Abnormal Psych Vocabulary for Chapter 1
Terms
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- The scientific study of abnormal behavior in order to describe, predict, explain and change abnormal patterns of functioning.
- Abnormal Psychology
- A society's stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.
- Norms
- A people's common history, values, isnstitutions, habits, skills, technology and arts
- Culture
- A procedure designed to help change abnormal behavior into more normal behavior.
- Treatment
- An ancient operation in which a stone instrument was used to cut away a circular section of the skull, perhaps to treat abnormal behavior.
- trephination
- The practice in early societies of treating abnormality by coaxing evil spirits to leave the person's body.
- exorcism
- According to Greek and Roman physicians, bodily chemicals that influence mental and physical functioning.
- Humors
- A type of institution that first became popular in the sixteenth century to provide care for persons with mental disorders. Most became virtual prisons.
- Asylum
- A nineteenth century approach to treating people with mental dysfunctions that emphasized moral guidance and humane and respectful treatment.
- Moral Treatment
- State run public mental institutions in the US
- State hospitals
- The view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes.
- Somatogenic Perspective
- The view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological.
- Psychogenic Perspective
- Either the theory or the treatment of abnormal mental functioning that emphasizes unconscious psychological forces as the cause of psychopathology.
- Psychoanalysis
- Drugs that mainly affect the brain and reduce many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning.
- Psychotropic medications
- The practice begun in the 1960's of relaeasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals.
- Deinstitutionalization
- Interventions aimed at deterring mental disorders before they can develop.
- Prevention
- The study and enhancement of positive feelings, traits and abilities.
- A system of health care coverage in which the insurance company largely controls the nature, scope and cost of medical or psychological services.
- A general understanding of the nature, causes and treatments of abnormal psychological functioning in the form of laws or principles.
- Nomothetic Understanding
- The process of systematically gathering and evaluating information through careful observations to gain an understanding of a phenomenon.
- Scientific Method
- A detailed account of a person's life and psychological problems.
- Case Study
- A research procedure used to determine how much events or characteristics very along with each other.
- Correlational Method
- A study that measures the incidence and prevelance of a disorder in a given time.
- Prevelance
- A study that observes the same subjects on many occasions over a long period of time.
- Longitudinal Study
- A research procedure in which a variable is manipulated and the effect of the manipulation is observed.
- Experiment
- The variable in an experiment that is manipulated to determine whether it has an effect on another variable.
- Independent variable
- The variable in an experiment that is expected to change as the independent variable is manipulated.
- Dependent variable
- In an experiment a group of subjects who are not exposed to the independent variable.
- Control Group
- In an experiment the subjects who are exposed to the independent variable under investigation.
- Experimental Group
- A selection procedure that ensures that subjects are randomly placed either in the control group or in the experimental group.
- Random Assignment
- An experiment in which subjects do not know whether they are in the experimental or control condition.
- Blind design
- An experiment which makes use of control and experimental groups that already exist in the world at large.
- Quasi experiment
- An experiment in which nature, rather than an experimenter manipulates an independent variable.
- Natural experiment
- A research method in which the experimenter produces abnormal like behavior in laboratory subjects and then studies the subjects.
- Analogue experiment
- An experiment which measures a single subject both before and after the manipulation of an independent variable.
- Single subject experiment