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| The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior. |
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| Every nongenetic influence, from prenatal nutrition to the people and things around us. |
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| Threadlike structures made of DNA molecules that contain the genes. |
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| DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) |
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| A complex molecule containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes. |
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| The biochemical units of heredity that make up the chromosomes; a segment of DNA capably of synthesizing a protein. |
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| The complete instructions for making an organism, consisting of all the genetic material in that organism's chromosomes. |
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| Twins who develop from a single fertilized egg that splits in two, creating two genetically identical organisms. |
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| Twins who develop from separate fertilized eggs. They are genetically no close than brothers and sisters, but they share a fetal environment. |
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| A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity. |
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| The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied. |
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| The interplay that occurs when the effect of one factor (such as environment) depends on another factor (such as heredity). |
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| The subfield of biology that studies the molecular structure and function of genes. |
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| The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection. |
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| The principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those that lead to increased reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations. |
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| A random error in gene replication that leads to a change. |
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| In psychology, the biologically and socially influenced characteristics by which people determine male and female. |
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| The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. |
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| An understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. Norms prescribe "proper" behavior. |
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| The buffer we like to maintain around our bodies. |
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| Giving priority to one's own goals over group goals and defining one's identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications. |
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| Giving priority to goals of one's group (often one's extended family or work group) and defining one's identity accordingly. |
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| Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone. |
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| The sex chromosome found in both men and women. Females have two X chromosomes; males have one. An X chromosome from each parent produces a female child. |
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| The sex chromosome found only in males. When paired with an X chromosome from the mother, it produces a male child. |
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| The most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males simulates the growth of male sex organs in the fetus and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty. |
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| A set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave. |
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| A set of expected behaviors for males or for females. |
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| Our sense of being male or female. |
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| The acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role. |
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| The theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished. |
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| Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience. |
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| All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. |
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| A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. |
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| Interpreting our new experience in terms of our existing schemas. |
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| Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information. |
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| In Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities. |
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| The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived. |
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| In Piaget's theory, the stage (from 2 to about 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. |
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| concrete operational stage |
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| In Piaget's theory, the stage (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that allow them to think logically about concrete concepts. |
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| In Piaget's theory, the stage (from 12 years of age to adulthood) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. |
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| The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects. |
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| In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view. |
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| People's ideas about their own and other's mental states - about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict. |
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| The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age. |
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| An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on seperation. |
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| An optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development. |
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| The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life. |
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| According to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caretakers. |
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| Our understanding and evaluation of who we are. |
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| The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence. |
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| The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing. |
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| primary sex characteristics |
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| The body structures that make sexual reproduction possible. |
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| secondary sex characteristics |
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Definition
| Non-reproductive sexual characteristics such as female hips, male voice quality, and so forth. |
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| authoritarian parenting style |
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| These parents impose rules and expect strict obedience. |
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| permissive parenting style |
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| These parents submit to their children'd desires. They make few demands and use little punishment. |
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| authoritative parenting style |
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| These parents are both demanding and responsive. They exert control by setting rules and enforcing them, but they also explain the reasons for rules. Especially with older children, they encourage open discussion when making the rules and allow exceptions. |
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| neglectful parenting style |
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| These parents pay little to no attention to their children, either in the way of care or of exerting authority. |
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| The first menstrual period. |
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| Before age 9, most children's morality focuses on self-interest, obeying rules to avoid punishment and gain reward. |
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| By early adolescence, morality focuses on caring for others and on upholding laws and social rules, simply because they are the laws and rules. |
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| postconventional morality |
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| With the abstract reasoning of formal operational thought, people reach a third level of moral thought. Actions are "right" because they flow from people's rights or from self-defined, basic ethical principles. |
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| Our sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles. |
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| The "we" aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to "Who am I?" that comes from our group memberships. |
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| In Erikson's theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood. |
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| For some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to early twenties, bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible adulthood. |
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| The time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines. |
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| A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another. |
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| Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period. |
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| crystallized intelligence |
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| Our accumulated knowledge and skills; tends to increase with age. |
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| Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood. |
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| The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement. |
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| Deviant, distressful, and dysfunctional patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. |
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Term
| attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) |
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Definition
| A psychological disorder marked by the appearance by age 7 of one or more of three key symptoms: extreme inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. |
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| The concept that diseases, in this case psychological disorders, have physical causes that can be diagnosed, treated, and in most cases cured, often through treatment in a hospital. |
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| The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, with an updated "text revision"; a widely used system for classifying psychological disorders. |
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| Treatment involving psychological techniques; consists of interactions between a trained therapist and someone seeking to overcome psychological difficulties or achieve personal growth. |
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| An approach to psychotherapy that, depending on the client's problems, uses techniques from various forms of therapy. |
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| Sigmund Freud's therapeutic technique. Freud believed the patient's free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences - and the therapists's interpretations of them - released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight. |
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| In psychoanalysis, the blocking from consciousness of anxiety-laden material. |
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| In psychoanalysis, the analyst's noting supposed dream meanings, resistances, and other significant behaviors and events in order to promote insight. |
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| In psychoanalysis, the patient's transfer to the analyst of emotions linked with other relationships (such as love or hatred for a parent). |
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| Therapy deriving from the psychoanalytic tradition that views individuals as responding to unconscious forces and childhood experiences, and that seeks to enhance self-insight. |
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| A variety of therapies which aim to improve psychological functioning by increasing the client's awareness of underlying motives and defenses. |
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| A humanistic therapy, developed by Carl Rogers, in which the therapist uses techniques such as active listening within a genuine accepting, empathic environment to facilitate client's growth. (Also called person-centered therapy.) |
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| Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies. A feature of Roger's client-centered therapy. |
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| unconditional positive regard |
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| A caring, accepting, nonjudgemental attitude, which Carl Rogers believed to be conducive to developing self-awareness and self-acceptance. |
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| Therapy that applies learning principles to the elimination of unwanted behaviors. |
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| A behavior therapy procedure that uses classical conditioning to evoke new responses to stimuli that are triggering unwanted behaviors; includes exposure therapies and aversive conditioning. |
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| Behavior techniques, such as systematic desensitization, that treat anxieties by exposing people (in imagination or actuality) to the things they fear and avoid. |
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| systematic desensitization |
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| A type of exposure therapy that associates a pleasant relaxed stage with gradually increasing anxiety-triggering stimuli. Commonly used to treat phobias. |
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| virtual reality exposure therapy |
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| An anxiety treatment that progressively exposes people to simulations of their greatest fears, such as airplane flying, spiders, or public speaking. |
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| A type of counterconditioning that associates an unpleasant state (such as nausea) with an unwanted behavior (such as drinking alcohol). |
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| An operant conditioning procedure in which people earn a token of some sort for exhibiting a desired behavior and can later exchange the tokens for various privileges or treats. |
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| Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting; based on the assumption that thoughts intervene between events and our emotional reactions. |
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| cognitive-behavior therapy |
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| A popular integrative therapy that combines congitive therapy (changing self-defeating thinking) with behavior therapy (changing behavior). |
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| Therapy that treats the family as a system. Views an individual's unwanted behaviors as influenced by, or directed at, other family members. |
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