Psych Exam 1

• Plagiarism is the copying of someone else’s exact words (or a close imitation of the words) and presenting them as your own.
• Mnemonic is a strategy or trick for aiding memory.
• A concept map is an organized visual representation of knowledge consisting of concepts and their relationships to other concepts.
• Applied research is research focused on finding practical solutions to real-world problems.
• Evolutionary Perspective:perspective that focuses on the biological bases of universal mental characteristics that all humans share.
• Control group : participants in an experiment who are not subjected to the independent variable and who may receive a placebo treatment.
• Humanistic Perspective: the “third force” in psychology that focuses on those aspects of personality that make people uniquely human, such as subjective feelings and freedom of choice.
• Dependent Variable: variable in an experiment that represents the measurable response or behavior of the participants in the experiment.
• Gestalt Psychology: early perspective in psychology focusing on perception and sensation, particularly the perception of patterns and whole figures.
• Psychiatrist: a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders.
• Psychologist: a professional with an academic degree and specialized training in one or more areas of psychology.
• Cognitive Neuroscience: study of the physical changes in the brain and nervous system during thinking.
• Observer bias: tendency of observers to see what they expect to see.
• Hypothesis: tentative explanation of a phenomenon based on observations.
• Basic Research: research focused on adding information to the scientific knowledge base.
• Case Study: study of one individual in great detail.
• Correlation:  measure of the relationship between two variables.
• Random Assignment: process of assigning participants to the experimental or control groups randomly, so that each participant has an equal chance of being in either group.
• Operationalization: specific description of a variable of interest that allows it to be measured.
• Psychodynamic Perspective: modern version of psychoanalysis that is more focused on the development of a sense of self and the discovery of motivations behind a person’s behavior other than sexual motivations.
• Behaviorism: the science of behavior that focuses on observable behavior only.
• Single-blind Study: study in which the participants do not know if they are in the experimental or the control group.
• Experimenter Effect: tendency of the experimenter’s expectations for a study to unintentionally influence the results of the study.
• Experiment: a deliberate manipulation of a variable to see if corresponding changes in behavior result, allowing the determination of cause-and-effect relationships.
• Observer effect: tendency of people or animals to behave differently from normal when they know they are being observed.
• Structuralism: early perspective in psychology associated with Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener, in which the focus of study is the structure or basic elements of the mind.
• Scientific Approach: system of gathering data so that bias and error in measurement are reduced.
• Objective Introspection: the process of examining and measuring one’s own thoughts and mental activities.
• Replicate: in research, repeating a study or experiment to see if the same results will be obtained in an effort to demonstrate reliability of results.
• Cognitive Perspective: in classical conditioning, modern theory in which conditioning is seen to occur because the conditioned stimulus provides information or an expectancy about the coming of the unconditioned stimulus.
• Independent Variable: variable in an experiment that is manipulated by the experimenter.
• Theory: a general explanation of a set of observations or facts.
• Experimental group: participants in an experiment who are subjected to the independent variable.
• biopsychological perspective: perspective that attributes human and animal behavior to biological events occurring in the body, such as genetic influences, hormones, and the activity of the nervous system.
• Critical thinking: making reasoned judgments about claims.
• functionalism: early perspective in psychology associated with William James, in which the focus of study is how the mind allows people to adapt, live, work, and play.
• Representative sample: randomly selected sample of participants from a larger population of participants.
• psychiatric social worker: a social worker with some training in therapy methods who focuses on the environmental conditions that can have an impact on mental disorders, such as poverty, overcrowding, stress, and drug abuse.
• Sociocultural perspective: perspective that focuses on the influence of social interactions, society, and culture on an individual’s thinking and behavior; in psychopathology, approach that examines the impact of social interactions, community, and culture on a person’s thinking, behavior, and emotions.
• participant oberservation: a naturalistic observation in which the observer becomes a participant in the group being observed.