Praxis Psychology flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Informed consent elements

Competence, voluntariness, and disclosure of purpose, procedures, risks, benefits, alternatives, and confidentiality limits; consent is ongoing and documented, not a one-time signature.

Standard error of measurement

SEM = SD × √(1 − reliability). It estimates the typical amount a score would vary across repeated administrations and is used to build confidence intervals around an observed score.

Reliability versus validity

Reliability is consistency of measurement; validity is whether a test measures what it claims. A test can be reliable without being valid, but cannot be valid without adequate reliability.

Duty to protect

When a client poses serious imminent danger to an identifiable other, the clinician takes protective action such as warning the potential victim, notifying authorities, or arranging hospitalization, consistent with law.

Classical conditioning components

An unconditioned stimulus elicits an unconditioned response; a neutral conditioned stimulus paired repeatedly with it comes to elicit a conditioned response. Extinction, spontaneous recovery, and generalization describe subsequent changes.

Operant reinforcement schedules

Fixed-ratio and variable-ratio schedules reinforce after a set or average number of responses; fixed-interval and variable-interval schedules reinforce after a set or average time. Variable schedules typically produce more persistent behavior.

Piaget concrete operational stage

Occurs roughly ages 7 to 11. Children acquire conservation, reversibility, and classification, and can reason logically about concrete events but not yet about abstract hypotheticals.

Erikson identity versus role confusion

Adolescent psychosocial stage in which the task is forming a coherent sense of self, values, and direction; failure to resolve it is associated with role confusion and difficulty committing to adult roles.

Ainsworth attachment classifications

Strange Situation yields secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized patterns. Secure infants use the caregiver as a safe base and are comforted on reunion.

Cognitive triad

Beck's model of depression: negative views of the self, the world, and the future. These schemas generate automatic thoughts that maintain depressive symptoms and are targeted in cognitive therapy.

Systematic desensitization

Wolpe's behavioral technique pairing progressive relaxation with a graduated hierarchy of feared stimuli, reducing anxiety through counterconditioning and graded exposure.

Exposure with response prevention

A CBT technique for OCD in which the client confronts feared triggers while refraining from compulsive rituals, allowing anxiety to habituate and obsessional beliefs to be disconfirmed.

Unconditional positive regard

Rogers's stance of accepting the client without judgment, paired with empathy and congruence. It supports self-exploration and movement toward self-actualization in client-centered therapy.

Transference and countertransference

Transference is the client's displacement of feelings from past relationships onto the therapist; countertransference is the therapist's emotional reactions to the client, which require self-monitoring.

SSRI mechanism

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors block serotonin reuptake, increasing synaptic serotonin. They are first-line for many depressive and anxiety disorders and require weeks for full effect.

Lithium indication

A mood stabilizer used for maintenance and acute mania in bipolar disorder; it requires periodic monitoring of serum levels, renal function, and thyroid function because of a narrow therapeutic window.

WAIS IQ distribution

Wechsler scales yield standard scores with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15; about 68% of the normative sample falls between 85 and 115.

MMPI-2 purpose

A self-report personality and psychopathology inventory with validity and clinical scales, used to aid diagnosis and treatment planning rather than as a stand-alone diagnostic test.

Dual relationship risk factors

Multiple relationships raise concern when a power differential exists, when exploitation is possible, or when objectivity may be impaired; not all are unethical, but they require careful analysis and documentation.

Mandated reporting threshold

Reporting is triggered by reasonable suspicion, not proof, of child, elder, or dependent adult abuse or neglect; clinicians must know jurisdiction timelines and document the report.

Telepsychology safeguards

Verify client identity and location, confirm licensure jurisdiction, use secure HIPAA-compliant platforms, establish emergency protocols, and obtain informed consent covering technology risks and limits.

APA General Principles

Aspirational ideals: beneficence and nonmaleficence, fidelity and responsibility, integrity, justice, and respect for people's rights and dignity. They guide conduct but are not enforceable standards.

Central limit theorem

With sufficiently large samples, the sampling distribution of the mean approaches normality regardless of population shape, with standard error equal to the population standard deviation divided by √n.

Effect size versus significance

Statistical significance indicates an effect is unlikely under the null; effect size (e.g., Cohen's d) quantifies magnitude. Large samples can make trivial differences significant.

Internal validity threats

History, maturation, testing, instrumentation, regression to the mean, selection, and attrition can produce changes unrelated to the manipulation, weakening causal conclusions in a study.

Normal distribution percentages

Approximately 68% of scores fall within one standard deviation of the mean, about 95% within two, and about 99.7% within three, forming the empirical rule.

Crystallized versus fluid intelligence

Crystallized intelligence is accumulated knowledge and verbal skill, which tends to hold or grow with age; fluid intelligence is novel problem-solving, which typically declines in later adulthood.

Delirium versus dementia

Delirium has acute onset and fluctuating attention and consciousness, often from medical causes; dementia is progressive cognitive decline, typically with preserved consciousness until late stages.

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overattribute others' behavior to dispositional traits while underestimating situational influences, especially when explaining negative actions by people outside one's own group.

Big Five traits

Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Conscientiousness predicts occupational performance; trait stability generally increases across adulthood.

Yerkes-Dodson law

Performance improves with arousal up to an optimal point and then declines; the optimal arousal level is lower for complex tasks and higher for simple or well-learned tasks.

Encoding specificity principle

Retrieval is best when cues at recall match those present at encoding. Context- and state-dependent memory effects illustrate this principle in learning and assessment settings.

Biopsychosocial formulation

An integrative account of biological, psychological, and social contributors to a client's presentation, used to guide diagnosis, treatment planning, and coordination of care across settings.