprets this internal activity and attempts to find meaning in these signals, which results in dreaming. | Activation-Synthesis Theory |
| Having the capacity for adaption. | Adaptive |
| A substance that initiates a physiological response when combined with a receptor. | Agonist |
| A methodical, logical rule, or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier - but also more error - prone - use of heuristics. | Algorithm |
| Drugs that stimulate neural activity, causing speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes. | Amphetamines |
| Two lima bean-sized neural clusters in the limbic system; linked to emotion. | Amygdala |
| A substance that interferes with or inhibits the physiological action of another. | Antagonist |
| Drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety. Different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters. | Antidepressant |
| A personality disorder in which the person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrong-doing, even toward friends and family members. May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist. | Antisocial Personality Disorder |
| Psychological disorders characterized by distressing, persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety. | Anxiety Disorders |
| A drug used to reduce anxiety. | Anxiolytic |
| A test designed to predict a person's future performance. | Aptitude Test |
| The capacity to learn. | Aptitude |
| The theory stating that we are motivated by our innate desire to maintain an optimal level of arousal. | Arousal Theory |
| Interpreting our new experience in terms of our existing schemas. | Assimilation |
| An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation. | Attachment |
| The mental faculty of considering or taking notice of someone or something. | Attention |
| Parenting style focused on excessive rules, rigid belief systems, and the expectation of unquestioned obedience. | Authoritarian |
| Parenting style focused on setting reasonable rules and expectations while encouraging communication and independence. | Authoritative |
| The part of the peripheral nervous system that controls the glands and the muscles of the internal organs (such as the heart). Its sympathetic division arouses; its parasympathetic division calms. | Autonomic Nervous System |
| Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common. | Availability Heuristic |
| A type of behavioral treatment where an aversive stimuli is paired with a negative behavior in hopes that the behavior will change in the future to avoid the aversive stimuli. | Aversion Therapy |
| A type of counter-conditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol). | Aversion Conditioning |
| A disorder involving social withdrawal, low self-esteem, and extreme sensitivity to being evaluated negatively. | Avoidant Personality Disorder |
| Psychological state characterized by general lack of desire, drive, or motivation to pursue meaningful goals. | Avolition |
| The parts of the DSM IV | Axis I, II, III, IV, V |
| The extension of a neuron, ending in branching terminal fibers, through which messages pass to other neurons or to muscles or glands. | Axon |
| Ends of branched-out neurons, where impulses are transmitted to other nerve cells or to organs that react to the signals transmitted. | Axon Terminal |
| Of or relating to behavior; "behavioral sciences" | Behavioral |
| The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior. | Behavioral Genetics |
| Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors. | Behavior Therapy |
| An interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease. | Behavioral Medicine |
| The view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2). | Behaviorism |
| Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited. | Belief Perseverance |
| Any of a class of heterocyclic organic compounds used as tranquilizers, such as Librium and Valium. | Benzodiazepines |
| Depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes. | Binocular Cues |
| Of or relating to both biology and medicine. | Biomedical |
| A disorder characterized by impulsive behavior and unstable relationships, emotions, and self-image. | Borderline Personality Disorder |
| The oldest part and central core of the brain, beginning where the spinal cord swells as it enters the skull; is responsible for automatic survival functions. | Brainstem |
| The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present. | Bystander Effect |
| The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) psychological responses and (2) the subjective experience of emotion. | Cannon-Bard Theory |
| An observation technique in which one person is studied in depth in the hope of revealing universal principles. | Case Study |
| An X-ray image made using computerized axial tomography. | CAT Scan |
| Emotional release. In psychology, the catharsis hypothesis maintains that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges. | Catharsis |
| The brain and spinal cord. | Central Nervous System (CNS) |
| The "little brain" at the rear of the brainstem; functions include processing sensory input and coordinating movement output and balance. | Cerebellum |
| The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells covering the cerebral hemispheres; the body's ultimate control and information-processing center. | Cerebral Cortex |
| A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. | Classical Conditioning |
| A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathetic environment to facilitate clients' growth. | Client-Centered Therapy |
| A branch of psychology that studies, assess, and treats people with psychological disorders. | Clinical Psychology |
| Of or relating to cognition. | Cognitive |
| All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. | Cognition |
| A mental representation of the layout of one's environment. For example, after exploring a maze, rats acts as if they have learned a cognitive map of it. | Cognitive Map |
| The interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language). | Cognitive Neuroscience |
| Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions. | Cognitive Therapy |
| A popular integrated therapy that combines cognitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior). | Cognitive Behavior Therapy |
| The theory that we act to reduce the discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes. | Cognitive Dissonance Theory |
| A culture that places high value on group image, group esteem, group reliance, group awareness, and achievement of the group. | Collectivist Culture |
| Giving priority to goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly. | Collectivism |
| An irresistible urge to behave in a certain way, especially against one's conscious wishes. | Compulsion |
| Stage in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. | Concrete Operational Stage |
| Retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. The cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations. | Cones |
| An actor who, unbeknownst to research participants, is working on behalf of experimenters to fulfill a part of the experimental design. | Confederate |
| Seeks an agreement between a theoretical concept and a specific measuring device, such as observation. | Construct Validity |
| The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest (such as a driving test that samples a driving task). | Content Validity |
| In an experiment, the group that is not exposed to the treatment; contrasts with the experimental group and serves as a comparison for evaluating the effect of the treatment. | Control Group |
| The process or state of converging. | Convergence |
| A rare somatoform disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no psychological basis can be found. | Conversion Disorder |
| The transparent layer forming the front of the eye. | Cornea |
| A statistical index of the relationship between two things. (from -1 to +1) | Correlation Coefficient |
| A measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the other. | Correlation |
| A behavior therapy procedure that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning. | Counterconditioning |
| An automatic response established by training to an ordinarily neutral stimulus. | Conditioned Response |
| A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another. | Cross-Sectional Study |
| A previously neutral stimulus that eventually comes to evoke a conditioned response. | Conditioned Stimulus |
| A bitter, resinous substance obtained from the bark and stems of some South American plants. It paralyzes the motor nerves and is traditionally used by some Indian peoples to poison their arrows and blowpipe darts. | Curare |
| Question someone about a completed mission or undertaking. | Debriefing |
| In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. | Defense Mechanisms |
| False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders. | Delusions |
| The bushy, branching extensions of a neuron that receive messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body. | Dendrite |
| A personality disorder that is characterized by a pervasive psychological dependence on other people. | Dependent Personality Disorder |
| The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable. | Dependent Variable |
| Drugs (such as alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates) that reduce neural activity and slow body functions. | Depressants |
| An explanation of mental disorders based on a combination of genetic vulnerability and environmental influences. | Diathesis-Stress Model |
| The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time. We experience it as a just noticeable difference (jnd). | Difference Threshold |
| In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus. | Discrimination |
| Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a group and its members. | Discrimination |
| A social group's informal norms about when, where, and how one should express emotions. | Display Rules |
| A split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others. | Dissociation |
| Disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings. | Dissociative Disorders |
| A compound present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances including epinephrine. | Dopamine |
| An experimental procedure in which both the research participants and the research staff are ignorant about whether the research participants have received the treatment or placebo. Commonly used in drug-evaluation studies. | Double-Blind Procedure |
| The process of interpreting the universal symbols and archetypes seen in dreams and the unconscious state to understand how they relate to waking life. | Dream Interpretation |
| The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state that motivates an organism to satisfy the need. | Drive-Reduction Theory |
| The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, with an updated "text revision"; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders. | DSM-IV-TR |
| A branch of psychology that studies children in an educational setting and is concerned with teaching and learning methods, cognitive development, and aptitude assessment. | Educational Psychology |
| An amplified recording of the waves of electrical activity that sweep across the brain's surface. These waves are measured by electrodes placed on the scalp. | Electroencephalogram (EEG) |
| The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. It operates on the reality principle. | Ego |
| In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view. | Egocentrism |
| The processing of information into the memory system for example, by extracting meaning. | Encoding |
| "Morphine within"-natural, opiatelike neurotransmitters linked to pain control and to pleasure. | Endorphins |
| Subcategory of Declarative memory where information regarding life events are stored. | Episodic Memory |
| Prescriptive guidance on the conduct of psychologists in research and practice. | Ethical Guidelines |
| The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection. | Evolutionary Psychology |
| Nerve signaling chemicals that increase activity in neurons. | Excitatory Neurotransmitter |
| A positive change in voltage that occurs when a neurotransmitter binds to an excitatory receptor site. | Excitatory Postsynaptic Potential |
| A research method in which an investigator manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) to observe the effect on some behavior or mental process (dependent variable). | Experiment |
| Errors in a research study due to the predisposed notions or beliefs of the experimenter. | Experimenter Bias |
| Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare". | Explicit Memory |
| The diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus; occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced. | Extinction |
| A desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment. | Extrinsic Motivation |
| An extroverted disposition; concern with what is outside the self. | Extroversion |
| The degree to which a procedure, esp. a psychological test or assessment, appears effective in terms of its stated aims. | Face Validity |
| The idea that the brain uses feedback from facial muscles to recognize emotions that are being experienced. | Facial Feedback Hypothesis |
| A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score. | Factor Analysis |
| The inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set. | Fixation |
| According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psycho-sexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved. | Fixation |
| In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed. | Fixed-Interval Schedule |
| Sudden exposure to the feared stimulus, usually in the presence of a fearless model, such as the therapist. | Flooding |
| In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing. | Free Association |
| Portion of the cerebral cortex lying just behind the forehead; involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making plans and judgments. | Frontal Lobes |
| The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving. | Functional Fixedness |
| The tendency for observers, when analyzing another's behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition. | Fundamental Attribution Error |
| A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test. | General Intelligence (g) |
| An amino acid that is found in the central nervous system; acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. | Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid |
| The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. | Gate-Control Theory |
| The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses. | Generalization |
| An anxiety disorder in which a person is continually tense, apprehensive, and in a state of autonomic nervous system arousal. | Generalized Anxiety Disorder |
| An organized whole. These psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes. | Gestalt |
| Cells in the nervous system that support, nourish, and protect neurons. | Glial Cells (Glia) |
| An exaggerated view of oneself as possessing special and extremely favorable personal qualities and abilities. | Grandiosity |
| The enhancement of a group's prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group. | Group Polarization |
| The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. | Groupthink |
| False sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus. | Hallucinations |
| The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. | Heritability |
| The tendency to believe, after learning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. | Hindsight Bias |
| A neural center that is located in the limbic system and helps process explicit memories for storage. | Hippocampus |
| A disorder characterized by attention-seeking behavior and shallow emotions. | Histrionic Personality Disorder |
| A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level. | Homeostasis |
| Chemical messengers that are manufactured by the endocrine glands, travel through the bloodstream, and affect other tissues. | Hormones |
| Historically significant perspective that emphasized the growth potential of healthy people and the individual's potential for personal growth. | Humanistic Psychology |
| A social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) suggests to another (the subject) that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur. | Hypnosis |
| A somatoform disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease. | Hypochondriasis |
| A neural structure lying below the thalamus; it directs several maintenance activities, helps govern the endocrine system via the pituitary gland, and is linked to emotion and reward. | Hypothalamus |
| A testable prediction, often implied by a theory. | Hypothesis |
| A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second. | Iconic Memory |
| Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. It operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification. | id |
| A positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior. | Incentive |
| The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied. | Independent Variable |
| Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. | Individualism |
| The drawing of a general conclusion from certain premises or statements. | Inductive Reasoning |
| The application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces. | Industrial-Organizational Psychology |
| The inability to remember events from one’s infancy and early childhood. | Infantile Amnesia |
| A neurotransmitter that acts to prevent a neuron from firing an action potential. | Inhibitory Neurotransmitter |
| A negative change in voltage that occurs when a neurotransmitter binds to an inhibitory receptor. | Inhibitory Postsynaptic Potential |
| The innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs. | Inner Ear |
| A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions. | Insight |
| Recurring problems in falling or staying asleep. | Insomnia |
| Development that takes account of the inherent connections among our environment, the people living in it, and the economy within which we interact on a daily basis. | Interdependence |
| Reinforcement of a behavior—but not after every response. | Intermittent Reinforcement |
| The extent to which all questions or items assess the same characteristic, skill, or quality. | Internal Consistency |
| To insert something between other things. | Interposition |
| A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake. | Intrinsic Motivation |
| The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli. | James-Lange Theory |
| The tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get. | Just-World Phenomenon |
| An innate mechanism that aids language development, through recognising grammatical structure. | Language Acquisition Device |
| Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it. | Latent Learning |
| Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences became more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely. | Law of Effect |
| The cerebral hemisphere to the left of the corpus callosum that controls the right half of the body. | Left Hemisphere |
| The transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina. | Lens |
| Tissue destruction. In the brain it is a naturally or experimentally caused destruction of brain tissue. | Lesion |
| A Freudian term for sexual urge or desire. | Libido |
| The appearance of things relative to one another as determined by their distance from the viewer. | Linear Perspective |
| Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period. | Longitudinal Study |
| Not providing adequate or appropriate adjustment to the environment or situation. | Maladaptive |
| The arithmetic average of a distribution, obtained by adding the scores and then dividing by the number of scores. | Mean |
| The middle score in a distribution; half the scores are above it and half are below it. | Median |
| A procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies. | Meta-Analysis |
| The most frequently occurring score(s) in a distribution. | Mode |
| Psychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes. | Mood Disorders |
| The process through which children learn to understand the differences between right and wrong and can make independent decisions on moral issues. | Moral Development |
| In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word. | Morpheme |
| A motion cue that indicates that things that are closer appear to move across your visual field more quickly than things that are further away. | Motion Parallax |
| A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior. | Motivation |
| A technique that uses magnetic fields and radio waves to produce computer-generated images of soft tissue. It scans show brain anatomy. | MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) |
| A layer of fatty tissue segmentally encasing the fibers of many neurons; enables vastly greater transmission speed of neural impulses as the impulse hops from one node to the next. | Myelin Sheath |
| A psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. | Myers-Briggs Type Inventory |
| A disorder characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance and self-absorption. | Narcissistic Personality Disorder |
| A sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks. The sufferer may lapse directly into REM sleep, often at inopportune times. | Narcolepsy |
| Observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation. | Naturalistic Observation |
| A correlation where as one variable increases, the other decreases. | Negative Correlation |
| Increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli, such as shock. | Negative Reinforcement |
| Asymmetry in which most of the scores in a distribution are at the high end. | Negative Skew |
| Nerve impulse: the electrical discharge that travels along a nerve fiber. | Neural Impulses |
| Major tranquilizer: tranquilizer used to treat psychotic conditions when a calming effect is desired. | Neuroleptics |
| Chemical messengers that cross the synaptic gaps between neurons. | Neurotransmitters |
| A sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified; unlike nightmares, it occurs during stage 4 sleep, within two or three hours of falling asleep, and are seldom remembered. | Night Terrors |
| A hormone that is released by the adrenal medulla and by the sympathetic nerves and functions as a neurotransmitter. | Norepinephrine |
| Influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval. | Normative Social Influence |
| An understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. "Proper" behavior. | Norm |
| The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived. | Object Permanence |
| Learning by observing others. | Observational Learning |
| An idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind. | Obsession |
| An anxiety disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and/or actions (compulsions). | Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder |
| Portion of the cerebral cortex lying at the back of the head; includes areas that receive information from the visual fields. | Occipital Lobes |
| A type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. | Operant Conditioning |
| A statement of the procedures used to define research variables. | Operational Definition |
| Opium and its derivatives, such as morphine and heroin; they depress neural activity, temporarily lessening pain and anxiety. | Opiates |
| The theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision. | Opponent-Process Theory |
| The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain. | Optic Nerve |
| A small bone; especially one in the middle ear. | Ossicle |
| Occurs when an external such as money or prizes decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task. | Overjustification Effect |
| An anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, chocking, or other frightening sensations. | Panic Disorder |
| A psychological construct representing standard strategies that parents use in their child rearing. | Parenting Styles |
| A progressive disease of the nervous system marked by tremor, muscular rigidity, and slow, imprecise movement, chiefly affecting middle-aged and elderly people. | Parkinson's Disease |
| The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events. | Perception |
| Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change. | Perceptual Constancy |
| The sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous system (CNS) to the rest of the body. | Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) |
| Granting or inclined or able to grant permission; not strict in discipline. | Permissive |
| A questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits. | Personality Inventory |
| Tending to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen. | Pessimistic |
| A visual display of brain activity that detects where a radioactive form of glucose goes while the brain performs a given task. | PET (position emission tomography) scan |
| Sensations that are described as perceptions that an individual experiences relating to a limb or an organ that is not physically part of the body. | Phantom Pain |
| An anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object or situation. | Phobia |
| In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit. | Phoneme |
| Experimental results caused by expectations alone; any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which the recipient assumes is an active agent. | Placebo Effect |
| The brain's ability to change, especially during childhood, by reorganizing after damage or by building new pathways based on experience. | Plasticity |
| A machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measure several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion. | Polygraph |
| All the cases in a group being studied, from which samples may be drawn. | Population |
| Where an increase in one data set produces an increase in the other. | Positive Correlation |
| Increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response. | Positive Reinforcement |
| Asymmetry in which most of the scores in a distribution are low. | Positive Skew |
| The principled level, is marked by a growing realization that individuals are separate entities from society, and that the individual’s own perspective may take precedence over society’s view. | Post Conventional Level (Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development) |
| Especially common in children, although adults can also exhibit this level of reasoning. Reasoners at this level judge the morality of an action by its direct consequences. | Pre Conventional Level (Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development) |
| The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. | Predictive Validity |
| In Piaget's theory, the stage during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. | Preoperational Stage |
| The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response. | Priming |
| The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory. | Priming |
| Unconscious memories such as motor skills and associations. | Procedural Memory |
| Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. | Projection |
| A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics. | Projective Test |
| A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories. | Prototype |
| Freud's theory of personality and therapeutic technique that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. | Psychoanalysis |
| Of or relating to or incorporating the methods and theory of psychiatric treatment originated by Sigmund Freud. | Psychoanalytic |
| Any branch of psychology concerned with psychological measurements | Psychometric |
| An event that decreases the behavior that it follows. | Punishment |
| Assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups. | Random Assignment |
| A sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion. | Random Sample |
| The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution. | Range |
| A type of cognitive therapy, developed by Albert Ellis, that treats psychological disorders by forcing the client to give up irrational beliefs. | Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy |
| The interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment. | Reciprocal Determinism |
| Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. | Regression |
| Rapid eye movement sleep, a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. Aka paradoxical sleep, because the muscles are relaxed but other body systems are active. | REM Sleep |
| The tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation. | REM Rebound |
| Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information. | Representativeness Heuristic |
| In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. | Repression |
| The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information. | Retina |
| A binocular cue for perceiving depth: By comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance-the greater the difference between the two images, the closer the object. | Retinal Disparity |
| The process of getting information out of memory storage. | Retrieval |
| Loss of memory for events immediately preceding a trauma. | Retrograde Amnesia |
| A neurotransmitter's re-absorption by the sending neuron. | Reuptake |
| The half of the brain that synthesizes experiences by giving a general, overall impression of what is happening. | Right Hemisphere |
| Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond. | Rods |
| A set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave. | Role |
| The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots. | Rorschach Inkblot Test |
| A portion drawn from a population, the study of which is intended to lead to statistical estimates of the attributes of the whole population. | Sample |
| States that emotion is a function of both cognitive factors and physiological arousal. | Schachter–Singer Theory |
| Reinforcement can be arranged to occur after every target instrumental response, or after only some of these. | Schedules of Reinforcement |
| A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. | Schema |
| A group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions. | Schizophrenia |
| The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus. | Selective Attention |
| According to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential. | Self-Actualization |
| A prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. | Self-Fulfilling Prophecy |
| A readiness to perceive oneself favorably. | Self-Serving Bias |
| The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning. | Semantics |
| The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment. | Sensation |
| In Piaget's theory, the stage during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities. | Sensorimotor Stage |
| Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation. | Sensory Adaption |
| Area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers and processes body touch and movement sensations. | Sensory Cortex |
| Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list. | Serial Position Effect |
| A compound present in blood platelets and serum that constricts the blood vessels and acts as a neurotransmitter. | Serotonin |
| An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior. | Shaping |
| Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten. | Short-Term Memory |
| Researcher knows placebo condition, but participant does not. | Single Blind Experiment |
| A sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and repeated momentary awakenings. | Sleep Apnea |
| The tendency for respondents to give answers that are socially desirable or acceptable, that may not be accurate. | Social Desirability Bias |
| Stronger responses on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others. | Social Facilitation |
| The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable. | Social Loafing |
| Combining social and cultural factors. | Sociocultural |
| Psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical cause. | Somatoform Disorder |
| A condition resulting from surgery that isolates the brain's two hemispheres by cutting the fibers (mainly those of the corpus callosum) connecting them. | Split Brain |
| A method of assessing internal reliability by correlating scores from one half of the items on an index or test with scores on the other half of the items. | Split-Half Reliability |
| The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response. | Spontaneous Recovery |
| A computed measure of how much scores vary around the mean score. | Standard Deviation |
| Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group. | Standardization |
| A theory of absolute time in which the number of states from the first moment in time up to the current moment in time can be counted. | State Theory |
| A statistical statement of how likely it is that an obtained result occurred by chance. | Statistical Significance |
| A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. | Stereotype Threat |
| Drugs that excite neural activity and speed up body functions. | Stimulants |
| A thing or event that evokes a specific functional reaction in an organ or tissue. | Stimulus |
| The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment and for future aspirations. | Superego |
| A technique for ascertaining the self-reported attitudes or behaviors of a particular group, usually by questioning a representative, random sample of the group. | Survey |
| The junction between the axon tip of the sending neuron and the dendrite or cell body of the receiving neuron. | Synapse |
| The tiny gap at the end of the synapse. | Synaptic Gap |
| The production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body. | Synesthesia |
| The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language. | Syntax |
| A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias. | Systematic Desensitization |
| Involuntary movements of the facial muscles, tongue, and limbs; a possible neurotoxic side effect of long-term use of antipsychotic drugs that target certain dopamine receptors. | Tardive Dyskinesia |
| Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - "go car" - using mostly nouns and verbs. | Telegraphic Speech |
| A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity. | Temperament |
| Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm. | Teratogens |
| The distortion in size which closer objects have compared to objects farther away. | Texture Gradient |
| The brain's sensory switchboard, located on top of the brainstem; it directs messages to the sensory receiving areas in the cortex and transmits replies to the cerebellum and medulla. | Thalamus |
| A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes. | Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) |
| An operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats. | Token Economy |
| Conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brains can interpret. | Transduction |
| In psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships. | Transference |
| The theory that color vision depends on the relative degree of stimulation of red, green, and blue receptors. | Trichromatic Theory |
| Any of a class of antidepressant drugs having molecules with three fused rings. | Tricyclics |
| In classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus, such as salivation when food is in the mouth. | Unconditioned Response (UR) |
| In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally-naturally and automatically-triggers a response. | Unconditioned Stimulus (US) |
| According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware. | Unconscious |
| The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. | Validity |
| Section of the hypothalamus, that when lesioned in a rats brain, the rat will demonstrate abnormal appetitive behaviour. | Ventromedial Hypothalamus |
| The part of the cerebral cortex that receives and processes sensory nerve impulses from the eyes. | Visual Cortex |
| The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage. | Weber's Law |
| Controls Language reception-a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe. | Wernicke's Area |
| The standard deviation units away from the mean a particular value of data lies. | Z Score |
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