COMPLETE MASTER AP Psychology Review

Psychological Disorder

Psychological Disorder

A condition marked by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognitions, emotion regulation, or behavior

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A neurodevelopmental disorder marked by extreme inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity.

Medical Model

The concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital.

DSM-5

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition
-A widely used system for classifying psychological disorders

Anxiety Disorders

Psychological disorders characterized by distressing persistent anxiety or maladaptive behaviors that reduce anxiety

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

A disorder characterized by chronic excessive worry accompanied by three or more of the following symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, concentration problems, irritability, muscle tension, and sleep disturbance.

Panic Disorder

An anxiety disorder marked by unpredictable, minutes-long episodes of intense dread in which a person experiences terror and accompanying chest pain, choking, or other frightening sensations. Often followed by worry over a possible next attack

Phobia

An anxiety disorder marked by a persistent, irrational fear and avoidance of a specific object, activity, or situation.

Social Anxiety Disorder

An anxiety disorder involving the extreme and irrational fear of being embarrassed, judged, or scrutinized by others in social situations.

Agoraphobia

Fear or avoidance of situations, such as crowds or wide open places, where one has felt loss of control and panic.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

A disorder in which repetitive, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and ritualistic behaviors (compulsions) designed to fend off those thoughts interfere significantly with an individual's functioning.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

A disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmare, social withdrawal, jumpy anxiety, numbness of feeling, and/or insomnia that lingers for four weeks or more after a traumatic experience.

Posttraumatic Growth

Positive psychological changes as a result of struggling with extremely challenging circumstances and life crises.

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

Psychological disorder involving a significant depressive episode and depressed characteristics, such as lethargy and hopelessness, for at least two weeks.

Mania

Extremely elevated and excitable mood usually associated with bipolar disorder.

Bipolar Disorder

Psychological disorder in which the patient experiences both manic and depressed episodes.

Rumination

Compulsive fretting, overthinking about our problems and their causes.

Schizophrenia

A psychological disorder characterized by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and/or diminished or inappropriate emotional expression

Psychosis

Loss of contact with reality that is severe and chronic

Delusions

False beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders

Somatic System Disorder

A psychological disorder in which the symptoms take a somatic (bodily) form without apparent physical causes

Conversion Disorder

A disorder in which a person experiences very specific genuine physical symptoms for which no physiological basis can be found.

Illness Anxiety Disorder

A disorder in which a person interprets normal physical sensations as symptoms of a disease.

Dissociative Disorders

Disorders in which conscious awareness becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

A rare dissociative disorder in which a person exhibits two or more distinct and alternating personalities

Anorexia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a normal-weight person diets and becomes significantly underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.

Bulimia Nervosa

An eating disorder in which a person alternates binge eating with purging, excessive exercise or fasting.

Binge Eating Disorders

Significant binge-eating episodes, followed by distress, disgust, or guilt, but without the compensatory purging or fasting that marks bulimia nervosa.

Personality Disorders

Psychological disorders characterized by inflexible and enduring behavior patterns that impair social functioning

Antisocial Personality Disorder

-An personality disorder in which a person (usually a man) exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members
-May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist

Intelligence

The mental potential to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

Intelligence Test

A method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

General Intelligence (g factor)

According to Spearman and others, this underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

Factor Analysis

A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score on a test.

Savant Syndrome

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Mental Age

A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance.

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

-Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ=ma/ca x 100)
-On contemporary intelligence test, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100

Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale

Terman's American adaptation of the Binet-Simon Scale, a test used in determining a person's intelligence quotient, or IQ.

Achievement Test

A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude Test

A test designed to predict a person's future performance.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

The most widely used modern intelligence test; contains verbal and performance subtests.

Standardization

Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.

Normal Curve

A symmetrical, bell-shape that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (68 percent fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer near the extremes.

Reliability

The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, or on retesting.

Validity

The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

Content Validity

The degree to which the content of a test is representative of the domain it's supposed to cover.

Predictive Validity

Refers to the function of a test in predicting a particular behavior or trait.

Crystallized Intelligence

One's accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence

One's ability to reason speedily and abstractly, tends to decrease during late adulthood.

Intellectual Disability

A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life.

Down Syndrome

A condition of intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21

Heritability

The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes.

Stereotype Threat

Apprehension about confirming negative stereotypes related to one's own group.

Charles Spearman

Found that specific mental talents were highly correlated, concluded that all cognitive abilities showed a common core which he labeled 'g' (general ability).

L. L. Thurstone

Seven clusters of primary mental abilities: word fluency, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, perceptual speed, numerical ability, inductive reasoning, and memory.

Howard Gardner

Devised theory of multiple intelligences: logical-mathematic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, linguistic, musical, interpersonal, naturalistic.

Robert Sternberg

Devised the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (academic problem-solving, practical, and creative).

Alfred Binet

Pioneer in intelligence (IQ) tests, designed the first intelligence test (in France), meant to identify learning disabled children in need of remediation.

Louis Terman

Altered Binet's IQ test, calling it the Stanford-Binet

David Wechsler

A psychologist who developed tests aimed at both adults and children, WISC and WAIS.

Adolescence

The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.

Identity

Our sense of self According to Erikson, the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles

Social Identity

The part of our answer to "Who am I?" that comes from our group memberships

Intimacy

The ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood.

Emerging Adulthood

For some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to mid-twenties, bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible adulthood

X Chromosome

-The sex chromosome found in both men and women
-Females have two X chromosomes, males have one
-An X chromosome from each parent produces a female child

Y Chromosome

-The sex chromosome found only in males
-Always from the father

Puberty

The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.

Primary Sex Characteristics

The body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible.

Secondary Sex Characteristics

A sex-differentiating characteristic that doesn't relate directly to reproduction, such as breast enlargement in women and deepening voices in men.

Sexual Orientation

An enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one's own sex, the other sex, or both.

Cross-Sectional Study

A study in which a representative cross section of the population is tested or surveyed at one specific time.

Longitudinal study

A research approach that follows a group of people over time to determine change or stability in behavior.

Social Clock

The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement

Erik Erikson

1902-1994; Field: neo-Freudian, humanistic; Contributions: created an 8-stage theory to show how people evolve through the life span. Each stage is marked by a psychological crisis that involves confronting "Who am I?"

Pre-Conventional Morality

First level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development in which the child's behavior is governed by the consequences of the behavior.

Conventional Morality

Second level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development in which the child's behavior is governed by conforming to the society's norms of behavior.

Post-Conventional Morality

Kohlberg's highest stage of morality- occurs late in life and is a personal morality, developed by the adult and which supersedes society's rules, laws, and restrictions. Not reached by all.

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development

1. trust vs. mistrust

2. autonomy vs. shame and doubt

3. initiative vs. guilt

4. industry vs. inferiority

5. identity vs. role confusion

6. intimacy vs. isolation

7. generativity vs. stagnation

8. integrity vs. despair

Developmental Psychology

A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.

Zygote

the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and then develops into an embryo.

Embryo

The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.

Fetus

In humans, the term for the developing organism between the embryonic stage and birth.

Teratogens

Chemicals or viruses that can enter the placenta and harm the developing fetus

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, symptoms include noticeable facial disproportions.

Rooting Reflex

A baby's tendency, when touched on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth, and search for the nipple to get food

Maturation

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Assimilation

Bringing new information into our current schemas

Sensorimotor Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

Object Permanence

Knowledge that an object does not cease to exist even when the object cannot be seen.

Preoperational Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage (from 2 to about 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

Conservation

Objects can be transformed visually, yet still be the same in value (weight, mass)

Egocentrism

The preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view

Theory of Mind

Ability to reason about what other people know or believe

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

A neurodevelopmental disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.

Concrete Operational Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Formal Operational Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Stranger anxiety

A fear of strangers developing at 8 or 9 months of age

Attachment

An emotional tie with another person