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APA - Psychology terms Category: Health and Medicine > Psychological and medical terms Date & country: 31/03/2017, USA Words: 638

Sensory memory
The initial memory processes involved in the momentary preservation of fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli.

Sensory neurons
The neurons that carry messages from sense receptors toward the central nervous system.

Sensory physiology
The study of the way in which biological mechanisms convert physical events into neural events.

Sensory receptors
Specialized cells that convert physical signals into cellular signals that are processed by the nervous system.

Sensory adaptation
A phenomenon in which receptor cells lose their power to respond after a period of unchanged stimulation; allows a more rapid reaction to new sources of information.

Sensation
The process by which stimulation of a sensory receptor gives rise to neural impulses that result in an experience, or awareness of, conditions inside or outside the body.

Semantic memories
Generic, categorical memories, such as the meanings of words and concepts.

Self-serving bias
A class of attributional biases in which people tend to take credit for their successes and deny responsibility for their failures.

Self-report measures
The self-behaviors that are identified through a participant's own observations and reports.

Self-fulfilling prophecy
A prediction made about some future behavior or event that modifies interactions so as to produce what is expected.

Self-handicapping
The process of developing, in anticipation of failure, behavioral reactions and explanations that minimize ability deficits as possible attributions for the failure.

Self-perception theory
The idea that people observe themselves in order to figure out the reasons they act as they do; people infer what their internal states are by perceiving how they are acting in a given situation.

Self-awareness
The top level of consciousness; cognizance of the autobiographical character of personally experienced events.

Self-concept
A person's mental model of his or her abilities and attributes.

Self-efficacy
The set of beliefs that one can perform adequately in a particular situation.

Self-esteem
A generalized evaluative attitude toward the self that influences both moods and behavior and that exerts a powerful effect on a range of personal and social behaviors.

Selective social interaction theory
The view that suggests that, as people age, they become more selective in choosing social partners who satisfy their emotional needs.

Self-actualization
A concept in personality psychology referring to a person's constant striving to realize his or her potential and to develop inherent talents and capabilities.

Selective optimization with compensation
A strategy for successful aging in which one makes the most of gains while minimizing the impact of losses that accompany normal aging.

Scientific method
The set of procedures used for gathering and interpreting objective information in a way that minimizes error and yields dependable generalizations.

Schemes
Piaget's term for cognitive structures that develop as infants and young children learn to interpret the world and adapt to their environment.

Schizophrenic disorder
Severe form of psychopathology characterized by the breakdown of integrated personality functioning, withdrawal from reality, emotional distortions, and disturbed thought processes.

Schemas
General conceptual frameworks, or clusters of knowledge, regarding objects, people, and situations; knowledge packages that encode generalizations about the structure of the environment.

Rules
Behavioral guidelines for acting in certain ways in certain situations.

Sample
A subset of a population selected as participants in an experiment.

Saturation
The dimension of color space that captures the purity and vividness of color sensations.

Schedules of reinforcement
In operant conditioning, the patterns of delivering and withholding reinforcement.

Retrieval
The recovery of stored information from memory.

Retrieval cues
Internally or externally generated stimuli available to help with the retrieval of a memory.

Reversal theory
Theory that explains human motivation in terms of reversals from one to the other opposing metamotivational states.

Ritual healing
Ceremonies that infuse special emotional intensity and meaning into the healing process.

Rods
Photoreceptors concentrated in the periphery of the retina that are most active in dim illumination; rods do not produce sensation of color.

Reticular formation
The region of the brain stem that alerts the cerebral cortex to incoming sensory signals and is responsible for maintaining consciousness and awakening from sleep.

Retina
The layer at the back of the eye that contains photoreceptors and converts light energy to neural responses.

Retinal disparity
The displacement between the horizontal positions of corresponding images in the two eyes.

Residual stress pattern
A chronic syndrome in which the emotional responses of posttraumatic stress persist over time.

Resistance
The inability or unwillingness of a patient in psychoanalysis to discuss certain ideas, desires, or experiences.

Response bias
The systematic tendency as a result of nonsensory factors for an observer to favor responding in a particular way.

Resting potential
The polarization of cellular fluid within a neuron, which provides the capability to produce an action potential.

Representative sample
A subset of a population that closely matches the overall characteristics of the population with respect to the distribution of males and females, racial and ethnic groups, and so on.

Representativeness heuristic
A cognitive strategy that assigns an object to a category on the basis of a few characteristics regarded as representative of that category.

Repression
The basic defense mechanism by which painful or guilt-producing thoughts, feelings, or memories are excluded from conscious awareness.

Reliability
The degree to which a test produces similar scores each time it is used; stability or consistency of the scores produced by an instrument.

Reinforcer
Any stimulus that, when made contingent upon a response, increases the probability of that response.

Relative motion parallax
A source of information about depth in which the relative distances of objects from a viewer determine the amount and direction of their relative motion in the retinal image.

Relaxation response
A condition in which muscle tension, cortical activity, heart rate, and blood pressure decrease and breathing slows.

Recognition
A method of retrieval in which an individual is required to identify stimuli as having been experienced before.

Reconstructive memory
The process of putting information together based on general types of stored knowledge in the absence of a specific memory representation.

Reflex
An unlearned response elicited by specific stimuli that have biological relevance for an organism.

Reinforcement contingency
A consistent relationship between a response and the changes in the environment that it produces.

Reciprocal determinism
A concept of Albert Bandura's sociallearning theory that refers to the notion that a complex reciprocal interaction exists among the individual, his or her behavior, and environmental stimuli and that each of these components affects the others.

Reciprocity norm
Expectation that favors will be returned-if someone does something for another person, that person should do something in return.

Reciprocal altruism
The idea that people perform altruistic behaviors because they expect that others will perform altruistic behaviors for them in turn.

Recency effect
Improved memory for items at the end of a list.

Receptive field
The visual area from which a given ganglion cell receives information.

Recall
A method of retrieval in which an individual is required to reproduce the information previously presented.

Reasoning
The process of thinking in which conclusions are drawn from a set of facts; thinking directed toward a given goal or objective.

Refractory period
The period of rest during which a new nerve impulse cannot be activated in a segment of an axon.

Rational-emotive therapy
(RET) A comprehensive system of personality change based on changing irrational beliefs that cause undesirable, highly charged emotional reactions such as severe anxiety.

Racism
Discrimination against people based on their skin color or ethnic heritage.

Range
The difference between the highest and the lowest scores in a set of observations; the simplest measure of variability.

Rapid eye movements
(REM) A behavioral sign of the phase of sleep during which the sleeper is likely to be experiencing dreamlike mental activity.

Punisher
Any stimulus that, when made contingent upon a response, decreases the probability of that response.

Puberty
The attainment of sexual maturity; indicated for girls by menarche and for boys by the production of live sperm and the ability to ejaculate.

Psychosurgery
A surgical procedure performed on brain tissue to alleviate a psychological disorder.

Psychotherapy
Any of a group of therapies, used to treat psychological disorders, that focus on changing faulty behaviors, thoughts, perceptions, and emotions that may be associated with specific disorders.

Psychotic disorders
Severe mental disorders in which a person experiences impairments in reality testing manifested through thought, emotional, or perceptual difficulties; no longer used as a diagnostic category after DSM-III.

Psychosomatic disorders
Physical disorders aggravated by or primarily attributable to prolonged emotional stress or other psychological causes.

Psychosocial stages
Proposed by Erik Erikson, successive developmental stages that focus on an individual's orientation toward the self and others; these stages incorporate both the sexual and social aspects of a person's development and the social conflicts that arise from the interaction between the individual and the social environment.

Psychopathological functioning
Disruptions in emotional, behavioral, or thought processes that lead to personal distress or block one's ability to achieve important goals.

Psychopharmacology
The branch of psychology that investigates the effects of drugs on behavior.

Psychophysics
The study of the correspondence between physical stimulation and psychological experience.

Psychometrics
The field of psychology that specializes in mental testing.

Psychoneuroimmunology
The research area that investigates interactions between psychological processes, such as responses to stress, and the functions of the immune system.

Psychological diagnosis
The label given to psychological abnormality by classifying and categorizing the observed behavior pattern into an approved diagnostic system.

Psychologist
An individual with a doctoral degree in psychology from an organized, sequential program in a regionally accredited university or professional school.

Psychology
The scientific study of the behavior of individuals and their mental processes.

Psychometric function
A graph that plots the percentage of detections of a stimulus (on the vertical axis) for each stimulus intensity (on the horizontal axis).

Psychological dependence
The psychological need or craving for a drug.

Psychodynamic perspective
A psychological model in which behavior is explained in terms of past experiences and motivational forces; actions are viewed as stemming from inherited instincts, biological drives, and attempts to resolve conflicts between personal needs and social requirements.

Psychological assessment
The use of specified procedures to evaluate the abilities, behaviors, and personal qualities of people.

Psychodynamic personality theories
Theories of personality that share the assumption that personality is shaped by and behavior is motivated by powerful inner forces.

Psychobiography
The use of psychological (especially personality) theory to describe and explain an individual's course through life.

Psychoactive drugs
Chemicals that affect mental processes and behavior by temporarily changing conscious awareness of reality.

Psychoanalysis
The form of psychodynamic therapy developed by Freud; an intensive and prolonged technique for exploring unconscious motivations and conflicts in neurotic, anxiety-ridden individuals.

Psychoanalyst
An individual who has earned either a Ph.D. or an M.D. degree and has completed postgraduate training in the Freudian approach to understanding and treating mental disorders.

Psychic determinism
The assumption that mental and behavioral reactions are determined by previous experiences.

Psychiatrist
An individual who has obtained an M.D. degree and also has completed postdoctoral specialty training in mental and emotional disorders; a psychiatrist may prescribe medications for the treatment of psychological disorders.

Prototype
The most representative example of a category.

Proximal stimulus
The optical image on the retina; contrasted with the distal stimulus, the physical object in the world.

Procedural memory
Memory for how things get done; the way perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills are acquired, retained, and used.

Projective test
A method of personality assessment in which an individual is presented with a standardized set of ambiguous, abstract stimuli and asked to interpret their meanings; the individual's responses are assumed to reveal inner feelings, motives, and conflicts.

Prosocial behaviors
Behaviors that are carried out with the goal of helping other people.

Problem solving
Thinking that is directed toward solving specific problems and that moves from an initial state to a goal state by means of a set of mental operations.

Problem space
The elements that make up a problem: the initial state, the incomplete information or unsatisfactory conditions the person starts with; the goal state, the set of information or state the person wishes to achieve; and the set of operations, the steps the person takes to move from the initial state to the goal state.

Priming
In the assessment of implicit memory, the advantage conferred by prior exposure to a word or situation.

Prejudice
A learned attitude toward a target object, involving negative affect (dislike or fear), negative beliefs (stereotypes) that justify the attitude, and a behavioral intention to avoid, control, dominate, or eliminate the target object.

Primacy effect
Improved memory for items at the start of a list.

Primary reinforcers
Biologically determined reinforcers such as food and water.

Prefrontal lobotomy
An operation that severs the nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes of the brain with the diencephalon, especially those fibers of the thalamic and hypothalamic areas; best-known form of psychosurgery.