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Psych (Laura King)
Psychology, an appreciative view, by Laura A. King
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Psychology | The scientific study of behavior and mental processes. |
| Behavior | Everything we do that can be directly observed. |
| Science | In Psychology, the use of systematic methods to observe, describe, predict, and explain behavior. |
| Mental Processes | The thoughts, feelings, and motives that each of us experiences privately but cannot be observed directly. |
| Critical Thinking | The process of thinking reflectively and productively, as well as evaluating evidence. |
| Positive Psychology Movement | The push for a stronger emphasis on research involving the experiences that people value, the traits associated with optimal capacities for love and work, and positive group and civic values. |
| Structuralism | An early school of psychology that attempted to identify the structures of the human mind. |
| Functionalism | An early school of psychology that was concerned with the functions and purposes of the mind and behavior in individual's adaptation to the environment. |
| Natural Selection | An evolutionary process that favors organisms traits or characteristics that are best adapted to reproduce and survive. |
| Biological Approach to Psychology | Psychology perspective examining behavior and mental processes through a focus on the body, especially the brain and nervous system. |
| Neuroscience | The scientific study of the structure, function, development, genetics, and biochemistry of the neurosystem. |
| Behavioral Approach to Psychology | Psychology perspective emphasizing study of observable behavioral responses and their environmental determinants. |
| Psychodynamic Approach to Psychology | Psychology perspective emphasizing unconscious thought, conflict between biological instincts and society's demands, and early family experiences. |
| Humanistic Approach to Psychology | Psychology perspective emphasizing positive qualities, capacity for positive growth, and the freedom to choose any destiny. |
| Cognitive Approach to Psychology | focuses on mental processes involved in knowing: how we direct our attention, perceive, remember, think and solve problems. |
| Evolutionary Approach to Psychology | Psychology perspective that uses evolutionary ideas such as adaptation, reproduction, and "survival of the fittest" as the basis for explaining specific human behaviors. |
| Sociocultural Approach to Psychology | Psychology perspective examining the way social and cultural environments influence behavior. |
| Psychopathology | The study of mental illness. |
| Meta-analysis | A method that lets researchers combine results of several studies on a similar topic in order to establish the strength of an effect. |
| Theory | an idea that tries to explain observations. |
| Variable | anything that can change |
| Operational Definition | An objective description of how a research variable is going to be measured and observed. |
| Hypothesis | An idea that is arrived at logically from a theory. It is a prediction that can be tested. |
| Step 1 of the Scientific Method | Observing some phenomenon |
| Step 2 of the Scientific Method | Formulating hypotheses and predictions |
| Step 3 of the Scientific Method | Testing through empirical research |
| Step 4 of the Scientific Method | Drawing conclusions |
| Step 5 of the Scientific Method | Evaluating conclusions |
| Population | The entire group about which the investigator wants to draw conclusions. |
| Sample | The subset of the population chosen by the investigator for study. |
| Random sample | A sample that gives every member of the population an equal chance of being selected. |
| Naturalistic Observation | Observation of behavior in real-world settings with no effort made to manipulate or control the situation. |
| Standardized Test | A test that requires answers to written and/or oral questions. |
| Case Study/Case History | an in-depth look at one individual. |
| Correlational research | A research strategy that identifies the relationships between two or more variables to explain how they change together. |
| Third Variable/Confound Problem | Situation where an extraneous variable that has not been measured accounts for the relationship between two others. |
| Longitudinal Design | Systematic observation involving measuring variables of interest in waves over time. |
| Experiment | procedure of manipulating some variables thought to influence behavior while all other variables are held constant. |
| Random Assignment | The assignment of participants to research groups by chance. |
| Independent Variable | The manipulated experimental factor in an experiment. |
| Dependent Variable | A factor that responds to change in the independent variable. |
| Experimental Group | A group in the research study whose experience is manipulated. |
| Control Group | A comparison group that is as much like the experimental group as possible and is treated the same except for in regard to the independent variable. |
| Validity | The soundness of the conclusions we draw from an experiment. |
| Ecological Validity | The extent to which an experimental design is representative of the real-world issues it is supposed to address. |
| Internal Validity | The extent to which the changes in the dependent variable are actually due to the manipulation of the independent variable. |
| Experimenter Bias | Influence of the experimenter's expectations on the outcome of an experiment. |
| Research Participant Bias | The influence of research participants' expectations on their behavior within an experiment. |
| Placebo | An inert substance given to participants instead of an active agent that has no real effect. |
| Placebo Effect | when participants' expectations, rather than experimental treatment, produce an experimental outcome. |
| Double-Blind Experiment | An experiment that is conducted so that neither the experimenter nor the participants are aware of which participants are in the experimental group and which are in the control group until after the results are calculated. |
| Descriptive Statistics | Mathematical procedures that are used to describe and summarize sets of data in a meaningful way. |
| Mean | A statistical measure of the central tendency that is calculated by adding all the scores in a set and then dividing by the number of scores. |
| Median | A statistical measure of central tendency that falls exactly in the middle of a distribution of scores after they have been arranged (or ranked) from highest to lowest. |
| Mode | A statistical measure of central tendency; the score that occurs most often in a set of data. |
| Range | A statistical measure of variability that is the distance between the highest and lowest scores. |
| Standard Deviation | A statistical measure of variability that involves how much the scores vary, on the average, around the mean of the sample. |
| Inferential Statistics | Mathematical methods that are used to indicate whether data sufficiently support or confirm a research hypothesis. |
| Ethnic Gloss | Using an ethnic label, such as "African American" or "Latino," in a superficial way that portrays the ethnic group as more homogenous than it really is. |
| Nervous System | The body's electrochemical communication circuitry, made up of billions of interconnected cells. |
| Plasticity | The brain's special capacity for modification and change. |
| Afferent Nerves | Sensory nerves that transport information to the brain. |
| Efferent Nerves | Motor nerves that carry the brain's output. |
| Neural Networks | Networks of nerve cells that integrate sensory input and motor output. |
| Central Nervous System | The brain and spinal cord. |
| Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) | The network of nerves that connects the brain and spinal cord to other parts of the body. It is divided into the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. |
| Somatic Nervous system | part of the PNS with sensory nerves, which convey information to the CNS, and motor nerves, which transmit information to the muscles. |
| Autonomic Nervous System | Part of the PNS that communicates with the internal organs and monitors processes such as breathing, heart rate, and digestion. It consists of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. |
| Sympathetic Nervous System | The division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body. |
| Parasympathetic Nervous System | The division of the autonomic nervous system that calms the body. |
| Neurons | Nerve cells that are specialized for processing information. Neurons are the basic units of the nervous system. |
| Glial Cells | Cells that provide support and nutritional benefits in the nervous system. |
| Cell Body | The part of the neuron containing the nucleus, which directs the manufacture of substances that the neuron needs for growth and maintenance. |
| Dendrites | Branches of a neuron that receive and orient information toward the cell body. |
| Axon | The part of the neuron that carries information away from the cell body to other cells. |
| Myelin sheath | The layer of fat cells that encases and insulates most axons. The myelin sheath speeds up the transmission of nerve impulses. |
| Resting Potential | The stable, negative charge of an inactive neuron. |
| Action Potential | The brief wave of positive electrical charge that sweeps down the axon during the transmission of a nerve impulse. |
| All-Or-None Principal | The idea that once an electrical impulse reaches a certain level of intensity, it fires and moves all the way down the axon without losing any of its intensity. |
| Synapses | Tiny junctions between two neurons, generally where the axon of one neuron meets the dendrites or cell body of another neuron. |
| Neurotransmitters | Chemical substances that carry information across the synaptic gap from one neuron to the next. |
| Agonist | A drug that mimics or increases a neurotransmitter's effects. |
| Antagonist | A drug that blocks a neurotransmitter's effects. |
| Hindbrain | The lowest portion of the brain, consisting of the medulla, cerebellum, and pons. |
| Midbrain | Located between the hindbrain and forebrain, a region where many nerve-fiber systems ascend and descend to connect the higher and lower portions of the brain. |
| Reticular Formation | A midbrain system that consists of a diffuse collection of neurons involved in stereotypical behaviors, such as walking, sleeping, or turning to a sudden noise. |
| Brain Stem | The region of the brain that includes much of the hindbrain (excluding the cerebellum) and the midbrain. |
| Forebrain | The highest level of the brain. Key structures are the limbic system, thalamus, basal ganglia, hypothalamus, and cerebral cortex. |
| Limbic System | Loosely connected network of structures--including the amygdala and hippocamupus that play important roles in memory and emotion. |
| Thalamus | Forebrain structure that functions as a relay station to sort information and send it to appropriate areas in the forebrain for further integration and interpretation. |
| Basal Ganglia | Large clusters of neurons, located above the thalamus and under the cerebral cortex, that work with the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex to control and coordinate voluntary movements. |
| Hypothalamus | Small forebrain structure involved in regulating eating, drinking, and sex; directing the endocrine system; and monitoring emotion, stress, and reward. |
| Cerebral Cortex | Highest level of the forebrain, where the highest mental functions, such as thinking and planning, take place. |
| Occipital Lobe | The part of the cerebral cortex at the back of the head that is involved in vision. |
| Temporal Lobe | The portion of the cerebral cortex just above the ears that is involved in hearing, language processing, and memory. |
| Frontal Lobe | The part of the cerebral cortex just behind the forehead that is involved in the control of voluntary muscles, intelligence, and personality. |
| Parietal Lobe | Area of the cerebral cortex at the top of the head that is involved in registering spatial location, attention, and motor control. |
| Somatosensory Cortex | Area of the cerebral cortex that processes information about body sensations. |
| Motor Cortex | Area of the cerebral Cortex that processes information about voluntary movement. |
| Association Cortex | Region of the cerebral cortex in which the highest intellectual functions, such as thinking and problem solving, occur; also called association areas. |
| Corpus Callosum | The large bundle of axons connecting the brain's two hemispheres. |
| Endocrine System | A set of glands that regulate the activities of certain organs by releasing their chemical products (hormones) into the bloodstream. |
| Hormones | Chemical messengers manufactured by the endocrine glands. |
| Pituitary Gland | An important endocrine gland at the base of the skull that controls growth and regulates other glands. |
| Adrenal glands | Important endocrine glands that are instrumental in regulating moods, energy level, and the ability to cope with stress. |
| Chromosomes | Threadlike structures that contain genes and DNA. Humans have 23 chromosome pairs in the nucleus of every cell. Each parent contributes one chromosome to each pair. |
| Deoxyrybonucleic Acid | A complex molecule that contains genetic information; makes up chromosomes. |
| Genes | The units of hereditary information. They are short segments of chromosomes, composed of DNA. |
| Dominant-recessive genes principle | The principle that, if one gene of a pair governing a given characteristic is dominant and one is recessive, the dominant gene overrides the recessive gene. A recessive gene exerts its influence only if both genes in a pair are recessive. |
| Genotype | An individual's genetic heritage; his or her actual genetic material. |
| Phenotype | The expression of an individual's genotype in observable, measurable characteristics. |
| Stress | The response of individuals to changes in circumstances and events that threaten their coping abilities. |
| Stressors | Circumstances and events that threaten individuals and tax their coping abilities. |
| Development | The pattern of continuity and change in human capabilities that occurs throughout the course of life. |
| Nature | An organism's biological inheritance. |
| Nurture | An organism's environmental experiences. |
| Preferential Looking | A test of perception that involves giving an infant a choice of what object to look at and that is used to determine whether infants can distinguish between objects. |
| Habituation | Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations. Habituation is used in infant research to examine if an infant can discriminate between an old stimulus and a new one. |
| Schema | A framework that already exists in a person's mind that organizes information and provides a structure for interpreting it. |
| Assimilation | An individual's incorporation of new information into existing knowledge. |
| Accommodation | An individual's adjustment of a schema to new information. |
| Sensorimotor Stage | The first Piagetian stage of cognitive development (birth to about 2 years), in which infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions. |
| Preoperational Stage | The second Piagetian stage of cognitive development (~2 to 7 years), in which thought becomes more symbolic than in the sensorimotor stage but the child cannot yet perform operations. |
| Concrete Operational Stage | The third Piagetian stage of cognitive development (~7 to 11 years), in which thought becomes operational and intuitive reasoning is replaced by logical reasoning in concrete situations. |
| Formal Operational Stage | The fourth and final Piagetian stage of cognitive development (emerging from about 11 to fifteen years), in which thinking becomes more abstract, idealistic, and logical. |
| Attachment | The close emotional bond between an infant and its caregiver. |
| Secure Attachment | An important aspect of socioemotional development in which infants use the caregiver, usually the mother, as a secure base from which to explore the environment. |
| Temperament | An individual's behavioral style and characteristic way of responding. |
| Authoritarian Parenting | parents exhorting the child to follow directions and to value hard work and effort. |
| Authoritative Parenting | encouraging independence (but still placing controls on behavior); includes verbal give-and-take, and nurturing interactions with the child. |
| Neglectful Parenting | Parents are uninvolved in their child's life. |
| Indulgent Parenting | Parents are involved with their children but place few limits on them. |
| Prosocial Behavior | Behavior that is intended to benefit other people. |
| Androgens | Main class of male sex hormones. |
| Estrogens | Main class of female sex hormones. |
| Resilience | A person's ability to recover from or adapt to difficult times. |
| Puberty | A period of rapid skeletal and sexual maturation that occurs mainly in early adolescence. |
| Identity versus Identity Confusion | Erikson's fifth psychological stage in which adolescents face the challenge of finding out who they are, what they are all about, and where they are going in life. |
| Emerging Adulthood | The transition from adolescence to adulthood. |
| Crystallized Intelligence | An individual's accumulated information and verbal skills. |
| Fluid intelligence | An individual's ability to reason abstractly. |
| Wisdom | Expert knowledge about the practical aspects of life. |
| Sensation | The process of receiving stimulus energies from the environment. |
| Transduction | The process of transforming physical energy into electrochemical energy. |
| Perception | The brain's process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to give it meaning. |
| Bottom-up Processing | Processing that begins with sensory receptors registering environmental information and sending it to the brain for analysis and interpretation. |
| Top-down Processing | Processing of perceptual information that starts out with cognitive processing at the higher levels of the brain. |
| Sensory Receptors | Specialized cells that detect stimulus information and transmit it to sensory (afferent) nerves and the brain. |
| Psychophysics | The field that studies links between the physical properties of stimuli and a person's experience of them. |
| Absolute Threshold | The minimum amount of stimulus energy that a person can detect. |
| Noise | Irrelevant and competing stimuli. |
| Subliminal Perception | The detection of information below the level of conscious awareness. |
| Difference Threshold | The smallest difference in stimulation required to discriminate one stimulus from another 50 percent of the time. |
| Weber's Law | The principle that two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount) to be perceived as different. |
| Signal Detection Theory | The theory about perception that focuses on decision making about stimuli in the presence of uncertainty; detection depends on a variety of factors besides the physical intensity of the stimulus and the sensory abilities of the observer. |
| Selective Attention | Focusing on a specific aspect of experience while ignoring others. |
| Perceptual Set | A predisposition to perceive something in a particular way. |
| Retina | The light-sensitive surface in the back of the eye that records what we see and converts it to neural impulses for processing in the brain |
| Rods | The receptors in the retina that are sensitive to light but are not very useful for color vision. |
| Cones | The receptors in the retina that process information about color. |
| Feature Detectors | Neurons in the brain's visual system that respond to particular features of a stimulus. |
| Parallel Processing | The simultaneous distribution of information across different neural pathways. |
| Binding | The bringing together and integration of what is processed through different pathways or cells. |
| Trichromatic theory | Theory stating that color perception is produced by three types of receptors (cone cells in the retina) that are particularly sensitive to different, but overlapping, ranges of wavelengths. |
| Opponent-Process Theory | Theory stating that cells in the visual system respond to red-green and blue yellow colors; a given cell might be excited by red and inhibited by green, whereas another might be excited by yellow and inhibited by blue. |
| Figure-Ground Relationship | Principle by which individuals organize the perceptual field into stimuli that stand out (figure) and those that are left over (background, or ground) |
| Gestalt Psychology | School of psychology emphasizing that people naturally organize their perceptions according to certain patterns. |
| Depth Perception | The ability to perceive objects three-dimensionally. |
| Binocular Cues | Depth cues that are based on the combination of the images on the left and the right eyes and on the way the two eyes work together. |
| Monocular Cues | Depth Cues that are available from the image in either eye. |
| Apparent Movement | The perception that a stationary object is moving. |
| Perceptual Constancy | Recognition that objects are constant and unchanging even though sensory input about them is changing. |
| Visual Illusion | A discrepancy between reality and the perceptual representation of it. |
| Outer Ear | Consists of Pinna and Auditory Canal. |
| Middle Ear | Consists of Eardrum, Hammer, Anvil, and Stirrup. |
| Inner Ear | Consists of the oval window, cochlea, and basilar membrane. |
| Place Theory | The theory of hearing that states that each frequency produces vibrations at a particular spot on the basilar membrane. |
| Frequency Theory | Theory stating that perception of a sound's frequency depends on how often the auditory nerve fires. |
| Volley Principle | Modification of frequency theory stating that a cluster of nerve cells can fire neural impulses in rapid succession, producing a volley of impulses. |
| Auditory Nerve | Nerve that carries neural impulses to the brain's auditory areas. |
| Thermoreceptors | Sensory receptors, located under the skin, that respond to changes in temperature at or near the skin and provide input to keep the body's temperature at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. |
| Pain | The sensation that warns us of damage to our bodies. |
| Papillae | Bumps on the tongue that contain taste buds, the receptors for taste. |
| Olfactory Epithelium | A sheet of receptor cells for smell that line sthe roof of the nasal cavity. |
| Kinesthetic Senses | Senses that provide information about movement, posture, and orientation. |
| Vestibular Sense | Senses that provide information about balance and movement. |
| Semicircular Canals | Structure in the inner ear containing the sensory receptors that detect head motion. |
| Consciousness | Awareness of external events and internal sesations, including awareness of the self and thoughts about one's experiences; this awareness occurs under a condition of arousal. |
| Stream of Consciousness | James's concept that the mind is a continuous flow of changing sensations, images, thoughts and feelings. |
| Controlled Processes | The most alert states of consciousness, in which individuals actively focus their efforts toward a goal. |
| Automatic Processes | States of consciousness that require little attention and do not interfere with other ongoing activities. |
| Unconscious Thought | Freud's concept of a reservoir of unacceptable wishes, feelings and thoughts that are beyond conscious awareness. |
| Biological Rhythms | Periodic physiological fluctuations in the body. |
| Circadian Rhythms | A daily behavioral or physiological cycle, such as the sleep/wake cycle. |
| Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) | A small structure in the brain that synchronizes its own rhythm with the daily cycle of light and dark based on input from the retina. |
| REM sleep | Rapid eye movement sleep; stage 5 of sleep, in which dreaming occurs. |
| Cognitive Theory of Dreaming | Theory proposing that dreaming can be understood by applying the same cognitive concepts used in studying the waking mind. |
| Activation-Synthesis Theory | Theory stating that dreaming occurs when the cerebral cortex synthesizes neural signals generated from activity in the lower part of the brain. |
| Hypnosis | An altered state of consciousness or simply a psychological state of altered attention and expectation, in which the individual is unusually receptive to suggestions. |
| Social Cognitive Behavior View of Hypnosis | Perspective that views hypnosis as a normal state in which the hypnotized person behaves the way he or she believes a hypnotized person should behave. |
| Psychoactive Drugs | Substances that act on the nervous system to alter consciousness, modify perceptions, and change. |
| Tolerance | The need to take increasing amounts of a drug to produce the same effect. |
| Physical Dependence | The physiological need for a drug, accompanied by unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, such as pain and craving, when the drug is discontinued. |
| Psychological Dependence | The strong desire to repeat the use of a drug for emotional reasons, such as a feeling of well-being and stress reduction. |
| Addiction | Either a physical or a psychological dependence, or both, on a drug. |
| Depressants | Psychoactive drugs that slow down mental and physical activity. |
| Alcoholism | A disorder that involves long-term, repeated, uncontrolled, compulsive and excessive use of alcoholic beverages and that impairs the drinker's health and social relationships. |
| Barbiturates | Depressant drugs that decrease the activity of the central nervous system. |
| Tranquilizers | Depressant drugs that reduce anxiety and induce relaxation. |
| Opiates | Opium and its derivatives; they depress the central nervous system's activity. |
| Stimulants | Psychoactive drugs that increase the central nervous system's activity. |
| Hallucinogens | Psychoactive drugs that modify a person's perceptual experiences and produce visual images that are not real. |
| Learning | A relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs through experience. |
| Behaviorism | A theory of learning that focuses solely on observable behaviors, discounting the importance of such mental activity as thinking, wishing and hoping. |
| Associative Learning | Learning in which a connection, or an association, is made between two events. |
| Observational Learning | Learning that occurs when a person observes and imitates another's behavior; also called imitation or modeling. |
| Classical Conditioning | Learning by which a neutral stimulus is associated with a meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response. |
| Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) | A stimulus that produces a response without prior learning. |
| Unconditioned Response (UCR) | An unlearned response that is automatically elicited by an unconditioned stimulus. |
| Conditioned Stimulus (CS) | A previously neutral stimulus that eventually elicits the conditioned response after being associated with the unconditioned stimulus. |
| Conditioned Response (CR) | The learned response to the conditioned stimulus that occurs after the pairing of a conditioned stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus. |
| Acquisition (classical conditioning) | The initial learning of the stimulus-response link, which involves a neutral stimulus being associated with an unconditioned Stimulus and becoming the conditioned stimulus that elicits the conditioned response. |
| Generalization (classical conditioning) | The tendency of a new stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus to elicit a response that is similar to the conditioned response. |
| Discrimination (classical conditioning) | The process of learning to respond to certain stimuli and not to others. |
| Extinction (classical conditioning) | The weakening of the conditioned response in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus. |
| Spontaneous recovery | The process in classical conditioning by which a conditioned response can recur after a time delay without further conditioning. |
| Counterconditioning | A classical conditioning procedure for weakening a conditioned response by associating the fear-provoking stimulus with a new response that is incompatible with the fear. |
| Operant Conditioning | Also called instrumental conditioning; a form of associative learning in which the consequences of a behavior change the probability of the behavior's occurrence. |
| Law of Effect | Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by positive outcomes are strengthened, whereas behaviors followed by negative outcomes are weakened. |
| Shaping | Rewarding approximations of a desired behavior. |
| Reinforcement | The process by which a stimulus or an event strengthens or increases the probability of a behavior or an event that it follows. |
| Positive Reinforcement | Following a behavior with a rewarding stimulus to increase the frequency of the behavior. |
| Negative Reinforcement | Following a behavior with the removal of an aversive stimulus to increase the frequency of the behavior. |
| Primary Reinforcement | The use of reinforcers that are innately satisfying. |
| Secondary Reinforcement | The use of reinforcers that are learned or conditioned. |
| Schedules of Reinforcement | Timetables that determine when a behavior will be reinforced. |
| Generalization (operant conditioning) | The tendency to give the same response to similar stimuli. |
| Discrimination (operant conditioning) | The tendency to respond to stimuli that signal that a behavior will or will not be reinforced. |
| Extinction (operant conditioning) | The situation where, because a previosly reinforced behavior is no longer reinforced, there is a decreased tendency to perform the behavior. |
| Punishment | A consequence that decreases the likelihood that a behavior will occur. |
| Positive Punishment | A behavior decreases when it is followed by an unpleasant stimulus. |
| Negative Punishment | A behavior decreases when a positive stimulus is removed. |
| Latent Learning (Implicit Learning) | Unreinforced learning that is not immediately reflected in behavior. |
| Insight Learning | A form of problem solving in which the organism develops a sudden insight into or understanding of the problem's solution. |
| Instinctive Drift | The tendency of animals to revery to instinctive behavior that interferes with learning. |
| Preparedness | The species-specific biological predisposition to learn in certain ways but not others. |
| Learned Helplessness | The phenomenon of learning through experience that outcomes are not controllable. |
| Applied Behavior Analysis (behavior modification) | The application of operant conditioning principles to change human behavior. |
| Memory | The retention of information over time through the processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval. |
| Encoding | The process by which information gets into memory storage. |
| Levels of Processing | The idea that encoding occurs on a continuum from shallow to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory. |
| Elaboration | Extensiveness of processing at any given level of memory. |
| Storage | Retention of information over time and the representation of information in memory. |
| Atkinson-Shiffrin theory | The view that memory storage involves three separate systems; sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. |
| Sensory Memory | Information from the world that is held in its original form only for an instant, not much longer than the brief time it is exposed to the visual, auditory, and other senses. |
| Short-term Memory | A limited-capacity memory system in which information is retained for only as long as 30 seconds unless strategies are used to retain it longer. |
| Working Memory | A three-part system that temporarily hods information as people perform cognitive tasks. Working memory is a kind of mental "workbench" on which information is manipulated and assembled to help individuals perform other cognitive tasks. |
| Long-term Memory | A relatively permanent type of memory that stores huge amounts of information for a long time. |
| Explicit Memory (Declarative Memory) | The conscious recollection of information, such as specific facts or events and, at least in humans, information that can be verbally communicated. |
| Episodic Memory | The retention of information about the where, when, and what of life's happenings. |
| Semantic Memory | A person's knowledge about the world. |
| Implicit Memory (Nondeclarative Memory) | Memory in which behavior is affected by prior experience without that experience being consciously recollected. |
| Procedural Memory | Memory for skills. |
| Priming | A type of implicit memory process involving the activation of information that people already have in storage to help them remember new information better and faster. |
| Schema | A preexisting mental concept or framework that helps people to organize and interpret information. |
| Script | A schema for an event. |
| Connectionism (Parallel Distributed Processing [PDP]) | The theory that memory is stored throughout the brain in connections among neurons, several of which may work together to process a single memory. |
| Retrieval | The memory process of taking information out of storage. |
| Serial Position Effect | The tendency for items at the beginning and at the end of a list to be recalled more readily than those in the middle. |
| Autobiographical Memory | A special form of episodic memory consisting of a person's recollections of his or her life experiences. |
| Flashbulb Memory | The memory of emotionally significant events that people often recall more accurately and vividly than everyday events. |
| Motivated Forgetting | An act of forgetting something because it is so painful or anxiety-laden that remembering it is intolerable. |
| Interference Theory | Theory stating that people forget not because memories are lost from storage but because other information gets in the way of what they want to remember. |
| Proactive interference | Situation in which material that was learned earlier disrupts the recall of material learned later. |
| Retroactive Interference | Situation in which material learned later disrupts the retrieval of information learned earlier. |
| Decay Theory | Theory stating that when something new is learned, a neurochemical "memory trace" is formed but over time this trace tends to disintegrate. |
| Tip-of-the-Tongue phenomenon (TOT State) | The "effortful retrieval" that occurs when people are confident that they know something but cannot pull it out of memory. |
| Retrospective Memory | Remembering the past. |
| Prospective Memory | Remembering information about doing something in the future, including memory for intentions. |
| Amnesia | The loss of memory. |
| Anterograde Amnesia | A memory disorder that affects the retention of new information and events. |
| Retrograde Amnesia | A memory disorder that involves memory loss for a segment of the past but not for new events. |
| Mnemonics | Specific visual and/or verbal memory aids. |
| Artificial Intelligence (AI) | The science of creating machines capable of performing activities that require intelligence when they are done by people. |
| Cognition | The way in which information is processed and manipulated in remembering, thinking, and knowing. |
| Thinking | Manipulating information mentally, as when we form concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and reflect in a creative or critical manner. |
| Concepts | Mental categories that are used to group objects, events, and characteristics. |
| Classical Model | Model stating that all instances of a concept share defining properties. |
| Prototype model | Model emphasizing that when people evaluate whether a given item reflects a certain concept, they compare the item with the most typical item(s) in that category and look for a "family resemblance." |
| Problem Solving | An attempt to find an appropriate way of attaining a goal when the goal is not readily available. |
| Decision Making | Evaluating alternatives and making choices among them. |
| Confirmation Bias | The tendency to search for and use information that supports, rather than refutes, our ideas. |
| Hindsight Bias | The tendency to report falsely after the fact, that we accurately predicted an outcome. |
| Availability Heuristic | A prediction about the probability of an event based on the ease of recalling or imagining similar events. |
| Mindfulness | Being alert and mentally present for one's everyday activities. |
| Open-Mindedness | Being receptive to the possibility of other ways of looking at things. |
| Creativity | The ability to think about something in novel and unusual ways and come up with unconventional solutions. |
| Divergent Thinking | Thinking that produces many answers to the same question; characteristic of creativity. |
| Convergent Thinking | Thinking that produces one correct answer; characteristic of the type of thinking requred on traditional intelligence tests. |
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