Psychology Unit 3: Executive Functions, Emotion, Motivation, Personality, Disorders, and Treatment

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering bilingualism and executive functions, emotion theories and developmental patterns, motivation, happiness, personality models, psychopathology criteria, and therapeutic treatment methods.

Bilingualism

The regular or alternate use of two or more languages in everyday life, involving the mental processes of understanding, selecting, and producing multiple linguistic systems; viewed in modern psychology as a dynamic, continuous spectrum rather than a categorical variable.

Executive Functions (EFs)

A set of mental processes located in the prefrontal cortex used to control and direct behavior toward goals, encompassing working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control.

Working Memory

An executive function that involves holding information in mind and mentally manipulating or working with it.

Cognitive Flexibility

An executive function that involves thinking outside the box, seeing things from different perspectives, and quickly adapting to changing circumstances, including planning, reasoning, problem solving, and multitasking.

Inhibitory Control

The ability to actively and consciously suppress or delay a dominant or automatic response in order to achieve a goal.

Bilingual Brain Training Hypothesis

The proposal that bilingual language control actively trains general cognitive control due to overlapping neural networks used for language control and non-verbal executive control tasks.

Simon Effect

The difference in reaction time between incongruent and congruent trials ($\text{Incongruent} - \text{Congruent}$), where a smaller difference indicates superior cognitive and inhibitory control.

Emotion

A subjective feeling involving psychological experience, physiological arousal, expression, and cognitive appraisal that is shorter in duration, relatively intense, and elicited in response to specific stimuli.

Mood

A prolonged, less intense affective state that is not as clearly linked to a specific eliciting stimulus or cause.

James-Lange Theory of Emotion

A theory positing that physiological reactions to a stimulus occur first, and the subjective emotional experience results from the perception and interpretation of those bodily responses.

Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotion

A theory asserting that physiological arousal and subjective emotional experiences occur simultaneously and independently in response to a stimulus.

Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory

A theory stating that emotion is determined by two factors: an undifferentiated state of physiological arousal and a cognitive label attributing that arousal to an environmental cue.

Lazarus Cognitive-Mediational Theory

A theory of emotion stating that cognitive appraisal precedes both physiological arousal and the subjective emotional experience.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

The principle that one's own facial expressions can directly influence the emotional experience that one feels.

Discrete Emotions Theory

An evolutionary perspective stating that humans experience a small number of distinct, biologically based primary emotions that emerge early in development and are accompanied by universal facial expressions.

Display Rules

Culturally specific guidelines and expectations regarding how, when, and where emotions should be overtly expressed.

Theory of Constructed Emotion

A theory proposing that emotions are constructed by the brain using situational context, cultural learning, personal experience, and one's current bodily state rather than being hardwired discrete entities.

Mere Exposure Effect

The psychological phenomenon in which repeated exposure to a novel or neutral stimulus increases a person's liking or preference for it.

Drive Reduction Theory

A theory of motivation stating that physiological needs create internal aversive states of arousal (drives) that compel an organism to behave in ways that satisfy the need and restore homeostasis.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

An empirical relationship dictating that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal up to an optimal level, forming an inverted U-shaped curve where optimal arousal is lower for difficult tasks and higher for easy tasks.

Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation driven by internal desires, such as autonomy, personal mastery, inherent enjoyment, or purpose, rather than external incentives.

Extrinsic Motivation

Motivation driven by external incentives or consequences, such as monetary compensation, grades, rewards, or avoiding punishment.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

A tiered motivational model requiring lower biological and survival needs to be satisfied before higher psychological needs can be pursued, progressing through physiological, security, social, esteem, and self-actualization.

Self-Control

The ability to regulate attention, emotion, and behavior by foregoing immediate temptations and short-term desires in favor of more desirable, long-term goals.

Grit

Sustained passion and perseverance directed toward challenging, superordinate long-term goals over years or decades despite obstacles and setbacks.

Controlled Question Test

A polygraph examination technique that compares autonomic physiological responses across relevant questions, control questions concerning past misdeeds, and irrelevant baseline questions.

Guilty Knowledge Test

A specialized lie-detection procedure that assesses physiological recognition responses to multiple-choice items containing concealable details that only the perpetrator and investigators would know.

Flow

A state of optimal engagement and deep concentration described by Csikszentmihalyi, occurring when a person engages in a challenging, skill-matched activity purely for its own sake, often altering the perception of time.

Affective Forecasting

The cognitive process of predicting one's own or others' future emotional states and happiness.

Durability Bias

A systematic cognitive bias wherein individuals overestimate the duration and intensity of their emotional reactions to future events.

Hedonic Treadmill

The tendency for humans to rapidly adapt to positive or negative life changes and events, inevitably returning to a stable baseline level of happiness.

Positive-Activity Model

A theoretical framework by Lyubomirsky and Layous detailing how intentional positive activities increase well-being through positive emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and need satisfaction, moderated by activity features, person features, and person-activity fit.

Self-Determination Theory

A macro-theory of human motivation postulating that intrinsic motivation and psychological flourishing depend on satisfying three fundamental human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Personality

The characteristic, enduring patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that distinguish one individual from another across situations and time.

Nomothetic Approach

A method of studying personality that identifies generalizable laws and traits across large populations of individuals.

Idiographic Approach

A method of studying personality focusing on unique, detailed case studies and internal dynamics within a single individual, yielding rich detail but limited generalizability.

Id

In Freud's psychodynamic theory, the primitive, unconscious component of personality that houses basic biological drives and operates entirely on the pleasure principle.

Ego

In Freud's psychodynamic theory, the realistic decision-making component of personality that mediates between the id and superego according to the reality principle.

Superego

In Freud's psychodynamic theory, the moral component of personality representing internalized social standards, conscience, rules, and ideals.

Fixation

According to psychodynamic theory, an unresolved psychological conflict or arrest in development during a specific psychosexual stage that influences adult personality.

Repression

A psychodynamic defense mechanism involving the unconscious blocking or exclusion of anxiety-provoking thoughts, impulses, or memories from conscious awareness.

Sublimation

A defense mechanism wherein unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses are redirected into socially valued, productive, and constructive activities.

Reciprocal Determinism

Albert Bandura's concept stating that behavior, internal cognitive/personal factors, and environmental/situational influences interact and continually influence one another in a bidirectional manner.

Self-Efficacy

An individual's personal belief and confidence in their capability to execute the actions required to succeed at a specific task or challenge.

Locus of Control

Julian Rotter's construct describing the degree to which people believe outcomes in their lives are governed by their own internal actions versus external forces like luck or fate.

Conditions of Worth

Carl Rogers' term for expectations and standards an individual believes they must meet to receive acceptance and positive regard from others, leading to psychological incongruence.

Big Five Model (OCEAN)

A dominant dimensional trait model derived from the lexical approach and factor analysis consisting of Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

The Little Six

A personality framework proposed for children and youth that incorporates the Big Five dimensions (OCEAN) alongside a distinct sixth dimension: Activity.

Cumulative Continuity Principle

The developmental principle stating that individual differences in personality traits become progressively more stable as people advance through adulthood.

Maturity Principle

The developmental observation that individuals typically show normative increases in conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability across adulthood.

Disruption Principle

The observed transient dip in specific adaptive personality dimensions (such as conscientiousness) during the transition from childhood to adolescence.

Barnum Effect

The cognitive tendency for individuals to accept vague, universally applicable descriptions as being highly specific and tailored to their own unique personality.

Factor Analysis

A multivariate statistical procedure that identifies clusters of correlated variables to reduce large sets of traits to a smaller set of underlying dimensions.

Psychopathology

The scientific study of psychological disorders, including their symptoms, etiology, classification, and treatments.

Harmful Dysfunction

Jerome Wakefield's definition of psychological disorder requiring that an internal psychological mechanism fails to perform its natural function, leading to harmful consequences judged by cultural standards.

Comorbidity

The co-occurrence or simultaneous presence of two or more distinct psychological disorders within a single individual.

Diathesis-Stress Model

A biopsychosocial framework proposing that a psychological disorder develops when an underlying biological or genetic vulnerability (diathesis) interacts with stressful environmental life challenges.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

An anxiety disorder characterized by persistent, excessive, and uncontrollable worry across multiple domains of everyday life, occurring more days than not for at least six months.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder marked by recurrent, unexpected panic attacks accompanied by persistent concern about having additional attacks or maladaptive behavioral changes.

Agoraphobia

Marked fear or avoidance of two or more environments (such as open spaces, public transportation, crowds, or being away from home alone) where escape might be difficult or help unavailable during panic-like symptoms.

Deinstitutionalization

The mid-twentieth-century historical policy of transferring individuals diagnosed with severe mental disorders out of large psychiatric institutions into community-based outpatient services.

Client-Centered Therapy

A humanistic psychotherapy developed by Carl Rogers emphasizing personal growth nurtured through a non-judgmental therapeutic alliance characterized by empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard.

Systematic Desensitization

A behavioral exposure technique that pairs progressive relaxation techniques with gradual, hierarchical confrontation of feared stimuli via counterconditioning.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

An integrative form of psychotherapy that targets and modifies maladaptive, irrational cognitive thinking patterns while simultaneously reinforcing adaptive behavioral strategies.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

A biomedical intervention that passes brief, controlled electrical currents through the brain to induce a therapeutic generalized seizure under general anesthesia, primarily utilized for treatment-resistant major depression.