Biological Bases of Behavior
Researchers found that prolonged exposure to blue light in the evening increased melatonin suppression and disturbed the participants' usual sleep-wake cycle.
Circadian Rhythm
Evidence shows that the ability to encode long-term memories develops around the age of 1. Therefore, scientists hypothesize that the inability of adults to remember episodic memories from infancy is due to postencoding mechanisms, whereby these memories become inaccessible for retrieval.
Infantile Amnesia
Recent research has revealed that human infants become attached to familiar caregivers, usually parents, who not only provide them with nourishment but also a soft, warm, reassuring environment where the baby feels safe and secure. The more comforting and frequent the interactions between cargiver and infant, the stronger the emotional relationship.
Attachment
The research reported here was conducted to illustrate how emotional responses unfold over time. A facial emotional expression (e.g., a disgusted face) activates a response that is similar to responses to other emotional stimuli of the same valence (e.g., a dirty, nonflushed toilet). In addition, moral violations (e.g., social injustice) and physical disgust both elicit similar physiological responses, such as facial EMG changes and autonomic reactions.
Elicitors
Research suggests that persistant difficulty discarding possessions regardless of value is maintained by maladaptive beliefs (e.g., "I might need this later"), information-processing deficits (problems with categorization/decision-making), and emotional avoidance of distress caused by discarding.
Hoarding Disorder
Participants that experienced prolonged periods of NREM 1 sleep reported increased strange voices, nightmares, dreamlike imagery, and the sensation of falling through space.
Hypnagogic Hallucinations
Imagination Inflation
Research indicates that the rigidity of expectations regarding developmental timing varies by culture, with studies finding it more stringent in China compared to the United States, often linked to Confucian values like filial piety. Being "off-time" (e.g., marrying later or earlier than peers) is associated with higher stress and potential social disapproval.
Social Clock
The results of this study indicate that, for about 40% of youth during early adolescence, the need for intense sensations and risk-taking behavior is relatively stable, whereas for the majority of the sample (60%) levels of risk-taking behavior are moderate and show increases during the middle school years.
Sensation Seeking
These findings suggest that addressing the source of emotional problems directly increases psychological wellbeing in a proactive and planned manner. This supports the finding that cognitive functioning is strongly associated with life satisfaction and positive emotions.
Problem-Focused Coping
Participants who had trouble differentiating red/green or blue/yellow were found to only have two functioning types of cones in their retina.
Dichromatism
Research shows that while people can perform two tasks simultaneously (one visual, one verbal), they struggle when both tasks require the same subordinate system, suggesting the presence of a supervisory system that allocates limited working memory resources.
Central Executive
Easy babies are cheerful, relaxed, and follow predictable patterns of eating and sleeping, while difficult babies are irritable, intense, and unpredictable. In general, easy babies tend to become sociable children, and difficult babies tend to become less sociable children. How the primary caregiver responds to the baby affects how the baby will react to an extent. Jerome Kagan showed that shy, inhibited babies can become more relaxed and less fearful with responsive parenting.
Temperament
This finding indicates that positive emotions in young children lead to higher levels of prosocial behavior and flexible thinking.
Broaden-and-Build Theory
Role of culture has been studied in disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression, anxiety disorders and attention deficit hyperactive disorder. In the context of psychiatric disorders, cultural influence is evident at multiple levels. First, culture and society shape the meanings and expressions people give to various emotions. Second, cultural factors determine which symptoms or signs are normal or abnormal. Third, culture helps define what comprises health and illness. Finally, it shapes the illness behavior and help seeking behavior.
Culture-bound Disorders
Recent studies on Alzheimer's Disease suggest that pathogenesis might involve harmful secretions from cells that normally support neuron function. These "helpers" make up roughly 50% of our brain's cells.
Glial Cells
Participants who mentally rehearsed the given series of nonsense sounds were able to recall them significantly batter than participants who did not.
Phonological Loop
Childhood trauma (abuse, neglect, household dysfunction) is strongly linked to chronic diseases, mental illness, and leading causes of death in adulthood. The number of types of trauma directly correlates with increased risk for severe health issues, including a potential 20-year reduction in lifespan for those with 6 or more.
Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE)
Small but significant gender differences in emotion expressions have been reported for adults, with women showing greater emotional expressivity, especially for positive emotions and internalizing negative emotions such as sadness.
Display Rules
Studies show utilizing top "signature strengths" enhances well-being, resilience, and job satisfaction, with over 1,000 studies validating their impact on health and positive functioning. Additionally, research indicates that strengths like curiosity, self-regulation, and zest are positively associated with healthy diets, exercise, and better self-care.
Character Strengths
Participants with abnormally low levels of acetylcholine and enlarged thymus glands exhibited muscle weakness, including drooping eyelids, trouble swallowing, and difficulty in maintaining facial expressions.
Myasthenia Gravis
Across a series of studies we consistently obtained the same result: disruption of visual, verbal or executive components of working memory, all impaired overall performance. However, in none of the cases was the capacity to bind features into episodes itself impaired by concurrent working memory tasks. We concluded first of all that the multidimensional buffer system appeared to be able to input information directly from any of a number of sources including not only visual and verbal stimuli, but also directly from long-term semantic and episodic memory.
Episodic Buffer
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory
Participants who compared themselves to someone superior were more motivated to improve than participants who did not, but also felt more inadequate, envious, and dissatisfied. Meanwhile, participants who compared themselves to those who were worse off exhibited improved self-esteem and a more positive attitude about their own situation.
Social Comparison Theory
Survey-based studies found that nursing home residents who exhibited less anger, engaged with hobbies and activities, and maintained stronger relationships with friends and family tended to have higher psychological well-being over time.
PERMA Model of Well-being