Psych notes vocab

Behaviorism

The study of behavior

Cognitive psychology

The study of mental processes

Consciousness

Awareness of ourselves and our environment

Empiricism

The belief that knowledge comes from experience

Eugenics

The practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits

Flashbulb memory

A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event

Functionalism

 A school of American psychology that focused on the utility of consciousness

Gestalt psychology

 An attempt to study the unity of experience

Individual differences

Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion, cognition, and development

Introspection

 A method of focusing on internal processes

Neural impulse

An electrochemical signal that enables neurons to communicate

Practitioner-Scholar Model

A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes clinical practice.

Psychophysics

Study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the perception of those stimuli

Realism

A point of view that emphasizes the importance of the senses in providing knowledge of the external world

Scientist-practitioner model

A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the development of both research and clinical skills

Structuralism

 A school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements of conscious experience

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

The inability to pull a word from memory even though there is the sensation that that word is available