5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition - Laura Lincoln Maitland [229]
Power tests—difficulty level measured; untimed tests which include easy to more difficult questions, used to assess intelligence and other capacities.
Preconscious—the level of consciousness that is outside of awareness but contains feelings and memories that can easily be brought to conscious awareness.
Preconventional level—Kohlberg’s first level of moral development, which bases moral behavior on obedience and punishment, or acting in one’s own best interests.
Predictive validity—the extent to which a test accurately forecasts a specific future result.
Prefrontal lobotomy—a surgical procedure that destroys the tracts connecting the frontal lobes to lower centers of the brain, once believed to be an effective treatment for schizophrenia.
Prejudice—unjustified attitudes we hold about others; generally negative evaluation based on ethnicity, race, sex, or some other criteria.
Prelinguistic speech—initial steps of cooing and babbling, later accidental imitation, and finally deliberate imitation as precursors to language development.
Premack Principle—a high probability response can serve as a reward for a low probability behavior, thus increasing it.
Prenatal development—period of development that begins with fertilization, or conception, and ends with birth.
Preoperational stage—Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development (2–7 yrs) during which the child represents and manipulates objects with symbols (language) and is egocentric.
Primacy effect (Law of Primacy)—the tendency to remember initial information; in the memorization of a list of words, the primacy effect is evidenced by better recall of the words early in the list.
Primary emotions—joy, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust which are inborn.
Primary motives—internal mechanism directing behavior dealing with sustaining processes biologically necessary for survival such as thirst, hunger, and sex.
Primary reinforcers—important automatic and unlearned (inborn) rewards like food and drink.
Primary sex characteristics—the reproductive organs (ovaries, uterus, and testes) and external genitals (vulva and penis).
Priming—activating specific associations in memory either consciously or unconsciously.
Proactive interference—occurs when something you learned earlier disrupts recall of something you experience later.
Problem solving—the active efforts we undertake to discover what must be done to achieve a goal that isn’t readily attainable.
Procedural memory—memories of perceptual, motor, and cognitive skills.
Projection—Freudian defense mechanism that attributes our undesirable feelings to others.
Projective personality tests—present ambiguous stimuli such as inkblots (Rorschaach) or pictures (TAT) with the assumption that test takers will project their unconscious thoughts or feelings onto the stimuli (according to psychoanalytic approach).
Prosocial behavior—positive, helpful, and constructive behavior.
Prototype—a mental image or “best example” that incorporates all the features you associate with a particular category.
Psychiatrist—medical doctor and mental health professional who can prescribe medication or perform surgery.
Psychoactive drug—a chemical that can pass through the blood-brain barrier to alter perception, thinking, behavior, and mood.
Psychoanalysis—Freudian form of therapy involving free association, dream analysis, resistance, and transference aimed at providing the patient insight into his/her unconscious motivations and conflicts.
Psychoanalyst—a therapist who has taken specialized postdoctoral training in psychoanalysis generally after earning either an M.D. or a Ph.D.
Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic approach—psychological perspective concerned with how unconscious instincts, conflicts, motives, and defenses influence behavior.
Psychological dependence—intense desire to achieve a drugged