One place to learn it, drill it, and practice the full exam.

Behavior reflects interacting genetic and environmental influences rather than a simple either-or cause.

A population statistic estimating how much variation in a trait, within a particular group and environment, is associated with genetic differences.

An approach that considers how natural selection may have shaped behavioral and mental tendencies.

The brain and spinal cord.

All nerves outside the brain and spinal cord that connect the CNS with the rest of the body.

The peripheral division involved in voluntary skeletal-muscle control and sensory information.

The peripheral division regulating glands and internal organs.

The autonomic division that mobilizes the body for action or stress.

The autonomic division that calms the body and conserves energy.

A specialized cell that receives, processes, and transmits information.

A branching neuron structure that typically receives incoming signals.

The neuron fiber that carries an electrical signal away from the cell body.

A fatty covering that speeds neural transmission along many axons.

A brief all-or-none electrical impulse traveling down an axon after threshold is reached.

A brief period after neural firing when another action potential is difficult or impossible.

The junction where one neuron communicates with another cell.

A chemical messenger released by neurons into a synapse.

A substance that increases or mimics a neurotransmitter's effect.

A substance that blocks or reduces a neurotransmitter's effect.

A neurotransmitter involved in movement, motivation, reward learning, and other functions.

A neurotransmitter involved in mood, sleep, appetite, and other functions.

A neurotransmitter important in muscle action, attention, and memory.

A major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.

A major excitatory neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory.

Naturally produced opioid-like chemicals involved in pain reduction and pleasure.

Glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream.

A forebrain region involved in homeostasis, motivation, endocrine control, and links between nervous and endocrine systems.

An endocrine gland controlled largely by the hypothalamus that influences several other glands.

A brainstem structure involved in vital automatic functions such as breathing and heart rate.

A brainstem region involved in sleep, arousal, movement, and communication among brain areas.

A brainstem network important for arousal and alertness.

A hindbrain structure important for balance, coordination, motor learning, and some cognitive functions.

A forebrain relay station for most sensory information headed to the cortex.

A limbic structure crucial for forming new explicit memories.

A limbic structure involved in emotional processing, especially threat and emotional learning.

The brain's outer layer involved in complex perception, thought, language, and voluntary action.

A cortical lobe involved in planning, decision making, speech production, and voluntary movement.

A cortical lobe involved in touch and body-position processing and spatial attention.

The cortical lobe that contains primary visual processing areas.

A cortical lobe involved in hearing, language, object recognition, and aspects of memory.

A frontal-lobe region involved in controlling voluntary movement.

A parietal-lobe region processing touch and body sensations.

A left-frontal region important for speech production in most people.

A left-temporal region important for language comprehension in most people.

The large fiber bundle connecting the two cerebral hemispheres.

The nervous system's ability to change in response to experience, learning, or injury.

An approximately 24-hour biological cycle regulating sleep-wake patterns and other functions.

A recurring sleep stage with rapid eye movements, vivid dreaming, and high brain activity.

Non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, including progressively deeper stages.

Conversion of physical stimulus energy into neural signals.

The minimum stimulation detected about half the time under specified conditions.

The smallest detectable difference between two stimuli about half the time.

The principle that a noticeable difference is often a constant proportion of the original stimulus.

A framework explaining detection as influenced by signal strength, experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness.

Decreased sensitivity to a constant, unchanging stimulus.

Retinal receptors especially useful for dim light and peripheral vision.

Retinal receptors concentrated near the fovea that support color and fine detail.

The idea that pitch is coded partly by the location of maximal vibration along the cochlea.

The idea that pitch is coded partly by the rate of neural firing matching sound frequency.

Perception that begins with incoming sensory information and builds toward recognition.

Perception guided by expectations, experience, context, and prior knowledge.

Focusing conscious awareness on some information while filtering other information.

Failing to notice a visible stimulus because attention is directed elsewhere.

A readiness to perceive something in a particular way based on expectations or experience.

The perceptual organization of a focal object against its background.

The Gestalt tendency to group nearby items together.

The Gestalt tendency to group similar items together.

The Gestalt tendency to fill gaps and perceive complete forms.

The ability to perceive the world in three dimensions and judge distance.

A depth cue that depends on information from both eyes, such as retinal disparity.

A depth cue available to either eye alone, such as relative size or linear perspective.

A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution when applied correctly.

A quick mental shortcut that is efficient but can produce errors.

Judging likelihood based on how easily examples come to mind.

Judging category membership by similarity to a prototype, sometimes ignoring base rates.

Seeking or interpreting information in ways that support existing beliefs.

Difficulty seeing an object as useful in a new way beyond its usual function.

The effect of how information is worded or presented on judgments and decisions.

Getting information into memory.

Retaining encoded information over time.

Accessing stored information.

A limited-capacity system for actively holding and manipulating information.

Conscious memory for facts and experiences.

Explicit memory for personally experienced events.

Explicit memory for facts, meanings, and general knowledge.

Memory expressed without conscious recollection, such as skills or conditioned associations.

Implicit memory for learned skills and procedures.

A lasting increase in synaptic strength after repeated stimulation, linked to learning and memory.

Organizing information into meaningful units to increase effective working-memory capacity.

Better long-term learning when study is distributed over time rather than massed.

Improved long-term retention produced by actively retrieving information.

Tendency to remember items at the beginning and end of a list better than middle items.

Improved retrieval when the external context resembles the context in which learning occurred.

Improved retrieval when a person's internal state matches the state present during learning.

Old information disrupts learning or recall of newer information.

New information disrupts recall of older information.

Memory distortion caused by misleading information introduced after an event.

Remembering information but misremembering or forgetting where it came from.

The consistency of a measurement or test.

The degree to which evidence supports the intended interpretation or use of a measure.

Using uniform procedures and comparing performance with an appropriate reference group.

A symmetrical bell-shaped distribution in which many scores cluster near the mean.

A value from -1 to +1 describing the direction and strength of a linear relationship.

The capacity to learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt, defined and measured in multiple ways.

A measure intended to assess what a person has already learned.

A measure intended to predict capacity to learn or future performance.

A design that follows the same people over an extended period.

A design that compares different age groups at one point in time.

A limited developmental window during which certain experiences have especially strong effects.

Biologically programmed growth processes that unfold with development.

A mental framework used to organize and interpret information.

Interpreting new experiences using existing schemas.

Changing existing schemas or creating new ones to fit new information.

Understanding that objects continue to exist even when not currently perceived.

Understanding that quantity can remain constant despite changes in appearance.

Understanding that other people can have thoughts, beliefs, and perspectives different from one's own.

An enduring emotional bond between an infant or child and a caregiver.

An attachment pattern involving caregiver use as a secure base and effective comfort upon reunion.

A parenting style combining warmth and responsiveness with clear, consistent expectations.

A parenting style emphasizing strict control and obedience with relatively low responsiveness.

A parenting style high in warmth but low in consistent demands or limits.

A person's developing sense of self, values, roles, and commitments.

Learning through association between stimuli.

A stimulus that naturally and automatically produces a response before conditioning.

An unlearned response naturally produced by an unconditioned stimulus.

A previously neutral stimulus that comes to trigger a learned response after association.

A learned response to a conditioned stimulus.

The initial learning of an association.

Decrease of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus.

Reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response after a pause.

Responding similarly to stimuli that resemble the conditioned stimulus.

Learning to distinguish between the conditioned stimulus and other stimuli.

Learning in which behavior changes as a function of consequences.

Adding a desirable consequence to increase a behavior.

Removing or avoiding an aversive condition to increase a behavior.

Adding an aversive consequence to decrease a behavior.

Removing a desirable consequence to decrease a behavior.

Reinforcing successive approximations toward a target behavior.

Reinforcing a behavior every time it occurs.

Reinforcing a behavior only some of the time.

Reinforcement after a set number of responses.

Reinforcement after an unpredictable number of responses.

Reinforcement for the first response after a set amount of time.

Reinforcement for the first response after unpredictable time intervals.

Learning by watching others and the consequences they experience.

Demonstrating a behavior that another person may imitate.

Learning that occurs without obvious reinforcement and may appear later when useful.

A mental representation of the layout of an environment.

Reduced attempts to escape or change aversive conditions after repeated experiences of uncontrollability.

An explanation for the causes of behavior.

Tendency to overemphasize dispositional causes and underestimate situational causes when explaining others' behavior.

Tendency to credit successes to oneself and blame failures on outside factors.

Discomfort from inconsistent attitudes or behavior that can motivate attitude change or rationalization.

Attitude change based on careful consideration of arguments and evidence.

Attitude change based on superficial cues such as attractiveness, emotion, or credibility.

Adjusting behavior or beliefs to match a group standard.

Conforming to gain approval or avoid rejection.

Conforming because others are viewed as a source of accurate information.

Changing behavior in response to a direct command from an authority.

Improved performance on easy or well-learned tasks, and sometimes impaired performance on difficult tasks, in the presence of others.

Reduced individual effort when working in a group on a shared task.

Strengthening of a group's prevailing attitudes after discussion.

Poor group decision making caused by pressure for harmony and insufficient critical evaluation.

Reduced likelihood of helping when other potential helpers are present.

Reduced personal sense of obligation when responsibility is shared among many people.

Increased liking for a stimulus after repeated exposure.

A generalized belief about members of a group.

An unjustified negative attitude toward a group and its members.

Unjustified negative behavior toward a group or its members.

Favoring one's own group over other groups.

A perspective emphasizing unconscious processes, conflict, and early experiences.

A perspective emphasizing growth, personal meaning, free will, and self-concept.

A perspective describing personality in terms of relatively stable characteristics.

A broad trait model including openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

A perspective emphasizing interaction among cognition, behavior, and social situations.

Mutual influence among behavior, personal factors, and environment.

Belief in one's ability to succeed at a particular task or situation.

Belief that outcomes are strongly influenced by one's own actions.

Belief that outcomes are strongly influenced by outside forces or chance.

Engaging in an activity because it is inherently interesting or satisfying.

Engaging in an activity to obtain an external reward or avoid punishment.

A motivation theory proposing that physiological needs create aroused states that motivate behaviors restoring balance.

A tendency for biological systems to maintain stable internal conditions.

The principle that optimal arousal varies with task difficulty, with very high arousal often harming complex performance.

The theory that awareness of physiological responses contributes to the experience of emotion.

The theory that emotional experience and physiological arousal occur simultaneously.

The theory that emotion reflects physiological arousal plus a cognitive label based on context.

The idea that facial expressions can influence emotional experience.

An approach explaining health and behavior through interacting biological, psychological, and social-cultural factors.

The process of responding to events appraised as threatening or challenging.

An event or condition that can trigger a stress response.

A model describing physiological responses to prolonged stress through alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

Attempting to reduce stress by directly changing the stressor or situation.

Attempting to reduce emotional distress rather than directly changing the stressor.

Ability to adapt and recover in the face of adversity or stress.

A person's evaluations and feelings about the quality of their life.

A classification system used by clinicians in the United States to describe patterns of psychological disorders.

A category involving excessive fear, anxiety, or related behavioral disturbance.

Persistent and excessive anxiety across multiple areas of life.

A disorder involving recurrent unexpected panic attacks and concern or behavior changes related to future attacks.

Marked, persistent fear of a specific object or situation that is disproportionate to actual danger.

A disorder involving obsessions, compulsions, or both that cause significant distress or impairment.

A trauma-related disorder involving persistent symptoms after exposure to a traumatic event.

A mood disorder involving a persistent period of depressed mood or loss of interest plus additional symptoms that impair functioning.

A mood disorder involving episodes of mania or hypomania, usually along with depressive episodes.

A disorder involving major disturbances in thought, perception, emotion, and behavior.

A schizophrenia symptom involving an addition to typical experience, such as hallucinations or delusions.

A schizophrenia symptom involving a reduction of typical functioning, such as diminished emotional expression or motivation.

A category involving disruptions in memory, identity, awareness, or perception.

An enduring, inflexible pattern of inner experience and behavior that causes impairment or distress.

Treatment involving psychological techniques and a therapeutic relationship.

Therapy aimed at identifying and changing maladaptive patterns of thinking.

Therapy that applies learning principles to change problem behaviors.

An approach combining cognitive and behavioral techniques.

A behavioral method using safe, gradual or structured contact with feared stimuli to reduce fear responses.

Exposure paired with relaxation, usually moving gradually through a fear hierarchy.

Therapy emphasizing empathy, acceptance, self-awareness, and personal growth.

Therapy exploring recurring patterns, relationships, emotions, and less conscious influences.

Psychotherapy delivered to multiple clients together.

Medication used for depressive and some anxiety-related disorders, often by altering neurotransmitter activity.

Medication commonly used to reduce psychotic symptoms.

Medication used to reduce extreme mood shifts, especially in bipolar disorders.

Change associated with expectations about treatment rather than its specific active ingredient.