Vocabulary

5α-reductase: An enzyme required to convert testosterone to 5α-dihydrotestosterone.
Ability model: An approach that views EI as a standard intelligence that utilizes a distinct set of mental abilities that (1) are intercorrelated, (2) relate to other extant intelligences, and (3) develop with age and experience (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).
Ablation: Surgical removal of brain tissue.
Adoption study: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of adopted children to their adoptive and biological parents.
Aggression: A form of social interaction that includes threat, attack, and fighting.
Agoraphobia: A sort of anxiety disorder distinguished by feelings that a place is uncomfortable or may be unsafe because it is significantly open or crowded.
Anecdotal evidence: A piece of biased evidence, usually drawn from personal experience, used to support a conclusion that may or may not be correct.
Anhedonia: Loss of interest or pleasure in activities one previously found enjoyable or rewarding.
Anxiety: A mood state characterized by negative affect, muscle tension, and physical arousal in which a person apprehensively anticipates future danger or misfortune.
Aromatase: An enzyme that converts androgens into estrogens.
Attributional style: The tendency by which a person infers the cause or meaning of behaviors or events.
Audience design: Constructing utterances to suit the audience’s knowledge.
Autobiographical memory: Memory for the events of one’s life.
Axial plane: See “horizontal plane.”
Basal ganglia: Subcortical structures of the cerebral hemispheres involved in voluntary movement.
Behavioral genetics: The empirical science of how genes and environments combine to generate behavior.
Biological vulnerability: A specific genetic and neurobiological factor that might predispose someone to develop anxiety disorders.
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-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD): The signal typically measured in fMRI that results from changes in the ratio of oxygenated hemoglobin to deoxygenated hemoglobin in the blood.
Brain stem: The “trunk” of the brain comprised of the medulla, pons, midbrain, and diencephalon.
Callosotomy: Surgical procedure in which the corpus callosum is severed (used to control severe epilepsy).
Case study: A thorough study of a patient (or a few patients) with naturally occurring lesions.
Categorize: To sort or arrange different items into classes or categories.
Causality: In research, the determination that one variable causes—is responsible for—an effect.
Central nervous system: The part of the nervous system that consists of the brain and spinal cord.
Cerebellum: The distinctive structure at the back of the brain, Latin for “small brain.”
Cerebral cortex: The outermost gray matter of the cerebrum; the distinctive convoluti characteristic of the mammalian brain.
Cerebral hemispheres: The cerebral cortex, underlying white matter, and subcortical structures.
Cerebrum: Usually refers to the cerebral cortex and associated white matter, but in some texts includes the subcortical structures.
Chromosomal sex: The sex of an individual as determined by the sex chromosomes (typically XX or XY) received at the time of fertilization.
Chronic stress: Discrete or related problematic events and conditions which persist over time and result in prolonged activation of the biological and/or psychological stress response (e.g., unemployment, ongoing health difficulties, marital discord).
Chunk: The process of grouping information together using our knowledge.
Chutes and Ladders: A numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge.
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.
Classical conditioning: Describes stimulus-stimulus associative learning.
Collectivism: Belief system that emphasizes the duties and obligations that each person has toward others.
Common ground: Information that is shared by people who engage in a conversation.
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: A learned reaction following classical conditioning, or the process by which an event that automatically elicits a response is repeatedly paired with another neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus), resulting in the ability of the neutral stimulus to elicit the same response on its own.
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.
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.
Consolidation: The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces.
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.
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).
Converging evidence: Similar findings reported from multiple studies using different methods.
Coronal plane: A slice that runs from head to foot; brain slices in this plane are similar to slices of a loaf of bread, with the eyes being the front of the loaf.
Correlation: In statistics, the measure of relatedness of two or more variables.
Crowds: Adolescent peer groups characterized by shared reputations or images.
Cue overload principle: The principle stating that the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory.
Data (also called observations): In research, information systematically collected for analysis and interpretation.
Deductive reasoning: A form of reasoning in which a given premise determines the interpretation of specific observations (e.g., All birds have feathers; since a duck is a bird, it has feathers).
Defeminization: The removal of the potential for female traits.
Demasculinization: The removal of the potential for male traits.
Deoxygenated hemoglobin: Hemoglobin not carrying oxygen.
Depolarization: A change in a cell’s membrane potential, making the inside of the cell more positive and increasing the chance of an action potential.
Depth perception: The ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment.
Deviant peer contagion: The spread of problem behaviors within groups of adolescents.
Dichotic listening: An experimental task in which two messages are presented to different ears.
Differential susceptibility: Genetic factors that make individuals more or less responsive to environmental experiences.
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.
Dihydrotestosterone (DHT): A primary androgen that is an androgenic steroid product of testosterone and binds strongly to androgen receptors.
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.
Distinctiveness: The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than uniform (nondistinctive) events.
Distribution: In statistics, the relative frequency that a particular value occurs for each possible value of a given variable.
Divided attention: The ability to flexibly allocate attentional resources between two or more concurrent tasks.
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.
Early adversity: Single or multiple acute or chronic stressful events, which may be biological or psychological in nature (e.g., poverty, abuse, childhood illness or injury), occurring during childhood and resulting in a biological and/or psychological stress response.
Electroencephalography (EEG): A neuroimaging technique that measures electrical brain activity via multiple electrodes on the scalp.
Emerging adulthood: A new life stage extending from approximately ages 18 to 25, during which the foundation of an adult life is gradually constructed in love and work. Primary features include identity explorations, instability, focus on self-development, feeling incompletely adult, and a broad sense of possibilities.
Emotional intelligence: The ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions. (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). EI includes four specific abilities: perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions.
Empirical: Concerned with observation and/or the ability to verify a claim.
Encoding: The pact of putting information into memory.
Encoding: The initial experience of perceiving and learning events.
Encoding specificity principle: The hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace.
Endocrine gland: A ductless gland from which hormones are released into the blood system in response to specific biological signals.
Endophenotypes: A characteristic that reflects a genetic liability for disease and a more basic component of a complex clinical presentation. Endophenotypes are less developmentally malleable than overt behavior.
Engrams: A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace.
Episodic memory: Memory for events in a particular time and place.
Estrogen: Any of the C18 class of steroid hormones, so named because of the estrus-generating properties in females. Biologically important estrogens include estradiol and estriol.
Event-related potentials (ERP): Measures the firing of groups of neurons in the cortex. As a person views or listens to specific types of information, neuronal activity creates small electrical currents that can be recorded from non-invasive sensors placed on the scalp. ERP provides excellent information about the timing of processing, clarifying brain activity at the millisecond pace at which it unfolds.
External cues: Stimuli in the outside world that serve as triggers for anxiety or as reminders of past traumatic events.
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.”
Fact: Objective information about the world.
Falsify: In science, the ability of a claim to be tested and—possibly—refuted; a defining feature of science.
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.
Feminization: The induction of female traits.
Fight or flight response: A biological reaction to alarming stressors that prepares the body to resist or escape a threat.
Flashback: Sudden, intense re-experiencing of a previous event, usually trauma-related.
Flashbulb memory: Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and usually emotional) event.
Foreclosure: Individuals commit to an identity without exploration of options.
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.
Four-Branch Model: An ability model developed by Drs. Peter Salovey and John Mayer that includes four main components of EI, arranged in hierarchical order, beginning with basic psychological processes and advancing to integrative psychological processes. The branches are (1) perception of emotion, (2) use of emotion to facilitate thinking, (3) understanding emotion, and (4) management of emotion.
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.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Entails the use of powerful magnets to measure the levels of oxygen within the brain that vary with changes in neural activity. That is, as the neurons in specific brain regions “work harder” when performing a specific task, they require more oxygen. By having people listen to or view social percepts in an MRI scanner, fMRI specifies the brain regions that evidence a relative increase in blood flow. In this way, fMRI provides excellent spatial information, pinpointing with millimeter accuracy, the brain regions most critical for different social processes.
G: Short for “general factor” and is often used to be synonymous with intelligence itself.
g or general mental ability: The general factor common to all cognitive ability measures, “a very general mental capacity that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—‘catching on,’ ‘making sense of things,’ or ‘figuring out’ what to do” (Gottfredson, 1997, p. 13).
Generalize: In research, the degree to which one can extend conclusions drawn from the findings of a study to other groups or situations not included in the study.
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Excessive worry about everyday things that is at a level that is out of proportion to the specific causes of worry.
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.
Gonadal sex: The sex of an individual as determined by the possession of either ovaries or testes. Females have ovaries, whereas males have testes.
Grandiosity: Inflated self-esteem or an exaggerated sense of self-importance and self-worth (e.g., believing one has special powers or superior abilities).
Gray matter: The outer grayish regions of the brain comprised of the neurons’ cell bodies.
Gyri: (plural) Folds between sulci in the cortex.
Gyrus: A fold between sulci in the cortex.
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: Occurs when the response to a stimulus decreases with exposure.
Hemoglobin: The oxygen-carrying portion of a red blood cell.
Heritability coefficient: An easily misinterpreted statistical construct that purports to measure the role of genetics in the explanation of differences among individuals.
Homophily: Adolescents tend to associate with peers who are similar to themselves.
Horizontal plane: A slice that runs horizontally through a standing person (i.e., parallel to the floor); slices of brain in this plane divide the top and bottom parts of the brain; this plane is similar to slicing a hamburger bun.
Hormone: An organic chemical messenger released from endocrine cells that travels through the blood to interact with target cells at some distance to cause a biological response.
Hyperpolarization: A change in a cell’s membrane potential, making the inside of the cell more negative and decreasing the chance of an action potential.
Hypersomnia: Excessive daytime sleepiness, including difficulty staying awake or napping, or prolonged sleep episodes.
Hypothesis: A tentative explanation that is subject to testing.
Identity achievement: Individuals have explored different options and then made commitments.
Identity diffusion: Adolescents neither explore nor commit to any roles or ideologies.
Implicit learning: Occurs when we acquire information without intent that we cannot easily express.
Implicit memory: A type of long-term memory that does not require conscious thought to encode. It's the type of memory one makes without intent.
Inattentional blindness: The failure to notice a fully visible object when attention is devoted to something else.
Incidental learning: Any type of learning that happens without the intention to learn.
Individualism: Belief system that exalts freedom, independence, and individual choice as high values.
Induction: To draw general conclusions from specific observations.
Inductive reasoning: A form of reasoning in which a general conclusion is inferred from a set of observations (e.g., noting that “the driver in that car was texting; he just cut me off then ran a red light!” (a specific observation), which leads to the general conclusion that texting while driving is dangerous).
Industrialized countries: The economically advanced countries of the world, in which most of the world’s wealth is concentrated.
Information processing theories: Theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time.
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.
Intelligence: An individual’s cognitive capability. This includes the ability to acquire, process, recall and apply information.
Intentional learning: Any type of learning that happens when motivated by intention.
Internal bodily or somatic cues: Physical sensations that serve as triggers for anxiety or as reminders of past traumatic events.
Interoceptive avoidance: Avoidance of situations or activities that produce sensations of physical arousal similar to those occurring during a panic attack or intense fear response.
Invasive Procedure: A procedure that involves the skin being broken or an instrument or chemical being introduced into a body cavity.
IQ: Short for “intelligence quotient.” This is a score, typically obtained from a widely used measure of intelligence that is meant to rank a person’s intellectual ability against that of others.
Lateralized: To the side; used to refer to the fact that specific functions may reside primarily in one hemisphere or the other (e.g., for the majority individuals, the left hemisphere is most responsible for language).
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.
Lesion: A region in the brain that suffered damage through injury, disease, or medical intervention.
Lesions: Abnormalities in the tissue of an organism usually caused by disease or trauma.
Levels of analysis: In science, there are complementary understandings and explanations of phenomena.
Lexicon: Words and expressions.
Limbic system: Includes the subcortical structures of the amygdala and hippocampal formation as well as some cortical structures; responsible for aversion and gratification.
Limited capacity: The notion that humans have limited mental resources that can be used at a given time.
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.
Malingering: Fabrication or exaggeration of medical symptoms to achieve secondary gain (e.g., receive medication, avoid school).
Masculinization: The induction of male traits.
Maternal behavior: Parental behavior performed by the mother or other female.
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT): A 141-item performance assessment of EI that measures the four emotion abilities (as defined by the four-branch model of EI) with a total of eight tasks.
Memory traces: A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event.
Metabolite: A substance necessary for a living organism to maintain life.
Metacognition: Describes the knowledge and skills people have in monitoring and controlling their own learning and memory.
Misinformation effect: When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of the original event.
Mixed and Trait Models: Approaches that view EI as a combination of self-perceived emotion skills, personality traits, and attitudes.
Mnemonic devices: A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues.
Moratorium: State in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made identity commitments.
Motor cortex: Region of the frontal lobe responsible for voluntary movement; the motor cortex has a contralateral representation of the human body.
Myelin: Fatty tissue, produced by glial cells (see module, “Neurons”) that insulates the axons of the neurons; myelin is necessary for normal conduction of electrical impulses among neurons.
Nature: The genes that children bring with them to life and that influence all aspects of their development.
Neural plasticity: The ability of synapses and neural pathways to change over time and adapt to changes in neural process, behavior, or environment.
Neuroscience methods: A research method that deals with the structure or function of the nervous system and brain.
Neurotransmitter: A chemical messenger that travels between neurons to provide communication. Some neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, can leak into the blood system and act as hormones.
Nomenclature: Naming conventions.
Nonassociative learning: Occurs when a single repeated exposure leads to a change in behavior.
Non-industrialized countries: The less economically advanced countries that comprise the majority of the world’s population. Most are currently developing at a rapid rate.
Noninvasive procedure: A procedure that does not require the insertion of an instrument or chemical through the skin or into a body cavity.
Norm: Assessments are given to a representative sample of a population to determine the range of scores for that population. These “norms” are then used to place an individual who takes that assessment on a range of scores in which he or she is compared to the population at large.
Null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST): In statistics, a test created to determine the chances that an alternative hypothesis would produce a result as extreme as the one observed if the null hypothesis were actually true.
Numerical magnitudes: The sizes of numbers.
Nurture: The environments, starting with the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development.
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.
Objective: Being free of personal bias.
Observational learning: Learning by observing the behavior of others.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): A disorder characterized by the desire to engage in certain behaviors excessively or compulsively in hopes of reducing anxiety. Behaviors include things such as cleaning, repeatedly opening and closing doors, hoarding, and obsessing over certain thoughts.
Occipital lobe: The back most (posterior) part of the cerebrum; involved in vision.
OECD countries: Members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, comprised of the world’s wealthiest countries.
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: Describes stimulus-response associative learning.
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.
Outgroup: Group to which a person does not belong.
Oxygenated hemoglobin: Hemoglobin carrying oxygen.
Oxytocin: A peptide hormone secreted by the pituitary gland to trigger lactation, as well as social bonding.
Panic disorder (PD): A condition marked by regular strong panic attacks, and which may include significant levels of worry about future attacks.
Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS): One of the two major divisions of the autonomic nervous system, responsible for stimulation of “rest and digest” activities.
Parent management training: A treatment for childhood behavior problems that teaches parents how to use contingencies to more effectively manage their children’s behavior.
Parental behavior: Behaviors performed in relation to one’s offspring that contributes directly to the survival of those offspring
Parietal lobe: The part of the cerebrum between the frontal and occipital lobes; involved in bodily sensations, visual attention, and integrating the senses.
Paternal behavior: Parental behavior performed by the father or other male.
Pathologizes: To define a trait or collection of traits as medically or psychologically unhealthy or abnormal.
Pavlovian conditioning: See classical conditioning.
Perceptual learning: Occurs when aspects of our perception changes as a function of experience.
Performance assessment: A method of measurement associated with ability models of EI that evaluate the test taker’s ability to solve emotion-related problems.
Peripheral nervous system: The part of the nervous system that is outside the brain and spinal cord.
Phonemic awareness: Awareness of the component sounds within words.
Phrenology: A now-discredited field of brain study, popular in the first half of the 19th century that correlated bumps and indentations of the skull with specific functions of the brain.
Piaget’s theory: Theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Population: In research, all the people belonging to a particular group (e.g., the population of left handed people).
Positron: A particle having the same mass and numerically equal but positive charge as an electron.
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.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): A sense of intense fear, triggered by memories of a past traumatic event, that another traumatic event might occur. PTSD may include feelings of isolation and emotional numbing.
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.
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.
Priming: A stimulus presented to a person reminds him or her about other ideas associated with the stimulus.
Probability: A measure of the degree of certainty of the occurrence of an event.
Probability values: In statistics, the established threshold for determining whether a given value occurs by chance.
Progesterone: A primary progestin that is involved in pregnancy and mating behaviors.
Progestin: A class of C21 steroid hormones named for their progestational (pregnancy-supporting) effects. Progesterone is a common progestin.
Prohormone: A molecule that can act as a hormone itself or be converted into another hormone with different properties. For example, testosterone can serve as a hormone or as a prohormone for either dihydrotestosterone or estradiol.
Prolactin: A protein hormone that is highly conserved throughout the animal kingdom. It has many biological functions associated with reproduction and synergistic actions with steroid hormones.
Pseudoscience: Beliefs or practices that are presented as being scientific, or which are mistaken for being scientific, but which are not scientific (e.g., astrology, the use of celestial bodies to make predictions about human behaviors, and which presents itself as founded in astronomy, the actual scientific study of celestial objects. Astrology is a pseudoscience unable to be falsified, whereas astronomy is a legitimate scientific discipline).
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.
Psychological vulnerabilities: Influences that our early experiences have on how we view the world.
Psychomotor agitation: Increased motor activity associated with restlessness, including physical actions (e.g., fidgeting, pacing, feet tapping, handwringing).
Psychomotor retardation: A slowing of physical activities in which routine activities (e.g., eating, brushing teeth) are performed in an unusually slow manner.
Psychophysiological methods: Any research method in which the dependent variable is a physiological measure and the independent variable is behavioral or mental (such as memory).
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.
Receptor: A chemical structure on the cell surface or inside of a cell that has an affinity for a specific chemical configuration of a hormone, neurotransmitter, or other compound.
Recoding: The ubiquitous process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered.
Reinforced response: Following the process of operant conditioning, the strengthening of a response following either the delivery of a desired consequence (positive reinforcement) or escape from an aversive consequence.
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.
Representative: In research, the degree to which a sample is a typical example of the population from which it is drawn.
Retrieval: The process of accessing stored information.
Retroactive interference: The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event.
SAD performance only: Social anxiety disorder which is limited to certain situations that the sufferer perceives as requiring some type of performance.
Sagittal plane: A slice that runs vertically from front to back; slices of brain in this plane divide the left and right side of the brain; this plane is similar to slicing a baked potato lengthwise.
Sample: In research, a number of people selected from a population to serve as an example of that population.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The hypothesis that the language that people use determines their thoughts.
Satisfaction: Correspondence between an individual’s needs or preferences and the rewards offered by the environment.
Satisfactoriness: Correspondence between an individual’s abilities and the ability requirements of the environment.
Scientific theory: An explanation for observed phenomena that is empirically well-supported, consistent, and fruitful (predictive).
Selective attention: The ability to select certain stimuli in the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information.
Self-report assessment: A method of measurement associated with mixed and trait models of EI, which evaluates the test taker’s perceived emotion-related skills, distinct personality traits, and other characteristics.
Semantic memory: The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have.
Sensitization: Occurs when the response to a stimulus increases with exposure
Sensorimotor stage: Period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects.
Sex determination: The point at which an individual begins to develop as either a male or a female. In animals that have sex chromosomes, this occurs at fertilization. Females are XX and males are XY. All eggs bear X chromosomes, whereas sperm can either bear X or Y chromosomes. Thus, it is the males that determine the sex of the offspring.
Sex differentiation: The process by which individuals develop the characteristics associated with being male or female. Differential exposure to gonadal steroids during early development causes sexual differentiation of several structures including the brain.
Shadowing: A task in which the individual is asked to repeat an auditory message as it is presented.
Situation model: A mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description.
Social and emotional learning (SEL): The real-world application of EI in an educational setting and/or classroom that involves curricula that teach the process of integrating thinking, feeling, and behaving in order to become aware of the self and of others, make responsible decisions, and manage one’s own behaviors and those of others (Elias et al., 1997)
Social anxiety disorder (SAD): A condition marked by acute fear of social situations which lead to worry and diminished day to day functioning.
Social brain: The set of neuroanatomical structures that allows us to understand the actions and intentions of other people.
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.
Social zeitgeber: Zeitgeber is German for “time giver.” Social zeitgebers are environmental cues, such as meal times and interactions with other people, that entrain biological rhythms and thus sleep-wake cycle regularity.
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.
Socioeconomic status (SES): A person’s economic and social position based on income, education, and occupation.
Somatosensory (body sensations) cortex: The region of the parietal lobe responsible for bodily sensations; the somatosensory cortex has a contralateral representation of the human body.
Spatial resolution: The degree to which one can separate a single object in space from another.
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.
Specific abilities: Cognitive abilities that contain an appreciable component of g or general ability, but also contain a large component of a more content-focused talent such as mathematical, spatial, or verbal ability; patterns of specific abilities channel development down different paths as a function of an individual’s relative strengths and weaknesses.
Specific vulnerabilities: How our experiences lead us to focus and channel our anxiety.
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.
Standardize: Assessments that are given in the exact same manner to all people . With regards to intelligence tests standardized scores are individual scores that are computed to be referenced against normative scores for a population (see “norm”).
Stereotype threat: The phenomenon in which people are concerned that they will conform to a stereotype or that their performance does conform to that stereotype, especially in instances in which the stereotype is brought to their conscious awareness.
Stimulus control: When an operant behavior is controlled by a stimulus that precedes it.
Storage: The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time.
Subcortical: Structures that lie beneath the cerebral cortex, but above the brain stem.
Subliminal perception: The ability to process information for meaning when the individual is not consciously aware of that information.
Suicidal ideation: Recurring thoughts about suicide, including considering or planning for suicide, or preoccupation with suicide.
Sulci: (plural) Grooves separating folds of the cortex.
Sulcus: A groove separating folds of the cortex.
Sympathetic nervous system (SNS): One of the two major divisions of the autonomic nervous system, responsible for stimulation of “fight or flight” activities.
Syntax: Rules by which words are strung together to form sentences.
Target cell: A cell that has receptors for a specific chemical messenger (hormone or neurotransmitter).
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.
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.
Temporal resolution: The degree to which one can separate a single point in time from another.
Tertiary education: Education or training beyond secondary school, usually taking place in a college, university, or vocational training program.
Testosterone: The primary androgen secreted by the testes of most vertebrate animals, including men.
Thought-action fusion: The tendency to overestimate the relationship between a thought and an action, such that one mistakenly believes a “bad” thought is the equivalent of a “bad” action.
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS): A neuroscience technique that passes mild electrical current directly through a brain area by placing small electrodes on the skull.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): A neuroscience technique whereby a brief magnetic pulse is applied to the head that temporarily induces a weak electrical current that interferes with ongoing activity.
Transfer-appropriate processing: A principle that states that memory performance is superior when a test taps the same cognitive processes as the original encoding activity.
Transverse plane: See “horizontal plane.”
Twin studies: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of the similarity of identical (monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins.
Type I error: In statistics, the error of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true.
Type II error: In statistics, the error of failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is false.
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.
Under-determined or misspecified causal models: Psychological frameworks that miss or neglect to include one or more of the critical determinants of the phenomenon under analysis.
Value: Belief about the way things should be.
Vicarious reinforcement: Learning that occurs by observing the reinforcement or punishment of another person.
Visual hemifield: The half of visual space (what we see) on one side of fixation (where we are looking); the left hemisphere is responsible for the right visual hemifield, and the right hemisphere is responsible for the left visual hemifield.
Voltage: The difference in electric charge between two points.
White matter: The inner whitish regions of the cerebrum comprised of the myelinated axons of neurons in the cerebral cortex.
Working memory: The form of memory we use to hold onto information temporarily, usually for the purposes of manipulation.