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Paradoxial Sleep: Paradoxical sleep is another term for activated sleep, deep sleep, desynchronized sleep, rapid eye-moyement or REM sleep, para sleep, and rhombencephalic sleep. Since dreaming occurs almost exclusively during this sleep state, it is also called dreaming sleep or D-state. During paradoxical sleep your brain is very active, and your eyes move in a sharp, back and forth motion as opposed to a slower, more rolling fashion that occurs in other stages of sleep. However, even though your eyes are moving a lot and your brain is active, your muscles are in a state of almost complete paralysis. That's why it's paradoxical sleep--you're asleep, your brain is active and your muscles are inactive. Parallel Distributed Processing Model: The Parallel Distributed Processing Model is a relatively new model regarding the processes of memory. The model postulates that information is not inputted into the memory system in a step by step manner like most models or theories hypothesize but instead, facts or images are distributed to all parts in the memory system at once. Older models hypothesized that information would consolidate first into sensory memory, then move to short-term memory, and then finally go to long-term memory. Paranoia: Paranoia is a psychological disorder in which the person has delusions of being persecuted by others or delusions of their own grandeur. Paranoia is a symptom of several different psychological disorders, including schizophrenia. Paranoid thinking often comes on gradually and develops into a very complex pattern of thought based on misinterpretations of real events. Paraphilia: A sexual disorder where individuals only become aroused by inappropriate objects or fantasies. An example of this disorder is pedophilia, in which people may only be sexually attracted to and want to have sexual relations with young children. Parasympathetic Nervous System: The parasympathetic nervous system is part of the autonomic nervous system. Its main function is to conserve/restore your body's energy. For example, the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for sending signals to slow your heart rate and breathing, and speed up your digestive tract in order to digest calories and save energy. Parietal Lobe: The area in the brain which plays a major part in touch, pressure and temperature. The parietal lobe would inform you the temperature of a hard boiled egg and would allow you to pick up that egg with just enough pressure to hold it and not crush it. Partial Reinforcement: Partial reinforcement is reinforcing an organism only sometimes and not everytime the desired behavior occurs. Think of trying to teach your dog to sit. Will he learn to sit faster if you reward the dog every single time he sits when you tell him to or if you reward him only sometimes? Of course he will learn to sit slower using this partial reinforcement approach. Passionate Love: Aren't new relationships great? You know that giddy feeling you get when you first fall in love? If you have intense feelings (positive feelings) toward the other person to the point of really being wrapped up in the other person, you have passionate love. This doesn't have to fade over time, but it often does. It's not realistic to expect this heightened state of emotion and passion to be maintained over a long period of time…but it sure is nice! Passive-Aggressive: When a person acts in a passive-aggressive manner, they are displaying aggression in a way that is indirect as opposed to direct (like hitting or yelling). There is no direct anger or confrontation involved, but the person is expressing aggression indirectly. For example, if you are angry at your spouse who asked you to pick up several ingredients for dinner that night, and you somehow forget a couple of the items which make preparing the meal impossible, this might be considered a passive aggressive act. Peak Experience: An experience in which an individual feels one with the universe. It is related to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs where that higher-level needs will not be met until lower-level needs are satisfied. A peak experience would most likely be experienced at Maslow's highest level: self-actualization. Perception: The process in which we understand sensory information. Illusions are powerful examples of how we misinterpret sensory information and perceive information incorrectly. Perceptual Constancy: Perceptual constancy is the ability to recognize that an object or organism has not changed (remained the same object or organism) even though other stimuli have changed. For example, when you go to a school reunion you will be able to recognize the other people from your class even though their physical characteristics may have changed such as increased weight, hair loss, etc. Performance Appraisal: A process in where an individual's performance is scored and feedback is given. A large component in psychology is trying to measure human behavior. Performance appraisals are often used in the work place to inform employees on their work progress. Promotions, bonuses and training needs are often based on the information provided by a performance appraisal. Peripheral Nervous System: The peripheral nervous system controls all voluntary and involuntary muscles and glands. Essentially, the peripheral nervous system contains all your nerves and nerve bundles excluding the brain and spinal cord. Personality: Personality is a person's unique behavioral and cognitive patterns; OR, a person's unique consistent pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. For example, some peoples' personality tends to be shy and introspective while others tend to be outgoing and extroverted. Because personalities, by definition, are stable patterns which cannot be changed easily, there has been great debate between personality theorists and social psychologists about the actual impact of personality on behavior, thought, and emotion. For example if someone is shy, does that mean that they will virtually never act in an outgoing manner? Personality Disorders: People with personality disorders have personalities that are outside social norms. Very often these people are not even aware that their maladaptive behaviors and personalities are so different than those of other members of their society. In addition, these behaviors are personalities are usually so ingrained that the person accepts them as completely normal and has no desire to change them. There are many different personality disorders, including, paranoid personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, schizophrenic personality disorder, and more. Person-Centered Therapy: Created by Carl Rogers, this form of humanistic therapy deals with the ways in which people perceive themselves consciously rather than having a therapist try to interpret unconscious thoughts or ideas. There are many different components and tools used in person-centered therapy including active listening, genuineness, paraphrasing, and more. But the real point is that the client already has the answers to the problems and the job of the therapist is to listen without making any judgments, without giving advice, and simply help the client feel accepted and understand their own feelings. Phallic Stage: One of Freud's five psychosexual stages of development where pleasure is centered around the genital region. The phallic stage is the third stage of development and usually is between ages 3 and 7. It is this stage where the child learns that there is a difference between males and females. Phi Phenomenon: Ah Christmas, such a warm, family-oriented, wonderful time. And a time of visual illusion! One such visual illusion is the phi phenomenon in which lights next to each other blinking on and off in succession appear to actually move. For example, a string of lights across a house appear to "run" even though you know it's just one light turning off and the one next to it turning on and so on down the line. Philosophy: Philosophy can be defined as the investigation (or study) of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods. As this definition suggests, philosphers do not draw conclusions or seek truth by examining observable events (empiricism) but rather by using rationalism -- draeing conclusion by reasoning and logic. In other words, they don't conduct studies, gather data, run tests, and allow the data to guide conclusions, but use reasoning instead. Psychology grew out of philosophy (and physiology). Philosophers grappled with psychological questions hundreds of years ago, such as: how do sensations become mental thoughts? Example - how does the feel of a hand stroking your face become a thought? And then if I ask you to imagine that feeling, can you do so? Phobias: Phobias are unsound or illogical fears of objects or events. It is thought that phobias are learned or conditioned responses from early childhood experiences. For example, I know of a person who is uncontrollably afraid of birds (known as Ornithophobia - not bad, eh?). After speaking about her fear, I found that her mother used to put bird feathers on furniture, in rooms and other areas where she was not allowed. To this day, she refuses to go into pet stores where there are birds or sleep on a down pillow. Her mother unknowingly conditioned her to believing that birds are dangerous! Phobic Disorder: A person with a phobia, technically has a phobic disorder. For example, if a person is uncontrollably afraid of birds (Ornithophobia) they might be diagnosed with the phobic disorder, Ornithophobia. Phonemes: Phonemes are sets of basic sounds (in fact, the smallest set of sounds) that are the building blocks to all spoken language. Unlike morphemes, phonemes are not units of speech that convey meaning when used in isolation. Phrenology: At one point in time, psychologists believed that behavioral characteristics of humans could be described by measuring the bumps on their heads. The technique was established by Francis Gall in the early 1800's and, as you can imagine, it didn't last long as he couldn't establish solid results. However, it did set the stage for later developments and approaches to measuring specific areas of the brain (so it wasn't all bad). Pituitary Gland: The pituitary gland, which is part of the endocrine system, is a small structure located just below the hypothalamus. This is a very influential gland releases hormones that affect your growth as well as influencing the activities of other glands. For this reason the pituitary gland is often referred to as the master gland. Placebo (placebo effect): A placebo is any substance that is not known to have any pharmacological effects (produces no meaningful changes in an oranism, either chemical, biological, etc.) that is made to look like an active ("real") drug. Sometimes the act of taking a pill produces an effect if the person believes the pill is active. To compensate for this, scientists often give placebos to determine if an effect is due to the "real" drug or from the act of just taking a pill. For additional information, see Control Condition. Pleasure Principle: The principle in which the id operates on. According to Freud, the id is the part of your personality that wants instant gratification of what you desire. The id is unconcerned with the consequences of acting on these urges as long as it obtains total gratification immediately. It is fair to say that discomfort is not one of the id's strong points and only operates on one principle: pleasure. Pollyannaish: Someone who is pollyannaish is very upbeat and/or optimistic. Sometimes people can seem unrealistically optimistic, even in the face of really negative events. This is a problem when the optimimism seems inappropriate or socially abnormal (outisde the norm for your society or culture). But in general, being pollyannaish is just a form of being highly optimistic. Pons: One of the structures located in the lower brain stem just above the spinal cord. Pons act as a major pathway for motor and sensory information between the body and higher level brain functioning. Population: When conducting research there are lots of factors to consider. Psychologists may want to study, for example, the effect of some new test on all college students, but this is obviously not possible. Instead, what they do is test on a sample or a smaller group of college students. In this example, everyone who could possibly be a participant in the study (meaning, all college students) is part of the population. College students would be the population the researcher wants to study and from which they select a sample. Positive Regard: According to Carl Rogers, people have two fundamental psychological needs, positive self regard and self-actualization. Positive self regard refers to the need for love, affection, and respect from other people. Rogers concluded that most people seem to satisfy this need in a reasonable manner. Positive Reinforcement: A stimulus which increases the frequency of a particular behavior using pleasant rewards. A doggy treat can pleasantly coerce your new puppy to sit (positive reinforcement) just as a pull to the choke collar can achieve the same affect (negative reinforcement). The difference is that the positive reinforcer is pleasant, but make sure you understand that both increase the frequency of the behavior! Positron Emission Tomography (PET): Positron emission tomography (PET), which is similar to the MRI, is a scanning method that enables psychologists and doctors to study the brain (or any other living tissue) without surgery. PET scans use radioactive glucose (instead of a strong magnetic field) to help study activity and locate structures in the body. Postconventional Level: Postconventional level is the third and final level of Kohlberg's moral development taxonomy where individuals enter the highest level of morale development. People who have reached this stage of development are concerned with the innate rights of humans and guided by their own ethical principles. An individual in this stage of development may believe it acceptable to steal experimental animals in order to save the animals' lives. They believe it to be the moral thing to do even though they are breaking state and federal laws. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychological disorder where individuals suffer nightmares and other types of emotional distress from a traumatic past experience or set of experiences. Stimulus that reminds them of the event or events can cause flashbacks and irritability. Preconscious: The preconscious, according to Freud, is the area that lies between conscious awareness and the unconscious. When thoughts are in the preconscious they are not at the conscious level nor are they buried in the unconscious but they are in between and can be retrieved or called into consciousness. According to Freud, this is an area where thoughts stay temporarily, not permanently. Preconventional Level: The first level of Kohlberg's moral development taxonomy where individuals' ethical principles are guided by the consequences of the action and the benefit awarded to him or herself. At this level of development, a child may not take a piece of candy from another because he or she is afraid of being punished opposed to being guided by feelings of morality or an understanding of the law. Predictive Validity: The relationship between test scores and later performance on a knowledge, skill or ability. SATs are said to have predictive validity; that is, there is a relationship between scores on the SAT and an individual's performance in college. The higher the predictive validity, the more useful the test. Prejudice: There are many different definitions or ideas about prejudice, but let's make this simple. Prejudice is a negative, usually unjustified attitude directed toward people simply because they are members of a specific social group. For example, if a person believes that people from Bali are less intelligent than people from Nepal, that person would be prejudice toward those from Bali. Often times prejudice involves broad, sweeping generalizations about others. Premack Principle: This is a principle of operant conditioning originally identified by David Premack in 1965. According to this principle, some behavior that happens reliably (or without interference by a researcher), can be used as a reinforcer for a behavior that occurs less reliably. For example, most children like to watch television--this is a behavior that happens reliably (they learn to like TV all on their own and it is something they will do willingly without any interference from their parents)--and parents often use this behavior to reinforce something children like to do less such as washing dishes. So, some parents might condition children to wash dishes by rewarding dish washing with watching television. I'm not saying that is the right thing to do, only that it is an example of the Premack Principle. Preoperational Stage: The preoperational Stage is one of Piaget's four stages of cognitive development. Infants between the ages of 18 and 24 months acquire the ability to visualize objects and events mentally. Playing house and war games are an example of a children's ability to do this. At 7, the child moves to the next stage: Concrete Operations. Prepositional Reasoning: Piaget suggests that most children enter the final stage of cognitive development around 12 years of age. It is at this time where they begin to develop prepositional reasoning. Prepositional reasoning describes a child's ability to reason about two or more related assertions and understand that words or statements can have a number of different meanings depending on the context it is used. A child at this stage would most likely appreciate a pun whereas a child who hadn't reach this stage of cognitive development would not. Primacy Effect: This is the tendency for the first items presented in a series to be remembered better or more easily, or for them to be more influential than those presented later in the series. If you hear a long list of words, it is more likely that you will remember the words you heard first (at the beginning of the list) than words that occurred in the middle. This is the primacy effect. You should also note that you will be likely to remember words at the end of the list more than words in the middle, and this is called the recency effect. Primary Reinforcer: This is a term used in conditioning, and it refers to anything that provides reinforcement without the need for learning to an organism. This means that the reinforcer is naturally reinforcing to the organism. For example, water is naturally reinforcing because organisms don't need to learn to be reinforced by it, they naturally get reinforced especially in times of being thirsty. Primary Sex Characteristics: Men and women both have have hair on our heads, our face, etc. However, primary sex characteristics are body structures that are specific to sex. Females have ovaries whereas men have testes. These are primary sex characteristics because they are specific to the sex of the person (men typically don't have ovaries) and are related to reproduction. Priming: Priming is an acuteness to stimuli because of exposure to a certain event or experience. For example, an individual who has just purchased a new car may now start to notice with more frequency other people driving her same make and model. This person has been primed to recognize more readily a car like hers because of the experience she has driving and owning one. Privation: This term refers to being deprived of something or being in a state of deprivation. For example, going without water for a couple of days creates a state of privation in which the person is motivated to drink water. Proactive Interference: Difficulty in learning new information because of already existing information. For example, an English speaking person may have greater difficulty learning Spanish because of his or her tendency to want to apply English grammar to the new language. Some people have a harder time learning how to drive an automatic vehicle because of their preexisting knowledge of how to drive a stick shift. The driver may want to use his or her left foot for the break where they are used to having the clutch. The same person may have learned to drive an automatic more easily without his or her knowledge of a standard car. Procedural Memory: Procedural memory is the most basic and primitive form of memory. As the name implies, this is the type of memory we have for "procedures" or for basic associations between stimuli and responses. For example, the process or procedure for riding a bike. Once you've learned this procedure (ie, made the association between the stimulus and appropriate responses) it is stored as a procedural memory. You've learned to respond with the appropriate set of behaviors and adapted properly to your environment. Progressive Error: These are changes in participant responses that are caused by testing in multiple treatment conditions; includes order effects, such as the effects of practice or fatigue. Progressive error can be linear (effects can be plotted as a straight line) or nonlinear (effects can be plotted as a curve). Projection: Projection is one of the defense mechanisms identified by Freud and still acknowledged today. According to Freud, projection is when someone is threatened by or afraid of their own impulses so they attribute these impulses to someone else. For example, a person in psychoanalysis may insist to the therapist that he knows the therapist wants to rape some women, when in fact the client has these awful feelings to rape the woman. Projective Test: A test which requires an individual to respond to indistinct stimuli. The individual's interpretation about the stimuli is meant to reveal aspects of their personality. The Rorschach, which has individuals describe various ambiguous inkblot pictures is a classic example of a projective test. These types of tests usually work the following way: A test taker is presented with a dark circular drawing and is asked to describe what he or she sees. Let us say that the test taker states that it is a basketball, the test scorer may then presume that the individual likes sports and probably favors basketball oppose to tennis or any other sport. This type of reasoning is a primary illustration of how these types of tests work. Prototype: A prototype is the BEST example or cognitive representation of something within a certain category. Prototypes are used to enhance memory and recall, since you can keep a prototype of something and then match new, similar things to the prototype in order to identify, categorize, or store this new thing. For example, if I ask you to imagine a dog, what do you imagine? You may consider a German Shepard your prototype for a dog by which you compare all other dogs. So if you see another dog, you could say that other dog is small (compared to your prototype), heavy, ugly, beautiful, etc. Psychiatrist: A psychiatrist is different from a psychologist in that a psychiatrist has a medical degree (as opposed to a PhD) and can prescribe medications. Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud is the most famous developer of this therapy approach. The therapy concentrates on bringing forward repressed unconscious thoughts. Freud believed that the ego and superego spent a considerable amount of energy to keep these feelings and thoughts repressed. It was this repression and the development of defense mechanism that left these hidden conflicts unresolved. Freud thought that these unresolved conflicts prevented normal psychosexual development, which in turn cause personality disorders. One of his most common techniques to bring these thoughts to the consciousness was the use of free association. Psychoanalytic Perspective (psychoanalytic approach): The psychoanalytic approach focuses on the importance of the unconscious mind (not the conscious mind). In other words, psychoanalytic perspective dictates that behavior is determined by your past experiences that are left in the unconscious mind (people are unaware of them). This perspective is still based on Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective about early experiences being so influential on current behavior, but the focus on sex is not as great. Psychodynamic Perspective: This psychological perspective originated from Freudian psychoanalysis which emphasizes the unconscious components such as conflicts, instinctual energies, etc. Many of Freud’s students of psychoanalysis broke off and went their own way, but kept the main aspect of psychoanalysis (the unconscious). As a result, the term psychodynamic is a more general term that incorporates all of these components, but keeps the unconscious as a primary element. The more hard line, scientifically focused psychologists often dismiss this perspective specifically because of the emphasis on the unconscious – their claim is, since you can’t observe it, you can’t measure it, so how can it be science. You be the judge. Psychology: The study of an organism's thoughts, feelings, and behavior and how these processes are effected by the environment, physical states, and mental states. The questions that psychology tries to answer are often complex and concern many different variables. Psychopathology: I wish I could come up with a really new and clever way of describing this, but it is simply the study of psychological disorders. Many people confuse psychopathology with "psychology" itself. However, there is more to psychology than illnesses or disorders that I can even begin to describe. But there are many professionals that actually study psychological disorders (what they are, where they come from, how do we classify them, etc.)...this is psychopathology. Psychophysics: Fechner started this area of psychology that addresses the relationship between psychological experiences and physical energy. A psychophysicist might look at the speed at which electrical impulses travel from the brain to the limbs, or how we perceive different light waves. Psychophysiological Illness: There is a strong connection between mind and body. Most people are quick to recognize this when we speak about information traveling from the brain to body parts and other such events. However, when asked if the brain can create illnesses, many people say no. However, psychophysiological illnesses, which include any stress-related physical illnesses, are very real. Some examples of these include ulcers, headaches, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. Remember, the mind controls hormones, chemicals in our bodies, etc., so if the mind tells glands to release certain chemicals that may be harmful to us, the body does it and we pay the price. Psychoses: Psychoses is a severe mental disorder in which the person experiences delusions, hallucinations, breaks from reality, and a variety of other extreme behavioral disturbances. This is severe enough that the person typically has to be institutionalized. Psychosexual Stages of Development: Freud believed there to be five stages of psychosexual development: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent and Genital. At each of these stages, pleasure is focused on a particular part of the body. Too much or too little pleasure in any one of these stages caused a fixation which would lead to personality or psychological disorders. For example, too much pleasure in the phallic stage could lead to obsessive masturbation and sexual dysfunction as an adult. Psychosocial Development: Erikson's theory of psychosocial development includes eight stages of development. At each stage there is a different and specific conflict that the individual must resolve in order to move to the next stage of development. If the person is unable to resolve a conflict at a particular stage, they will confront and struggle with it later in life. According to Schultz and Schultz (1987), "The person is faced with a choice between two ways of coping with each crisis, an adaptive or maladaptive way. Only when each crisis is resolved, which involves a change in the personality, does the person have sufficient strength to deal with the next stages of development". So you see, this theory is based on encountering and resolving conflicts, which helps the person establish a sense of identity and move from one developmental stage to the next. It's important to note that this theory of development removes the emphasis on sex, like Freud's psychosexual theory of development has. Psychosomatic: I find this to be a really interesting concept because people often have such incorrect ideas about it. I have often heard people say, "you're not really sick...it's psychosomatic." Or when I suggest that some problem they're having is psychosomatic they respond by saying, "Oh no, the pain (or whatever the symptoms are) are real." These responses imply that psychosomatic means fake and that there are no real symptoms or illnesses. However, a psychosomatic illness or symptom is indeed real...very real, but is brought on by mental processes. In other words, a psychosomatic illness is an illness that is brought on by the mind and not from a virus, bacteria, injury, etc. For example, many people experience stomach pains when they are dealing with a stressful mental situation (e.g., getting all worked up before a really important test). These stomach pains are absolutely real, as are the chemical reactions occurring in the body as a result of the person's thought process (thinking about the test). But, the stomach pains are not caused by some stomach infection or air born virus, but rather the process of thinking about the stressful event which in turn triggers all sorts of chemical and biological events to happen and eventually cause the stomach pain. Remember, psychosomatic pains, illnesses, etc. are very real, but are brought on by thought or the mind rather than bacteria, injury, etc. Psychosurgery: A method to cure psychological disorders through brain surgery. One of the more salient examples of psychosurgery (and one that's seen most often in movies) was the use of prefrontal lobotomies often done in the 1940s and 1950s to reduce aggressive behavior in people with mental illnesses. Psychosurgery has a long history and may have started as far back as 40,000 years ago when it was done to get rid of demons or the "stone of madness" (it was believed that there was some little part of the brain responsible for mental illness so if you just cut that part out you cured the patient). In 1894 the first "rational" (or scientific) psychosurgery was conducted by a Swiss surgeon. Today psychosurgery is still done but it's radically different; today it involves lasers, very precise work on specific areas of the brain, and can be done without opening the skull Psychotherapy: When people talk or think about psychological therapy, they are really referring to psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is any type of therapeutic situation between a trained professional and someone seeking help. There are more than 250 different types but the most well known are psychoanlysis, humanistic, behavior therapy, and cognitive therapy. Punishment: Any stimulus that represses a behavior. It is important to note that punishment is not the same as negative reinforcement. Is failing a test negative reinforcement or punishment? If it motivates you to study more it is negative reinforcement (i.e., it increases the behavior of studying). However, if you feel that studying is actually hurting your performance (due to, for example, test anxiety) you will perceive that failing the test was due to studying too hard. Next time, you will not study (i.e., decrease your behavior) so that you will not be punished for it. Now you just need to convince your professor that bad grades are actually causing you to study less. Pupil: The opening in your eye that allows light to enter. The light then hits your neural receptors which transforms the stimulus into neural impulses which can be interpreted by your brain (mainly, the occipital lobe).
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