5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (84 page)

Central nervous system
(CNS)—brain and spinal cord.

Central route of persuasion
—
according to the elaboration likelihood model, changes attitudes by requiring a person to think critically about an argument; usually results in stable change of attitudes.

Central tendency
—
average or most typical scores of a set of research data or distribution.

Central trait
—
a general characteristic that shapes much of our behavior (according to Allport).

Cerebellum
—
part of the brainstem that controls posture, equilibrium, and movement.

Cerebral cortex
—
convoluted part of forebrain that is the center for higher order processes such as thinking, planning, judgment; receives and processes sensory information and directs movement.

Chaining
—
an operant conditioning technique used to teach complex behaviors; a number of behaviors must be done successively before the reward is given.

Chromosome
—
structure in the nucleus of cells that contains genes determined by DNA sequences.

Chunking
—
grouping information into meaningful units; expands the capacity of short-term memory beyond seven unrelated bits of information.

Circadian rhythms
—
daily patterns of changes that cycle approximately every 24 hours such as the sleep/wake cycle.

Classical conditioning
—
learning which takes place when two or more stimuli are presented together; unconditioned stimulus is paired repeatedly with a neutral stimulus until it acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response.

Client-centered or person-centered therapy
—humanistic therapy introduced by Carl Rogers in which the client rather than the therapist directs the treatment process.

Clinical depression
—
also called major depression, characterized by persistent and severe feelings of sadness (dysphoria) and worthlessness accompanied by changes in appetite, sleeping, and behavior.

Clinical psychologists
—
psychologists who evaluate and treat mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders.

Cochlea
—
snail-shaped, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear with hair cells on the basilar membrane that transduce mechanical energy of vibrating molecules to the electrochemical energy of neural impulses.

Cognition
—
all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering information.

Cognitive approach
—
psychological perspective concerned with how we receive, store, and process information; think/reason; and use language.

Cognitive dissonance
—
according to Festinger, the theory that changes in attitudes can be motivated by an unpleasant state of tension caused by a disparity between a person’s beliefs or attitudes and behavior.

Cognitive illusion
—
systematic way of thinking that is responsible for an error in judgment.

Cognitive learning
—
a type of learning that involves mental events, problem solving, and rule formation.

Cognitive map
—
a mental picture of the layout of one’s environment.

Cognitive restructuring
—
cognitive therapy in which clients discuss their fears and are led to change their attitudes and beliefs about the situations that frighten them.

Cognitive therapy
—
therapy that teaches people more adaptive ways of thinking and acting in order to eliminate maladaptive thinking and emotional reactions.

Cognitive triad
—
Beck’s cognitive therapy which looks at what people think about their Self, their World, and their Future.

Cohort
—
group of people in one age group.

Cohort effect
—
observed group differences based on the era when people were born and grew up exposing them to particular experiences which may affect results of cross-sectional studies.

Cohort-sequential
—
research design that combines aspects of cross-sectional and longitudinal research to correct for cohort effect.

Collective unconscious
—
according to Jung, the powerful and influential system of the psyche that contains universal memories and ideas that all people have inherited from our ancestors over the course of evolution.

Collectivism
—
primary identification of an individual as a member of a group (family, school, company, community) and goals of the group as one’s goals.

Color blindness
—
sex-linked trait more common in males where individual cannot see certain colors, most often red and green.

Compliance
—
modification of our behavior at another person’s request.

Compulsion
—
an irresistible impulse to repeat some action over and over although it serves no useful purpose.

Computerized axial tomography
(CAT or CT)—a computerized image using x-rays passed through the brain to show structure and/or the extent of a lesion.

Concept
—
a mental grouping or category for similar objects; one of the basic elements of thought.

Concrete operational stage
—
Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development (7–12 yrs) during which the child develops simple logic and masters conservation concepts.

Concurrent validity
—
measure of test showing how much of a skill a person has at the moment.

Conditioned response
(CR)—in classical conditioning, the learned response to a conditioned stimulus which results from repeated pairing with the unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned stimulus
(CS)—in classical conditioning, originally a neutral stimulus that comes to trigger a conditioned response after being repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

Conditions of worth
—
conditions that others place on us for receiving their positive regard.

Conduction deafness
—
loss of hearing that results when the eardrum is punctured or ossicles lose their ability to vibrate. A hearing aid may restore hearing.

Cones
—
photoreceptors that detect color and fine detail in daylight or in bright conditions. Most concentrated at the fovea of the retina; none are in the periphery.

Confabulation
—
filling in gaps in memory by combining and substituting memories from events other than the one you’re trying to remember.

Confirmation bias
—
a tendency to search for and use information that supports our preconceptions, and ignore information that refutes our ideas; often a hindrance to problem solving.

Conflict situation
s—problems in choosing between alternatives.

Conformity
—
the adoption of attitudes and behaviors shared by a particular group of people.

Confounding variables
—
in a controlled experiment, factors that cause differences between the experimental group and the control group other than the independent variable.

Connectionism
—
theory that memory is stored throughout the brain in connections between neurons, many of which can work together to process a single memory.

Consciousness
—
awareness of the outside world and ourselves, including our own mental processes, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. EEGs of wakeful consciousness record alpha and beta waves.

Conservation concepts
—
changes in the form of an object do not alter physical properties of mass, volume, and number, acquired during Piaget’s concrete operational stage.

Consolidation
—
the process by which information in short-term memory is transferred to long-term memory, presumably because of physical changes that occur in neurons in the brain.

Construct validity
—
the
true
measure of validity. Construct validity is the extent to which the test measures a given characteristic, trait, or construct.

Contact comfort
—
Harlow study with monkeys and surrogate moms—need for close contact with caregiver independent of feeding; questions Hull’s drive-reduction theory.

Contact theory
—
if members of two opposing groups are brought together in an emergency situation, group cooperation will reduce prejudice thinking.

Context-dependent memory
—
physical setting in which a person learns information is encoded along with the information and becomes part of the memory trace.

Contextual intelligence
—
what Sternberg calls “street smarts”; intelligence that reflects behaviors that help us to adapt and fit into the environment by developing useful skills and behaviors.

Contiguity
—
Pavlovian theory that classical conditioning is based on the association in time of the CS prior to UCS.

Contingency
—Rescorla theory that the predictability of UCS following CS determines classical conditioning.

Continuity-discontinuity controversy
—
deals with the issue of whether development is a gradual, continuous process or a sequence of separate stages.

Continuous reinforcement
—
the schedule of reinforcement where
each
behavior emitted by the organism is rewarded.

Contralaterality
—
control of one side of your body by the other side of your brain.

Control group
—
in a controlled experiment, the comparison group; the subgroup of the sample that is similar to the experimental group in every way except for the presence of the independent variable.

Controlled experiment
—
research method in which the experimenter manipulates the independent variable (IV) to see the effect on the dependent variable (DV) in order to establish a cause and effect relationship between the IV and DV.

Conventional level
—
Kohlberg’s second level of moral development, in which people realize that society has instituted rules to maintain order and to serve the best interests of its citizens.

Convergent thinking
—
conventional thinking; thinking directed toward a single correct solution.

Conversion disorder
—
a somatoform disorder involving the actual loss of bodily function, such as
blindness, paralysis, and numbness, due to excessive anxiety with no physiological cause.

Convolutions
—
folding-in and out of the cerebral cortex that increases surface area of the brain.

Coping
—
active efforts to reduce or tolerate perceived levels of stress.

Cornea
—
transparent, curved layer in the front of the eye that bends incoming light rays.

Corpus callosum
—
broad band of nervous tissue that connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres transmitting information from one side of the brain to the other.

Correlation coefficient
(r)
—a statistical measure of the degree of relatedness or association between two sets of data that ranges from -1 to +1.

Counseling psychologists
—
psychologists who help people adapt to change or make changes in their lifestyle.

Counterconditioning
—
replacing one emotion with its exact opposite such as relaxation as opposed to fear in phobias.

Creative self
—
Alder’s term for the conscious control of problem-solving strategies in daily life.

Creativity
—
the ability to generate ideas and solutions that are original, novel, and useful.

Critical period
—
a time interval during which specific stimuli have a major effect on development that the stimuli do not produce at other times.