Psychology glossary
Psychology glossary
This glossary contains the words people can use to talk about psychology and describe the different psychological process.
- brain
- noun
- An organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates, functioning as the coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity.
- Example: But if we think of the conscious subject as located within, or identical to, the brain, then external relations are beyond his gaze.
- fr: cerveau
- psychology
- noun
- The scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context.
- Example: Data was collected from masters level counseling psychology students and from masters level students from non- health related fields, from two regional public universities located in the southern and midwestern United States.
- fr: psychologie
- psychologist
- noun
- An expert or specialist in psychology.
- Example: His adult life has been spent as a psychologist and economist, engaged on problems of development in the Third World.
- fr: psychologue
- psychiatry
- noun
- The study and treatment of mental illness, emotional disturbance, and abnormal behavior.
- Example: Of course psychologists, unlike their medical colleagues in psychiatry, have never really been convinced of the reality of such categorisations of psychosis.
- fr: psychiatrie
- psychiatrist
- noun
- A medical practitioner specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.
- Example: Rothenberg, another psychiatrist to consider the question, reacts with similar equivocation.
- fr: psychiatre
- cognition
- noun
- The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
- Example: It is in its form as a general theory of cognition that the behaviouristic approach is most clearly refutable, but from the general refutation we can refute its application to perception.
- fr: cognition
- emotion
- noun
- A strong feeling such as love or anger, or strong feelings in general:.
- Example: The study of stance examines the expression of emotion, attitude, certainty and doubt in language.
- fr: émotion
- behavior
- noun
- The way in which an animal or person acts in response to a particular situation or stimulus.
- Example: Findings of this study are reported in the four thematic areas of participant and staff behavior, relationships between behavior and environment, the change process associated with adopting the person-centered approach to care, and the generative action research process.
- fr: comportement
- cognitive
- adjective
- Relating to cognition.
- Example: We argue that consequently only a theory that has at its disposal a wide array of information sources - from syntax through compositional and lexical semantics to domain and world knowledge, and reasoning about cognitive states - can do justice to the complexity of their interpretation.
- fr: cognitive cognitif
- conscious
- adjective
- (of the mind or a thought) directly perceptible to and under the control of the person concerned.
- Example: Edges are the conscious and unconscious reminders of providing distinctions between property lines, public and private areas, where one discerns the difference between the man-made and natural.
- fr: conscient consciente
- intelligence
- noun
- The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
- Example: intelligence, vigilance, practicality, cunning, luck, friendship - Levi was crucially helped by donations from an Italian workman he barely knew, and by the exercise of his skills as a chemist - kept you going and, in some few cases, made you free.
- fr: intelligence
- interpretation
- noun
- The action of explaining the meaning of something.
- Example: In order to provide more reliability in the automatic extracting building system, the formal treatment of the combination of multiple data sources and of the uncertainty in the image interpretation is desired.
- fr: interprétation
- knowlegde
- noun
- Facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
- Example: A thirst for knowledge.
- fr: connaissance
- neurology
- noun
- The branch of medicine or biology that deals with the anatomy, functions, and organic disorders of nerves and the nervous system.
- Example: The main reason has been its long standing commitment (still evident in some quarters) to the idea that each of the different forms of functional psychosis is really a distinct type of brain disease, equivalent to those studied in neurology.
- fr: neurologie
- unconscious
- noun
- The part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but which affects behavior and emotions.
- Example: This is not to say that functionalists would be in sympathy with Freud's belief that certain unconscious mental processes are so anxiety - provoking that they must not be allowed to enter awareness.
- fr: inconscient
- therapeutic
- adjective
- Relating to the healing of disease.
- Example: It should be mentioned that the use of certain creatures in the treatment of mentally disturbed patients bears witness to their therapeutic effectiveness.
- fr: thérapeutique
- perception
- noun
- The neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli.
- Example: The perceptual process is discussed and it is shown how human perception is specialized for sensing and organizing a middle range of complexity.
- fr: la perception
- motivation
- noun
- The reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.
- Example: Furthermore, the findings suggest that virtual leaders' behavior, besides having statistically significant correlation with virtual team motivation, also has a strong positive correlation with the traits and decision styles of the leader.
- fr: motivation
- variety
- noun
- A number or range of things of the same general class that are different or distinct in character or quality.
- Example: Although he was a talented garden designer, his greatest significance comes from his ability to synthesize practical and theoretical developments from a variety of fields, including architecture, garden design, urban design, social reform, agricultural reform, and ecological gardening.
- fr: variété
- field
- noun
- A general area of meaning within which individual words make particular distinctions.
- Example: Analysis of his projects was possible through the plans in his files and field study of the gardens still existing in original or near original condition.
- fr: domaine