5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (91 page)

Reliability
—
consistency or repeatability of results.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS
)
—
a treatment for depression involving repeated pulses through a magnetic coil positioned above the right eyebrow of the patient that does not result in memory loss.

Replication
—
repetition of the methods used in a previous experiment to see whether the same methods will yield the same results.

Representativeness heuristic
—
tendency to judge the likelihood of things according to how they relate to a prototype; in social psychology the prejudgement of people in the same way.

Repression
—
most frequently used Freudian defense mechanism, characterized by unconscious forgetting; pushing threatening thoughts, feelings, and memories into the unconscious mind.

Resistance
—
blocking of anxiety-provoking feelings and experiences in the process of psychoanalysis.

Resistance stage
—
second stage of Selye’s general adaptation syndrome characterized by the use of “fight or flight” mechanisms to control, cope with, or flee from the stressful situation.

Resistant attachment
—
mixed reactions of infants to their mothers in the Strange Situation. They may approach their mothers upon their return but, at the same time, continue to cry or even push their mothers away.

Reticular formation
(a.k.a. reticular activating system)—a network of neurons extending from the brainstem/hindbrain into the midbrain essential to the regulation of sleep, wakefulness, arousal, and attention.

Retina
—
light-sensitive surface in the back of the eye containing rods and cones that transduce light energy. Has layers of bipolar cells and ganglion cells that transmit visual information to the brain.

Retrieval
—
the process of getting information out of memory storage.

Retrieval cue
—
a stimulus that provides a trigger to get an item out of stored memory.

Retroactive inference
—
recently learned information disrupts our ability to remember older information.

Retrograde amnesia
—
involves memory loss for a segment of the past usually around the time of an accident, such as a blow to the head.

Reversibility
—
characteristic of Piaget’s concrete operational stage, the logical negation of an operation, for example, if 4 + 2 = 6 then 6 − 2 = 4

Rods
—
photoreceptors that detect black, white, and gray and movement; are necessary for peripheral and dim-light vision when cones do not respond. Distributed throughout the retina of the eye, except in the fovea.

Roles
—
ascribed social positions in groups and defined behavior expectations.

Rooting reflex
—
the newborn’s tendency to move its head when stroked on the cheek, turn toward the stimulus as if searching for a nipple, and open its mouth.

Rorschach inkblot test
—
a
projective test in which a person is shown a series of symmetrical inkblots and asked to describe what he or she thinks they represent.

Saltatory conduction
—
rapid conduction of impulses when the axon is myelinated since depolarizations jump from node (of Ranvier) to node.

Sample
—
the subgroup of the population that participates in the study.

Satiety
—
absence of hunger.

Savants
,
also known as people with
savant syndrome
—
individuals otherwise considered mentally retarded who have a specific exceptional skill typically in calculating, music, or art.

Scapegoat theory
—
attributes prejudice to frustration; when own self-worth is in doubt or jeopardy, we find others to blame.

Schachter-Singer two-factor theory of emotions
—
an emotion is inferred from physiological arousal, and label of that emotion is based on our cognitive explanation for the arousal.

Schema
—
framework of basic ideas and preconceptions about people, objects, and events based on past experience in long-term memory; concepts or frameworks that organize and interpret information.

Schizophrenia
—
a serious mental disorder characterized by thought disturbances, hallucinations, anxiety, emotional withdrawal, and delusions.

School psychologists
—
assess and counsel students, consult with educators and parents, and perform behavioral intervention when necessary.

Script
—
a schema for an event.

Seasonal affective disorder
—
a mood disorder characterized by depression, lethargy, sleep disturbances, and craving for carbohydrates; generally occurs during the winter, when the amount of daylight is low, and is sometimes treated with exposure to bright lights.

Second order conditioning
—
learning procedure in which a well-learned conditioned stimulus is paired with a new neutral stimulus resulting in a similar conditioned response.

Secondary motive
—
internal mechanism directing learned behavior as being desired, such as power and wealth.

Secondary reinforcer
—
something seen as rewarding because it is associated with a primary reinforcer.

Secondary sex characteristics
—
the nonreproductive sexual characteristics including developed breasts in females; facial hair, Adam’s apple, and deepened voice in males; and pubic hair and underarm hair in both.

Selective attention
—
focusing of awareness on a specific stimulus (while excluding others) in sensory memory.

Self-actualization
—
the realization of our true intellectual and emotional potential (according to Maslow).

Self archetype
—
according to Jung, our sense of wholeness or unity.

Self-awareness
—
consciousness of oneself as a person.

Self-concept
—
our overall view of our abilities, behavior, and personality or what we know about ourselves.

Self-efficacy
—
how competent and able we feel to accomplish tasks; an expectation of success.

Self-esteem
—
how worthy we think we are.

Self-fulfilling prophecy
—
a tendency to let our preconceived expectations of others influence how we treat them and thus evoke those very expectations.

Self-referent encoding
—
determining how new information relates to us personally.

Self-report methods
—
most common personality assessment technique, involves person answering a series of questions such as a personality questionnaire or supplying information about himself/herself.

Self-serving bias
—
our tendency to take personal credit for our achievements and blame failures on situational factors, to perceive ourselves favorably.

Semantic encoding
—
information processed for meaning into short-term memory and long-term memory.

Semantics
—
a set of rules we use to derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences.

Semantic memories
—
a type of long-term memory that includes general knowledge, objective facts, and vocabulary.

Semantic networks
—
model of long-term memory with more irregular and distorted systems than strict hierarchies, with multiple links from one concept to others.

Sensation
—
the process by which we detect physical energy from our environment and encode it as neural signals.

Sensorimotor stage
—
Piaget’s first stage (0–2 yrs) during which the infant experiences the world through senses and action patterns; progresses from reflexes, to object permanence and symbolic thinking.

Sensory adaptation
—
a temporary decrease in sensitivity to a stimulus that occurs when stimulation is unchanging.

Sensory memory
—
primitive, brief type of memory that holds incoming information just long enough for further processing.

Sensory receptor
—
cell typically in sense organs that initiates action potentials which then travel along sensory/afferent neurons to the CNS.

Separation anxiety
—
a set of fearful responses, such as crying, arousal, and clinging to the caregiver, that infants exhibit when the caregiver attempts to leave the infant.

Serial position effect
—
the tendency to remember and recall information that comes at the beginning (primacy effect) and at the end of a list of words (recency effect) more easily than those in the middle.

Serotonin
—
a neurotransmitter associated with arousal, sleep, appetite, moods, and emotions. Lack of serotonin is associated with depression.

Set point
—
a preset natural body weight, determined by the number of fat cells in our body.

Sex-linked traits
—
recessive genes located on the X chromosome with no corresponding gene on the Y chromosome result in expression of recessive trait more frequently in males.

Sexual orientation
—
the direction of an individual’s sexual interest.

Sexual response cycle
—
Masters and Johnson’s four stages of bodily response during sex: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Shadow
—
according to Jung represents our baser instinctual urges we attempt to keep hidden from others.

Shallow processing
—
encoding into memory superficial sensory information without making it relevant which seldom results in enduring memory.

Shaping
—
positively reinforcing closer and closer approximations of a desired behavior through operant conditioning.

Short-term memory
—
also called working memory, which can hold about seven unrelated items for about twenty to thirty seconds without rehearsal.

Simultaneous conditioning
—
in classical conditioning the CS and UCS are paired together at the
same time; weaker conditioning technique than the ideal delayed conditioning.

Single-blind procedure
—
research design in which participants don’t know whether they are in the experimental or control group.

Signal detection theory
—
maintains that minimum threshold varies with fatigue, attention, expectations, movitation, and emotional distress, as well as from one person to another.

Situational attributions
—
inferences that a person’s behavior is caused by some temporary condition or situation the person was in.

Sleep
—
a complex combination of states of consciousness each with its own level of consciousness, awareness, responsiveness, and physiological arousal.

Sleepwalking
—
most frequently a childhood sleep disruption that occurs during stage 4 sleep characterized by trips out of bed or carrying on of complex activities.

Social clock
—
idea that society has certain age expectations for when someone should marry and have kids and people feel compelled to meet these expectations or face a crisis.

Social cognition
—
refers to the way people gather, use, and interpret information about the social aspects of the world around them.

Social facilitation
—
improved performance of well-learned tasks in front of others.

Social group
—
two or more people sharing common goals and interests interact and influence behavior of the other(s).

Social impairment
—
worsened performance of a newly learned or difficult task when performed in front of an audience.