V Flashcards
A tubelike structure in female mammals that leads from the cervix (neck) of the uterus to the exterior
- The muscular walls of this are lined with mucous membrane, and two pairs of vestibular glands around this opening secrete fluid that facilitates penetration by the penis during coitus
Vagina
A sexual dysfunction in which spasmic contractions of the muscles around the vagina occur during or immediately preceding sexual intercourse, causing the latter to be painful or impossible
- This is not diagnosed if the dysfunction is due solely to the effects of a medical condition
Vaginismus
The tenth cranial nerve, a mixed nerve with both sensory and motor fibers that serves many functions
- The sensory fibers innervate the external ear, vocal organs, and thoracic and abdominal viscera
- The motor nerves innervate the tongue, vocal organs, and - through many ganglia of the parasympathetic nervous system - the thoracic and abdominal viscera
Vagus Nerve
The degree to which a test or measurement accurately measures or reflects what it purports to measure
- There are various types, including concurrent, construct, and ecological
Validity
- The mathematical magnitude or quantity of a variable
- A moral, social, or aesthetic principle accepted by an individual or society as a guide to what is good, desirable, or important
- The worth, usefulness, or importance attached to something
Value
An assessment of individuals, objects, or events in terms of the values held by the observer rather than in terms of their intrinsic characteristics objectively considered
- In some areas, such as aesthetics or morality, these are conmon, but in hard and social sciences they are frequently considered undesirable
Value Judgement
In statistics and experimental design, the degree to which members of a group or population differ from each other
Variability
A quantity in an experiment or test that varies, that is, takes on different values (such as test scores, ratings assigned by judges, and other personal, social, or physiological indicators) that can be quantified (measured)
Variable
In free operant conditioning, a type of interval reinforcement in which the reinforcement or reward is presented for the first response after a variable period has elapsed since the previous reinforcement
- Reinforcement does not depend on the number of responses during the intervals
- The value of the schedule is given by the average interval length; for example, “VI 3” indicates that the average length of the intervals between potential reinforcements is 3 minutes
Variable Interval Schedule
In free operant conditioning, a type of intermittent reinforcement in which a response is reinforced after a variable number of responses
- The value of the schedule is given by the average number of responses per reinforcer; for example, “VR 10” indicates that the average number of responses before reinforcement is 10
Variable Ratio Schedule
(Symbol: ō2)
A measure of the spread, or dispersion, of scores within a sample, whereby a small one indicates highly similar scores, all close to the sample mean, and a large one indicates more scores at a greater distance from the mean and possibly spread over a larger range
Variance
The existence of qualitative differences in form, structure, behavior, and physiology among the individuals of a population, whether due to heredity or to environment
- Both artificial selection and natural selection operate on this among organisms, but only genetic type is transmitted to the offspring
Variation
Severe loss of cognitive functioning as a result of cerebrovascular disease
- It is often due to repeated strokes
Vascular Dementia
Narrowing of blood vessels, which is controlled by vasomotor nerves of the sympathetic nervous system or by such agents as vasopressin or drugs
- It has the effect of increasing blood pressure
Vasoconstriction
Widening of blood vessels, as by the action of a vasomotor nerve or a drug, which has the effect of lowering blood pressure
Vasodilation
Describing or relating to nerve fibers, drugs, or other agents that can affect the diameter of blood vessels, especially small arteries, by causing contraction or relaxation of the smooth muscle of their walls
- Fibers of the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system have this effect
Vasomotor
A peptide hormone synthesized in the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary gland
- It plays an important role in the retention of water in the body (by signaling the kidneys to reabsorb water instead of excreting it in urine) and in regulation of blood pressure (by constricting small blood vessels, which raises blood pressure)
- This secretion may also activate the hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical system and may be associated with mechanisms of learning and memory
Vasopressin
- Pertaining to basic physiological functions, such as those involved in growth, respiration, sleep, digestion, excretion, and homeostasis, which are governed primarily by the autonomic nervous system
- Living without apparent cognitive neurological function or responsiveness, as in persistent vegetative state
Vegetative
Denoting the abdomen or the front surface of the body
- In reference to the latter, this term is sometimes used interchangeably with anterior
Ventral
Either of the bottom regions of the H shaped pattern formed by the gray matter in the central portion of the spinal cord
- These contain large motor neurons whose axons form the ventral roots
Ventral Horn
Any of the spinal roots that carry motor nerve fibers and arise from the spinal cord on the front surface of each side
Ventral Root
A series of specialized visual regions in the cerebral cortex of the brain that originate in the striate cortex (primary visual cortex) of the occipital lobe and project forward and downward into the lower temporal lobe
- It is known informally as the “what” pathway of perception
Ventral Stream
An anatomical cavity in the body, such as any of these of the heart but particularly any of the four interconnected cavities inside the brain, which serve as reservoirs of cerebrospinal fluid
- Each of the two lateral ones communicates with the third one via an opening called the interventicular foramen; the third and fourth ones communicate with each other, via the cerebral aqueduct, and with the central canal of the spinal cord
Ventricle
The tendency for sounds to appear to emanate from plausible visual objects, regardless of the actual source of the sound
- For example, the voices of actors in a movie are localized to the images on the screen, rather than to the speakers that produce the sound
- This stems from visual capture
Ventriloquism Effect
Oriented or directed from the front (ventral) region of the body to the back (dorsal) region
Ventrodorsal
A set of symptoms caused by experimental lesions in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus in the brain
- The syndrome consists of two stages
- The first is characterized by hyperphagia (overeating) and subsequent weight gain, resulting in obesity
- The second includes stabilization of body weight and willingness to eat only easily obtainable and palatable foods
Ventromedial Hypothalamic Syndrome
An area of the hypothalamus in the brain that receives input from the amygdala and is associated particularly with eating and sexual behavior
- This traditionally has been referred to as the satiety center because of its presumed dominance over the cessation of eating, but it is now known that other neural areas are involved in this function as well
Ventromedial Nucleus
Any of four major descending groups of nerve fibers within the motor system, conveying information from diffuse areas of the cerebral cortex, midbrain, and cerebellum
- These pathways include the anterior corticospinal tract, which descends directly from motor cortex to the anterior horn of the spinal cord; the vestibulospinal tract, which carries information from the vestibular nuclei for control of equilibratory responses; the tectospinal tract, for control of head and eye movements; and the reticulospinal tract, for maintaining posture
Ventromedial Pathway
The process of learning about verbal stimuli and responses, such as letters, digits, nonesense syllables, or words
Verbal Learning
The process of learning about verbal stimuli and responses, such as letters, digits, nonesense syllables, or words
Verbal Learning
The capacity to remember something written or spoken (eg; a poem)
Verbal Memory
Any test or scale in which performance depends upon one’s ability to comprehend, use, or otherwise manipulate words
Verbal Test
A turning movement of the eyes
- If they turn inward, the movement is convergence; if outward, it is divergence
Vergence
In Piagetian theory, the invariable sequence in which the different stages of development (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) are attained
Vertical Décalage
An unpleasant, illusory sensation of movement or spinning of oneself or one’s surroundings due to neurological disorders, psychological stress (eg; anxiety), or activities that disturb the labyrinth (which contains the organs of balance) in the ear (as in a roller coaster ride)
Vertigo
A fluid filled saclike structure, such as any of the synaptic ones in axon terminals that contain neurotransmitter molecules
Vesicle
Any of four masses of cell bodies in the dorsolateral part of the pons and the medulla oblongata in the brain that receives input from the vestibular system in the inner ear and serves the sense of balance and orientation in space
- It sends fibers to the cerebellum, reticular formation, thalamus, and the vestibulospinal tract
Vestibular Nucleus
Two sacs in the inner ear - the utricle and saccule - that, together with the semicircular canals, comprise the vestibular apparatus
- These respond to gravity and encode information about the head’s orientation
Vestibular Sacs
The sense of equilibrium: the sense that enables the maintenance of balance while sitting, standing, walking, or otherwise maneuvering the body
- A subset of proprioception, it is in part controlled by the vestibular system in the inner ear, which contains specialized vestibular receptors that detect motions of the head
Vestibular Sense
A system in the body that is responsible for maintaining balance, posture, and the body’s orientation in space and plays an important role in regulating locomotion and other movements
- It consists of the vestibular sacs and the semicircular canals in the inner ear, the vestibular nerve (a division of the vestibulocochlear nerve), and the various cortical regions associated with the processing of vestibular (balance) information
Vestibular System
The eighth cranial nerve: a sensory nerve containing tracts that innervate both the sense of balance and the sense of hearing
- It has two divisions: the vestibular nerve, originating in the vestibular sacs and the semicircular canals, and the auditory nerve, originating in the cochlea
- This transmits impulses from the inner ear to the medulla oblongata and pons and has fibers that continue into the cerebrum and cerebellum
Vestibulocochlear Nerve
The involuntary compensatory movement of the eyes that occurs to maintain fixation on a visual target during small, brief head movements
- It is triggered by vestibular signals
Vestibulo Ocular Reflex
Secondary or indirect reinforcement: the process whereby a person becomes more likely to engage in a particular behavior (response) by observing the consequences of that behavior for another individual
- An important concept in social learning theory, this is often indicated by imitation: for example, a student who hears the teacher praise a classmate for neat penmanship on an assignment and who then carefully handwrites his or her own assignment is considered to have received this
Vicarious Reinforcement
The impact on a therapist of repeated emotionally intimate contact with trauma survivors
- More than countertransference, this affects the therapist across clients and situations
- It results in a change in the therapist’s own worldview and sense of the justness and safety of the world
Vicarious Traumatization
A state of extreme awareness and watchfulness directed by one or more members of a group toward the environment, often toward potential threats (eg; predators, intruders, enemy forces in combat)
- It demands maximum physiological and psychological attention and an ability to attend and respond to stimulus changes for uninterrupted periods of time, which can produce significant cognitive stress and occasional physiological stress reactions
Vigilance
A technique, based on habituation and dishabituation procedures, in which increases in an infant’s looking time are interpreted as evidence that the outcome expected by the infant has not occurred
Violation of Expectation Method
The expression of hostility and rage with the intent to injure or damage people or property through physical force
Violence
The presence in a female of secondary sexual characteristics that are peculiar to men, such as muscle bulk and hirsutism
- The condition is due to overactivity of the adrenal cortex, with excessive secretion of androgen
Virilism
A form of in vivo exposure in which clients are active participants immersed in a three dimensional computer generated interactive environment that allows them a sense of actual presence in scenarios related to their presenting problems
- This treatment is currently used primarily for anxiety related disorders, such as fear of flying
Virtual Reality Therapy
The organs in any major body cavity, especially the abdominal organs (stomach, intestines, kidneys, ect)
Viscera
The sense of sight, in which the eye is the receptor and the stimulus is radiant energy in the visible spectrum
Vision
Loss or impairment of the ability to recognize and understand the nature of visual stimuli
- Various subtypes exist, based on the type of visual stimulus the person has difficulty recognizing, such as objects (visual object agnosia or visual form agnosia), multiple objects or pictures (simultanagnosia), or faces (prosopagnosia)
Visual Agnosia
Any of many regions of the cerebral cortex in which the neurons are primarily sensitive to visual stimulation
- Together, all of these comprise the visual cortex
- Most of these can be distinguished from one another on the basis of their anatomical connections (ie; their cytoarchitecture) and their specific visual sensitivities
- Individual areas are designated by “V” and a number (eg; V1, V2…V5), which indicates roughly how distant the area is from striate cortex
Visual Area
The tendency for vision to override the other senses
- It is responsible for the ventriloquism effect
Visual Capture
An apparatus to investigate the development of depth perception in nonverbal human infants and animals, in particular, whether depth perception is an innate ability or learned through visuomotor experience
- The apparatus consists of a table with a checkerboard pattern, dropping steeply down a “cliff” to a surface with the same pattern some distance below the tabletop
- The apparatus is covered with a transparent surface, and the participant is positioned on this at the border between the tabletop and the cliff
- Reluctance to crawl onto the surface covering the cliff is taken as an indication that the participant can discriminate the apparent difference in depth between the two sides of the apparatus
- Most infants as young as six months of age will not cross over to the side over the cliff
Visual Cliff
The cerebral cortex of the occipital lobe, specifically the striate cortex (primary visual cortex)
- In humans this occupies a small region on the lateral surface of the occipital pole of the brain, but most is buried in the banks of the calcarine fissure on the medial surface of the brain
- This receives input directly from the lateral geniculate nucleus via the optic tract and sends output to multiple visual areas that make up the visual association cortex
Visual Cortex
The extent of visual space over which vision is possible with the eyes held in a fixed position
- The outer limit of vision for each eye extends approximately 60° nasally, 90° temporally, 50° superiorly, and 70° inferiorly
- The extent varies with age: very young children and older people have a smaller one
Visual Field
Visual perception in the absence of any external stimulus
- These may be unformed (eg; shapes, colors) or complex (eg; figures, faces, scenes)
- They may be associated with psychotic disorders or with pathological states of the visual system
Visual Hallucination
A misperception of external visual stimuli that occurs as a result of a misinterpretation of the stimuli, such as a geometric illusion
- These are among the most common type of illusion
Visual Illusion
Mental imagery that involves the sense of having “pictures” in the mind
- Such images may be memories of earlier visual experiences or syntheses produced by the imagination (as, for example, in visualizing a pink kangaroo)
- This can be used for such purposes as dealing with traumatic events, establishing desensitization hierarchies, or improving physical performance
Visual Imagery
The awareness of visual sensations that arises from the interplay between the physiology of the visual system and the internal and external environments of the observer
Visual Perception
The process of detecting a target visual stimulus among distractor stimuli
- In experimental studies, the characteristics of the target and distractors are manipulated to explore the mental operations that underlie visual attention
Visual Search
The components of the nervous system and the nonneurai apparatus of the eye that contribute to the perception of visual stimulation
- The anterior structures of the eye, such as the cornea and lens, focus light on the retina, which transduces photons into neural signals
- These are transmitted via the optic nerve and optic tract to nuclei in the thalamus and brainstem
- These in turn transmit the signals either to the visual areas of the cerebral cortex for conscious analysis or directly to motor centers in the brainstem and spinal cord to produce eye movements
Visual System
The capacity of the lungs to hold air, measured as the maximum volume of air that can be exhaled after maximum inspiration
Vital Capacity
Physical or intellectual vigor or energy: the state of being full of zest and enthusiastic about ongoing activities
Vitality
The production of sounds by means of vibrations of the vocal cords, as in speaking, babbling, singing, screaming, and so forth
Vocalization
In phonetics, the brief instant that elapses between the initial movement of the speech organs as one begins to articulate a speech sound and the vibration of the vocal cords
- This has been the subject of intense research in adult and infant speech perception because of evidence that this continuous acoustic dimension is perceived categorically
Voice Onset Time
The principle that individual fibers in an auditory nerve respond to one or another stimulus in a rapid succession of rhythmic sound stimuli, whereas other fibers in the nerve respond to the second, third, or nth stimulus
- The result is that successive volleys of impulses are fired to match the inputs of stimuli, yet no single fiber is required to respond to every stimulus
- Thus a nerve can reflect a more rapid frequency of stimulation (eg; 1000 Hz) than any individual fiber could follow
Volley Theory
Describing activity, movement, behavior, or other processes produced by choice or intention and under cortical control, in contrast to automatic movements (eg; reflexes) or action that is not intended (ideomotor activity)
Voluntary
Any systematic difference between participants who volunteer to be in a study versus those who do not
Volunteer Bias
A set of specialized receptor cells that in nonhuman mammals is sensitive to pheromones and thus plays an important role in the sexual behavior and reproductive physiology of these animals
- In humans this system responds physiologically to chemical stimulation and, in turn, excites brain centers, but its role in human olfaction is not known
Vomeronasal System
A culture bound syndrome observed in Haiti, Africa, Australia, and islands of the Pacific and the Caribbean
- An individual who has disobeyed a ritual or taboo is hexed or cursed by a medicine man or sorcerer and dies within a few days
- The individual’s strong belief in the curse is posited to be the cause of physiological reactions in the body resulting in death
Voodoo Death
A paraphilia in which preferred or exclusive sexual interest and arousal is focused on observing unsuspecting people who are nude or in the act of undressing or engaging in sexual activity
- Although the voyeur seeks no sexual activity with the person observed, orgasm is usually produced through masturbation during the act of “peeping” or later, while visualizing and remembering the event
Voyeurism
Susceptibility to developing a condition, disorder, or disease when exposed to specific agents or conditions
Vulnerability
