PSY 2300

Ageism

The tendency to attribute a multitude of problems to an advancing age; in abnormal psychology, this bias results in decreased recognition of psychological symptoms and disorders that warrant treatment.

Alzheimer’s disease

The most common form of dementia, characterized by a gradual onset and continuing cognitive decline, which includes memory loss, difficulties with language and decision making, and ultimately inability to care for self.

Cerebral senile plaques

Intercellular deposits of beta-amyloid protein that are found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Cognitive reserve

The brain’s ability to resist insult from pathology or injury, which varies across individuals, and may be affected by factors like synaptic connections, brain size, and educational and occupational attainment.

Delirium

A disturbance in consciousness that typically occurs in the context of a medical illness or after ingesting a substance.

Dementia

A term used in the DSM-5-TR to describe major neurocognitive disorders.

Executive dysfunction

The condition characterized by difficulty planning, thinking abstractly, initiating, and inhibiting actions.

Geropsycology

A subdiscipline of psychology that addresses issues of aging including normal development, individual differences, and psychological problems unique to older persons.

Homebound

Incapable of leaving one’s home, typically as a result of illness/disability or advanced age.

Infraction

Tissue death resulting from insufficient blood supply, most often due to a blockage.

Late-onset Schizophrenia

The Schizophrenia that first appears after age 40.

Major neurocognitive disorder

A disorder that represents deficits in cognitive abilities significantly affecting older people.

Major/mild vascular neurocognitive disorder

A disorder diagnosed when a patient’s history, laboratory tests, and/or brain imaging studies indicate cognitive impairment as a result of cardiovascular disease, such as stroke, transient ischemic attack (TIA, or mini-stroke), coronary artery disease, or untreated high blood pressure.

Mild neurocognitive disorder

A disorder of cognitive decline that afflicts older people in which the person can still function independently, but tasks take longer and may require the use of compensatory strategies.

Nuerofibillary tangles

The twisted protein fibers within neurons found in the brain of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Problem-solving therapy

A cognitive behavioral treatment that helps people learn the steps of solving problems to reduce depression and/or anxiety.

Reminiscence therapy

A treatment for depression used with older adults that focuses on patients’ recall of significant past events and how they managed distress.

Substance/medication-induced (major or minor) neurocognitive disorder

The cognitive impairment associated with substance use.

Vascular depression

A mood disorder that occurs in the context of cerebrovascular disease.

Very-late-onset schizophrenia like psychosis

A schizophrenic-like disorder but with symptoms that do not include deterioration in social or personal functioning.

Analgesic

Pain reducing

Cisgender

When gender identity and birth sex are in alignment.

Covert sensitization

A treatment that uses prolonged, imaginative exposure to engagement in a sexually deviant act but also imagining the negative consequences that result from it.

Delayed ejaculation

The delay or inability to achieve orgasm despite adequate sexual stimulation; sometimes known as retarded ejaculation.

Erectile disorder

A condition with persistent and recurrent inability to maintain an adequate erection until completion of sexual activity.

Excitement phase

The first phase of the sexual response cycle when arousal occurs.

Exhibitionistic disorder

The recurrent fantasies, urges, or behaviors involving exposing one’s genitals to an unsuspecting stranger.

Female orgasmic disorder

A condition with persistent and recurrent delay or absence of orgasm following the normal excitement phase; sometimes called anorgasmia.

Female sexual interest/arousal disorder

A condition with persistent or recurrent inability to maintain adequate vaginal lubrication and swelling response until completion of the sexual activity.

Fetishistic disorder

The sexual arousal (fantasies, urges, or behaviors) that involves nonliving objects (not limited to female clothing used in cross-dressing).

Frotteuristic disorder

The consistent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving touching and rubbing against a nonconsenting person.

Gender dysphoria

A strong and persistent cross-sex identification in which a person’s biological sex and gender identity do not match.

Gender fluidity

Those who do not have a fixed gender identity, but instead identify as masculine sometimes and feminine at other times.

Gender identity

Our concept of ourself as male, female, a blend of both, or neither.

Genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder

The consistent genital pain associated with sexual intercourse.

Intersex

People who are born with both male and female sex characteristics such as genitalia, hormones, chromosomes, and reproductive organs.

Male hypoactive sexual desire disorder

A condition with reduced or absent sexual desires or behaviors, either with a partner or through masturbation.

Orgasm phase

The third stage of the sexual response cycle when climax occurs.

Paraphilic disorders

Pharaphilias that cause distress or impairment to the person or when the satisfaction of a paraphilia has caused harm or risk of harm to another person.

Pedophilic disorder

Recurrent and intense sexual urges, sexually arousing fantasies, or behaviors involving sexual activity directed toward prepubescent child or children.

Plateau phase

The second phase of the sexual response cycle which includes the period of sexual excitement prior to orgasm.

Plethysmography

A method to measure sexual arousal in men or women.

Premature ejaculation

The consistent ejaculation with minimal sexual stimulation before, immediately upon, or shortly after penetration and before the person wishes it.

Resolution phase

The fourth phase of the sexual response cycle during which there is a return to normal functioning.

Satiation

A treatment that uses prolonged, imaginal exposure to arousing sexual stimuli until it no longer produces positive, erotic feelings.

Sensate focus

Sex therapy techniques using intimacy experiences to decrease performance anxiety and increase communication between partners.

Sex drive

The physical and/or psychological craving for sexual activity and pleasure.

Sexual dysfunctions

The absence of impairment of some aspect of sexual response that causes distress or impairment considering age, sex, and culture.

Sexual masochism disorder

A person’s consistent intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving actual acts of being humiliated, beaten, bound, or otherwise made to suffer.

Sexual sadism disorder

The consistent sexual arousal that occurs when one inflicts acts of humiliation, beating, bondage, or acts of suffering on another person.

Stop-squeeze technique

A behavioral technique for treating premature ejaculation.

Transgender

An umbrella term use to describe a person whose gender identity is different from which was assigned at birth.

Transvestic disorder

The sexual arousal in men that results from wearing women’s clothing and is accompanied by significant distress or impairment.

Voyeuristic disorder

The consistent intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors centered on observing an unsuspecting person who is naked, disrobing, or engaging in sexual activity.

Addictive behavior

Repetitive or compulsive engagement in a behavior despite negative consequences to the physical, mental, social, or financial well being that is associated with strong urges to perform the behavior and a sometimes hedonic pleasure during behavior.

Bibliotherapy

Psychological treatment that occurs through the use of reading materials.

Biological challenge studies

Studies in which a biological agent is given to trigger symptoms.

Biological marker studies

Studies that compare biological variables across groups.

Body dysmorphic disorder

An overwhelming concern that some part of the body is ugly or misshapen.

Body-focused repetitive behavior

Repetitive behavior that cause physical damage to oneself, including repetitive hair pulling, skin picking and nail biting.

Compulsions

Repetitive behaviors or mental acts that are extensive, time-consuming, and distressful; compulsions are typically performed in response to obsessions or according to rigid rules.

Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder

Recurrent skin picking resulting in skin lesions.

Exposure with response prevention

A behavioral treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder that includes 1. Exposure to feared stimuli and associated with obsessions, and 2. Response prevention, which involves preventing rituals, mental acts, and avoidance behaviors that serve to reduce anxiety associated with obsessions.

Family accommodation

A family’s reaction to a member who has obsessive compulsive disorder that involves performing rituals for the person with OCD (e.g. providing repeated reassurance, checking for the person).

Grooming behavior

A behavior across species that severs social and hygienic roles (e.g. picking and pulling to clean or maintain body appearance).

Habit reversal training

One of the original behavior therapy treatments for trichotillomania and skin-picking that focuses on the awareness of triggers and the use of a competing response to prevent the behavior.

Habituation

Dissipation of anxiety that occurs during exposure treatment.

Hoarding disorder

A disorder characterized by the persistent difficulty in discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.

Imaginal desensitization

A psychological treatment process that involves imagining a fear or urge, combined with a coping response such as relaxation or guided imagery, that facilitates reduction of the fear or urge.

Impulse-control disorder

Disorders characterized by repetitive behaviors over which a person feels a lack of control; typically, these behaviors violate the rights of others or put the individual in conflict with societal norms or authority figures.

Kleptomania

A disorder characterized by a failure to resist urges to steal items that are not needed for personal use or monetary value.

Obsessions

Recurrent, persistent, and intrusive thoughts.

Obsessive-compulsive related disorders

A group of disorders for which obsessive compulsive disorder is the “centerpiece” and all related disorders are thought to have significant overlap with this disorder in terms of clinical features, family/genetic risk factors, neuroanatomical abnormalities, behavioral mechanisms for symptom onset, and treatment response.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

A condition involving obsessions (intrusive thoughts), often combined with compulsions (repetitive behaviors) that can be extensive, time consuming, and distressful.

Psychological challenge studies

A study of assessment methodology that requires people to confront objects or situations while neuroimaging procedures are used to scan suspected areas of the brain for enhanced activity.

Pyromania

A disorder characterized primarily by the deliberate and intentional setting of fires for pleasure.

Stimulus control

Placing barriers to behaviors in high-risk situations.

Thought-action fusion

A type of obsessive thinking that involves equating a thought about a behavior with performing the behavior itself.

Treatment refractory

Resistance to positive effects of treatment.

Trichotillomania

Repetitive hair pulling that results in noticeable hair loss.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

A common childhood disorder characterized by inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

Autism spectrum disorder

Consists of deficits in social communication and social interaction and the presence of restrictive and repetitive patterns of behavior.

Conduct disorder

The continuous and repeated pattern of violating the basic rights of others or breaking societal rules including aggression towards people or animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness or theft, and serious rule violations.

Down syndrome

The unusual condition in which chromosome 21 has three copies (i.e. trisomy) rather than the usual two.

Dyscalculia

Specific learning disorder with impairment in mathematics.

Dysgraphia

Difficulty composing grammatically correct sentences and organize coherent written paragraphs.

Dyslexia

A specific learning disorder involving difficulty learning to read or interpret words, letters, or other symbols.

Echolalia

The repetition of the last word, sound, or phase that was heard.

Encopresis

The repeated elimination of feces on or into inappropriate places such as the floor or clothing by someone over the age of 4.

Enuresis

The voiding of urine into one’s clothing or bedding.

Fragile X syndrome

The most commonly inherited cause of intellectual disability