Glossary
Words the exam actually uses — and the neighbor they get confused with
A definition is a tool, not a personality. Learn the confusable so the distractor stops feeling clever.
273 terms
Absolute threshold
The minimum stimulus intensity that is detected, classically on about half of the trials.
Confusable. Not a personality of ‘good ears,’ and not the same as a just-noticeable change.
Accommodation
Changing a scheme so that new information can be handled.
Confusable. Not the same as just noticing something new. The structure of the scheme moves.
Acquisition
The phase when pairing builds the CS–UCS association and the CR grows.
Confusable. Not extinction, which is CS-alone and a fading CR.
Action potential
A rapid, all-or-none electrical spike that travels the axon once threshold is reached.
Confusable. Resting potential is the stable negative charge at rest — not the spike itself.
Actor–observer bias
The same kind of act is explained more situationally for the self (the actor) and more dispositionally for someone else (the observer).
Confusable. Neighbor of FAE. Actor–observer names the self/other split; FAE names the observer’s lean on others.
Actualizing tendency
Rogers: a directional push toward growth and a more complete self as the person lives it.
Confusable. Not Maslow’s hierarchy as a law, and not an id impulse. Humanistic, with limits.
Adoption study (as method)
A design that compares resemblance to birth relatives versus adoptive relatives to help separate shared genes from shared home.
Confusable. Placement is not random assignment of DNA. One adopted child is not the field.
Adult sensory change
Common later-life shifts such as lens stiffening, high-frequency hearing loss, and slower reaction time — researchable, not a joke.
Confusable. Not proof that thinking stops, and not a claim you can hang on adolescence.
Agonist
A chemical that mimics or enhances a neurotransmitter’s effect at a receptor.
Confusable. Antagonist is the blocker. ‘Agonist’ is not ‘agonizing’ and is not a personality type.
Algorithm
A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct solution if one exists and the steps are completed.
Confusable. A heuristic is faster and does not guarantee. Insight is a sudden reorganization, not a recipe you can write out in advance.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
All-or-none principle
If threshold is met, the axon fires a full spike; if not, it does not fire a half-spike.
Confusable. Does not mean the brain is all-or-none. Intensity is coded by firing rate and how many neurons fire.
Amygdala
A structure involved in emotion- and threat-related processing.
Confusable. Not ‘the fear center’ as a complete job description, and not a snack target in an ad.
Anchoring
An early number or starting value tugs later estimates even when the start is arbitrary.
Confusable. Not framing (which is about how the same information is worded or packaged).
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
Antagonist
A chemical that blocks or reduces a neurotransmitter’s effect at a receptor.
Confusable. Not the opposite of a hormone, and not a villain in a story.
Anxiety-related category
A research cluster centered on excessive fear or worry and related bodily alarm — a construct, not a hallway label.
Confusable. Not the same as obsessive-compulsive-related (intrusions + neutralizing rituals), and not ordinary exam-week nerves as a diagnosis.
Appraisal
The interpretation of a stressor — for example as threat or challenge, controllable or not.
Confusable. Not a performance review at work. It is the read of the event.
Appraisal (Lazarus-style, AP grain)
The meaning assigned to an event is what makes the emotion; that assignment can be rapid.
Confusable. Neighbor of two-factor. If the stem is leftover arousal plus a room’s story, two-factor is usually tighter. If the stem is the interpretation of the event, appraisal.
Arousal theory (Yerkes–Dodson as enrichment)
People seek a workable band of stimulation. Flagged enrichment: performance often relates to arousal in an inverted U, with task difficulty mattering.
Confusable. Not a mood-disorder diagnosis. Not drive-reduction (which is about need and homeostasis).
Assimilation
Fitting new information into an existing scheme without changing the scheme’s core.
Confusable. Accommodation is changing the scheme because the new information will not fit.
Attachment (Bowlby)
An early emotional tie that organizes seeking proximity, a secure base for exploration, and a safe haven under threat.
Confusable. Not identity work in adolescence, and not a parenting-style slogan.
Attitude
An evaluation of a person, object, or claim — favor or disfavor — with cognitive, affective, and behavioral sides that need not match.
Confusable. A belief is a true/false-style claim. A behavior is the act. Do not treat the three as identical.
Authoritarian parenting
A research category: high demand with low warmth, as a study operationalizes those dimensions.
Confusable. Not a moral caption, and not the same cell as authoritative.
Authoritative parenting (Baumrind)
A research category: high warmth and high demand / clear limits, as measured in a study — not a halo.
Confusable. Authoritarian is high demand with low warmth. The words look similar; the warmth dimension does not.
Automatic encoding
Getting information in with little deliberate effort — often gist, place, or sequence you did not try to memorize.
Confusable. Effortful encoding is the work you do on purpose. Automatic is not ‘better,’ just less intentional.
Autonomic nervous system
The PNS branch that regulates glands, heart, and smooth muscle — largely without a conscious plan.
Confusable. Not ‘automatic personality.’ It is a branch of nerves.
Availability heuristic
Judging frequency or probability by how easily examples come to mind.
Confusable. Representativeness is about similarity to a prototype, not about vivid ease of recall.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
Behavioral family
Approaches that change learned responses and contingencies — exposure, systematic desensitization, skills, token economies.
Confusable. Not cognitive restructuring (that targets thought patterns). Exposure is a behavioral mechanism even when thoughts show up in the room.
Belief
A cognitive claim about what is true or how the world is.
Confusable. You can believe a policy works and still dislike it (attitude) and still not vote (behavior).
Bias (as a methods idea) / achievement vs aptitude
Bias: a test may not measure the same construct across groups or contexts, or may predict differently — a research-methods problem. Achievement tests claim learned skill; aptitude tests claim to predict later learning. Different claims.
Confusable. Bias is not a slogan that ‘all tests are destiny,’ and it is not a prompt to rank ethnic groups. Achievement is not aptitude.
Big Five (OCEAN)
Five trait dimensions — Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism — used as sliders, not types.
Confusable. Not MBTI letter boxes. Not destiny. Not a moral ranking.
Binocular depth cues
Depth information that requires two eyes, especially retinal disparity and convergence.
Confusable. Monocular cues (relative size, linear perspective, interposition, and the rest) work with one eye.
Biological perspective
An explanation that points at genes, brain systems, neurotransmitters, or other physiology.
Confusable. Not the same as a cognitive explanation (interpretations of events), and not a prescription of medication (that is 5.5, still not a prescription from this page).
Biomedical family
Approaches that target physiology as a protocol in research — for example a medication class — still not a prescription from this page.
Confusable. Not a conspiracy, not a cure slogan, and not advice about what a reader should take.
Bipolar-related category
A cluster that includes periods of elevated, expansive, or irritable mood as manuals name mania or hypomania, distinct from unipolar depressive clusters.
Confusable. Not ‘moody,’ not a compliment for energy, and not an insult to throw at a classmate.
Bottom-up processing
Organization that starts from features in the already-transduced signal — edges, frequencies, the strokes that are actually there.
Confusable. Not sensation itself. Sensation is the transduction step in 1.6. Bottom-up is a perceptual direction of travel.
Brainstem
Structures at the top of the spinal cord that support basic life functions such as breathing, heart, and arousal pathways.
Confusable. Not the seat of personality, and not the cerebellum.
Bystander effect
People are less likely to help when others are present.
Confusable. Diffusion of responsibility is a mechanism: responsibility is shared so each person feels less of it.
Cannon–Bard theory
Bodily response and feeling are triggered at the same time; the body pattern is not required as the cause of the feeling.
Confusable. Not James–Lange (body first). Not two-factor (arousal plus situational label).
Central nervous system (CNS)
Brain and spinal cord — the midline cable and the processors on it.
Confusable. Not the nerves in the hand. Those are PNS.
Central route
Persuasion that relies on argument quality when the person is motivated and able to think about the message.
Confusable. Peripheral route relies on cues (celebrity, length, attractiveness), not on the logic of the case.
Cephalocaudal pattern
A typical infant motor direction from head toward tail — head control before walking.
Confusable. Not proximodistal, which is center-out (trunk before fingers).
Cerebellum
A structure involved in coordinated movement, balance, and timing.
Confusable. Not the storehouse of autobiographical stories (closer to hippocampus).
Cerebral cortex (lobes)
The outer layer of the hemispheres: frontal (planning/movement/speech production), parietal (touch/spatial), temporal (hearing/speech comprehension), occipital (vision).
Confusable. A lobe job is not a personality type. Broca/Wernicke are historical addresses with limits, not quizzes.
Chunking
Grouping bits into meaningful units so a limited workspace can handle more.
Confusable. Not spacing (when you study). Not a mnemonic story unless the chunk itself is the device.
Circadian rhythm
A roughly 24-hour biological timing cycle, including sleepiness and alertness, that can be set by cues such as light.
Confusable. Not the same as ‘hours spent in bed,’ and not a personality type.
Classification system
A shared set of labels and written criteria used for research and professional communication — with limits.
Confusable. Not a verdict on a person, not a personality quiz, and not a tool for diagnosing a classmate.
Cognitive / CBT family
Approaches that target thought patterns and the tests a person can run in daily life; CBT combines cognitive work with behavioral experiments.
Confusable. Not biomedical (a physiological protocol). CBT is not ‘just think happy thoughts.’
Cognitive dissonance
Discomfort from inconsistency among attitudes, beliefs, or behavior, which people often reduce by changing one of those pieces.
Confusable. Not mere exposure, not classical pairing, and not ‘being a hypocrite’ as an insult.
Cognitive map
An internal representation of a layout that can guide later performance even if it was not being rewarded while it was built.
Confusable. Not a photograph of the maze, and not a CR to a tone.
Cognitive perspective
An explanation that points at interpretations, appraisals, and thought patterns.
Confusable. Not biological (the chemical hop) and not behavioral (the learned cue–response or consequence), though a stem can involve more than one.
Cohort effect
A difference that comes from the generation or historical period people were born into, not from age alone.
Confusable. Not the same as a practice effect (getting better because you took the test before).
Comorbidity
The research observation that more than one classified cluster can be present at once — a limit on neat boxes.
Confusable. Not ‘being more ill’ as a moral story, and not a second insult stacked on a person.
Compliance
Agreeing to a direct request, typically without a formal authority order.
Confusable. Not automatically conformity (no group standard required).
Conditioned response (CR)
The learned response to the CS after pairing.
Confusable. Often looks like the UCR but is tied to the CS. Do not call it negative reinforcement.
Conditioned stimulus (CS)
A once-neutral stimulus that, after pairing with a UCS, comes to pull a conditioned response.
Confusable. Not the UCS, and not a reward for a behavior (that is operant language).
Confirmation bias
Seeking, noticing, or remembering evidence that fits a current belief and missing what does not.
Confusable. Not the same as overconfidence (certainty outrunning accuracy), though they can travel together.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
Conformity
Changing behavior or judgment toward a group standard.
Confusable. Obedience is to authority, not to peers. Compliance is to a request.
Congruence
Rogers: a match between self-concept and actual experience. Incongruence is a gap between the picture and the life.
Confusable. Not Freud’s ego as mediator. Not ‘being authentic’ as a slogan with no mechanism.
Conservation
Understanding that quantity stays the same when appearance changes (liquid, number, mass) — a concrete-operational success, a preoperational failure on classic tasks.
Confusable. Failing the task is not a diagnosis. Wording and materials can hide competence.
Consolidation
The process of stabilizing a memory trace over time; the hippocampus is involved in many new explicit traces.
Confusable. Not ‘the hippocampus is the hard drive of personality.’ Not a 10%-of-brain claim. Not photographic storage.
Contact comfort (Harlow)
The finding, from surrogate-rearing methods, that clinging was pulled more by a comfortable cloth than by food alone.
Confusable. A classic method with an ethical limit — not a parenting tip, and not a human life in a box.
Context-dependent memory
Place and external setting can serve as cues; matching rooms can help, mismatch can hurt.
Confusable. State-dependent is internal state (including mood-congruent versions), not the furniture.
Continuity/discontinuity (lens)
A question about whether change is gradual (more of the same) or stage-like (a new kind of functioning).
Confusable. Not the same as stability/change, which asks whether a quality persists, not whether it is stage-like.
Critical period
A limited window when a system typically needs particular input for the usual developmental path.
Confusable. Stricter than a sensitive period, which is a time of heightened openness rather than a hard lock.
Cross-sectional design
Different age groups measured at one time so researchers can compare age groups quickly.
Confusable. Not longitudinal. You do not follow the same people. Age is mixed with cohort.
Defense mechanism (theory)
A psychodynamic idea: a process that reduces anxiety by distorting or redirecting a threatening impulse or feeling. Applied as a lens with limits, not as proof.
Confusable. Not a Big Five score (4.5), not ordinary forgetting (2.7), and not a secret fact about the reader.
Deindividuation
Reduced self-awareness and personal constraint in a group, often with anonymity and arousal.
Confusable. Not just ‘being in a group.’ Anonymity/arousal are the usual ingredients.
Depressive category
A cluster of persistent low mood and loss of interest or pleasure, with associated changes the research criteria group together.
Confusable. Not ‘sad for an afternoon,’ and not the same cluster as bipolar-related categories (which include elevated/irritable mood episodes).
Deviance / distress / dysfunction
Three discussion tests of what gets classified: unusual relative to a norm, reported suffering, and interference with life tasks — each with limits.
Confusable. Not a three-item quiz that licenses a hallway diagnosis. Culture, concealment, and setting all bound them.
Difference threshold (JND)
The minimum change in a stimulus that is detected; Weber’s idea is that this change tends to scale with starting intensity.
Confusable. Not a table of invented fractions you must memorize, and not absolute threshold.
Diffusion of responsibility
A person feels less personally responsible when others could also act.
Confusable. Related to the bystander effect, but not identical to deindividuation.
Discrimination
Unequal behavior toward a person or group based on group membership.
Confusable. The act, not the thought. A private stereotype without a different act is not this term.
Discriminative stimulus
A cue that signals a particular consequence is now available for a behavior.
Confusable. Not the same as a CS in classical conditioning, though both are cues.
Display rules
Cultural and situational norms for when, how intensely, and whether an emotion is expressed.
Confusable. Not proof that the feeling is absent. Not a universal-percentage claim.
Dispositional attribution
Explaining a behavior as caused by the person’s traits, abilities, or intentions.
Confusable. Situational attribution points at the context. ‘Dispositional’ is not a synonym for ‘mean.’
Door-in-the-face
A large request is refused, after which a smaller request is more likely to be accepted.
Confusable. Not foot-in-the-door (small then large). Not obedience to an authority order (that is 4.3).
Dream theories (with limits)
Wish-fulfillment treats a dream as a disguised wish; activation-style ideas treat a dream as cortex stitching a story onto sleep activity. Both are theories, not proven decoders.
Confusable. Not settled science, not a sixth sense, and not the same as naming a sleep stage.
Drive-reduction
A need creates an internal drive; behavior that restores homeostasis reduces the drive.
Confusable. Incentive is an external pull. Hierarchy is a stacked-motives sketch with limits — not the default key.
DSM (as an example)
A widely taught example of a diagnostic manual: one classification system among possible systems, revised over time.
Confusable. Not a law of nature and not a code this product will assign to you. Other systems exist; manuals change.
Dual coding
The idea that pairing verbal material with imagery can strengthen encoding. A useful idea with limits, not a doodle guarantee.
Confusable. Not two memory stores (that is 2.5). Not proof of left-brain/right-brain study styles.
Effectiveness as a research question
Whether a specified protocol outperforms a control on an operationalized measure in a specified sample — a methods claim with limits.
Confusable. Not ‘therapy always works’ and not ‘meds are a conspiracy.’ Direction of a comparison, then the limit.
Effortful encoding
Deliberate work to get information into memory — rehearsal with meaning, organization, practice.
Confusable. Not the same as highlighting. Effort that stays shallow can still fail.
Ego
In Freud’s sketch, the reality-oriented mediator among id, superego, and the world.
Confusable. Not ‘having a big ego’ as an insult. Not Rogers’s self-concept.
Egocentrism (Piaget)
Difficulty taking another person’s visual or conceptual viewpoint — a preoperational pattern on classic tasks.
Confusable. Not selfishness as a moral, and not Vygotsky’s ZPD.
Emotion-focused coping
Coping aimed at changing the emotional or bodily state.
Confusable. Not automatically weaker than problem-focused. It is a different target.
Encoding
The process of getting information into memory in the first place.
Confusable. Not retrieval (getting it out) and not storage (holding it). Three jobs, three names.
Encoding specificity
Retrieval is stronger when cues at test match the cues present at encoding.
Confusable. Not ‘study longer.’ Matching beats extra unmatched minutes. 2.7 uses this idea for cue-dependent forgetting.
Encoding specificity
Retrieval is stronger when cues at test match the cues present at encoding.
Confusable. Not the same as ‘study longer.’ Matching context is the move.
Endocrine system
Glands that release hormones into the bloodstream — slower, often longer-lasting chemical messages than a synapse.
Confusable. Not the same postal system as a neurotransmitter hopping a cleft (that is 1.3).
Epigenetics (AP grain)
Environmental influence on gene expression — whether a sequence is more or less active — without treating DNA as a locked vault or a one-night rewrite.
Confusable. Not ‘stress rewrote your genome and your children are doomed’ as settled exam science.
Episodic memory
Explicit memory for a personal event in time and place.
Confusable. Semantic is fact without that personal movie. Both can be explicit.
Explicit memory
Memory you can declare — episodes and facts you can report as ‘I remember’ or ‘I know.’
Confusable. Implicit is skill, priming, or conditioned response without that report. Explicit is not ‘true’ and implicit ‘false.’
External locus of control
A tendency to treat outcomes as tied to luck, fate, or other people rather than one’s own actions.
Confusable. Not a diagnosis, not ‘giving up’ as an insult, and not low self-efficacy by another name.
Extinction (classical)
Presenting the CS without the UCS until the CR fades.
Confusable. Not unlearning as a deleted file — spontaneous recovery can show the association is not simply gone.
Feeding and eating category
A CED-allowed grouping of patterns involving eating, body-related concern, and control of intake as research constructs.
Confusable. Not a cafeteria diagnosis of a classmate, and not ‘dieting’ as a punchline.
Figure–ground
One region is perceived as the object (figure); the rest recedes as background (ground).
Confusable. Not the same as closure (filling a gap in a line or shape).
Fixed-interval schedule
The first response after a set time is reinforced; responding often scallops toward the interval’s end.
Confusable. Not fixed-ratio (count of responses).
Flow
An idea: a challenge–skill match reported as absorbing, with narrowed attention and altered sense of time — with limits.
Confusable. Not a trait you ‘are,’ not proof of talent, and not a treatment. High challenge with low skill is strain, not flow.
Foot-in-the-door
Agreeing to a small request first makes a later, larger related request more likely to be accepted.
Confusable. Door-in-the-face starts with a large request that is refused, then a smaller one.
Framing
The wording or packaging of the same information changes the choice (gains vs losses, 90% vs 10%).
Confusable. Not anchoring (a starting number). Framing is the window, not the first digit.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
Functional fixedness
Stuck on an object’s usual function, so a new use that would solve the problem does not appear.
Confusable. Mental set is a stuck strategy or procedure. Functional fixedness is a stuck use of an object.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
Fundamental attribution error
The tendency, when explaining someone else’s behavior, to overstate disposition and understate situation.
Confusable. Not self-serving bias (that pattern is about one’s own wins and losses). FAE is about others.
g (general intelligence as a factor)
A statistical-factor idea: shared variance among many cognitive tests, named as general intelligence by some researchers.
Confusable. Not a fluid, not a soul, not proof of destiny. Not the same as a viral puzzle score.
Gender expression
How a person presents gender through appearance, manner, or other signals a culture can read.
Confusable. Not identical to identity (a person may express and identify in ways a study must measure separately).
Gender identity
A person’s internal sense of their gender, treated here as a research construct to be measured as a study defines it.
Confusable. Not the same as sex classification, and not the same as a pattern of attraction.
Gender role
A culture’s taught expectations for how people of a gender are supposed to act, appear, or occupy work and family.
Confusable. Not a biological classification, and not proof of what any one person ‘should’ be.
Gender schema
A cognitive framework that organizes information into gender categories and can guide attention and memory.
Confusable. A research idea about organization of information — not a rule that a child must follow, and not a cause of orientation.
General adaptation (classic pattern)
A named pattern of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion as a broad sketch of prolonged stress physiology.
Confusable. Not a diagnosis, not every body’s story, and not a synonym for ‘burnout’ as a meme.
Generalization (classical)
Stimuli similar to the CS pull some of the CR.
Confusable. Discrimination is learning which similar cues do not predict the UCS.
Generativity (Erikson)
A later-adulthood crisis in Erikson’s theory: investing in the next generation or in work that outlasts the self, vs stagnation.
Confusable. Not socioemotional selectivity, and not the adolescent identity item.
Genotype
The genetic sequence a person inherited — the DNA-level contribution, not the visible trait itself.
Confusable. Phenotype is what you can observe. They are not synonyms.
Gestalt grouping
Organization rules by which bits are perceived as wholes: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, figure–ground.
Confusable. Not a proof that cameras group. Not a social ‘group’ in Unit 4.
Gratitude protocol
A specified exercise such as listing concrete events and why they happened, used in research as an independent variable — not a command to be grateful.
Confusable. Not the same as shutting someone down with ‘just be grateful,’ and not a cure for a disorder (disorders are not this page).
Group / community family
Approaches that use a social setting as the method: a group protocol, or a community program aimed at access and isolation as the CED allows.
Confusable. Not social loafing, and not a guarantee. Setting is the mechanism, not ‘friends are medicine’ as a meme.
Group polarization
Like-minded discussion moves the group’s average position toward a more extreme version of the initial lean.
Confusable. Not the same as groupthink, though a group can show both.
Groupthink
A cohesive group under pressure suppresses dissent and fails to appraise alternatives.
Confusable. Group polarization is a shift toward a more extreme average, not necessarily silenced dissent.
Hair cells (hearing)
Receptors in the cochlea that transduce sound-wave vibration into a neural code.
Confusable. Not photoreceptors, and not ‘noticing what the siren means.’
Heritability
A population statistic: the proportion of variance in a trait, in a group in a given range of environments, that relates to genetic differences.
Confusable. Not a personal destiny score, not ‘this percent of YOU is genetic,’ and not a reason practice cannot matter.
Heuristic
A mental shortcut that often produces a good-enough judgment quickly, with systematic error patterns the exam will name.
Confusable. Not ‘being sloppy’ as a character trait. Not an algorithm. Name which heuristic.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
Hierarchy of needs (with limits)
Maslow’s sketch that some motives are more basic and others later. A topic idea — not a law, not a personal score, never this product’s voice.
Confusable. Do not use it as the key unless the stem actually maps a hierarchy claim. Drive and incentive remain separate tools.
Hippocampus
A structure heavily involved in forming new explicit / episodic memories.
Confusable. Not the cerebellum’s movement job, and not a guarantee of photographic video memory.
Homeostasis
A relatively steady internal state that drive-reduction behavior works to restore.
Confusable. Not ‘balance’ as a wellness slogan. It is an internal-state idea in a drive story.
Humanistic / person-centered family
Approaches that aim at growth under empathy, congruence (genuineness), and unconditional positive regard.
Confusable. Unconditional positive regard is not ‘agreeing with everything,’ and not psychodynamic interpretation.
Hypothalamus
A structure involved in drives and internal regulation (hunger, thirst, temperature) and in directing the pituitary/endocrine system.
Confusable. Not the thalamus (sensory relay) and not a food that ‘hacks emotion.’
Id
In Freud’s structural sketch, the part of personality that seeks immediate gratification (pleasure principle).
Confusable. Not the self-concept (that is humanistic). Not a synonym for ‘being evil.’
Identity vs role confusion (Erikson)
The adolescent psychosocial crisis in Erikson’s lifespan theory: forming a coherent sense of self vs remaining unintegrated.
Confusable. One chapter on a lifespan staircase — not attachment, and not the whole of Erikson.
Implicit memory
Memory expressed in behavior without a required conscious report — procedural skill, priming, some conditioning.
Confusable. Not ‘repression’ (a contested 2.7 idea). Not a hidden video.
Incentive
An external stimulus that pulls behavior, even when internal drive is low.
Confusable. Not the drive itself. A bakery smell can pull eating without a strong hunger drive.
Informed consent (treatment ethics)
People are told enough about purpose, risks, and the right to stop before they take part in a protocol or a study of a protocol.
Confusable. Not the same as confidentiality (who can see what was said). Identify the guideline, then describe how it was applied.
Insight (Köhler, historical)
A sudden reorganization of a problem that yields a solution, often after a pause — not a shaped staircase.
Confusable. Not latent learning (which can be gradual and hidden), and not 3.8 shaping.
Insufficient external justification
When a person has already acted and cannot point to a strong outside reason, attitude often shifts to match the act.
Confusable. A large reward can explain the act without an attitude shift. Weak justification is the exam move.
Internal locus of control
A tendency to treat outcomes as tied to one’s own actions.
Confusable. Not self-efficacy. You can believe effort matters and still doubt you can do this specific skill.
Interrater reliability (classification)
The degree to which independent raters, using the same criteria, apply the same label to the same material.
Confusable. Not validity (whether the label points at a useful construct). Agreement is not the same as truth.
Intrinsic motivation
Doing an activity because the activity itself is interesting, skillful, or meaningful to the person.
Confusable. Not a moral upgrade over extrinsic. Extrinsic means an outside consequence is doing work.
IQ score
A number from a standardized intelligence test, interpreted against a reference sample. A score, not a person and not a destiny.
Confusable. Not achievement in a course. Not proof of genius from one viral puzzle.
James–Lange theory
A specific body pattern is interpreted as the emotion: body then feeling (we feel afraid because we ran / shook).
Confusable. Cannon–Bard is simultaneous, not sequential. Two-factor needs a cognitive label of the situation, not body-alone.
Kind-act protocol
A specified helpful action toward another person, logged as the intervention in a study of well-being.
Confusable. Not a personality of ‘being nice,’ and not community treatment (that family lives in 5.5).
Language acquisition device (theory)
Chomsky’s nativist idea of a built-in preparedness to extract grammar; a theory, not a photographed organ.
Confusable. Not a license to skip input, and not ‘left-brain personality.’
Latent learning (Tolman, historical)
Learning that occurs without being visible in performance until there is a reason to show it (a cognitive map unused until a payoff appears).
Confusable. Not insight’s sudden ‘aha,’ and not shaping of the running response.
Levels of processing
Shallower encoding of surface features vs deeper encoding of meaning; deeper processing tends to support later memory.
Confusable. Not a moral ranking of students. Not automatic vs effortful (you can effortfully stay shallow).
Localization of function
The idea that some psychological jobs depend more on some brain structures than others.
Confusable. Not a left-brained/right-brained personality sorting hat.
Long-term memory
A more durable store of information — skills, episodes, facts — in the multi-store sketch.
Confusable. Not proof of a video recording. Types of long-term store are 2.5’s job.
Longitudinal design
The same people measured across time so change and stability can be tracked inside a person.
Confusable. Not a true experiment on aging. You still cannot randomly assign age. Watch attrition.
Melatonin (classroom grain)
A pineal hormone whose rise in dimness is part of the circadian night signal — a clock chemical, not a magic genius pill.
Confusable. Not a neurotransmitter hopping a synapse as the whole sleep story, and not medical advice.
Memory consolidation
The stabilizing of memory traces after learning; sleep is one contributor, with limits on what we can claim.
Confusable. Not a guarantee that every list survives, and not the same as circadian timing itself.
Mirror neurons (with limit)
Cells reported to fire both when an act is performed and when it is observed — mention only with a hard limit.
Confusable. Do not retrieve them as a settled explanation of empathy or of a whole personality.
Misinformation effect
Post-event information can distort later memory reports of the original event.
Confusable. Not proof that the original event never happened, and not a lie detector.
Mnemonic
A deliberate encoding device — acronym, peg, palace, story — that organizes to-be-remembered material.
Confusable. Not automatic encoding. Not dual coding unless an image is actually paired with the words.
Monocular depth cues
Depth information available with one eye: relative size, interposition, linear perspective, relative height, texture, motion, light and shadow.
Confusable. Not ‘weaker binocular.’ Different recipe, not a failed two-eye system.
Morpheme
The smallest unit that carries meaning, including prefixes, suffixes, and whole short words.
Confusable. Not a phoneme, and not the same as syntax (order).
Multiple intelligences
A popular alternative framing that names several intelligences (for example linguistic, musical, bodily-kinesthetic). Measurement of them as separate intelligences is the limit.
Confusable. Not an official sorting hat. A talent or interest is not automatically a separately measured intelligence.
Natural selection
A species-level process across generations in which heritable traits that aid survival and reproduction become more common in a population.
Confusable. Not ‘you evolved to hate math this month,’ and not a personal origin story for one bad mock.
Nature–nurture interaction
Genes and environments jointly shape a phenotype; neither slogan is the whole mechanism.
Confusable. Not ‘nature versus nurture’ as a fight with one winner.
Nature/nurture (lens)
A question about how biological inheritance, experience, and their interaction explain a pattern in a sample.
Confusable. Not a personality type and not a slogan that one side ‘won.’
Negative punishment
A desirable stimulus is removed after a behavior; the behavior becomes less likely.
Confusable. Taking the phone is not negative reinforcement unless the behavior increases.
Negative reinforcement
An aversive stimulus is removed after a behavior; the behavior becomes more likely.
Confusable. Not punishment. The behavior increases. Escape and avoidance live here.
Neurodevelopmental category
Early-onset patterns researchers name (for example ADHD and autism as research categories) involving attention, activity, social communication, or restricted/repetitive behavior.
Confusable. Not an insult, not a quiz of the reader, and not ‘everyone is a little bit’ as a joke.
Neurotransmitter
A chemical messenger released into a synapse to affect the next neuron (or muscle/gland).
Confusable. A hormone travels in blood. Dopamine in a synapse is not ‘the pleasure molecule’ circulating the body.
NREM sleep
Non-REM stages 1–3, from light sleep into deep slow-wave sleep.
Confusable. Not ‘wasted time until REM,’ and not a genius setting.
Obedience
Changing behavior in response to a directive from an authority.
Confusable. Not the same as agreeing with friends. Authority is the ingredient.
Object permanence
Understanding that an object continues to exist when it is out of sight — a sensorimotor milestone in Piaget’s map.
Confusable. Not conservation (quantity despite appearance change), and not a personality trait.
Observational learning
Learning by watching a model, without needing a direct consequence to the observer’s own act in that moment.
Confusable. Not shaping (which reinforces the observer’s successive approximations).
Obsessive-compulsive-related category
A cluster of intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the distress of those thoughts (compulsions).
Confusable. Not a synonym for being tidy, organized, or particular about a sport kit.
Olfactory receptors
Receptors that transduce airborne chemical molecules into a neural code for smell.
Confusable. Interpreting ‘someone was here’ is not the transduction step.
Overjustification
An expected external reward added to an already-interesting task can later reduce unpaid interest in that task.
Confusable. Not ‘rewards never work.’ The pattern is about later intrinsic interest, not about whether completion rose while the reward ran.
Overregularization
Applying a grammatical rule too widely (goed, tooths) — a sign a rule is in play.
Confusable. Not proof the child has ‘no grammar,’ and not a phoneme error.
Parasympathetic division
The autonomic regulator that conserves energy and settles the body — heart down, digestion on.
Confusable. Not ‘always good.’ You need it, and you also need sympathetic.
Perceptual constancy
Perceiving an object as stable in shape, size, or color despite changing retinal input.
Confusable. Not sensory adaptation (1.6: receptors firing less). Constancy is an interpretation that holds identity.
Perceptual set
A ready expectation or context that tilts how ambiguous input is organized.
Confusable. Not a mental set in problem-solving (2.2: a stuck strategy). Neighboring word, different job.
Peripheral nervous system (PNS)
Nerves outside the brain and spinal cord that carry messages in and out.
Confusable. Not ‘peripheral’ as in unimportant. It is the wiring to the body.
Peripheral route
Persuasion that relies on surface cues rather than careful evaluation of arguments.
Confusable. Not ‘all ads.’ Name the cue. Central is the neighbor when involvement and argument quality are high.
Phenotype
An observable trait — height, a skill, a score — produced by genotype, environment, and their interaction.
Confusable. Not ‘personality as destiny,’ and not a heritability coefficient for one student.
Phoneme
The smallest sound unit that can change a word’s meaning.
Confusable. Not a morpheme. Sounds vs meaning-bits.
Photoreceptors
Rods and cones in the retina that transduce light into a neural code.
Confusable. Not hair cells (those transduce vibration in the ear), and not the later naming of a face.
Physiological arousal
Bodily activation (heart, breath, shake, sweat) that theories place in different orders relative to feeling.
Confusable. Not a diagnosis. Not ‘being an emotional person’ as a trait insult.
Plasticity
The brain’s ability to reorganize with experience or after injury.
Confusable. Not ‘we use 10%,’ and not proof that damage never happened.
Positive psychology
A research field that studies well-being, strengths, and related constructs with specified measures — not a slogan and not a treatment mandate.
Confusable. Not ‘being positive.’ Not a replacement for studying disorders in 5.3–5.5, and not a diagnosis of anyone who is having a hard week.
Positive punishment
An aversive stimulus is added after a behavior; the behavior becomes less likely.
Confusable. Not ‘tough love’ as a slogan. Name the added aversive event.
Positive reinforcement
A desirable stimulus is added after a behavior; the behavior becomes more likely.
Confusable. Not ‘positive’ as in morally good. It means something was added.
Pragmatics
Social use of language: turn-taking, tone, adjusting to the listener, what is left unsaid.
Confusable. Not vocabulary size, and not syntax.
Prejudice
An attitude, often negative, toward a group or a person because of group membership.
Confusable. Not the same as a stereotype (cognition) and not the same as discrimination (behavior).
Primacy effect
Better recall of early list items, often tied to more rehearsal into a longer-term hold.
Confusable. Recency is the end of the list (short-term / working hold on immediate tests), not the beginning.
Primary sex characteristics
Body changes directly involved in reproduction (internal and external reproductive organs).
Confusable. Secondary sex characteristics are the more visible non-reproductive markers (voice, hair, fat distribution).
Priming
A recent stimulus increases the accessibility of a related response, often without a deliberate search.
Confusable. Not a full recall of an episode. Not perceptual set (2.1), though both involve readiness.
Proactive interference
Older learning disrupts recall of newer learning.
Confusable. Retroactive runs the other way: new learning disrupts old.
Problem-focused coping
Coping aimed at changing the situation or one’s handling of the task.
Confusable. Not ‘being practical’ as a personality. Name the move that targets the problem.
Procedural memory
Implicit memory for how to do something — riding, typing, a sport motion.
Confusable. The story of yesterday’s ride is episodic. The how-to is procedural.
Psychodynamic family
Approaches that aim at insight into unconscious conflict and relationship patterns (interpretation, transference as classroom-common tools).
Confusable. Not the same as humanistic regard, and not a synonym for ‘talking.’ Mechanism is insight into conflict.
Puberty
A hormonal process that produces reproductive maturity and related body changes, with variable timing.
Confusable. Not the whole of physical development, and not a personality type.
Recall vs recognition
Recall requires producing an item; recognition requires identifying it among options. They are different tests with different claims.
Confusable. A recognition hit is not proof you could recall. Relearning is a third measure (savings on a later try).
Recall vs recognition (at retrieval)
Recall produces the item; recognition identifies it. A recognition hit is not proof of recall.
Confusable. Not two stores. Two tests. 2.3 introduced the split; this page applies it as a retrieval fact.
Recency effect
Better recall of late list items on an immediate test, often still in short-term / working memory.
Confusable. A delay or distractor before recall can reduce recency while leaving primacy more intact.
Reciprocal determinism
Person factors, behavior, and environment influence one another continuously — a social-cognitive loop.
Confusable. Not Freud’s id/ego/superego. Not a one-way ‘environment stamps a trait.’
Reflex arc
A fast pathway, often spinal: sensory in, cord connection, motor out — without waiting for a finished conscious plan.
Confusable. Not proof the brain is unused, and not a hormone bypass.
Refractory period
A short window after a spike when the axon cannot fire again (or needs a stronger push).
Confusable. Not the same as fatigue, laziness, or ‘running out of dopamine.’
Reliability
Consistency of scores — across time, items, or forms — if the construct is stable.
Confusable. Reliability is not validity. A consistent score can still fail to measure the intended construct.
Reliability
Consistency of a measure — similar scores on a retest, or items that hang together.
Confusable. Validity is whether the measure does the job it claims. A consistent dart that misses the board is reliable and invalid for that aim.
REM sleep
A stage with rapid eye movements, a more active brain, and more often vivid dream reports; the body is typically quite still.
Confusable. Not the only stage that matters, and not proof a dream has been decoded.
Representativeness heuristic
Judging category or probability by similarity to a prototype, often neglecting base rates.
Confusable. Availability is ease of coming to mind. Looking like a type is representativeness.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision-Making
Repression (contested)
A psychodynamic idea that threatening memories are pushed out of awareness. Evidence is disputed; do not treat it as settled science.
Confusable. Not a synonym for ordinary forgetting, interference, or choosing not to talk about something.
Resting potential
The electrical charge of a neuron when it is not firing, typically negative inside relative to outside.
Confusable. Not the same as being ‘asleep’ or ‘unconscious.’ It is a membrane state.
Retrieval
Getting stored information back out when you need it.
Confusable. A retrieval miss is not automatic proof that encoding never happened (that question lives more fully in 2.7).
Retrieval cue
Any hint — external or internal — that can help locate a stored trace.
Confusable. Not the same as encoding (getting it in). A missing cue can hide a trace that was stored.
Retroactive interference
Newer learning disrupts recall of older learning.
Confusable. Not ‘retro’ as in vintage style. New material acting backward on old.
Savoring
A specified practice of attending to and lingering on a present positive experience as a research protocol.
Confusable. Not the same as a kind-act protocol (which targets a helpful action toward another person), and not ‘mindfulness’ as a brand.
Scaffolding
Temporary, adjustable help inside the ZPD that is faded as the learner can take more of the task.
Confusable. Not doing the whole task for them, and not a conservation probe.
Schachter–Singer (two-factor) theory
Emotion is arousal plus a cognitive label of the situation. Same shake, different story, different reported feeling.
Confusable. James–Lange does not require the situational label as a second factor. Appraisal emphasizes meaning assigned to the event.
Schizophrenia-spectrum category
A research cluster of psychosis-related features such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking — constructs, not folklore.
Confusable. Not ‘split personality’ (a pop mix-up with a different idea), not ‘dangerous’ as a story, and not a slur.
Self-concept
The organized picture a person holds of who they are — a humanistic tool, not an id.
Confusable. Not a trait dimension (4.5) and not the unconscious as Freud used it.
Self-determination (idea with limits)
A framework in which volitional motivation is supported by autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Limits: not a brand, not complete, not a diagnosis.
Confusable. Not Maslow as product voice. Not ‘intrinsic is always better’ as a sermon.
Self-efficacy
The belief that you can produce a version of a specific act — a social-cognitive factor in whether a modeled skill is attempted.
Confusable. Not global self-esteem, and not a UCS.
Self-efficacy
Belief that you can successfully perform a particular task or class of tasks.
Confusable. Not self-esteem as a global like/dislike of the self, and not locus of control (that is about whether actions move outcomes).
Self-serving bias
Attributing one’s successes more to disposition and one’s failures more to situation.
Confusable. Not a character insult and not FAE. The pattern is win → me, loss → the scene.
Semantic memory
Explicit memory for facts, meanings, and general knowledge, not tied to one personal event.
Confusable. Not implicit. Knowing that Paris is a capital is semantic even if you have never been.
Semantics
Meaning — what words and sentences refer to.
Confusable. Not pragmatics, which is how language is used in a social situation.
Sensation
Detection of physical energy by sensory receptors, including transduction into a neural code.
Confusable. Perception is organization and interpretation — Unit 2. Do not collapse the two.
Sensitive period
A window when a system is especially open to experience, without the all-or-nothing lock of a critical period.
Confusable. Not a synonym for puberty, and not a license to say ‘too late forever’ without evidence.
Sensory adaptation
Reduced responding to a constant stimulus at the receptor and its circuits.
Confusable. Not a sixth sense vanishing, and not absolute threshold going to infinity.
Sensory memory
A very brief hold of just-seen or just-heard input, as in the Atkinson–Shiffrin sketch.
Confusable. Not perception (2.1 organization) and not long-term memory of a smell from childhood.
Sensory storage
A very brief hold of just-seen or just-heard input before it is selected or lost.
Confusable. Not a childhood smell returning years later — that returning episode is long-term, often explicit.
Sequential design
More than one cohort followed over time, combining cross-sectional and longitudinal features.
Confusable. Not a guarantee that cohort effects vanish. It is an attempt to unhook age from generation.
Sex (research construct)
Biological classification typically based on chromosomes, gonads, hormones, and anatomy, including natural variation.
Confusable. Not a synonym for gender, and not a synonym for sexual orientation.
Sexual orientation
A pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction — a construct a survey can report, not a sermon.
Confusable. Not gender identity, not sex classification, and not a one-day behavior sample.
Shaping
Reinforcing successive approximations of a target behavior.
Confusable. Not one-shot reinforcement of the finished act, and not classical pairing.
Short-term / working storage
A limited, temporary workspace for holding and manipulating information you are using now.
Confusable. Not long-term procedural skill. A password you can type but not recite may be procedural plus a working-memory trick.
Short-term memory
A limited, temporary hold in the multi-store sketch, often maintained by rehearsal.
Confusable. Working memory is the workspace idea (executive plus phonological and visuospatial), not just a smaller box with a famous number.
Situational attribution
Explaining a behavior as caused by the context, constraints, or other people.
Confusable. Not an excuse as a moral category. It is a type of cause. The exam asks which type was used.
Sleep deprivation
Getting too little sleep relative to need; at classroom grain it can impair attention, mood, and learning.
Confusable. Not a hustle badge, not a fake IQ-loss percent, and not a diagnosis from one late night.
Social facilitation
The presence of others improves performance on simple or well-learned tasks (and can impair hard or new ones).
Confusable. Social loafing is reduced effort when individual output is hidden.
Social learning of gender roles
The claim that observation, modeling, and consequences help transmit a culture’s gender-role expectations.
Confusable. Can describe role learning. Cannot, by itself, explain sexual orientation as a parenting product.
Social loafing
Reduced individual effort on a group task when personal output is not identifiable.
Confusable. Not laziness as a trait. The situation hides the individual.
Sociocultural perspective
An explanation that points at norms, stigma, inequality, family systems, or cultural definitions of unusual.
Confusable. Not ‘society is always the only cause,’ and not a license to ignore distress as ‘just culture.’
Socioemotional selectivity
The idea that when time is viewed as limited, people often prefer emotionally close partners over new, information-heavy ones.
Confusable. An idea with limits — not every older adult, and not an infant attachment style.
Somatic nervous system
The PNS branch for skeletal-muscle movement and sensory input from skin, muscles, and joints.
Confusable. Not the gut/heart story. That is autonomic.
Source amnesia / source monitoring
Remembering information while losing (or misattributing) where it came from.
Confusable. Not the same as forgetting the information itself.
Spacing (distributed practice)
Spreading study over time rather than massing it in one block; tends to support more durable encoding.
Confusable. The testing effect is about retrieving as a study move, not about the calendar. Both can be used together.
Specified intervention / protocol
A well-being exercise written as steps a researcher could assign and compare with a control.
Confusable. A poster that says ‘choose joy’ is not a protocol. Operational steps are the difference.
Spontaneous recovery
The return of a faded CR after a rest, when the CS is presented again.
Confusable. Not acquisition from scratch, and not operant shaping.
Stability/change (lens)
A question about whether a quality or rank-order persists across time in the same people.
Confusable. Best served by following people. A one-time age comparison cannot finish this question.
Standardization
Uniform procedures and interpretation of scores against a norming sample.
Confusable. Not bias, and not a claim that the norming sample represents every context. Uniform rules are not the same as fairness.
State-dependent memory
Matching internal state at encoding and test can support retrieval.
Confusable. Not a license to sit a paper unwell because you studied unwell. It is a cue-match idea with limits.
Statistical learning
Picking up patterns in input (such as sound streams) from regularities, without a lecture.
Confusable. An idea with limits: lab pattern detection is not a full account of grammar in a life.
Stereotype
A cognitive generalization about members of a group — a belief, not yet an act.
Confusable. Prejudice is the attitude; discrimination is the behavior. Do not collapse the three.
Storage
Holding encoded information over time.
Confusable. Not a guarantee of later recall. Stored material still needs a cue. Not a video file in one folder.
Strange situation
Ainsworth’s brief lab procedure using separations and reunions to classify infant attachment behavior toward a caregiver.
Confusable. A snapshot with culture and duration limits — not a destiny score, and not Erikson’s identity crisis.
Stress response
The body’s and behavior’s reaction after appraisal of a stressor.
Confusable. Not ‘being a stressed person’ as a trait label.
Stressor
An event or condition that can trigger a stress process.
Confusable. Not the same as the stress response. The exam likes this split.
Superego
In Freud’s sketch, internalized standards — the ‘should’ that can clash with id and with reality.
Confusable. Not a parent in the room. Not unconditional positive regard (humanistic, and a different job).
Sympathetic division
The autonomic regulator that mobilizes energy — heart up, digestion down — in a challenge or threat.
Confusable. Not ‘sympathy’ and not the good/bad label. It is not a villain.
Synapse
The gap (and surrounding machinery) where one neuron’s chemical message reaches the next cell.
Confusable. Not the axon. The axon is the wire; the synapse is the hop at the end of the wire.
Syntax
The rules for combining words into allowed sentences.
Confusable. Semantics is meaning; a sentence can be grammatical and still be nonsense.
Taste aversion
A special classical case: a taste paired with illness can become a CS after one trial, even with a delay.
Confusable. Not the usual many-trial immediate pairing sketch, and not a consequence that was arranged to punish eating.
Teratogen
An agent that can disrupt prenatal development — a researchable risk whose effect depends on dose, timing, and context.
Confusable. Not a moral about a parent, and not a guaranteed outcome in every body.
Testing effect (as a study move)
Trying to produce the material during study — self-testing — tends to encode it more strongly than restudying.
Confusable. A later exam is a retrieval test (2.6). Using a quiz while studying is an encoding/study strategy on this page.
Top-down processing
Organization that uses knowledge, context, and expectation to interpret the signal — filling a missing letter, hearing a lyric you know.
Confusable. Not ‘imagination’ as a personality. Not extra transduction in the receptor.
Toxic positivity (misuse)
Using ‘be positive’ or ‘be grateful’ to shut down distress, or treating pain as a personal failure to flourish.
Confusable. Not a synonym for a gratitude protocol. The protocol is a method; the shutdown is a social move.
Trait
A relatively stable pattern of thinking, feeling, or behaving that varies in degree along a dimension.
Confusable. A situation can still override a tendency in a scene. A trait is not a box you are locked in.
Transduction
Conversion of physical energy (light, vibration, chemicals, pressure) into a neural code at the receptor.
Confusable. Not a hormone in the blood, and not the later meaning of the stimulus.
Trauma-related category
A cluster defined in relation to a qualifying event plus patterns such as re-experiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal as criteria are written.
Confusable. Not every hard week, and not a personality. The event is part of the construct’s definition.
Triarchic framing
Sternberg’s map of analytical, creative, and practical aspects of intelligence — another framing, not a second IQ mystique.
Confusable. Not three brain lobes. Not a license to skip reliability and validity.
Twin study (as method)
A comparison of resemblance (often identical vs fraternal, sometimes raised apart) on a measured trait, used to bound genetic and environmental contributions to variance.
Confusable. Not an experiment that assigned genes last week, and not a destiny printer.
Unconditional positive regard
Rogers: acceptance of the person that is not made to depend on meeting a condition.
Confusable. Not ‘never give feedback.’ Not Freud’s superego. Regard can be unconditional while a behavior is still named.
Unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
A stimulus that already pulls a response without this learning (food, a loud noise, illness).
Confusable. Not the CS. The CS started as neutral and gained its pull through pairing.
Universal-emotion idea (with limits)
A classroom-common claim that a small set of facial emotion patterns is widely recognized across groups.
Confusable. Display rules limit when and how a feeling is shown. Do not invent a percentage of agreement.
Validity
How well a test measures the construct it claims (construct), covers relevant content (content), and predicts a later criterion (predictive).
Confusable. Not ‘the number feels true.’ Not automatic just because the test is famous or consistent.
Validity
The extent to which a measure assesses the intended construct and/or predicts what it claims to predict.
Confusable. Not a brand name. Not the same as reliability. Predictive validity can fail while retest reliability looks tidy.
Variable-ratio schedule
Reinforcement after an unpredictable number of responses; tends to produce high, steady responding.
Confusable. Not variable-interval (which is about time, not count).
Vicarious reinforcement
Seeing a model rewarded, which makes the observer more likely to copy the act.
Confusable. Vicarious punishment is seeing the model pay a cost, which makes copying less likely.
Well-being (measured construct)
A score on a specified scale (life satisfaction, affect, or a named well-being inventory) in a specified sample, with limits.
Confusable. Not a moral grade, not ‘happiness’ as a vibe, and not a DSM-style verdict.
Working memory
A limited workspace for holding and manipulating information — central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad at AP grain.
Confusable. Not identical to the Atkinson–Shiffrin STM box. Not a capacity number you invent. 7±2 is a historical STM sketch; working memory is often smaller.
Working memory (information-processing)
The limited workspace for holding and manipulating information; capacity and speed are a lifespan research target.
Confusable. Not a Piagetian stage label, and not ‘memory’ as one blob.
Zeitgeber
A time-giving cue that helps set the circadian clock; light is the main classroom example.
Confusable. Not a brand of melatonin, and not a moral lecture about phones.
Zone of proximal development
The band of tasks a learner cannot yet do alone but can do with a more skilled partner.
Confusable. Not a Piagetian stage, and not help that is so far above the learner that it does no work.