Military psychology, when defined broadly, can include a vast array of activities in psychological research, assessment, and treatment. Military psychologists may be either soldiers or civilians. The field can encompass every aspect of the human mind that interests the military., but researchers focus on the psychology of military organization, military life, and the psychology of combat. Military…
Minimal brain dysfunction was formally defined in 1966 by Samuel Clements as a combination of average or above average intelligence with certain mild to severe learning or behavioral disabilities characterizing deviant functioning of the central nervous system. It can involve impairments in visual or auditory perception, conceptualization, language, and memory, and difficulty controlling attention…
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is a test used to gather information on personality, attitudes, and mental health of persons aged 16 or older and to aid in clinical diagnosis. It consists of 556 true-false questions, with different formats available for individual and group use. The MMPI is untimed and can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours to complete. This is normally done …
The eldest of three children born to the children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Salvador Minuchin was born and raised in a closely knit small Jewish community in rural Argentina. His father had been a prosperous businessman until the Great Depression forced his family into poverty. In high school he decided he would help juvenile delinquents after hearing his psychology teacher discuss the philoso…
The basic coding procedure common to most mnemonic strategies is to mentally associate, in some manner, items of new or unfamiliar information with various interconnected parts of a familiar, known whole. Mnemonic devices range from the very simple to the remarkably complex. An example of a very simple mnemonic device is the use of the acronymic word HOMES to remember the names of the Great Lakes …
In statistics, the mode is a descriptive number that indicates the most frequently occurring score or scores in a group of numbers. Along with the mean and the median, the mode constitutes the grouping of descriptive statistics known as measures of central tendency. Although the mode is the easiest of the measures of central tendency to determine, it is the least used because it gives only a crude…
The use of modeling in psychotherapy was influenced by the research of social learning theorist Albert Bandura, who studied observational learning in children, particularly in relation to aggression. Bandura pioneered the concept of vicarious conditioning, by which one learns not only from the observed behavior of others but also from whether that behavior is rewarded or punished. Bandura conclude…
Maria Montessori is best known for the progressive method of education that bears her name. She earned her medical degree from the University of Rome in 1894, the first Italian woman to do so. A psychiatrist by training, Montessorri worked with deprived and retarded children at the Orthophrenic School in Rome starting in 1899. Her observations of the educational challenges facing these children le…
A mood, while relatively pervasive, is typically neither highly intense nor sustained over an extended period of time. Examples of mood include happiness, sadness, contemplativeness, and irritability. The definitions of phrases to describe moods—such as good mood and bad mood—are imprecise. In addition, the range of what is regarded as a normal or appropriate mood varies considerably…
Moral development involves the formation of a system of values on which to base decisions concerning "right" and "wrong, " or "good" and "bad."fi Values are underlying assumptions about standards that govern moral decisions. Although morality has been a topic of discussion since the beginning of human civilization, the scientific study of mor…
Christiana Drummond Morgan grew up living the life of a debutante and may well have become no more than a society figure. Because she came of age at a time of social upheaval throughout the world, and because her life crossed paths with many influential scientists and intellectuals, she was able to expand her talents and make important contributions to behavioral therapy. Her unorthodox romance wi…
The study of motivation is concerned with the influences that govern the initiation, direction, intensity, and persistence of behavior. Three categories of motives have been recognized by many researchers: primary or biological (hunger and the regulation of food intake); stimulus-seeking (internal needs for cognitive, physical, and emotional stimulation, or intrinsic and extrinsic rewards); and le…
1893-1988American biochemist, physician, and clinical and experimental psychologist who developed an integrated theory of personality. Henry Alexander Murray, Jr. developed "personology," the integrated study of the individual from physiological, psychoanalytical, and social viewpoints. His background in medicine, biology, Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis, and clinical and experim…
Music has been used throughout human history to express and affect human emotion. The health benefits of music to patients in Veterans Administration hospitals following World War II became apparent, leading to its use as a complementary healing practice. Musicians were hired to work in hospitals. Degrees in music therapy became available in the late 1940s, and in 1950, the first professional asso…
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assigns people to one of sixteen different categories or types, based on their answers to 126 questions, such as: "How easy or difficult do you find it to present yourself, consistently, over a long period as a person who is patient?" There are 4 different subscales of the test, which purport to measure different personality tendencies. Extraver…
Narcissism is the personality trait that features an exaggerated sense of the person's own importance and abilities. People with this trait believe themselves to be uniquely gifted and commonly engage in fantasies of fabulous success, power, or fame. Arrogant and egotistical, narcissistics are often snobs, defining themselves by their ability to associate with (or purchase the services of) …
Narcolepsy, which usually begins in adolescence or early adulthood, affects about one in every 1,000 persons and is equally common in males and females. The sleep attacks, which can occur anywhere from six to 20 times a day, usually last about 10 to 20 minutes but can persist for as long as two to three hours. Narcolepsy is diagnosed if sleep attacks occur every day for at least three months (alth…
A narcotic is a depressant that produces a stuporous state in the person who takes it. Narcotics, while often inducing a state of euphoria or feeling of extreme well being, are powerfully addictive. The body quickly builds a tolerance to narcotics, so that greater doses are required to achieve the same effect. Because of their addictive qualities, most countries have strict laws regarding the prod…
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has over 21,000 members from the United States and abroad. Founded in 1969, NASP is dedicated to serving the mental health and educational needs of school age children and adolescents. Members are school psychologists or professionals in related fields. The association encourages professional development and provides publications, meetings, w…
The National Institute of Mental Health conducts and supports research in a very broad array of areas of mental health and illness. The Institute also collects and analyzes a vast amount of scientific data, widely distributes those data and analyses, and provides technical assistance to numerous federal, state, local, and private agencies and organizations. The National Institute of Mental Health …
The nature-nurture controversy is an age-old dispute among behavioral psychologists, philosophers, theologians, and theorists of consciousness as to the source of the creation ofhuman personality: Does it develop primarily from biology (nature), or from the environments in which we are raised (nurture)? People have been pondering the role of nature and environmentsince the time of Hippocrates (c. …
Margaret Naumburg was not a psychologist, but her work as an educator and as a therapist influenced twentieth century ideas about creativity and mental illness. Her work with children and with the mentally ill was widely studied by psychologists and psychiatrists. She was able to achieve all this despite her lack of training as a scientist. Naumburg was born in New York on May 14, 1890. She attend…
Tales of near-death experiences (NDEs) are not unusual. Out-of-body experiences, the sensation of moving through a tunnel toward a light, the review of the events of one's life, and pleasurable glimpses of other worlds are relatively consistent features of people's "near death" reports. In fact, research suggests that almost one fifth of Americans report having almost d…
Negativism is a behavior characterized by the tendency to resist direction from others, and the refusal to comply with requests. Negativism appears and wanes at various stages of a person's development. Active negativism, that is, behavior characterized by doing the opposite of what is being asked, is commonly encountered with young children. For example, a parent may ask a toddler to come …
The neocortex, the exterior covering of the cerebral hemispheres of the brain, is approximately 2 millimeters thick and consists of six thin layers of cells. The cortex is convoluted, furrowed, and, if stretched out, would measure 1.5 square feet. In terms of function, the cortex is divided into four lobes distinguished by the lateral and central fissures: the frontal lobe; parietal lobe (which co…
Nerves form the network of connections that receive signals, known as sensory input, from the environment and within the body and transmit the body's responses, or instructions for action, to the muscles, organs, and glands. The central nervous system, comprised of the brain and spinal cord, sends information throughout the body over the network of nerves known collectively as the periphera…
The nervous system is responsible for the perception of external and internal conditions and the body's response to them. It has two major divisions: the central and peripheral nervous systems. The central nervous system (CNS), consisting of the brain and the spinal cord, is that part of the nervous system that is encased in bone; the brain is located in the cranial cavity of the skull, and…
Neurons are the basic working unit of the nervous system, sending, receiving, and storing signals through a unique blend of electricity and chemistry. The human brain has more than 100 billion neurons. Neurons that receive information and transmit it to the spinal cord or brain are classified as afferent or sensory; those that carry information from the brain or spinal cord to the muscles or gland…
The word neurosis means "nerve disorder," and was first coined in the late eighteenth century by William Cullen, a Scottish physician. Cullen's concept of neurosis encompassed those nervous disorders and symptoms that do not have a clear organic cause. Sigmund Freud later used the term anxiety neurosis to describe mental illness or distress with extreme anxiety as a defining f…
Communication at the synapses between neurons relies on chemicals called neurotransmitters. Secreted from a part of one neuron (the axon) into the synaptic gap between two others, neurotransmitters diffuse across this space and combine with specific proteins on the surface of the receiving cell, triggering an electrochemical response in the target cell. Afterward, neurotransmitters are either dest…