MIDTERM

• Comorbidity Multiple disorders at the same time
• Cognitive restructuring method of therapy Identifying and changing irrational negative thoughts to more reasonable and beneficial thoughts as a form of therapy
• Benzodiazepines Tranquilizers that produce relatively quick relief of anxiety. However, they are also addictive
• Difference between bipolar 1 and 2 Bipolar 1 is is characterized by periods of depression and periods of mania (manic episodes). Bipolar 2 is characterized by hypomanic episodes [Similar to manic episodes, but less severe and of shorter duration], which are less sever and of shorter duration
• Systematic desensitization methods A type of exposure therapy in which people gradually learn to confront increasingly anxiety provoking situations
• Intern syndrome The tendency, when people begin to learn about a disorder, to think that they (or friends or family members) have the disorder
• Dysthymia A type of depression that is less severe than major depression, but longer lasting.
• Cognitive perspective A perspective that investigates psychology at the cognitive level, such as by studying thoughts and feelings
• Behavioral perspective A perspective that investigates psychology by studying behavior
• Biological perspective A perspective that investigates psychology at the biological level, such as by studying brain structures or neurochemicals
• Structuralism Focused on discovering the structure of conscious experience by breaking it down into psychological element
• Functionalism Proposed that it is the function, not the structure, of thoughts and behaviors that is important
• Goals of Psychology It aims to enhance individual and societal well-being through a deeper understanding of human behavior and cognition.
• Theory A general idea or framework that helps to organize what we know and want to know about a topic
• Hypothesis A testable idea derived from a theory
• Naturalistic observation Research that involves observing behavior in its natural setting
• Case study An in-depth investigation of a single person or small group of people
• Experimental research Seeks to discover if one variable causes another
• Experimental group The participants who receive the factor
• Control group The participants who do not receive the factor that the researcher is investigating. The control group is used as a standard or baseline.
• Confound A problem in which there are multiple explanations for an experimental result, making it difficult to know why the result occurred
• Dependent variables The variables that are measured in an experiment
• Independent variables The variables that are manipulated in an experiment
• Double-blind procedure A research technique used to reduce the effects of expectations, in which neither the experimenter nor the participant knows which condition the participant is in
• Sensation The process by which information from the world is detected by the senses
• Perception The process by which the mind interprets action potentials coming from the senses
• Transduction The process of changing the information detected by the senses into action potentials that travel via nerves to the brain
• Sensory adaptation The process by which our senses adjust to different stimulus intensities
• Absolute threshold The minimum intensity necessary for a stimulus to be detected
• Subliminal perception Perception in which we are affected by stimuli that we can’t consciously detect
• Gestalt Principles the gestalt psychologists held that the whole is more than the sum of the parts
• prägnanz the principle of prägnanz maintains that perceptions tend to be ideal or best
• Figure-ground general gestalt principle; it maintains that some parts of what we see seem to be the figure or thing we are looking at, but other parts seem to be the ground or background.
• Principles of grouping; Gestalt Principles. principle of proximity, principle of similarity, principle of continuation, principle of common fate, principle of familiarity, principle of closure.
• Language relativism This hypothesis suggests that different languages lead their speakers to view the world in different ways.
• Selective attention Choosing some things to attend to while ignoring others
• Divided attention Distributing our attention among several things at once
• Sustained attention Continuously paying attention over a period of time, often because we are searching for something or watching to see if something will happen
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) A well-known measure of psychological problems
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Provides criteria to help diagnosticians evaluate a person’s thoughts and behaviors and reach a specific diagnosis.