psych

2. Prejudice against older people, similar to racism and sexism in its negative stereotypes.
3. disease A chronic organic brain syndrome characterized by gradual loss of memory, decline in intellectual ability, and deterioration of personality.
4. A step-by-step procedure that always provides the right answer for a particular type of problem.
5. Acronym for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a syndrome caused by a virus that damages the immune system and weakens the body's ability to fight infection.
6. psychology The area of psychological investigation concerned with understanding the nature of individual pathologies of mind, mood, and behavior.
7. stress A transient state of arousal with typically clear onset and offset patterns.
8. According to Piaget, the process of restructuring or modifying cognitive structures so that new information can fit into them more easily; this process works in tandem with assimilation.
10. An extreme fear of being in public places or open spaces from which escape may be difficult or embarrassing.
12. Prosocial behaviors a person carries out without considering his or her own safety or interests.

1. Behaviors that cause psychological or physical harm to another individual.
3. The stage in a classical conditioning experiment during which the conditioned response is first elicited by the conditioned stimulus.
6. A perceptual object that may have more than "one interpretation.
8. law The rule that the size of the action potential is unaffected by increases in the intensity of stimulation beyond the threshold level.
9. threshold The minimum amount of physical energy needed to produce a reliable sensory experience; operationally defined as the stimulus level at which a sensory signal is detected half the time.
10. cells Cells that integrate information across the retina; rather than sending signals toward the brain, amacrine cells link bipolar cells to other bipolar cells and ganglion cells to other ganglion cells.
11. A condition in which the body requires a drug in order to function without physical and psychological reactions to its absence; often the outcome of tolerance and dependence.
12. potential The nerve impulse activated in a neuron that travels down the axon and causes neurotransmitters to be released into a synapse.