Vocabulary

Absolute threshold: The smallest amount of stimulation needed for detection by a sense.
Action Potential: A transient all-or-nothing electrical current that is conducted down the axon when the membrane potential reaches the threshold of excitation.
Agnosia: Loss of the ability to perceive stimuli.
Anchoring: The bias to be affected by an initial anchor, even if the anchor is arbitrary, and to insufficiently adjust our judgments away from that anchor.
Anosmia: Loss of the ability to smell.
Audience design: Constructing utterances to suit the audience’s knowledge.
Audition: Ability to process auditory stimuli. Also called hearing.
Auditory canal: Tube running from the outer ear to the middle ear.
Auditory hair cells: Receptors in the cochlea that transduce sound into electrical potentials.
Axon: Part of the neuron that extends off the soma, splitting several times to connect with other neurons; main output of the neuron.
Behaviorism: The study of behavior.
Biases: The systematic and predictable mistakes that influence the judgment of even very talented human beings.
Binocular disparity: Difference is images processed by the left and right eyes.
Binocular vision: Our ability to perceive 3D and depth because of the difference between the images on each of our retinas.
Blocking: In classical conditioning, the finding that no conditioning occurs to a stimulus if it is combined with a previously conditioned stimulus during conditioning trials. Suggests that information, surprise value, or prediction error is important in conditioning.
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC): Blood Alcohol Content (BAC): a measure of the percentage of alcohol found in a person’s blood. This measure is typically the standard used to determine the extent to which a person is intoxicated, as in the case of being too impaired to drive a vehicle.
Bottom-up processing: Building up to perceptual experience from individual pieces.
Bounded awareness: The systematic ways in which we fail to notice obvious and important information that is available to us.
Bounded ethicality: The systematic ways in which our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves.
Bounded rationality: Model of human behavior that suggests that humans try to make rational decisions but are bounded due to cognitive limitations.
Bounded self-interest: The systematic and predictable ways in which we care about the outcomes of others.
Bounded willpower: The tendency to place greater weight on present concerns rather than future concerns.
Brain Stem: The “trunk” of the brain comprised of the medulla, pons, midbrain, and diencephalon.
Broca’s Area: An area in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere. Implicated in language production.
Categorize: To sort or arrange different items into classes or categories.
Central Nervous System: The portion of the nervous system that includes the brain and spinal cord.
Cerebellum: The distinctive structure at the back of the brain, Latin for “small brain.”
Cerebrum: Usually refers to the cerebral cortex and associated white matter, but in some texts includes the subcortical structures.
Chemical senses: Our ability to process the environmental stimuli of smell and taste.
Circadian Rhythm: Circadian Rhythm: The physiological sleep-wake cycle. It is influenced by exposure to sunlight as well as daily schedule and activity. Biologically, it includes changes in body temperature, blood pressure and blood sugar.
Classical conditioning: The procedure in which an initially neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (or US). The result is that the conditioned stimulus begins to elicit a conditioned response (CR). Classical conditioning is nowadays considered important as both a behavioral phenomenon and as a method to study simple associative learning. Same as Pavlovian conditioning.
Cochlea: Spiral bone structure in the inner ear containing auditory hair cells.
Cognitive psychology: The study of mental processes.
Common ground: Information that is shared by people who engage in a conversation.
Conditioned compensatory response: In classical conditioning, a conditioned response that opposes, rather than is the same as, the unconditioned response. It functions to reduce the strength of the unconditioned response. Often seen in conditioning when drugs are used as unconditioned stimuli.
Conditioned response (CR): The response that is elicited by the conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has taken place.
Conditioned stimulus (CS): An initially neutral stimulus (like a bell, light, or tone) that elicits a conditioned response after it has been associated with an unconditioned stimulus.
Cones: Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to color. Located primarily in the fovea.
Confounds: Factors that undermine the ability to draw causal inferences from an experiment.
Consciousness: Awareness of ourselves and our environment.
Consciousness: Consciousness: the awareness or deliberate perception of a stimulus
Context: Stimuli that are in the background whenever learning occurs. For instance, the Skinner box or room in which learning takes place is the classic example of a context. However, “context” can also be provided by internal stimuli, such as the sensory effects of drugs (e.g., being under the influence of alcohol has stimulus properties that provide a context) and mood states (e.g., being happy or sad). It can also be provided by a specific period in time—the passage of time is sometimes said to change the “temporal context.”
Contralateral: Literally “opposite side”; used to refer to the fact that the two hemispheres of the brain process sensory information and motor commands for the opposite side of the body (e.g., the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body).
Corpus Callosum: The thick bundle of nerve cells that connect the two hemispheres of the brain and allow them to communicate.
Correlation: Measures the association between two variables, or how they go together.
Cues: Cues: a stimulus that has a particular significance to the perceiver (e.g., a sight or a sound that has special relevance to the person who saw or heard it)
Dark adaptation: Adjustment of eye to low levels of light.
Dendrites: Part of a neuron that extends away from the cell body and is the main input to the neuron.
Dependent variable: The variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment.
Depressants: Depressants: a class of drugs that slow down the body’s physiological and mental processes.
Differential threshold (or difference threshold): The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (See Just Noticeable Difference (JND))
Diffuse Optical Imaging (DOI): A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in light as it is passed through the skull and surface of the brain.
Discriminative stimulus: In operant conditioning, a stimulus that signals whether the response will be reinforced. It is said to “set the occasion” for the operant response.
Dissociation: Dissociation: the heightened focus on one stimulus or thought such that many other things around you are ignored; a disconnect between one’s awareness of their environment and the one object the person is focusing on
Dorsal pathway: Pathway of visual processing. The “where” pathway.
Electroencephalography (EEG): A neuroimaging technique that measures electrical brain activity via multiple electrodes on the scalp.
Empirical methods: Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and observation.
Empiricism: The belief that knowledge comes from experience.
Ethics: Professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that protect research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts of interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research.
Eugenics: The practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits.
Euphoria: Euphoria: an intense feeling of pleasure, excitement or happiness.
Experimenter expectations: When the experimenter’s expectations influence the outcome of a study.
Extinction: Decrease in the strength of a learned behavior that occurs when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or when the behavior is no longer reinforced (in instrumental conditioning). The term describes both the procedure (the US or reinforcer is no longer presented) as well as the result of the procedure (the learned response declines). Behaviors that have been reduced in strength through extinction are said to be “extinguished.”
Fear conditioning: A type of classical or Pavlovian conditioning in which the conditioned stimulus (CS) is associated with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a foot shock. As a consequence of learning, the CS comes to evoke fear. The phenomenon is thought to be involved in the development of anxiety disorders in humans.
Flashbulb memory: A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event.
Flavor: The combination of smell and taste.
Flexible Correction Model: Flexible Correction Model: the ability for people to correct or change their beliefs and evaluations if they believe these judgments have been biased (e.g., if someone realizes they only thought their day was great because it was sunny, they may revise their evaluation of the day to account for this “biasing” influence of the weather)
Framing: The bias to be systematically affected by the way in which information is presented, while holding the objective information constant.
Frontal Lobe: The front most (anterior) part of the cerebrum; anterior to the central sulcus and responsible for motor output and planning, language, judgment, and decision-making.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in oxygen levels in the blood.
Functionalism: A school of American psychology that focused on the utility of consciousness.
Gestalt psychology: An attempt to study the unity of experience.
Goal-directed behavior: Instrumental behavior that is influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the association between the behavior and its consequence and the current value of the consequence. Sensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.
Gustation: Ability to process gustatory stimuli. Also called taste.
Habit: Instrumental behavior that occurs automatically in the presence of a stimulus and is no longer influenced by the animal’s knowledge of the value of the reinforcer. Insensitive to the reinforcer devaluation effect.
Hallucinogens: Hallucinogens: substances that, when ingested, alter a person’s perceptions, often by creating hallucinations that are not real or distorting their perceptions of time.
Heuristics: cognitive (or thinking) strategies that simplify decision making by using mental short-cuts
Hypnosis: Hypnosis: the state of consciousness whereby a person is highly responsive to the suggestions of another; this state usually involves a dissociation with one’s environment and an intense focus on a single stimulus, which is usually accompanied by a sense of relaxation
Hypnotherapy: Hypnotherapy: The use of hypnotic techniques such as relaxation and suggestion to help engineer desirable change such as lower pain or quitting smoking.
Hypotheses: A logical idea that can be tested.
Implicit Associations Test: Implicit Associations Test (IAT): A computer reaction time test that measures a person’s automatic associations with concepts. For instance, the IAT could be used to measure how quickly a person makes positive or negative evaluations of members of various ethnic groups.
Independent variable: The variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment.
Individual differences: Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion, cognition, and development.
Ingroup: Group to which a person belongs.
Instrumental conditioning: Process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their consequences. Also known as operant conditioning.
Introspection: A method of focusing on internal processes.
Jet Lag: Jet Lag: The state of being fatigued and/or having difficulty adjusting to a new time zone after traveling a long distance (across multiple time zones).
Just noticeable difference (JND): The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (see Differential Threshold)
Law of effect: The idea that instrumental or operant responses are influenced by their effects. Responses that are followed by a pleasant state of affairs will be strengthened and those that are followed by discomfort will be weakened. Nowadays, the term refers to the idea that operant or instrumental behaviors are lawfully controlled by their consequences.
Lexicon: Words and expressions.
Light adaptation: Adjustment of eye to high levels of light.
Limbic System: Includes the subcortical structures of the amygdala and hippocampal formation as well as some cortical structures; responsible for aversion and gratification.
Linguistic intergroup bias: A tendency for people to characterize positive things about their ingroup using more abstract expressions, but negative things about their outgroups using more abstract expressions.
Longitudinal study: A study that follows the same group of individuals over time.
Mechanoreceptors: Mechanical sensory receptors in the skin that response to tactile stimulation.
Melatonin: Melatonin: A hormone associated with increased drowsiness and sleep.
Mindfulness: Mindfulness: a state of heightened focus on the thoughts passing through one’s head, as well as a more controlled evaluation of those thoughts (e.g., do you reject or support the thoughts you’re having?)
Multimodal perception: The effects that concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality has on the perception of events and objects in the world.
Myelin Sheath: Fatty tissue, that insulates the axons of the neurons; myelin is necessary for normal conduction of electrical impulses among neurons.
Nervous System: The body’s network for electrochemical communication. This system includes all the nerves cells in the body.
Neural impulse: An electro-chemical signal that enables neurons to communicate.
Neurons: Individual brain cells
Neurotransmitters: Chemical substance released by the presynaptic terminal button that acts on the postsynaptic cell.
Nociception: Our ability to sense pain.
Observational learning: Learning by observing the behavior of others.
Occipital Lobe: The back most (posterior) part of the cerebrum; involved in vision.
Odorants: Chemicals transduced by olfactory receptors.
Olfaction: Ability to process olfactory stimuli. Also called smell.
Olfactory epithelium: Organ containing olfactory receptors.
Operant: A behavior that is controlled by its consequences. The simplest example is the rat’s lever-pressing, which is controlled by the presentation of the reinforcer.
Operant conditioning: See instrumental conditioning.
Operational definitions: How researchers specifically measure a concept.
Opponent-process theory: Theory proposing color vision as influenced by cells responsive to pairs of colors.
Ossicles: A collection of three small bones in the middle ear that vibrate against the tympanic membrane.
Outgroup: Group to which a person does not belong.
Overconfident: The bias to have greater confidence in your judgment than is warranted based on a rational assessment.
Parietal Lobe: The part of the cerebrum between the frontal and occipital lobes; involved in bodily sensations, visual attention, and integrating the senses.
Participant demand: When participants behave in a way that they think the experimenter wants them to behave.
Pavlovian conditioning: See classical conditioning.
Perception: The psychological process of interpreting sensory information.
Peripheral Nervous System: All of the nerve cells that connect the central nervous system to all the other parts of the body.
Phantom limb: The perception that a missing limb still exists.
Phantom limb pain: Pain in a limb that no longer exists.
Pinna: Outermost portion of the ear.
Placebo effect: When receiving special treatment or something new affects human behavior.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET): A neuroimaging technique that measures brain activity by detecting the presence of a radioactive substance in the brain that is initially injected into the bloodstream and then pulled in by active brain tissue.
Practitioner-Scholar Model: A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes clinical practice.
Prediction error: When the outcome of a conditioning trial is different from that which is predicted by the conditioned stimuli that are present on the trial (i.e., when the US is surprising). Prediction error is necessary to create Pavlovian conditioning (and associative learning generally). As learning occurs over repeated conditioning trials, the conditioned stimulus increasingly predicts the unconditioned stimulus, and prediction error declines. Conditioning works to correct or reduce prediction error.
Preparedness: The idea that an organism’s evolutionary history can make it easy to learn a particular association. Because of preparedness, you are more likely to associate the taste of tequila, and not the circumstances surrounding drinking it, with getting sick. Similarly, humans are more likely to associate images of spiders and snakes than flowers and mushrooms with aversive outcomes like shocks.
Primary auditory cortex: Area of the cortex involved in processing auditory stimuli.
Primary somatosensory cortex: Area of the cortex involved in processing somatosensory stimuli.
Primary visual cortex: Area of the cortex involved in processing visual stimuli.
Priming: A stimulus presented to a person reminds him or her about other ideas associated with the stimulus.
Priming: Priming: the activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon
Principle of inverse effectiveness: The finding that, in general, for a multimodal stimulus, if the response to each unimodal component (on its own) is weak, then the opportunity for multisensory enhancement is very large. However, if one component—by itself—is sufficient to evoke a strong response, then the effect on the response gained by simultaneously processing the other components of the stimulus will be relatively small.
Psychophysics: Study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the perception of those stimuli.
Punisher: A stimulus that decreases the strength of an operant behavior when it is made a consequence of the behavior.
Quantitative law of effect: A mathematical rule that states that the effectiveness of a reinforcer at strengthening an operant response depends on the amount of reinforcement earned for all alternative behaviors. A reinforcer is less effective if there is a lot of reinforcement in the environment for other behaviors.
Quasi-experimental design: An experiment that does not require random assignment to conditions.
Random assignment: Assigning participants to receive different conditions of an experiment by chance.
Realism: A point of view that emphasizes the importance of the senses in providing knowledge of the external world.
Reinforcer: Any consequence of a behavior that strengthens the behavior or increases the likelihood that it will be performed it again.
Reinforcer devaluation effect: The finding that an animal will stop performing an instrumental response that once led to a reinforcer if the reinforcer is separately made aversive or undesirable.
Renewal effect: Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs when the context is changed after extinction. Especially strong when the change of context involves return to the context in which conditioning originally occurred. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.
Retina: Cell layer in the back of the eye containing photoreceptors.
Rods: Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to low levels of light. Located around the fovea.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The hypothesis that the language that people use determines their thoughts.
Scientist-practitioner model: A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the development of both research and clinical skills.
Sensation: The physical processing of environmental stimuli by the sense organs.
Sensory adaptation: Decrease in sensitivity of a receptor to a stimulus after constant stimulation.
Shape theory of olfaction: Theory proposing that odorants of different size and shape correspond to different smells.
Signal detection: Method for studying the ability to correctly identify sensory stimuli.
Situation model: A mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description.
Social brain hypothesis: The hypothesis that the human brain has evolved, so that humans can maintain larger ingroups.
Social Learning Theory: The theory that people can learn new responses and behaviors by observing the behavior of others.
Social models: Authorities that are the targets for observation and who model behaviors.
Social networks: Networks of social relationships among individuals through which information can travel.
Soma: Cell body of a neuron that contains the nucleus and genetic information, and directs protein synthesis.
Somatosensation: Ability to sense touch, pain and temperature.
Somatotopic map: Organization of the primary somatosensory cortex maintaining a representation of the arrangement of the body.
Sound waves: Changes in air pressure. The physical stimulus for audition.
Spatial Resolution: A term that refers to how small the elements of an image are; high spatial resolution means the device or technique can resolve very small elements; in neuroscience it describes how small of a structure in the brain can be imaged.
Split-brain Patient: A patient who has had most or all of his or her corpus callosum severed.
Spontaneous recovery: Recovery of an extinguished response that occurs with the passage of time after extinction. Can occur after extinction in either classical or instrumental conditioning.
Stimulants: Stimulants: a class of drugs that speed up the body’s physiological and mental processes.
Stimulus control: When an operant behavior is controlled by a stimulus that precedes it.
Structuralism: A school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements of conscious experience.
Superadditive effect of multisensory integration: The finding that responses to multimodal stimuli are typically greater than the sum of the independent responses to each unimodal component if it were presented on its own.
Synapses: Junction between the presynaptic terminal button of one neuron and the dendrite, axon, or soma of another postsynaptic neuron.
Synaptic Gap: Also known as the synaptic cleft; the small space between the presynaptic terminal button and the postsynaptic dendritic spine, axon, or soma.
Syntax: Rules by which words are strung together to form sentences.
System 1: Our intuitive decision-making system, which is typically fast, automatic, effortless, implicit, and emotional.
System 2: Our more deliberative decision-making system, which is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical.
Systematic observation: The careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better understanding it. Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise organize information about the natural world.
Tastants: Chemicals transduced by taste receptor cells.
Taste aversion learning: The phenomenon in which a taste is paired with sickness, and this causes the organism to reject—and dislike—that taste in the future.
Taste receptor cells: Receptors that transduce gustatory information.
Temporal Lobe: The part of the cerebrum in front of (anterior to) the occipital lobe and below the lateral fissure; involved in vision, auditory processing, memory, and integrating vision and audition.
Temporal Resolution: A term that refers to how small a unit of time can be measured; high temporal resolution means capable of resolving very small units of time; in neuroscience it describes how precisely in time a process can be measured in the brain.
Theories: Groups of closely related phenomena or observations.
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: The inability to pull a word from memory even though there is the sensation that that word is available.
Top-down processing: Experience influencing the perception of stimuli.
Trance States: Trance: a state of consciousness characterized by the experience of “out-of-body possession,” or an acute dissociation between one’s self and the current, physical environment surrounding them.
Transduction: The conversion of one form of energy into another.
Trichromatic theory: Theory proposing color vision as influenced by three different cones responding preferentially to red, green and blue.
Tympanic membrane: Thin, stretched membrane in the middle ear that vibrates in response to sound. Also called the eardrum.
Unconditioned response (UR): In classical conditioning, an innate response that is elicited by a stimulus before (or in the absence of) conditioning.
Unconditioned stimulus (US): In classical conditioning, the stimulus that elicits the response before conditioning occurs.
Ventral pathway: Pathway of visual processing. The “what” pathway.
Vestibular system: Parts of the inner ear involved in balance.
Vicarious reinforcement: Learning that occurs by observing the reinforcement or punishment of another person.
Weber’s law: States that just noticeable difference is proportional to the magnitude of the initial stimulus.