Riassunto per l'esame Lingua Inglese per la Psicologia + esercizi con soluzioni, prof.ssa Doerr

Vocabulary

Terms and definitions

Autistic: Affected by a mental disorder which inhibits social interaction, communication, and emotional development.

Psychotic: Affected by a mental illness characterized by delusions, hallucinations, and losing touch with reality.

Deranged (or unhinged): Insane.

Lunatic: Mentally ill or used to indicate someone who is affected by drastic mood swings.

Retarded: A very derogatory term for people with learning difficulties or brain and/or physical disabilities if not used specifically in a medical sense.

Theories and concepts

Psychoanalytical = Freud’s theory and therapy.

Psychodynamic = Refers to both Freud’s theories and those of his followers. In contrast to behavioral psychology, psychodynamic psychology ignores the trappings of science and instead focuses on trying to get “inside the head” of individuals in order to make sense of their relationships, experiences, and how they see the world.

Id (= it): Represents our inherited (= biological) and unconscious wishes (aggression = Thanatos and sexual desires = Eros) based on the “pleasure principle.”

Ego (= I): Conscious aspect of our personality modified by direct contact with the outside world that mediates and permits us to live in a community by controlling the Id through the “reality principle”; has no concept of right and wrong.

Superego (= above I): Incorporates learned values and morals of society; controls the id's impulses and persuades the ego to turn to moralistic goals (compromise) and consists of two systems: conscience and ideal self (or ego ideal).

Unconscious concepts

Personal unconscious: Things that have been repressed, rejected from consciousness; it is therefore something that is built up during the individual's lifetime.

Collective unconscious: Older than the individual and older than consciousness; it consists of the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution born anew in the brain structure of every individual.

Linguistic terms

Synonyms: Words with similar meanings (e.g., disease, condition, illness).

Antonyms: Words with opposite meanings (e.g., male/female, healthy/sick).

Hypernyms: General word for a set of words (e.g., diseases may be infectious, congenital, hereditary).

Linked words: Words pertaining to a common semantic category (e.g., young, teenage, in his/her 20’s, adult, old).

Cognitive development and memory

Cognitive development: Refers to how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of his or her world through the interaction of genetic and learned factors.

Scaffolding: Refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process (Vygotsky: teacher should provide scaffolding).

Memory: The mental capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information.

Short-term memory: The initial memory stage in which information is held in consciousness for about 10 to 20 seconds.

Long-term memory: The final phase of memory in which information storage may last from hours to a lifetime.

Declarative memory: Memory for information such as facts and events.

Iconic memory: Sensory memory in the visual domain.

Procedural memory: Memory for performing skilled actions (e.g., driving a car).

Working memory: The structures and processes used for temporarily storing and manipulating information.

Personality and theories

Personality: The "relatively stable and enduring aspects of individuals which distinguish them from other people, making them unique, but which at the same time allow people to be compared with each other."

Self-efficacy: A person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. It emphasizes the role of observational learning, social experience, and reciprocal determinism in the development of personality.

Trait theory: According to this theory, personality is made up of a number of broad traits. A trait is basically a relatively consistent characteristic that causes an individual to behave in certain ways.

Humanism: Emphasizes the importance of free will and individual experience, in other words, of the individual, in the development of personality.

Self-actualization: Refers to a person’s desire for self-fulfillment, i.e., the tendency for him or her to become actualized in what he or she is potentially.

Situationalism: A theory that holds that personality is influenced more by external factors and situations than by internal traits or motivation.

Additional concepts

Digressions: Stories or anecdotes that the lecturer uses to move away from a main point.

Abuse: The continued use of something despite adverse consequences.

Addiction: The condition of being addicted to something (the person suffering from such a condition is called an “addict”).

Compulsion: The action or state of forcing or being forced to do something; constraint.