Psychology Exam 4

Front 1

Psychological Disorder

Back 1

deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Front 2

ADHD

Back 2

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

Front 3

medical model

Back 3

the concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and, in most cases, cured, often through treatment in a hospital.

Front 4

DSM-IV-TR:

Back 4

the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, with an updated “text revision”; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders.

Front 5

mood disorders

Back 5

sychological disorders characterized by emotional extremes. See major depressive disorder, mania, and bipolar disorder.

Front 6

major depressive disorder

Back 6

a mood disorder in which a person experiences, in the absence of drugs or a medical condition, two or more weeks of significantly depressed moods, feelings of worthlessness, and diminished interest or pleasure in most activities.

Front 7

mania

Back 7

a mood disorder marked by a hyperactive, wildly optimistic state.

Front 8

bipolar disorder

Back 8

a mood disorder in which the person alternates between the hopelessness and lethargy of depression and the overexcited state of mania. (Formerly called manic-depressive disorder.)

Front 9

schizophrenia

Back 9

a group of severe disorders characterized by disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions.

Front 10

psychotic disorder

Back 10

a psychological disorder in which a person loses contact with reality, experiencing irrational ideas and distorted perceptions.

Front 11

delusions

Back 11

false beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur, that may accompany psychotic disorders.

Front 12

psychotherapy

Back 12

treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth.

Front 13

eclectic approach

Back 13

an approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client’s problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy.

»

Front 14

psychoanalysis

Back 14

Freud’s theory of personality and therapeutic techniques that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences—and the therapist’s interpretations of them—release previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

Front 15

resistance

Back 15

in psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material.

Front 16

interpretation

Back 16

in psychoanalysis, the analyst’s noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight.

Front 17

transference

Back 17

in psychoanalysis, the patient’s transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent).

Front 18

psychodynamic therapy

Back 18

therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight.

Front 19

insight therapies

Back 19

a variety of therapies which aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing the client’s awareness of underlying motives and defenses.

Front 20

clinet-centered therapy

Back 20

a humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine, accepting, empathic environment to facilitate clients’ growth. (Also called person-centered therapy.)

Front 21

active listening

Back 21

empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Rogers’ client-centered therapy.

Front 22

unconditional positive regard

Back 22

a caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude of total acceptance toward another person; Carl Rogers believed that this attitude, used in therapy, would help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Front 23

behavior therapy

Back 23

therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors.

Front 24

counter-conditioning

Back 24

a behavior therapy procedure that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning.

Front 25

exposure therapies

Back 25

behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) to the things they fear and avoid.

Front 26

systematic desensitization

Back 26

a type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias.

Front 27

aversive conditioning

Back 27

a type of counter-conditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol).

Front 28

token economy

Back 28

an operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats.

Front 29

cognitive therapy

Back 29

therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions.

Front 30

family therapy

Back 30

therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual’s unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members.

Front 31

evidence-based practice

Back 31

clinical decision-making that integrates the best available research with clinical expertise and patient characteristics and preferences.

Front 32

social psychology

Back 32

the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.

Front 33

attribution theory

Back 33

the theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.

Front 34

fundamental attribution error

Back 34

the tendency for observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.

Front 35

attitude

Back 35

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

Front 36

central route persuasion

Back 36

occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.

Front 37

peripheral route persuasion

Back 37

occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness.

Front 38

foot-in-the-door phenomenon

Back 38

the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

Front 39

role

Back 39

a set of explanations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave.

Front 40

cognitive dissonance theory

Back 40

the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.

Front 41

biomedical therapy

Back 41

prescribed medications or medical procedures that act directly on the patient’s nervous system.

Front 42

psychopharmacology

Back 42

the study of the effects of drugs on mind and behavior.

Front 43

antipsychotic drugs

Back 43

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

Front 44

antianxiety drugs

Back 44

drugs used to control anxiety and agitation.

Front 45

antidepressant drugs

Back 45

drugs used to treat depression; also increasingly prescribed for anxiety. Different types work by altering the availability of various neurotransmitters.

Front 46

electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) a

Back 46

biomedical therapy for severely depressed patients in which a brief electric current is sent through the brain of an anesthetized patient.

Front 47

repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)

Back 47

the application of repeated pulses of magnetic energy to the brain; used to stimulate or suppress brain activity.

Front 48

psychosurgery

Back 48

surgery that removes or destroys brain tissue in an effort to change behavior

Front 49

lobotomy

Back 49

a now-rare psychosurgical procedure once used to calm uncontrollably emotional or violent patients. The procedure cut the nerves connecting the frontal lobes to the emotion-controlling centers of the inner brain.