Questions tagged [terminology]

For questions about definitions, names, and terms used in the psychology & neuroscience literature.

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5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why is the order of brainwaves not labelled "alphabetically"?

The brainwave - frequency breakdown is as follows: Delta wave – (0.1 – 3 Hz) Theta wave – (4 – 7 Hz) Alpha wave – (8 – 15 Hz) Mu wave – (7.5 – 12.5 Hz) SMR wave – (12.5 – 15.5 Hz) Beta wave – (16 – ...
6 votes
1 answer
302 views

Wisdom of crowds vs group polarization

I'm having a hard time understanding two concepts: wisdom of crowds and group polarization, at the same time. Wisdom of crowds states that aggregation of information or prediction, in groups, are ...
4 votes
1 answer
98 views

What is the difference between "avolition" and "abulia"

The Wikipedia articles are confusing especially the first one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abulia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avolition If you google "abulia avolition" the first entry (&...
6 votes
1 answer
318 views

Phenomenon that causes music to sound like it's being played at a different tempo than remembered?

Something I've noticed now and then is that I'll be listening to a song off my music player and it sounds like it's being played in a tempo faster or slower than I remember the song being. Is this a ...
5 votes
3 answers
2k views

How do Terence Tao's "three stages of rigorousness" relate to cognitive science? [closed]

This is an excerpt from There’s more to mathematics than rigour and proofs of Terrence Tao: The “pre-rigorous” stage, in which mathematics is taught in an informal, intuitive manner, based on ...
1 vote
1 answer
559 views

What's the term in psychology for the way people think of concepts using examples?

I learned about this but forget its name. The idea is that when people hear a word or think of a concept they tend to come up with certain examples that fit the idea more than others. For example, if ...
16 votes
7 answers
2k views

What is the difference between a psychopath and sociopath?

The Internet is of course full of memes from Sherlock Holmes show, based on one of the episodes having Sherlock self-diagnose: I'm not a psychopath, I'm a highly functioning sociopath But what ...
2 votes
1 answer
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What exactly does "single trial" mean in neuroscience research?

I am new to neuroscience (coming from a data science background), and I'm a little bit confused about the terminology used in many of the resources I have come across. Many studies mention "...
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

What is it called when the brain creates an alternative reality?

I recently heard of a phycological phenomenon where someone's brain can create its own ongoing reality. someone can go through a traumatic situation and their brain creates a whole new life without ...
1 vote
0 answers
24 views

Is there a special name for expert explanations cognitive biases? [duplicate]

Is there a special name of cognitive distortion, when a number of things seem obvious and elementary to an expert, although in reality they are counterintuitive and complex? And therefore his ...
3 votes
3 answers
6k views

What is the source and real meaning of "provisional living " concept and is there an equivalent term?

I found in this blog post the following definition : Psychologists have a concept they call “provisional living.” That’s the insistence, so often heard from people whose lives are stuck on a ...
2 votes
1 answer
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What is it called when manipulating the body, such as with a smile, triggers emotion?

Normally we smile as a consequence of being happy, but psychologists have, over the years investigated the idea that smiling itself can cause happiness. So, we have the concept of a physical act ...
3 votes
2 answers
149 views

What is the term for the inability to see past one's own current emotional state?

I'm looking for a specific latin or greek word that describes something like the inability to empathize with emotions that are not in line with one's current affective state. It could probably be ...
4 votes
2 answers
803 views

What's the difference between simultanagnosia and neurological extinction?

Both of these terms describe the inability to perceive more than one object at a time. I'm not too sure what the big difference is between them. Note that I'm referring to 'extinction' as used in ...
3 votes
2 answers
11k views

Is there a term for people who hate (or don't prefer ) things that are mainstream?

There are people who hate (or don't prefer ) things that are mainstream, is there a term for them ? Any references to cognitive reasons for some people being odd in that way would be helpful.
1 vote
1 answer
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Does intention matter for positive reinforcement?

What makes something positive reinforcement: The intention or the outcome? I have two examples I'm trying to understand. First, if I am teaching my dog a trick and I give her a treat whenever I say &...
2 votes
2 answers
55 views

Term for how one's self-image improves when something they associate with, like a sports team or politician, does well?

I'm trying to understand the phenomenon of how one's self-image, self-confidence, or personal regard goes up because something they affiliate themselves with "does well." For example, ...
0 votes
0 answers
81 views

Is there a proper term for describing when a person gives up?

Ive come across apathy, learned helplessness and "give up itis". The last of which is exactly what Im looking for, however it seems to invariably involve death. Is there a psychological term ...
1 vote
2 answers
33 views

Under which sub-field of neuroscience can this project be best classified?

Under which subfield of neuroscience does a project that develops a deep learning model to study long-term brain scans of Alzheimer's caregivers and draw a correlation between staying in the proximity ...
3 votes
1 answer
3k views

What did Freud intend as the referent of 'Das Es' (Latin: 'id')? Why didn't he name with the referent?

Wikipedia states: The terms "id", "ego", and "super-ego" are not Freud's own. They are latinisations by his translator James Strachey. Freud himself wrote of "das Es",[5] "das Ich",[19] and "das ...
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Is there a psychological effect when you speak badly about a person to another person and then that inadvertently reflects back on you?

Suppose one person (Person A) were to speak badly of another person (Person B) in conversation with Person C. For example if Person A says that person B is a bad person and that person B is ...
4 votes
1 answer
51 views

What are the reasons for human curiosity?

Accordingly to Maslow's pyramid, a good answer, in my opinion, in order to justify our behavior of "exploration/curiosity", could be in terms of the "physiological needs" step. But,...
3 votes
1 answer
57 views

Are binary relations the same as "1-dimensional"?

Halford et al. (2010) claims discusses binary relations and that humans can process up to a quaternary relation. Are these equivalent to "0-dimensional," "1-dimensional" ...
3 votes
1 answer
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What is it called, when people lean forward in the real world while moving forward in a Virtual Environment?

A test subject wears a Virtual-Reality-Headset (like the HTC-Vive). When the test subject moves forward in the virtual world and stands still in the real world, the subject tends to lean forward in ...
3 votes
1 answer
133 views

Why Is It Still Called Schizophrenia?

Schizo = Split Phrenia = Mind The word schizophrenia translates as splitting of the mind, its use was intended to describe the separation of function between personality, thinking, memory, and ...
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

Term for remembering the location/position of text on a page as part of the memory recall process?

Is there a name for the phenomenon of remembering the position on a page or location in a book as part of the process of recalling a memory? For example, knowing that something was on the left side ...
1 vote
0 answers
194 views

Is Mark Manson's meta-feeling table based on any theory?

Mark Manson from the article Fuck Your Feelings introduces this table of what he calls "meta-feelings": Feeling Bad About Feeling Bad (Self-Loathing)Excessive self-criticismAnxious/Neurotic ...
3 votes
2 answers
110 views

Term for how anxiety makes people think abnormally?

For a paper I'm writing, I want to make a point about how anxiety changes the way people think - i.e., the same person in the same situation might think differently depending on whether or not they ...
16 votes
4 answers
59k views

Difference between Instinct and Intuition

Sometimes I've heard people using the term gut feeling rather than their 'intuition or instinct' and I'm not sure which one do they mean. So, can both the terms be used interchangeably and simply ...
2 votes
1 answer
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Term for this Manipulation tactic -- saying "we" instead of "i"

The term is for when a manipulator keeps saying "we" this, "we" that, when really they should be saying "I". It's a form of manipulation I believe is called "forced&...
4 votes
1 answer
86 views

is there a well recognized bias towards observations that can be measured?

It seems that people and orgnaizations have a tendency to make decision that will improve a measurement when the downsides of this decisions cannot be measured or (alternatively) can be measured but ...
0 votes
0 answers
337 views

What is the difference between reminiscence and nostalgia?

Both reminiscence and nostalgia refer to thinking about the past, but where is the line between them? I am looking into how reminiscence affects meaning in life and have found that most research ...
29 votes
4 answers
23k views

Is pedophilia a sexual orientation or a mental disorder?

There are some different claims being made that pedophilia is a sexual orientation rather than a mental disorder. At the moment there seems to be a growing group of psychologists advocating that ...
3 votes
1 answer
282 views

Is thermoception part of the sense of touch in the 5 human senses or is it a 6th separate sense?

In an answer provided by DavidCian, it is mentioned that thermoception is separate to the 5 human bodily senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste). Yet, I would have thought it would be part of ...
6 votes
0 answers
216 views

How can people better express subjective conscious experience with words?

I'm interested in how the human mind works, and over the years have experienced and took notice of a number of peculiar states of consciousness, thought patterns, dreams, etc. While a lot of these ...
2 votes
0 answers
28 views

Is there a name for this emotion or emotion-related effect?

This is about a positive emotion or "wibe" (I call it here "an emotion-related effect") that a person may feel in their chest/heart in certain cases. This feeling can appear at any ...
1 vote
0 answers
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Term for expectation of early defection in a collusion situation?

My background is in economics, so my apologies if my description here is unclear. In a paper, Dong (2019) mentions that: On the other hand, the anticipated costs of collusion could decrease if firms ...
3 votes
1 answer
57 views

Name for the effect where people cause others to fulfill their expectations

I recall hearing a social cognition lecture a number of years ago in which the lecturer described a particular idea that centered around the role of self-fulfilling prophecies in relationships. For ...
4 votes
1 answer
96 views

Isn't fluid intelligence necessarily influenced by crystallized intelligence?

In this article, it is said: Conversely, Gf [general fluid intelligence] represents the ability to employ a type of mental operation to independently reason and solve novel problems; it does not ...
3 votes
1 answer
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"Polysemous heuristics": people trusts Tesla Inc more if they already trusted Nikola Tesla, even though those two are unrelated

For example, because of massive number of films and online short videos, the population is convinced that Tesla is a great inventor. The population is more likely to give a positive opinion (or ...
2 votes
1 answer
133 views

How is "the innermost child" framed in psychology?

In art and literature, the adults are usually depicted as having a trapped child in their hearts: The child is pure and naive, but is trapped in the adult body who is struggling to survive. I think ...
5 votes
2 answers
194 views

Does the "learned" in "learned helplessness" refer specifically to behaviorism's conditioning?

I was said that because the experiment of Seligman that gave birth the theory of learned helplessness was an expansion of Pavlov's experiment, hence the word "learned" in the term should be ...
1 vote
1 answer
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What is the name of the cognitive bias about groups of people with the same beliefs about others?

Last year I read an interesting magazine article about some papers on a cognitive bias about group beliefs. The papers highlight the fact that we tend to judge in a stronger way the same behavior if ...
2 votes
1 answer
81 views

What is the name of this bias or phenomenon?

He lied. You changed your mind. I reconsidered my decision. What is the name for this type of cognitive bias where you are easier on yourself when you describe your behavior, but harder on the second ...
8 votes
3 answers
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What is the psychological term for disregarding correct but unwanted information?

Sometimes people seem to be very resistant to information that is in conflict with prior beliefs, even when this new information is very plausible. For example, a patient might change a doctor, ...
0 votes
1 answer
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Is Type A personality and being an alpha (male) the same thing?

The question in final jeopardy tonight was "(What is) type A personality". My response was "alpha (male)", which I maintained was the same thing. Later, when I typed in "...
23 votes
1 answer
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Is there a term for trying to remember a word, but only remembering its first letter?

This happens to me frequently. I'll say, "Oh you know that guy... uhh... I can't remember his name. But he starts with a 'Z'." You can remember part of the word but not the whole word. Is there a ...
4 votes
2 answers
4k views

Is "Schizophrenic" considered to be a derogatory or offensive term?

In US English, "Schizoid" is considered a derogatory term, while "patient/person with Schizoid Personality Disorder" is the "politically correct" term (and more accurate). For this reason I wanted to ...
2 votes
1 answer
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Is there a term/name for the feeling you get when trying to pat your head and rub your tummy?

I often hear the phrase "It's like patting your head and rubbing your tummy/belly" when referring to trying to perform two seemingly simple actions that inexplicably conflict with each other,...
1 vote
0 answers
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Relation and differences between Awe, Aha moment and Flow [closed]

Relation and differences between Awe, Aha moment and Flow? From my reading, Awe is defined as 'Awe refers to an intense emotional response people may have when they encounter an object, event, or ...

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