Test 1 Flashcards
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The scientific study of abnormal behavior in an effort to describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning.
Abnormal Psychology
A society’s stated and unstated rules for proper conduct.
Norms
A people’s common history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts.
Culture
Interferes with daily functioning
Dysfunction
Behavior that is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk.
Danger
A systematic procedure designed to change abnormal behavior into more normal behavior. Also called therapy.
Treatment
An ancient operation in which a stone instrument was used to cut away a circular section of the skull, perhaps to treat abnormal behavior.
Trephination
According to the Greeks and Romans, bodily chemicals that influence mental and physical functioning.
Humors
A type of institution that first became popular in the sixteenth century to provide care for persons with mental disorders. Most became virtual prisons.
Asylum
A nineteenth-century approach to treating people with mental dysfunction that emphasizes moral guidance and humane and respectful treatment.
Moral Treatment
State-run public mental institutions in the United States.
State Hospitals
The view that abnormal psychology functioning has physical causes.
Somatogenic Perspective
The view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological.
Psychological Perspective
Either the theory or the treatment of abnormal mental functioning that emphasizes unconscious psychological forces as the cause of psychopathology.
Psychoanalysis
Drugs that mainly affect the brain and reduce many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning.
Psychotropic Medications
The practice, begun in the 1960s, of releasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals.
Deinstitutionalization
An arrangement in which a person directly pays a therapist for counseling services.
Private Psychotherapy
Interventions aimed at deterring mental disorders before they develop.
Prevention
The study and enhancement of positive feelings, traits, and abilities.
Positive 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.
Multicultural Psychology
A system of health care coverage in which the insurance company largely controls the nature, scope, and cost of medical or psychological services.
Managed Care Program
The process of systematically gathering and evaluating information through careful observations to gain an understanding of a phenomenon.
Scientific Method
A detailed account of a person’s life and psychological problems.
Case Study
The degree to which events of characteristics vary along with each other.
Correlation
A research procedure used to determine how much events, or characteristics vary along with each other.
Correlational method
A study that measures the incidence and prevalence of a disorder in a given population.
Epidemiological Study
A study that observes the same participants on many occasions over a long period of time.
Longitudinal Study
A research procedure in which a variable is manipulated and the effect of the manipulation is observed.
Experiment
The variable in an experiment that is manipulated to determine whether it has an effect on another variable.
Independent Variable
The variable in an experiment that is expected to change as the independent variables is manipulated.
Dependent Variable
In an experiment, a variable other than the independent variable that is also acting on the dependent variable.
Confound
In an experiment, a group of participants who are not exposed t the independent variable.
Control Group
In an experiment, the participants who are exposed to the independent variable under investigation.
Experimental Group
A selection procedure that ensures that participants are randomly place either in the control group or in the experimental group.
Random Assignment
An experiment in which participants do not know whether they are in the experimental or the control condition.
Blind Design
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.
Quasi-Experiment
An experiment in which nature, rather than an experimenter, manipulates or independent variable.
Natural Experiment
An experiment in which the investigator produces abnormal-like behavior in laboratory participants and then conducts studies on the participants.
Analogue Experiment
A research method in which a single participant is observed and measured both before and after the manipulation of an independent variable.
Single-Subject Experimental Design
An understanding of the behavior of a particular individual.
Idiographic Understanding
The process of collecting and interpreting relevant information about a client or research participant.
Assessments
The process in which a test is administered to a large group of people whose performance then serves as a standard or norm against which any individual’s score can be measured.
Standardization
A measure of the consistency of test or research results.
Reliability
The accuracy of a test’s or study’s results; that is, the extent to which the test or study actually measures or shows what it claims.
Validity
A set of interview questions and observations designed to reveal the degree and nature of a client’s abnormal functioning.
Mental Status Exam
A device for gathering information about a few aspects of a person’s psychological functioning from which broader information about the person can be inferred.
Test
A test consisting of ambiguous material that people inexpert or respond to.
Projective Test
A test designed to measure broad personality characteristics, consisting of statements about behaviors, beliefs, and feelings that people evaluate as either characteristic or uncharacteristic of them.
Personality Inventory
Tests designed to measure a person’s responses in one specific area of functioning, such as affect, social skills, or cognitive process.
Response Inventories
A text that measures physical responses (such as heart rate and muscle tension) as possible indicators of psychological problems.
Psychophysiological Test
A test that directly measures brain structure or activity.
Neurological Test
Neurological tests that provide images of brain structure or activity, such as CT scans, PET scans, and MRIs. Also called brain scans.
Neuroimaging Techniques
A test that detects brain impairment by measuring a person’s cognitive, perceptual, and motor performances.
Neuropsychological Test
A test design to measure a person’s intellectual ability.
Intelligence Test
An overall score derived from intelligence tests.
Intelligence Quotient
A determination that a person’s problems reflect a particular disorder.
Diagnosis
A cluster of symptoms that usually occur together.
Syndrome
A list of disorders, along with descriptions of symptoms and guidelines for making appropriate diagnoses.
Classification System
The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
DSM-5
A movement in the clinical field that seeks to identify which therapies have received clear research support for each disorder, to develop corresponding treatment guidelines, and to spread such information to clinicians. Also known as evidence-based treatment.
Empirically Supported Treatment
An effort to identify a set of common strategies that run through the work of all effective therapists.
Rapprochement Movement
A psychiatrist who primarily prescribes medications.
Psychopharmacologist
