A
abduction in conditional reasoning, the generation of an explanation for an event, taken from a theory of how the world works, the plausibility of which depends in large part on the number and the likelihood of the alternative explanations.
abstract identifications a category in the analysis of responses to the ‘Who Am I?’, which includes self-descriptions that are too abstract or general to constitute social identity elements (e.g. a human being).
accentuation theory one of a variety of social cog-nition theories, which suggests that when other people’s attitudes differ from our own, we tend to exaggerate the difference between them.
action potential the brief, all-or-nothing change in membrane potential that constitutes a single response in a neurone.
actor-observer difference in the study of the attribution process, the tendency for actors to attribute their behaviour to the situation and for observers to attribute the actor’s behaviour to dispositions.
actualizing the self an explanation of individual behaviour as being a striving to fulfil, where self-image is a key filter which can either be in harmony with the organism or in opposition.
adult attachment interview a type of interview devised to probe adults’ memories of their own childhood experiences and relationships with their parents, and from which four basic classifications of parenting styles have been defined.
advice an ethical obligation on the part of trained psychologists to offer qualified help to participants in an observational study when evidence of mental of physical problems arise in relation to them.
aesthetics of place in environmental psychology, the physical appearance of particular behavioural settings which affect the behaviour of those living within them.
affect in environmental psychology, an individual’s emotional response to the environment, which is predicted by the naturalness of the place; its upkeep, openness, order; and historical significance.
affordances in environmental psychology, the kinds of activities that a place permits or encourages in those living within them.
agonist a psychoactive drug which when it acts on the synapse between neurones facilitates postsynaptic events.
albedo see surface reflectance
algorithmic method a method for solving problems, which, in contrast to heuristics, will always find a solution, if there is one, but which may be very slow.
altruism in human and animal behaviour, the tendency to act in ways that benefit other individuals more than oneself, sometimes even where there is a real cost involved to the giver.
Alzheimer’s disease the most common form of senile dementia, a disease which usually manifests itself in old age, but which can also occur prematurely, and is related to certain, possibly genetic, abnormalities and degeneration in brain tissue.
ambiguous figure a kind of visual illusion in which a picture can be seen in two different ways, where the percept usually flips between the two alternative interpretations.
amnesia loss of memory syndrome, characterised by intact LTS and preserved procedural memory and which is caused by damage to one of two specific brain regions, the temporal lobes or the diencephalon.
amniotic sac a kind of water bed inside the female uterus in which the human embryo develops into a fetus and which cushions the embryo, keeping it at a constant temperature.
amygdala an almond-shaped group of cells in the temporal lobes of the brain, which is a major part of the limbic system that controls the emotions.
analogical mapping in problem solving, the use of the solution of another problem as a pattern, by establishing a mapping between the domains from which the problems are drawn – the source (or base) domain – and the target domain.
analogical reasoning in the study of intelligence, a form of problem solving involving the comparison of similarities between pairs, often in the form of pictures.
analogical storing in environmental cognition, a method for storing spatial information as an internal spatial representation – i.e. in the head.
analysis by synthesis an extreme form of top-down processing, most often applied to speech perception, in which the listener is thought to make sense of the speech waveform by attempting mentally to produce the same sounds as the speaker.
anchoring and adjustment one of three types of heuristic which is based on the idea that people often make estimates, of probabilities among other things, by taking an initial value, or anchor, and adjusting it. See also availability, representativeness.
anonymity in the study of crowds, the lack of identification of the individual which leads them to act in a less social or responsible way than they otherwise would.
antagonist a psychoactive drug that acts on the synapse between neurones and blocks the action of another drug
architecture for cognition (ACT*) a model which provides for a complete framework for the ‘Adaptive Control of Thought’. The most recent model, ACT-R (Rational ACT) has a computer implementation that allows experimentation on how people learn to act and think.
Area 17 the primary visual cortex.
artificial neural network a means of investigating learning in a way that is more ‘brain-like’ than traditional, symbolic, approaches, and which has many different possible types, each with different learning rules.
aschematics in experiments in self-concept formation, those people who do not possess a self-schema in a particular domain. See also schematics.
ascribed characteristics a system for analysing responses to the ‘Who Am I?, which outlines 30 categ-ories of responses under eight broad headings referring to social identity elements.
assimilation-contrast theory one of a variety of social cognition theories which suggests that when other people hold attitudes similar to our own we tend to exaggerate the similarity.
association cortex one of several areas in the frontal region of the brain, occupying the temporal, occipital and parietal lobes which receives information from sensory cortical areas as well as other association areas.
atmosphere hypothesis in syllogistic reasoning, an hypothesis for accounting for errors made when subjects are asked to assess conclusions presented to them, rather than to generate conclusions of their own.
attachment behaviours a preferential system of approaching and interacting with familiar care givers, also known as proximity-maintaining behaviours, such as crying and clinging, which the infant develops in the first nine months of its life.
attachment figure the primary care giver recognized by the infant as part of its behavioural system, with whom it maintains proximity by crying or reaching out, and with whom it feels secure.
attachment theory an analytical attempt to explain the various factors that bind people to another in emotional terms, primarily that attachment first established in infancy between the baby and its mother or primary care giver, which is seen as forming the later expectation experienced by the adult in their relationships with others.
attachment to places in environmental cognition, the development and maintenance of personal and social well-being through identification with particular places.
attention to the other in the dyad, the interpretation of the output from the other.
attitude accessibility model in the evaluation of social attitudes, an approach which stresses the evaluative component of attitudes as a learned association between an entity and its evaluation, which is stored in memory.
attribution of a disposition in correspondent inference theory, the second of a two-stage process, when observers determine whether a person has a disposition which gives rise to a particular intention. See also attribution of intent.
attribution of intent in correspondent inference theory, the first of a two-stage process, when observers infer the intention of the person performing a particular behaviour. See also attribution of a disposition
attribution theory in the psychology of personality, an explanation of social behaviour by attributing to it the core characteristics of the individual rather than the specifics of the situation they might be in.
attributional processes in applied psychology, how individuals assign causal meaning to events.
auditory nerve the nerve that carries information from the ear to the brain.
automaticity the property of performance of a skill that makes it no longer depend upon effortful, conscious monitoring, such as learning to drive a car or other cognitive skills like reading or playing chess.
autonomic nervous system a self-governing system within the peripheral nervous system which helps regulate the internal environment of the body, receiving information from and sending commands to the heart, intestines and other organs in order to regulate vital bodily functions.
autoreceptor a site located on the synaptic bouton from which monoamine transmitters are released into the synaptic gap of the brain.
availability one of three types of heuristic, according to which the probability of an event, or of an item having a property, is judged by the ease with which instances can be brought to mind – their availability from memory. See also representativeness, anchoring and adjustment.
axon a prominent, branched fibre attached to the cell body.
babble the first stage in the infant’s progress towards speech production, highlighted by the playful production of universally recognizable single-consonant and vowel-like sounds and repetitive syllable strings.
background firing rate most neurones are not ‘silent’, but respond spontaneously with a background, or resting, rate of action potentials, even when not directly stimulated.
basal ganglia a collective name for a set of structures located around the thalamus, also known as the putamen and globus pallidus, that are part of the motor control mechanism of the brain.
base rates those rates of occurrence of a phenomenon which need to be taken into account in order to determine the diagnosticity of evidence.
basilar membrane the part of the cochlea of the inner ear responsible for breaking down incoming sound waveforms into their harmonic components.
behaviour setting in environmental psychology, those aspects of a sociophysical environment with which the individual interacts, such as other people and inanimate objects.
behavioural intention in the explanation of social attitudes, the tendency to act towards the entity in a particular way.
belief in the explanation of social attitudes, the cognitive component of the person’s overall evaluation of an entity.
bias in the consideration of arguments, an inability to allow all possible arguments about an issue, thus considering mainly or only the arguments on one side of a particular case.
the Big Five the five major personality dimensions, defined by various theorists, which are now generally applied in research on personality traits.
binaural comparison comparison of the responses in the two ears, which is particularly important in location the direction of sound sources.
Binet-Simon scale in intelligence testing, a system of 30 tests in a scale of increasing difficulty as a way of measuring the child’s scholastic performance in comparison with expected levels of performance of other children of the same age.
binocular disparity the small positional differences in the images formed in the two eyes which arise because they have slightly different viewpoints on the world.
binocular stereopsis literally ‘two-eyed sold vision’, this is the process of using binocular disparity to recover information about the relative distance of objects.
binocularly-driven cell a cell with a receptive field in each of the eyes, which will thus respond to appropriate stimulation of either eye.
biological motion the stimulus motion produced by animate things which is most often used to refer to particular moving stimuli, where the movement of a person in represented only by a few lights attached to the major joints.
biomedical approach a psychological approach to abnormality which emphasizes both qualitative and quantitative differences in order to ascertain what is underlying a particular symptom or deviation of a diagnostic sign.
biopsychosocial model a theoretical model applied to the diagnosis of physical and mental-health problems.
bipolar cell a type of retinal cell that connects retinal receptor cells to retinal ganglion cells.
bipolar depression also known as manic depression, a severe form of depression where the sufferer alternates between periods of depression and mania, and during the manic phase is irritable, overactive and shows extreme recklessness.
birth one of the two points in child development where change is relatively sudden, in this case where the child reaches the outside world after being in the womb for nine months.
body-image in self-descriptions, a person’s perceptions of their own body, which may involve either neutral descriptions relating to height, weight, etc., or evaluative judgements of appearance.
bottom-up processing a type of information processing which is thought to progress from a simple description of the stimulus (e.g. the image) to a more complex description of the external world (i.e. a perceptual model).
brightness the perceived amount of light in a scene, corresponding roughly to the level of physical illumination. See also surface lightness.
Broca’s aphasia a condition, described by the French surgeon, Paul Broca, where people have slow and stilted speech as a result of a dysfunction in the precentral gyrus responsible for organizing speech output.
bullying persistent aggressive behaviour directed towards a particular victim, particularly children at school, who cannot retaliate effectively.
canalization the strongly pre-determined process of pre-natal growth in the womb which gives clear genetic instructions for the zygote to differentiate into the embryo.
case grammar a form of semantic grammar which represents the semantic roles of phrases using semantic cases such as agents, objects and instruments.
case study a detailed study of one particular example of a phenomenon which involves in-depth analysis of a particular individual’s behaviour.
central nervous system (CNS) one of the two major divisions of the body’s nervous system, which is comprised of the brain and the spinal cord. See also peripheral nervous systems.
centre subregion one of two concentric, circular regions which make up the receptive fields of retinal ganglion cells and which are of opposite sign (excitatory or inhibitory) and exhibit lateral inhibition.
cerebellum meaning literally ‘little brain’ the large and richly connected structure at the back of the brain, located under the cerebrum, that links with other sub-cortical structures and with areas of the cerebral cortex to produce finely controlled motor skills – particularly in quick-reaction sports which require rapid movements.
cerebro-spinal fluid a plasma filtrate that is secreted from the capillaries of the ventricles of the brain and other blood vessels and circulates around these and other cavities.
cerebrum the two major hemispheres of the brain, which dominate its external appearance and control all voluntary motor activity and higher mental functions.
child-directed speech (CDS) a term, formerly called Motherese, to describe the short, fluent, grammatically correct utterances, with enhanced intonation, by which mothers, other adults and older children help toddlers to learn language.
cisterna a structure which contains the synaptic vesicles and from which bits of vesicle membrane are pinched off.
cistron a piece of DNA, often also called a gene.
cladistic taxonomy a classification scheme applied to primates, which uses the possession of shared, derived features as a way of defining groups.
classical conditioning the way in which an infant, during its development, learns to associate one event with another. The term is derived from procedures first introduced by Pavlov in his experimentation with dogs, in which a Conditional Stimulus (a bell) was paired with an Unconditional Stimulus (salivating) in order to elicit a response (known as the Conditioned Response), in this case that of the dog salivating even when the bell was sounded without food.
client-centred therapy also known as person centred or Rogerian therapy, a form of therapy which brings the client’s personal needs into action, viewing the client as intrinsically good and offering a sense of unconditional acceptance and regard for them.
co-actor one of two individuals performing the same task within the same space.
cochlea the main organ of the inner ear, responsible for the initial analysis of sound waveforms.
cocktail party phenomenon the ability to attend to a single conversation in a crowded room; an example of stimulus segmentation.
codon a triplet of bases along DNA which build amino acids.
coefficient of relatedness in sociobiology, the average proportion of genes that are shared between family members.
cognitive-social approach to personality in personality studies, an approach to the study of behaviour which emphasizes the individual’s expectations and hypotheses about the social world.
colour circle a simple way of illustrating how perceived hue and saturation depend upon the wavelength and spectral composition of a light and which can be used to predict the perceived colour of mixtures of monochromatic light. See also colour solid.
colour constancy the perceptual phenomenon by which the perceived colour of a surface remains constant despite variations in the spectral composition of the light that it reflects.
colour solid an extension of the colour circle which adds the dimension of perceived brightness.
comparative method an approach applied in socio-biology, where the distribution of a particular bodily feature among a living species is studied in order to deduce at what point in evolution that feature was first seen.
competence that aspect of a theory which is the abstract knowledge which helps to describe some phenomena, as opposed to the performance theory. In language research a competence theory tries to capture generalizations about what language is and what it does.
complementary colour a colour that complements any colour evoked by a monochromatic light, such that when the two lights, e.g. red–green, blue–yellow are mixed in equal proportions, the resulting colour is white.
complementary coloured after image a phenomenon which occurs when the eye adapts to one colour (e.g. red) and then the gaze is shifted to an achromatic (e.g. grey) region, an after image of the complementary colour (e.g. green) is seen for a short time.
complex cell a type of cell in the visual cortex that is orientationally selective and has a relatively large receptive field. See also simple cell, hypercomplex cell.
computer aided design programs (CAD) in environmental programming, an interactive way of working with the user on the on-screen design of buildings etc., by trying out a whole range of alternatives.
conceptual dependency (CD) a form of case grammar which aims to represent the key semantic concepts in language and to capture how these concepts depend upon each other.
concrete operational stage the period from the ages of seven to eleven years during which children’s processing capacity increases and they develop the use of memory encoding and retrieval strategies, becoming more aware of their own capabilities and limitations.
conditional reasoning a form of reasoning that indicates that other types of a particular situation are possible.
cones a type of retinal receptor that is active in daylight (photopic) conditions. The three different types of cone found in the human retina provide the basis for colour vision. See also rod.
confidentiality the protection of the anonymity of a participant in a psychological study through the correct storage and published use of their data.
conflict-resolution strategy the expression of heuristics in a uniform way as sets of ‘if...then’ rules or ways of deciding what to do when the conditions for more than one production are satisfied.
conformity the tendency, among young adults in particular, to adopt attitudes, styles of dress and behaviour patterns that are guided by peer pressure and the desire to belong to a group rather than by personal choice.
conjunction fallacy in the representative heuristic, an error of judgement where the second of two statements is selected because a person fails to recognize that everything that is both A and B must also be A.
compliance in group membership, the act of yielding to the will of others within the group.
conjunction fallacy in the method of anchoring and adjustment used in heuristics, the error of selecting a second statement without recognizing that everything that is both A and B must also be A.
connectionism in cognitive psychology, the major formal language for the description of sub-symbolic learning.
consensual validation in group membership, the process by which the group affirms and supports the views of a particular individual.
consent one of the components of the ‘Ethical Principles for Conducting Research with Human Participants’ drawn up by the British Psychology Society, which underlines the participant’s need to consent to a particular study and be fully informed about the nature of the work.
conservation task a type of task, described by Jean Piaget, where superficial changes in an object or group of objects do not necessarily alter the properties of those objects.
conspecific in sociobiology, a name for another animal of the same species.
constructive play a stage of play amongst children when they develop skills by using objects in non-pretend ways, such as doing a jigsaw or pouring sand or water from one container into another.
contagion in the study of crowd behaviour, the spread of feeling or a mood through a crowd which leads them to behave in particular, concerted and often violent ways.
context in encoding specificity experiments, intrinsic context refers to various features that are an integral part of a target stimulus, whilst extrinsic context represents those features that are present when the target is encountered.
convergent evolution an increase in similarity between species in response to the same selection pressure brought about by the problems of living in a particular niche.
conversion in syllogistic reasoning the swapping round of the two terms, A and B, which is valid in statements of type I and E and invalid for types A and O.
coordinated reference system in environmental psychology, the system of abstract geometric patterns which children acquire by the end of Piaget’s concrete operations stage.
coping resources those resources both within the individual and in the environment around them which enable them to deal with stressful situations.
corpus callosum a set of nerve fibre tracts visible in the midline sagittal section of the brain and which link its two hemispheres.
correspondence problem the problem of deciding which feature of the image in the left eye matches each feature in the right eye image. Correct matches are needed for binocular steropsis.
cortical plasticity the ability of the cerebral cortex to change as a function of learning or damage, such as the reacquisition of language function following damage to the language hemisphere.
counselling psychologist a clinical practitioner who specializes in helping and advising adults in troubled and dysfunctional relationships, or who are struggling with social problems such as drug or alcohol addiction through interpersonal procedures such as interviewing and tests.
cranial nerve a group of twelve nerves in the peripheral nervous system which are attached directly to the brain and supply the head and neck region of the body.
creole a pidgin language which has become the native tongue of the children growing up in a pidgin speech community.
cross-sectional study a study of adult behaviour drawn from adults of different ages.
crystallized intelligence one of the two most important general factors which influence performance across many tasks, referring to performance on well-learned and familiar tasks. See also fluid intelligence.
cue a particular feature of the stimulus that forms the basis for further processing, for example a depth cue.
cytochrome oxidase blobs an anatomical (and possibly functional) feature of the visual cortex revealed by selectively staining with cytochrome oxidase.
Darwinian fitness in the theory of evolution, the ability to reproduce successfully and leave descendants, a fact which is dependant upon particular attributes rather than physical health.
debriefing a session set up after completion of a psychological study, which explains the exact nature of that study to the subject, where this has not been possible at its commencement and where any use of deception during the experiment is revealed to them.
declarative memory a single form of memory embracing episodic and semantic components.
decussation the crossing of nerve fibres from one side of the brain to the other.
deductive reasoning reasoning from facts that are known or supposed to be true, to other facts that necessarily follow from them.
defence mechanism in Freudian psychology, a pattern of self-protective reaction employed by the ego in situations arousing distress or anxiety.
defensible space in environmental psychology, the individual’s personalization of the particular area they inhabit and are familiar with and which they feel safe in.
deficiency motives in self-actualization, those motives which reduce the personal needs lower in the hierarchy, such as reducing hunger and thirst and the need for obtaining security.
delayed inhibition the temporal equivalent of lateral inhibition, where responses are subtracted from a delayed copy of themselves so that unchanging stimuli are filtered out and only temporal changes are transmitted.
deliberate practice a form of acquiring a skill under close supervision, in which specific aspects of the skill are trained, as opposed to general play in which there is no such deliberate plan.
delinquency a type of reckless behaviour, particularly among adolescents, and sometimes influenced by hormonal changes, which often involves crime, underage drinking and sexual activity, and illegal drug use.
delta rule a powerful form of learning, also known as gradient descent learning, which suggests that following a particular action, the difference between the planned outcome and the actual outcome (the error) is calculated, and the system adjusted to reduce the error next time.
delusions an erroneous belief the defies rational argument and despite all evidence to the contrary; this can also take the form of a psychiatric disorder manifest in conditions such as schizophrenia and paranoia.
dendrites twig-like fibres which are attached to the cell body and which receive inputs to the neurone.
density-intensity effect hypothesis in environmental psychology, the correlation between varying levels of social density and the individual’s positive and/or negative reaction to them.
dependent variable a feature of a particular phenomenon which varies according to the theory because it depends directly on how a given situation is manipulated.
depression a catch-all term used to describe any of several complex, and sometimes extreme psychological states where the emotions are affected, either by internal factors such as by low spirts and low self-esteem or external factors, such as traumatic events in someone’s life.
depth cue one of a number of features of the visual stimulus that may be used to recover the relative distance of objects.
derived feature in sociobiology, a feature whose possession is unique to the group of species descended from the single (originator) population.
descriptive hierarchy the idea that a stimulus is represented internally at several different levels of detail, with simple features like edges at the lower levels being combined into more complex features, like corners, at the higher levels.
design out in architectural planning, the taking into account of special needs or social factors affecting a particular area or community, such as housing estates, and making them less vulnerable to crime and vandalism by redesigning their layout.
diagnosticity in heuristics, the selection of evidence in order to facilitate choice between hypotheses.
diary study a naturalistic complement to a think-aloud protocol in which subjects are asked to make their own record of their behaviour and feelings during a psychological experiment by keeping a log in a diary.
direct perception an approach to vision, sometimes called ecological perception in which features of the stimulus are thought to correspond directly to features of the world, without the need for inference or high level knowledge of the world.
directional selectivity a property of many visual neurones in which the neurone responds better to some directions of stimulus motion than to others.
dispositions see traits
dissonance theory in the study of attitude functions, the suggestion that people are motivated to attend to and prefer information that is consistent with their current attitudes rather than information that is inconsistent (i.e. dissonant).
docility among humans, the genetical trait of non-reciprocal altruism and acceptance.
double opponent cell a type of visual cell found, for example, in the lateral geniculate nucleus, that has a complex receptive field showing inhibition both between different wavelengths and different positions.
dramaturgical approach an approach used in the explanation of behaviour in social situations, where social life is seen as a metaphor for stage performance, with individuals selecting the roles and scripts to be played.
dualism the concept, discussed by various philosophers since Descartes, that the mind and the brain (i.e. matter) are dual entities which have separate functions, with the mind exerting an influence on the physical workings of the brain that in turn control the muscles of the body.
dyad an encounter between two individuals.
echoic memory see sensory store
ecological approach in environmental psychology, the study of behaviour settings in order to predict their effect on particular individuals.
ecological perception see direct perception
effects of content in the solving of syllogisms, the effects of prior beliefs and knowledge relating to the basic information presented, which may affect the process of syllogistic reasoning.
effort after meaning the amount of effort utilized by witnesses to describe a recent specific event or a particular person’s behaviour.
ego in Freudian psychology, one of the three fundamental components of the personality; in the baby, the ego develops out of the id from the age of about 6–8 months as a result of its life experiences, to become the locus of the emotions. See also id, superego.
ego development a collective term for the various stages of life during which a human being acquires and masters those functions necessary to deal with the world at large. The American psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson, has described ego development in terms of eight distinct, psychosocial stages which a human moves through during a lifetime life.
egocentric orientation in environmental psychology, the child’s understanding of its environment only as it relates to self, and which is characteristic of the sensorimotor stage of development.
elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM) a theory which tries to account for the contradictory findings in the acceptance of persuasive communications by asserting that acceptance of a message can be achieved by two routes, the central and the peripheral, either of which depends on the extent to which the person thinks about and evaluates the message.
embryo the implanted fertilized egg which over a period of about six weeks develops into a fetus in the womb of the human female and mammal.
empirical evidence recorded observations which together form the basis of psychology as a science and which can be inspected and publicly questioned.
empty nest a popular term for that time in an adult’s life when they have to come to terms with their sense of loss and loneliness when their children grow up and leave home.
encoding the extraction of information from a stimulus in order to form a memory trace.
encoding specificity principle a proposition that retrieval is a function of the overlap between a memory trace and the information provided at retrieval, which led to the view that recall and recognition are different aspects of the same process.
envelope the overall shape of a waveform.
environmental cognition in environmental psychology, the individual’s perception of the real world at molar (i.e. comprehensive) rather than molecular level.
environmental determinism in environmental psychology, those everyday, external aspects of living, such as good or bad housing, which make the occurrence of a certain behaviour more likely.
environmental grammar the terms of reference acquired by an individual in relation to the spaces and settings around them, from which they develop the appropriate expectancies and hence, the corresponding search strategies.
environmental programming in the design of buildings, the systematic collection of data on user-needs in order to understand better their collective needs.
environmental simulations in environmental programming, the use of certain communication tools, such as drawings and models, in order to elicit responses from potential users of buildings etc.
epidemiology the study of how diseases spread, the effect that they have on the environment and how they are controlled.
episodic memory a proposed memory system which contains a record of personal events.
equilibrium mode in the dyad, the balancing of the level of intimacy through the gaze pattern, which is adjusted according to the distance the two people are away from each other.
ergonomics the study of the relationship between the individual worker and the demands of their job and their working environment, paying particular attention to the efficiency with which their work is performed.
everyday reasoning a form of reasoning that is linked with practical action and is based on people’s ability to develop convincing arguments about everyday issues, and which is based on situation modelling.
evidence see empirical evidence
evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) in sociobiology, a strategy for species preservation, in the form of an adaptive behaviour, which can resist invasion by other strategies.
expectancy–value model in the explanation of social attitudes, a model devised as a uni-dimensional, or one-component, view of attitudes which provides a useful basis for understanding why different people hold different attitudes towards the same entity.
experimental aesthetics in cognitive psychology, the examination in detail of the relationship between particular physical and environmental features and people’s aesthetic response to them.
explanatory style a method adopted in social psychology for examining the idea that people have stable ways of explaining the positive and negative events in their lives and which is often applied to the areas of mental and physical health
explicit memory any memory task requiring conscious recollection.
extension see reference
extroversion–introversion with neuroticism–normality, one of two orthogonal dimensions applied in the description of personality, as proposed by the psychologist Hans Eysenck, and used in the statistical analysis of behavioural data, where variations in behaviour are defined between these two opposite, end points.
Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) a questionnaire devised by the psychologist Hans Eysenck to capture the dimensions of personality in a questionnaire format for use in psychiatric diagnosis, using the extroversion-introversion and neuroticism-normality dimensions. See also EPQ.
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) a modification of the Eysenck Personality Inventory, incorporating a third dimension, psychoticism to account for more of the variance in data.
factor analysis in intelligence testing, a mathematical technique used to identify the underlying factors which could account for the correlations between different tests.
false-belief tasks a series of tasks used in the study of theory of mind which provide a test case for finding out whether children really understand the relationship between beliefs and behaviour.
false consensus effect in the study of the attribution process, the tendency to use our own attitudes and behaviour as the basis for deciding consensus for that behaviour, by overestimating the number of people who share our beliefs and habits.
false uniqueness an aspect of the false consensus effect, where the subject underestimates the number of people who share their particular skills and abilities.
falsifiable theory a theory capable of generating hypotheses that show it to be false and which is an essential feature of scientific method.
falsification in experiments with selection tasks, a level of insight into the logical structure of the task demonstrated by the choosing of cards that are falsifying rather than confirming instances.
fast mapping the process whereby the child learns new nouns and verbs by relating a novel object or action to a novel word via the formation of a new concept in as little as a single experience.
feature detector the idea deriving from early neuro-physical studies of the visual cortex that an individual cell (specifically a simple cell) could signal the presence of an individual line or edge of a specific orientation at a specific position in the image.
feature-tracking the process thought to be used by the long range motion system by which image motion is recovered by tracking a distinct feature of the image from one moment to the next.
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory in the study and assessment of leadership amongst social groups, a method which takes account of the leader’s personal style appropriate to a given situation.
field experiment an experiment that is more naturalistic in content than that performed in a laboratory, in that it is in less danger of distorting the evidence by taking the phenomenon out of its true context.
finite state machine a simple theoretical mechanism which shows how each word in a string of words can be related to the next.
fixed system of reference in environmental psychology, the child’s use of known locations — home, friends’ houses, shops, school — to provide an understanding of large-scale place.
fluid intelligence one of the two most important general factors influencing human performance, which relates to a person’s capacity to solve new problems and to learn. See also crystallized intelligence.
form stream the neural pathway in the visual cortex thought to be concerned primarily with the analysis of the stimulus’s spatial structure. See also motion stream.
formal operational thinking a term defined by Jean Piaget to describe the stage, arrived at by around age 11 or 12, when children are able to first think in abstract, logical and systematic ways.
formal reasoning the type of reasoning needed for solving formal problems relating, in particular, to logic and mathematics.
formal sign language a system of gestures, used as a replacement or supplement for spoken language, where each specific gesture has an agreed definition
formant a discrete band of frequencies forming a distinct feature of many (especially periodic) speech sounds, for example vowel sounds.
formant transition the changes over time of the frequencies of the formants in some speech sounds, for example, voiced stops (/d/, /g/, /b/).
formats a type of familiar play or care routine within which carers constructively support a child’s language development. See language acquisition support system (LASS).
Fourier series the spectrum of a periodic waveform, which is composed of discrete harmonics. See also Fourier transform.
Fourier transform the spectrum of an aperiodic waveform which can contain all frequencies, rather than discrete harmonics. See also Fourier series.
frame in environmental psychology, a locus or set of loci with respect to which spatial position is defined.
frames of reference the developing child’s expand-ing range of geographical experience, labelled as edocentric (relating to body-part coordination), allocentric (relating to the immediate world) and geocentric (relating to the spatial relationships between places).
free association in Freudian psychoanalysis, a technique for accessing the patient’s subconscious, by encouraging them to relax in a reclining posture and move freely and spontaneously from thought to thought
frontal lobe one of the four major lobes which comprise the cerebrum.
fundamental attribution error in the analysis of how people make attributions, the tendency to over-estimate the impact of dispositional factors and to underestimate the impact of situational factors in making attributions.
fundamental frequency in perception, the first harmonic of a periodic waveform, being a pure tone with the same basic frequency as the original waveform.
ganglia a collection of neurone cell bodies in the sympathetic nervous system.
gaze pattern in the study of channels of communication between individuals, the pattern of looking at the other that can have communicative value.
gene a term for the portion of chromosomal material that carries the inherited characters of an individual and which potentially serves as a unit of natural selection.
generalized cone the basic building block of Marr’s model of visual object representation, having a cross-section, an axis, and a description of the way that the cross-section changes along the axis.
generalized other in self-concept formation, the global view we develop about how we are seen by others.
generation-recognition a model of retrieval in which there is a generative phase and a recognition phase and which proposes that recall and recognition are different processes.
generative grammar a way of thinking about grammar rules where they are seen as generating all and only those sentences that are legitimate in the language in question.
generativity one of the polarities of maturity, as described by Erik Erikson, where an adult is able to give of him/herself without expectation of personal gain.
genetic predisposition those aspects of an individual that may lead them to respond more negatively to an unpleasant event, which are related to events they have experienced in the past.
geon the basic building block of Biederman’s model of visual object representation, which is a simplified version of a generalized cone, having an axis and a cross-section which are defined only in terms of simple dichotomies (straight or curved, symmetrical or asymmetrical).
Gestalt psychologists a group of mainly German psychologists, who were most active in the 1920s and interested, among other things, in the way that perception imposes structure upon its stimulus.
glial cell a cell in the nervous system which provides the chemical support that is essential to maintain neural functioning.
graded receptor potential the response of a typical receptor cell involving a change in membrane potential that is proportional to the strength of the stimulus, rather than being an all-or-nothing action potential.
gradualism in the study of evolution, the view that most of the time a species exists it will stay exactly the same, with only slow changes occurring.
great apes the larger group of apes – the orangutan, gorilla and two species of chimpanzee – which are the closest animal relatives to man.
group cohesion in the study of groups, the development of friendships and the structuring of the group, which occurs as some individuals take the lead and others tend to follow.
group factor theory an approach in the theory of intelligence, which emphasizes the independence of different factors that make up intelligence rather than one important general factor; using factor analysis, the American psychologist Thurstone identified seven separate factors in the performance of intelligence tests.
group membership acceptance of the individual into a particular social group, which in turn is a powerful influence in the formation of the self.
group selection in sociobiology, the evolution of traits for the good of the species or group, even though they disadvantage the individual.
groupthink a phenomenon related to decision-making by groups, where errors of judgement arise as a result of an over-emphasis placed on the need for consensus, at the expense of individual critical evaluation procedures.
growth motives in self actualization, those motives which move a person up to the higher part of a hierarchy, to an achievement of things beyond the satisfaction of essential needs.
growth need strength in the psychology of the work-place, a theory relating to the perception of job meaningfulness, where those low in growth need will not be motivated by increases in job characteristics – such as skill, responsibility, autonomy – whereas those high in growth need will benefit.
gyri the ridges formed by adjacent clefts or sulci in the cerebrum.
hair cell the auditory receptor cell type, found in the cochlea.
haplorhines one of the two great branches of the primate order, comprised of monkeys and apes. See also strepsirhines.
harmonic the simplest basic sound into which all auditory waveforms can be broken down, consisting of a sinusoid of a specific frequency and amplitude.
Hawthorne effect in the psychology of the workplace, the connection between increased productivity and the introduction of new working methods, the argument being that workers respond positively, if only temporarily, to any kind of innovation.
Hebb rule or Hebbian learning a natural form of learning which suggests that ‘cells that fire together, wire together’ – i.e. if two neurones are active at the same time and they synapse to each other, then the strength of the synapse will be increased.
heuristics a set of experimental, trial-and-error kinds of procedures used for assessing the probabilities of events or of properties that objects might have and for making inferences from those probabilities.
high density setting in the evaluation of personal environment the level of proximity and crowding within buildings such as housing blocks or the locality in which people live, which may have an effect on their psychological well-being.
hippocampus a major structure located within the forebrain and which forms part of the brain’s limbic system, playing an important part in emotional behaviour and memory.
HIV an acronym for human immunodeficiency virus, the virus which causes AIDS and which is generally transmitted via sexual activity or drug use.
holophrases two-word utterances, such as ‘allgone’, ‘oh-dear’, which the child learns as a single word during early speech development.
home range in environmental psychology, the particular area through which any animal species will move, on both a daily and seasonal basis, in order to gain the resources it needs.
hope that quality of ego functioning, as defined by Erik Erikson, which enables the infant to differentiate between trust and mistrust and develop a capacity for viewing life with optimism.
horizontal cell a type of retinal neurone that collects the responses of many receptor cells and relays them to a bipolar cell.
hue the correct term for what is generally called colour. Scientifically, colour is broken down into hue, saturation and brightness.
hypercolumn the complete set of several hundred thousand cells in the primary visual cortex responsible for the preliminary analysis of one small region of the image.
hypercomplex cell a type of cell in the visual cortex, also known as end-stopped cell, that is orientationally selective, having a relatively large receptive field, and which responds best to stimuli that end within its receptive field. See also simple cell, complex cell.
hypothalamus a small structure located inside the brain which is important in numerous motivational processes such as hunger, thirst and sex and which also plays a role in controlling emotion, sleep and bodily temperature. In addition, it can exert certain physical and emotional effects by directing the release of hormones from the pituitary gland.
hypothesis a set of predictions gathered as the basis of a theory that can themselves be tested with respect to evidence.
hypothesis testing a procedure for testing the truth or usefulness of a hypothesis, by deducing specific consequences from it and finding out whether those consequences are true.
iconic memory see sensory store
id in Freudian psychology, one of the three fundamental components of the personality; the id is present at birth and is entirely unconscious, and is responsible for the basic sexual and destructive-aggressive instincts. See also ego, super-ego.
ideal self in the perception of self, that view of the self which implies ‘Me as I would like to be’. See also ought self, possible self.
identity status four categories of reaction in young people to certain questions posed them in a semi-structured interview and which have been defined as ‘confusion’, ‘foreclosure’, ‘moratorium’ and ‘achievement’.
idiosyncrasy credit in the study of social influence processes, a pre-existing, powerful role displayed by a ‘minority’ member of a particular group which can lead the group members to comply unexpectedly with them.
idiot savant a child or adult who despite often (but not always) having a mental handicap has an extraordinary ability to perform mental calculations or demonstrate feats of knowledge, in many cases relating to numbers.
if–then profile in trait research, a formulation for analysing data types of behaviour by plotting the conditional if...then’s of the particular responses to particular social situations.
illocution in speech act theory, the intention of the speaker that is actually transmitted to the listener, which can be very different from the locution itself.
illusory correlation in reasoning, the relationship between variables that is strongly influenced by real-world knowledge rather than rational thought.
imageability in environmental psychology, the symbolic significance of place related to its distinctiveness of form, its visibility, and patterns of use.
immunological functioning in the study of psychological stress, the body’s ability to resist infection and illness, a state which can be affected to low moods.
implicit memory any memory task which tests memory indirectly, e.g. repetition priming.
impression regulation in the dyad, the control over the output from oneself to the other.
inclusive fitness in the study of evolution, the theory that inherited traits take account of all effects on relatives as well as the self, being the sum of their effects on the reproduction of the individual itself, plus the effect on the reproduction of all of its relatives, each devalued by the appropriate coefficient of relatedness.
independent variable a variable that takes some part in the manipulation of a particular situation in scientific experimentation.
indirect perception the approach to perception that emphasizes the indirectness of the relationship between the final conscious impression and the initial pattern of stimulation and which suggests that perception is an active process involving sophisticated knowledgeSee also direct perception.
individuation the process, generally experienced in the transitional period between early and middle adulthood, whereby an adult becomes more reflective about his/her life and increasingly compassionate, accepting and more loving of self and others.
induction a non-deductive type of reasoning where, even if a person knows the premises given are true, and knows that they have reasoned as they intended, they cannot be sure that their conclusion will be true, the end result being a hypothesis.
inferential explosion the point arrived at when the use of rules to reason about a representation become vulnerable and therefore unsustainable.
information processing a way of thinking about perception, usually associated with the indirect approach, that views it as a process of creating and manipulating internal representations.
inhibition in social psychology, the restraining effect on the individual of the presence of others when they are performing certain tasks, which stems from their apprehension at being evaluated by the other
insecure attachment the lack of attachment by an infant to a particular care giver, so that it does not use the attachment figure as a secure base and when distressed will show some ambivalence to or avoidance of that attachment figure. See also secure attachment.
insight see representational understanding
instrumental conditioning an experimental procedure in which reinforcement takes place only after the subject has made the appropriate response and which is used almost interchangeably with the term operant conditioning.
integrated internal representation the method applied by a blind child for building up an awareness of a particular area, which is relative to the amount of lifetime freedom it has been allowed to explore space by its parents or carers.
intelligence quotient (IQ) the ratio of intelligence in an individual, calculated by dividing their mental age by their chronological age and multiplying by 100.
intelligence scale a scale devised by Binet and Simon, which was based on already-existing tests of memory, comprehension, vocabulary and reasoning, the selection being based on items which generated good performance from children rated as bright as well as poor performance from children considered less able.
intension see sense
intensity cue one of the main sources of information in locating the direction of sound sources. Sounds coming from the left, for example, will be more intense in the left ear than in the right. See also timing cue.
intentional deception one of the thorniest of ethical issues in psychological research, deception is used in psychological studies through the use of confederates in order to gauge the response of subjects to wrong answers. The use of deception is usually revealed to the subject in the debriefing session.
interactional synchronicity a stage of development whereby babies over the age of 2 or 3 months develop a readiness for communicative interaction with their carers.
interactionalist resolution in the analysis of personality dimension, the study of behaviour as a product of traits expressed in interaction with social situations.
interaural delay a difference in the time of arrival of a stimulus at the two ears. An important source of information about the direction of a sound source. See also timing cue.
intergroup awareness and hostility in social psychology, the existence of prejudice and hostility as part of the normal relations within groups.
intergroup comparison in social identity theory, the comparison between one’s own group and other groups.
introspection the most informal kind of self-report, in which a subject speculates on his/her cognitive states and processes, and which produces data of a highly qualitative nature.
invariant a feature of the stimulus that reliably signals some useful featur