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EPPP study cards

Terms

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Amygdala
The part of the limbic system that controls emotion, aggression, and the formation of emotional memory
Analytic psychology
A branch of psychology that views the person as a constellation of compensatory internal forces in a dynamic balance.
Anchoring heuristic
An insufficient adjustment up or down from an original starting value when judging the probable value of some event or outcome.
Anorexia nervosa
An eating disorder in which an individual weighs less than 85 percent of her or his expected weight but still controls eating because of a self-perception of obesity.
Anticipatory coping
Efforts made in advance of a potentially stressful event to overcome, reduce, or tolerate the imbalance between perceived demands and available resources.
Anxiety
An intense emotional response caused by the preconscious recognition that a repressed conflict is about to emerge into consciousness.
Anxiety disorders
Mental disorders marked by physiological arousal, feelings of tension, and intense apprehension without apparent reason.
Archetype
A universal, inherited, primitive, and symbolic representation of a particular experience or object.
Assimilation
According to Piaget, the process whereby new cognitive elements are fitted in with old elements or modified to fit more easily; this process works in tandem with accommodation.
Association cortex
The parts of the cerebral cortex in which many high-level brain processes occur.
Attachment
Emotional relationship between a child and the “regular caregiver.
Attitude
The learned, relatively stable tendency to respond to people, concepts, and events in an evaluative way.
Attribution theory
A social-cognitive approach to describing the ways the social perceiver uses information to generate causal explanations.
Attributions
Judgments about the causes of outcomes.
Audience design
The process of shaping a message depending on the audience for which it is intended
Auditory cortex
The area of the temporal lobes that receives and processes auditory information
Auditory nerve
The nerve that carries impulses from the cochlea to the cochlear nucleus of the brain.
Automatic processes
Processes that do not require attention; they can often be performed along with other tasks without interference.
Autonomic nervous system (ANS)
The subdivision of the peripheral nervous system that controls the body's involuntary motor responses by connecting the sensory receptors to the central nervous system (CNS) and the CNS to the smooth muscle, cardiac muscle, and glands.
Availability heuristic
A judgment based on the information readily available in memory
Aversion therapy
A type of behavioral therapy used to treat individuals attracted to harmful stimuli; an attractive stimulus is paired with a noxious stimulus in order to elicit a negative reaction to the target stimulus.
Axon
The extended fiber of a neuron through which nerve impulses travel from the soma to the terminal buttons.
Basic level
The level of categorization that can be retrieved from memory most quickly and used most efficiently.
Basilar membrane
A membrane in the cochlea that, when set into motion, stimulates hair cells that produce the neural effects of auditory stimulation.
Behavior
The actions by which an organism adjusts to its environment.
Behavior analysis
The area of psychology that focuses on the environmental determinants of learning and behavior
Behavior modification or
Behavior therapy
The systematic use of principles of learning to increase the frequency of desired behaviors and/or decrease the frequency of problem behaviors.
Behavioral confirmation
The process by which people behave in ways that elicit from others specific expected reactions and then use those reactions to confirm their beliefs.
Behavioral data
Observational reports about the behavior of organisms and the conditions under which the behavior occurs or changes.
Behavioral measures
Overt actions and reactions that are observed and recorded, exclusive of self-reported behavior
Behavioral rehearsal
Procedures used to establish and strengthen basic skills; as used in social-skills training programs, requires the client to rehearse a desirable behavior sequence mentally
Behaviorism
A scientific approach that limits the study of psychology to measurable or observable behavior
Behaviorist perspective
The psychological perspective primarily concerned with observable behavior that can be objectively recorded and with the relationships of observable behavior to environmental stimuli.
Belief-bias effect
A situation that occurs when a person's prior knowledge, attitudes, or values distort the reasoning process by influencing the person to accept invalid arguments.
Between-subjects design
A research design in which different groups of participants are randomly assigned to experimental conditions or to control conditions.
Biofeedback
A self-regulatory technique by which an individual acquires voluntary control over nonconscious biological processes.
Biological constraints on learning
Any limitations on an organism's capacity to learn that are caused by the inherited sensory, response, or cognitive capabilities of members of a given species.
Biological perspective
The approach to identifying causes of behavior that focuses on the functioning of the genes, the brain, the nervous system, and the endocrine system.
Biomedical therapies
Treatments for psychological disorders that alter brain functioning with chemical or physical interventions such as drug therapy, surgery, or electroconvulsive therapy.
Biopsychosocial model
A model of health and illness that suggests that links among the nervous system, the immune system, behavioral styles, cognitive processing, and environmental factors can put people at risk for illness.
Bipolar cells
Nerve cells in the visual system that combine impulses from many receptors and transmit the results to ganglion cells.
Bipolar disorder
A mood disorder characterized by alternating periods of depression and mania. Must have manic or mixed episode
Blocking
A phenomenon in which an organism does not learn a new stimulus that signals an unconditioned stimulus, because the new stimulus is presented simultaneously with a stimulus that is already effective as a signal
Bottom-up processing
Perceptual analyses based on the sensory data available in the environment; results of analyses are passed upward toward more abstract representations
Brain stem
The brain structure that regulates the body's basic life processes
Broca's area
The region of the brain that translates thoughts into speech or sign.
Bulimia nervosa
An eating disorder characterized by binge eating followed by measures to purge the body of the excess calories.
Bystander intervention
Willingness to assist a person in need of help.The more people the less help.
Cannon–Bard theory of emotion
A theory stating that an “emotional stimulus produces two co-occurring reactions—arousal “and experience of emotion—that do not cause each other.
Case study
Intensive observation of a particular individual or small group of individuals
Catharsis
The process of expressing strongly felt but usually repressed emotions
Central nervous system (CNS)
The part of the nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord.
Centration
A thought pattern common during the beginning of the preoperational stage of cognitive development; characterized by the child's inability to take more than one perceptual factor into account at the same time.
Cerebellum
The region of the brain attached to the brain stem that controls motor coordination, posture, and balance as well as the ability to learn control of body movements.
Cerebral cortex
The outer surface of the cerebrum
Cerebral hemispheres
The two halves of the cerebrum, connected by the corpus callosum
Cerebrum
The region of the brain that regulates higher cognitive and emotional functions.
Child-directed speech
A special form of speech with an exaggerated and high-pitched intonation that adults use to speak to infants and young children.
Chronic stress
A continuous state of arousal in which an individual perceives demands as greater than the inner and outer resources available for dealing with them.
Chronological age
The number of months or years since an individual's birth.
Chunking
The process of taking single items of information and recoding them on the basis of similarity or some other organizing principle.
Circadian rhythm
A consistent pattern of cyclical body activities, usually lasting 24 to 25 hours and determined by an internal biological clock.
Classical conditioning
A type of learning in which a behavior (conditioned response) comes to be elicited by a stimulus (conditioned stimulus) that has acquired its power through an association with a biologically significant stimulus (unconditioned stimulus).
Client-centered therapy
A humanistic approach to treatment that emphasizes the healthy psychological growth of the individual; based on the assumption that all people share the basic tendency of human nature toward self-actualization.
Clinical ecology
A field of psychology that relates disorders such as anxiety and depression to environmental irritants and sources of trauma.
Clinical psychologist
An individual who has earned a doctorate in psychology and whose training is in the assessment and treatment of psychological problems
Closure
A perceptual organizing process that leads individuals to see incomplete figures as complete.
Cochlea
The primary organ of hearing; a fluid-filled coiled tube located in the inner ear.
Cognition
Processes of knowing, including attending, remembering, and reasoning; also the content of the processes, such as concepts and memories.
Cognitive appraisal
With respect to emotions, the process through which physiological arousal is interpreted with respect to circumstances in the particular setting in which it is being experienced; also, the recognition and evaluation of a stressor to assess the demand, the size of the threat, the resources available for dealing with it, and appropriate coping strategies.
Cognitive appraisal theory of emotion
A theory stating that the experience of emotion is the joint effect of physiological arousal and cognitive appraisal, which serves to determine how an ambiguous inner state of arousal will be labeled
Cognitive behavior modification
A therapeutic approach that combines the cognitive emphasis on the role of thoughts and attitudes influencing motivations and response with the behavioral emphasis on changing performance through modification of reinforcement contingencies.
Cognitive development
The development of processes of knowing, including imagining, perceiving, reasoning, and problem solving.
Cognitive dissonance
The theory that the tension-producing effects of incongruous cognitions motivate individuals to reduce such tension.
Cognitive map
A mental representation of physical space

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