Depth perception—the ability to judge the distance
of objects.
Descriptive statistics—numbers that summarize a
set of research data obtained from a sample.
Developmental psychology—study of physical,
intellectual, social, and moral changes over the
entire life span from conception to death.
Deviation IQ—Weschler’s procedure for computing
the intelligence quotient; compares a child’s score
with those received by other children of the same
chronological age.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV-
TR)—manual used by mental health professionals
for classifying psychological disorders; published
by the American Psychiatric Association.
Diathesis–stress model—an account of the cause of
mental disorders based on the idea that mental dis-
orders develop when a person possesses a genetic
predisposition for a disorder, and later faces stress -
ors that exceed his or her abilities to cope with
them.
Difference threshold—mimimum difference be -
tween any two stimuli that a person can detect 50
percent of the time.
Discrimination—in classical conditioning, the abil-
ity to tell the difference between the CS and stim-
uli similar to it that do not signal a UCS; in
operant conditioning refers to responding differ-
ently to stimuli that signal that behavior will be
reinforced or not reinforced; in social psychology it
refers to unjustified behavior against an individual
or group.
Disinhibition—a behavior therapy for phobias
where modeling is used.
Disorganized schizophrenia (hebephrenia)—a type
of schizophrenia characterized primarily by distur-
bances of thought and inappropriate affect—silly
behavior or absence of emotions.
Displacement—expressing feelings toward some-
thing or someone besides the target person,
because they are perceived as less threatening.
Display rules—culturally determined rules that pre-
scribe the appropriate expression of emotions in
particular situations.
Dispositional attributions—inferences that a per -
son’s behavior is caused by the person’s tendency to
think, feel, or act in a particular way.
Dissociation—experience of two or more streams of
consciousness cut off from each other.
Dissociative amnesia—repression of memory of a
particularly troublesome event or period of time
into the unconscious mind; characterized by the
inability to remember important events or personal
information.
Dissociative disorders—class of disorders in which
traumatic events or unpleasant memories cause a
massive repression of these into the unconscious
mind.
Dissociative fugue—sometimes called the “traveling
amnesiac” disorder, in which a person moves away
and assumes a new identity, with amnesia for the
previous identity.
Dissociative identity disorder—formerly known as
multiple personality disorder, a rarely seen dissocia-
tive disorder in which two or more distinct person-
alities exist within the same person.
Divergent thinking—thinking that produces many
alternatives or ideas; creativity.
Dizygotic or fraternal twins—twins who develop
from two different eggs fertilized by two different
sperms.
Dominant gene—the gene expressed when the genes
for a trait are different.
Dopamine—a neurotransmitter that stimulates the
hypothalamus to synthesize hormones and affects
alertness, attention, and movement. Lack of
dopamine is associated with Parkinson’s disease;
too much, with schizophrenia.
Double-bind—a theory that serious mental illness
can be expressed in an individual who has been
given mutually inconsistent messages, such as love
and hate, typically from a parent during childhood.
Double-blind procedure—research design in which
neither the experimenter nor the participants know
who is in the experimental group and who is in the
control group.
Down syndrome—usually with three copies of
chromosome-21 in their cells, individuals are typi-
cally mentally retarded, have a round head, flat
nasal bridge, protruding tongue, small round ears,
a fold in the eyelid, and poor muscle tone and
coordination.
Drive-reduction theory—theory of motivation that
focuses on internal states of tension such as hunger
that motivate us to pursue actions that reduce the
tension and bring us back to homeo stasis or inter-
nal balance.
Dualism—sees mind and body as two different
things that interact.
Echoic memory—auditory sensory memory.
Eclectic—use of techniques and ideas from a variety
of approaches to psychotherapy.320 á Glossary
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