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

Predictive validity
See criterion validity.

Preconscious memories
Memories that are not currently conscious but that can easily be called into consciousness when necessary.

Preattentive processing
Processing of sensory information that precedes attention to specific objects.

Positive reinforcement
A behavior is followed by the presentation of an appetitive stimulus, increasing the probability of that behavior.

Possible selves
The ideal selves that a person would like to become, the selves a person could become, and the selves a person is afraid of becoming; components of the cognitive sense of self.

Posttraumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) An anxiety disorder characterized by the persistent reexperience of traumatic events through distressing recollections, dreams, hallucinations, or dissociative flashbacks; develops in response to rapes, life-threatening events, severe injuries, and natural disasters.

Placebo effect
A change in behavior in the absence of an experimental manipulation.

Placebo therapy
A therapy independent of any specific clinical procedures that results in client improvement.

Pons
The region of the brain stem that connects the spinal cord with the brain and links parts of the brain to one another.

Population
The entire set of individuals to which generalizations will be made based on an experimental sample.

Positive punishment
A behavior is followed by the presentation of an aversive stimulus, decreasing the probability of that behavior.

Pituitary gland
Located in the brain, the gland that secretes growth hormone and influences the secretion of hormones by other endocrine glands.

Place theory
The theory that different frequency tones produce maximum activation at different locations along the basilar membrane, with the result that pitch can be coded by the place at which activation occurs.

Placebo control
An experimental condition in which treatment is not administered; it is used in cases where a placebo effect might occur.

Photoreceptors
Receptor cells in the retina that are sensitive to light.

Physical development
The bodily changes, maturation, and growth that occur in an organism starting with conception and continuing across the life span.

Physiological dependence
The process by which the body becomes adjusted to and dependent on a drug.

Pitch
Sound quality of highness or lowness; primarily dependent on the frequency of the sound wave.

Pheromones
Chemical signals released by organisms to communicate with other members of the species; often serve as long-distance sexual attractors.

Phi phenomenon
The simplest form of apparent motion, the movement illusion in which one or more stationary lights going on and off in succession are perceived as a single moving light.

Phobia
A persistent and irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that is excessive and unreasonable, given the reality of the threat.

Phonemes
Minimal units of speech in any given language that make a meaningful difference in speech production and reception; r and l are two distinct phonemes in English but variations of one in Japanese.

Phenotype
The observable characteristics of an organism, resulting from the interaction between the organism's genotype and its environment.

Personality types
Distinct patterns of personality characteristics used to assign people to categories; qualitative differences, rather than differences in degree, used to discriminate among people.

Persuasion
Deliberate efforts to change attitudes.

PET scans
Brain images produced by a device that obtains detailed pictures of activity in the living brain by recording the radioactivity emitted by cells during different cognitive or behavioral activities.

Phantom limb phenomenon
As experienced by amputees, extreme or chronic pain in a limb that is no longer there.

Personality
The unique psychological qualities of an individual that influence a variety of characteristic behavior patterns (both overt and covert) across different situations and over time.

Personality disorder
A chronic, inflexible, maladaptive pattern of perceiving, thinking, and behaving that seriously impairs an individual's ability to function in social or other settings.

Personality inventory
A self-report questionnaire used for personality assessment that includes a series of items about personal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Perception
The processes that organize information in the sensory image and interpret it as having been produced by properties of objects or events in the external, three-dimensional world.

Perceptual constancy
The ability to retain an unchanging percept of an object despite variations in the retinal image.

Perceptual organization
The processes that put sensory information together to give the perception of a coherent scene over the whole visual field.

Peripheral nervous system
(PNS) The part of the nervous system composed of the spinal and cranial nerves that connect the body's sensory receptors to the CNS and the CNS to the muscles and glands.

Perceived control
The belief that one has the ability to make a difference in the course or the consequences of some event or experience; often helpful in dealing with stressors.

Peace psychology
An interdisciplinary approach to the prevention of nuclear war and the maintenance of peace.

Pastoral counselor
A member of a religious order who specializes in the treatment of psychological disorders, often combining spirituality with practical problem solving.

Patient
The term used by those who take a biomedical approach to the treatment of psychological problems to describe the person being treated.

Panic disorder
An anxiety disorder in which sufferers experience unexpected, severe panic attacks that begin with a feeling of intense apprehension, fear, or terror.

Partial reinforcement effect
The behavioral principle that states that responses acquired under intermittent reinforcement are more difficult to extinguish than those acquired with continuous reinforcement.

Participant modeling
A therapeutic technique in which a therapist demonstrates the desired behavior and a client is aided, through supportive encouragement, to imitate the modeled behavior.

Parenting styles
The manner in which parents rear their children; an authoritative parenting style, which balances demandingness and responsiveness, is seen as the most effective.

Parietal lobe
Region of the brain behind the frontal lobe and above the lateral fissure; contains somatosensory cortex.

Parallel processes
Two or more mental processes that are carried out simultaneously.

Parasympathetic division
The subdivision of the autonomic nervous system that monitors the routine operation of the body's internal functions and conserves and restores body energy.

Parental investment
The time and energy parents must spend raising their offspring.

Parenting practices
Specific parenting behaviors that arise in response to particular parental goals.

Overregularization
A grammatical error, usually appearing during early language development, in which rules of the language are applied too widely, resulting in incorrect linguistic forms.

Pain
The body's response to noxious stimuli that are intense enough to cause, or threaten to cause, tissue damage.

Parallel forms
Different versions of a test used to assess test reliability; the change of forms reduces effects of direct practice, memory, or the desire of an individual to appear consistent on the same items.

Organismic variables
The inner determinants of an organism's behavior.

Organizational psychologists
Psychologists who study various aspects of the human work environment, such as communication among employees, socialization or enculturation of workers, leadership, job satisfaction, stress and burnout, and overall quality of life.

Orientation constancy
The ability to perceive the actual orientation of objects in the real world despite their varying orientation in the retinal image.

Out-groups
The groups with which people do not identify.

Operant extinction
When a behavior no longer produces predictable consequences, its return to the level of occurrence it had before operant conditioning.

Operational definition
A definition of a variable or condition in terms of the specific operation or procedure used to determine its presence.

Optic nerve
The axons of the ganglion cells that carry information from the eye toward the brain.

Occipital lobe
Rearmost region of the brain; contains primary visual ­cortex.

Olfactory bulb
The center where odor-sensitive receptors send their signals, located just below the frontal lobes of the cortex.

Operant
Behavior emitted by an organism that can be characterized in terms of the observable effects it has on the environment.

Operant conditioning
Learning in which the probability of a response is changed by a change in its consequences.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD) A mental disorder characterized by obsessions-recurrent thoughts, images, or impulses that recur or persist despite efforts to suppress them-and compulsions-repetitive, purposeful acts performed according to certain rules or in a ritualized manner.

Object relations theory
Psychoanalytic theory that originated with Melanie Klein's view that the building blocks of how people experience the world emerge from their relations to loved and hated objects (significant people in their lives).

Observational learning
The process of learning new responses by watching the behavior of another.

Observer bias
The distortion of evidence because of the personal motives and expectations of the viewer.

Normative influence
Group effects that arise from individuals' desire to be liked, accepted, and approved of by others.

Normative investigations
Research efforts designed to describe what is characteristic of a specific age or developmental stage.

Norms
Standards based on measurements of a large group of people; used for comparing the scores of an individual with those of others within a well-defined group.

Object permanence
The recognition that objects exist independently of an individual's action or awareness; an important cognitive acquisition of infancy.

Normal curve
The symmetrical curve that represents the distribution of scores on many psychological attributes; allows researchers to make judgments of how unusual an observation or result is.

Nonconscious
Information not typically available to consciousness or memory.

Non-REM (NREM) sleep
The period during which a sleeper does not show rapid eye movement; characterized by less dream activity than REM sleep.

Norm crystallization
The convergence of the expectations of a group of individuals into a common perspective as they talk and carry out activities together.

Neurotransmitters
Chemical messengers released from neurons that cross the synapse from one neuron to another, stimulating the postsynaptic neuron.

Nociceptive pain
Pain induced by a noxious external stimulus; specialized nerve endings in the skin send this pain message from the skin, through the spinal chord, into the brain.

Neuropathic pain
Pain caused by abnormal functioning or overactivity of nerves; it results from injury or disease of nerves.

Neuroscience
The scientific study of the brain and of the links between brain activity and behavior.

Neurotic disorders
Mental disorders in which a person does not have signs of brain abnormalities and does not display grossly irrational thinking or violate basic norms but does experience subjective distress; a category dropped from DSM-III.

Negative punishment
A behavior is followed by the removal of an appetitive stimulus, decreasing the probability of that behavior.

Negative reinforcement
A behavior is followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus, increasing the probability of that behavior.

Neuromodulator
Any substance that modifies or modulates the activities of the postsynaptic neuron.

Neuron
A cell in the nervous system specialized to receive, process, and/or transmit information to other cells.

Nature-nurture controversy
The debate concerning the relative importance of heredity (nature) and learning or experience (nurture) in determining development and behavior.

Need for achievement
(n Ach) An assumed basic human need to strive for achievement of goals that motivates a wide range of behavior and thinking.

Motivation
The process of starting, directing, and maintaining physical and psychological activities; includes mechanisms involved in preferences for one activity over another and the vigor and persistence of responses.

Motor cortex
The region of the cerebral cortex that controls the action of the body's voluntary muscles.

Motor neurons
The neurons that carry messages away from the central nervous system toward the muscles and glands.

Narcolepsy
A sleep disorder characterized by an irresistible compulsion to sleep during the daytime.

Natural selection
Darwin's theory that favorable adaptations to features of the environment allow some members of a species to reproduce more successfully than others.

Morality
A system of beliefs and values that ensures that individuals will keep their obligations to others in society and will behave in ways that do not interfere with the rights and interests of others.

Metamemory
Implicit or explicit knowledge about memory abilities and effective memory strategies; cognition about memory.

Mnemonics
Strategies or devices that use familiar information during the encoding of new information to enhance subsequent access to the information in memory.

Mode
The score appearing most frequently in a set of observations; a measure of central tendency.

Mood disorder
A mood disturbance such as severe depression or depression alternating with mania.

Meta-analysis
A statistical technique for evaluating hypotheses by providing a formal mechanism for detecting the general conclusions found in data from many different experiments.

Mental set
The tendency to respond to a new problem in the manner used to respond to a previous problem.

Menarche
The onset of menstruation.

Mental retardation
Condition in which individuals have IQ scores 70 to 75 or below and also demonstrate limitations in the ability to bring adaptive skills to bear on life tasks.

Median
The score in a distribution above and below which lie 50 percent of the other scores; a measure of central tendency.

Meditation
A form of consciousness alteration designed to enhance self-knowledge and well-being through reduced self-awareness.