5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (85 page)

Critical period hypothesis
—
an optimal time after birth during which an organism must be exposed to certain influences if it is to develop properly. (Language is on example.)

Cross-sectional research
—
a method of assessing developmental changes by evaluating different age groups of people at the same time.

Crystallized intelligence
—
learned knowledge and skills such as vocabulary which tend to increase with age.

Culture
—
behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions transmitted from one generation to the next within a group of people who share a common language and environment.

Daily hassles
—
everyday annoyances such as having to wait on lines, arguing with a friend, etc.

Dark adaptation
—
increased visual sensitivity that gradually develops when it gets dark.

Daydreaming
—
state of consciousness characterized by focus on inner, private realities which can generate creative ideas.

Decay theory
—
assumes that memories deteriorate as time passes.

Declarative memory (explicit)
—
memory of facts and experiences that one consciously is aware of and can declare.

Deductive reasoning
—
reasoning from the general to the specific.

Deep processing
—
involves attaching meaning and creating associations between the new memory and existing memories.

Defense mechanisms
—
unconscious, deceptive reactions that protect the ego from unpleasant emotions that are threatening, according to Freudian theory. They become active when unconscious instinctual drives of the id come into conflict with prohibitions of the superego.

Deindividuation
—
loss of self-awareness and restraint resulting from immersion in a group.

Deinstitutionalization
—
movement begun in 1950s to remove patients who were not considered a threat to themselves or the community from mental hospitals.

Delayed conditioning
—
ideal training in classical conditioning training where the CS precedes UCS and briefly overlaps.

Delusion
—
false belief that others are plotting against one, that one is famous or that one’s thoughts and actions are controlled by others; symptomatic of schizophrenia and sometimes depression.

Demand characteristics
—
clues participants discover about the purpose of the study that suggest how they should respond.

Dendrites
—
branching tubular processes of neuron that have receptor sites for receiving information.

Denial
—
Freudian defense mechanism, a refusal to admit a particular aspect of reality.

Dependent variable
(DV)—the behavior or mental process that is measured in an experiment or quasi-experiment (the effect).

Depressants
—
psychoactive drugs that reduce the activity of the central nervous system and induce relaxation; include sedatives such as barbiturates, tranquilizers, and alcohol.

Depth perception
—
the ability to judge the distance of objects.

Descriptive statistics
—
numbers that summarize a set of research data obtained from a sample.

Developmental psychology
—
study of physical, intellectual, social, and moral changes over the entire life span from conception to death.

Deviation IQ
—
Weschler’s procedure for computing the intelligence quotient; compares a child’s score with those received by other children of the same chronological age.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
(DSM IVTR)—manual used by mental health professionals for classifying psychological disorders; published by American Psychiatric Association.

Diathesis–stress model
—
an account of the cause of mental disorders based on the idea that mental disorders develop when a person possesses a genetic predisposition for a disorder, and later faces stressors that exceed his or her abilities to cope with them.

Difference threshold
—
mimimum difference between any two stimuli that a person can detect 50 percent of the time.

Discrimination
—
in classical conditioning, the ability to tell the difference between the CS and stimuli similar to it that do not signal a UCS; in operant conditioning refers to responding differently to stimuli that signal that behavior will be reinforced or not reinforced; in social psychology it refers to unjustified behavior against an individual or group.

Disinhibition
—
a behavior therapy for phobias where modeling is used.

Disorganized schizophrenia (hebephrenia)
—
a type of schizophrenia characterized primarily by disturbances of thought and inappropriate affect—silly behavior or absence of emotions.

Displacement
—
expressing feelings toward something or someone besides the target person, because they are perceived as less threatening.

Display rules
—
culturally determined rules that prescribe the appropriate expression of emotions in particular situations.

Dispositional attributions
—
inferences that a person’s behavior is caused by the person’s tendency to think, feel, or act in a particular way.

Dissociation
—
experience of two or more streams of consciousness cut off from each other.

Dissociative amnesia
—
repression of memory for a particularly troublesome event or period of time into the unconscious mind; characterized by the inability to remember important events or personal information.

Dissociative disorders
—
class of disorders in which traumatic events or unpleasant memories cause a massive repression of these into the unconscious mind.

Dissociative fugue
—
sometimes called the “traveling amnesiac” disorder, in which a person moves away and assumes a new identity, with amnesia for the previous identity.

Dissociative identity disorder
—
formerly known as multiple personality disorder, a rarely seen dissociative disorder in which two or more distinct personalities exist within the same person.

Divergent thinking
—
thinking that produces many alternatives or ideas; creativity.

Dizygotic
or
fraternal twins
—
twins who develop from two different eggs fertilized by two different sperms.

Dominant gene
—
the gene expressed when the genes for a trait are different.

Dopamine
—
a neurotransmitter that stimulates the hypothalamus to synthesize hormones and affects alertness, attention, and movement. Lack of dopamine is associated with Parkinson’s disease; too much with schizophrenia.

Double-bind
—
a theory that serious mental illness can be expressed in an individual who has been given mutually inconsistent messages, such as love and hate, typically from a parent during childhood.

Double-blind procedure
—
research design in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group.

Down syndrome
—
usually with three copies of chromosome-21 in their cells, individuals are typically mentally retarded, have a round head, flat nasal bridge, protruding tongue, small round ears, a fold in the eyelid, and poor muscle tone and coordination.

Drive-reduction theory
—
theory of motivation that focuses on internal states of tension such as hunger that motivate us to pursue actions that reduce the tension and bring us back to homeostasis or internal balance.

Dualism
—
sees mind and body as two different things that interact.

Echoic memory
—
auditory sensory memory.

Eclectic
—
use of techniques and ideas from a variety of approaches to psychotherapy.

Ectomorph
—
Sheldon’s body type characterized by thin, frail body, introversion, and intelligence.

Educational psychologists
—
psychologists who focus on how effective teaching and learning take place.

EEG
(electroencephalogram)—an amplified tracing of brain activity produced when electrodes positioned
over the scalp transmit signals about the brain’s electrical activity (“brain waves”) to an electroencephalograph machine.

Effector
—
muscle cell that contracts or gland cell that secretes.

Efferent neuron
—
also called motor neuron, nerve cell in your PNS that transmits impulses from sensory or interneurons to muscle cells that contract or gland cells that secrete.

Ego
—
Freud’s personality structure that is the only rational component; it serves as the mediator between the id and superego and also as the decision-maker for the personality.

Egocentrism
—
seeing the world from one’s own perspective; the inability to see reality from the perspective of another person characteristic of the preoperational child.

Elaboration likelihood model
(ELM)—accounts for how attitudes can be changed.

Elaborative rehearsal
—
movement of information into long-term memory by making it meaningful.

Electroconvulsive treatment
(ECT)—is used as a last resort to treat severely depressed patients; involves passing small amounts of electric current through the brain to produce seizure activity and a change in affect.

Embryo
—
the developmental prenatal stage (from about 2 weeks through 2 months after fertilization) when most organs begin to develop.

Emotional intelligence
—
the ability to perceive, express, understand, and regulate emotions.

Emotions
—
feelings, highly subjective personal tendencies to respond to internal and external variables; includes physical arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.

Encoding
—
the process of converting information into some form that enables it to be stored into our memory system.

Encoding specificity principle
—
retrieval depends upon the match between the way information is encoded and the way it’s retrieved.

Endocrine system
—
ductless glands that typically secrete hormones directly into the blood which help regulate body and behavioral processes.

Endomorph
—
Sheldon’s body type characterized by round, spherical body; love of comfort, sociability.

Endorphins
—
neurotransmitters similar to the opiate morphine that relieves pain, and may induce feelings of pleasure.

Engineering psychologists
—
psychologists who do research on how people function best with machines.

Engrams
—
memory traces of information one acquires during life encoded in the brain.

Episodic memories
—
personal experiences that become consolidated into our long-term memory.

Equipotentiality
—
theory that any behavior can be taught to any organism.

Equivalent-form reliability
—
when two different versions of a test on the same material are given and the scores are highly correlated.

Escape behavior
—
behavior that terminates an ongoing event; negative reinforcement.

ESP (extrasensory perception
)
—
controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input.

Ethical guidelines
—
suggested rules for acting responsibly and morally when conducting research or in clinical practice.