PSYC203 Abnormal and Clinical Psychology

Stupidity according to Bonhoeffer (2010)

Mindlessness, or the absence of active thinking.

Academic Freedom definition

Freedom to question, test received wisdom, and state unpopular opinions within the law.

Explanation in abnormal psychology

An account of cause (aetiology) and developmental process (pathogenesis).

Description in abnormal psychology

An account of features, expression, and characteristics.

Symptoms

What the patient reports about their experience.

Signs

What an external observer observes.

Syndrome

A collection of symptoms and signs that tend to co-occur.

Phenotype

An observable characteristic assumed to be caused by gene-environment interaction (G x E).

DSM-5-TR diagnostic orientation

Descriptive, intending criteria to be atheoretical about cause.

Agoraphobia core criteria

Marked fear in two or more of five specific situations causing distress or impairment.

Biomedical model (Engel, 1977)

Views disorder as an entity independent of the person and fully explained by biological factors.

Biopsychosocial model

Considers lower-level, higher-level, and same-level psychological and social processes.

Latent construct

A hidden or not visible idea or concept inferred from evidence and reasoning.

Manifest characteristics

Visible features, such as reported distress or observed signs.

Case of Martha source

Dening & West (1989) multiple serial lycanthropy.

Delusions definition (DSM-5-TR)

Fixed beliefs not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence.

Hallucinations definition (DSM-5-TR)

Perception-like experiences without an external stimulus that are vivid and clear.

Classical conditioning unconditioned components

Unconditioned stimulus (US) leads to unconditioned response (UR).

Classical conditioning conditioned components

Conditioned stimulus (CS) leads to conditioned response (CR).

Positive reinforcement

Supplying a pleasant stimulus to increase behaviour.

Negative reinforcement

Removing an unpleasant stimulus to increase behaviour.

Positive punishment

Supplying an unpleasant stimulus to decrease behaviour.

Negative punishment

Removing a pleasant stimulus to decrease behaviour.

Normative definition

Statistically common among non-disordered people.

Normal definition

The absence of dysfunction.

WEIRD samples limitation

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic samples can mislead about what is normal.

Anomalous paraphilia targets

Anomalous act affecting courtship, anomalous act with pain, or anomalous target.

Fetishistic disorder core feature

Persistent use of nonliving objects or specific non-genital body focus for sexual arousal.

Paedophilic disorder core feature

Intense sexually arousing fantasies or behaviours involving a prepubescent child.

Learning aberrant behaviour vs aberrant learning

Normal learning process producing an undesirable or maladaptive product.

Mowrer's two-factor theory systems

Autonomic nervous system (ANS) maps to classical conditioning and Central nervous system (CNS) to operant conditioning.

Premack's principle (1959)

The more frequent behaviour will reinforce the less frequent one.

Response disequilibrium theory

Deprivation or constraint of a baseline behaviour creates disequilibrium and a new optimal bliss point.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder Criterion A

Presence of obsessions, compulsions, or both.

Obsessions definition in OCD

Recurrent, persistent, intrusive unwanted thoughts, urges, or images causing anxiety.

Compulsions definition in OCD

Repetitive behaviours or mental acts performed in response to an obsession or rigid rules.

Response disequilibrium therapy (RDx)

Making a pleasurable behavior contingent on symptom reduction goals.

Fear definition (DSM-5-TR)

Emotional response to real or perceived imminent threat involving defensive withdrawal.

Anxiety definition (DSM-5-TR)

Anticipation of future threat involving defensive approach.

Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) Criterion A

Excessive anxiety and worry about a number of events or activities.

State vs Trait

State is current and transitory, while trait is enduring and dispositional.

Avoidance vs Escape

Avoidance pre-empts an unpleasant experience, whereas escape leaves a current ongoing experience.

Reliability in psychometrics

The repeatability, consistency, or stability of a score and absence of error.

Validity in psychometrics

The meaningfulness of a score and degree to which it corresponds to the target construct.

Factor analysis functions

Data reduction and understanding latent structure (unitary vs multifaceted).

Construct validity definition

The theoretical network of ideas and evidence accounting for true-score variance.

Negative cognitive triad (Beck)

Idiosyncratic negative automatic thoughts about the self, the world, and the future.

Paralogical reasoning errors

Arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, over-generalisation, and dichotomous thinking.

Stylistic reasoning errors

Exaggeration, magnification, and minimisation.

Semantic reasoning errors

Inexact labelling.

Cognitive schema (Beck, 1964)

An enduring cognitive structure used to screen, code, and evaluate stimuli.

Maladaptive schemas

Negative generalisations of prior experience that act as an impermeable vulnerability or diathesis.

Socratic questioning

Open questions leading patients to discover problems in their own beliefs.

Generic cognitive model dual processing

Fast automatic system (protoschemas) versus slow, effortful controlled system.

Self-expansive vs Self-protective modes

Integrated cognitive sets focused on enhancement and pleasure versus threat and resources.

Schizophrenia Criterion A symptoms

Delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech, grossly disorganised behaviour, and negative symptoms.

Orthorexia nervosa

Extreme preoccupation with eating food believed to be healthy, marked by rigid avoidance and guilt.

Self-regulatory executive function (SREF) model

Model covering content and process, especially attention, memory, and meta-cognition.

Cognitive-attentional syndrome (CAS)

Elevated self-focused attention, worry, rumination, and threat monitoring.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)

Focuses on psychological flexibility and inflexibility rather than changing private events directly.

Relational frame theory (RFT)

Verbal behavior defined by mutual relatedness, combinable relatedness, and transformation of stimulus function.

Psychological inflexibility components

Experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, conceptualised self, weak self-knowledge, and lack of clear values.

Six core ACT processes

Present moment contact, acceptance, defusion, self as context, values, and committed action.

Odds ratio (OR)

Ratio of the odds of an event occurring in one group compared to another (1.00 equals no risk).

Pleiotropy and redundancy in risk factors

One factor predicting several outcomes versus several factors predicting the same outcome.

Interpersonal theory of suicide

Suicide occurs due to thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, and acquired capability.

PTSD diagnostic requirement

Combines symptom clusters with a specific aetiological component (a trauma event).

PTSD symptom clusters

Intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and altered arousal and reactivity.

Inter-generational trauma definition

Trauma experienced by a previous generation having psychopathological effects in descendants.

Bowlby's attachment patterns

Secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant/ambivalent, and insecure-disorganised.

Meihana model components

Waka hourua, aku, nga hau e wha, nga roma moana, and whakatere.

Functional analysis framework

Maps antecedents, behavior, and consequences across behavior, affect, and cognition.

Schizotypy vs Schizotypal personality disorder

Schizotypy is a latent personality trait or diathesis, whereas schizotypal PD is a clinical diagnosis.

Eysenck's psychoticism

A continuous dimensional personality diathesis running from normal to psychosis.

Meehl's schizotaxia

An inherited, discontinuous categorical diathesis for schizophrenia.

DSM-5 Personality Disorder clusters

Cluster A (odd/eccentric), Cluster B (dramatic/flamboyant), and Cluster C (anxious/fearful).

Polythetic diagnostic criteria

Requiring a set number of symptoms out of a longer list, leading to clinical heterogeneity.

DSM-5 Alternative Model for PD (AMPD)

Evaluates impairment in self and interpersonal functioning (Criterion A) and pathological trait domains (Criterion B).

Wakefield's harmful dysfunction analysis

Defines disorder as an objective evolutionary dysfunction plus a subjective value-based harm.

Neurodiversity movement

An advocacy movement arguing that many neurodivergent phenotypes represent normal human variation rather than pathology.

Self-verification view in depression

People engage in stress-generation behaviors that validate their negative identity.

Ideation-to-action suicide theories

Theories distinguishing the development of suicidal ideation from progression to suicidal behavior.

Latent structure types

Categorical (taxons/types) versus continuous (dimensions/traits).

Comorbidity in categorical diagnoses

The high rate of patients meeting criteria for multiple distinct diagnostic categories.

Common cause symptom clustering

Symptoms clustering together because they share a single underlying disease entity or latent factor.

Symptom network symptom clustering

Symptoms clustering together because individual symptoms directly cause other symptoms.

Test-retest reliability

Assesses consistency across different assessment episodes.

Inter-rater reliability

Assesses consistency across different raters or interviewers to check for constant errors and biases.

Split-half and internal consistency reliability

Assesses consistency across item content and sampling domains.

Face and content validity

Checking whether items look like they measure the construct and represent the target sampling universe.

Concurrent and predictive validity

Correlations between test scores and criterion scores or future outcomes.

Cognitive fusion in ACT

Treating a private event or thought as literally true or identical to the actual self.

Experiential avoidance

Attempts to alter, suppress, or avoid unwanted private emotional and cognitive events.

Detached mindfulness

Meta-cognitive technique involving awareness of thoughts without entanglement or reaction.

Premorbid adjustment in schizophrenia

Level of social and academic functioning prior to the onset of psychotic symptoms.

Expressed emotion (EE)

Family environment measure involving high criticism, hostility, or emotional overinvolvement.

Heritability

Proportion of phenotypic variance in a population attributable to genetic variation.

Gene-environment interaction (G x E)

When the effect of an environmental exposure depends on genetic vulnerability.

Transdiagnostic approach

Focusing on core psychological processes and mechanisms shared across multiple distinct diagnoses.