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| Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meanings. |
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| In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix). |
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| In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. |
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| The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning. |
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| The rules combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language. |
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| Stage Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language. |
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| The stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words. |
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| Beginning at about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements. |
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| Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram, using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting auxiliary words. |
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| Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think. |
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| The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. |
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| A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people. |
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| A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin) |
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| A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier—but also more error-prone—use of heuristics. |
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| A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms. |
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| A sudden and often more novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy based solutions. |
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| A tendency to search for information that confirms one’s preconceptions. |
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| The inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving. |
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| A tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past. |
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| The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving. |
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| Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore other relevant information. |
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| Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common. |
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| The tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs and judgments. |
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| The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments. |
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| The tendency for one’s preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning, sometimes by making invalid conclusions seem valid, or valid conclusions seem invalid. |
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| Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited. |
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| Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations. |
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| A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one’s total score. |
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| A general intelligence factor that according to Spearman and others specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test. |
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| A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing. |
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| The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions. |
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| The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas. |
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| A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with others, using numerical scores. |
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| A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have the mental age of an 8. |
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| The widely used America revision of Binet’s original IQ test. |
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| Intelligence quotient (IQ) |
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| Defined originally as the ration of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100. On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100. |
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| A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn. |
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| A test designed to assess what a person has learned. |
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| Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) |
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| The WAIS is the most widely used IQ test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests. |
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| Defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested standardization group. |
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| The symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extreme. |
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| The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting. |
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| The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to. |
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| The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest |
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| The behavior that a test is designed to predict; thus, the measure used in defining whether the test has predictive validity. |
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| The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior. |
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| A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by a score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound. |
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| a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome in ones genetic makeup. |
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| The proportion of variation we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied. |
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| A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. |
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| A need or desire that energizes and directs behavior. |
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| A complex behavior that is rigidly patterned throughout a species |
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| The idea that a physiological needs create an aroused tension state that motivate an organism to satisfy the need. |
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| A tendency to maintain a balanced or contest internal state; the regulation of any aspect of body chemistry, such as blood glucose, around a particular level. |
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| A positive or negative environmental mental stimulus that motivates behavior. |
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| Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with psychical needs that must first be satisfied before high-level safety needs and then psychological needs become active. |
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| The form of glucose that circulates in the blood and provides the major source of energy for body tissues. When its level is low, we feel hunger. |
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| The point at which an individual’s “weight thermostat” is supposedly set. When the body falls below this weight, an increase in hunger and a lowered metabolic rate may act to restore the lost weight. |
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| The body’s resting rate of energy expenditure. |
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| An eating disorder, in which a normal weight person, usually female, diets and becomes significantly underweight, yet still feeling fat, continues to starve. |
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| An eating disorder characterized by episodes of overeating, usually of high-calorie foods, followed by vomiting, laxative use, fasting, or excessive exercise. |
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| The four stages of sexual responding described by Masters and Johnson – excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution |
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| A resting period after orgasm, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm. |
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| A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning. |
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| A sex hormone, secreted in greater amounts by females then by males. In nonhuman female mammals, estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity. |
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| The most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty. |
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Definition
| An enduring sexual attraction towards members of either one’s own sex (homo) or the other sex (hetero). |
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| A completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one’s skills. |
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| Industrial-organization psychology |
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Definition
| The application of psychological concepts and methods to optimizing human behavior in workplaces. |
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| A subfield of I/O psychology that focuses on employee recruitment, selection, placement, training, appraisal, and development. |
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| Organizational psychology |
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| A subfield of I/O psychology that examines organizational influences on worker satisfaction and productivity and facilitates organizational change. |
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| Interview process that asks the same job-relevant questions of all applicants, each of whom is rated on established scales. |
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| A desire for significant accomplishment: for mastery of things, people, or ideas; for attaining a high standard. |
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| Goal-oriented leadership that sets standards, organizes work, and focuses attention. |
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| Group-oriented leadership that builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support. |
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| A response of the whole organism, involving (1) physiological arousal, (2) expressive behaviors, and (3) conscious experience. |
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| The theory that our experience of emotion is our awareness of our physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli. |
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| The theory that an emotion-arousing stimulus simultaneously triggers (1) physiological response and (2) the subjective experience of emotion. |
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| Schachters-singers theory that to experience emotion one must (1) be physically aroused and (2) cognitively label the arousal. |
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| A machine, commonly use in attempts to detect lies, that measures several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion (sweat, heartbeat, etc.) |
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| Emotional release. In psychology, the catharsis hypothesis maintains that “releasing” aggressive energy, through action or fantasy, relieves aggressive urges. |
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| Feel-good, do-good phenomenon |
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| People’s tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood. |
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| Self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being (for example, physical and economic indicators) to evaluate people’s quality of life. |
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| Adaption-level phenomenon |
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Definition
| Our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experiences. |
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| The perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself. |
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| An interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease. |
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| The application of psychological concepts and research to illness prevention and treatment and to health advancement. |
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| The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, which we appraise as threatening or challenging. |
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| General adaption syndrome (GAS) |
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Definition
| Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three stages – alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. |
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Definition
| The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in many developed countries. |
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| Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people. |
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| Friedman and Rosenman’s term for easygoing relaxed people. |
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| Literally, “mind-body” illness, any stress-related physical illness, such as hypertension and some headaches. |
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| Two types of white blood cells that are part of the body’s immune system: B lymphocytes form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infections; T lymphocytes form in the thalamus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances. |
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| Alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods. |
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| Attempting to alleviate stress directly – by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor. |
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| Attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to one’s stress reaction. |
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| Sustained exercise that increases heart and lungs fitness; may also alleviate depression and anxiety. |
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| A system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension. |
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| Complementary and alternative medicine |
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Definition
| Unproven health care treatments taught widely in medical schools, not used in hospitals, and not usually reimbursed by insurance companies. |
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