General and Health Psychology: Cognitive Processes, Development, and Health Behaviors

Vocabulary study set covering basic and higher cognitive processes, human development, personality structure, and core concepts in health psychology.

Sensation

A passive and purely physiological biological process of receiving physical stimuli through sensory organs, occurring across detection, transduction, and transmission to the brain.

Transduction

The phase in sensation where physical energy is converted into a nerve impulse.

Perception

The psychophysiological process by which the brain organizes, interprets, and assigns meaning to sensations, generating a conscious experience of the environment influenced by prior experiences, context, culture, and expectations.

Attention

A cognitive selection mechanism that acts as a filter to prioritize relevant information among multiple environmental stimuli.

Sustained Attention

A type of attention that involves maintaining cognitive focus on a stimulus over an extended period.

Selective Attention

A type of attention that filters out distractors to concentrate exclusively on a single stimulus.

Divided Attention

A type of attention responsible for the simultaneous processing of multiple tasks.

Memory

A cognitive structure comprising the stages of encoding, storage, and retrieval, divided across sensory, short-term/working, and long-term systems.

Sensory Memory

A memory system characterized by the retention of sensory information for only milliseconds.

Short-Term / Working Memory

A temporary storage memory system with a limited capacity of approximately $\sim 7$ items.

Long-Term Memory

A memory system divided into declarative (episodic and semantic) and non-declarative (procedural) memory.

Motivation

An internal state that acts as the engine of human behavior by activating, directing, and sustaining actions toward specific goals.

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation driven by personal interest, internal satisfaction, or curiosity.

Extrinsic Motivation

Motivation guided by external rewards or avoidance of punishments.

Thought

A higher mental process that manipulates internal representations (concepts, images, symbols) to perform reasoning, problem solving, decision making, and judgment without acting directly upon reality.

Emotions

Brief and intense psychophysiological responses to significant stimuli, encompassing physiological, behavioral, and cognitive components.

Feelings

Affective states that develop subsequent to emotions, characterized by being conscious, durable, and less intense.

Emotional Intelligence

The capacity described by Goleman to recognize, understand, and manage one's own and others' emotions through self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Human Development

A continuous, adaptive, and multidimensional process of change and stability across the lifespan that encompasses physical, cognitive, and psychosocial domains.

Personality

An individual's unique, relative, and stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, structured by biological temperament and socially acquired character.

Temperament

The component of personality structure that is biological and hereditary in origin.

Character

The component of personality structure molded by life experiences and the social environment.

Health Psychology

A branch of psychology focused on the role of psychological factors in health promotion, maintenance, and disease prevention, aiming to transition from curative medicine to prevention and integral well-being.

Biopsychosocial Model

The foundational model of health psychology stating that health integrates biological, psychological, and social components.

Treatment Adherence

The degree to which a patient's behavior coincides with medical and health recommendations.

Protective Health Behaviors

Actions aimed at maintaining well-being, such as balanced nutrition, adequate sleep, physical exercise, and preventive checkups.

Risk Health Behaviors

Actions that increase the probability of illness or injury, including a sedentary lifestyle, substance use, and insufficient sleep.