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Declarative memory (explicit)—memory of facts and experiences that one consciously is aware of and can declare.

Deductive reasoning—reasoning from the general to the specific.

Deep processing—involves attaching meaning and creating associations between the new memory and existing memories.

Defense mechanisms—unconscious, deceptive reactions that protect the ego from unpleasant emotions that are threatening, according to Freudian theory. They become active when unconscious instinctual drives of the id come into conflict with prohibitions of the superego.

Deindividuation—loss of self-awareness and restraint resulting from immersion in a group.

Deinstitutionalization—movement begun in 1950s to remove patients who were not considered a threat to themselves or the community from mental hospitals.

Delayed conditioning—ideal training in classical conditioning training where the CS precedes UCS and briefly overlaps.

Delusion—false belief that others are plotting against one, that one is famous or that one’s thoughts and actions are controlled by others; symptomatic of schizophrenia and sometimes depression.

Demand characteristics—clues participants discover about the purpose of the study that suggest how they should respond.

Dendrites—branching tubular processes of neuron that have receptor sites for receiving information.

Denial—Freudian defense mechanism, a refusal to admit a particular aspect of reality.

Dependent variable (DV)—the behavior or mental process that is measured in an experiment or quasi-experiment (the effect).

Depressants—psychoactive drugs that reduce the activity of the central nervous system and induce relaxation; include sedatives such as barbiturates, tranquilizers, and alcohol.

Depth perception—the ability to judge the distance of objects.

Descriptive statistics—numbers that summarize a set of research data obtained from a sample.

Developmental psychology—study of physical, intellectual, social, and moral changes over the entire life span from conception to death.

Deviation IQ—Weschler’s procedure for computing the intelligence quotient; compares a child’s score with those received by other children of the same chronological age.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IVTR)—manual used by mental health professionals for classifying psychological disorders; published by American Psychiatric Association.

Diathesis–stress model—an account of the cause of mental disorders based on the idea that mental disorders develop when a person possesses a genetic predisposition for a disorder, and later faces stressors that exceed his or her abilities to cope with them.

Difference threshold—mimimum difference between any two stimuli that a person can detect 50 percent of the time.

Discrimination—in classical conditioning, the ability to tell the difference between the CS and stimuli similar to it that do not signal a UCS; in operant conditioning refers to responding differently to stimuli that signal that behavior will be reinforced or not reinforced; in social psychology it refers to unjustified behavior against an individual or group.

Disinhibition—a behavior therapy for phobias where modeling is used.

Disorganized schizophrenia (hebephrenia)—a type of schizophrenia characterized primarily by disturbances of thought and inappropriate affect—silly behavior or absence of emotions.

Displacement—expressing feelings toward something or someone besides the target person, because they are perceived as less threatening.

Display rules—culturally determined rules that prescribe the appropriate expression of emotions in particular situations.

Dispositional attributions—inferences that a person’s behavior is caused by the person’s tendency to think, feel, or act in a particular way.

Dissociation—experience of two or more streams of consciousness cut off from each other.

Dissociative amnesia—repression of memory for a particularly troublesome event or period of time into the unconscious mind; characterized by the inability to remember important events or