• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Cognitive triad—Beck’s cognitive therapy which looks at what people think about their Self, their World, and their Future.

Cohort—group of people in one age group.

Cohort effect—observed group differences based on the era when people were born and grew up exposing them to particular experiences which may affect results of cross-sectional studies.

Cohort-sequential—research design that combines aspects of cross-sectional and longitudinal research to correct for cohort effect.

Collective unconscious—according to Jung, the powerful and influential system of the psyche that contains universal memories and ideas that all people have inherited from our ancestors over the course of evolution.

Collectivism—primary identification of an individual as a member of a group (family, school, company, community) and goals of the group as one’s goals.

Color blindness—sex-linked trait more common in males where individual cannot see certain colors, most often red and green.

Compliance—modification of our behavior at another person’s request.

Compulsion—an irresistible impulse to repeat some action over and over although it serves no useful purpose.

Computerized axial tomography (CAT or CT)—a computerized image using x-rays passed through the brain to show structure and/or the extent of a lesion.

Concept—a mental grouping or category for similar objects; one of the basic elements of thought.

Concrete operational stage—Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development (7–12 yrs) during which the child develops simple logic and masters conservation concepts.

Concurrent validity—measure of test showing how much of a skill a person has at the moment.

Conditioned response (CR)—in classical conditioning, the learned response to a conditioned stimulus which results from repeated pairing with the unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned stimulus (CS)—in classical conditioning, originally a neutral stimulus that comes to trigger a conditioned response after being repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

Conditions of worth—conditions that others place on us for receiving their positive regard.

Conduction deafness—loss of hearing that results when the eardrum is punctured or ossicles lose their ability to vibrate. A hearing aid may restore hearing.

Cones—photoreceptors that detect color and fine detail in daylight or in bright conditions. Most concentrated at the fovea of the retina; none are in the periphery.

Confabulation—filling in gaps in memory by combining and substituting memories from events other than the one you’re trying to remember.

Confirmation bias—a tendency to search for and use information that supports our preconceptions, and ignore information that refutes our ideas; often a hindrance to problem solving.

Conflict situations—problems in choosing between alternatives.

Conformity—the adoption of attitudes and behaviors shared by a particular group of people.

Confounding variables—in a controlled experiment, factors that cause differences between the experimental group and the control group other than the independent variable.

Connectionism—theory that memory is stored throughout the brain in connections between neurons, many of which can work together to process a single memory.

Consciousness—awareness of the outside world and ourselves, including our own mental processes, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. EEGs of wakeful consciousness record alpha and beta waves.

Conservation concepts—changes in the form of an object do not alter physical properties of mass, volume, and number, acquired during Piaget’s concrete operational stage.

Consolidation—the process by which information in short-term memory is transferred to long-term memory, presumably because of physical changes that occur in neurons in the brain.

Construct validity—the true measure of validity. Construct validity is the extent to which the test measures a given characteristic, trait, or construct.

Contact comfort—Harlow study with monkeys and surrogate moms—need for close contact