Chapter 1 Flashcards
Abnormal Psychology
The scientific study of abnormal behavior in an effort to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning.
Norms
A society’s stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.
Culture
A people’s common history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology,and arts.
Treatment
A systematic procedure designed to change abnormal behavior into more normal behavior. Also called therapy.
Trephination
An ancient operation in which a stone instrument was used to cutaway a circular section of the skull, perhaps to treat abnormal behavior.
Humors
According to the Greeks and Romans, bodily chemicals that influence mental and physical functioning.
Asylum
A type of institution that first became popular in the sixteenth century to provide care for persons with mental disorders. Most became virtual prisons.
Moral Treatment
A nineteenth-century approach to treating people with mental dysfunction that emphasized moral guidance and humane and respectful treatment.
State Hospitals
State-run public mental institutions in the United States.
Somatogenic Perspective
The view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes.
Psychogenic Perspective
The view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological.
Psychoanalysis
Either the theory or the treatment of abnormal mental functioning that emphasizes unconscious psychological forces as the cause of psychopathology.
Psychotropic Medications
Drugs that mainly affect the brain and reduce many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning.
Deinstitutionalization
The practice, begun in the 1960s, of releasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals.
Private Psychotherapy
An arrangement in which a person directly pays a therapist for counseling services.
Prevention
Interventions aimed at deterring mental disorders before they develop.
Positive Psychology
The study and enhancement of positive feelings, traits, and abilities.
Multicultural Psychology
The field of psychology that examines the impact of culture, race, ethnicity, gender, and similar factors on our behaviors and thoughts,including abnormal behaviors and thoughts.
Managed Care Program
A system of health care coverage in which the insurance company largely controls the nature,scope, and cost of medical or psychological services.
Scientific Method
The process of systematically gathering and evaluating information through careful observations to gain an understanding of a phenomenon.
Case Study
A detailed account of a person’s life and psychological problems.
Correlation
The degree to which events or characteristics vary along with each other.
Correlational Method
A research procedure used to determine how much events or characteristics vary along with each other.
Epidemiological Study
A study that measures the incidence and prevalence of a disorder in a given population.
Longitudinal Study
A study that observes the same participants on many occasions over a long period of time.
Experiment
A research procedure in which a variable is manipulated and the effect of the manipulation is observed.
Independent Variable
The variable in an experiment that is manipulated to determine whether it has an effect on another variable.
Dependent Variable
The variable in an experiment that is expected to change as the independent variable is manipulated.
Confound
In an experiment, a variable other than the independent variable that is also acting on the dependent variable.
Control Group
In an experiment, a group of participants who are not exposed to the independent variable.
Experimental Group
In an experiment, the participants who are exposed to the independent variable under investigation.
Random Assignment
A selection procedure that ensures that participants are randomly placed either in the control group or in the experimental group.
Blind Design
An experiment in which participants do not know whether they are in the experimental or the control condition.
Quasi-experiment
An experiment in which investigators make use of control and experimental groups that already exist in the world at large. Also called a mixed design.
Natural Experiment
An experiment in which nature, rather than an experimenter, manipulates an independent variable.
Analogue Experiment
An experiment in which the investigator produces abnormal-like behavior in laboratory participants and then conducts studies on the participants.
Single-Subject Experimental Design
A research method in which a single participant is observed and measured both before and after the manipulation of an independent variable.
Deviance
different, extreme, unusual, perhaps even bizarre
Distress
unpleasant and upsetting to the person
Dysfunction
interfering with the person’s ability to conduct daily activities in a constructive way
Danger
of hurting oneself or others
General Paresis
An irreversible medical disorder whose symptoms include psychological abnormalities, such as delusions of grandeur; caused by syphilis.
Hypnosis
A sleep-like suggestible state during which a person can be directed to actin unusual ways, to experience unusual sensations, to remember seemingly forgot-ten events, or to forget remembered events.
Incidence
The number of new cases of a disorder occurring in a population over a specific period of time.
Prevalence
The total number of cases of a disorder occurring in a population over a specific period of time.
Placebo Therapy
A sham treatment that the subject in an experiment believes to be genuine.
Double-blind Design
Experimental procedure in which neither the participant nor the experimenter knows whether the participant has received the experimental treatment or a placebo.
