BCS Written Post-Related Psychology key terms

The view that reliable knowledge about behaviour and mental life should come from observation, measurement and experiment rather than from intuition, tradition or pure reasoning alone.

A method in which trained observers report the contents of their own conscious experience in detail, used by early structuralist psychologists and later criticised for its subjectivity and poor reliability.

An early school, associated with Wundt and Titchener, that tried to analyse consciousness into basic elements such as sensations, images and feelings, mainly through controlled introspection.

A school influenced by James and Darwin that asked what mental processes are for, emphasising how attention, habit and emotion help organisms adapt to their environment.

An approach holding that psychology should study observable behaviour and its environmental determinants, treating inner mental events as either irrelevant or inferable only from behaviour.

A nerve cell specialised for receiving, integrating and transmitting electrochemical signals; it has dendrites, a cell body, an axon and terminals that release neurotransmitter onto other cells.

A brief, all-or-none electrical impulse that travels along an axon when the membrane depolarises past threshold, forming the basic unit of neural signalling.

The junction between a neuron's terminal and another cell, across which chemical neurotransmitter is released to excite, inhibit or otherwise modify the receiving cell.

A chemical messenger released at synapses that binds to receptors on a target cell and alters its likelihood of firing; examples include dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and GABA.

The division of the peripheral nervous system controlling involuntary functions of glands, heart and smooth muscle, organised into sympathetic and parasympathetic branches that mobilise or conserve body resources.

A small forebrain structure that regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature, circadian rhythm and sexual behaviour, and links the nervous system to the endocrine system through the pituitary gland.

The master endocrine gland beneath the hypothalamus; it secretes hormones that control other glands and growth, and its posterior lobe releases oxytocin and vasopressin.

A chemical secreted by an endocrine gland into the bloodstream that acts on distant target tissues, influencing growth, metabolism, reproduction, mood and responses to stress.

A glucocorticoid hormone released by the adrenal cortex during stress; it mobilises glucose and supports short-term coping but can impair immune function and memory when chronically elevated.

The weakest stimulus intensity that an observer can detect reliably, conventionally defined as the level detected on a stated proportion of trials, such as fifty per cent.

The smallest change in a stimulus that can be detected, also called the just noticeable difference; Weber's law states that it grows in proportion to the original stimulus intensity.

A framework that separates sensitivity to a stimulus from the decision criterion an observer adopts, explaining detection in terms of hits, misses, false alarms and correct rejections.

Rules describing how perceivers group discrete elements into coherent wholes, including proximity, similarity, continuity, closure and common fate.

The tendency to perceive objects as keeping stable size, shape, colour or brightness despite large changes in the retinal image caused by distance, angle or illumination.

The ability to judge distance and three-dimensional layout, using binocular cues such as retinal disparity and convergence plus monocular cues such as linear perspective and interposition.

The process of focusing cognitive resources on one source of information while filtering out competing stimuli, as in listening to one voice in a noisy room.

Learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after repeated pairing with a stimulus that already produces that response, as in Pavlov's salivating dogs.

Learning in which the frequency of a behaviour changes because of its consequences, with reinforcement increasing and punishment decreasing the behaviour that precedes them.

The rule determining how often and when a response is reinforced; ratio and interval schedules may be fixed or variable, and variable schedules typically produce persistent, high response rates.

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned or operant response when the reinforcement or unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented; spontaneous recovery may follow a rest period.

Acquisition of behaviour by watching others, especially models; Bandura showed that attention, retention, reproduction and motivation determine whether observed actions are later performed.

A limited-capacity system that temporarily holds and manipulates information for ongoing tasks such as reasoning, comprehension and mental arithmetic.

The initial process of transforming sensory information into a form that memory can store, influenced by attention, elaboration and the depth of processing.

The process of accessing stored information and bringing it back into awareness; its success depends on the match between retrieval cues and the way material was encoded.

The explanation that forgetting occurs because other learning competes with the target memory, either retroactively when new learning disrupts old, or proactively when old learning disrupts new.

The body's tendency to maintain internal stability around a set point by adjusting physiological processes, a central concept in theories of biological drives such as hunger and thirst.

The view that behaviour is energised by internal states of tension arising from unmet biological or psychological needs, and directed toward reducing that tension.

Engagement in an activity for its own sake, because it is interesting or satisfying, rather than for separable external rewards or pressures.

Selye's model describing a nonspecific stress response in three stages: alarm, resistance and exhaustion, with prolonged stress eventually depleting the body's coping resources.

Cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage demands appraised as exceeding one's resources; strategies are often classed as problem-focused or emotion-focused.

Lazarus's concept that stress depends on how a person evaluates a situation as threatening or challenging and on whether available resources are judged sufficient to cope.

The consistency of a test or measurement across occasions, items or raters; a reliable instrument yields similar scores when the underlying attribute has not changed.

The extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure, judged through content, criterion-related and construct evidence; a test can be reliable yet still invalid.

Establishing uniform procedures for administering and scoring a test, and deriving norms from a representative sample so that individual scores can be interpreted comparatively.

An approach describing personality in terms of stable, measurable dispositions that vary between people and predict behaviour across situations, as in the five-factor model.

Bandura's term for a person's belief in their capacity to organise and carry out the actions required to reach a goal, influencing effort, persistence and choice of activities.

Piaget's paired processes of fitting new experience into existing cognitive schemas and, when that fails, modifying schemas to restore equilibrium with the environment.

The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, gradually achieved in infancy, according to Piaget, during the sensorimotor period.

An enduring emotional bond between infant and caregiver; secure, avoidant, ambivalent and disorganised patterns are assessed in the strange situation procedure.

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with guidance from a more capable person, where instruction is most effective.

Tajfel and Turner's account of intergroup behaviour holding that people derive self-esteem from group memberships and favour their own group to maintain a positive identity.

The tendency to evaluate members of one's own group more favourably and to allocate them more resources than members of groups to which one does not belong.

A change in belief or behaviour toward the group standard in response to real or imagined social pressure, even when no direct request is made, as in Asch's line experiments.

Compliance with a direct order from an authority figure; Milgram's studies showed that ordinary people may follow harmful instructions under situational pressure.

The discomfort felt when holding conflicting cognitions, which motivates people to change an attitude, seek supporting information or rationalise behaviour to restore consistency.

A widely used classification system that lists mental disorders with defining criteria, duration and exclusion rules, intended to improve reliability of diagnosis and communication among clinicians.

The co-occurrence of two or more disorders in the same person during a specified period, a common phenomenon that complicates diagnosis, prognosis and treatment planning.

A structured, goal-oriented treatment that helps clients identify and modify distorted thoughts and maladaptive behaviours, with strong evidence for anxiety and depressive disorders.