Psychology and Cognitive Sciences

According to humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, all individuals strive to become self-actualized, or reach their fullest potential; however, in order to do so, a series of needs must first be...

Patience and tolerance initially appear to be relatively similar; however, upon closer examination, they are actually quite different experiences. According to some psychologists, patience and...

Cognition--from which "cognitive task" derives, is the scientific term that essentially means "the process of thought." Cognitive tasks therefore, are the actions which help define cognitive...

When we think of psychosocial development and psychosocial tasks, we usually think of Erikson and his stages of psychosocial development. In this theory, human development is defined as going...

Memories serve a very important function in our lives. To examine the importance of memories though, one must understand their functions in different capacities. First, memories are important in...

Under the heading of "ontological anxiety" Laing invokes the work of Kafka, Beckett, and Shakespeare to describe the the sense of non-existence which often permeates the life of those suffering...

While psychology is generally considered a “soft science” (meaning not provable by scientific means or physical laws), educational psychology has produced many years of data through experimentation...

Attribution (in psychology) is a term which denotes how individuals explain behavior, their own and the behavior of others. Attribution can be internal (causes are from within, personality or...

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, created psychoanalysis and founded clinical psychiatry as we know it today. His theories have been challenged and changed but remain the base of modern...

Short-term and long-term memory can be influenced by both internal and external factors. The time and place where the memory occurred can have an impact on its formation. Internal factors...

Gestalt principals have to do with what is known as "visual perception." It's how people view visual information and organize what they see. Gestalt, in German, means form or shape. By nature of...

Application of Rank's The Myth of the Birth of the Hero most directly relates to child and family therapy. In his studies, Rank looked at the qualities and similarities of well known literary and...

All three of these terms relate to the perception of stimulus. I can't give you original examples based on your experiences, of course, but I can think of a few common ones and you can add your...

"Sound" refers to a type of wave that emits from particles when they vibrate. Humans can hear only a certain range. What you hear at any given moment depends on how your brain decides to process...

A schema (plural schemata) is any pattern of thought, idea, or habit that exists in a structured form (Wikipedia). Constructive processing is the conscious examination and absorption of outside...

This is an important question, because people are complex. In other words, there is not only one way to help people. Hence, the assumptions of classical conditioning can be very reductionistic in...

The classical conditioning theory was proposed by Ivan Pavlov in the early part of the 20th century. The gist of the theory is that behavior can be learned by instinct with the application of a...

The traditional Pavlovian classical conditioning teaches us that a response can be achieved by association. In humans, it means that a person can achieve a behavior, or respond to a situation in a...

The Russian Scientist, Pavlov, demonstrated “conditioning” of dogs in an experiment involving exposure of the dogs to meat powder (the unconditional stimulus, or UCS), resulting in salivation (the...

Yes, there are cues you can use. When a person is lying, the person often either seems to be making an extra effort to look you in the eye or avoids looking at you. However, there are many...

The developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky are not only different in nature, but different in approach, and you are right in that they are difficult to compare. The best way to approach the...

Ivan Pavlov defined Classical Conditioning in 1927. Pavlov used dogs as subjects and exposed them to a neutral stimulus (in this case a ringing bell) followed by an unconditional stimulus (meat...

Dementia involves symptoms of loss of brain function, including memory, as well as distortions in personality that are out of character. Patients may also lose the ability to perform basic motor...

A man named, oddly enough, Erik Erikson came up with this idea. He developed a list of 7 stages of "psychosocial" development: HOPE --"trust versus mistrust." An infant is unable to take care of...

To know what this says about her score, we first have to understand a couple of statistical terms. First of all, mean in the average score. Standard deviations are set marks that are based around...

Strength-based approaches have been shown to offer numerous advantages. Because they focus on the individual and emphasize their strength and self-determination, such approaches build on the...

I do not necessarily think it is imperative that a parent fully understands the how's and why's of child-development, as long as the parent is willing to pick a path of parenting and attempt to...

This is a great question and you are right that our memories are not passive but very active. Many scholars from different field have been working on this topic. Here are two examples of how our...

Here's one! The Rorschach Inkblot Test was developed/based on a common parlour game called "Blotto" or Klecksographie (German for 'blot and blot game). People would gather in someone's home parlor...

Clinical and counseling psychology both require similar graduate level training, which includes academic coursework in all of the major areas of psychology (developmental, psychopathology, social,...

Unfortunately, I can answer this from experience. My children were 4 and 6 at the time of my divorce. Prior to my divorce, the stress both I and their father were feeling was quite overwhelming....

Beginning at the base of Maslow's pyramid, the first type of need is physiological needs. These are the obvious things, like food, water, and sleep that we need in order to survive. After we have...

I'm going to guess from this question that it was posed by your teacher and you are to write about something personal. This means that any Enotes answers could best be used as inspiration or to...

In 1992 Costa and McCrea published their Five Factor Model (FFM) or so called “Big 5” broad categories or dimensions of personality types. The authors sought to explain certain academic behaviors...

As a parent, teacher, and former therapeudic counselor I have come to believe that one of the most important components of raising, developing, or helping children grow with emotional stability, is...

Psychology is the science behind or the study of the mind and behavior. One of the main goals of applied psychology is to benefit society. A huge component of psychology is the drawing of...

In Lockhart and Craik's alternative to the Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model, it is suggested that the depth of mental processing affects memory function. The range of processing goes from shallow...

These three types of mental illness are different in both symptoms and known causes. Schizophrenia has genetic precursors, and is neither trauma or chemically induced. The schizophrenic has...

Your question is a bit hard to understand. It would be helpful to know what you want to study. Without that piece of knowledge, all I can do is offer you some suggestions of possible experiments of...

I usually think of it as organizational psychology, but it can also be called industrial psychology. Here is a link to a useful bit of information:...

Stress is caused when your body thinks it is in harm’s way. Originally and in nature, this meant physical nature. Stress can now be caused by all kinds of non-life-threatening pressures. Our...

This is a fascinating question. Recently a lot of scholars from all disciplines have been working on this topic - philosophy, history, and psychology. Here are some thoughts on each of these...

"Cognitive process" refers, in basic terms, to the development of intellectual capability. "Sensorimotor stages" attempt to organize and order the physical capabilities and reactions to physical...

One key principle of Vygotsky that is currently present in the classroom is the idea of "scaffolding." Whether labeled as such or not, this was Vygotsky's term for building new learning by using...

I'm not sure that without some sort of medical or psychological degree, you have it in your power to disprove your friend "scientifically." In fact, when it comes to behavior, psychology is unique...

Cognition can be defined as the mental ability or a set of mental processes that are involved in thinking, reasoning, perception, comprehension, making judgments and decisions, etc. In simplest...

The nature of this question is almost too vague to answer with specifics, unless some definition is brought to some of the terms provided. I'm going take this from the angle that a difference in...

One of the most common ways mindfulness—defined as concentrating one's attention to one's physical and emotional experiences at the present moment—is taught youth and adults alike is through...

Given the scope of such a question, I imagine answers could be across the board, so I will try to narrow mine to a field of psychology with which I believe I have immediate personal and...

I really think this question means that this person is important to you, and you may see her in many different roles or places in your life. To be your mother according to the dream may simply be...