Abnormal Psychology
A personality disorder in which sufferers exhibit overly dramatic behaviors
What is histrionic personality disorder?
The primary technique of psychoanalysis, this involves saying whatever comes to mind without thinking
What is free association?
This occurs when people tend to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors and underestimate the role of situational factors
What is the fundamental attribution error?
The fatty covering around the axon of some neurons that speeds neural impulses
What is the myelin sheath
Decreasing responsiveness to stimuli due to constant stimulation
What is sensory adaptation?
A disorder involving flashbacks or nightmares following a person's involvement in or observation of an extremely troubling event such as war or natural disaster
What is post-traumatic stress disorder?
A type of behavioral therapy in which desired behaviors are identified and rewarded with items of no value of their own that can be exchanged for various objects or privileges
What is a token economy?
The tendency of a group's views to get stronger during group discussions, which may lead to more extreme decisions
What is group polarization?
The part of the brain responsible for receiving the sensory signals coming up the spinal cord and sending them to the appropriate areas in the the rest of the forebrain
What is the thalamus?
The curved and flexible part of the eye that focuses the light that enters the pupil
What is the lens?
This disorder was formerly known as multiple personality disorder
What is dissociative identity disorder?
With examples the Thorazine and Haldol, this class of drugs is often used to treat schizophrenia
What are antipsychotic drugs?
A strategy to get others to comply in which getting people to agree to a small request leads to greater chance that they will agree to a larger follow-up request
What is the foot-in-the-door technique?
The ability of parts of the brain to adapt themselves to perform other functions if needed
What is brain plasticity?
Another name for taste, this occurs when taste buds on the tongue absorb chemicals from the food we eat
What is gustation?
This hypothesis is named for the neurotransmitter that is often at a high level in people with schizophrenia
What is the dopamine hypothesis?
A humanistic therapy that focuses on helping clients achieve a subjectively meaningful perception of their lives
What is existential therapy?
Lack of this neurotransmitter associated with motor movement is often associated with Alzheimer's disease
What is acetylcholine?
A theory of color vision that states that the sensory receptors arranged in the retina come in pairs: red/green pairs, yellow/blue pairs, and black/white pairs
What is the opponent-process theory?
The fear of open, public spaces
What is agoraphobia?
A type of behavioral therapy in which a client is exposed gradually to an anxiety hierarchy, a rank-ordered list of what the client fears
What is systematic desensitization?
The tendency for people from one culture become so used to their own culture that they see it as the norm and use it as a standard by which to judge other cultures
What is ethnocentrism?
These are neurotransmitters associated with pain control that are also involved in drug addictions
What are endorphins?
A set of rules that describe the principles that govern how we perceive groups of objects, for example, proximity, similarity, and closure
What are gestalt rules?