Psychology Vocab From Exploring Psychology Chapters 8, 9, 10, And 11

Front 1

Memory

Back 1

The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information

Front 2

Encoding

Back 2

The processing of information into the memory system - for example, by extracting meaning

Front 3

Storage

Back 3

The retention of encoded information over time

Front 4

Retrieval

Back 4

The process of getting information out of memory storage

Front 5

Sensory memory

Back 5

The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

Front 6

Short-term memory

Back 6

Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten

Front 7

Long-term memory

Back 7

The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system; includes knowledge, skills, and experiences

Front 8

Working memory

Back 8

A newer understanding of short-term memory that involves conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory

Front 9

Automatic processing

Back 9

Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

Front 10

Effortful processing

Back 10

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Front 11

Rehearsal

Back 11

The conscious repetition of information, either to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage

Front 12

Spacing effect

Back 12

The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Front 13

Serial position effect

Back 13

Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

Front 14

Imagery

Back 14

Mental pictures; a powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding

Front 15

Mnemonics

Back 15

Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

Front 16

Chunking

Back 16

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Front 17

Iconic memory

Back 17

A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Front 18

Echoic memory

Back 18

A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within three or four seconds

Front 19

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

Back 19

An increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory

Front 20

Flashbulb memory

Back 20

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Front 21

Amnesia

Back 21

The loss of memory

Front 22

Implicit memory

Back 22

Retention independent of conscious recollection; also called nondeclarative memory

Front 23

Explicit memory

Back 23

Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare; also called declarative memory

Front 24

Hippocampus

Back 24

A neural center that is located in the limbic system and helps process explicit memories for storage

Front 25

Recall

Back 25

A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test

Front 26

Recognition

Back 26

A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test

Front 27

Relearning

Back 27

A memory measure that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time

Front 28

Priming

Back 28

The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

Front 29

Deja vu

Back 29

That eerie sense that "I've experienced this before"; cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience

Front 30

Mood-congruent memory

Back 30

The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood

Front 31

Proactive interference

Back 31

The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information

Front 32

Retroactive interference

Back 32

The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information

Front 33

Repression

Back 33

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Front 34

Misinformation effect

Back 34

Incorporation misleading information into one's memory of an event

Front 35

Source amnesia

Back 35

Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined; also called source misattribution; source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories

Front 36

Cognition

Back 36

The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Front 37

Concept

Back 37

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Front 38

Prototype

Back 38

A mental image or best example of a category; matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin)

Front 39

Algorithm

Back 39

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem; contrasts with the usually speedier - but also more error prone - use of heuristics

Front 40

Heuristic

Back 40

A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error prone than algorithms

Front 41

Insight

Back 41

A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions

Front 42

Confirmation bias

Back 42

A tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions

Front 43

Fixation

Back 43

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving

Front 44

Functional fixedness

Back 44

The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving

Front 45

Representativeness heuristic

Back 45

Judging the likelihood of things only in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore relevant information

Front 46

Availability heuristic

Back 46

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Front 47

Overconfidence

Back 47

The tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgments

Front 48

Framing

Back 48

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decision and judgments

Front 49

Belief perseverance

Back 49

Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Front 50

Language

Back 50

Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Front 51

Babbling stage

Back 51

Beginning at about four months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

Front 52

One-word stage

Back 52

The stage in speech development, from about age one to two, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Front 53

Two-word stage

Back 53

Beginning about age two, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements

Front 54

Telegraphic speech

Back 54

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - "go car" - using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words

Front 55

Linguistic determinism

Back 55

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Front 56

Intelligence

Back 56

Mental quality consisting of ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

Front 57

General intelligence (g)

Back 57

A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

Front 58

Savant syndrome

Back 58

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing

Front 59

Creativity

Back 59

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

Front 60

Emotional intelligence

Back 60

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Front 61

Intelligence test

Back 61

A method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores

Front 62

Mental age

Back 62

A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance; thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8

Front 63

Stanford-Binet

Back 63

The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test

Front 64

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

Back 64

Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus ma/ca x 100); On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.

Front 65

Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale

Back 65

The most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests

Front 66

Availability heuristic

Back 66

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Front 67

Overconfidence

Back 67

The tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of one's beliefs and judgments

Front 68

Framing

Back 68

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decision and judgments

Front 69

Belief perseverance

Back 69

Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Front 70

Language

Back 70

Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Front 71

Babbling stage

Back 71

Beginning at about four months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

Front 72

One-word stage

Back 72

The stage in speech development, from about age one to two, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Front 73

Two-word stage

Back 73

Beginning about age two, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements

Front 74

Telegraphic speech

Back 74

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram - "go car" - using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words

Front 75

Linguistic determinism

Back 75

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Front 76

Aptitude test

Back 76

A test designed to predict a person's future performance

Front 77

Aptitude

Back 77

The capacity to learn

Front 78

Achievement test

Back 78

A test designed to assess what a person has learned

Front 79

Standardization

Back 79

Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group

Front 80

Normal curve

Back 80

The symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes; most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes

Front 81

Reliability

Back 81

The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting

Front 82

Validity

Back 82

The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to

Front 83

Content validity

Back 83

The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest; such as a driving test that samples driving tasks

Front 84

Predictive validity

Back 84

The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior; also called criterion-related validity

Front 85

Heritability

Back 85

The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes; it may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied

Front 86

Instinct

Back 86

A complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species and is unlearned

Front 87

Drive-reduction theory

Back 87

The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need

Front 88

Homeostasis

Back 88

A tendency to maintain a balanced or constant internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particularly level

Front 89

Incentive

Back 89

A positive or negative environment stimulus that motivates behavior

Front 90

Hierarchy of needs

Back 90

Maslow's pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active

Front 91

Glucose

Back 91

The form of sugar that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues; when its level is low, we feel hunger

Front 92

Set point

Back 92

The point at which an individual's "weight thermostat" is supposedly set; when the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight

Front 93

Basal metabolic rate

Back 93

The body's resting rate of energy expenditure

Front 94

Anorexia nervosa

Back 94

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

Front 95

Bulimia nervosa

Back 95

An eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually of high-calorie foods, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise

Front 96

Sexual response cycle

Back 96

The four stages described by Masters and Johnson - excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution

Front 97

Refractory period

Back 97

A resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm

Front 98

Sexual disorder

Back 98

A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning

Front 99

Estrogen

Back 99

A sex hormone, secreted in greater amounts by females than by males; in nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity

Front 100

Testosterone

Back 100

The most important of the male sex hormones; both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty

Front 101

Sexual orientation

Back 101

An enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one's own sex (homosexual) or the other sex (heterosexual)

Front 102

Achievement motivation

Back 102

A desire for significant accomplishment; for mastery of things, people, or ideas; for attaining a high standard

Front 103

Emotion

Back 103

A response of the whole organism, involving 1) physiological arousal, 2) expressive behaviors, and 3) conscious experience

Front 104

James-Lange theory

Back 104

The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

Front 105

Cannon-Bard theory

Back 105

The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers 1) physiological responses and 2) the subjective experience of emotion

Front 106

Two-factor theory

Back 106

Schachter-Singer's theory that to experience emotion one must 1) be physically aroused and 2) cognitively label the arousal

Front 107

Polygraph

Back 107

A machine, commonly used in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion (such as perspiration and cardiovascular and breathing changes)

Front 108

Catharsis

Back 108

Emotional release; in psychology, the catharsis hypothesis maintains that "releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges

Front 109

Feel-good, do-good phenomenon

Back 109

People's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood

Front 110

Subjective well-being

Back 110

Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life; used along with measures of objective well-being to evaluate people's quality of life; for example, the physical and economic indicators

Front 111

Adaption-level phenomenon

Back 111

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

Front 112

Relative deprivation

Back 112

The perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself

Front 113

Stress

Back 113

The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging

Front 114

General adaption syndrome (GAS)

Back 114

Selye's concept of the body's adaptive response to stress in three states - alarm, resistance, and exhaustion

Front 115

Coronary heart disease

Back 115

The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in many developed countries

Front 116

Type A

Back 116

Friedman and Rosenman's term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people

Front 117

Type B

Back 117

Friedman and Rosenman's term for easygoing, relaxed people

Front 118

Psychophysiological illness

Back 118

Literally "mind-body" illness; any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches

Front 119

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)

Back 119

The study of how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes together affect the immune system and resulting health

Front 120

Lymphocytes

Back 120

The two types of white blood cells that are part of the body's immune system; B (form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections); T (form in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances

Front 121

Aerobic exercise

Back 121

Sustained exercise that increases heart and lung fitness; may also alleviate depression and anxiety

Front 122

Biofeedback

Back 122

A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension

Front 123

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)

Back 123

As yet unproven health care treatments intended to supplement or serve as alternatives to conventional medicine, and which typically are not widely taught in medical schools, used in hospitals, or reimbursed by insurance companies; when research shows a therapy to be safe and effective, it usually then becomes part of accepted medical practice