Psychology key terms

The symptoms and other requirements used to decide whether a person has a particular condition.

An explanation in which an underlying vulnerability combines with environmental stresses or experiences to produce a disorder.

A reduction in an individual's sense of personal responsibility because responsibility appears to be shared with other people.

An expense directly associated with providing a service, such as paying staff to deliver mental health care.

Personally receiving a reward after performing behaviour, making that behaviour more likely to be repeated.

An explanation proposing that the environment provides enough sensory information for perception without drawing on past experience to make inferences.

A break in continuity, such as an unexplained change in the location or events of an imagined story.

Learning through actively exploring, experimenting and finding things out rather than only receiving information.

Numerical data consisting of separate possible values, such as the number of words recalled.

Unfair treatment of someone because of a characteristic or condition, such as excluding someone because they have a mental health problem.

Withdrawal from social relationships, activities or wider participation in society.

A state of mental imbalance caused by information that does not fit existing schemas.

The extent to which values in a dataset are spread out.

The loss of information from a limited-capacity memory store when new information pushes it out.

An individual characteristic, such as personality or morality, that influences behaviour.

The pattern of how values in a dataset are spread: which values are common and which are rare.

Non-identical twins who develop from two separate fertilised eggs and share, on average, about half their inherited genetic variation, like other siblings.

A neurotransmitter: a chemical messenger that carries signals between neurons and is involved in functions including movement, attention, emotion and perception.

The proposal that an overactive dopamine system, involving excessive dopamine signalling and receptor stimulation, contributes to schizophrenia.

A nerve cell that releases dopamine as its neurotransmitter.

A region towards the upper, outer sides of the prefrontal cortex, involved in demanding cognitive tasks. Abbreviated to DLPFC.

An experimental arrangement in which neither participants nor the researchers directly testing them know which treatment is being administered.

In Freud’s theory, the process that disguises the hidden meaning of a dream through symbols, making its content less disturbing.

An offence involving illegal drugs, such as unlawful possession or supply.

The length of time information remains in a memory store.

The extent to which a study’s findings apply to behaviour in natural, everyday settings.

Managing stress and difficulties in ways that help a person deal with the situation and continue functioning.