GRE Psychology Subject Test key terms

A brief all-or-none electrical impulse that travels down an axon when the membrane depolarizes past threshold, driven by sodium influx and restored by potassium efflux.

A short interval after an action potential during which a neuron cannot fire again, or can fire only with stronger stimulation, limiting maximum firing rate.

The narrow gap between a presynaptic terminal and a postsynaptic membrane across which neurotransmitters diffuse to carry a signal between neurons.

The process by which a presynaptic neuron reabsorbs neurotransmitter molecules from the synaptic cleft, ending their action and recycling them for later release.

The tendency for some cognitive and motor functions to be handled more by one cerebral hemisphere than the other, as with language typically favoring the left hemisphere.

A thick band of myelinated fibers connecting the two cerebral hemispheres and allowing them to exchange information during ordinary perception and action.

Surgical severing of the corpus callosum, used to control severe epilepsy, which reveals hemispheric specialization when stimuli are presented to only one visual field.

A medial temporal lobe structure critical for forming new declarative memories and for spatial navigation; damage impairs consolidation of new facts and events.

The gradual stabilization of a memory trace over time, involving cellular changes and, for declarative memories, transfer of dependence toward cortical storage.

A lasting increase in synaptic strength following brief high-frequency stimulation, widely studied as a cellular model of learning and memory.

A limited-capacity system that temporarily holds and manipulates information for ongoing tasks, often described in terms of phonological, visuospatial, and central executive components.

Recoding separate items into a smaller number of meaningful units, which increases the amount of information that can be held in short-term or working memory.

The idea that retrieving a concept temporarily raises the accessibility of related concepts in a semantic network, speeding responses to associated words.

Faster recognition of a target word after a related word, such as doctor before nurse, taken as evidence that meaning is organized associatively in memory.

An organized knowledge structure built from experience that guides what people notice, how they interpret events, and what they later remember about them.

Judging the frequency or probability of an event by how easily examples come to mind, which overweights vivid, recent, or emotionally striking cases.

Estimating likelihood by how closely a case matches a prototype or stereotype, often ignoring base rates and producing conjunction errors.

The proposal that verbal and imaginal information are stored in separate systems, so material encoded both verbally and visually is remembered better.

The discomfort felt when attitudes and behavior conflict, motivating people to change a belief, add justification, or devalue the inconsistent element.

The tendency to explain other people's behavior mainly by their dispositions while underestimating situational pressures, especially for negative acts.

The tendency to attribute one's own behavior to situational causes while attributing the same behavior in others to stable personal traits.

The finding that people are less likely to help in an emergency when others are present, partly because responsibility is diffused across witnesses.

Reduced individual effort when people work in a group whose output is pooled, especially when personal contributions cannot be identified.

The view that people infer their own attitudes by observing their behavior and the circumstances in which it occurred, much as they judge others.

The tendency to seek, notice, and remember information that supports existing beliefs while neglecting or discounting evidence that contradicts them.

The understanding that objects continue to exist when hidden from view, typically emerging near the end of infancy according to Piagetian theory.

The understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in appearance or arrangement, such as pouring liquid into a taller, narrower glass.

Difficulty taking another person's spatial or mental perspective, characteristic of early childhood in Piaget's account of cognitive development.

The ability to attribute beliefs, desires, and knowledge to oneself and others, and to recognize that others can hold false beliefs.

An enduring emotional bond between infant and caregiver, classified as secure or insecure based on reunion behavior in the strange situation procedure.

A limited developmental window during which a system is especially sensitive to particular experience, after which typical development may not occur.

Learning in which the probability of a behavior changes because of consequences that follow it, such as reinforcement or punishment.

An increase in the likelihood of a behavior produced by removing or avoiding an unpleasant stimulus, as with taking aspirin to end a headache.

The decline of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus, or when reinforcement stops.

The reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a rest interval, showing that extinction suppresses rather than erases learning.

Learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after being paired repeatedly with a stimulus that already produces that response.

The biological predisposition of some organisms to learn certain stimulus associations, such as taste with illness, more readily than others.

An increase in responsiveness to a repeated or intense stimulus, often following exposure to a noxious event, distinct from habituation's decline in response.

The degree to which a diagnostic category corresponds to a real, distinct condition and predicts course, treatment response, and underlying mechanisms.

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

The proposal that disorder emerges when a preexisting vulnerability, such as genetic risk, is activated by stressful life events or circumstances.

Features such as flat affect, social withdrawal, and poverty of speech that reflect a loss of normal functioning, prominent in some psychotic disorders.

The consistency of a measure, whether across time, across items, or across raters, and a precondition for the validity of psychological scores.

The extent to which a test measures what it is intended to measure and supports the inferences drawn from scores, including content, criterion, and construct evidence.

An estimate of the typical size of error in an individual's observed score, derived from test reliability and used to build confidence intervals around scores.

The tendency of extreme scores to move closer to the average on retesting, a statistical artifact that can mimic treatment effects in selected groups.