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Factor Analysis: Okay, we know how most students feel about statistics, so we will make this as quick and painless as possible. Factor analysis is a type of statistical procedure that is conducted to identify clusters or groups of related items (called factors) on a test. For example, when you take a multiple choice Introductory Psychology test, a factor analysis can be done to see what types of questions you did best on and worst on (maybe they did best on factual types of questions but really poorly on conceptual types of questions). That wasn't too bad was it? False Consensus Effect: False concensus effect is an overestimation of how much other people share our beliefs and behaviors. For example, I know someone who is very health conscious when it comes to eating…she eats all sorts of grains, vegetables, etc., but stays away from fattening (but tasty!) foods. She is religious about eating healthy and truly believes that because she thinks it's important, everyone thinks it's important. This is a false consensus effect. Family Therapy: Family therapy is a type of therapy in which members of a family are treated. They may not be in the same room at the same time, but the members of the family are all counseled to encourage all members to partake in open communication and healing. For example, when parents are having problems with a child, they may all go to therapy together so that parents can learn about their child's feelings and in turn, the child can learn about his or her parents' feelings. This promotes understanding and empathy that is often the cause of communication problems. Feature Detectors: The ability to detect certain types of stimuli, like movements, shape, and angles, requires specialized cells in the brain called feature detectors. Without these, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to detect a round object, like a baseball, hurdling toward you at 90 miles per hour. Fecundity: Productive or creative power. A common example is to say that someone has fecundity of the mind - meaning, the person has the capacity for creativity and generating novel ideas. Feel-Good, Do-Good Phenomenon: When do you help other people? According to this theory, you are more likely to help other people when you are already in a good mood. So, if you just got an "A" on the big exam and a friend just gave you a great gift, you are more likely to help someone else that you might not if you weren't in such a good mood. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS): Fetal alcohol syndrome includes physical, cognitive, and psychologicl abnormalities that result from consuming alcohol during pregnancy (no, I'm not talking about guys consuming alcohol when a woman is pregnant…geez). Some statistics indicate that 1 in 750 babies are born with FAS as a result of their mother drinking heavily during pregnancy. The rates are much higher for alcoholic women -- about 4 in 10. Some results include deformed heads, incomplete development of the face and mouth, brain deficits, and more. Fetus: This is the longest stage of prenatal, human development that lasts from 9 weeks after conception to birth. By the end of the 6th month, the fetus usually has developed internal organs (e.g., stomach and intestines), which also become functional. Many people believe that it is important to talk to the fetus to help foster attachment, and get the baby used to the sound of the parents voice. Others believe that this is not useful as the fetus can't hear. However, the reality is that the fetus is responsive to sound at approximately 6 months of development. So...talk it up, they can hear. Figure-Ground: The Gestalt Psychologists studied all sorts of perceptual organization--the ways that humans organize information about what they see, hear, etc. What they found was that there are two main visual components necessary for a person to see an object properly; a figure (the object) and the ground (the background or surroundings in which the object occurs). Thus, when you look at a picture on a wall, the picture is the figure and you can distinguish it clearly from its surroundings, the wall (ground). Fixation: This term has several different meanings in psychology. Fixation has a long history in Freudian and clinical psychology, and refers to when a person is "stuck" in one stage of psychosexual development. For example, if a person does not get through the oral stage of development properly, then Freud would say that the person is fixated in the oral stage and will continue to seek oral pleasures, and will not be able to progress to the next stage of development until the oral issues are resolved. Fixation also refers to an inability to adopt any different or new perspective on a problem. It is similar to fixation in the Freudian sense except that here it is not necessarily referring to psychosexual development. Fixed-Interval Schedule: With this type of operant conditioning reinforcement schedule, an organism must wait (either not make the operant response, whatever it is in that experiment; or it can make the response but the response produces nothing) for a specific amount of time and then make the operant response in order to receive reinforcement. For example, if you are conducting a study in which you place a rat on a fixed-interval 30 second schedule (FI-30s), and the operant response is pressing the lever, then the rat must wait for 30 seconds, then press the lever, and it will receive reinforcement. This type of schedule is called fixed because the amount time the organism must wait remains constant. In addition, the investigator can determine what NOT waiting will do. If the rat presses the lever before the interval has elapsed, it can either make the interval start all over again (so if the rat waits 15 seconds and then presses the lever, it starts the 30 seconds all over again), or do nothing so that the rat can press the lever constantly for 30 seconds, and then the next one will produce reinforcement. Fixed-Ratio Schedule: With this type of operant conditioning reinforcement schedule, an organism must make a certain number of operant responses (whatever it may be in that experiment) in order to receive reinforcement. For example, if you are conducting a study in which you place a rat on a fixed-ratio 30 schedule (FR-30), and the operant response is pressing the lever, then the rat must press the lever 30 times before it will receive reinforcement. This type of schedule is called fixed because the number of operant responses required remains constant. Flashbulb Memory: The sudden onset of a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event. When you are trying to remember something and then it "all of a sudden comes to you", you have experienced a flash bulb memory. It is like turning on a light. Fluid Intelligence: There are two main type of intelligence, crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence is your ability to reason in an abstract way. For example, if I asked you to come up with as many different possible uses for a tire, you would have to use very abstract reasoning -- think about what a tire is, the different types, the sizes, etc., then go through cognitive lists of situations, uses, and much more. One unfortunate problem with this type of reasoning is that it tends to decrease during later adulthood. Foot-In-The-Door Phenomenon: There is both foot-in-the-door phenomenon and foot-in-the-door technique. As you can guess, the technique is used to get the phenomenon. The phenomenon is the tendancy for people to comply with some large request after first agreeing to a small request. As you can then imagine, the technique is used to get compliance from others (to get them to behave in a way you want) in which a small request is made first in order to get compliance for a larger request. For example, someone might want you to give to give 5 hours of your time a week for the three months as a volunteer to a charity (a big request). But to get you to agree to this big request, they first ask you to volunteer for 1 hour one time and one time only. After hearing this small request, which you are willing to agree to, they then work their way up asking you to volunteer time until you are willing to agree to the big request. You are more likely to agree to this when you have already said yes to the small request. Forensic Psychology: Is there a better source for information about forensic psychology than the Academy of Forensic Psychology? We don't think there is, so we're using their definition here: Forensic Psychology is the application of the science and profession of psychology to questions and issues relating to law and the legal system. The word "forensic" comes from the Latin word "forensis," meaning "of the forum," where the law courts of ancient Rome were held. Today forensic refers to the application of scientific principles and practices to the adversary process where specially knowledgeable scientists play a role. Formal Operational Stage: According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development, when a person gets to be approximately age 12, they acquire the ability to think logically about abstract concepts. They can extrapolate about events that occurred at different times (does not have to be occurring right then and there), think about people that are not there, etc. Fovea: The fovea is the central focal point on the retina in the eye around which the cones cluster. In fact, the fovea has only cones around it, which are better for detecting fine detail. So, when trying to really see some fine detail or focus something, people tend to move the image onto the fovea (although they may be unaware that this is what they are doing...they just think they are trying to see something better). Framing: Read these two questions and consider how you would respond if a person you liked called you and presented them to you: 1) "Would you like to go out tonight?"; and 2) "What time do you want to go out tonight?" These two questions are addressing the same basic issue, but they are framed differently -- they are presented in different ways and under different pretenses. The first, is framed in a more passive, open manner, while the second implies that you and this person ARE going out and the only issue is what time you will be going. It is all in how you ask! Fraternal Twins: Fraternal twins are siblings who develop from separate eggs and separate sperm cells, but during the same fertilization period. So they end up being conceived at the same time, developing at the same time, and being born at approximately the same time. Plus, unlike identical twins, fraternal twins can be different sex (brother and sister). Free Association: Quick, say whatever comes to your mind when I say the word "marriage". Don't limit or try to evaluate your responses, just say everything that pops into your head. This process is a Freudian (psychoanalytic) method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing. Frequency: Frequency is the number of complete wavelengths (also known as cycles) that occur within a specific time. A wave with high frequency means it occurs more rapidly or often and is also considered shorter. Frequency is used to measure all sorts of wavelengths, such as light waves, sound waves, and brain waves. Frequency Distribution: Frequency distribution is a simple (basic, not necessarily easy) type of statistic that people often make into a much bigger deal than it really is. Let's say you are in a class with 100 people, and you have just taken a test. The teacher then tells you that on the test, there were 20 "A"s, 25 "B"s, 35 "C"s, 15 "D"s, and 5 "F"s. What the teacher has just given you is a frequency distribution; a breakdown of how all the scores fell into the different categories or ranges that the overall score was broken into. Frequency Theory: This theory of how we hear sounds states that there are pulses that travel up the auditory nerve, carrying the information about sound to the brain for processing, and that the rate of this pulse matched the frequency of whatever tone you are hearing exactly. We thus hear the tone because the pulse traveling up the auditory nerve matches the actual tone. Essentially, we are getting a copy of the real sound. Frontal Lobes: A region of the cerebral cortex at the front of the brain (lying just behind the forehead) that is necessary for motor control and more complex, high-end functioning like speech, decision making, and judgments. Frustration-Aggression Theory: First, we need to explain frustration (not that we don't all already know what this is). Frustration is a feeling of tension that occurs when our efforts to reach some goal are blocked. When this occurs, it can produce feelings of anger, which in turn can generate feelings of aggression and aggressive behavior. This theory has been utilized to explain a lot of violent behavior over time. For example, some have stated that people who become frustrated with their jobs because they don't like their work, can't get the raise they want, etc., but can't take out their aggressions at work (can't yell at the boss, can't punch annoying co-workers), will redirect this frustration and act aggressively toward others (like a husband, wife, children, etc.). Fugue: Fugue (also known as Dissociative Fugue) is a really interesting type of disorder in which a person suffers a bout of amnesia and then flees their home and identity. Often the person will travel far away from their home, assume a new identity, and live as a different person until they "snap" out of their amnesic state. The DSM criteria for Dissociative Fugue are: 1. The main disturbance is sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one's customary place of work, with inability to recall one's past. 2. Confusion about personal identity or assumption of a new identity (partial or complete). 3. The disturbance does not occur exclusively during the course of Dissociative Identity Disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (for example, a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (for example, temporal lobe epilepsy). 4. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Functional Fixedness: People are often very limited in the ways they think about objects, concepts, and people. When something is thought of only in terms of its functionality, then the person is demonstrating functional fixedness. This type of thinking is narrow and limited, often inhibiting the problem solving process. Functionalism: Functionalism was the psychological school of thought that followed Structuralism and moved away from focusing on the structure of the mind to a concern with how the conscious is related to behavior... How does the mind affect what people do? One of the major proponents of Functionalism was Thorndike (created the ever-popular puzzle box) who studied the primary issue of functionalism...WHAT FUNCTION DOES A BEHAVIOR HAVE. In addition, this school of thought focused on observable events as opposed to unobservable events (like what goes on in someone’s mind). Fundamental Attribution Error: Imagine this situation, you are at school and someone you know comes by, you say hello, and this person just gives you a quick, unfriendly "hello" and then walks away. How would you attribute this situation -- why did this person act this way? If you react to this situation by saying the person is a "jerk" or an "ass", then you have made the fundamental attribution error; the tendency for an observer, when interpreting and explaining the behavior of another person (the actor), to underestimate the situation and to overestimate the personal disposition. Maybe the person was having the worst day of their life, just found out a loved one died, failed a test and was feeling devastated, etc. In this case, the situation may have caused them to act in a way that was different than their normal happy self. But, you, as a normal observer, would instead attribute their behavior to them as a person...acted that way because that is the type of person they are.
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