Vocabulary

Abstinence: Avoiding any sexual behaviors that may lead to conception.
Active-constructive responding: Demonstrating sincere interest and enthusiasm for the good news of another person.
Adaptation: The fact that after people first react to good or bad events, sometimes in a strong way, their feelings and reactions tend to dampen down over time and they return toward their original level of subjective well-being.
Adoption study: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of adopted children to their adoptive and biological parents.
Age of viability: The age at which a fetus can survive outside of the uterus.
Agender: An individual who may have no gender or may describe themselves as having a neutral gender.
Ambivalent sexism: A concept of gender attitudes that encompasses both positive and negative qualities.
Anal sex: Penetration of the anus by an animate or inanimate object.
Androgyny: Having both feminine and masculine characteristics.
Assent: When minor participants are asked to indicate their willingness to participate in a study. This is usually obtained from participants who are at least 7 years old, in addition to parent or guardian consent.
Attachment behavioral system: A motivational system selected over the course of evolution to maintain proximity between a young child and his or her primary attachment figure.
Attachment behaviors: Behaviors and signals that attract the attention of a primary attachment figure and function to prevent separation from that individual or to reestablish proximity to that individual (e.g., crying, clinging).
Attachment figure: Someone who functions as the primary safe haven and secure base for an individual. In childhood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a parent. In adulthood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a romantic partner.
Attachment patterns: (also called “attachment styles” or “attachment orientations”) Individual differences in how securely (vs. insecurely) people think, feel, and behave in attachment relationships.
Attrition: When a participant drops out, or fails to complete, all parts of a study.
Authoritative: A parenting style characterized by high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior, good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s misbehavior.
Authority stage: Stage from approximately 2 years to age 4 or 5 when parents create rules and figure out how to effectively guide their children’s behavior.
Barrier forms of birth control: Methods in which sperm is prevented from entering the uterus, either through physical or chemical barriers.
Behavioral genetics: The empirical science of how genes and environments combine to generate behavior.
Benevolent sexism: The “positive” element of ambivalent sexism, which recognizes that women are perceived as needing to be protected, supported, and adored by men.
Bidirectional: The idea that parents influence their children, but their children also influence the parents; the direction of influence goes both ways, from parent to child, and from child to parent.
Bidirectional relations: When one variable is likely both cause and consequence of another variable.
Bigender: An individual who identifies as two genders.
Binary: The idea that gender has two separate and distinct categories (male and female) and that a person must be either one or the other.
Bisexual: Attraction to two sexes.
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.
“Bottom-up” or external causes of happiness: Situational factors outside the person that influence his or her subjective well-being, such as good and bad events and circumstances such as health and wealth.
Capitalization: Seeking out someone else with whom to share your good news.
Case study: An in-depth and objective examination of the details of a single person or entity.
Categorize: To sort or arrange different items into classes or categories.
Cervix: The lower portion of the uterus that connects to the vagina.
Character strength: A positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good and is valued for itself as well as for promoting individual and collective well-being.
Chromosomal sex: Also known as genetic sex; defined by the 23rd set of chromosomes.
Chutes and Ladders: A numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge.
Cisgender: A term used to describe individuals whose gender matches their biological sex.
Cisgender: When a person’s birth sex corresponds with his/her gender identity and gender role.
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.
Clitoris: A sensitive and erectile part of the vulva; its main function is to initiate orgasms.
Cohort effects: When research findings differ for participants of the same age tested at different points in historical time.
Coital sex: Vaginal-penile intercourse.
Conception: Occurs typically within the fallopian tube, when a single sperm fertilizes an ovum cell.
Concrete operations stage: Piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning.
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.
Conscience: The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct.
Conservation problems: Problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about.
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.”
Contingency management: A reward or punishment that systematically follows a behavior. Parents can use contingencies to modify their children’s behavior.
Continuous development: Ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps.
Cowper's glands: Glands that produce a fluid that lubricates the urethra and neutralizes any acidity due to urine.
Cross-sectional research: A research design used to examine behavior in participants of different ages who are tested at the same point in time.
Crowds: Adolescent peer groups characterized by shared reputations or images.
Cunnilingus: Oral stimulation of the female’s external sex organs.
Departure stage: Stage at which parents prepare for a child to depart and evaluate their successes and failures as parents.
Depth perception: The ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment.
Developmental intergroup theory: A theory that postulates that adults’ focus on gender leads children to pay attention to gender as a key source of information about themselves and others, to seek out possible gender differences, and to form rigid stereotypes based on gender.
Deviant peer contagion: The spread of problem behaviors within groups of adolescents.
Differential susceptibility: Genetic factors that make individuals more or less responsive to environmental experiences.
Discontinuous development: Discontinuous development
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.
Dishabituation: When participants demonstrated increased attention (through looking or listening behavior) to a new stimulus after having been habituated to a different stimulus.
Dizygotic twins: Twins conceived from two ova and two sperm.
Drug diversion: When a drug that is prescribed to treat a medical condition is given to another individual who seeks to use the drug illicitly.
Effortful control: A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-regulation.
Elicited imitation: A behavioral method used to examine recall memory in infants and young children.
Emergency contraception: A form of birth control used in a variety of circumstances, such as after unprotected sex, condom mishaps, or sexual assault.
Empirical methods: Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and observation.
Epididymis: A twisted duct that matures, stores, and transports sperm cells into the vas deferens.
Erogenous zones: Highly sensitive areas of the body.
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.
Event-related potentials (ERP): The recording of participant brain activity using a stretchy cap with small electrodes or sensors as participants engage in a particular task (commonly viewing photographs or listening to auditory stimuli).
Excitement phase: The activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system defines this phase of the sexual response cycle; heart rate and breathing accelerate, along with increased blood flow to the penis, vaginal walls, clitoris, and nipples.
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.”
Fallopian tubes: The female’s internal sex organ where fertilization is most likely to occur.
Family Stress Model: A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through the effects of economic stress on parents’ depressed mood, increased marital problems, and poor parenting.
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.
Fellatio: Oral stimulation of the male’s external sex organs.
Five stages of psychosexual development: Oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
Flourishing: To live optimally psychologically, relationally, and spiritually.
Foreclosure: Individuals commit to an identity without exploration of options.
Foreskin: The skin covering the glans or head of the penis.
Forgiveness: The letting go of negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward an offender.
Formal operations stage: Piagetian stage starting at age 12 years and continuing for the rest of life, in which adolescents may gain the reasoning powers of educated adults.
Gender: The cultural, social, and psychological meanings that are associated with masculinity and femininity.
Gender: The psychological and sociological representations of one’s biological sex.
Gender constancy: The awareness that gender is constant and does not change simply by changing external attributes; develops between 3 and 6 years of age.
Gender discrimination: Differential treatment on the basis of gender.
Gender identity: Personal depictions of masculinity and femininity.
Gender identity: A person’s psychological sense of being male or female.
Gender roles: Societal expectations of masculinity and femininity.
Gender roles: The behaviors, attitudes, and personality traits that are designated as either masculine or feminine in a given culture.
Gender schema theory: This theory of how children form their own gender roles argues that children actively organize others’ behavior, activities, and attributes into gender categories or schemas.
Gender schemas: Organized beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children’s thinking about gender.
Gender stereotypes: The beliefs and expectations people hold about the typical characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of men and women.
Genderfluid: An individual who may identify as male, female, both, or neither at different times and in different circumstances.
Genderqueer or gender nonbinary: An umbrella term used to describe a wide range of individuals who do not identify with and/or conform to the gender binary.
Glans penis: The highly sensitive head of the penis, associated with initiating orgasms.
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.
Goodness of fit: The match or synchrony between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good “fit” means that parents have accommodated to the child’s temperamental attributes, and this contributes to positive personality growth and better adjustment.
Gratitude: A feeling of appreciation or thankfulness in response to receiving a benefit.
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.
Habituation: When participants demonstrated decreased attention (through looking or listening behavior) to repeatedly-presented stimuli.
Happiness: The popular word for subjective well-being. Scientists sometimes avoid using this term because it can refer to different things, such as feeling good, being satisfied, or even the causes of high subjective well-being.
Heritability coefficient: An easily misinterpreted statistical construct that purports to measure the role of genetics in the explanation of differences among individuals.
Heterosexual: Opposite-sex attraction.
Homophily: Adolescents tend to associate with peers who are similar to themselves.
Homosexual: Same-sex attraction.
Hormonal forms of birth control: Methods by which synthetic estrogen or progesterone are released to prevent ovulation and thicken cervical mucus.
Hostile sexism: The negative element of ambivalent sexism, which includes the attitudes that women are inferior and incompetent relative to men.
Humility: Having an accurate view of self—not too high or low—and a realistic appraisal of one’s strengths and weaknesses, especially in relation to other people.
Hypotheses: A logical idea that can be tested.
Identity achievement: Individuals have explored different options and then made commitments.
Identity diffusion: Adolescents neither explore nor commit to any roles or ideologies.
Image-making stage: Stage during pregnancy when parents consider what it means to be a parent and plan for changes to accommodate a child.
Information processing theories: Theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time.
Informed consent: The process of getting permission from adults for themselves and their children to take part in research.
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs): A committee that reviews and approves research procedures involving human participants and animal subjects to ensure that the research is conducted in accordance with federal, institutional, and ethical guidelines.
Instrumental conditioning: Process in which animals learn about the relationship between their behaviors and their consequences. Also known as operant conditioning.
Interdependent stage: Stage during teenage years when parents renegotiate their relationship with their adolescent children to allow for shared power in decision-making.
Interpretive stage: Stage from age 4or 5 to the start of adolescence when parents help their children interpret their experiences with the social world beyond the family.
Intersex: Born with either an absence or some combination of male and female reproductive organs, sex hormones, or sex chromosomes.
Interview techniques: A research method in which participants are asked to report on their experiences using language, commonly by engaging in conversation with a researcher (participants may also be asked to record their responses in writing).
Introitus: The vaginal opening to the outside of the body.
Involuntary or obligatory responses: Behaviors in which individuals engage that do not require much conscious thought or effort.
Labia majora: The “large lips” enclosing and protecting the female internal sex organs.
Labia minora: The “small lips” surrounding and defining the openings of the vagina and urethra.
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.
Life satisfaction: A person reflects on their life and judges to what degree it is going well, by whatever standards that person thinks are most important for a good life.
Longitudinal research: A research design used to examine behavior in the same participants over short (months) or long (decades) periods of time.
Malingering: Fabrication or exaggeration of medical symptoms to achieve secondary gain (e.g., receive medication, avoid school).
Masochism: Receiving pain from another person to experience pleasure for one’s self.
Masturbation: Tactile stimulation of the body for sexual pleasure.
Menstruation: The process by which ova as well as the lining of the uterus are discharged from the vagina after fertilization does not occur.
Monozygotic twins: Twins conceived from a single ovum and a single sperm, therefore genetically identical.
Moratorium: State in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made identity commitments.
Motor control: The use of thinking to direct muscles and limbs to perform a desired action.
Mullerian ducts: Primitive female internal sex organs.
Myotonia: Involuntary muscular movements, such as facial grimaces, that occur during the excitement phase of the sexual response cycle.
Natural forms of birth control: Methods that rely on knowledge of the menstrual cycle and awareness of the body.
Nature: The genes that children bring with them to life and that influence all aspects of their development.
Negative feelings: Undesirable and unpleasant feelings that people tend to avoid if they can. Moods and emotions such as depression, anger, and worry are examples.
Neuroimaging techniques: Seeing and measuring live and active brains by such techniques as electroencephalography (EEG), computerized axial tomography (CAT), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Numerical magnitudes: The sizes of numbers.
Nurture: The environments, starting with the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development.
Nurturing stage: Stage from birth to around 18-24 months in which parents develop an attachment relationship with child and adapt to the new baby.
Object permanence: The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be directly observed (e.g., that a pen continues to exist even when it is hidden under a piece of paper).
Object permanence task: The Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act as if they do not know that it continues to exist.
Observational learning: Learning by observing the behavior of others.
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.
Oppositional defiant disorder: A childhood behavior disorder that is characterized by stubbornness, hostility, and behavioral defiance. This disorder is highly comorbid with ADHD.
Oral sex: Cunnilingus or fellatio.
Orgasm phase: The shortest, but most pleasurable, phase of the sexual response cycle.
Orgasmic platform: The tightening of the outer third of the vaginal walls during the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle.
Ovaries: The glands housing the ova and producing progesterone, estrogen, and small amounts of testosterone.
Ovulation: When ova travel from the ovaries to the uterus.
Oxytocin: A neurotransmitter that regulates bonding and sexual reproduction.
Paraphilic disorders: Sexual behaviors that cause harm to others or one’s self.
Parent management training: A treatment for childhood behavior problems that teaches parents how to use contingencies to more effectively manage their children’s behavior.
Pathologizes: To define a trait or collection of traits as medically or psychologically unhealthy or abnormal.
Pavlovian conditioning: See classical conditioning.
Penis: The most prominent external sex organ in males; it has three main functions: initiating orgasm, and transporting semen and urine outside of the body.
Phonemic awareness: Awareness of the component sounds within words.
Piaget’s theory: Theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Plateau phase: The phase of the sexual response cycle in which blood flow, heart rate, and breathing intensify.
Plethysmography: The measuring of changes in blood - or airflow - to organs.
Positive feelings: Desirable and pleasant feelings. Moods and emotions such as enjoyment and love are examples.
Positive psychology: The science of human flourishing. Positive Psychology is an applied science with an emphasis on real world intervention.
Practice effect: When participants get better at a task over time by “practicing” it through repeated assessments instead of due to actual developmental change (practice effects can be particularly problematic in longitudinal and sequential research designs).
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.
Pregnancy: The time in which a female carries a developing human within her uterus.
Preoperational reasoning stage: Period within Piagetian theory from age 2 to 7 years, in which children can represent objects through drawing and language but cannot solve logical reasoning problems, such as the conservation problems.
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.
Primitive gonads: Reproductive structures in embryos that will eventually develop into ovaries or testes.
Pro-social: Thoughts, actions, and feelings that are directed towards others and which are positive in nature.
Prostate gland: A male gland that releases prostatic fluid to nourish sperm cells.
Psychological control: Parents’ manipulation of and intrusion into adolescents’ emotional and cognitive world through invalidating adolescents’ feelings and pressuring them to think in particular ways.
Psychophysiological responses: Recording of biological measures (such as heart rate and hormone levels) and neurological responses (such as brain activity) that may be associated with observable behaviors.
Punisher: A stimulus that decreases the strength of an operant behavior when it is made a consequence of the behavior.
Qualitative changes: Large, fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such as Piaget’s posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages.
Quantitative changes: Gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth.
Quantitative genetics: Scientific and mathematical methods for inferring genetic and environmental processes based on the degree of genetic and environmental similarity among organisms.
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.
Quickening: The feeling of fetal movement.
Recall memory: The process of remembering discrete episodes or events from the past, including encoding, consolidation and storage, and retrieval.
Refractory period: Time following male ejaculation in which he is unresponsive to sexual stimuli.
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.
Relationship bank account: An account you hold with every person in which a positive deposit or a negative withdrawal can be made during every interaction you have with the person.
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.
Replacement fantasy: Fantasizing about someone other than one’s current partner.
Research design: The strategy (or “blueprint”) for deciding how to collect and analyze research information.
Research methods: The specific tools and techniques used by researchers to collect information.
Resolution phase: The phase of the sexual response cycle in which the body returns to a pre-aroused state.
Sadism: Inflicting pain upon another person to experience pleasure for one’s self.
Safer-sex practices: Doing anything that may decrease the probability of sexual assault, sexually transmitted infections, or unwanted pregnancy; this may include using condoms, honesty, and communication.
Safer-sex practices: Doing anything that may decrease the probability of sexual assault, sexually transmitted infections, or unwanted pregnancy; these may include using condoms, honesty, and communication.
Schemas: The gender categories into which, according to gender schema theory, children actively organize others’ behavior, activities, and attributes.
Scrotum: The sac of skin behind and below the penis, containing the testicles.
Security of attachment: An infant’s confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.
Self-expansion model: Seeking to increase one’s capacity often through an intimate relationship.
Semen: The fluid that sperm cells are transported within.
Seminal vesicles: Glands that provide sperm cells the energy that allows them to move.
Sensorimotor stage: Period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects.
Sequential research designs: A research design that includes elements of cross-sectional and longitudinal research designs. Similar to cross-sectional designs, sequential research designs include participants of different ages within one study; similar to longitudinal designs, participants of different ages are followed over time.
Sex: Biological category of male or female as defined by physical differences in genetic composition and in reproductive anatomy and function.
Sex: An organism’s means of biological reproduction.
Sexual attraction: The capacity a person has to elicit or feel sexual interest.
Sexual consent: Permission that is voluntary, conscious, and able to be withdrawn at any time.
Sexual dysfunctions: A range of clinically significant impairments in a person’s ability to experience pleasure or respond sexually as outlined by the sexual response cycle.
Sexual fluidity: Personal sexual attributes changing due to psychosocial circumstances.
Sexual harassment: A form of gender discrimination based on unwanted treatment related to sexual behaviors or appearance.
Sexual literacy: The lifelong pursuit of accurate human sexuality knowledge, and recognition of its various multicultural, historical, and societal contexts; the ability to critically evaluate sources and discern empirical evidence from unreliable and inaccurate information; the acknowledgment of humans as sexual beings; and an appreciation of sexuality’s contribution to enhancing one’s well-being and pleasure in life.
Sexual orientation: Refers to the direction of emotional and erotic attraction toward members of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both sexes.
Sexual orientation: A person’s sexual attraction to other people.
Sexual response cycle: Excitement, Plateau, Orgasm, and Resolution.
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs): Infections primarily transmitted through social sexual behaviors.
Skene’s glands: Also called minor vestibular glands, these glands are on the anterior wall of the vagina and are associated with female ejaculation.
Social Learning Theory: The theory that people can learn new responses and behaviors by observing the behavior of others.
Social learning theory: This theory of how children form their own gender roles argues that gender roles are learned through reinforcement, punishment, and modeling.
Social models: Authorities that are the targets for observation and who model behaviors.
Social referencing: The process by which one individual consults another’s emotional expressions to determine how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.
Sociocultural theories: Theory founded in large part by Lev Vygotsky that emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture influence children’s development.
Solidity principle: The idea that two solid masses should not be able to move through one another.
Somatosensory cortex: A portion of the parietal cortex that processes sensory information from the skin.
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.
Stimulus control: When an operant behavior is controlled by a stimulus that precedes it.
Strange situation: A laboratory task that involves briefly separating and reuniting infants and their primary caregivers as a way of studying individual differences in attachment behavior.
Subjective well-being: The name that scientists give to happiness—thinking and feeling that our lives are going very well.
Subjective well-being scales: Self-report surveys or questionnaires in which participants indicate their levels of subjective well-being, by responding to items with a number that indicates how well off they feel.
Survey method: One method of research that uses a predetermined and methodical list of questions, systematically given to samples of individuals, to predict behaviors within the population.
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.
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.
Temperament: Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation for personality development.
Temperament: A child’s innate personality; biologically based personality, including qualities such as activity level, emotional reactivity, sociability, mood, and soothability.
Testicles: Also called testes—the glands producing testosterone, progesterone, small amounts of estrogen, and sperm cells.
Theories: Groups of closely related phenomena or observations.
Theory of mind: Children’s growing understanding of the mental states that affect people’s behavior.
“Top-down” or internal causes of happiness: The person’s outlook and habitual response tendencies that influence their happiness—for example, their temperament or optimistic outlook on life.
Transgender: A person whose gender identity or gender role does not correspond with his/her birth sex.
Transgender: A term used to describe individuals whose gender does not match their biological sex.
Transgender female (TGF): A transgender person whose birth sex was male.
Transgender male (TGM): A transgender person whose birth sex was female.
Trimesters: Phases of gestation, beginning with the last menstrual period and ending about 40 weeks later; each trimester is roughly 13 weeks in length.
Twin studies: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of the similarity of identical (monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins.
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.
Urethra: The tube that carries urine and semen outside of the body.
Uterus: Also called the womb—the female’s internal sex organ where offspring develop until birth.
Vagina: Also called the birth canal—a muscular canal that spans from the cervix to the introitus, it acts as a transport mechanism for sperm cells coming in, and menstrual fluid and babies going out.
Vas deferens: A muscular tube that transports mature sperm to the urethra.
Vasectomy: A surgical form of birth control in males, in which the vas deferens is intentionally damaged.
Verbal report paradigms: Research methods that require participants to report on their experiences, thoughts, feelings, etc., using language.
Vestibular glands (VGs): Also called major vestibular glands, these glands are located just to the left and right of the vagina, and produce lubrication to aid in sexual intercourse.
Vicarious reinforcement: Learning that occurs by observing the reinforcement or punishment of another person.
Vignette: A short story that presents a situation that participants are asked to respond to.
Violation of expectation paradigm: A research method in which infants are expected to respond in a particular way because one of two conditions violates or goes against what they should expect based on their everyday experiences (e.g., it violates our expectations that Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff but does not immediately fall to the ground below).
Voluntary responses: Behaviors that a person has control over and completes by choice.
Vulva: The female’s external sex organs.
Wolffian ducts: Primitive male internal sex organs.
Zygote: Fertilized ovum.