Learning, Memory, Thinking and Language, and Personality
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| 407963274 | Learning | A relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior due to experience | |
| 407963275 | Associative Learning | Learning that certain events occur together. | |
| 407963276 | Classical Conditioning | A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. | |
| 407963277 | Behaviorism | the view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not with (2) | |
| 407963278 | Unconditioned Response (UR) | In classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus (US), such as salivation when food is in the mouth. | |
| 407963279 | Unconditioned Stimulus (US) | In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally—naturally and automatically—triggers a response. | |
| 407963280 | Conditioned Response (CR) | In classical conditioning, the learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS). | |
| 407963281 | Conditioned Stimulus (CS) | In classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to trigger a conditioned response. | |
| 407963282 | Acquisition | In classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response. | |
| 407963283 | High Order Conditioning | A procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus. For example, an animal that has learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that a light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone. | |
| 407963284 | Extinction | The diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus (US) does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS); occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced | |
| 407963285 | Spontaneous Recovery | The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response. | |
| 407963286 | Generalization | The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response. | |
| 407963287 | Discrimination | In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus. | |
| 407963288 | Respondent Behavior | Behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus. | |
| 407963289 | Operant Conditioning | A type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. | |
| 407963290 | Operant Behavior | Behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences. | |
| 407963291 | Law of Effect | Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely. | |
| 407963292 | Operant Chamber | in operant conditioning research, a chamber (also known as a Skinner box) containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer; attached devices record the animal's rate of bar pressing or key pecking. | |
| 407963293 | Shaping | An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior. | |
| 407963294 | Reinforcer | In operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows. | |
| 407963295 | Positive Reinforcement | Increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response. | |
| 407963296 | Negative Reinforcement | Increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing nega¬ tive stimuli, such as shock. A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. | |
| 407963297 | Primary Reinforcer | An innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need. | |
| 407963298 | Conditioned Reinforcer | A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as a secondary reinforcer. | |
| 407963299 | Continuous Reinforcement | Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs. | |
| 407963300 | Partial (intermittent) Reinforcement | Reinforcing a response only part of the time; results in slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction than does continuous reinforcement. | |
| 407963301 | Fixed Ratio Schedule | in operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses. | |
| 407963302 | Variable Ratio Schedule | In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses. | |
| 407963303 | Fixed Interval Schedule | In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified time has elapsed. | |
| 407963304 | Variable Interval Schedule | An operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals | |
| 407963305 | Punishment | An event that decreases the behavior that it follows. | |
| 407963306 | Cognitive Map | A mental representation of the layout of one's environment. For example, after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned a cognitive map of it. | |
| 407963307 | Latent Learning | Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it. | |
| 407963308 | Intrinsic Motivation | A desire to perform a behavior effectively for its own sake. | |
| 407963309 | Extrinsic Motivation | A desire to perform a behavior to receive promised rewards or avoid threatened punishment. | |
| 407963310 | Observation Learning | Learning by observing others. | |
| 407963311 | Modeling | The process of observing and imitating a specific behavior. | |
| 407963312 | Mirror Neurons | Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation and empathy. | |
| 408015149 | Prosocial Behavior | Positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior | |
| 408015150 | Memory | The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information. | |
| 408015151 | Encoding | The processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning. | |
| 408015152 | Storage | The retention of encoded information over time. | |
| 408015153 | Retrieval | The process of getting information out of memory storage. | |
| 408015154 | Sensory Memory | The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system. | |
| 408015155 | Short Term Memory | 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. | |
| 408015156 | Long Term Memory | The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences. | |
| 408015157 | Working Memory | A newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory. | |
| 408015158 | Automatic Processing | Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings | |
| 408015159 | Effortful Processing | Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort. | |
| 408015160 | Rehearsal | The conscious repetition of information, either to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage. | |
| 408015161 | Spacing Effect | The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice. | |
| 408015162 | Serial Position Effect | Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list. | |
| 408015163 | Visual Encoding | The encoding of picture images. | |
| 408015164 | Acoustic Encoding | The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words. | |
| 408015165 | Semantic Encoding | The encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words. | |
| 408015166 | Imagery | Mental pictures; a powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding. | |
| 408015167 | Mnemonics | Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices. | |
| 408015168 | Chunking | Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically. | |
| 408015169 | Iconic Memory | A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second. | |
| 408015170 | Echoic Memory | A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds. | |
| 408015171 | Long Term Potential | An increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory. | |
| 408015172 | Flashbulb Memory | A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event. | |
| 408015173 | Amnesia | The loss of memory. | |
| 408015174 | Implicit Memory | Retention independent of conscious recollection. | |
| 408015175 | Explicit Memory | Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare." | |
| 408015176 | Hippocampus | A neural center that is located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for storage. | |
| 408015177 | Recall | A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test. | |
| 408015178 | Recognition | A measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test. | |
| 408015179 | Relearning | A measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time. | |
| 408015180 | Priming | The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory | |
| 408015181 | Deja Vu | That eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience. | |
| 408015182 | Mood Congruent Memory | The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood | |
| 408015183 | Proactive Interference | The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information. | |
| 408015184 | Retroactive Interference | The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information. | |
| 408015185 | Repression | In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories | |
| 408015186 | Misinformation Effect | Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event. | |
| 408015187 | Source Amnesia | Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. | |
| 410102673 | Cognition | The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. | |
| 410102674 | Concepts | A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people. | |
| 410102675 | Prototypes | A mental image or best example of a category. | |
| 410102676 | Algorithm | A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. | |
| 410102677 | Heuristics | A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently. | |
| 410102678 | Insight | A sudden and often novel real¬ ization of the solution to a problem. | |
| 410102679 | Confirmation Bias | A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence. | |
| 410102680 | Fixation | The inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set. | |
| 410102681 | Mental Set | A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past. | |
| 410102682 | Functional Fixedness | The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving. | |
| 410102683 | Representativeness Heuristic | Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes. | |
| 410102684 | Availability Heuristic | Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory. | |
| 410102685 | Overconfidence | The tendency to be more confident than correct | |
| 410102686 | Belief Perseverance | Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited. | |
| 410102687 | Intuition | An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning | |
| 410102688 | Framing | The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments. | |
| 410102689 | Phoneme | In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit. | |
| 410102690 | Morpheme | In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning | |
| 410102691 | Grammar | In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. | |
| 410102692 | Semantics | The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning. | |
| 410102693 | Syntax | The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language. | |
| 410102694 | Babbling Stage | Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language. | |
| 410102695 | One-word Stage | The stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words. | |
| 410102696 | Two-Stage | Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly twoword statements. | |
| 410102697 | Telegraphic Speech | Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—"go car"—using mostly nouns and verbs. | |
| 410102698 | Aphasia | Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area | |
| 410102699 | Broca's Area | Controls language expression—an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech. | |
| 410102700 | Wernicke's Area | Controls language reception—a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe. | |
| 410247319 | Linguistic Determinism | Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think. | |
| 411986731 | Personality | An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. | |
| 411986732 | Free Association | A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing. | |
| 411986733 | Psychoanalysis | Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. | |
| 411986734 | Unconscious | According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. | |
| 411986735 | Manifest Content | Remembered parts of dreams. | |
| 411986736 | Latent Content | A censored expression of the dreamer's unconscious wishes. | |
| 411986737 | Id | Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification. | |
| 411986738 | Ego | The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain. | |
| 411986739 | Superego | The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations. | |
| 411986740 | Psychosexual Stages | The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones. | |
| 411986741 | Oedipus Complex | A boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father. | |
| 411986742 | Identification | The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos. | |
| 411986743 | Fixation | A lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved. | |
| 411986744 | Defense Mechanism | The ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. | |
| 411986745 | Repression | The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. | |
| 411986746 | Regression | An individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. | |
| 411986747 | Reaction Formation | The ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings. | |
| 411986748 | Projection | People disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. | |
| 411986749 | Rationalization | Offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions. | |
| 411986750 | Displacement | shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet. | |
| 411986751 | Denial | People refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities. | |
| 411986752 | Defense Mechanisms | Repression, Regression, Reaction Formation, Projection, Rationalization, Displacement, Denial | |
| 411986753 | Collective Unconscious | Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history. | |
| 411986754 | Projective Test | A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics. | |
| 411986755 | Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) | A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes. | |
| 411986756 | Rorschach Inkblot Test | 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. | |
| 411986757 | Terror-management Theory | A theory of death-related anxiety; explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death. | |
| 411986758 | Self-actualization | 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. | |
| 411986759 | Unconditional Positive Regard | According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person. | |
| 411986760 | Self Concept | All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?" | |
| 411986761 | Trait | A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports. | |
| 411986762 | Personality Inventories | A questionnaire (often with true-false or agree disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits. | |
| 411986763 | Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory | the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes. | |
| 411986764 | Empirically Derived Test | A test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups. | |
| 411986765 | Big 5 Personality Traits | CANOE = Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extraversion | |
| 411986766 | Social-cognitive Perspective | Views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people's traits (including their thinking) and their social context. | |
| 411986767 | Reciprocal Determinism | the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment. | |
| 411986768 | Personal Control | The extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless. | |
| 411986769 | External Locus of Control | The perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your fate. | |
| 411986770 | Internal Locus of Control | The perception that you control your own fate. | |
| 411986771 | Learned Happiness | The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events. | |
| 412014368 | Positive Psychology | The scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive. | |
| 412014369 | Self | In contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. | |
| 412014370 | Spotlight Effect | Overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders. | |
| 412014371 | Self-esteem | One's feelings of high or low self-worth. | |
| 412014372 | Self-serving Bias | A readiness to perceive oneself favorably. |
