5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (89 page)

Nerve (sensorineural
)
deafness
—
loss of hearing that results from damage to the cochlea, hair cells, or
auditory neurons; cochlea implants may restore some hearing.

Neural network
—
clusters of neurons that are interconnected to process information.

Neurogenesis
—
the growth of new neurons.

Neuroleptics
—
antipsychotic drugs to reduce hallucinations, delusions, and jumbled thought processes; include Thorazine (chlorpromazine), Haldol, Clozaril.

Neuron
—
the basic unit of structure and function of your nervous system. Neurons perform three major functions: receive information, process it, and transmit it to the rest of your body.

Neuropsychologists
—
neuroscientists who explore the relationships between brain/nervous systems and behavior. Neuropsychologists are also called biological psychologists or biopsychologists, behavioral geneticists, physiological psychologists, and behavioral neuroscientists.

Neuroticism
—
Eysenck’s personality dimension that measures our level of instability, how moody, anxious, and unreliable we are; as opposed to stability, how calm, even-tempered, and reliable we are.

Neurotransmitters
—
chemical messengers released by the terminal buttons of the presynaptic neuron into the synapse.

Night terrors
—
most frequently childhood sleep disruptions from stage 4 sleep characterized by a bloodcurdling scream and intense fear.

Nightmares
—
are frightening dreams that occur during REM sleep.

Nodes of Ranvier
—
spaces between segments of myelin on the axons of neurons.

Nomothetic methods
—
personality techniques such as tests, surveys, and observations that focus on variables at the group level, identifying universal trait dimensions or relationships between different aspects of personality.

Nonconscious
—
level of consciousness devoted to processes completely inaccessible to conscious awareness such as blood flow, filtering of blood by kidneys, secretion of hormones, and lower level processing of sensory information such as detecting edges, estimating size and distance of objects, recognizing patterns, etc.

Non-declarative (implicit
)
memory
—
retention without conscious recollection of learning the skills and procedures to do things thought to be stored in the cerebellum.

Non-REM or NREM sleep
—
sleep stages 1–4 during which rapid eye movements do NOT occur.

Normal distribution
—
bell-shaped curve that represents data about how lots of human characteristics are dispersed in the population.

Normative social influence
—
going along with the group, even if you do not agree with their decisions, because you desire to gain their social approval.

Norms—
(in social psychology), rules either implicit or explicit that govern the behavior of group members; (in testing), scores established from the test results of the representative sample, which are then used as a standard for assessing the performances of subsequent test takers.

Object permanence
—
awareness that objects still exist when out of sight; milestone of Piaget’s sensorimotor period, 0–2 years.

Observational learning
—
learning that takes place by watching and imitating others’ behavior.

Obsession
—
an involuntary recurring thought, idea, or image.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder
—
recurrent, unwanted thoughts or ideas and compelling urges to engage in repetitive ritual-like behavior.

Occipital lobes
—
region in the back of the cerebral cortex that is the primary area for processing visual information.

Olfaction
—
chemical sense of smell with receptors in a mucous membrane (olfactory epithelium) on the roof of the nasal cavity that transduce chemical energy of dissolved molecules to electrochemical energy of neural impulses.

Omission training
—
removal of a rewarding consequence that follows a voluntary behavior thereby decreasing the probability the behavior will be repeated.

Operant conditioning
—
learning that occurs when an active learner performs certain voluntary behavior and the
consequences
of the behavior (pleasant or unpleasant) determine the likelihood of its recurrence.

Operational definition
—
a description of the specific procedure used to determine the presence of a variable (such as a smile for happiness).

Opponent-process theory
—
proposed mechanism for color vision with opposing retinal processes for red-green, yellow-blue, white-black. Some retinal cells are stimulated by one of a pair and inhibited by the other.

Opponent-process theory of emotions
—
following a strong emotion, an opposing emotion counters the first emotion lessening the experience of that emotion. On repeated occasions, the opposing emotion becomes stonger.

Optic nerve
—
nerve formed by ganglion cell axons; carries the neural impulses from the eye to the thalamus of the brain.

Optical
or
visual illusions
—
discrepancies between the appearance of a visual stimulus and its physical reality.

Oral stage
—
Freud’s first psychosexual stage; pleasure derived from sucking; crisis is weaning from bottle or breast fixation: dependent personalities who are smokers, overeaters, talkative, etc.

Organismic self
—
according to Rogers, the original (real) self that strives toward positive goals until it is influenced by society.

Out-group
—
groups to which we do not belong.

Out-group homogeneity
—
belief that members of another group are more similar in their attitudes than they are.

Ovaries
—
gonads in females that produce hormones necessary for reproduction and development of secondary sex characteristics.

Overconfidence bias
—
the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments which proves to be a hindrance in problem solving.

Overgeneralization
or
overregularization
—
application of grammatical rules without making appropriate exceptions.

Overjustification effect
—
where promising a reward for doing something we already like to do results in us seeing the reward as the motivation for performing the task. When the reward is taken away, the behavior tends to disappear.

Pancreas
—
gland near stomach that secretes the hormones insulin and glucagon that regulate blood sugar necessary for fueling all behavioral processes. Imbalances result in diabetes and hypoglycemia.

Panic disorder
—
unpredictable attacks of acute anxiety accompanied by high levels of physiological arousal that last from a few seconds to a few hours.

Parallel distributive processing (PDP
)
—
performing several operations simultaneously as opposed to serially or one operation after another.

Parallel processing
—
to simultaneously analyze different elements of sensory information such as color, shape, brightness, etc.

Paranoid personality disorder
—
symptoms include delusions of persecution that are generally organized around one theme.

Paranoid schizophrenia
—
a form of schizophrenia in which the person suffers from delusions of persecution, grandeur, reference, or control.

Parapsychology
—
study of paranormal events that investigates claims of ESP, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis or psychokinesis.

Parasympathetic nervous system
—
subdivision of PNS and ANS whose stimulation calms your body following sympathetic stimulation by restoring normal body processes.

Parathyroids
—
endocrine glands in neck that produce parathyroid hormone which helps maintain calcium ion level in blood necessary for normal functioning of neurons.

Parietal lobes
—
region on the top of the cerebral cortex the front strip of which is the somatosensory cortex that processes sensory information including touch, temperature, and pain from body parts; association areas perceive objects.

Peg word mnemonic
—
memory device which uses a scheme (“One is a bun, two is...”) we memorize, then associate with names or objects in a series.

Percentile score
—
the percentage of scores at or below a particular score.

Perception
—
the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensations, enabling one to recognize meaningful objects and events.

Perceptual constancy
—
perceiving an object as unchanging even when the immediate sensation of the object changes.

Peripheral nervous system (PNS
)
—
portion of the nervous system outside the brain and spinal cord. It includes all of the sensory and motor neurons, and subdivisions called the autonomic and somatic nervous systems.

Peripheral route of persuasion
—
(according to the elaboration likelihood model) changes attitudes by pairing superficial positive stimuli (supermodels and celebrities) with an argument; leads to unstable change in attitudes.

Permissive parenting style
—
parents set no firm guidelines for behavior and tend to give in to demands of the child.

Persona
—
according to Jung, this is the outward part of the personality or the mask we wear when dealing with society and opposite of the unconscious shadow.

Personal constructs
—
a set of bipolar categories we use as labels to help us categorize and interpret the world; Kelly believes that personality is a
habitual
way we live our lives trying to make sense out of what happens.

Personal fable
—
exaggerated belief in one’s uniqueness and immortality in adolescence.

Personal unconscious
—
according to Jung, a storehouse of all our past memories and hidden instincts and urges unique to the individual.

Personality
—
a unique pattern of consistent feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that originate within the individual.

Personality disorders
—
chronic, maladaptive thought and behavior patterns that are troublesome to others, harmful, or illegal.

Phallic stage
—
Freud’s third stage of psychosexual development; the primary erogenous zone is the genital area; during this time children become attached to the opposite-sex parent.

Phenotype
—
the expression of the genes.

Phenylketonuria (PKU
)
—
recessive trait that results in severe, irreversible brain damage unless the baby is fed a special diet low in phenylalanine.

Phobia
—
irrational fear of specific objects or situations, such as animals or enclosed spaces.

Phonemes
—
smallest possible sound units of spoken language.

Photoreceptors
—
modified neurons (rods and cones) that convert light energy to electrochemical neural impulses at the retina.

Physiological motivations
—
such as hunger, thirst and sex. Each is influenced by biological factors, environmental factors and learned preferences and habits. The hypothalamus and endocrine system are implicated in each of these motives.

Pineal gland
—
endocrine gland in brain that produces melatonin that helps regulate circadian rhythms and is associated with seasonal affective disorder.

Pitch
—
the highness or lowness of a sound. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency and pitch. The longer the wavelength, the lower the frequency and the lower the pitch.