Psychology Vocabulary Notes

Psychology Vocabulary Notes

Aaron Beck

  • Developed cognitive therapy to reverse patients' negative beliefs about themselves, their situations, and their futures.

Absolute Threshold

  • The minimum stimulation required to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.

Accommodation (Cognitive)

  • Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Achievement Tests

  • Tests designed to assess what a person has learned.

Accommodation (Ocular)

  • The act or state of adjustment or adaptation, specifically changes in the shape of the ocular lens for various focal distances.

Acoustic Encoding

  • The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words.

Acquisition

  • Classical Conditioning: The initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response.

  • Operant Conditioning: The strengthening of a reinforced response.

Action Potential

  • A neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon.

Active Listening

  • Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies.

  • A feature of Rogers' client-centered therapy.

Adaptation-Level Phenomenon

  • Our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.

  • Example: Feeling richer or poorer depends on comparing your income to those around you.

Addiction

  • Compulsive drug craving and use, despite adverse consequences.

Adolescence

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

Adrenal Glands

  • A pair of endocrine glands that sit just above the kidneys and secrete hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine) that help arouse the body in times of stress.

Aggression

  • Any physical/verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy someone.

Algorithm

  • A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

  • Contrasts with heuristics, which are speedier but more error-prone.

Alpha Waves

  • The relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state.

Altruism

  • Unselfish regard for the welfare of others.

Amnesia

  • The loss of memory.

Amphetamines

  • Drugs that stimulate neural activity, causing speeded-up body functions and associated energy and mood changes.

Amygdala

  • Two lima bean-sized neural clusters in the limbic system; linked to emotion.

Anorexia Nervosa

  • An eating disorder in which a person (usually an adolescent female) diets and becomes significantly (15% or more) underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continues to starve.

Antianxiety Drugs

  • Drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Antidepressant Drugs

  • Drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety.

  • Different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters.

Antipsychotic Drugs

  • Drugs used to treat schizophrenia and other forms of severe thought disorder.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

  • A personality disorder in which the 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.

Anxiety Disorders

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

Aphasia

  • Impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding).

Applied Research

  • Scientific study that aims to solve practical problems.

Aptitude Tests

  • Tests designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Assimilation

  • Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Association Areas

  • Areas of the cerebral cortex that are not involved in primary motor or sensory functions; rather, they are involved in higher mental functions such as learning, remembering, thinking, and speaking.

Associative Learning

  • Learning that certain events occur together.

  • The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequences (as in operant conditioning).

Attachment

  • An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

  • A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

Attitude

  • Feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.

Attribution Theory

  • Theory that we explain someone's behavior by crediting either the situation or the person's disposition.

Audition

  • The sense or act of hearing.

Autism

  • A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of minds.