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taboo: something that is avoided, banned, or not allowed because of a cultural belief.
tabula rasa: (translation: ‘blank slate’), refers to the behaviourist belief that all human behaviour is infinitely plastic and malleable, and therefore can be explained in terms of learnt
experiences, rather than genetic predispositions.
tardive dyskinesia: a condition that is occasionally experienced as a side-effect of
antipsychotic drugs, typified by involuntary movements of the tongue, lips, jaw and other
facial movements.
taste aversion: refers to a type of learning formed after one trial, whereby an association is formed between feelings of sickness and (usually) a particular food, resulting in an avoidance of the food.
telegraphic speech: refers to the reduced sentences (resembling telegrams) that distinguish children’s speech patterns from around 18 months to two years, demonstrating the basics of early grammar by containing crucial nouns and verbs.
telic state: a motivational state in which arousal is avoided.
temperament:
aspects of
personality that exist at birth and are believed
to be as a result of
genetic influences.
template theories:
an
account of
pattern recognition; the proposal that we match
incoming information with templates (miniature
representations) of patterns stored in
long-term memory.
temporal lobe:
the region of the
cortex below the lateral fissure; contains
the
auditory cortex.
territoriality:
the tendency of animals to defend (e.g. through scent
markings) a particular geographical area from other members
of their own species, in order to gain access to and
increase control over a resource.
testosterone:
a male sex
hormone produced by the testes, that is responsible
for production of sperm and the development of the
secondary sexual characteristics. It has also
been associated with
aggression.
test-retest reliability:
measure
of measurements consistency, by
correlating (the same) test
performance on two different occasions.
thalamus:
part of the
forebrain, transmits nerve impulses, up sensory
pathways to the
cerebral cortex. Damage to the thalamus can
result in
anterograde amnesia.
thanatos:
a
Freudian term which represents the death instinct,
characterised by
aggressive behaviour and a
rejection of pleasurable
stimuli.
thematic apperception
test (TAT):
a projective test, whereby individuals are presented with
ambiguous pictures and asked to generate a story from them,
thereby reveal
personality characteristics,
motivation for
power, achievement and
affiliation, and in a clinical
setting, any underlying
emotional problems.
theory:
a
structured set of concepts to explain a
phenomena or group
of
phenomena.
theory of mind:
child’s understanding of the
emotions and
motives of other
people.
therapeutic:
having a beneficial effect on
mental health.
therapy:
any process
that aids understanding and recovery from
psychological
difficulties. A wide variety of therapies can be divided
into
psychotherapies (involving discussion or action)
and
somatic therapies (medical or biological
intervention).
think-aloud protocol:
comments made when by experimental
participants of the
mental processes and approaches used whilst working on a
task.
third force:
term
used to describe the development of the
humanistic
perspective as an alternative to the
psychoanalytic and
behaviourist perspectives.
Thorndike puzzle-box:
piece of
laboratory apparatus used by
Skinner, to demonstrate
trial-and-error learning.
thought:
an idea; an instance of
thinking; the state or condition of thinking.
thought disturbances:
in
abnormal psychology, distortions of thought processes
such as incoherent speech.
thought disorder: in
abnormal psychology,
a general term to describe disturbance of thought or speech
that might be symptomatic of a
mental disorder, for
instance incoherent thought and speech patterns.
Thorndike
(1874-1949):
renowned for his animal research, exploring trial and
error learning (known as instrumental learning) in animals
through the development of the Thorndike ‘puzzle-box’
three mountains test:
a
Piagetian task to demonstrate
egocentricity,
whereby children are shown a model of three mountains, and
watches as a doll is positioned at a different point
around the mountains. Pre-operational
egocentric
children are unable to see from the dolls perspective of
the mountains.
tip of the tongue
phenomenon:
a term used to refer to the experience when we feel that we know a
particular word, yet are unable to retrieve it.
token economy:
using
the principles of
operant conditioning, a
behaviour modification technique used to encourage
particular behaviour, through the employment of
secondary reinforcers (tokens) after desirable behaviour, which can
be collected and exchanged for
primary reinforcers (a
meaningful object or privilege).
tolerance:
over
time,
the need
for greater dosages of a drug in order to achieve the same
effect.
Tolman (1886 ?1959):
an
American
psychologist who concentrated on learning (escape,
latent, avoidance, approach and choice-point learning) in
rats, most commonly in mazes.
top-down approach:
in
the context of
offender profiling, an approach that examines
evidence from the crime scene in light of existing
classifications and
theories of serious crimes (the ‘top’)
and appraises which category a particular crime fits into.
Commonly used by American criminal profilers.
top-down processing:
perceptual processing in which previous experiences,
existing knowledge, expectations,
motivations or the
context in which
perception takes place, affect how a
perceived object is interpreted and classified.
Tourette’s
syndrome:
neurological disorder characterised by facial grimaces
and tics and movements of the upper body and grunts and
shouts and
coprolalia.
trace-dependent
forgetting: the information no longer stored in
memory.
trait:
a specific
personal characteristic or attribute which occurs
consistently and influences behaviour across a range of
situations.
transference:
a process during
psychoanalysis, whereby a client attaches
feelings towards the
therapist that were previously
unconsciously directed towards a significant person in their
life, who may have been involved in some form of
emotional
conflict.
transfer of training:
refers to the way in which skills learnt in one
situation may to be transferred to a second, related
situation.
trauma:
term used either for a physical injury (as a result of an
external force), or a
psychological injury (caused by an
emotional event).
Treisman (1935-): A British
psychologist specialising in visual attention and object
perception, renowned for proposing the feature integration
theory of
attention.
trial: in
experimental psychology,
a single unit of experimentation where a
stimulus is
presented, an organism responds and a consequence follows.
trial-and-error learning:
originally proposed by Thorndike, a view of learning that
proposes responses that do not achieve the desired effect
are gradually reduced, and those that do are gradually
strengthened.
turing test:
a test to
determine how closely computers mimic human
cognitive
process.
two factor theory of
emotion: is a
social psychology
theory that views
emotion as having two components (factors):
physiological
arousal and
cognition. According to the
theory, “cognitions
are used to interpret the meaning of
physiological reactions to outside events.”
twin studies:
refers to
studies where
monozygotic and
dizygotic
twins are studied to assess the relative contributions
of
genetic and environmental influences on a particular
characteristic, e.g.
intelligence.
type 1 error:
rejecting the
null hypothesis when it should be accepted.
Also called a
false positive.
type 2 error:
accepting the
null hypothesis when it should be rejected.
Also called a
false negative.
type A personality: a set of personality characteristics, including a sense of
competitiveness, hostility, a constant sense of time pressure and impatience, which result in an increased risk of coronary heart disease.
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