A-D terms from Wayne Weiten's Psychology: Themes & Variations
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| The minimum length of time after an action potential during which another action potential cannot begin | ||
| The minimum amount of stimulation that an organism can detect for a specific type of sensory input | ||
| The degree to which a person is socially and psychologically integrated into a new culture | ||
| The need to master difficult challenges, to outperform others, and to meet high standards of excellence | ||
| Tests that gauge a person's mastery and knowledge of various subjects | ||
| The formation of a new conditioned response tendency | ||
| A brief change in a neuron's electrical charge | ||
| An inherited characteristic that increased in a population (through natural selection) because it helped solve a problem of survival or reproduction during the time it emerged | ||
| Formation of colors by superimposing lights, putting more light in the mixture than exists in any one light by itself | ||
| Research studies that assess hereditary influence by examining the resemblance between adopted children and both their biological and their adoptive parents | ||
| Axons that carry information inward to the central nervous system from the periphery of the body | ||
| The need to associate with others and maintain social bonds | ||
| A visual image that persists after a stimulus is removed | ||
| The age at which a baby can survive in the event of a premature birth | ||
| Any behavior that is intended to hurt someone, either physically or verbally | ||
| A chemical that mimics the action of a neurotransmitter | ||
| A fear of going out to public places | ||
| A variety of beverages containing ethyl alcohol | ||
| A methodical, step-by-step procedure for trying all possible alternatives in searching for a solution to a problem | ||
| Phenomenon that occurs when people's belief about whether an outcome will occur changes depending on how alternative outcomes are distributed, even though the assumed probability of the alternative outcomes is held constant | ||
| A significant memory loss that is too extensive to be due to normal forgetting | ||
| The principal class of gonadal hormones in males | ||
| Personal stories about specific incidents and experiences | ||
| The belief that all things are living | ||
| Eating disorder characterized by intense fear of gaining weight, disturbed body image, refusal to maintain normal weight, and dangerous measures to lose weight | ||
| A chemical that opposes the action of a neurotransmitter | ||
| In behavior modification, events that typically precede the target response | ||
| Loss of memories for events that occur after a head injury | ||
| Medications that relieve tension, apprehension, and nervousness | ||
| Medications that gradually elevate mood and help bring people out of a depression | ||
| Medications used to gradually reduce psychotic symptoms, including hyperactivity, mental confusion, hallucinations, and delusions | ||
| A type of personality disorder marked by impulsive, callous, manipulative, aggressive, and irresponsible behavior that reflects a failure to accept social norms | ||
| A class of disorders marked by feelings of excessive apprehension and anxiety | ||
| Substances thought to increase sexual desire | ||
| The branch of psychology concerned with everyday, practical problems | ||
| A conflict situation in which a choice must be made between two attractive goals | ||
| A conflict situation in which a choice must be made between two attractive goals | ||
| Psychological tests used to assess talent for specific types of mental ability | ||
| According to Jung, emotionally charged images and though forms that have universal meaning | ||
| One or more premises used to provide support for a conclusion | ||
| The afferent fibers running through the reticular formation that influence physiological arousal | ||
| Premises for which no proof or evidence is offered | ||
| A close, emotional bond of affection between infants and their caregivers | ||
| Focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events | ||
| Orientations that locate objects of thought on dimensions of judgment | ||
| Inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others' behavior, and their own behavior | ||
| Locating the source of a sound in space | ||
| The system of nerves that connect to the heart, blood vessels, smooth muscles, and glands | ||
| Basing the estimated probability of an event on the ease with which relevant instances come to mind | ||
| A behavior therapy in which the aversive stimulus is paired with a stimulus that elicits an undesirable response | ||
| A conflict situation in which a choice must be made between two unattractive goals | ||
| Learning that has occurred when an organism engages in a response that prevents aversive stimulation from occurring | ||
| A long, thin fiver that transmits signals away from the neuron cell body to other neurons, or to muscles or glands | ||
| A structure that runs the length of the cochlea in the inner ear and holds the auditory receptors, called hair cells | ||
| Any overt (observable) response or activity by an organism | ||
| A systematic approach to changing behavior through the application of the principles of conditioning | ||
| Application of the principles of learning to direct efforts to change clients' maladaptive behaviors | ||
| A written agreement outlining a promis to adhere to the contingencies of a behavior modification program | ||
| An interdisciplinary field that studies the influence of genetic factors on behavioral traits | ||
| A theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behavior | ||
| The tendency to hang onto beliefs inn the face of contradictory evidence | ||
| The acquisition of two languages that use different speech sounds, vocabularies, ans grammatical rules | ||
| Clues about distance based on the differing views of the two eyes | ||
| A therapy method in which a bodily function (such as heart rate) is monitored and information about it is fed back to a person to facilitate improved control of the physiological process | ||
| Periodic fluctuations in physiological functioning | ||
| Physiological interventions intended to reduce symptoms associated with psychological disorders | ||
| A model of illness that holds that physical illness is caused by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors | ||
| (formerly known as manic-depressive disorder) Mood disorder marked by the experience of both depressed and manic periods | ||
| Persons who seek emotional-sexual relationships with members of either sex | ||
| A semipermeable membrane-like mechanism that stops some chemicals from passing between the bloodstream and the brain | ||
| Weight (in kilograms) divided by height (in meters) squared (kg/m2) | ||
| In form perception, and progression from individual elements to the whole | ||
| Eating disorder characterized by habitually engaging in out-of-control overeating followed by unhealthy compensatory efforts, such as self-induced vomiting, fasting, abuse of laxatives and diuretics, and excessive exercise | ||
| Physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that is attributable to work related stress | ||
| A paradoxical social phenomenon in which people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups than when they are alone | ||
| The hemp plant from which marijuana, hashish, and THC are derived | ||
| An in-depth investigation of an individual subject | ||
| Unrealistically pessimistic appraisals of stress that exaggerate the magnitude of one's problems | ||
| A type of schizophrenia marked by striking motor disturbances, ranging from muscular rigidity to random motor activity | ||
| The release of emotional tension | ||
| The brain and the spinal cord | ||
| The tendency to focus on just one feature of a problem, neglecting other important aspects | ||
| The head-to-foot direction of motor developmen | ||
| The convoluted outer layer of the cerebrum | ||
| The right and left halves of the cerebrum | ||
| A solution that fills the hollow cavities (ventricles) of the brain and circulates around the brain and spinal cord | ||
| The medium through which a message is sent | ||
| Threadlike strands of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules that carry genetic information | ||
| A group of familiar stimuli stored as a single unit | ||
| The 24-hour biological cycles found in humans and many other species | ||
| A type of learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the ability to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus | ||
| An insight therapy that emphasizes providing a supportive emotional climate for clients, who play a major role in determining the pace and direction of their therapy | ||
| Psychologists who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders | ||
| The tendency to remember similar or related items in groups | ||
| The fluid-filled, coiled tunnel in the inner ear that contains the receptors for hearing | ||
| The percentage of variation in one variable that can be predicted based on the other variable | ||
| The mental process involved in acquiring knowledge | ||
| Transitions in youngsters' pattern of thinking, including reasoning, remembering, and problem solving | ||
| A psychological state that exists when related cognitions are inconsistent | ||
| An insight therapy that emphasizes recognizing and changing negative thoughts and maladaptive beliefs | ||
| According to Jung, a storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people's ancestral past | ||
| Putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one's identity in terms of the groups one belongs to | ||
| Deficiency in the ability to distinguish among colors | ||
| An intent to maintain a relationship in spite of the difficulties and costs that may arise | ||
| The coexistence of two or more disorders | ||
| Warm, trusting, tolerant affection for another whose life is deeply intertwined with one's own | ||
| People, objects, events, and other standards that are used as a baseline for comparisons in making judgments | ||
| According to Adler, efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one's abilities | ||
| In decision making, strategies that allow attractive attributes to compensate for unattractive attributes | ||
| Pairs of colors that produce gray tones when added together | ||
| A multilevel classification system based on common properties among items | ||
| The percentage of twin pairs or other pairs of relatives that exhibit the same disorder | ||
| Two or more reinforcement schedules that operate simultaneously and independently, each for a different response | ||
| A learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of previous conditioning | ||
| A previously neutral stimulus that has, through conditioning, acquired the capacity to evoke a conditioned response | ||
| Specialized visual receptors that play a key role in daylight vision and color vision | ||
| The tendency to seek information that supports one's decisions and beliefs while ignoring disconfirming information | ||
| A state that occurs when two or more incompatible motivations or behavioral impulses compete for expression | ||
| The tendency for people to yield to real or imagined social pressure | ||
| A condition that exists whenever two variables are linked together in a way that makes it difficult to sort out their independent effects | ||
| An error that occurs when people estimate that the odds of two uncertain events happening together are greater that the odds of either event happening alone | ||
| Whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time | ||
| Piaget's term for the awareness that physical quantities remain constant in spite of changes in their shape or appearance | ||
| A hypothetical process involving that gradual conversion of information into durable memory codes stored in long-term memory | ||
| The extent to which there is evidence that a test measures a particular hypothetical construct | ||
| Relatively healthful efforts that people make to deal with stressful events | ||
| The degree to which the content of a test is representative of the domain it's supposed to cover | ||
| Reinforcing every instance of a designated response | ||
| Subjects in a study who do not receive the special treatment given to the experimental group | ||
| A cue depth that involves sensing the eyes converging toward each other as they focus on closer objects | ||
| Narrowing down a list of alternatives to converge on a single correct answer | ||
| A somatoform disorder characterized by a significant loss of physical function (with no apparent organic basis), usually in a single organ system | ||
| Active efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the demands created by stress | ||
| The structure that connects the two cerebral hemispheres | ||
| The extent to which two variables are related to each other | ||
| A numerical index of the degree of relationship between two variables | ||
| Psychologists who specialize in the treatment of everyday adjustment problems | ||
| The generation of ideas that are original, novel, and useful | ||
| Test validity that is estimated by correlating subjects' scores on a test with their scores on an independent criterion (another measure) of the trait assessed by the test | ||
| A limited time span in development of an organism when it is optimal for certain capacities to emerge because the organism is especially responsive to certain experiences | ||
| The use of cognitive skills and strategies that increase the probability of a desired outcome | ||
| A research design in which investigators compare groups of subjects of differing age who are observed at a single point in time | ||
| One's ability to apply acquired skills and knowledge in problem solving | ||
| The widely shared customs, beliefs, values, norms, institutions, and other products of a community that are transmitted socially across generations | ||
| Abnormal syndromes found only in a few cultural groups | ||
| A graphic record of reinforcement and responding in a Skinner box as a function of time | ||
| Exhibiting chronic but relatively mild symptoms of bipolar disturbance | ||
| The process in which the eyes become more sensitive to the light in low illumination | ||
| Procedures for making empirical observations and measurements | ||
| The idea that forgetting occurs because memory traces fade with time | ||
| The process of evaluating alternatives and making choices among them | ||
| Memory for factual information | ||
| Largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt | ||
| Transferring the treatment of mental illness from inpatient institutions to community-based facilities that emphasize outpatient care | ||
| False beliefs that are maintained even though they are clearly out of touch with reality | ||
| An abnormal condition marked by multiple cognitive defects that include memory impairment | ||
| Branchlike parts of a neuron that are specialized to receive information | ||
| In an experiment, the variable that is thought to be affected by the manipulation of the independent variable | ||
| Interpretation of visual cues that indicate how near or far away objects are | ||
| Statistics that are used to organize and summarize data | ||
| The sequence of age-related changes that occur as a person progresses from conception to death | ||
| The average age at which individuals display various behaviors and abilities | ||
| Scores that locate subjects precisely within the normal distribution, using the standard deviation of the unit of measurement | ||
| Distinguishing one illness from another | ||
| Behaving differently, usually unfairly, toward the members of a group | ||
| Cues that influence operant behavior by indicating the probable consequences (reinforcement or nonreinforcement) of a response | ||
| An increase in the strength of a habituated response elicited by a new stimulus | ||
| A type of schizophrenia in which particularly severe deterioration of adaptive behavior is seen | ||
| Diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target | ||
| Cultural norms that regulate the appropriate expressions of emotions | ||
| A splitting off of mental processes into two separate, simultaneous streams of awareness | ||
| A sudden loss of memory for important personal information that is too extensive to be due to normal forgetting | ||
| A class of disorders in which people lose contact with portions of their consciousness or memory, resulting in disruptions in their sense of identity | ||
| A disorder in which people lose their memory for their entire lives along with their sense of personal identity | ||
| A type of dissociative disorder characterized by the coexistence in one person of two or more largely complete, and usually very different, personalities. Also called multiple-personality disorder | ||
| Stimuli that lie in the distance (that is, in the world outside the body) | ||
| Trying to expand the range of alternatives by generating many possible solutions | ||
| A gene that is expressed when paired genes are heterozygous | ||
| Making a large request that is likely to be turned down as a way to increase the chances that people will agree to a smaller request later | ||
| A research strategy in which neither subjects nor experimenters know which subjects are in the experimental or control groups | ||
| A psychoanalytic technique in which the therapist interprets the symbolic meaning of the client's dreams | ||
| Paivio's theory that memory is enhanced by the forming of semantic and visual codes, since either can lead to recall | ||
| A chronic depression that is insufficient in severity to merit diagnosis of a major depressive episode |
