57 of the Psychology glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
A structural brain imaging technique that uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves to produce detailed images of brain anatomy without radiation.
A functional imaging technique that records the tiny magnetic fields produced by the brain's electrical activity, with millisecond timing and better localisation than EEG.
A mental health disorder involving depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure for at least two weeks, with symptoms such as sleep and appetite changes, fatigue, worthlessness and poor concentration.
An acculturation strategy, often not freely chosen, in which a person has little involvement with either their heritage culture or the host culture.
A level descriptor used to mark an answer as a whole: the examiner chooses the band whose description best fits the answer, then awards a mark within that band.
A cultural dimension contrasting societies that value achievement, competition and distinct gender roles (masculine) with societies that value caring, cooperation, quality of life and overlapping gender roles (feminine).
A model who performs a task correctly and confidently from the start, demonstrating the finished skill without errors or doubt.
An experimental design in which participants are paired on characteristics relevant to the study, such as age or ability, and one member of each pair is placed in each condition.
The proposal that people tend to form relationships with partners whose physical attractiveness or overall social desirability is similar to their own.
A caregiver’s ability to notice an infant’s signals, interpret them correctly and respond to them promptly and appropriately, proposed by Ainsworth as the main cause of secure attachment.
Biologically driven change in the body and brain that unfolds with age according to a genetic timetable, largely independent of specific experience, such as the development of the prefrontal cortex in adolescence.
A measure of central tendency calculated by adding all the scores in a set of data and dividing by the number of scores.
A single value that represents the typical or central score in a set of data: the mean, the median or the mode.
A descriptive statistic that shows how spread out the scores in a data set are, such as the range, the interquartile range or the standard deviation.
A concept referring to how psychologists represent behaviour and mental processes as data, by choosing methods and operationalising variables so that the results are reliable, valid and credible.
The degree to which a measure, such as a translated questionnaire, assesses the same construct in the same way in different cultures, so that scores can be fairly compared.
Using two or more media or devices at the same time, or switching rapidly between them, such as messaging while watching videos and studying.
A measure of central tendency: the middle score when all the scores are put in order, or the midpoint of the two middle scores.
The four processes (attention, retention, reproduction and motivation) that Bandura proposed take place between observing a model and imitating the model’s behaviour.
A credibility strategy in qualitative research in which participants are asked to check the researcher's transcripts or interpretations to confirm that they represent their views accurately; also called respondent validation.
A cognitive process by which information is encoded, stored and later retrieved, allowing past experience to affect present behaviour and thought.
The process by which a newly encoded, fragile memory trace is stabilised into a lasting long-term memory, first at synapses within hours and then across brain systems over months or years.
The proposal that stress hormones such as adrenaline, acting through the amygdala, strengthen the consolidation of memories formed during emotional arousal rather than creating them.
A state of psychological and emotional well-being in which a person can cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and contribute to their community; more than the absence of a disorder.
A pattern of thoughts, emotions and behaviour that causes significant distress or impairment in daily functioning and meets agreed diagnostic criteria, such as those of DSM-5-TR or ICD-11.
The tendency to develop a more positive attitude towards a person or stimulus simply because of repeated exposure to it.
The proposal that the visible presence of a smartphone, even when unused, reduces attention, cognitive capacity or conversation quality; the evidence for it is mixed.
A statistical technique that combines the results of many studies on the same question to estimate the overall size and consistency of an effect.
Knowledge about one’s own thinking and the ability to monitor and control it, such as judging how well something has been learned and choosing a strategy to learn it.
A way of paying attention, on purpose and without judgement, to present-moment experience, including thoughts and feelings, which are noticed as passing events rather than facts.
A group treatment combining mindfulness meditation with elements of cognitive therapy, designed to prevent relapse in people who have recovered from recurrent depression.
A research method in which participants are divided into groups on a trivial or random basis, with no contact, history or conflict, to test whether categorisation alone produces in-group favouritism.
A form of social influence in which a smaller group or individual changes the views of a majority, usually through a consistent argument that leads to private acceptance (conversion).
The distortion of a memory by misleading information received after the event, so that a person reports details that were not part of the original experience.
The gap between the heritability of a trait estimated from twin studies and the much smaller share of variation explained by genetic variants found in genome-wide association studies.
A research strategy that combines quantitative and qualitative data in one study, so that each kind of data compensates for the limitations of the other.
A technique, such as an acronym, a rhyme or the method of loci, that organises information into a memorable structure to aid encoding and retrieval.
The finding that learners learn more when a diagram is accompanied by a spoken rather than a written explanation, because visual and auditory channels together increase effective working memory capacity.
A measure of central tendency: the score or category that occurs most often in a set of data.
A simplified representation of a complex process, usually showing its components and how they are linked, used to explain the process, test hypotheses and make predictions.
The demonstration of a behaviour by a model (a live person, a media character or a verbal description) that an observer may learn and later imitate.
The hypothesis that depression is caused by low levels or reduced activity of monoamine neurotransmitters, especially serotonin and noradrenaline, in the brain.
An antidepressant that blocks monoamine oxidase, the enzyme that breaks down serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine, so that more of these neurotransmitters is available for release.
Bowlby’s idea that an infant has an innate tendency to form one primary attachment, usually with the mother, which is more important than any other bond.
Twins who develop from a single fertilised egg that splits in two, so they share almost 100% of their genes; also called identical twins.
The distinction between moral rules, judged to be wrong everywhere because they concern harm, rights or justice, and conventional rules, judged to be local customs that authorities could change.
Any person, or tool, with greater understanding or skill than the learner for a particular task, who can guide the learner through the zone of proximal development.
Reasoning in which the wish to reach a particular conclusion, rather than accuracy, influences how evidence is sought, evaluated and remembered.
The processes that give behaviour its purpose or direction, energy and persistence; motives may be conscious, such as a stated goal, or unconscious.
A client-centred counselling approach that strengthens a person’s own motivation to change a behaviour by exploring their ambivalence and reasons for change rather than persuading or instructing them.
A visual illusion in which two lines of equal length appear to differ in length because of the direction of arrow-like fins at their ends.
A model of memory proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) in which information passes through three separate stores, sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory, linked by attention, rehearsal and retrieval.
A society’s policy and attitude of accepting cultural diversity, in which different cultural groups keep their heritage while sharing full participation in the larger society.
The increase in the risk of at least one type I error when many significance tests are run on the same data, because each test at the 0.05 level carries its own chance of a false positive.
The extent to which the tasks and setting of a study resemble situations that people meet in everyday life.
A fatty insulating layer, formed by glial cells, that wraps axons in segments and greatly speeds the conduction of action potentials.
The process in which axons become covered in a fatty myelin sheath, which speeds up and synchronises signals between brain regions; it continues into the twenties, with frontal pathways among the last.