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| the scientific study of thought and behavior |
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| the study of how people precieve, remember, think, speak, and solve problems |
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| the stucy of how thought and behavior change and remain stable across the life span |
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| the study of the links among brain, mind, and behavior |
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| the study of the relationship between bodily systems & chemicals and how they influence behavior and thought |
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| the study of the treatment of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders and the promotion of pyschological health |
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| the study of what makes people unique and the consistencies in people's behavior across time and situations |
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| the study of how living among others influences thought, feeling, and behavior |
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| the study of the role that psychological factors play in regard to physical health and illness |
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| the study of how students learn, the effectiveness of particular teaching techniques, the social pyschology of schools, and the pyschology of teaching |
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| the study of pyschological factors in sports and exercise |
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| industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology |
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| application of pyschological concepts and questions to work settings |
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| field that blends, psychology, law, and criminal justice |
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| medicine men or women who treated people with mental problems by driving out their deamons with elaborate rituals, such as exorcisms, incantations, and prayers |
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| facilities for treating the mentally ill in Europe during the Middle Ages and into the 19th century |
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| 19th Century approach to treating the mentally ill with dignity in a caring environment |
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| a clinically based approach to understanding and treating psychological disorders; assumes that the unconscious mind is the most powerful force behind thought and behavior |
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| the view that all knowledge and thoughts come from experience |
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| the first scientific form of pyschology; labratory studies of the subjective experience of physical sensations |
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| 19th-century school of pyschology that argued that breaking down experience into its elemental parts offers the best way to understand thought and behavior |
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| the main method of investigation for structuralists; it involves looking into one's own mind for information about the nature of conscious experience |
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| 19th-century school of psychology that argued it was better to look at why the mind works the way it does than to describe its parts |
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| a theory of psychology that foucuses on personal growth and meaning as a way of reaching ones highest potential |
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| scientific approach to studying, understanding, and promoting healthy and postive psychological functioning |
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| a theory of psychology that mantains that we precieve things a wholes rather than as a compilation of parts |
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| a school of psychology that proposed that psychology can be a true science only if it examines observable behavior, not ideas, thoughts, feelings, or motives |
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| the position that the environment constantly interacts with biology to shape who we are and what we do |
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| the change over time in the frequency with which specific genes occur within a breeding species |
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| a feedback process whereby nature favors one design over another because it has an impact on reproduction |
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| the branch of psychology that studies human behavior by asking what adaptive problems it may have solved for our ancestors |
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| the procedures by which scientists conduct research, consisting of five basic processes; observation, prediction, testing, interpretation, and communication |
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| a specific, informed, and testable prediction of the outcome of a particular set of conditions in a research design |
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| a set of related assumptions from which scientists can make testable predictions |
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| the repetion of a study to confirm the results; essential to the scientific process |
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| claims presented as scientific that are not supported by evidence obtained with the scientific method |
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| palns of action for how to conduct a scientific study |
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| a characteristic that changes or "varies", such as age, gender, weight, intelligence, anxiety, and extraversion |
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| the entire group a researcher is interested in; for example, all humans, all adolescents, all boys, all girls, all college students |
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| subsets of the population studied in a research project |
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| the tendency toward favorable self-presentation that could lead to inaccurate self reports |
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| study designs in which the researcher defines a problem and varible of interest but makes no prediction and does not control or manipulate anything |
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| a study design in which a psychologist, often a therapist, observes on person over a long period of time |
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| a study in which the researcher unobtrusively observes and records behavior in the real world |
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| a research sample that accurately reflects the population of people one is studying |
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| a statistic that ranges from -1.0 to +1.0 and assumes the strength and direction of association between two varibles |
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| studies the measure two or more varibles and their relationship to one another; not designed to show causation |
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| varible whose influence on the dependent varible cannot be separated from the independent varible being examined |
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| studies in which participants do not know the experimental condition (group) to which they have been assigned |
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| experimenter expectancy effects |
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| result that occurs when the behavior of the participants is influenced by the experimenter's knowledge of who is in the control group and who is in the experimental group |
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| studies in which niether the participants nor the researchers adminstering the treatment know who has been assigned to the experimental group or control group |
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| a statement that affects events to cause the prediction to come ture |
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| a measure of strength of the relationship between two varibles or the magnitude of an experimental effect |
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| a research and statistical technique for combining all research results on one question and drawing a conclusion |
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| written or oral accounts of a person's thoughts, feelings, or actions |
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| a statistic that represents the most commonly score or value |
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| measures based on systematic observation of people's actions either in their normal environment or in a labratory setting |
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| measures of bodily responses, such as blood pressure or heart rate, used to determine changes in psychological state |
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| the use of several measures to acquire data on one aspect of behavior |
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| measures used to describe and summarize research data |
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| a statistical measure of how much scores in a sample vary around the mean |
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| the rules governing the conduct of a person or group in general or in a specific situation-- or more simply, standards of right and wrong |
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| the explanation of the purposes of a study following data collection |
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| institutional review boards (IRBs) |
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| organizations that evaluate research proposals to make sure research involving humans does not cause undue harm or distress |
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| quasi-experimantal design |
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| research method similar to an experimantal design except that it makes use of naturally occuring groups rather than randomly assigning subjects to groups |
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| a coiled-up thread of DNA |
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| DNA (deoxy-ribonucleic acid) |
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| a large molecule that contains genes |
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| small segments of DNA that contain information for producing proteins |
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| all the genetic information in DNA |
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| different forms of a gene |
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| genes that show their effect even if there is only one allele for that trait in the pair |
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| genes that show their effects only when both alleles are the same |
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| the scientific study of the role of heredity in behavior |
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| the hereditary passing on the traits determined by a single gene |
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| the process by which many genes interact to create a single characteristic |
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| research into hereditary influence comparing pairs of fraternal or identical twins |
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| research into hereditary influence in which adopted people are compared to their boilogical and adoptive parents |
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| the extent to which a characteristic is influenced by genetics |
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| gene-by-environment interaction research |
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| a method of studying heritability by comparing genetic markers that allows researchers to assess how genetic differences interact with the environment to produce certain behaviors in some ppl but not in others |
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| concerns changes in the way genes are turned on or off without a change in the sequence of DNA |
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| central nervous system (CNS) |
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| the part of the nervous system that comprises the brain and spinal cord |
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| peripheral nervous system |
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| the part of the nervous system that comprises all the nerve cells in the body outside the central nervous system |
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| nerve cells of the peripheral nervous system that transmit sensory information to the central nervous system (CNS) & those that transmit information from the CNS to the skeletal muscles |
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| autonomic nervous system (ANS) |
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| all the nerves of the peripheral nervous system that serve involuntary systems of the body, such as the internal organs and glands |
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| parasympathetic nervous system |
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| the branch of the autonomic nervous system nervous system that usually relaxes or returns the body to a less active, restful state |
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| sympathetic nervous system |
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| the branch of the autonomic nervous system that activates bodily systems in times of emergency |
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| central nervous system cells that provide structural support, promote effcient communication between neurons, and serve as scavengers, removing cellular debris |
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| the cells that process & transmit information in the nervous system |
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| chemicals that transmit information between neurons |
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| the cell body of the neuron |
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| a long projection that extends from a neuron's soma; it transmits electrical impulses toward the adjacent neuron and stimulates the release of neurotransmitters |
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| finger like projections from a neuron's soma that recieve incoming messages from other neurons |
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| little knobs at the end of the axon that contain tiny sacs of neurotransmitters |
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| nerve cells that recieve incoming sensory information from the sense organs (eye,ear,skin,tongue,nose) |
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| the fatty substance wrapped around some axons, which insulates the axon, making the nerve impulse travel more efficiently |
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| the junction between an axon and the adjacent neuron, where information is tranmitted from one neuron to another |
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| nerve cells that carry commands for movement from the brain to the muscels of the body |
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| the impulse of positive charge that runs down an axon |
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| the difference in electrical charge between the inside and outside of the axon when the neuron is at rest |
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| nerve cells that are active when we observe others preforming an action as well as when we are preforming the same action |
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| neurons that communicate only with other neurons |
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| chemically charged particles that pre-dominate in bodily fluids; found both inside and outside cells |
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| the span of time, after an action potential has been generated, when the neuron is returning to its resting state and the neuron cannot generate an action potential |
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| the idea that once the threshold has been crossed, an action potential either fires or does not; there is no halfway |
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| tiny sacs in the terminal buttons that contain neurotransmitters |
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| a way of removing excess neurotransmitter from the synapse, in which excess neurotransmitter is returned to the sending, or presynaptic, neuron for storage in vesiclesand future use |
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| a neurotransmitter released in response to behaviors that feel good or are rewarding to the person or animal; also involved in voluntary motor control |
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| a way of removing excess neurotransmitter from the synapse, in which enzymes specific for that neurotransmitter bind with the neurotransmitter and destroy it |
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| small changes in membrane potential that by themselves are insufficient to trigger an action potential |
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| a neurotransmitter that controls muscle movement and plays a role in mental processes such as learning, memory, attention, sleeping and dreaming |
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| also known as adrenaline, a neurotransmitter that arouses bodily systems (such as increasing heart rate) |
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| a neurotransmitter with wide-ranging effects: involved in dreaming and controlling emotional states, especially anger, anxiety and depression |
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| a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in the sympathetic nervous system, energizing bodily systems and increasing mental arousal and alertness |
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| GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) |
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| a major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain that tells postsynaptic neurons not to fire; it slows CNS activity and is necessary to regulate and control neural activity |
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| a major excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain that increases the likelihood that a postsynaptic neuron will fire; important in learning, memory, neural processing, and brain development |
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