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Major Depression: Major depression is a mood disorder that is characterized by an extended period of sadness. Most people are saddened by certain events in their lives (e.g., doing poorly on a pop quiz) but if the depression is constant and long lasting, an individual could be diagnosed with major depression. People who suffer from major depression feel that their mood is permanent. Major Depressive Disorder: Depression is the #1 reason why people get psychological counseling. However, there is a difference between feeling depressed and being clinically depressed. Major depressive disorder is classified as a mood disorder in which people have periods of hopelessness and sadness that last for more than 2 weeks and don't appear to have a specific cause (although this varies). This is more than "having the blues" but is a period of intense psychological pain that includes hopelessness, feeling worthless, loss of pleasure in things that previously were pleasurable, etc. Mania: Unlike being depressed, mania is a mood disorder in which people feel incredibly excited, hyperactive, and overly optimistic. Mania is also one part of bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression in which people swing from being depressed to being manic (being in a state of mania). Often times people who are manic indicated enjoying the state and getting a sense of pleasure from it since during the state they are so optimistic and energetic. I once had an instructor in college who had periods of mania in which he insisted he was more productive than any other time in his life. However, it is common for people in a state of mania to produce things that are very poor quality or don't make sense. For example someone may write for 3 days straight during a manic state and believe they wrote the greatest thing in the world, but you would look at it and think it was garbage or didn't make sense at all (this is not always the case but it does occur). Manifest Content: According to Freud, our dreams are important and meaningful in understanding the causes of our problems, hidden issues, and painful issues we can't face during wakefulness. Freud identified two types of content in our dreams; latent content and manifest content. Manifest content is all the parts of the dream that we remember (the actual content). It's not the stuff we associate with our dreams, but the actual story lines of the dreams. Masochism: Masochism is gaining pleasure from physical or psychological. The pain can be self inflicted or inflicted by someone else. When the pain inflicted produces sexual pleasure, the infliction of the pain is called sexual masochism or paraphilia. Mean: A measure of central tendency which is more commonly known as an "average." The average or mean is calculated by adding all scores and then dividing by the number of scores. For example, the mean of 3, 5, and 1 is 3. Median: A measure of central tendency that is defined as the midpoint in an array of numbers. The median for 1, 6, 102, 1000 and 1,323 would be 102. If the array has an uneven number of scores, the midpoint is the average of the two numbers closest to the middle. For example, for the array 1, 2, 3, 4, the median would be 2.5. Medulla: The medulla is a structure of the brain located in the brain stem. The brain stem begins just above the spinal cord and continues to the center of the brain. The brain stem is void of any cerebral functioning but instead controls lower level functioning. The medulla is primarily responsible for breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, and coughing. Meme: A meme is a piece of information that is passed from one entity (person, book, etc.) to another. Often memes are social or cultural in nature and are ways aspects of culture are passed from person to person so that the information is understood. They can also be ideas, parts of ideas, sounds, songs, and all sorts of other pieces of information that get passed on. Memes have been compared to viruses because of the way they self perpetuate and spread from person to person. Memory: A cognitive system that retains information. Similar to a computer's ability to retain information, your brain remembers bits of information such as your mother's name or first day of college. You would be unable to retrieve this information if you were unable to have it stored in your memory. There many components to memory including senory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory, forgetting, and more. Menarche: This is a very straight forward one - menarche is a female's first menstrual cycle…when a girl has her first "period". Menopause: As we get older, we all go through lots of changes physically and mentally. Menopause is a natural change in a woman's menstrual cycle that occurs as she gets older (usually once a woman reaches her 50s). This is a signal that the woman's ability to reproduce is ending. This is a biological change which includes changes in hormones and side effects such as hot flashes. Mental Age: It's easy to tell how old you are chronologically…if you are 10 years old, then your chronological age is 10. But determing a person's mental age, or the age-level at which they function mentally or intellectually, is much harder. Binet actually developed tests to measure mental age and it measures a person's level of performance as it corresponds to their chronological age. For example, one child age 10 may be able do sophisticated math, read more effectively, and comprehend more than another child the same age. In this case we might say that one child has a mental age greater than the other and is more in line cognitively with people several years older. Mental Illness: This term refers to a state of being in which a person has difficulty handling daily situations and feelings. It is not unusual for conditions to be characterized by impairment of intellectual functions, the experience of shallow and unstable emotions, and difficulty in adapting to one's environment. Some definitions actually refer to mental illness as a "disease of the brain" or "sickness of the brain". Mental Retardation: This is a commonly used term but one that actually has a very specific meaning. Technically a person with mental retardation scores below 70 on an intelligence test and, as such has limited mental abilities. As we have become much more politically correct, this term is used less frequently and has been somewhat replaced by the term "mentally challenged". However, mental retardation is still the clinical term for someone who scores lower than 70 on intelligence tests, has limited mental capabilities, and difficulty dealing with day-day-day aspects of living. There is a range of mental retardation from mild to profound. Mental Set: Many people approach problems in similar ways all the time even though they can't be sure they have the best approach or an approach that will even work. Doing this is an example of mental set -- a tendency to approach situations the same way because that way worked in the past. For example, a child may enter a store by pushing a door open. Every time they come to a door after that, the child pushes the door expecting it to open even though many doors only open by pulling. This child has a mental set for opening doors. Mere Exposure Effect: Have you ever met someone you didn't like very much at first and then over time, even if you didn't really have personal interactions with the person you started liking them (or disliking them less)? This might have been due to the mere exposure effect in which you begin to like something simply because you are exposed to it over and over again. I bet if you think about it you can come up with all sorts of things that you like simply because you are exposed to it repeatedly. There are many advertisers who bombard you with their products for this reason. Metacognition: The term metacognition refers to the act of thinking about thinking, or the cognition of cognition. It is the ability for you to control your own thoughts. Confused? Although it is a complex construct, the definition is not complex. It really is the knowledge and regulation of cognitive phenomena which means, you can control your own thoughts. Metacognition includes the ability for you to control, 1) person variables (knowledge about one's self, and others' thinking), 2) task variables (knowledge that different types of tasks exert different types of cognitive demands), and; 3) strategy variables (knowledge about cognitive and metacognitive strategies for enhancing learning and performance). Method of Loci: This is a mnemonic device or technique in which a person visualizes the items they're trying to learn in different spatial locations. To do this, the person associates the items with landmarks in some familiar place, which helps them recall the items later. Microexpressions: A facial expression that lasts a fraction of a second. If you have ever been accurately accused of cheating on a test, you may have given a microexpression signaling your guilt or true emotions. Since microexpressions do not last long, they go undetected in our every day lives. Microexpressions are a type of nonverbal communication. Midbrain: The midbrain is a portion of the brain located just above the medulla and pons and contains basic vision and hearing functions; it also is the input center for muscle movement. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) -- a test that detects abnormal personality styles. This instrument is commonly used by clinicians to determine if a person may have a psychological disorder. It is also commonly used by psychologists to determine if people are fit to work in public safety occupations such as police officer. Misinformation Effect (false memory): Human memory is not as good as people like to think. There are times when you are 100% confident in your memory of something and the reality is, your memory is wrong. This is often seen in eye witness testimony situations. How is it that 10 people witness a crime and when asked, there are 10 different versions of the crime? According to the misinformation effect, when we witness an event and then get some incorrect information about that event, we incorporate that incorrect information (misinformation) into our memory of the event. The result in an altered memory of the event. You may not want to believe this one, but it's true and we are all susceptible to it. Mitosis: Cell division in which chromosome pairs split and then duplicate themselves. In essence, this is the way cells grow, the way we grow. We start as a single celled organism and then through a process of cell division, we become 2 celled, then 4 celled, then 8 celled, and so on. Mnemonics: Mnemonics are simply memory aids. Anything you do (any technique you use) to help you remember something can be considered a mnemonic. For example, if you use the phrase "Emma has a dilemma" in order to remember how to correctly spell "dilemma" you are using a mnemonic. Mode: A measure of central tendency which is defined by the most common number in an array. For example, the following string of numbers: 1, 3, 3, 3, 56, 89, 89; the mode in this case would be 3 since it is the most frequent number observed in the sample. Modeling: Modeling is a form of learning where individuals ascertain how to act or perform by observing another individual. Think of it this way, you may know how to tell a joke better because you have watched Jay Leno's standup routine on TV. Or, if you have ever felt uncomfortable at a party and someone gives you the advice of: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" -- well, the person is really saying: "Model your behaviors and learn how to act by watching how others are performing in the same situation." Modeling Therapy: In this type of therapy, individuals watch others behaving in an adaptive, effective manner. This is very much like the regular process of modeling (a type of learning), except that Modeling Therapy is not a natural, unprompted event, but a way to change some maladaptive behavior. Monocular Clues: Cues of depth that can be detected by one eye instead of two. For example, size is a monocular clue. One doesn't need two eyes to tell how large an object is, and because of its size, how close it is perceived to be. Mood: How do you know what a mood disorder is without really knowing what “mood” is? In a nutshell, “mood” is an overall feeling or mental state such as happiness, anger, tension, or anxiety. Mood Disorders: Psychological disorders involving intense and prolonged shifts in mood. A person with a mood disorder might feel very happy or very sad for long periods of time and for no apparent reason. Because of this, their moods affect they way perceive everything in their daily lives, making it very difficult to function well. There are two main categories of mood disorders; Depressive Disorders (major depression, dysthymia) and Bipolar Disorders (also known as manic depression; mood swings from euphoria to depression). Moral Development: As children age, they become more adept at distinguishing right from wrong. For example, most two year olds don't know that it is wrong to take something that is not yours, however, by the time you are an adult, you know that stealing is wrong. This process is moral development. Morphemes: The smallest units of speech that convey meaning. All words are composed of at least one morpheme. For example, the word "work" is a single morpheme, but the word "working", which implies some action, is made up of two morphemes ("work" and "ing"). Motivated Forgetting: Motivated Forgetting is what Freud referred to as repressing memories. According to Freud, there are times when an event or an action is so painful that we can’t deal with the memory of it, so we repress the memory completely. By pushing the memory into the subconscious and actively repressing it, we are unable to recall the memory. So in essence, motivated forgetting is purposeful forgetting, even if it's not purposeful at a conscious level. Here's an example at a conscious level. Tonight, I want you to do whatever you have to do in order to forget the following numbers: 5-3-1. Do whatever you have to, but forget the numbers "5-3-1" by this time tomorrow. If you can do it, you will have experienced one type of motivated forgetting. Note: if you actively try to forget these numbers, you probably won't be able to. So while some memories might be so painful they are repressed in an unconscious process, the idea of conscious, motivated forgetting is pretty questionable. Motivation: Why do you eat? Why do you drink? What makes you do anything? The answer is motivation; a process that acts, guides, and maintains behaviors. For example, when you have not eaten for a period of time, you will eventually start having the feeling of hunger, which motivates you to eat something, and thus reduce the feelings of hunger. Motor Neurons: As you know, information is traveling throughout your brain and body all the time. As I type this definition, information is traveling from my brain to the muscles in my arms, hands, and fingers to press the right keys. To make my fingers press the right keys, the information travels on motor neurons -- neurons that carry information from the central nervous system to the muscles to make these movements. Multiple Personality Disorder: A personality disorder where an individual seems to possess more than one personality. People who suffer from this disorder generally have gone through traumatic childhood experiences that have caused the formation of more than one personality in order to psychologically escape from their situation. A high percentage of people who suffer from this disorder have been sexually abused as a child. Also, many people mistakenly refer to people with MPD as schizophrenics, but they are completely different disorders. Myelin: Myelin is a fatty substance that covers neurons. Around your neurons is a myelin sheath (a layer of myelin) that helps increase the speed at which information can travel on the neurons. If you could look at a neuron you would see the sheath covering the axon of the neuron in a way that looks like a row of sausage links.
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