Glossary
Decibel -- this is simply a measure of sound intensity. When you are at
the Smashing Pumpkins concert, standing next to the speakers, banging your head,
the volume of the music is measured in decibels. The higher the decibels, the
louder the music and the higher the decibel level, the more likely it is to cause
damage to your auditory system.... What did you say?
Declarative Memory (explicit memory) -- this is a type of long-term memory
in which we store memories of fact. In addition, declarative memory is divided
further into semantic and episodic memories (please look those up for complete
definitions). So, if you have memories of things such as when Columbus sailed
to America or what day and time your baby brother was born, you have declarative
memories.
Defense Mechanisms -- when we engage in some type of activity we find wrong
or troubling, we need to protect ourselves in some way. According to Psychoanalytic
theory, the ego has several different types of Defense mechanisms, or methods
of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. For example, Freud indicated
that humans have many defense mechanisms, including, repression, regression, denial
(my personal favorite), projection, compensation, sublimation, reaction formation,
rationalization, and hallucination.
Deindividuation -- have you ever been in a group and acted in a manner
that was completely out of character for you? How about when you hear on the news
that some group of people did something so violent or stupid that you just couldn't
believe it? One reason this happens is that people in groups tend to lose some
of their own self-awareness and self-restraint when in groups. They become less
of an individual and more anonymous. In a sense, people will do things in groups
they otherwise would not because they feel less responsible for their actions
and less like an individual. This process of deindividuation can have powerful
effects. For example, how can soldiers kill innocent children? They often answer
this question by saying that they are not monsters, but that they were going along
with the group and that they were just following orders, and that they were not
the only ones doing it....all engaged in heinous acts of violence because, in
part, they had become deindividuated.
Deja Vu (From French, literally meaning "already seen.'') -- that eerie
sense of "I've experienced this before." This may occur from the current situation
producing some clues that may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.
Deja Vu is that eerie sense of "I've experienced this before." This may occur
from the current situation producing some clues that may subconsciously trigger
retrieval of an earlier experience. As Yogi Berra said, "It's like deja vu all
over again."
Delta Wave -- a type of brain wave that is large (high amplitude) and slow
(low frequency), and is most often associated with Slow Wave Sleep (stages 3 and
4; often referred to as deep sleep).
Delusions -- people certain psychological disorders (or those having a
psychotic episode), such as schizophrenia, may demonstrate delusions, or false
beliefs, often of persecution or grandeur. For example, a schizophrenic may insist
they he is a great football player who has won many awards and has been the hero
of many games, even though in reality, he was never even on a football team.
Dendrite -- the branch-like structures of Neurons that extend from the
cell body (soma). The dendrites are the receivers of neural impulses (electrical
and chemical signals) from the axons of other neurons. Although there are some
areas of the body that contain dendrites which can act like axon terminals, releasing
neurotransmitter in response to impulses and local voltage changes, most dendrites
are the receiving branches of the neuron.
Dependent Variable -- in an experiment there are two variables; the Independent
Variable (IV) and the Dependent Variable (DV). In the most basic sense, you need
two variables because as a researcher, you want to be able to examine if something
(a drug, a therapy, a teaching technique, whatever) has an effect on some participant
(person, people, animals, etc.). To accomplish this, you not only need something
to examine (and manipulate - this is the IV), but also something to measure the
effect the IV has (this is the DV). Thus, we can define the dependent variable
as the variable that is being measured. It is this variable that we, as the researchers,
look at for change. IF there is a change, we may conclude that the IV affected
the DV. The ultimate here is to establish that the IV caused the change in the
DV (this is the magical "cause-effect" relationship).
Depressants Drugs (such as alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates) that reduce
neural activity and slow down body functions. Many people think that alcohol is
not a depressant and actually makes them have more fun. However, what alcohol
does is lower inhibitions, so you may act in ways you otherwise would not. Also,
it diminishes your senses - makes you less alert, less attentive, less "sharp",
essentially depressing the nervous system.
Depth Perception -- the ability to judge the distances of objects, which
also allows us to see them in three dimensions. Obviously, images that strike
the retina are two dimensional, but because our visual systems have the capacity
to interpret stimuli in terms of relative depth, we see these objects not as flat,
but as having some depth.
Developmental Psychology -- the branch of psychology that studies physical,
cognitive, and social change of humans throughout their life cycle. Some argue
that developmental psychologists study changes over time which all psychologists
study, not just developmentalists. However, the difference is that the topics
studied by developmental psychologists revolve around the maturation and aging
process; what affects it and what it affects. For example, a developmental psychologist
and myself may each conduct a study addressing how children of different ages
perform on a particular test. The developmental Psychologist would be concerned
with the differences between the age groups, why they performed differently, what
developmental issues may be the causal factors in the differences, etc., while
I may explain the differences in terms of the test, not the developmental differences
of the children (i.e., the test is age appropriate, can we use it on people of
other ages, what does having an age difference mean on whatever the test actually
measured, etc.).
Difference Threshold - the minimum difference in stimulation that a person
can detect 50 percent of the time. We experience the difference threshold as a
just noticeable difference. For example, let's say I asked you to put your hand
out and in it I placed a pile of sand. Then, I add tiny amounts of sand to your
hand and ask you to tell me when you notice any change in the overall weight.
As soon as you can detect any change in the weight, that difference between the
weight of the sand before I added that last bit of sand and the amount of sand
after I added it, is the difference threshold.
Differentiation -- differentiation typically refers to a developmental
process when a skill becomes more sophisticated and broken into subsets. For
example, a child may first learn the skill of walking, which can later become
more sophisticated and break into skipping, running, jumping, and more. The
child has not reached a new level of walking (if you will), but rather differentiated
one skill into multiple subsets.
Discrimination -- discrimination is a term that is used in both classical
and operant conditioning. In classical conditioning, it refers to an ability
to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and other, similar stimuli
that don't signal an unconditioned stimulus (US). For example, if Pavlov's dog
had developed discrimination, it would have salivated to the tone that had been
paired with the delivery of the meat powder, and not a similar tone with a slightly
different pitch. In operant conditioning, the definition is essentially the
same, but here the organism discriminates between a learned, voluntary response
and an irrelevant, non-learned response. For example, a dog that has learned
to sit when a person says "sit" in order to receive a treat, but the dog does
not sit when a person says "bit".
Displacement -- according to Freudian in psychoanalytic theory, displacement
is when a person shifts his/her impulses from an unacceptable target to a more
acceptable or less threatening target. For example, if you are very angry at your
teacher because you did poorly on a test and think the reason for your poor performance
is because the teacher asked tricky, unfair questions, you may become angry at
your teacher. But, you obviously can't yell at your teacher (really, you can't),
hit your teacher, or express your angry in any other hostile way toward the teacher,
so you go home and "displace" your anger by punching your little brother instead.
Dissociation -- this is a split in the mind in which there can be two independent
streams of consciousness occurring at the same time, allowing some thoughts and
behaviors to occur simultaneously with others. According to some, dissociation
is the foundation of hypnosis - the hypnotized person is able to maintain control
of certain thoughts and behaviors, while others are being influenced by the hypnotist.
Dissociative Disorders -- these are disorders such as psychogenic fugue,
multiple personality, and psychogenic amnesia in which a person's conscious awareness
becomes separated (dissociated) from previous memories, thoughts, and feelings.
When this happens, the person is unable to recall certain events that happened
in their lives. For example, you may have heard of people committing heinous crimes
and them claiming to have no recollection whatsoever of the event. This would
be a case of psychogenic amnesia.
Double-Blind Procedure -- one type of experimental procedure in which both
the patient and the staff are ignorant (blind) as to the condition (or group)
that the participant is in. This would make it impossible for the participant
or researcher to know if the participant is receiving the treatment (for example
a drug) or a placebo. This type of design is commonly used in drug evaluation
studies, and is used to prevent the researchers from acting differently to people
in one group, or from giving the participant any information that could make them
act and/or behave unnaturally.
Down Syndrome -- a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders
caused by an extra chromosome. Each person has 23 pairs of chromosomes, one pair
from each parent. A person with Down Syndrome has a 3rd chromosome on the 21st
pair. This results are both mental and physical, and often include small eyes,
and hands, protruding tongues, short necks and fingers. There are all different
levels of the disorder, and the probability of a child being born with it increases
as the mother's age increases; this is especially true as the mother becomes middle
aged.
Drive -- an aroused state of psychological tension that typically arises
from a need. A drive, such as hunger or thirst, motivates the organism to act
in ways that will reduce the tension. So, for example, when you become hungry
(tension caused by need for food) you are motivated to eat (method of reducing
the tension).
DSM-IV-R -- the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition, Revised) is a system used for classifying
psychological disorders. This is the most widely accepted set of guidelines and
definitions for mental disorders, and is often referred to as, "the clinician's
bible". There are approximately 230 disorders listed in the DSM-IV-R which are
organized into 17 categories.
Dualism -- the presumption proposed by Descartes that the human mind and
body are two distinct entities that interact with each other to make a person.
Descartes reasoned that the mind and the body communicate with each other through
a small structure at the base of the brain called the pineal gland.
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