Glossary / C

Psychology terms starting with C

2,831 terms with short definitions. Study these as flashcards

C fibernoun: A thin nerve extension without a myelin covering carries signals slowly, including signals involved in lingering pain.
C-reactive protein (CRP)noun: A protein made mainly by the liver rises during inflammation and provides a blood marker without identifying the cause.
C-sectionabbreviation: Short for cesarean section, this operation delivers a baby through surgical openings in the abdomen and uterus.
C-suitenoun: A company’s most senior executives form this group, often holding job titles that begin with the word chief.
CAabbreviation: These initials can mean Cocaine Anonymous, a recovery fellowship, or chronological age, the time a person has lived since birth.
CA1, CA2, CA3, and CA4abbreviation: These labels identify regions of the hippocampus, a brain structure important for learning and forming memories of facts and events.
caapinoun: A psychedelic drink also called ayahuasca combines a South American vine with other plants and has traditional spiritual uses.
CABabbreviation: A shortened name for the Coolidge Assessment Battery, a set of tests used in psychological assessment.
CABGabbreviation: An operation reroutes blood through transplanted vessels so it can bypass obstructions in arteries supplying the heart.
cable propertiesnoun: An axon's electrical characteristics determine how passive voltage changes spread and weaken with increasing distance.
cable tensiometrynoun: Muscle strength is measured by recording the tension produced when someone pulls against a cable.
cachexianoun: Serious illness can cause a wasting condition involving major muscle loss, weakness, and sometimes loss of body fat.
caco- (cac-)prefix: This word part adds the meaning bad or unpleasant to another word.
cacoethesnoun: An overwhelming urge or compulsion feels impossible to resist and may lack a sensible reason.
caesarean sectionnoun: A baby is delivered surgically through openings made in the pregnant person's abdomen and uterus.
cafardnoun: Historical accounts describe a Polynesian pattern of distress involving withdrawal followed by sudden aggression, resembling amok.
Cafergotnoun: A branded migraine medicine combines ergotamine with caffeine to help treat headache attacks.
cafeteria feedingnoun: Researchers offer children or other animals several foods to study whether their choices meet nutritional needs.
caffeinenoun: A common stimulant drug that blocks a brain chemical linked to sleepiness, reducing fatigue but sometimes causing anxiety.
caffeine intoxicationphrase: A problem after too much caffeine causing at least five symptoms like jitters, insomnia, upset stomach, or fast heartbeat.
CAGEnoun: A four-question alcohol screening test that checks for signs of drinking dependence.
CAHabbreviation: Congenital adrenal hyperplasia involves inherited differences in adrenal hormone production, often reducing cortisol and increasing androgens.
CAIabbreviation: Computer-assisted instruction uses computer activities, practice, and feedback to help people learn.
CALabbreviation: Computer-assisted learning uses computers to support studying through exercises, simulations, games, or individual guidance.
calamus scriptoriusnoun: The pointed lower tip of the fourth brain ventricle's floor lies on the back of the medulla.
calcarine areanoun: An inner region of the brain's occipital lobe surrounds the calcarine groove and includes areas that process vision.
calcarine fissurenoun: A groove along each hemisphere's inner occipital surface serves as a landmark for the primary visual cortex.
calcitoninnoun: A hormone made by thyroid C cells helps lower blood calcium, partly by reducing calcium release from bones.
calcium channelnoun: A membrane protein lets calcium enter cells, helping trigger chemical messenger release at nerve endings.
calcium regulationnoun: The body adjusts calcium absorption, storage, and removal to keep calcium in surrounding fluids within a suitable range.
calcium-channel blockernoun: A medicine reduces calcium entry into certain muscle cells to treat high blood pressure or some irregular heart rhythms.
calcium-deficiency disordersnoun: Too little available calcium can cause health conditions involving weakened bones, muscle spasms, or other problems.
calendar agenoun: A person's age is measured by the time that has passed since birth.
calendar calculationnoun: An unusual skill allows someone to rapidly work out which weekday matches a particular calendar date.
calibrationnoun: Setting a test's scores against a trusted standard so its results can be interpreted accurately.
California Achievement Tests (CAT)noun: A standardized set of school tests measures students' learning in subjects such as reading, language, and mathematics.
California Psychological Inventory (CPI)phrase: A self-report personality test measures social behavior, everyday traits, and adjustment in teens and adults.
California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT)noun: A standardized assessment examines how someone learns word lists and later recalls or recognizes the words.
call boynoun: An older expression describes a male sex worker who arranges private appointments, here specifically with male clients.
call girlnoun: An informal label describes a woman providing paid sexual services who books meetings remotely instead of seeking customers at particular locations.
callbacknoun: Consumer researchers interview someone again to learn whether their satisfaction with a purchase or their views have shifted.
calling cardnoun: In criminal profiling, a distinctive trace an offender leaves serves no practical purpose in the offense but may suggest identity.
callosaladjective: This adjective describes structures or processes involving the corpus callosum, the main nerve bridge linking the cerebral hemispheres.
callosal apraxianoun: Damage to the corpus callosum disrupts learned movements despite sufficient basic movement ability and understanding.
callosal gyrusnoun: The cingulate cortex curves above the corpus callosum and contributes to emotion, memory, and movement planning.
callosal sulcusnoun: A groove on each hemisphere's inner surface divides the cingulate cortex from the corpus callosum.
callosectomynoun: A surgical procedure completely divides the corpus callosum to limit seizure spread between the brain's hemispheres.
callosotomynoun: Surgeons divide some or all corpus callosum fibers to reduce seizure spread between the brain's hemispheres.
callosumnoun: A thick band of nerve fibers connects the brain's two halves and lets them share information.
calmodulinnoun: A protein detects calcium by binding it and helps control cell activities, including processes involved in forming memories.
caloric intakenoun: The energy someone consumes through food and drinks is measured in dietary calories.
caloric nystagmusnoun: Warming or cooling the ear can trigger involuntary rhythmic eye movements used to assess the balance system.
caloric restrictionnoun: Energy intake is reduced while essential nutrients remain sufficient and unhealthy metabolic changes are avoided.
calorienoun: An energy unit measures the heat needed to warm one gram of water by one degree Celsius.
Calvinismnoun: A Protestant Christian tradition shaped by John Calvin emphasizes God's authority and salvation through divine grace and predestination.
CAMabbreviation: Depending on context, this abbreviation means cell adhesion molecule or complementary and alternative medicine.
camaraderienoun: Warm trust and easy friendship that help a group feel close and work well together.
camisolenoun: In historical psychiatric usage, this name describes a straitjacket, a garment used to restrict a person's arm movements.
camouflagenoun: Blending into surroundings, by looks or hard-to-place sounds, helps an animal avoid predators or sneak near prey.
cAMPabbreviation: A cell messenger made from ATP that helps pass signals inside cells.
camphoraceousadjective: A camphor-like smell belongs to one odor category proposed by the historical stereochemical theory of smell.
camphorated tincture of opiumnoun: Also called paregoric, this opium-containing liquid medicine has been used for diarrhea and historically for opioid withdrawal.
Campralnoun: A brand of acamprosate helps people with alcohol dependence maintain abstinence alongside counseling or other behavioral support.
camptocormianoun: A marked forward bend of the trunk can occur with neurological, muscular, or sometimes functional conditions.
campus crisis centernoun: A school or college service provides support, guidance, and help accessing care during students' personal crises.
can-do factorsnoun: An employee's knowledge, skills, and abilities contribute to how well they can perform a job.
Canadian Psychological Association (CPA)noun: A national professional organization supports psychology research, education, ethical practice, and psychologists working in Canada.
canalizationnoun: In psychology, needs become directed toward established ways of satisfying them, such as particular food preferences.
cancellation testnoun: An assessment measures visual searching and movement speed by having someone cross out target symbols among scattered items.
cancernoun: A disease in which abnormal cells grow out of control, invade nearby tissue, and can spread elsewhere.
cancer phobianoun: A lasting, overwhelming fear of developing cancer exceeds the actual danger and can interfere with everyday life.
candidate genenoun: Researchers select a particular gene for investigation because earlier evidence suggests it might influence a trait or health condition.
candidiasisnoun: An infection develops when Candida yeasts grow excessively or invade tissues, often affecting moist areas such as the mouth.
canenoun: A handheld mobility aid can support balance and body weight or help a person with vision loss detect surroundings.
cannabidiol (CBD)noun: A cannabis compound called CBD does not produce THC’s characteristic high and is studied for possible medical benefits.
cannabinoidnoun: A chemical belonging to a group found in cannabis may influence body signaling, with some members producing a high.
cannabinoid receptornoun: A protein on a cell’s surface receives certain cannabis compounds or similar body chemicals and changes the cell’s activity.
cannabisnoun: A marijuana plant drug that can change mood, thinking, memory, and appetite.
cannabis abusenoun: An older diagnosis described repeated cannabis use that caused serious problems with responsibilities, relationships, or other parts of life.
cannabis dependencenoun: An older diagnosis described difficulty controlling cannabis use despite significant problems, sometimes involving tolerance or withdrawal.
cannabis intoxicationphrase: After using marijuana, a temporary state can cause noticeable mood, thinking, perception, and body changes.
cannabis psychosisnoun: Another name describes a cannabis-related disorder involving delusions or hallucinations that seriously disrupt a person’s grasp of reality.
cannabis-induced psychotic disordernoun: Cannabis exposure brings on delusions or hallucinations severe enough to form a disorder beyond ordinary intoxication.
cannibalismnoun: An organism eats flesh from another member of its species, a behavior found in humans and some other animals.
Cannon–Bard theorynoun: A historical theory proposes that brain activity produces an emotional feeling and its bodily response at the same time.
cannulanoun: A small tube placed inside the body provides a route for delivering substances, draining fluids, or collecting blood.
canonnoun: A basic guiding rule helps researchers or thinkers judge evidence and draw sound conclusions.
canonical analysisnoun: A family of statistical methods studies relationships among groups of measurements by combining them into fewer weighted summaries.
canonical correlation analysisphrase: Shows how strongly two sets of variables are related by combining each set into one score.
canonical correlation coefficientnoun: A number measures the strongest correlation obtainable between weighted combinations from two sets of measurements.
capabilitynoun: A person's usable ability or potential that can be developed into effective skill.
capacitynoun: The greatest amount a person can take in, hold, or do mentally or physically.
capacity modelnoun: A theory treats attention as a limited supply that becomes insufficient when tasks demand too much mental processing.
capacity sharingnoun: Attention is divided between two tasks processed simultaneously, with performance depending on how much mental capacity each task receives.
CAPDabbreviation: Central auditory processing disorder involves difficulty making sense of sounds, especially speech, beyond what basic hearing sensitivity would explain.
Capgras syndromenoun: A person holds a persistent false belief that someone familiar has been replaced by an identical-looking stranger.
capitalismnoun: An economic system centers on privately owned businesses and resources, with production and trade largely guided by markets and profit.
capitalizationnoun: Sharing good news with others to increase joy, connection, and memory of a positive event.
capitalization on chancephrase: Finding a pattern that looks real only because random chance pushed results in that direction.
capitationnoun: A healthcare provider receives a set payment per covered person for a period, regardless of how many services they use.
caprylicadjective: In a historical smell classification, this describes a basic odor quality resembling goats or rancid fat.
capsaicinnoun: A chemical in chili peppers activates heat-sensitive sensory receptors, creating a burning sensation, and appears in some pain-relief creams.
captioningnoun: Written words appear alongside a presentation or video to make speech and relevant sounds accessible to viewers.
captivitynoun: A person or animal is kept within a controlled place and prevented from leaving freely.
capture–tag–recapture samplingnoun: Researchers estimate population size by marking one sample, releasing it, and checking how many marked individuals appear in another sample.
CARabbreviation: A learned action that helps someone avoid something unpleasant before it happens.
carbamatenoun: In dementia treatment, certain drugs from this chemical family slow acetylcholine breakdown and may help manage cognitive symptoms.
carbamazepine (CBZ)noun: A medicine mainly used to prevent seizures and also to steady mood during mania.
carbidopanoun: A medicine blocks levodopa’s conversion outside the brain, allowing more levodopa to reach the brain during Parkinson’s treatment.
carbohydratenoun: A sugar or starch food molecule that the body breaks down for energy.
carbohydrate metabolismnoun: The body processes sugars and starches through chemical reactions that supply energy, store fuel, and help maintain blood glucose.
carbon dioxidenoun: A gas made of carbon and oxygen is released during cellular energy production and breathed out by humans.
carbon dioxide therapynoun: An obsolete psychiatric treatment used inhaled carbon dioxide to induce unconsciousness, based on a proposed interruption of abnormal brain activity.
carbon monoxide poisoningnoun: Breathing carbon monoxide disrupts oxygen delivery in the body and can cause confusion, unconsciousness, or lasting brain injury.
carbon tetrachloridenoun: A toxic industrial solvent can alter awareness when inhaled and cause serious damage to the brain and other organs.
carbonic anhydrase inhibitornoun: A drug blocks an enzyme involved in acid balance and fluid production, with uses including glaucoma and some seizure treatments.
carcinogennoun: A substance can increase the chance that exposed living cells develop into cancer.
carcinomanoun: A cancer begins in cells that cover body surfaces or line internal organs, such as skin or lung tissue.
card-sorting testnoun: An assessment asks someone to group mixed cards by rules to examine abilities such as learning, reasoning, or mental flexibility.
card-stackingnoun: A persuasion tactic selectively presents or distorts evidence so one viewpoint appears stronger than a balanced account would support.
cardi-prefix: This word part means heart and appears in medical vocabulary concerning that organ.
cardiac deathnoun: Death is determined by the permanent stopping of circulation and breathing, rather than by testing brain function.
cardiac indexnoun: A measurement divides the heart’s blood output each minute by body surface area to account for body size.
cardiac musclenoun: The heart’s pumping tissue contains branching, striped cells that share electrical signals to coordinate contractions without conscious control.
cardiac neurosisnoun: An older label describes anxiety centered on having, developing, or experiencing a heart condition.
cardiac pacemakernoun: An implanted electronic device monitors heartbeat timing and supplies electrical signals when needed to support an appropriate rhythm.
cardiac psychologynoun: A specialty studies how emotions, behavior, and social conditions affect heart disease and applies psychology to prevention and care.
cardiac rehabilitationphrase: A personalized program that helps heart patients recover through exercise, health habits, and support for stress or mood.
cardinaladjective: Describing a number that tells how many items there are, not their place in order.
cardinal dispositionnoun: In Allport’s personality theory, an unusually dominant personal trait shapes nearly everything someone does.
cardinal humorsnoun: An ancient theory proposed that blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile determined health and temperament through their balance.
cardinal virtuesnoun: Medieval thinkers regarded wise judgment, bravery, moderation, and fairness as basic strengths underlying other good qualities.
cardinalitynoun: The total number of members in a collection is its cardinality, a concept children develop while learning to count.
cardio- (cardi-)prefix: This word part adds the meaning of heart to a longer word.
cardiogramnoun: A recorded graph shows an aspect of the heart’s activity, most often its electrical signals over time.
cardiomyopathynoun: A disease of heart muscle can change its structure or make pumping blood more difficult.
cardiophobianoun: An excessive fear centers on the heart, especially the possibility of having or developing a heart disease.
cardiopulmonary bypass machinenoun: During certain operations, a device temporarily pumps blood through the body and adds oxygen in place of normal heart–lung functioning.
cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)noun: An emergency procedure uses chest compressions, sometimes with rescue breaths, to keep blood circulating when the heart stops pumping effectively.
cardiovascular (CV)adjective: Connected to the heart, blood vessels, and how blood moves through the body.
cardiovascular diseasephrase: A group of health problems that damage the heart or the blood vessels.
cardiovascular fitnessnoun: The heart, lungs, and circulation deliver oxygen that muscles can use to sustain physical activity.
cardiovascular reactivityphrase: How much heart rate and blood pressure change during stress or challenge.
cardiovascular systemnoun: The heart pumps blood through vessels, delivering oxygen and nutrients while carrying away waste.
CAREabbreviation: A helper's style of showing genuine, respectful, empathic understanding so the other person feels safe and heard.
care of youngnoun: Animals support offspring through feeding, sheltering, and other care, often influenced by hormones and the young animals’ presence.
care-and-protection proceedingsnoun: A court becomes involved to protect a child whose caregivers are not adequately meeting the child’s welfare needs.
career anchornoun: In Schein’s theory, a developing understanding of personal abilities, interests, and values guides a person’s choices about work.
career choicephrase: Choosing a job path based on interests, skills, opportunities, guidance, and experiences.
career conferencenoun: A school meeting brings students together with people from an occupation to discuss entry requirements and work opportunities.
career counselingphrase: Helps people choose, plan, or change work paths by matching jobs with their interests, skills, values, and experience.
career developmentphrase: The ongoing process of building and changing work goals, skills, and roles across different career stages.
career guidancenoun: Counseling helps people explore work options and make career decisions using their interests, abilities, values, and experience.
career planningphrase: Helping someone choose a job by matching their interests and abilities with real work options.
career workshopnoun: A guided group session helps participants explore occupations, available opportunities, and the preparation different jobs require.
caregivernoun: A person who regularly meets the daily needs of someone who cannot fully care for themselves.
caregiver burdennoun: Family members and other informal caregivers may experience stress and emotional strain from supporting someone with ongoing health needs.
caregiver supportphrase: Help that gives a person caring for someone else breaks, advice, or services to reduce stress.
caretaking behaviornoun: Parents or other caregivers meet infants’ needs by responding to their signals, providing comfort, and keeping them protected.
carezza (karezza)noun: A sexual practice involves intercourse during which the male partner avoids reaching orgasm, often emphasizing prolonged closeness.
cargo cultnoun: A historical label groups diverse Pacific religious movements that linked rituals with expectations of material goods arriving through supernatural means.
carisoprodolnoun: A muscle relaxant slows central nervous system activity and can cause sedation, intoxication, and dependence.
carnaladjective: This describes bodily appetites and pleasures, with particular emphasis on sexual desire.
carotid arterynoun: Each of these paired neck arteries delivers blood through branches serving the brain, face, and scalp.
carotid sinusnoun: A widened area near a neck artery’s branching point contains sensors that help the nervous system regulate blood pressure.
carotid stenosisnoun: An abnormally narrowed carotid artery can reduce the blood reaching the brain.
carotid-sinus syndromenoun: An unusually strong reflex from neck artery sensors causes a heartbeat slowdown or blood pressure drop that produces fainting.
carotodynianoun: This pain occurs around a carotid artery in the neck and may extend toward the face.
carpal agenoun: An estimate of physical maturity comes from comparing wrist bone development with typical development at different ages.
carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS)noun: Compression of the median nerve at the wrist can cause hand tingling, numbness, pain, or weakness.
Carpenter’s syndromenoun: A rare inherited condition involves early skull bone fusion and finger or toe differences, sometimes accompanied by intellectual disability.
carpentered environmentnoun: A built setting dominated by rectangles and straight edges may shape how people interpret depth and certain visual illusions.
carphologynoun: Repeated, aimless picking or grasping at bedcovers or clothes can occur during delirium or serious illness.
carriernoun: Someone who has one hidden recessive gene and can pass it to a child.
carrier wavenoun: A repeating wave carries information when features such as its strength, frequency, or timing are varied.
carryover effectnoun: An earlier experimental condition continues influencing a participant’s responses during a later condition, making results harder to interpret.
CART analysisnoun: A statistical method builds branching prediction rules by repeatedly dividing observations into groups whose outcomes are increasingly alike.
Cartesian coordinate systemnoun: A graphing system locates points using numbers that measure position along perpendicular axes from a shared starting point.
Cartesian dualismnoun: Descartes proposed that a nonphysical mind and a physical body are distinct kinds of substance that influence each other.
Cartesian selfnoun: In Descartes’ philosophy, the thinking subject can be certain of its own existence because even doubting involves thought.
Cartesian theaternoun: Dennett criticized the idea that conscious experiences gather at one inner location to be viewed by a central observer.
Cartesianismnoun: Descartes’ philosophical system seeks certain knowledge through reason, beginning with truths considered impossible to doubt.
Carus typologynoun: Carus proposed a historical classification that sorted people into five categories based on bodily characteristics.
carve outverb: To arrange certain health services separately, an insurance plan removes them from its main coverage and contracts with another provider.
Carver and White’s BIS/BAS scalesnoun: These questionnaires assess behavioral inhibition and approach tendencies through reported sensitivity to punishment, reward, goal pursuit, and enjoyable opportunities.
CASabbreviation: The Cognitive Assessment System tests young people’s planning, attention, and ability to process information together or in sequence.
Casanova complexnoun: A historical label describes a man’s persistent pursuit of many female sexual partners without seeking emotional attachment or commitment.
casenoun: A single person, group, job, or other unit looked at individually for study or decision making.
case advocatenoun: A person speaks or acts for one individual to defend their rights and communicate their needs or perspective.
case alternationnoun: Reading researchers change words’ uppercase and lowercase letter patterns to study how readers recognize written language.
case grammarnoun: A linguistic approach analyzes words by their meaning roles, such as who acts and what receives the action.
case historynoun: A record gathers someone’s health concerns, life background, and assessment findings to help professionals understand their condition and plan care.
case lawnoun: Law built from judges' decisions in earlier court cases, rather than from laws passed by lawmakers.
case loadnoun: A professional’s workload over a set period depends on both client numbers and how much support each client needs.
case managementphrase: Coordinating a person's services across providers to keep care connected, effective, and affordable.
case managernoun: A care coordinator links clients, helpers, and insurers so services continue smoothly and stay affordable.
case methodnoun: A workplace training approach asks managers or supervisors to develop solutions together for a realistic business problem.
case reportnoun: A written account gathers information about one person’s mental or physical health condition.
case studyphrase: A detailed look at one person or event using many kinds of information.
case-based reasoningnoun: People solve a current problem or make predictions by drawing on what happened in similar earlier situations.
case-control studynoun: Researchers compare people who have a condition with people who do not, examining differences in earlier exposure to possible risks.
case-findingnoun: Services actively identify people who may need mental health treatment through screening, referrals, or contact with other agencies.
casewise deletionnoun: Researchers exclude a whole record from an analysis when it lacks any value needed for that analysis.
caseworknoun: Professional help that assesses a person or family's needs and coordinates services and support.
Caspar Hauser experimentnoun: An animal experiment restricts normal surroundings or sensory input starting at birth to study effects on development.
cassinanoun: An evergreen shrub called yaupon has caffeine-containing leaves used by some Indigenous North American peoples for ceremonial and social drinks.
castenoun: A social group receives its rank mainly through birth within a rigid system that limits movement between groups.
castrationnoun: Removing the testicles, and sometimes the ovaries, by surgery or by making them stop working.
castration anxietyphrase: In Freudian theory, a young boy's fear that he will lose or damage his penis.
castration complexnoun: Freud proposed that children develop unconscious fears or beliefs about losing a penis or having already lost one.
casual crowdnoun: People briefly gather, usually in public, because something happening nearby captures their shared attention.
CATabbreviation: A testing method where a computer changes question difficulty based on each earlier answer.
cat-cry syndromenoun: Missing material from chromosome 5’s short arm causes a genetic condition involving developmental delays and often a distinctive high infant cry.
cat’s-eye syndromenoun: Extra chromosome 22 material causes a rare condition with variable eye, ear, organ, and sometimes intellectual development differences.
cata- (cat-; kata-; kat-)prefix: This word beginning can mean downward, underneath, reversal, or deterioration, depending on the word it helps form.
catabolismnoun: Cells break larger molecules into smaller parts through chemical reactions that often release usable energy.
catabolitenoun: A substance forms when a living organism chemically breaks down a larger molecule.
catalepsynoun: A movement disturbance involves keeping a fixed body position for an unusually long time while showing little response.
catalogianoun: Speech repeatedly returns to particular words or phrases without an apparent meaningful purpose.
catalysisnoun: A chemical reaction proceeds faster because a substance helps it occur without being consumed overall.
catalystnoun: A substance helps a chemical reaction happen faster while remaining available after the reaction.
catamitenoun: This outdated label described a boy subjected to sexual activity by an adult man.
catamnesisnoun: A health history records what happens after a disorder begins, often following an examination or the end of treatment.
cataphasianoun: A speech disturbance involves repeating one word, or more broadly repeating language without an apparent meaningful purpose.
cataphoranoun: In this medical usage, a coma is interrupted by periods when the person becomes partly conscious.
cataplexynoun: A brief, sudden loss of muscle control, often triggered by strong emotion, that can make a person sag or collapse.
Catapresnoun: This brand name identifies clonidine, a medicine that reduces sympathetic nerve activity and is used to lower blood pressure.
cataractnoun: Cloudiness develops in the eye’s lens, making sight less clear and often increasing problems with glare or nighttime vision.
catarrhal ophthalmianoun: Inflammation affects the membrane covering the eye’s white surface and inner eyelids, producing mucus or pus.
catastrophe theorynoun: A mathematical framework explains how gradual changes in conditions can produce sudden, large shifts in a system’s behavior.
catastrophic illnessnoun: A very serious illness carries a substantial risk of major disability or death and often requires extensive treatment.
catastrophic reactionphrase: A sudden, overwhelming emotional outburst when someone with brain damage feels unable to cope or communicate.
catastrophic stressnoun: An exceptionally traumatic event produces an overwhelming stress response that exceeds a person’s usual ability to cope.
catastrophizeverb: To magnify a situation’s possible negative results is to treat disaster as more likely or certain than the evidence supports.
catathymic crisisnoun: A historical diagnostic label described one sudden, severe violent outburst far beyond its trigger, without another identified clinical cause.
catatonianoun: A person becomes unusually still, stiff, or oddly active, showing severe problems with movement and posture.
catatonic excitementnoun: During catatonia, a person may show intense restlessness and unusually excessive movement that seems to lack a clear goal.
catatonic rigiditynoun: A person maintains a fixed body posture for an extended period with little response, as described here under catalepsy.
catatonic schizophrenianoun: An older schizophrenia subtype emphasized major movement disturbances, including prolonged stillness, unusual postures, or extreme activity.
catatonic statenoun: A syndrome disrupts movement and responsiveness, potentially causing marked stillness, stiffness, unusual postures, or excessive activity.
catatonic stupornoun: During catatonia, a person shows very little self-initiated movement and greatly reduced responses to surrounding events.
catch trialnoun: An experiment includes a test with no target signal while recording responses to measure reports made when nothing was presented.
catchment areanoun: A health service or program provides care to people living within a particular geographic region.
catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT)noun: An enzyme called COMT helps deactivate chemical messengers in the catecholamine family, including dopamine and norepinephrine.
catecholaminenoun: A brain and body chemical, such as dopamine or norepinephrine, that helps nerve cells signal during stress.
catecholamine hypothesisphrase: Suggests that too little dopamine or norepinephrine in brain signaling causes depression, while too much can contribute to mania.
catecholaminergicadjective: Something described this way releases, responds to, or otherwise involves catecholamine messengers such as dopamine or norepinephrine.
categoricaladjective: Describing data sorted into named groups rather than measured on a number scale.
categorical attitudenoun: A thinking style uses general ideas, shifts between perspectives, and considers possibilities beyond the immediate situation.
categorical classificationphrase: Putting people, symptoms, or ideas into separate groups based on shared features.
categorical dataphrase: Information sorted into named groups instead of measured amounts, such as diagnosis type or yes/no answers.
categorical data analysisnoun: Statistical methods examine observations grouped into categories, often testing relationships or predicting which category an outcome will occupy.
categorical imperativenoun: Kant proposed an unconditional moral rule: act only on principles you could consistently will everyone to follow in equivalent circumstances.
categorical intrusionnoun: During recall, someone mistakenly includes an unpresented item that belongs to a meaning-based category shared by studied items.
categorical perceptionnoun: Gradually changing speech sounds are heard as separate categories, with differences easier to notice across category boundaries than within them.
categorical scalenoun: A measurement system uses numbers to assign observations to separate categories, which may or may not have a meaningful order.
categorical thoughtnoun: In Piaget’s theory, reasoning uses broad concepts and classifications rather than staying focused only on particular objects or experiences.
categorical variablephrase: A measure that puts people or things into named groups instead of giving exact numerical amounts.
categories of thoughtnoun: Kant proposed twelve basic concepts, independent of experience, that allow people to organize and understand what they experience.
categorizationnoun: Grouping things, events, people, or experiences into classes by shared features and differences from other classes.
categorized listnoun: A memory study uses this list of items belonging to meaning groups, such as fruits or vehicles.
category fluencynoun: This ability involves producing examples from a given meaning group, often within a short time limit.
category production testnoun: This memory task asks people to name category members, sometimes revealing effects of earlier learning without deliberate remembering.
Category Testnoun: This assessment measures abstract reasoning and flexible thinking by asking people to discover visual rules using feedback on number choices.
category-system methodnoun: Researchers use this approach to sort observations or other data into groups following clearly specified rules.
cathardnoun: Historical cultural accounts applied this name to episodes of uncontrolled aggression described in Polynesia and compared with amok.
catharsisnoun: Releasing buried emotions linked to trauma by bringing the memory back and feeling it again.
cathectedadjective: In psychoanalytic accounts, something described this way carries emotional importance through a proposed investment of mental energy.
cathectic dischargenoun: During therapy, strong emotional expression while exploring past experiences is interpreted in psychoanalytic accounts as releasing mental energy.
catheternoun: A flexible medical tube enters the body to deliver fluid, drain fluid, or maintain an open passage.
cathexisnoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes that people invest mental energy in someone or something, giving that target emotional importance.
cathinonenoun: A stimulant chemical in khat produces effects on alertness, appetite, and mood and is chemically related to amphetamine.
cationnoun: An atom or molecule with more positive than negative electrical charge belongs to this class of ions.
catoptricsnoun: This branch of optical science examines how light reflects from surfaces.
Cattell–Horn theory of intelligencenoun: This theory distinguishes reasoning through unfamiliar problems from using accumulated knowledge, with later versions including additional broad mental abilities.
Cattell’s personality trait theorynoun: This theory uses statistical patterns to propose 16 underlying personality traits that help explain groups of observable behaviors.
cauda equinanoun: A cluster of spinal nerve roots extends below the spinal cord, with an appearance resembling a horse’s tail.
caudaladjective: This anatomical direction describes a position toward an animal’s tail end or a feature related to its tail.
caudate nucleusnoun: A tail-shaped brain structure in the basal ganglia that helps control movement.
causal ambiguitynoun: Several explanations could account for an outcome, leaving its cause or the direction of influence unclear.
causal analysisnoun: Researchers examine data to judge whether changes in one factor bring about changes in another, using methods with varying strength.
causal attributionphrase: An explanation for why a person acted that points to a specific cause.
causal chainnoun: A linked series of events or conditions where each step helps cause the next outcome.
causal inferencephrase: Drawing a conclusion that one change caused another change, based on evidence and reasoning.
causal latencynoun: An interval separates a cause from the appearance of the effect it produces.
causal lawnoun: A general statement describes a dependable relationship in which one condition produces another or changes its likelihood.
causal mechanismphrase: The direct physical process through which something happens, even if deeper causes also matter.
causal modelingphrase: A set of statistical methods used to test whether several variables may cause changes in each other.
causal nexusnoun: A connection links events or conditions because one brings about another.
causal orderingnoun: This principle places causes earlier in time than the effects they produce.
causal pathphrase: A likely step-by-step route showing how one variable may lead to another in a statistical model.
causal texturenoun: This concept describes reality as many interdependent events whose changing connections involve probabilities rather than guaranteed outcomes.
causal variablenoun: An independent variable is used to explain or predict an outcome, although its causal influence may remain unproven.
causalgianoun: Persistent, intense burning pain after peripheral nerve injury has historically carried this name, now associated with complex regional pain syndrome II.
causalitynoun: One event directly produces another, rather than simply happening at the same time.
causationnoun: When changing one thing directly makes another thing change, a cause-and-effect link exists.
causative verbnoun: A word in this verb class expresses that someone or something brings about an action or change.
causenoun: Something that makes another thing happen, producing an effect or result.
cause-and-effect testnoun: This intelligence assessment asks people to select the most logical causes or outcomes from several alternatives.
cautious shiftnoun: After group discussion, a person chooses a less risky option than they would have chosen alone.
CAVLTabbreviation: An assessment measures children's learning and memory by repeating a spoken word list and checking recall immediately and after waiting.
CBASabbreviation: The Coaching Behavior Assessment System records how often coaches display 12 behaviors to study their influence on athletes.
CBCAabbreviation: Criterion-based content analysis evaluates features of children’s accounts of alleged abuse to help assess credibility without establishing truth by itself.
CBCLabbreviation: The Child Behavior Checklist uses parent ratings to assess a child’s emotional and behavioral difficulties and areas of competence.
CBDabbreviation: Cannabidiol is a cannabis chemical that does not produce THC’s characteristic high and is studied for possible medical uses.
CBGDabbreviation: These initials name corticobasal ganglionic degeneration, involving progressive brain cell loss that can disrupt movement and thinking.
CBTabbreviation: A therapy that changes unhelpful thoughts and actions to improve feelings and behavior.
CBZabbreviation: Carbamazepine is a medicine used to control seizures, ease certain nerve pain, and stabilize mood during mania.
CCC theoryabbreviation: A developmental proposal explains children's increasingly complex rule use through gains in conscious awareness and control over their actions.
CCKabbreviation: Cholecystokinin is a gut hormone that may help signal fullness and also carries messages between certain nerve cells.
CCRCabbreviation: A continuing care retirement community provides older residents with housing and different levels of support as their needs change.
CCRTabbreviation: The core conflictual relationship theme method examines recurring wishes, others’ responses, and personal reactions in stories about relationships.
CCTV systemabbreviation: A closed-circuit television system uses a camera and screen to enlarge writing for people with low vision.
CCUabbreviation: A continuing care unit provides further hospital care after the acute phase of a serious or lasting illness.
CDabbreviation: A childhood disorder marked by repeated aggression, serious rule-breaking, and violating other people's rights.
CDCabbreviation: The U.S. public health agency that tracks disease and gives prevention guidance.
CDFabbreviation: A cumulative distribution function assigns each cutoff the chance of observing a result no greater than that cutoff.
CDIabbreviation: The Children’s Depression Inventory is a questionnaire young people complete to report how strongly they have experienced depressive symptoms.
CDQabbreviation: The Choice Dilemma Questionnaire measures willingness to recommend risky actions by asking what chances of success would be acceptable.
cebocephalynoun: A condition present at birth involves closely positioned eyes and a nose that is absent or incompletely developed.
CEFTabbreviation: An assessment explores children's cognitive style through tasks requiring them to locate basic shapes concealed in increasingly busy visual displays.
ceiling agenoun: On a standardized test organized by mental age, this marks the first level where every response is wrong.
ceiling effectphrase: When many scores bunch near the top, a measure cannot show real differences between high performers.
Celexanoun: This brand name identifies citalopram, an SSRI antidepressant that slows serotonin reuptake between nerve cells.
celiac plexusnoun: A network of abdominal nerves lies in front of the aorta and carries signals associated with internal organs.
celibacynoun: A person remains unmarried, often for religious reasons, or abstains from sexual activity.
cellnoun: The smallest living building block of the body, enclosed by a membrane and containing working parts.
cell adhesion molecule (CAM)noun: A surface protein helps cells attach to neighboring cells or surrounding material, supporting development and guiding growing nerve fibers.
cell assemblynoun: A proposed network of nerve cells becomes linked through repeated shared activity, allowing partial activation to awaken a larger pattern.
cell bodyphrase: The main part of a neuron holding the nucleus and most of the cell's parts.
cell deathphrase: The natural loss of cells during development or damage, often helping shape the nervous system.
cell differentiationnoun: During early development, cells change their structures and activities to take on specialized roles in the body.
cell divisionphrase: When one cell splits to make new cells during growth and development.
cell interactionsnoun: During embryonic development, cells influence how other cells, often nearby ones, develop specialized structures and functions.
cell migrationnoun: During development, cells travel from where they first form to the places where they will settle.
cell nucleusnoun: In many kinds of cells, a compartment enclosed by a membrane holds most genetic information as chromosomes.
cell proliferationnoun: Cells increase in number through repeated division involving mitosis, which copies and separates their chromosomes.
cell theorynoun: This biological principle states that every living organism consists of cells, whether a single cell or many.
cell-mediated immunitynoun: T cells provide targeted immune protection by acting on infected or abnormal cells and directing other immune cells.
cell–cell interactionsnoun: In an embryo, signals or contact from some cells help shape the specialized development of other cells.
cellular automatanoun: These computer models use grids whose cells change step by step according to rules, often involving neighboring cells.
cellular fluidnoun: The liquid contained inside a cell's outer membrane provides the internal environment for many cellular activities.
cellular respirationnoun: Through a series of chemical reactions, cells release energy from nutrients and convert it into forms they can use.
CEMabbreviation: The collective effort model proposes that group effort depends on members' expectations that their contributions will help achieve valued outcomes.
cenesthesia (coenesthesia)noun: Many internal bodily sensations combine into a background sense of being alive and feeling physically well, tired, or unwell.
cenesthopathynoun: A person experiences a broad sense of feeling physically unwell without locating it in any specific body area.
ceno-prefix: This word part adds the meaning common or general to the word it helps form.
censornoun: Freud proposed a mental gatekeeper that keeps unacceptable or upsetting thoughts outside awareness and disguises wishes in dreams.
censored dataphrase: Data with some values unknown because they were not observed or fell beyond the measuring limits.
censored observationnoun: A measurement gives only a limit on the true value because observation ended or the measuring range was exceeded.
censored regressionnoun: This statistical method estimates relationships when some outcome values are recorded only at an upper or lower measurement limit.
censoringnoun: When some study results are missing because the event has not happened before observation stops.
censusnoun: A complete count includes every person in a population, not just a smaller sample.
census tractnoun: A small geographic district has boundaries set for collecting and reporting population information, often useful for assessing community needs.
centnoun: In sound measurement, this logarithmic unit divides an octave into 1,200 equal steps, with 100 steps per equal-tempered semitone.
centernoun: A brain area or other structure that controls a specific body or mental function.
Center for Deployment Psychologynoun: This organization trains behavioral health professionals to address deployment-related psychological needs and provide effective care for military personnel and families.
Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D)noun: This 20-question self-report measure asks about depressive symptoms over the past week to help identify people needing further assessment.
Center for Independent Living (CIL)noun: A community nonprofit led by disabled people provides advocacy, peer support, and practical resources for directing their own lives.
center mediannoun: This large cluster of nerve cells within the thalamus belongs to the intralaminar group and connects strongly with basal ganglia.
center of gravitynoun: An object's weight acts as though concentrated at this point, whose position helps determine whether the object stays balanced.
center–surround antagonismnoun: Stimulating the middle and outer areas of a sensory neuron's receptive field produces opposite effects, helping emphasize contrast.
center–surround receptive fieldnoun: A sensory neuron's responding area has a central zone and surrounding zone whose stimulation affects its activity in opposite ways.
centeredadjective: Mentally steady and well integrated, with a realistic view of oneself, life goals, and everyday challenges.
centeringnoun: A person uses focused attention, often on breathing, to settle themselves, manage stress, or prepare for performance.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)noun: This United States public health agency tracks health problems and supports research and prevention to protect communities.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)noun: This United States agency administers Medicare and oversees federal participation in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
centilenoun: A score's position shows what percentage of scores in a comparison group fall at or below it.
centraladjective: Connected to the brain and spinal cord, rather than nerves outside them.
central anticholinergic syndromenoun: Blocking acetylcholine activity in the brain can produce a drug-related syndrome involving confusion, memory problems, sleepiness, or hallucinations.
central aphasianoun: An older, loosely applied label describes difficulties understanding or producing language following damage to the brain.
central auditory abilitiesnoun: These hearing-related skills include telling sounds apart, directing attention toward sounds, and remembering what has been heard.
central auditory processing disorder (CAPD)noun: The brain has difficulty processing sounds, including speech, even when basic sound detection is relatively preserved.
central auditory systemnoun: The brain's hearing structures and pathways process sound information received from the ears, including within the auditory cortex.
central canalnoun: A narrow passage running through the middle of the spinal cord contains cerebrospinal fluid.
central coherence theorynoun: This theory proposes that people tend to combine details into meaningful wholes and that some autistic people favor detail-focused processing.
central conceptual structurenoun: Robbie Case proposed a connected mental network of ideas and operations that helps children think within a particular subject area.
central conflictnoun: Karen Horney proposed an inner struggle between a person's constructive real self and the restrictive demands of an idealized self-image.
central deafnessnoun: Hearing is reduced or absent because the brain's auditory structures are damaged or develop differently.
central dispositionnoun: In Allport's personality theory, a readily noticeable trait shapes behavior across many situations without dominating everything a person does.
central distributionnoun: Within certain statistical families, this distribution has a noncentrality parameter of zero and often represents results under a null hypothesis.
central dyslexianoun: Acquired brain damage disrupts processes for pronouncing or understanding written words while leaving basic visual analysis of words intact.
central executivephrase: The part of working memory that directs attention and handles mental tasks without storing information itself.
central fissurenoun: A prominent groove on each cerebral hemisphere separates the frontal lobe from the parietal lobe.
central graynoun: This brainstem region surrounds the cerebral aqueduct and helps organize defensive responses, including becoming still when danger is perceived.
central inhibitionnoun: Processes in the brain or spinal cord reduce or stop nerve signals that would otherwise guide behavior.
central limit theorem (CLT)phrase: When samples get larger, their averages form a bell-shaped pattern even if the original data do not.
central limited capacitynoun: The mind can handle only a limited amount of information or demanding activity at once.
central lobenoun: The insula is a hidden brain region involved in feelings, taste, body awareness, and some movements.
central momentnoun: A statistical measure averages powers of differences between values and their mean to describe a distribution.
central nervous system (CNS)phrase: This body system includes the brain plus spinal cord and handles sensing, movement, and mental processing.
central nervous system disordernoun: A neurological condition affects the brain, spinal cord, or both.
central neuronnoun: A nerve cell lies wholly inside the brain or spinal cord, including all its extensions.
central nucleusnoun: A cluster of amygdala neurons sends signals to other brain areas that help organize fear responses.
central painnoun: Pain arises because of damage or disease affecting the brain or spinal cord.
central pattern generatornoun: A network of neurons generates repeating signals that help coordinate rhythmic movements such as walking.
central precocious puberty (CPP)noun: Puberty begins unusually early because the brain activates its usual hormone signaling system ahead of time.
central processesnoun: Mental control skills help people plan, make decisions, manage impulses, and adjust their actions toward goals.
central processing dysfunctionnoun: Difficulty understanding, storing, combining, or using information through symbols can interfere with learning.
central processornoun: Some thinking models propose a main mental system that performs operations on stored information.
central reflex timenoun: Part of a reflex's delay comes from signal processing inside the brain or spinal cord.
central route to persuasionphrase: Attitudes change when someone carefully thinks through the strongest reasons and evidence in a message.
central scotomanoun: An area at the center of someone's view has reduced or missing vision.
central sleep apneanoun: Breathing repeatedly pauses or weakens during sleep because the brain's control of breathing becomes disrupted.
central state theorynoun: A philosophical theory proposes that mental experiences and brain states are the same events described differently.
central stimulationnoun: Electrical currents or chemicals are applied to the brain to change its activity.
central sulcusnoun: A prominent groove on each brain hemisphere separates its frontal and parietal lobes.
central tendencyphrase: A number showing where most scores cluster in a set of data.
central visionnoun: Detailed sight around the spot you look directly at depends especially on the retina's fovea.
central-tendency biasnoun: People favor middle rating options and avoid extreme ones, potentially making responses less accurate.
centralismnoun: A psychological viewpoint explains behavior through brain activity and the wider central nervous system.
centralist psychologynoun: A psychological approach emphasizes higher brain activity as the basis of behavior and mental life.
centrality of an attitudenoun: An attitude's centrality reflects how much its subject occupies thought or how strongly it connects with other attitudes.
centralized organizationnoun: An organization keeps most decision authority with leaders at its highest levels.
centrationnoun: Young children may focus on just one noticeable feature of a situation and miss other important parts.
centrencephalicadjective: Something described this way lies around the brain's middle region.
centrencephalic epilepsynoun: A historical label described generalized seizures thought to begin deep within the brain and spread through both hemispheres.
centrencephalic systemnoun: Penfield proposed a central brain system that would unite mental activity and provide a basis for free will.
centrifugaladjective: Movement or signaling travels outward, as when nerves send messages from the brain or spinal cord toward the body.
centripetaladjective: Movement or signaling travels inward, as when sensory nerves carry messages toward the brain or spinal cord.
centripetal impulsenoun: A sensory nerve signal travels inward from the body toward the brain or spinal cord.
centroidnoun: In statistics, a central point represents the average value for each variable in a group of observations.
centromedian nucleusnoun: A large group of neurons within the thalamus has important connections with the basal ganglia.
centromerenoun: A chromosome region holds its copied halves together and helps them separate correctly during cell division.
cephalalgianoun: A medical name describes a headache, regardless of its cause.
cephalicadjective: Something described this way concerns the head or has its location there.
cephalic indexnoun: A head-shape measurement divides the head's greatest width by its greatest length, then multiplies the result by 100.
cephalizationnoun: Evolution concentrates nervous tissue and major sensory organs toward an animal's front end, forming a head region.
cephalo- (cephal-)prefix: This word part adds the meaning of head to a larger word.
cephalocaudaladjective: Development or direction proceeds from the head toward lower body regions, with upper regions often maturing earlier.
cephalocaudal axisnoun: An imaginary lengthwise line extends through the body from its head end toward its tail end.
cephalogenesisnoun: The head takes shape as an embryo grows and develops.
cephalometrynoun: Scientific measurements record the head's size, shape, and proportions to study its structure or growth.
CERabbreviation: A conditioned emotional response develops when a previously neutral cue becomes linked with fear, anxiety, or another negative emotion.
cereb-prefix: This word part contributes the meaning of brain to a larger word.
cerebellaradjective: Related to the cerebellum, the brain area that helps with balance and coordinated movement.
cerebellar ataxianoun: Damage to the cerebellum makes voluntary movements poorly coordinated, affecting activities such as walking or reaching.
cerebellar cortexnoun: An outer layer of gray matter covers the cerebellum and helps process signals for coordinated movement and learning.
cerebellar folianoun: Narrow, repeated folds form the ridged surface of the cerebellum's outer layer.
cerebellar gaitnoun: An unsteady walking pattern with feet placed widely apart results from problems with cerebellar function.
cerebellar hemispherenoun: One of the cerebellum's two large side portions helps coordinate movement and supports some forms of learning.
cerebellar nucleusnoun: A cluster of nerve cells sits deep inside the cerebellum, surrounded by white matter.
cerebellar pedunclenoun: Each cerebellar half has three nerve bundles that carry messages between the cerebellum and other brain regions.
cerebellar rigiditynoun: Damage involving the cerebellum can produce sustained tightness in muscles that straighten limbs.
cerebellar speechnoun: Damage to the cerebellum can make speech uneven in timing and poorly coordinated.
cerebellopontine anglenoun: This space beside the cerebellum and pons contains nerves involved in facial movement, hearing, and balance.
cerebellumnoun: A hindbrain structure that smooths movement, helps balance, and supports learning of some automatic movement patterns.
cerebraladjective: Related to the cerebrum, the brain's large upper part involved in thinking and control.
cerebral achromatopsianoun: After brain damage, a person may lose color vision even though the eyes still work normally.
cerebral amblyopianoun: Brain injury eliminates shape and color perception in one or both visual halves, reducing light perception while usually sparing movement detection.
cerebral anemianoun: Blood reaching the brain contains too little hemoglobin or too few red cells, reducing its ability to deliver oxygen.
cerebral angiographynoun: Doctors use injected contrast material and X-rays to create pictures of vessels carrying blood through the brain.
cerebral angiomatosisnoun: Multiple abnormal blood-vessel growths develop in or around brain tissue and may cause seizures or weakness.
cerebral aqueductnoun: A narrow channel through the midbrain carries cerebrospinal fluid between the brain's third and fourth ventricles.
cerebral arteriographynoun: Injected contrast material makes the brain's arteries visible in X-ray images so doctors can examine their structure.
cerebral arteriosclerosisnoun: Arteries delivering blood to brain tissue develop thicker, stiffer walls that may interfere with circulation.
cerebral atrophyphrase: Shrinkage and loss of brain tissue, often from aging, disease, or injury.
cerebral beriberinoun: Severe thiamine deficiency causes a brain disorder that can involve confusion, poor balance, and abnormal eye movements.
cerebral blindnessnoun: Damage to the brain's visual pathways or cortex causes lost vision, although pupils can still respond to light.
cerebral contusionnoun: A head injury bruises brain tissue, often causing small areas of bleeding and swelling.
cerebral cortexnoun: The brain's folded outer gray layer supports thinking, understanding speech, sensing the world, and making plans.
cerebral deathnoun: Brain function has permanently ceased, including the brainstem functions needed for breathing independently.
cerebral diplopianoun: A disturbance within the brain causes a person to see two images of a single object.
cerebral dominancenoun: One brain hemisphere contributes more strongly than its partner to a particular function, such as producing speech.
cerebral dyschromatopsianoun: Changes in the brain's visual processing reduce color perception or make colors appear distorted.
cerebral dysfunctionnoun: Brain processes work less effectively, potentially affecting abilities such as remembering, speaking, concentrating, or planning.
cerebral dysplasianoun: Brain structures develop abnormally, potentially leaving some regions unusually formed, incomplete, or absent.
cerebral dysrhythmianoun: Electrical rhythms in the brain show abnormal patterns that may accompany neurological illness or other medical conditions.
cerebral edemanoun: Too much fluid builds up in brain tissue, causing swelling and dangerous pressure inside the skull.
cerebral electrotherapy (CET)noun: Low-voltage electrical pulses are applied to influence brain activity, sometimes as treatment for anxiety, depression, or sleep difficulties.
cerebral embolismnoun: Material traveling in the bloodstream becomes lodged in a brain vessel, obstructing circulation and potentially causing a stroke.
cerebral gigantismnoun: An older name for Sotos syndrome describes a genetic condition involving rapid childhood growth, a large head, and developmental differences.
cerebral hemispherenoun: One of the cerebrum's two connected halves supports thinking, perception, and movement through networks that work with the other half.
cerebral hemorrhagephrase: Bleeding inside brain tissue after a blood vessel breaks, often causing stroke symptoms or other brain problems.
cerebral hyperplasianoun: Brain tissue becomes unusually enlarged because its cells increase in number.
cerebral hypoplasianoun: The cerebrum's hemispheres develop incompletely, leaving less developed tissue than expected.
cerebral infarctionnoun: An area of brain tissue dies because its blood supply cannot provide enough oxygen and nutrients.
cerebral infectionnoun: Disease-causing organisms enter brain tissue and multiply, potentially disrupting how the brain works.
cerebral ischemianoun: Brain tissue receives too little blood to meet its needs for oxygen and nutrients.
cerebral lateralizationphrase: Some mental and body functions are handled more by one brain half than the other.
cerebral lesionnoun: A region within the brain has undergone physical damage that may change thinking, feelings, movement, or other functions.
cerebral pacemakernoun: A proposed group of brain cells was thought to set the timing of electrical rhythms across the cerebral hemispheres.
cerebral palsy (CP)phrase: A childhood condition caused by early brain injury that permanently affects movement, posture, and sometimes speech or thinking.
cerebral pedunclenoun: Each of two large midbrain nerve bundles carries signals from the cerebrum toward the brainstem and spinal cord.
cerebral specializationnoun: The brain's left and right hemispheres make different contributions to particular abilities, such as language and spatial processing.
cerebral stimulationnoun: Electrical, magnetic, or other methods influence activity in selected brain regions to study their roles or treat certain conditions.
cerebral syphilisnoun: Syphilis infection affects the brain and its coverings, potentially causing difficulties with memory, attention, behavior, and movement.
cerebral thrombosisnoun: A clot forms within a brain blood vessel and may obstruct circulation enough to cause a stroke.
cerebral traumanoun: An impact or other physical force injures brain tissue, with effects that may be temporary or lasting.
cerebral typenoun: Historical body classifications proposed a type whose supposedly dominant nervous system produced especially strong intellectual abilities.
cerebral vascular accidentnoun: A sudden disruption of brain circulation, through blockage or bleeding, can damage tissue and alter thinking, movement, or awareness.
cerebral vascular diseasenoun: Disease affects vessels supplying brain tissue and can increase the likelihood of strokes or temporary disruptions in brain function.
cerebral vascular insufficiencynoun: The heart and blood vessels fail to deliver enough oxygen-rich blood to meet the brain's needs.
cerebral ventriclenoun: One of four linked spaces within the brain holds cerebrospinal fluid, which helps cushion and support nervous tissue.
cerebral vesiclenoun: An early swelling in an embryo's neural tube grows into a major brain region.
cerebrationnoun: Conscious mental activity includes reflecting on ideas, considering possibilities, and working through problems.
cerebritisnoun: Brain tissue becomes inflamed, often because of an infection.
cerebro- (cereb-)prefix: This word-building element adds the meaning of brain or cerebrum to a compound word.
cerebrocranial defectnoun: A structural or functional abnormality involves both the cerebrum and the skull surrounding it.
cerebromacularadjective: This adjective describes diseases affecting brain function that may also involve deterioration of the retina.
cerebrosidenoun: This fatty substance belongs to a group of lipids found in the insulating myelin around nerve fibers.
cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)phrase: A clear liquid around the brain and spinal cord cushions them and carries nutrients and wastes.
cerebrotonianoun: Sheldon’s historical theory proposed that thin bodies were linked with a reserved, sensitive personality and preference for solitude.
cerebrovascular accident (CVA)phrase: A stroke caused by blocked or broken brain blood vessels, changing movement, feeling, thinking, or alertness.
cerebrovascular diseasenoun: Disease affecting the brain's blood vessels that can cause stroke or brief stroke-like attacks.
cerebrovascular insufficiencynoun: The brain receives too little oxygen-rich blood because blood vessels or the heart cannot deliver enough.
cerebrumnoun: The brain’s largest region has two connected halves and supports perception, memory, thinking, and voluntary movement.
CERQabbreviation: The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire measures how often people use different thinking strategies to handle emotions after upsetting events.
certainty of an attitudenoun: A person feels confident that they understand their own opinion and that it is a sound judgment.
certainty of paternitynoun: This describes how sure a potential father can be that an offspring is biologically related to him.
certifiableadjective: In historical mental health usage, someone could meet formal legal requirements for compulsory admission to a psychiatric hospital.
certificate of need (CON)noun: A government approval allows certain healthcare construction or expansion after officials determine that the proposed services are needed.
certificationnoun: An outside group officially confirms a person meets set standards to practice a specialty.
certification lawsnoun: These legal rules govern formal psychiatric admission procedures or who may officially use the professional title of psychologist.
certiorarinoun: A higher court issues an order to review a case or decision from a lower court.
cerumennoun: Earwax is a substance produced in the ear canal that helps protect its skin and trap debris.
cerveau isolénoun: An experimental animal has its midbrain surgically divided between the upper visual and lower auditory colliculi.
cervicaladjective: Describes something involving the neck, such as nerves or bones in that area.
cervical anginanoun: Chest pain resembling heart-related angina arises from problems in the neck’s spine or associated nerves.
cervical ganglionnoun: A cluster of sympathetic nerve cell bodies in the neck relays signals to structures including the eyes and heart.
cervical nervenoun: One of eight pairs of spinal nerves associated with the neck carries sensory information and movement commands.
cervical plexusnoun: A network formed by front branches of the first four cervical spinal nerves supplies parts of the neck and nearby structures.
cervical sprain syndromenoun: Sudden acceleration or deceleration can strain the neck’s soft tissues, causing the injury commonly called whiplash.
cervixnoun: A neck-shaped anatomical region, especially the uterus’s narrow lower end, connects the uterine cavity with the vagina.
CESabbreviation: Cranial electrical stimulation applies a weak electrical current across the head and has been used to promote relaxation or sleep.
CES-Dabbreviation: This 20-question self-report scale measures depressive feelings and behaviors experienced during the past week.
Cesametnoun: This brand name identifies nabilone, a manufactured cannabinoid medicine used to reduce nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy.
cesarean section (caesarean section; C-section)noun: A baby is delivered through surgical openings in the abdomen and uterus.
CETabbreviation: A treatment that sends very weak electrical currents through the head to try to reduce symptoms.
CFabbreviation: In hearing research, characteristic frequency means the sound frequency at which a neuron responds at the lowest sound level.
CFAabbreviation: Confirmatory factor analysis tests whether measured results fit a proposed pattern of underlying traits or processes.
CFFabbreviation: Critical flicker frequency marks how fast a light must flash before its flashes appear to merge into steady light.
CFSabbreviation: Chronic fatigue syndrome is a lasting illness involving severe fatigue, reduced daily functioning, and symptoms that can worsen after exertion.
cGMPabbreviation: Cyclic guanosine monophosphate is a messenger molecule that passes signals within cells, including neurons receiving messages from other neurons.
chain of behaviornoun: Several simpler actions connect in a particular order to form a larger behavior pattern.
chain reproductionnoun: A story or idea changes as successive people or groups pass it along.
chained schedulenoun: Reinforcement follows completion of successive requirements for one response, with a different cue signaling each stage.
chainingnoun: Teaching a long behavior by linking small steps and rewarding the completed sequence.
chakranoun: Some South Asian spiritual traditions describe a bodily energy center used as a focus during meditation and yoga.
challengenoun: A difficult obstacle seen as something you can handle and even turn into improvement.
challenge for causenoun: During jury selection, someone asks the judge to exclude a potential juror for a stated reason, such as bias.
challenge suggestionnoun: A hypnotic instruction tests responsiveness to suggestion and may strengthen a person’s experience that their actions happen automatically.
challengedadjective: Formerly used as a polite label for having a disability, but now considered outdated.
challenging behaviornoun: Actions create safety concerns or substantially limit participation in learning, care, or community activities, indicating a need for support.
CHAMPUSabbreviation: An earlier American military insurance program funded healthcare for eligible retired service members, their families, and families of deceased personnel.
chance differencenoun: Two samples differ because of random sampling variability rather than an effect of the researcher’s intervention.
chance variationnoun: Measured outcomes fluctuate because of random influences rather than the particular factors a study aims to examine.
change agentnoun: A person, factor, or process brings about change, often aiming to improve personal functioning or how a group works.
change blindnessnoun: Someone fails to detect a visual change, often when a brief interruption hides the moment it happens.
change effectnoun: In parapsychology, an object’s physical structure is claimed to change through paranormal influence.
change managementnoun: People plan, carry out, and assess changes in organizations or communities while helping others adjust and addressing unexpected effects.
change of lifephrase: This everyday expression usually describes the transition around menopause, when hormonal changes bring menstrual cycles to an end.
change of venuenoun: A court relocates proceedings when finding impartial jurors locally seems difficult, sometimes because news coverage has shaped public opinion.
change scorenoun: The amount a person's score goes up or down between two testing times.
change therapynoun: Discredited practices attempt to suppress or alter LGBTQ+ identities or expressions and can damage psychological well-being.
change-over delay (COD)noun: After switching between available responses, an organism must wait through a set interval before reinforcement becomes available.
changing-criterion designnoun: Researchers assess an intervention by checking whether behavior follows stepwise changes in a target requirement after measuring its starting level.
channelnoun: A pathway that carries coded information from an input source to an output target.
channel capacitynoun: An information channel has an upper limit on how much information it can reliably carry under specified conditions.
channel factorsnoun: Features of a persuasive message’s delivery medium, such as print or audio, can affect how people receive it.
channels of communicationnoun: Information travels through available routes between group members or through sensory means such as speech, gesture, and touch.
chaos theorynoun: This mathematical field studies rule-governed nonlinear systems in which tiny starting differences can grow into greatly different outcomes.
characternoun: A person's usual traits, especially their moral and social qualities, that make up who they are.
character analysisnoun: Wilhelm Reich’s historical psychoanalytic treatment aimed to change lasting personality patterns believed to protect people from difficult feelings.
character developmentnoun: People gradually form moral beliefs, conscience, religious views, and attitudes toward others as their personalities develop.
character disordernoun: Psychoanalysts formerly used this label for personality disorders involving lasting patterns that interfere with everyday functioning.
character displacementnoun: Competing populations evolve differences in traits or behavior that reduce their competition and may contribute to new species forming.
character neurosisnoun: Historical psychoanalysts used this name for personality disorders involving persistent difficulties in thinking, relating, and functioning.
character strengthnoun: A valued personal quality, such as fairness or kindness, helps people live meaningfully and supports others’ well-being.
character structurenoun: A person’s lasting qualities fit together into an organized pattern of character.
character traitsphrase: Stable tendencies involving values, motives, and self-control that guide behavior by moral and ethical standards.
character typenoun: A personality category groups people by shared traits, sometimes using psychoanalytic ideas about defenses or development.
characteristicnoun: A lasting feature or trait that helps describe a person, group, or thing.
characteristic frequency (CF)noun: An auditory nerve fiber responds at its lowest required sound level to this particular frequency.
characterologynoun: An older field studied personality and character; the name also describes unsupported attempts to infer character from appearance.
Charcot–Marie–Tooth diseasenoun: An inherited nerve disorder gradually causes weakness, muscle loss, and reduced sensation, especially in hands and feet.
charismanoun: A compelling personal presence draws people’s attention and earns their trust, sometimes across very large groups.
charismatic authoritynoun: Influence comes from a person’s compelling presence and the credibility others give them because of it.
charismatic leadernoun: A leader inspires unusually strong loyalty and enthusiasm, often through personal appeal or qualities followers deeply admire.
charitynoun: Help given to people in need, sometimes even when the helper expects praise or some return.
charlatannoun: Someone deliberately pretends to possess expertise, abilities, or unusual powers that they lack.
Charles Bonnet syndromenoun: People with reduced vision may see detailed images that are absent while usually recognizing that these experiences are unreal.
charmnoun: A pleasing personal quality that makes other people feel interested, attracted, or comfortable.
Charpentier’s bandsnoun: Apparent bright and dark stripes can seem to trail a narrow moving light viewed against darkness.
Charpentier’s illusionnoun: When two objects weigh the same, the smaller one can feel heavier because their sizes influence weight judgments.
chartnoun: A visual display, such as a table or graph, used to organize and compare information.
chastitynoun: A person follows sexual restraint guided by moral or religious beliefs, sometimes avoiding sexual activity entirely.
chatnoun: A stimulant drug made from a plant whose leaves are chewed to increase alertness and energy.
chauvinismnoun: Excessive loyalty to one’s group includes treating it as superior, often expressed through claims that men outrank women.
CHDabbreviation: Coronary heart disease involves narrowed heart arteries that limit blood reaching the heart muscle.
ChEabbreviation: Cholinesterase is an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine, helping end the nerve signals carried by this chemical messenger.
cheatingnoun: Getting a better result by breaking rules, lying, or using unfair tricks.
check readingnoun: A machine display shows the system’s current condition so an operator can judge whether it falls within expected limits.
checkerboard patternnoun: Researchers use a grid with alternating bright and dark squares to study vision and activate brain cells responsive to sight.
checklistnoun: A written list of things to watch, record, fix, or think about during a task.
ChEIabbreviation: A cholinesterase inhibitor slows the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine, allowing this nerve messenger to remain available longer.
cheilophagia (chilophagia)noun: This behavior involves biting your lips repeatedly, rather than doing so just once.
cheiromancynoun: An unsupported practice claims that palm lines and shapes reveal someone’s personality or future.
chelationnoun: A molecule attaches to a metal ion at multiple points, sometimes allowing that metal to be removed from the body.
chemesthesisnoun: Chemicals produce sensations such as cooling or tingling by activating touch, temperature, or pain pathways rather than taste or smell alone.
chemical antagonismnoun: One substance directly combines with another and changes it, reducing or stopping its biological action.
chemical brain stimulationnoun: Researchers or clinicians place active chemicals in selected brain areas to change nerve activity for experiments or treatment.
chemical castrationnoun: Medicines reduce androgen production or effects to treat conditions such as prostate cancer or reduce sexual drive.
chemical communicationphrase: Sending information between individuals through smells or other chemicals, often to signal identity, status, or mating readiness.
chemical dependencenoun: An older diagnostic label describes persistent substance use driven by strong urges despite serious problems, sometimes involving tolerance or withdrawal.
chemical sensesnoun: Sensory systems, especially taste and smell, detect chemicals when molecules interact with specialized receptors.
chemical stimulationnoun: Contact with particular molecules changes activity in taste or smell receptor cells, starting signals that the nervous system processes.
chemical sympathectomynoun: Specific drugs disrupt the activity of selected sympathetic nerves, which help regulate automatic bodily responses.
chemical synapsenoun: At this nerve-cell junction, released messenger chemicals cross a tiny space and influence the receiving cell’s activity.
chemical trailnoun: Some animals deposit chemical markers on surfaces, allowing others in their group to follow the route later.
chemical transmissionphrase: Messages pass from one nerve cell to another when neurotransmitters cross the tiny synapse, or gap.
chemical transmitternoun: A neurotransmitter is a chemical messenger released by nerve cells that influences other cells across a junction.
chemical warfarenoun: Military operations use toxic chemicals as weapons to disable or kill people.
chemistrynoun: The science of how substances are built, what properties they have, and how they react.
chemo brainnoun: Some people experience changes in memory, attention, or thinking during cancer care or afterward, with several possible contributing causes.
chemoaffinity hypothesisnoun: Roger Sperry proposed that nerve cells use matching chemical identities to find appropriate connection partners during development.
chemoattractantnoun: A chemical draws certain developing nerve tips toward it, helping guide where their axons grow.
chemoreceptornoun: A sensory cell or nerve ending detects particular chemicals and turns their presence into nervous-system signals.
chemoreceptor trigger zone (CTZ)noun: A brainstem cell group detects certain chemicals, including some medicines, and can trigger nausea and vomiting.
chemorepellantnoun: A chemical steers certain developing nerve tips away from it, helping shape the routes their axons take.
chemosensory event-related potential (CSERP)noun: A measurable electrical brain response follows chemical stimulation involving smell, taste, or sensations such as nasal cooling.
chemotaxisnoun: Chemical signals guide a cell or organism's travel, drawing it closer or sending it farther away.
chemotherapynoun: A medical treatment that uses powerful drugs to fight disease, especially cancer.
Chernoff facesnoun: Data displays use drawn faces whose features vary to represent values of several different measurements at once.
chessboard illusionnoun: A distorted checkerboard with squares enlarging toward its edges can appear three-dimensional under viewing conditions placing it near the retina.
chest voicenoun: A lower vocal register produces speaking or singing tones often felt as vibrations in the chest.
Cheyne–Stokes breathingnoun: A repeating breathing pattern gradually deepens, then becomes shallower, with pauses between cycles.
chi (qi)noun: The Greek letter used in statistics, especially in the name of the chi-square test.
chi-squarenoun: A test statistic comparing observed counts with expected counts to judge whether differences are likely due to chance.
chi-square distribution (χ2 distribution)noun: A probability distribution describes sums of squared independent normal values, each drawn from a distribution with mean zero and variance one.
chi-square testphrase: Checks whether two category variables are related by comparing actual counts with expected counts.
chiaroscuronoun: Contrasts between bright and shaded areas make objects in a flat picture appear to have depth.
chiasmal syndromenoun: Damage where visual nerves partly cross can reduce sight, often affecting the outer visual areas of both eyes.
chibihnoun: In some Latin American cultural traditions, distress after a fright is understood as the soul leaving the body.
Chicago schoolnoun: This historical psychology movement centered in Chicago emphasized how mental activity helps people and animals adjust to their surroundings.
chicken gamenoun: A decision game rewards standing firm when another yields, but gives both players their worst outcome when neither yields.
chicken poxnoun: An easily spread infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus typically brings itchy blisters, fever, and tiredness.
childnoun: A person who is no longer a baby but has not yet reached adolescence.
child abusenoun: Harm to a child by a caregiver, including physical, sexual, emotional abuse, or neglect of basic needs.
child advocacynoun: Organized efforts by professionals or groups protect children's interests and help them receive needed care and support.
child analysisnoun: A form of psychoanalytic therapy adapts methods for children to explore feelings and proposed unconscious conflicts, often through play.
Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)noun: A standardized questionnaire asks parents or caregivers to rate children's emotional and behavioral difficulties and, in some versions, strengths.
child carenoun: The supervision and support of children includes meeting their everyday physical, emotional, and practical needs in different settings.
child care facilitiesnoun: Licensed centers provide children with regular daytime supervision and care away from their homes.
child care workernoun: A trained person supports children's daily needs and supervises activities in homes, centers, schools, or other care settings.
child custodynoun: A court's decision about who will care for, protect, and make choices for a child.
child custody evaluationphrase: A psychologist's court-focused review of parenting and a child's needs to recommend custody arrangements.
child day carenoun: Arranged daytime supervision meets children's needs while their parents or usual caregivers are working or otherwise unavailable.
child developmentphrase: The physical, thinking, and behavior changes children go through from birth until the teen years.
child findnoun: A U.S. educational process locates and evaluates children who may have disabilities and need special education or related support.
child guidancenoun: A mental health approach combines treatment, family education, and support to address children's difficulties and help prevent future problems.
child molestationnoun: Sexual abuse occurs when an adult involves a child in sexual contact or other sexual behavior.
child neglectnoun: A caregiver's failure to provide essential care, supervision, or emotional support can leave a child's basic needs unmet.
child pornographynoun: Sexually explicit material depicts children or represents them in sexual situations, including some written or computer-generated content.
child psychologynoun: A branch of psychology studies children's thinking, feelings, behavior, and development, including difficulties and ways to help.
child psychotherapynoun: Psychological treatment adapted for children helps them work through emotional, thinking, or behavioral difficulties, sometimes with family involvement.
child study movementnoun: This organized movement began under Stanley Hall during the late 1800s, using science to understand children and improve their lives.
child supportphrase: After parents separate, a court can require money to help pay for a child's basic and school needs.
child visitationnoun: Court-approved arrangements allow children to spend time with parents or relatives who do not have custody, considering children's interests.
child welfarephrase: A child's safety, health, and emotional well-being, especially when courts or social services get involved.
child with special needsnoun: This outdated label describes a young person whose disability calls for tailored support in schooling, healthcare, or daily activities.
child-centeredadjective: An approach gives priority to children's interests, needs, protection, and healthy development when making decisions.
child-directed speechnoun: Adults often use simpler, extra-clear language patterns and tone when speaking with small children.
child-focused familynoun: A family places children's needs first, sometimes allowing them to outweigh the needs of parents or other members.
child-rearing practicenoun: A customary way of raising children reflects a family's habits or the values of a culture or historical period.
child–parent relationship therapy (CPRT)noun: A structured therapy teaches parents play-based skills to understand their children, strengthen connection, and address emotional or behavioral difficulties.
childhoodnoun: The years from about age two until puberty, after infancy and before adolescence.
childhood absence epilepsynoun: A childhood epilepsy syndrome causes frequent, brief seizures during which awareness suddenly pauses, often with staring.
childhood adversitynoun: Severe or ongoing stressful experiences during childhood can affect development and health, especially when reliable support is missing.
childhood amnesianoun: Most people cannot remember personal events from their first years because memory systems were not mature yet.
childhood apraxia of speechnoun: A speech disorder makes planning and coordinating speech movements difficult, causing inconsistent pronunciation without requiring muscle weakness.
childhood autismnoun: A historical diagnostic label described early developmental differences in social communication alongside repetitive behavior and restricted interests, now within autism spectrum disorder.
childhood depressionphrase: A major depression episode in a child, often showing irritability and poor expected weight gain instead of sadness.
childhood disintegrative disordernoun: A historical diagnosis described marked loss of several acquired abilities between ages two and ten after initially typical development.
childhood disordernoun: A condition during childhood significantly affects emotional health, social functioning, behavior, or learning.
childhood fearsnoun: Children's worries about possible threats often change with development and may fade as understanding and experience grow.
childhood neurosisnoun: Freudian theory proposed that children's psychological symptoms arise when mental defenses attempt to manage inner conflicts.
childhood obesitynoun: A medical condition involves excess body fat in a child and is influenced by biological, behavioral, social, and environmental factors.
childhood psychosisnoun: Psychosis beginning in childhood can involve hallucinations, strongly held false beliefs, or disorganized thinking that makes judging reality difficult.
childhood schizophrenianoun: A rare form of schizophrenia begins in childhood and involves persistent disturbances in perception, beliefs, thinking, and everyday functioning.
childhood sensorineural lesionnoun: Damage in a child's inner ear or hearing nerve pathways can interfere with sound signals reaching or being processed by the brain.
childhood-onset fluency disorderphrase: A childhood speech problem causes repeated sounds, long pauses, or blocks that disrupt smooth talking and make communication hard.
children in need of supervision (CHINS)noun: A juvenile court category identifies children considered to need intervention for age-related rule violations, such as repeatedly missing school.
Children’s Apperception Test (CAT)noun: A projective assessment asks children to tell stories about pictures, aiming to explore their feelings, relationships, and personality themes.
Children’s Auditory Verbal Learning Test (CAVLT)noun: A memory assessment measures how children learn and remember spoken words across repeated presentations and after a delay.
Children’s Complex Figure Testnoun: A child copies a detailed drawing and later redraws it from memory to assess visual memory and related skills.
Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI)noun: This questionnaire measures depressive symptom severity through answers young people give about their experiences over two weeks.
Children’s Embedded Figures Test (CEFT)noun: A visual assessment asks children to locate simple shapes hidden inside complicated pictures to examine separation of details from context.
Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)noun: A U.S. program funded by federal and state governments provides health coverage for eligible children, often above Medicaid income limits.
Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (CMAS)noun: A self-report questionnaire adapted from an adult anxiety scale measures anxiety symptoms in children through answers about their experiences.
Children’s Personality Questionnaire (CPQ)noun: A questionnaire measures 14 personality traits through 140 answers provided by children aged 8 to 12.
chilophagianoun: A repetitive behavior involves biting one's own lips again and again.
chimeranoun: An organism contains genetically different cell populations originating from more than one fertilized egg, sometimes through transplantation.
chimeric stimulationnoun: Researchers present combined images, often different face halves, to examine how separated brain hemispheres process visual information.
chimerismnoun: An individual has genetically distinct groups of cells originating from different fertilized eggs.
chin reflexnoun: A tap on the chin can trigger automatic jaw closure, with an unusually strong response suggesting neurological problems.
China whitephrase: An informal street name can mean fentanyl, a powerful opioid, although its use does not reliably identify a substance.
Chinese Room argumentnoun: A philosophical argument proposes that following rules for manipulating symbols does not by itself provide understanding of their meaning.
CHINSabbreviation: A court label for youths needing supervision because of behavior problems, not serious crimes.
chippernoun: An informal label describes someone who occasionally uses tobacco or opiates without an associated substance use disorder.
chiromancy (cheiromancy)noun: A practice claims to reveal personality or predict someone's future through palm features, without scientific support.
chiropracticnoun: A healthcare approach emphasizes manual adjustments, especially of the spine, based partly on proposed links between spinal alignment and health.
chirosophynoun: An unsupported practice interprets palm markings as clues about someone's character or future.
chloral hydratenoun: A sedative drug slows brain activity and was widely used to bring on sleep, with toxicity limiting its use.
chlordiazepoxidenoun: A benzodiazepine medicine has lasting calming effects and is used for anxiety and managing alcohol withdrawal.
chloride channelnoun: A protein passage through a cell's outer membrane lets chloride ions cross and helps regulate nerve activity.
chloropsianoun: A change in color perception makes viewed objects seem unusually green.
chlorpromazine (CPZ)noun: An early antipsychotic medicine that reduces hallucinations and delusions but often causes strong side effects.
chlorprothixenenoun: An antipsychotic medicine in the thioxanthene family helps treat psychotic symptoms and has relatively low potency.
choice axiomnoun: Luce's mathematical rule assumes choosing directly or through successive selections gives the same probability for an option.
choice behaviornoun: A person or animal selects among available options or possible actions.
Choice Dilemma Questionnaire (CDQ)noun: A research questionnaire measures risk willingness by asking what success odds would justify recommending uncertain actions in imagined situations.
choice reaction timenoun: The measured interval runs from a signal's appearance to the response selected for that signal among several possible responses.
choice shiftnoun: An individual's decision changes after discussing the available options with a group.
choice stimulinoun: The possible signals in a reaction-time experiment each require a different assigned response.
choked disknoun: Raised pressure inside the skull causes swelling where the optic nerve meets the retina.
chokesnoun: Rapidly decreasing surrounding pressure can produce nitrogen bubbles that disrupt breathing and circulation, causing this serious type of decompression illness.
choking under pressurephrase: Pressure to succeed makes someone perform below their usual ability in an important situation.
cholecystokinin (CCK)noun: A hormone released by the small intestine helps signal fullness and also carries messages between some nerve cells.
choleric typenoun: An ancient personality category described easily irritated, quick-tempered people and linked these traits to yellow bile.
cholesterolnoun: A fatty substance in animal tissues that helps build cells, but high levels can clog blood vessels.
cholinenoun: An essential nutrient helps build cell membranes and supplies material for making acetylcholine, a chemical messenger used by nerves.
choline acetylasenoun: An enzyme makes acetylcholine by transferring an acetyl group from acetyl coenzyme A to choline.
cholinergicadjective: The adjective describes cells, receptors, or processes that release, respond to, or otherwise involve acetylcholine.
cholinergic drugnoun: A medicine increases acetylcholine's effects or imitates them, often stimulating functions such as digestion and bladder emptying.
cholinergic receptornoun: A protein on a cell's surface responds to acetylcholine and triggers changes in the cell's activity.
cholinergic synapsenoun: A nerve junction passes a signal to another cell by releasing the chemical messenger acetylcholine.
cholinergic systemnoun: Within automatic body control, this network uses acetylcholine signals to influence organs and glands.
cholinesterase (ChE)noun: An enzyme breaks down acetylcholine after nerve signaling, helping stop the message at the synapse, or neuron gap.
chondroectodermal dysplasianoun: An inherited condition causes short stature, extra fingers or toes, and differences in teeth, nails, and sometimes heart development.
chord keyboardnoun: A keyboard produces many letters, numbers, or commands through combinations of a small set of keys.
chorda tympaninoun: A branch of the facial nerve carries taste signals from the tongue's front region and helps control saliva production.
choreanoun: Sudden, uncontrolled jerky movements of the face or limbs seen in some brain disorders.
choreiformadjective: The adjective describes irregular, jerky movements that happen involuntarily and resemble those seen in chorea.
choreoathetosisnoun: A movement pattern combines sudden, irregular jerks with slower twisting movements that occur without voluntary control.
choreoidadjective: The adjective describes movements resembling chorea, with unpredictable jerks occurring outside a person's voluntary control.
choreomanianoun: A historical label described an apparently uncontrollable drive to dance, including reported group outbreaks in medieval Europe.
chorionnoun: The outer protective membrane around an embryo contributes to forming the placenta during human development.
chorionic villus sampling (CVS)noun: A prenatal diagnostic procedure examines a small placental tissue sample to check for certain genetic or chromosome conditions.
choroid layernoun: A pigmented, vessel-rich layer behind the retina nourishes light-sensitive cells and absorbs stray light inside the eye.
choroid plexusnoun: Specialized tissue inside the brain's fluid-filled spaces produces cerebrospinal fluid, which cushions and supports the brain and spinal cord.
Chotzen’s syndromenoun: A rare genetic condition causes some skull seams to close early and can affect the face, fingers, toes, and development.
Christian Sciencenoun: A Christian denomination founded by Mary Baker Eddy teaches that spiritual understanding and prayer can bring healing.
CHRN genesnoun: A gene family provides instructions for making parts of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, which respond to acetylcholine and nicotine.
chrom-prefix: This word-building element adds the meaning of color to a larger word.
chroma–brightness coefficientnoun: This measure links a color's saturation with its intensity within Munsell's numerical method for describing colors.
chromaticadjective: A color described this way has a hue and some saturation, unlike white, gray, or black.
chromatic aberrationnoun: An image develops colored edges when a lens bends different wavelengths unequally and brings them into focus at different distances.
chromatic adaptationnoun: The visual system becomes less responsive to a color when exposure to it continues.
chromatic auditionnoun: Hearing sounds automatically brings accompanying color experiences in this form of synesthesia.
chromaticitynoun: A light stimulus's color properties can be specified separately from its luminance, using information about wavelength and purity.
chromaticsnoun: This branch of optics explores colors, including how they appear to people who see them.
chromatidnoun: Each copy of a duplicated chromosome, initially attached to its partner, becomes a separate chromosome when the pair divides.
chromatinnoun: DNA and its associated proteins form the material that makes up chromosomes within cell nuclei.
chromatin negativeadjective: A body cell described this way has no visible Barr body, the compact form of an inactive X chromosome.
chromatin positiveadjective: A body cell described this way contains a visible Barr body formed from an inactive X chromosome.
chromatopsianoun: A change in color vision makes objects appear tinted with a particular color.
chromesthesianoun: Sounds, tastes, smells, or other nonvisual experiences automatically produce accompanying color sensations in this form of synesthesia.
chromic myopianoun: An older vision term describes difficulty recognizing colors at distances where someone with typical color vision can still distinguish them.
chromo- (chrom-; chromato-)prefix: This word part adds the meaning of color to a longer word.
chromopsianoun: An alteration in vision gives the surroundings an unusual tint of one color.
chromosomal aberrationnoun: A chromosome has an altered structure, such as a missing, extra, or rearranged section.
chromosomal mapnoun: A stained chromosome displays a recognizable band pattern that helps researchers identify it and examine its structure.
chromosomal mutationnoun: A lasting genetic change affects chromosome arrangement or count, rather than only a few DNA building blocks.
chromosomenoun: A threadlike package of DNA and proteins in a cell nucleus that carries inherited information.
chromosome 18, deletion of long armnoun: Missing genetic material from chromosome 18's longer arm can affect growth, muscle tone, hearing, and learning.
chromosome 4, deletion of short armnoun: Loss of genetic material from chromosome 4's shorter arm causes Wolf–Hirschhorn syndrome, which can affect growth and development.
chromosome 5, deletion of short armnoun: Missing material from chromosome 5's shorter arm causes cri du chat syndrome, often involving developmental delays and distinctive infant cries.
chromosome abnormalitynoun: A cell's chromosomes differ from the usual pattern in their total count or physical structure.
chromosome disordernoun: A health or developmental condition results from changes in how many chromosomes are present or how they are structured.
chromosome mosaicismnoun: An early cell division error can leave groups of cells in one individual with differing chromosome counts.
chromosome numbernoun: The count of chromosomes in a cell is usually 46 in human body cells and 23 in eggs or sperm.
chromotherapynoun: This proposed treatment uses colors or colored light with the aim of improving health or psychological well-being.
chron-prefix: This word part contributes the meaning of time when combined with other word parts.
chronaxie (chronaxy)noun: The shortest electrical pulse needed to activate nerve or muscle is measured at twice the minimum effective sustained current strength.
chronesthesianoun: A proposed mental capacity lets people experience personal time by remembering past events and imagining possible futures.
chronicadjective: Lasting a long time or slowly getting worse, and often hard to cure.
chronic adjustment disordernoun: Stress-related emotional or behavioral difficulties continue beyond six months while the stressor or its consequences persist.
chronic alcoholismphrase: Ongoing heavy drinking that creates alcohol dependence and lasting problems in health, thinking, or daily life.
chronic anxietyphrase: Long-lasting, widespread worry or dread can show up in several anxiety disorders.
chronic brain disordernoun: A condition associated with brain damage causes enduring difficulties in thinking, movement, sensation, or emotional functioning.
chronic carenoun: Ongoing treatment and support help people manage health conditions that continue over long periods.
chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)noun: A long-lasting illness causes disabling exhaustion, worsening symptoms after exertion, and difficulties that can include unrefreshing sleep and slowed thinking.
chronic illnessphrase: A long-lasting health condition that needs ongoing care and can affect daily life.
chronic mood disordernoun: A mood condition causes persistent emotional symptoms, with few periods when those symptoms settle or disappear.
chronic motor or vocal tic disordernoun: Movement tics or sound tics, but never both types, persist over a year and begin before adulthood.
chronic myofascial pain (CMP)noun: Persistent muscle pain and stiffness are associated with sensitive spots called trigger points, which may also produce pain elsewhere.
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)noun: A lasting lung condition restricts airflow, making breathing difficult and often causing coughing or wheezing.
chronic painphrase: Pain that lasts long after treatment, often because the brain and spinal cord keep sending danger signals.
chronic posttraumatic stress disordernoun: An older diagnostic label described posttraumatic stress disorder when symptoms continued for at least three months.
chronic preparationnoun: Researchers perform a procedure on an animal, allow recovery, and then study it over an extended period.
chronic psychosisnoun: Hallucinations, delusions, or related difficulties distinguishing experiences from shared reality continue for an extended period.
chronic schizophreniaphrase: Schizophrenia with symptoms that continue for a long time instead of coming and going briefly.
chronic stressphrase: A lasting state of body or mind strain caused by ongoing stress, even from remembered events.
chronic traumatic encephalopathynoun: A degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head impacts involves distinctive tissue changes and may affect thinking, behavior, and movement.
chronically accessible constructsnoun: Frequently used ideas or mental categories become especially easy to bring to mind when interpreting new experiences.
chronically suicidaladjective: This describes someone experiencing persistent or recurring suicidal thoughts, plans, or attempts over an extended period.
chronicitynoun: A condition's long-lasting or repeatedly returning course over time.
chrono- (chron-)prefix: This combining word part adds a connection to time in words about timing, sequence, or duration.
chronobiologynoun: This branch of biology studies recurring patterns in living things, including daily changes in sleep and alertness.
chronographnoun: An instrument creates a graphical record showing when events occur and how they unfold over time.
chronological age (CA)phrase: The number of months or years a person has lived since birth.
chronometernoun: A highly accurate clock keeps running reliably despite changes in surrounding conditions.
chronometric analysisnoun: Researchers vary what participants encounter and compare response speeds to infer how mental processing works.
chronometrynoun: Time is measured to establish durations, intervals, or when particular events occur.
chronopsychologynoun: Researchers in this field study how shifts in daily sleeping and waking patterns affect people's functioning.
chronosystemnoun: In ecological systems theory, this dimension includes changes and stable conditions across time that shape a person's development.
chronotaraxisnoun: A person experiences confusion about how much time has passed or what day or time it is.
chronotherapynoun: This sleep treatment shifts bedtime later in planned steps until the intended sleep schedule is reached.
chronotopic constraintsnoun: The brain's developing abilities place limits on when particular skills, such as language processing, can emerge.
chunkingnoun: Breaking information into small meaningful groups so short-term memory can hold more at once.
CIabbreviation: A confidence interval estimates a population value using a range calculated by a method with a stated long-run coverage rate.
cicatrizationnoun: Scar tissue forms as the body repairs an injured area.
cichlidnoun: A tropical freshwater fish with spiny fins belongs to a family often studied to understand animal behavior.
CIE XYZ color spacenoun: This mathematical color system represents colors using three abstract components labeled X, Y, and Z.
CILabbreviation: A Center for Independent Living is a nonprofit organization led by disabled people that supports choice, access, and everyday independence.
cilianoun: These tiny projections extend from cells and can serve movement or sensing functions.
ciliary bodynoun: A structure behind the iris contains muscles for focusing and tissue that produces the eye's clear internal fluid.
ciliary musclenoun: An eye muscle adjusts tension on lens-supporting fibers, changing lens curvature to focus at different distances.
ciliary processesnoun: Small folds behind the iris produce clear eye fluid and anchor fibers supporting the lens.
ciliumnoun: A tiny projection extends from a cell and may help it move materials or detect signals.
Cinderella syndromenoun: This historical label describes childhood behavior linked to feeling rejected, neglected, or mistreated by parents.
cingulate cortexnoun: A curved brain area in the limbic system, which helps with feelings, supports emotion, memory, and movement planning.
cingulate sulcusnoun: On the brain's inward-facing surface, a groove runs between cingulate cortex below and superior frontal gyrus above.
cingulotomynoun: This brain surgery destroys selected cingulate tissue and pathways to treat persistent pain or, rarely, severe psychiatric conditions.
cingulum bundlenoun: A band of nerve fibers beneath cingulate cortex links frontal regions with areas around the hippocampus in the temporal lobe.
CIPSabbreviation: This questionnaire measures impostor feelings through 20 statements about doubting earned success and fearing discovery as a fraud.
circadian dysrhythmianoun: The body's usual daily pattern of sleeping and being awake becomes disrupted.
circadian oscillatornoun: A nerve-cell circuit produces repeating signals roughly every 24 hours, helping organize daily sleeping and waking patterns.
circadian rhythmnoun: A roughly 24-hour body clock that guides sleep, alertness, and other daily body changes.
circadian rhythm sleep disordernoun: Sleep difficulties or excessive sleepiness arise when internal daily rhythms conflict with the schedule a person needs to follow.
circannual rhythmnoun: A pattern in an organism's behavior, growth, or bodily activity repeats approximately every year.
Circle of Securitynoun: This attachment-focused intervention helps caregivers understand children's emotional signals and respond in ways intended to strengthen relationship security.
circle of supportnoun: A group helps someone pursue personally chosen goals, often bringing together relatives, friends, and service providers.
circle of Willisnoun: An arterial ring beneath the brain connects blood supplies and may provide alternative routes when circulation is reduced.
circuit resistance trainingnoun: A planned sequence of muscle-strengthening exercises assigns each exercise a set duration or repetition count for fitness or rehabilitation.
circular behaviornoun: An action by one person prompts others to perform a similar action, such as laughing or yawning.
circular causalitynoun: Effects feed back to influence their original causes, continuing a repeating chain of mutual influence.
circular questioningphrase: Asking each family member the same question to reveal different views and relationship patterns in the family.
circular reactionphrase: During Piaget's sensorimotor stage, babies repeat actions that bring interesting results, sometimes with small changes.
circular reasoningnoun: An argument uses the claim it needs to establish as part of its own supporting evidence.
circulating levelsnoun: Measurements show the concentrations of particular substances, such as hormones or medicines, within blood.
circulatory systemnoun: The heart pumps blood through a network of vessels that carries it throughout the body.
circumcisionnoun: Surgical removal of the skin covering the tip of the penis, often done in infancy.
circumlocutionnoun: Using many indirect words because the right word cannot be found, often after language problems or disorganized thinking.
circumplexnoun: A circular diagram arranges variables so similar ones sit near each other and opposing ones sit across the circle.
circumscribed amnesianoun: Memory loss affects particular experiences or a limited period rather than memories generally.
circumscribed beliefnoun: A narrowly focused delusion remains internally coherent, resists contrary evidence, and appears separate from a person's other beliefs.
circumstantial bilingualismnoun: This pattern involves two languages, commonly in working-class immigrant communities where schooling provides little support for the mainly spoken home language.
circumstantial evidencenoun: Information supports a conclusion through inference rather than directly showing that the claimed fact occurred.
circumstantialitynoun: Speech takes a long route through unnecessary details but eventually reaches the intended point.
circumstriate cortexnoun: These visual-processing regions lie beyond primary visual cortex and include areas involved in interpreting features such as color and movement.
circumthanatologynoun: This field studies experiences people report after coming close to death, including unusual perceptions and feelings.
circumvallate papillaenoun: Large bumps near the tongue's rear contain many taste buds along the walls of surrounding grooves.
circumventricular organsnoun: Small structures beside brain ventricles help regulate bodily functions, with many allowing unusually direct exchange between blood and brain tissue.
cirrhosisnoun: Long-lasting liver damage produces extensive scarring that interferes with the liver's normal work.
CISDabbreviation: Critical-incident stress debriefing is a structured discussion, usually in groups, intended to address distress after a traumatic event.
cisgendernoun: Describes a person whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.
cissanoun: During pregnancy, a person experiences cravings for unusual foods or substances that provide no nourishment.
cissexismnoun: Unfair beliefs, actions, or social systems give cisgender people advantages while dismissing or excluding people with other gender identities.
cistern puncturenoun: A medical procedure uses a needle near the skull's base to access cerebrospinal fluid in the cisterna magna.
cisternanoun: An enlarged anatomical space holds fluid, or a flattened membrane sac forms part of a cell's Golgi apparatus.
cisterna magnanoun: A spacious cerebrospinal fluid compartment lies between the cerebellum's underside and the back of the medulla.
CITabbreviation: A job-study method that collects examples of very effective or ineffective work behaviors to identify key job duties.
citalopramnoun: A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressant that blocks serotonin reabsorption, leaving more serotonin available between neurons.
citation analysisnoun: Researchers examine who cites particular publications, how often, and when to understand patterns in the spread of ideas.
citizennoun: A legally recognized member of a country or similar political group, with the rights and duties that go with it.
cittosisnoun: An older label describes cravings for unusual foods or substances that provide no nourishment.
civil commitmentphrase: A court process allowing involuntary hospital placement for someone with mental illness who has not been charged with a crime.
civil disobediencenoun: People peacefully and openly break selected laws to protest government actions they believe are wrong.
civil emergencynoun: A major disaster threatens people in a community and calls for organized help and protection.
civil rightsphrase: Legal protections that give people equal treatment and basic freedoms in society.
civil rights movementnoun: People organize together to secure political or social rights that their government has denied them.
Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS)noun: This historical U.S. program helped cover healthcare costs for eligible military retirees and families, including surviving relatives.
civilizationnoun: A society develops complex institutions and shared cultural achievements in areas such as art, technology, and law.
CJDabbreviation: A rare, fast-moving brain disease that causes severe memory, thinking, and movement problems.
CKabbreviation: Creatine kinase is an enzyme in muscles and brain tissue whose blood levels can help indicate tissue damage.
CLabbreviation: Comparison level is the standard shaped by past relationships that people use to judge satisfaction with a current relationship.
cladisticsnoun: Scientists group organisms by shared evolutionary ancestry and display those relationships using branching diagrams.
claims reviewnoun: An insurer checks whether a healthcare payment request meets coverage, cost, and medical necessity requirements.
clairaudiencenoun: Parapsychology describes a claimed, unproven ability to receive sounds or spoken messages without ordinary hearing.
clairvoyancenoun: Parapsychology describes a claimed, unproven ability to perceive hidden or distant things without using ordinary senses.
clairvoyant dreamnoun: A dream appears to reveal otherwise unknown events when later experiences or information seem to match its contents.
CLaltabbreviation: Comparison level for alternatives measures expected benefits and costs of other relationships or being alone when deciding whether to stay.
clamminessnoun: A combined touch sensation includes coolness, dampness, and slight stickiness occurring together.
clannoun: A social group brings together families who recognize a shared ancestor, whether that ancestry is established or believed.
Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (CIPS)noun: A questionnaire uses 20 statements to measure feelings of being undeserving of success and fearing exposure as incapable.
clang associationnoun: Words become connected mainly through similar sounds instead of related meanings, sometimes disrupting coherent speech.
clarificationnoun: A helper restates a person's thoughts or feelings more clearly, without judging them or guessing hidden meanings.
classnoun: A category of things or people grouped together because they share important features.
class advocatenoun: A person speaks or acts for an entire group to defend its rights or represent its interests.
class consciousnessnoun: People recognize their place in a social or economic group and understand interests they share with other members.
class inclusionnoun: Understanding categories includes recognizing that every member of a smaller category also belongs to a broader category containing it.
class intervalnoun: A selected numerical range groups data values together so their frequencies can be summarized.
class limitnoun: Either endpoint of a grouped numerical interval specifies its lowest or highest included value.
class structurenoun: A society's social classes have a particular makeup, arrangement, and pattern of economic and political relationships.
class theorynoun: This view proposes that conflict among economic and social classes strongly shapes society and people's thoughts, goals, and expectations.
classic categorical approachnoun: A diagnostic approach sorts disorders into separate categories, assuming clear boundaries distinguish one disorder from another.
classicaladjective: In psychology, this describes Pavlovian conditioning, the older learning method contrasted with operant conditioning.
classical conditioningphrase: Learning where a neutral cue, after pairing with a reflex trigger, starts causing the response itself.
classical humorsnoun: Ancient medicine proposed that blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile governed health and temperament through their balance.
classical inferencenoun: Statistical conclusions are drawn using how often outcomes would occur across many repetitions under the same conditions.
classical paranoianoun: A historical diagnosis described slowly developing, organized delusions alongside otherwise orderly reasoning, without another disorder explaining them.
classical probabilitynoun: An event's chance is calculated by dividing its favorable outcomes by all possible outcomes, assuming each outcome has equal likelihood.
classical psychoanalysisphrase: A Freudian therapy using free association and dream analysis to reveal unconscious conflicts and change personality.
classical test theory (CTT)phrase: A test score is seen as a person's real ability plus random measurement mistakes.
classical theorynoun: Freud's psychoanalytic account emphasizes unconscious drives, sexual energy, and psychosexual development as influences on personality.
classicism factornoun: In studying responses to art, this style dimension emphasizes traditional ideals, formal order, and polish, especially Greek and Roman influences.
classificationnoun: Putting mental disorders into groups based on shared symptoms and other important features.
classification and regression tree analysisnoun: A statistical method repeatedly splits cases using predictor variables to create groups with increasingly similar outcomes.
classification methodnoun: Employers evaluate jobs for pay by matching their descriptions to established job categories, often using reference jobs.
classification rulenoun: A mathematical formula assigns cases to groups based on measured characteristics, aiming to place similar cases together.
classification tablenoun: A grid compares predicted categories with actual categories, showing how often a model sorts cases correctly or incorrectly.
classification testnoun: An assessment asks people to sort items into categories or uses their answers to place the people themselves into categories.
classifier systemnoun: A computer model learns by changing if–then rules through environmental feedback, with performance judged across the whole system.
classroom disciplinenoun: Teachers use rules, guidance, and responses to behavior to support classroom learning and help students follow expectations.
classroom environmentphrase: The surroundings and social conditions of a learning space that shape students' behavior and learning.
classroom testnoun: A teacher creates an assessment for students in their own class to check what they have learned.
classroom-behavior modificationnoun: Teachers apply learning principles and adjust classroom conditions to change specific student behaviors.
claudicationnoun: A medical label can mean limping or muscle cramps, particularly in the calves.
clausenoun: A group of words with a subject and verb that works as part of a sentence.
claustrophobianoun: Enclosed spaces or situations that feel confining trigger persistent, excessive fear, often leading to avoidance or intense distress.
claustrumnoun: A slender sheet of gray matter lies deep beside the brain's insula, with functions that remain incompletely understood.
clavanoun: An elongated bulge in the medulla contains a nucleus that receives sensory information from the legs.
clavusnoun: A sharply localized head pain feels piercing, as though concentrated into one small point.
clay therapynoun: Working with clay during therapy can help children express feelings, practice physical skills, and experience a sense of control.
clear sensoriumnoun: A person's overall awareness and sensory-related thinking function normally, allowing clear attention and understanding of their surroundings.
clearance (CL)noun: Shows how quickly the body removes a drug, compared with how much is in the blood.
clearance requirementnoun: A security rule limits entry to certain places or access to certain information to people with specific authorization.
cleavagenoun: An early embryo develops through repeated cell divisions that produce smaller cells without increasing its overall size.
cleft palatenoun: A gap in the palate is present at birth because developing tissues did not completely join during pregnancy.
CLEPabbreviation: The College Level Examination Program offers exams through which students can earn college credit for existing knowledge.
Clérambault’s syndromenoun: A person firmly believes someone loves them romantically despite evidence against that belief.
clerical aptitudenoun: A person’s capacity to learn office tasks includes handling words, numbers, typing, and checking information accurately.
clerical testnoun: An assessment measures abilities needed for office work, such as checking records, using words, and working with numbers.
CLESabbreviation: The Constructivist Learning Environment Survey asks students how much classroom activities support actively building understanding and sharing learning decisions.
Clever Hansnoun: A famous horse appeared to solve problems but actually followed subtle, unintentional movements from people who knew the answers.
click-thru ratenoun: The percentage of displayed advertisements that receive clicks measures how often viewers respond by opening them.
clientnoun: A person receiving professional help or services from a therapist, counselor, or social worker.
client abusenoun: A care provider harms a client by misusing professional power, trust, or the client’s vulnerability.
client characteristicsphrase: A person's traits, health, symptoms, and problems that shape what they bring into treatment.
client educationnoun: A professional provides information to help clients understand and change thoughts, feelings, beliefs, or behavior.
client obligationsnoun: Responsibilities agreed upon with a therapist describe what a client is expected to do during treatment.
client rightsphrase: People in treatment must be told benefits and risks, then choose whether to start, continue, or refuse care.
client satisfactionphrase: How pleased a person getting mental health care feels about the results.
client self-monitoringnoun: A client records personal behavior and its circumstances to notice patterns and support changes during treatment.
client-centered consultationnoun: A mental health specialist advises a caregiver or professional about helping a particular person in their care.
client-centered therapynoun: Carl Rogers’s approach supports personal growth through a therapist’s empathy, acceptance, and respect while clients guide their own exploration.
client–patient issuenoun: Professionals debate whether people receiving psychological services should be called clients or patients and what each label suggests.
client–treatment matchingnoun: Clinicians choose therapy approaches and therapists to fit a person’s needs, preferences, and individual characteristics.
climactericnoun: A life transition involves age-related hormonal changes and declining reproductive function, especially the transition surrounding menopause.
climatenoun: How included or left out people feel in a group, workplace, or community.
climaxnoun: Sexual excitement reaches an intense high point, typically involving pleasurable sensations, repeated muscle tightening, and easing tension.
clinging behaviorphrase: After about six months, some children hold tightly to a caregiver and panic when left alone.
clinicnoun: A place where people get health checks, diagnosis, and treatment without staying overnight.
clinicaladjective: Connected to finding and treating mental or medical problems in real patients.
clinical assessmentphrase: A careful process of measuring mental, brain-body, and social factors to understand possible psychological problems.
clinical counselingphrase: Professional help for personal or emotional problems that builds self-understanding, choices, and healthier relationships.
clinical decision support (CDS)phrase: Computer tools that combine patient details and medical knowledge to guide care choices for one person.
clinical depressionphrase: Among professionals, another name for major depressive disorder, a severe, lasting low-mood illness.
clinical diagnosisphrase: Finding which disorder a person has by studying symptoms, history, records, and sometimes test results.
clinical efficacynoun: A treatment’s ability to produce intended benefits is evaluated under carefully controlled research conditions.
clinical evaluationphrase: A careful check of a client's condition and how well treatment is working.
clinical evidencenoun: Information from interviews, tests, observations, and personal records helps professionals understand a person’s difficulties and plan treatment.
clinical geropsychologynoun: A psychology specialty studies and supports older adults’ mental health while considering development across their lives.
clinical health psychologynoun: A psychology specialty uses knowledge about bodies, minds, and social situations to support physical health and adjustment to illness.
clinical hypnosisnoun: A trained professional uses hypnosis and therapeutic suggestions to help address symptoms or behavior as part of treatment.
clinical interviewphrase: A flexible question-and-answer talk lets a clinician adjust questions to understand a person's problems, abilities, and needs.
clinical investigationnoun: A professional examines someone’s difficulties through interviews, tests, observations, records, or detailed study of their personal history.
clinical judgmentphrase: A trained professional's expert decision about symptoms, treatment choices, or likely improvement, based on experience rather than statistics.
clinical judgment researchnoun: Researchers study how mental health professionals reach decisions and how personal traits, surroundings, and thinking processes affect those decisions.
clinical markernoun: An observable feature provides a clue that a disorder may be present.
clinical methodnoun: A professional gathers and interprets information about a person to reach a clinical conclusion or diagnosis.
clinical neurologynoun: A medical specialty identifies and treats conditions affecting the brain, spinal cord, and nerves.
clinical neuropsychologynoun: A psychology specialty evaluates and helps manage changes in thinking, behavior, and daily functioning related to brain conditions.
clinical neurosciencephrase: Uses brain science to understand behavior problems and brain illnesses, improving how clinicians identify and treat them.
clinical pediatric neuropsychologynoun: A specialty assesses children’s thinking and behavior in relation to brain development and uses findings to guide support.
clinical practicephrase: Working directly with patients to assess, diagnose, and treat health or mental health problems.
clinical practice guidelinesnoun: Carefully developed recommendations help professionals and people receiving care choose appropriate options for particular health conditions.
clinical predictionnoun: Using a person's history and signs to make outcome judgments by expert opinion instead of statistics.
clinical psychologynoun: A branch of psychology that studies, diagnoses, prevents, and treats mental, emotional, and behavior problems.
clinical psychopharmacologynoun: A specialty examines how medicines affect thinking, emotion, and behavior and guides their use in mental health treatment.
clinical psychophysiologynoun: Therapists apply knowledge of connections between bodily activity and psychological processes through methods such as biofeedback.
clinical risk assessmentnoun: A clinician uses personal judgment and case information to estimate the chance of specified harmful behavior within a stated period.
clinical significancephrase: Shows whether a study result matters enough to help diagnose or treat a real problem.
clinical social worknoun: A professional field combines therapy with attention to social circumstances and help accessing resources or services.
clinical sociologynoun: An applied sociology approach works with people and communities to study social problems and develop practical changes.
clinical sport psychologynoun: A psychology specialty helps athletes with performance concerns and mental health difficulties, including problems beyond sport.
clinical trialphrase: A study tests whether a new treatment works better than standard care or a comparison condition.
clinical typenoun: A person shows a recognizable pattern of symptoms or behavior associated with a mental health disorder.
clinical utilityphrase: How much a test helps improve health by guiding treatments that work and are practical to use.
clinical utility researchnoun: Studies examine how useful treatments are in ordinary care, sometimes including practical concerns such as access.
clinical validationnoun: Researchers gather evidence that a particular assessment or treatment procedure is useful for its intended clinical purpose.
clinical vampirismnoun: A rare descriptive label covers blood drinking linked to sexual arousal or occurring alongside vampire-related delusions.
clinically relevant behavior (CRB)noun: In functional analytic psychotherapy, session behavior reveals everyday difficulties, improvements, or a client’s understanding of what influences their actions.
cliniciannoun: A health or mental health professional who directly evaluates and treats patients rather than mainly doing research or office work.
clinician ratingnoun: A health professional describes or scores a person’s condition or behavior, often using a structured scale.
clinodactylynoun: A finger has a lasting sideways curve, which may occur alone or alongside certain genetic conditions.
clippingnoun: An existing word loses some sounds or letters but retains its meaning and grammatical category.
cliquenoun: A small circle within a larger social group forms around friendship or shared social standing.
clitoral circumcisionnoun: An older label describes genital cutting involving the clitoris or its covering without medical need, a practice that can cause harm.
clitoral hoodnoun: A movable skin fold covers and protects the clitoris’s external tip.
clitoridectomynoun: A surgical procedure removes some or all clitoral tissue; when performed without medical need, it constitutes female genital mutilation.
clitorisnoun: An organ with many sensitive nerve endings, located partly outside and mostly inside the body, contributes to sexual pleasure.
cloacanoun: A shared chamber receives digestive, urinary, and reproductive passages in early mammalian embryos and many other vertebrates.
clomipraminenoun: A tricyclic antidepressant often used to treat OCD, and sometimes depression or panic disorder.
clonazepamnoun: A benzodiazepine medicine slows nervous system activity and is used to manage panic disorder and certain seizures.
clonenoun: An organism or cell is a genetic copy of another, or belongs to a group descended from one original.
clonicadjective: Describes repeated, rhythmic muscle jerking caused by alternating contraction and relaxation, often during seizures.
clonic phasephrase: Part of a seizure when muscles jerk in repeated, rhythmic bursts after stiffening.
clonic spasmnoun: An involuntary muscle movement involves repeated tightening followed by relaxation.
clonidinenoun: A medicine that lowers blood pressure and can also help with ADHD and drug withdrawal symptoms.
cloningnoun: A biological process produces genetic copies of DNA segments, cells, or whole organisms.
Cloninger’s alcoholism typologynoun: A proposed classification separates alcohol dependence into later-starting and earlier-starting patterns that differ in personality, family history, and behavior.
Cloninger’s psychobiological model of personalitynoun: A personality theory proposes four temperament traits influenced by inheritance and three character traits shaped partly by experience.
clonusnoun: Rapid, rhythmic muscle jerking occurs when muscles repeatedly tighten and relax without voluntary control.
Clopixolnoun: A brand name identifies zuclopenthixol, an older type of antipsychotic medicine used to treat psychotic symptoms.
clorazepatenoun: A benzodiazepine medicine with lasting effects helps treat anxiety, symptoms during alcohol withdrawal, and some seizures.
closed adoptionnoun: An adoption arrangement provides no contact between a child's birth parents and adoptive parents.
closed call systemnoun: An animal's vocal communication uses a limited set of calls or stops adding or changing calls after a developmental stage.
closed economynoun: An operant learning experiment supplies all of a planned reward within experimental sessions, with none supplied elsewhere.
closed groupnoun: A group keeps its original membership and does not admit newcomers during its course, such as during therapy.
closed head injuryphrase: A brain injury from a blow or sudden movement when the skull stays unbroken.
closed marriagenoun: A historical concept describes marriage with little personal or relationship change, relying on legal commitment for permanence and sexual exclusivity.
closed questionnoun: A question limits answers to supplied choices or requests a brief, definite response.
closed scenarionoun: An experimental task requires participants to solve a given problem by selecting from a restricted set of options.
closed shopnoun: A workplace arrangement requires people to belong to a labor union before they can be hired.
closed skillnoun: A movement skill is performed in stable, predictable surroundings with similar conditions each time.
closed societynoun: A society maintains rigid social arrangements and beliefs while resisting criticism and differences among people.
closed systemphrase: A group or organization that shuts out outside input and resists change or new information.
closed-captioned televisionnoun: Television offers optional onscreen text representing dialogue and relevant sounds, supporting access for viewers who cannot hear the audio.
closed-circuit television system (CCTV system)noun: A camera enlarges written material on a screen to support reading for people with low vision.
closed-class wordsnoun: Grammatical words, such as pronouns and prepositions, belong to categories that rarely gain new members.
closed-loop systemnoun: A system monitors its results and uses that feedback to adjust its operation toward a desired condition.
closedmindednessnoun: A personality tendency involves holding beliefs with strong certainty and resisting alternative views or new evidence.
closetedadjective: Describes someone who has not shared being LGBTQ+ with certain people, or with anyone.
closingnoun: The planned ending of a therapy or counseling session, started by either client or therapist.
closurenoun: People naturally fill in missing parts so an incomplete picture or sound seems whole.
Closure Flexibility Testnoun: A visual perception test asks someone to find which of four complicated designs contains a given simple shape.
clouded sensoriumnoun: A state of reduced mental clarity makes concentrating and thinking clearly difficult.
clouding of consciousnessnoun: A mental state combines confusion, difficulty concentrating, and reduced awareness of surrounding events.
cloverleaf skullnoun: A congenital skull condition produces three rounded bulges and can occur with fluid buildup around the brain and developmental difficulties.
clozapinenoun: A strong atypical antipsychotic used when others fail, but it needs blood tests for dangerous white blood cell loss.
cloze procedurenoun: A reading activity removes selected words from a passage and asks learners to fill the gaps using context.
CLTabbreviation: The central limit theorem says that, under suitable conditions, averages from increasingly large random samples follow an approximately bell-shaped distribution.
club drugnoun: A psychoactive substance is associated with recreational use at dance venues, parties, or similar social gatherings.
clubfootnoun: A physical condition holds the foot in a twisted position, often pointing inward and downward, and commonly exists at birth.
clumsy automationnoun: Poorly assigning tasks between people and machines fails to improve safety or efficiency, often by creating too much or little work.
cluster analysisnoun: Statistical methods sort people or other observations into groups according to similarities across measured features.
cluster evaluationnoun: Evaluators coordinate assessments across related projects or sites and share findings to understand common results and contributing factors.
cluster headachenoun: A very painful one-sided headache around one eye that comes in daily bursts for weeks or months.
cluster randomizationnoun: Researchers use chance to assign existing groups, such as classrooms, to different experimental conditions.
cluster samplingphrase: Researchers randomly choose whole groups, then smaller groups within them, to reach people for a study.
cluster suicidenoun: More suicide deaths occur than statistically expected within a particular place, social network, or period.
cluster-randomized trialnoun: An experiment compares interventions by assigning whole groups to study conditions through chance and accounting for members' shared group.
clustered datanoun: Observations form groups whose members share features, so differences between groups help explain variation across the full dataset.
clusteringnoun: During recall, related items often come out together in groups instead of one mixed list.
clutteringnoun: A speech fluency disorder involves an unusually fast or uneven pace that makes spoken messages difficult to understand.
CMabbreviation: The cochlear microphonic is an electrical response from inner-ear hair cells whose pattern closely follows incoming sound waves.
CMASabbreviation: The Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale is a questionnaire developed to measure anxiety symptoms reported by children.
CMEabbreviation: Through continuing medical education, physicians develop and update knowledge, skills, and professional abilities after earning their medical degree.
CMHCabbreviation: A community mental health center offers local services that help prevent mental health problems, provide treatment, and support recovery.
CMIabbreviation: The Cornell Medical Index is a historical health questionnaire used to screen physical complaints and psychological symptoms.
CMPabbreviation: With chronic myofascial pain, lasting muscle pain and stiffness are associated with sensitive areas called trigger points.
CMSabbreviation: A U.S. government agency manages Medicare and oversees Medicaid and a public insurance program for children.
CNSabbreviation: The brain and spinal cord, which carry messages and control many body functions.
CNS abnormalitynoun: A problem affects the structure or functioning of the central nervous system, which includes brain and spinal tissues.
CNS depressantnoun: A drug reduces central nervous system activity, potentially slowing reactions, reducing alertness, and affecting breathing.
CNS stimulantnoun: A drug increases central nervous system activity, often making someone more alert and less tired.
CNS vasodilationnoun: Blood vessels supplying the brain widen, allowing increased blood flow through brain tissue.
CNVabbreviation: Short for contingent negative variation, this slow electrical brain signal appears between a warning and an action cue, indicating expectation.
Coabbreviation: In psychophysics, Co labels the comparison stimulus used to judge another stimulus.
CO blobabbreviation: A cytochrome oxidase blob is a small neuron patch in primary visual cortex with high enzyme activity and wavelength sensitivity.
Co-Dependents Anonymousnoun: A peer support organization uses twelve steps to help members change relationship patterns involving unhealthy dependence.
co-occurrencenoun: When two or more things usually happen together, they show co-occurrence, without proving one causes the other.
coachingnoun: Guided training that helps a person build specific skills or improve work or life performance.
Coaching Behavior Assessment System (CBAS)noun: An observation method counts twelve categories of coaches’ actions to study coaching and its effects on athletes.
coacting groupnoun: Two or more people carry out tasks near each other with little need to communicate or coordinate.
coaction effectnoun: A person’s performance changes, for better or worse, when others nearby are doing the same activity.
coaction tasknoun: An individual carries out a goal-directed activity alongside other people who are doing similar activities.
coactivationnoun: Two different stimuli trigger one shared response at the same moment.
coactive sportnoun: Participants perform the same sporting activity independently, without needing to coordinate their movements with other players.
coadaptationnoun: Different species develop adaptations, including behaviors, that fit together and make them dependent on one another.
coalitionnoun: People or groups join forces to pursue a shared goal, often while keeping their separate identities.
coarse tremornoun: Unwanted shaking involves relatively slow, large movements of a body part or larger muscle group.
coarticulationnoun: An action changes depending on nearby actions in a sequence, especially when neighboring speech sounds influence pronunciation.
cobeddingnoun: Sibling babies, such as twins, are placed together on one sleeping surface or in one incubator.
cocanoun: A shrub native to South America has leaves that contain cocaine and have long been used for their stimulant effects.
cocainenoun: A powerful stimulant drug that briefly boosts energy and mood by keeping dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine active longer.
cocaine abusenoun: An older diagnosis described repeated cocaine use causing major life problems when the separate diagnosis of dependence did not apply.
Cocaine Anonymous (CA)noun: A voluntary peer organization supports recovery from problematic cocaine use through a twelve-step approach.
cocaine dependencenoun: An older diagnosis described persistent cocaine use despite serious problems, often involving tolerance or withdrawal.
cocaine intoxicationnoun: Recent cocaine use causes temporary, significant changes in behavior or mental state, together with physical effects such as rapid heartbeat.
cocaine intoxication deliriumnoun: Recent cocaine use causes rapidly developing confusion and disrupted attention and awareness beyond the usual effects of intoxication.
cocaine withdrawalphrase: After heavy cocaine use stops, a person may feel very depressed, tired, hungry, slowed down, or restless.
coccygeal nervenoun: The lowest pair of spinal nerves lies in the tailbone region.
coccyxnoun: The tailbone forms the lowest end of the backbone from several joined vertebrae.
cochleanoun: A spiral, fluid-filled structure inside the ear contains sensory cells that convert sound vibrations into electrical signals.
cochlear aplasianoun: A developmental condition involves the absence of the cochlea, the ear’s spiral hearing structure.
cochlear ductnoun: The middle fluid-filled channel within the cochlea contains the structures that support hearing receptors.
cochlear echonoun: The inner ear generates faint sounds that sensitive equipment can measure, either spontaneously or after sound stimulation.
cochlear emissionsnoun: The cochlea produces faint sounds, either spontaneously or after sound stimulation, that can help assess its functioning.
cochlear implantphrase: A surgically placed device sends sound signals directly to the hearing nerve for people with severe deafness.
cochlear microphonic (CM)noun: Hair cells inside the ear produce an electrical signal whose changing pattern closely follows incoming sound vibrations.
cochlear nervenoun: The hearing branch of cranial nerve eight carries signals from the cochlea into the brainstem.
cochlear nucleusnoun: A cluster of brainstem neurons receives incoming auditory nerve signals and begins further processing of sound information.
cochlear recruitmentnoun: Additional neurons associated with the cochlea begin responding as a sound becomes stronger.
Cochran Q testnoun: A statistical test checks whether yes-or-no outcome rates differ across multiple conditions measured in the same participants or units.
Cockayne syndromenoun: A rare inherited disorder affects growth and nervous system development, often causing sunlight sensitivity, hearing difficulties, and learning delays.
cocktail-party effectnoun: A person can follow one conversation amid competing voices, while some meaningful background information may still catch their attention.
cocktail-party universalnoun: A proposed category covers feelings said to be shared by everyone but discussed without being measurable.
cocoanoun: A food powder made from roasted, ground cacao seeds with much fat removed contains the active chemicals theobromine and caffeine.
coconsciousnessnoun: Someone experiencing dissociative identity disorder may be aware of experiences belonging to another of their identity states.
cocontractionnoun: Muscles that pull a joint in opposing directions become active together.
cocounselingnoun: Peers take turns providing counseling to each other and receiving it in return.
CODabbreviation: Short for change-over delay, this is an imposed wait before reinforcement can follow switching between available response options.
codabilitynoun: Naming agreement measures how consistently people using the same language choose matching words for a particular thing.
code of ethicsnoun: A profession’s written principles and rules guide members toward responsible conduct in their work.
code switchingnoun: A speaker shifts between languages, dialects, or styles of speech to fit a situation or express social meaning.
code testnoun: An assessment asks someone to replace symbols with other symbols according to a specified code.
codeinenoun: An opioid medicine reduces pain and coughing and can cause sleepiness, pleasant feelings, and dependence.
codependencynoun: A relationship pattern involves excessive emotional reliance on another person, sometimes alongside that person’s substance use or other ongoing difficulties.
codificationnoun: Information or items are systematically arranged into categories or converted into a code that others can interpret.
codification-of-rules stagenoun: In Piaget’s theory, children around age eleven begin treating agreed rules as binding parts of an organized system.
codingnoun: Turning information into symbols, categories, or signals so it can be stored, scored, or sent.
coding testnoun: A task measures performance by asking someone to replace symbols with matching symbols according to a supplied key.
codominancenoun: Several animals share a high social rank within their group, sometimes through temporary alliances.
codonnoun: Three neighboring genetic letters in DNA or messenger RNA specify a protein building block or a signal for protein production.
coefficientnoun: A number that shows how much of a quality or relationship is present.
coefficient alphaphrase: A number showing how consistently items on a test measure the same thing.
coefficient of agreementnoun: A number summarizes how closely different judges or measuring tools agree when assigning cases to categories.
coefficient of alienationnoun: A statistic indicates how poorly one variable predicts another, calculated as the square root of one minus their squared correlation.
coefficient of associationnoun: A number describes the strength, and sometimes direction, of a statistical relationship linking two variables.
coefficient of concordancenoun: Kendall’s W measures how similarly several judges rank the same items, with higher values indicating greater agreement.
coefficient of contingencynoun: A statistic measures how strongly two variables are connected when their possible values are categories without a natural order.
coefficient of determinationphrase: Shows how much of one variable's differences can be predicted from its link with another.
coefficient of multiple determinationnoun: The statistic R² gives the share of outcome variation accounted for by several predictors together in a linear model.
coefficient of relatednessnoun: A number estimates the proportion of genetic variants two individuals share through common ancestry.
coefficient of reliabilitynoun: A statistic estimates how consistently an assessment measures differences between people rather than random measurement error.
coefficient of variationnoun: This statistic measures relative spread using a ratio: standard deviation divided by the average, sometimes converted to a percentage.
coefficient of visibilitynoun: A number expresses human visual sensitivity to a particular light wavelength relative to the wavelength of greatest sensitivity.
coenesthesianoun: Blended signals within your body give you a quiet overall sense of existing physically and feeling well, unwell, rested, or tired.
coeno- (coen-; cene-; ceno-)prefix: This word part adds the meaning common, shared, or general to the words it helps form.
coenzymenoun: A small organic molecule that is not a protein helps an enzyme carry out a chemical reaction.
coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10)noun: A naturally occurring substance helps cells produce usable energy and also acts as an antioxidant.
coerced confessionnoun: An accused person admits guilt because of pressure such as threats, force, or promises rather than a freely made choice.
coercionnoun: Using threats, force, or punishment to make someone do what you want.
coercive behaviornoun: Actions pressure or force another person to comply, sometimes appearing to express care or concern.
coercive persuasionnoun: An organized program uses intense pressure and control to try to reshape people’s beliefs, attitudes, or behavior.
coercive powerphrase: Getting people to obey by using force, penalties, or warning them bad consequences will follow.
coercive treatmentnoun: A person receives therapy or another clinical intervention without giving informed, voluntary agreement.
coevolutionnoun: Two or more species undergo evolutionary changes that influence each other across generations.
coexistence hypothesisnoun: One explanation proposes that later misinformation competes with an intact original memory and is easier to recall because it is newer.
cofacilitatornoun: A therapist or trainee shares leadership of a therapy group, helping guide sessions or observe group interactions.
coffeenoun: A common drink made from roasted beans that contains caffeine, a stimulant that increases alertness.
Coffelt decisionnoun: A 1994 California settlement required expanded community living and improved service planning for people with developmental disabilities leaving institutions.
cofigurative culturenoun: In Margaret Mead’s classification, people in this kind of culture learn mainly from others close to their own age.
Cogan’s syndromenoun: A rare condition, thought to involve autoimmunity, combines eye inflammation with inner ear problems affecting hearing and balance.
CogATabbreviation: The Cognitive Abilities Test assesses students’ reasoning through tasks involving language, numbers, and visual patterns.
Cogentinnoun: A brand name for benztropine identifies a medicine used for certain antipsychotic movement side effects and Parkinson’s symptoms.
cogito ergo sumphrase: Descartes’ Latin statement argues that the act of thinking establishes the thinker’s own existence.
cognateadjective: Words described this way developed from a shared ancestral word, sometimes across different languages.
Cognexnoun: A brand name for tacrine identifies a medicine historically used for Alzheimer’s symptoms that was limited by liver toxicity.
cognitionnoun: Mental processes used to notice, remember, think, judge, imagine, and solve problems.
Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT)phrase: A school test battery that measures students' verbal, math, and nonverbal reasoning skills.
cognitive abilityphrase: Mental skills used to notice, learn, remember, understand, reason, judge, and use language.
cognitive adaptation modelnoun: This model proposes that coping with threatening events involves finding meaning, rebuilding control, and restoring a positive view of oneself.
cognitive agingphrase: Describes how thinking skills like attention, memory, and choices change as people grow older across life.
cognitive aidnoun: An external tool or display supports thinking, remembering, or completing tasks.
cognitive analytic therapynoun: This brief therapy blends psychodynamic understanding with cognitive behavioral methods, helping clients and therapists jointly examine and revise established mental patterns.
cognitive appraisal theoryphrase: Says emotions arise from how people judge what a situation means and whether they can handle it.
cognitive architecturenoun: A proposed model describes how mental components work together to support thinking and problem solving, often through computer simulation.
cognitive arousal theory of emotionnoun: The Schachter–Singer theory proposes that emotions depend jointly on bodily arousal and how someone interprets that arousal.
cognitive assessmentphrase: Measures how well a person thinks, remembers, learns, and solves problems.
Cognitive Assessment System (CAS)phrase: A test battery measures planning, attention, and two processing styles to understand children's thinking strengths and weaknesses.
cognitive balance theorynoun: Heider’s theory proposes that people prefer consistent relationships among their attitudes toward another person and a shared object or issue.
cognitive behavior modificationnoun: A psychotherapy approach helps people examine and change unhelpful thinking and behavior while recognizing their connection with emotions.
cognitive behavior theorynoun: This family of theories explains behavior partly through how people mentally represent and interpret their surroundings.
cognitive behavior therapy (CBT)phrase: A therapy that changes harmful thoughts and actions to improve feelings and daily functioning.
cognitive behavioral couples therapynoun: Partners examine and change unhelpful beliefs about each other and relationships while practicing more constructive ways of interacting.
cognitive behavioral group therapynoun: A therapist guides several people in changing unhelpful thoughts and practicing skills to meet specific behavioral goals.
cognitive behavioral play therapynoun: A therapist uses guided play to help young children develop coping skills and change unhelpful thinking and behavior.
cognitive behavioral stress management (CBSM)noun: A brief therapy approach teaches people to reconsider unhelpful thoughts and practice skills for handling stress.
cognitive clicknoun: During therapy, someone suddenly recognizes an error in their thinking and sees a need to revise their beliefs.
cognitive closurenoun: A person reaches the feeling that they understand something and see how its parts fit together.
cognitive complexitynoun: Thinking that uses many connected ideas at once, making judgments more detailed but often harder.
cognitive complexity and control theory (CCC theory)noun: This developmental theory proposes that growing awareness and self-control let children apply increasingly complex systems of rules.
cognitive conditioningnoun: Learning occurs through repeatedly pairing a stimulus with a response or behavior that someone imagines or anticipates.
cognitive consistencynoun: This describes how closely someone’s thoughts agree logically, with one belief supporting or leading to another.
cognitive consistency theorynoun: A family of theories proposes that people change attitudes to make their thoughts, beliefs, and evaluations fit together.
cognitive consonancenoun: Two thoughts or beliefs fit together because one supports or follows from the other.
cognitive constructnoun: An element of knowledge helps someone understand and interpret information about people or situations.
cognitive controlphrase: Mental processes that help you plan, organize, and guide your thoughts and actions toward a goal.
cognitive copingphrase: Using your thoughts to handle stress, such as reframing the problem or planning what to do next.
cognitive declinephrase: A gradual drop in thinking skills like memory, attention, or judgment can happen with aging or illness.
cognitive deconstructionnoun: A mental state involves little emotion or future awareness, with thinking narrowed to immediate, concrete sensations.
cognitive deficitphrase: Much poorer than expected thinking, memory, or problem-solving ability for a person's age and schooling.
cognitive derailmentnoun: Thoughts shift between topics with weak or missing logical connections, sometimes quite suddenly.
cognitive developmentphrase: The way thinking skills like memory, reasoning, and problem solving grow and become more advanced over time.
cognitive discriminationnoun: The ability to tell concepts apart includes recognizing which examples belong to a concept and which do not.
cognitive disordernoun: A condition disrupts mental abilities involved in remembering, understanding, organizing, or managing thoughts and actions.
cognitive dissonancephrase: Feeling upset when your beliefs, attitudes, or actions clash, pushing you to make them match.
cognitive dissonance theoryphrase: People feel mental discomfort when their beliefs and actions clash, pushing them to restore consistency.
cognitive distortionnoun: A recurring thinking error bends how someone understands events, often making situations seem worse or less balanced.
cognitive distractionnoun: Competing thoughts or mental activities pull attention away from a task, goal, sensation, or feeling.
cognitive domainphrase: A specific area of thinking ability, such as memory, language, or attention, checked when judging neurocognitive disorders.
cognitive dysfunctionphrase: Problems with thinking, learning, remembering, or understanding that make daily mental tasks harder.
cognitive electrophysiologynoun: A recording method uses sensors on the scalp to measure electrical activity produced by the brain.
Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ)noun: A 36-item questionnaire measures how often adolescents and adults use nine thinking strategies to handle emotions after upsetting events.
cognitive enhancernoun: A drug is used to support abilities such as memory and thinking, often when illness or injury has impaired them.
cognitive ergonomicsnoun: A field studies how thinking abilities, tasks, and surroundings interact to improve the design of work systems.
cognitive ethologynoun: A field investigates animals' possible mental experiences and how these shape behavior in their natural surroundings.
cognitive evaluation theorynoun: A theory proposes that performance changes depending on whether rewards feel like recognition of achievement or attempts at control.
cognitive facultynoun: A particular mental ability supports a kind of thinking, such as using language or recognizing faces.
cognitive fatiguenoun: Mental tiredness during prolonged, demanding thinking can reduce attention, motivation, speed, and accuracy.
cognitive flexibilityphrase: Being able to look at a situation fairly and change your thinking or actions when needed.
cognitive floodingnoun: A therapy method uses intense imagined encounters with feared situations to help people experience fear as manageable and reduce it.
cognitive functioningphrase: How well a person thinks, learns, remembers, understands, and uses judgment and language.
cognitive generalizationnoun: Knowledge or thinking skills learned in one setting are applied to problems in a different setting.
cognitive grammarnoun: A theory explains language structure through broader thinking abilities, including forming categories and connecting ideas.
cognitive heuristicnoun: An experience-based mental shortcut helps someone decide or solve problems efficiently but can produce mistakes.
cognitive hypothesis testingnoun: Someone solves a problem by proposing possible rules and testing them until one consistently produces correct answers.
cognitive impairmentphrase: Problems with memory, learning, language, perception, or thinking that make mental tasks harder.
cognitive impenetrabilitynoun: A proposed property of some mental processes makes them unaffected by existing knowledge or beliefs, with little conscious control.
cognitive intelligencenoun: A person's mental abilities support learning, remembering, reasoning, solving problems, and reaching sensible judgments.
cognitive interdependencenoun: People in a close, committed relationship increasingly understand themselves as a pair with shared goals, perspectives, and identity.
cognitive interviewnoun: A structured interview uses memory cues and varied recall techniques to help eyewitnesses remember more about an event.
cognitive learning theorynoun: A theory explains learning through changes in mental understanding, including how people represent events and connect information.
cognitive loadnoun: The amount of mental effort a task uses from your limited attention and thinking resources.
cognitive mapnoun: A mental picture of places and their links that helps someone find the way around.
cognitive misernoun: A person often saves mental effort by choosing quick, workable answers through shortcuts instead of examining every possibility.
cognitive modelphrase: A way of explaining how thoughts and mental pictures guide what people notice, understand, and do.
cognitive narrowingnoun: Attention concentrates on one feature of something while its broader context receives less consideration.
cognitive neuropsychologynoun: A field studies how brain damage affects mental abilities to understand how thinking normally works.
cognitive neurosciencenoun: A scientific field investigates how brain cells and networks produce mental activities such as remembering, perceiving, and reasoning.
cognitive operationphrase: Using mental pictures or ideas by sorting, linking, expanding, or recalling them from memory.
cognitive overloadphrase: When mental tasks demand more attention and processing than a person can handle effectively.
cognitive penetrabilitynoun: A mental process can change because of what someone knows, believes, or wants to achieve.
cognitive perseverationnoun: A person keeps repeating a thought or strategy even when the situation calls for stopping or switching.
cognitive perspectivenoun: An approach explains behavior by examining how people interpret information, remember experiences, and work through problems.
cognitive plasticitynoun: Mental abilities can change through experience, including practice that improves learning or remembering.
cognitive problem-solving skills trainingnoun: A treatment helps children showing disruptive behaviors examine their thinking and practice steps for resolving disagreements, aiming to ease frustration.
cognitive processphrase: How the mind takes in, stores, changes, and uses information for thinking, learning, and solving problems.
cognitive processing therapy (CPT)phrase: A trauma-focused therapy helps people challenge mistaken beliefs they formed after trauma, reducing posttraumatic stress symptoms.
cognitive psychologynoun: Studies how people notice things, pay attention, think, remember, and use language.
cognitive rehabilitationnoun: Treatment helps people rebuild mental abilities or develop ways around thinking difficulties caused by illness or brain injury.
cognitive rehearsalnoun: In therapy, someone imagines challenging situations and practices helpful responses or coping statements in their mind.
cognitive remediationphrase: A treatment that improves thinking skills like attention and memory after brain injury, stroke, or severe mental illness.
cognitive reservephrase: Built-up mental flexibility helps some people function normally longer despite brain injury, disease, or aging changes.
cognitive resource theorynoun: A framework proposes that demanding mental work uses limited capacity, leaving less available for other thinking activities.
cognitive response theorynoun: A theory proposes that attitude change depends mainly on how many favorable or unfavorable reactions people generate toward a message.
cognitive restructuringphrase: Helps people notice unhelpful thoughts, question them, and replace them with more realistic ones.
cognitive schemaphrase: A mental framework that helps people organize information and quickly make sense of experiences.
cognitive sciencephrase: A field that studies thinking and the mind by combining psychology, brain science, language, philosophy, and computers.
cognitive self-guidance systemnoun: In Vygotsky's proposed account, talking to oneself helps organize actions and work through problems.
cognitive self-managementnoun: Someone uses inner speech, mental pictures, or both to guide behavior during stressful or demanding situations.
cognitive setnoun: An established collection of ideas about oneself and the world shapes how someone interprets situations and acts.
cognitive sign principlenoun: A learning principle proposes that cues become signals predicting events or outcomes in the surrounding world.
cognitive slippagenoun: Thinking becomes mildly disconnected, so the links between successive ideas are less clear or logical.
cognitive specificity hypothesisnoun: A proposal links particular emotional states, such as anxiety or depression, with distinct patterns of automatic thinking.
cognitive stagenoun: In some developmental theories, a period features a kind of thinking that differs fundamentally from thinking in other periods.
cognitive strategyphrase: A planned way of guiding your thinking, such as self-talk to stay focused, confident, and energized.
cognitive structurenoun: A mental framework organizes related knowledge, beliefs, or attitudes so they can guide understanding and responses.
cognitive stylenoun: A person's usual way of taking in information, thinking about it, and solving problems.
cognitive systemnoun: A collection of thoughts or beliefs forms a meaningful whole through the relationships connecting its parts.
cognitive task analysisnoun: A method examines the knowledge and thinking steps someone needs to perform a task skillfully.
cognitive theoryphrase: Explains behavior by focusing on mental processes like attention, memory, thinking, planning, and language.
cognitive theory of leadershipnoun: A family of models explains leadership through how leaders and group members think, interpret situations, and perceive one another.
cognitive therapy (CT)phrase: A talk therapy that helps people spot unrealistic thoughts and build healthier ways of thinking and acting.
cognitive trainingnoun: Structured mental exercises aim to strengthen or preserve thinking skills, although benefits beyond practiced tasks vary.
cognitive triadphrase: Three negative beliefs in depression about yourself, the world, and what will happen next.
cognitive tunnelingnoun: Attention narrows to one kind of information during demanding or stressful tasks, leaving other useful details unnoticed.
cognitive unconsciousnoun: Mental activities such as recognizing patterns and using memories can influence behavior without entering conscious awareness.
cognitive vulnerabilitynoun: Beliefs or attitudes that make someone more likely to develop depression, anxiety, or other emotional problems.
cognitive walkthrough methodnoun: Evaluators work through a product's tasks from intended users' viewpoints to identify confusing steps and likely difficulties.
cognitive well-beingnoun: A person's judgments about satisfaction with life overall and with particular areas make up this aspect of well-being.
cognitive-social learning theorynoun: This theory explains learning and behavior through mutual influences among personal thoughts, actions, and surroundings.
cognitive-transactional theorynoun: This theory explains stress through how people judge threats, assess coping resources, and respond to situations.
cognitive–affective crossfirenoun: Feedback creates conflict when thoughts favor an existing self-image while feelings favor a more flattering picture.
cognitive–affective personality systemnoun: This theory describes personality as interconnected thoughts and emotional tendencies that shape responses to different situations.
cognitive–evaluative consistencynoun: The positive or negative direction of someone's beliefs matches their overall attitude to a greater or lesser extent.
cognitive–motivational–relational theorynoun: This theory explains emotions through equally important roles for interpreting events, pursuing goals, and relating events to those goals.
cognitively based persuasionnoun: An attempt to shift someone's attitude focuses mainly on changing beliefs about the target's qualities.
cognitively guided instructionnoun: Teachers adapt lessons to students' understanding and encourage students to develop their own ways of solving problems.
cognitivismnoun: The view that thoughts and mental processes explain behavior better than just observable actions.
cognitivistnoun: A theorist emphasizes mental processes when explaining intellectual development or early language learning.
cognizeverb: To recognize something mentally or understand it involves this act of knowing.
cogwheel rigiditynoun: Muscle stiffness causes repeated catches and releases when another person moves a limb, producing a ratchetlike sensation.
cohabitationnoun: Living together as an unmarried romantic couple sharing a home and daily life.
Cohen’s dnoun: Shows how far apart two group averages are, using standard deviation, a common measure of spread.
Cohen’s kappaphrase: Shows how much two judges truly agree on category ratings after removing agreement that could happen by luck.
coherencenoun: Logical fit among separate thoughts or beliefs so they make sense together.
cohesionnoun: The strength of the bonds that keep a group connected and wanting to stay together.
cohortnoun: A group of people who share the same birth period or another important experience.
cohort analysisnoun: Researchers statistically examine data from people with a shared characteristic or experience to understand patterns associated with that group.
cohort effectphrase: Differences caused by growing up in the same time and sharing similar life experiences.
cohort samplingnoun: Researchers select and observe groups whose members share a feature, such as a birth year or experience.
cohort studynoun: Researchers repeatedly observe the same group with a shared characteristic or experience to examine changes across time.
cohort-sequential designnoun: Researchers follow several groups starting at different ages, combining repeated observations with comparisons between age groups.
coital anorgasmianoun: A woman does not experience orgasm during vaginal intercourse, even though orgasm may occur through other stimulation.
coitusnoun: Sexual intercourse usually involves a penis entering a vagina, although the word can cover other forms of sexual contact.
coitus a tergonoun: Sexual intercourse occurs with the partner whose penis is involved positioned behind the other partner.
coitus analisnoun: Sexual intercourse involves a penis entering another person's anus.
coitus in anonoun: This Latin expression describes sexual intercourse involving penile entry into the anus.
coitus inter femoranoun: Sexual activity involves placing a penis between a partner's thighs held together.
coitus interruptusnoun: During vaginal intercourse, a person withdraws their penis before ejaculation in an attempt to prevent pregnancy.
coitus intra mammasnoun: Sexual activity involves positioning a penis in the space between a partner's breasts.
coitus prolongatusnoun: During this form of sexual intercourse, the partner with a penis does not reach orgasm.
coitus reservatusnoun: During sexual intercourse, the partner with a penis deliberately holds back ejaculation.
cokenoun: In drug-related language, this informal name means cocaine, a stimulant that affects brain activity and mood.
cola nutnoun: A seed from certain tropical African trees contains caffeine, a stimulant that can increase alertness.
cold cognitionnoun: Thinking proceeds without emotional involvement, as when someone sorts neutral information or handles an unemotional task.
cold emotionnoun: Certain stimulants produce bodily signs of emotional arousal without a recognizable feeling underlying those signs.
cold pressor pain testnoun: Researchers assess pain responses by having a participant place a limb in very cold water.
cold spotnoun: A small skin location detects cooling through temperature-sensitive nerve endings.
cold turkeyphrase: Stopping a drug all at once without replacement medicine, often causing strong withdrawal symptoms.
cold-blooded animalnoun: An animal gets most of its body heat from its surroundings, so external conditions strongly influence its temperature.
cold-deck imputationnoun: Researchers fill gaps in a dataset using replacement values taken from a separate, external source.
coldnessnoun: Showing little empathy, meaning care for others' feelings, and giving very little emotional support.
coleadershipnoun: Two or more people divide responsibilities for organizing, guiding, and motivating a group.
coleranoun: In some Latino communities, this cultural illness concept links intense anger with physical distress and disrupted bodily balance.
colicnoun: Some healthy infants experience frequent, lengthy crying spells whose cause remains unclear.
colitisnoun: Inflammation affects the colon, a major section of the large intestine.
collaborationnoun: Working together with shared goals while respecting each person's needs and ideas.
collaborative carephrase: Different helpers work together to assess problems, plan treatment, coordinate services, and track how well a client is doing.
collaborative empiricismphrase: In CBT, therapist and client work as teammates testing thoughts and building change together.
collaborative evaluationnoun: Service staff, and sometimes service users, help assess a program while an evaluator guides their work.
collaborative family health carenoun: Professionals from different fields coordinate care and share decisions with patients and families, considering physical, psychological, and social needs.
collaborative filteringnoun: A computer suggests options using preferences or choices recorded from people with similar tastes or behavior.
collaborative learningnoun: People deepen their understanding by working together on a task and exchanging ideas or strategies.
collaborative memorynoun: A group produces a combined account by working together to recall information or events its members experienced.
collaborative primary carenoun: Health professionals work together to provide the general health services people usually approach first.
collaborative stepped carenoun: Community and primary care workers begin mental health support, with specialists providing further care when initial help is insufficient.
collaborative therapynoun: A therapist and client work as partners to examine difficulties, build shared understanding, and support change.
collagennoun: A strong structural protein helps support body tissues, including skin, bones, cartilage, and tendons.
collapsingnoun: Combining several answer choices or groups into fewer, broader categories for analysis.
collateraladjective: Secondary or indirect, rather than the main source or focus.
collateral behaviornoun: An action regularly occurs near a rewarded behavior in time, although earning the reward does not require it.
collateral hereditynoun: Relatives trace their descent through separate family branches that lead back to a shared ancestor.
collateral sulcusnoun: A groove underneath each brain hemisphere extends between regions of the occipital and temporal lobes.
collative propertiesnoun: Features such as novelty and complexity shape how interesting or stimulating a pattern or artwork feels.
collectivenoun: A group of people who act or think in a shared way, even without direct contact.
collective bargainingnoun: Employers and union representatives negotiate agreements about employees’ pay, benefits, schedules, and other working conditions.
collective behaviornoun: People in a group act together or similarly, sometimes behaving differently than they would on their own.
collective consciencenoun: A society’s shared beliefs, values, feelings, and expectations provide a common foundation for judging right and wrong.
collective consciousnessnoun: A disputed proposal suggests that people in crowds merge mentally into a single awareness that can override individual choices.
collective efficacynoun: People believe their group can combine its abilities and sustained effort to meet a challenge successfully.
collective effort model (CEM)noun: This theory explains reduced group effort through lower expectations of success and less personal value attached to shared goals.
collective experiencenoun: During group therapy, members develop shared emotional understanding by recognizing one another’s difficulties and offering empathy and support.
collective guiltnoun: People feel regret because a group they belong to has acted against moral or social standards.
collective hypnosisnoun: One practitioner guides several people through hypnosis during the same session.
collective hysterianoun: This historical label describes unusual feelings, beliefs, symptoms, or actions that arise spontaneously and spread within a group.
collective inductionnoun: People discuss evidence together to solve problems, especially by finding general rules that explain particular examples.
collective information-processing modelnoun: This theory explains group decisions as the result of members sharing and working through information in discussion.
collective memorynoun: People within a community develop shared recollections about earlier events through storytelling, celebrations, and other ways of remembering together.
collective mindnoun: A controversial theory proposes that a crowd develops one shared mind capable of directing its members beyond their individual wishes.
collective monologuenoun: Children speak in one another’s company, but their remarks seem disconnected rather than forming a meaningful exchange.
collective movementsnoun: Similar responses to an event spread over time among increasing numbers of people in different places.
collective psychologynoun: This field studies how people think and feel as members of crowds, audiences, and other large groups.
collective representationsnoun: Shared symbols, stories, customs, laws, and institutions express a society’s values and its understanding of its own identity.
collective selfnoun: The part of someone’s identity that comes from belonging to social groups helps shape how they understand themselves.
collective self-esteemnoun: People evaluate the part of their identity connected to group memberships, including their worth as members and their groups’ value.
collective suicidenoun: All or most people in an existing social group intentionally end their own lives in a shared event.
collective unconsciousnoun: According to Jung, a deepest shared unconscious layer holds inherited archetypes, or universal mental images, seen in dreams and myths.
collectivismnoun: Seeing yourself mainly as part of a group, with the group's goals valued over personal independence.
college admission testsnoun: Schools use these assessments to help judge applicants’ academic knowledge, skills, and readiness for college or graduate study.
College Entrance Examination Board Advanced Placement Programnoun: This program lets high school students demonstrate advanced subject knowledge through examinations that may earn college credit or higher placement.
College Level Examination Program (CLEP)noun: This examination program allows learners to demonstrate existing college-level knowledge and potentially earn credit at colleges that accept their results.
collegial modelnoun: A collaborative approach gives participants equal standing and encourages everyone’s involvement while reducing differences in status.
colliculusnoun: A small rounded brain structure belongs to paired midbrain regions that process visual or sound information.
collinearitynoun: Two predictors in a regression analysis are so closely related that separating their individual contributions becomes difficult.
colloidnoun: A mixture contains tiny particles or large molecules spread throughout another substance without fully dissolving into it.
collusionnoun: A therapist knowingly or unknowingly joins a client or another person in avoiding an issue that therapy needs to address.
collusional marriagenoun: This label describes a marriage where one spouse secretly supports or conceals the other’s problematic conduct while appearing merely burdened.
colobomanoun: A gap in an eye structure is usually present because that tissue did not fully close during prenatal development.
colocalizationnoun: Different chemicals or measured brain activities occupy overlapping locations, such as multiple neurotransmitters within one nerve ending.
colonial speciesnoun: A bird species has multiple breeding groups that nest close to others of their own kind.
colonialismnoun: A country establishes control over another territory and its people, often through settlement and economic exploitation.
colonynoun: A relatively large gathering of animals belonging to one species lives together, with or without an organized social structure.
colornoun: A seen quality of light, shaped by wavelength and the eye, experienced as hue, brightness, and saturation.
color adaptationnoun: The visual system becomes less sensitive to a color when exposure to that color continues over time.
color agnosianoun: A person has difficulty recognizing or understanding colors even when basic visual abilities do not fully explain the problem.
color amnesianoun: A person cannot remember objects’ usual colors despite being able to see and distinguish colors.
color anomianoun: A person cannot name a visible color but can match it and select it when someone provides its name.
color attributenoun: A basic feature used to describe color may concern its hue, purity, or light intensity.
color balancenoun: The relative amounts of different colors in a composition are arranged to create a pleasing combination.
color blindnessphrase: A vision problem where someone cannot tell some colors apart, usually because cone cells work differently.
color cellsnoun: Three kinds of cone cells in the human retina respond most strongly to different wavelength ranges, supporting color vision.
color circlenoun: A circular color diagram arranges hues in spectrum order, includes purples, and places complementary pairs across from each other.
color conenoun: A cone-shaped color model places light intensity vertically, hue around its axis, and saturation outward from its center.
color constancynoun: An object tends to appear similar in color even when changes in lighting alter the light reaching the eyes.
color contrastnoun: A color can look different because of colors seen beside it or just before it.
color harmonynoun: Certain combinations of colors feel more pleasing together than others to the person viewing them.
color hearingnoun: Some people experience colors when hearing sounds, a form of synesthesia called chromatic audition.
color inductionnoun: Stimulation of a nearby visual area changes the color experienced in another area.
color mixernoun: A device directs two light wavelengths onto one retinal area together or in quick alternation.
color mixturenoun: Combining pigments, overlapping colored lights, or rapidly alternating colors can produce a blended color appearance.
color perceptionphrase: Seeing and noticing hue, the quality that makes colors look different from one another.
color puritynoun: A color's purity describes how little white, gray, or black is mixed into it.
color pyramidnoun: A pyramid-shaped model arranges colors in three dimensions by hue, brightness, and saturation.
color saturationnoun: The strength of a color's hue determines how vivid or washed out it appears.
color scotomanoun: A patch within someone's field of vision has reduced or missing color sensitivity.
color sensationnoun: The immediate experience of color arises when colored light stimulates the visual system.
color solidnoun: A model organizes colors in three dimensions according to hue, brightness, and saturation.
color subtractionnoun: Pigments absorb certain wavelengths from incoming light, leaving other wavelengths to reflect and shape the color seen.
color surfacenoun: A flat slice through a three-dimensional color model shows hues and saturations sharing one brightness level.
color systemnoun: An organized method classifies colors using their hue, saturation, and brightness.
color temperaturenoun: A light's color is described using the kelvin temperature of an ideal heated object producing matching light.
color theorynoun: An explanation proposes how color experiences arise and why particular color effects occur.
color trianglenoun: A triangular chart represents relationships among color hue, brightness, and saturation on a flat surface.
color valuenoun: The lightness of a color describes where it falls between dark and light.
color visionphrase: Seeing differences in light wavelengths lets people tell one color from another.
color wheelnoun: A disk with differently colored sections spins so researchers can study how the colors visually blend.
color zonesnoun: Different regions of the retina or visual field differ in their sensitivity to colors.
color-blindness testnoun: A task checks how well someone distinguishes colors to identify differences or difficulties in color vision.
Colored Progressive Matricesnoun: This Raven assessment uses 36 picture puzzles with colored backgrounds to assess reasoning, especially among children and older people.
colorimeternoun: An instrument measures or matches colors by comparing them with known light mixtures.
colostrumnoun: The earliest milk produced around childbirth supplies nutrients and antibodies that help protect a newborn from infection.
columnnoun: A vertical group of items or numbers in a table, spreadsheet, or list.
columnar organizationnoun: Some neurons in the brain's outer layer form connected vertical groups that extend across several layers.
comanoun: A deep unconscious state where a person cannot be awakened or respond to the world.
coma stimulationphrase: Using sights, sounds, touch, and other senses to try to raise awareness in a coma, though benefit is unproven.
coma therapynoun: A historical schizophrenia treatment used insulin to lower blood sugar enough to cause repeated temporary comas.
coma vigilnoun: An outdated, imprecise label describes apparent wakefulness without observable signs of awareness or purposeful responses.
combat and operational stress control (COSC)noun: Military programs prevent, recognize, and manage stress reactions to support service members' health and ability to perform duties.
combat stress reaction (CSR)noun: Psychological responses to traumatic military experiences can vary from mild distress to severe disruption.
combat stress reductionnoun: Training and support build coping skills to prevent or lessen stress reactions associated with combat.
combinationnoun: A way of choosing items from a group when the order of the chosen items does not matter.
combination antibiotic therapynoun: Treatment uses two or more antibiotics together to address a bacterial infection.
combination antiretroviral therapy (cART)noun: Treatment combines medicines that limit HIV multiplication, helping preserve immune function and reduce illness.
combination lawnoun: This principle proposes that nearby stimuli can combine responses, and a trigger for either response may bring out both.
combination testnoun: An assessment measures how someone puts separate pieces, such as objects or words, together into something more complicated.
combination therapyphrase: Using two or more different treatments by one therapist for the same problem.
combination tonenoun: An extra tone can arise within the ear when two tones of different frequencies sound together.
combinatorial operationnoun: A mental process joins smaller parts according to rules to create a new structured idea or expression.
combined therapyphrase: Using counseling together with medication can treat a person more effectively than either alone.
coming outnoun: Recognizing and accepting one's LGBTQ+ identity can include choosing to share it with other people over time.
command stylenoun: A teaching approach gives the teacher control over lesson decisions while students follow instructions and complete assigned tasks.
commensalismnoun: An ecological relationship gives one species an advantage while having no beneficial or harmful effect on the other.
commissural fibernoun: A nerve cell's long extension connects corresponding brain structures across the left and right hemispheres.
commissurenoun: A bundle of nerve fibers linking matching areas on the left and right sides of the brain.
commissurotomynoun: Surgery cuts a nerve-fiber bridge, often between brain hemispheres, to limit the spread of otherwise difficult-to-control seizures.
commitmentnoun: A strong sense of dedication and loyalty to a person, group, goal, or job.
commitment lawsnoun: Legal rules govern when and how someone may be hospitalized for mental health care without their consent.
commodity theorynoun: A theory proposes that limited availability can increase the perceived value of something people already want.
common cause hypothesisnoun: A proposed explanation attributes aging-related changes in both sensory and thinking abilities to shared declines in brain function.
common chemical sensenoun: Chemicals can create sensations such as cooling, warmth, or tingling through receptors other than those for taste and smell.
common consciencenoun: Shared beliefs, values, and feelings help members of a society judge right and wrong and guide their actions.
common factorphrase: A helpful part shared by many therapies, such as trust with the therapist, that improves treatment.
common fatenoun: People tend to see things moving or changing together as belonging to one group.
common knowledge effectnoun: Information already known by more group members tends to carry greater weight in group discussion and decisions.
common lawnoun: Legal principles develop through earlier court rulings that guide decisions in later cases.
common metricnoun: A shared measurement scale lets researchers meaningfully compare results gathered from different sources.
common regionnoun: People tend to see objects enclosed by the same boundary as belonging together.
common sensephrase: Widely shared practical judgment that seems obviously reasonable to most people.
common traitnoun: In Allport’s theory, a lasting personality characteristic shared and similarly expressed by many people allows comparisons between them.
common-law marriagenoun: Some legal systems recognize a couple as married without a formal ceremony when specific requirements are met.
commonality analysisnoun: A statistical method divides explained outcome differences into contributions unique to individual predictors and contributions shared among predictors.
commons dilemmanoun: People face a conflict when taking more from a shared resource benefits them individually but threatens everyone's future access.
commonsense justicenoun: Everyday beliefs about fair treatment guide judgments that may differ from formal legal rules.
commonsense psychologynoun: Everyday experience supplies beliefs about thoughts, feelings, and behavior that may lack scientific support.
communal nursingnoun: A nursing mammal feeds another mother's young with milk produced by her own body.
communal relationshipnoun: People in this relationship respond mainly to each other's needs rather than keeping track of equal repayment.
communalitynoun: In factor analysis, the share of a test item's differences explained by the factors it shares with others.
communenoun: People or families live together in a community that shares resources, daily responsibilities, and sometimes childcare.
communicable diseasenoun: An infectious illness can spread between individuals through direct contact or indirect routes.
communicated authenticity, regard, empathy (CARE)phrase: Some therapy theories consider a therapist's expressed honesty, respect, and understanding of clients' feelings essential for successful treatment.
communicating hydrocephalusnoun: Fluid builds up in brain cavities despite open connecting passages, usually because the body does not absorb it adequately.
communicationnoun: Sending and receiving information through words, signals, or behavior helps people and animals share ideas and feelings.
communication analysisnoun: Looking closely at how people speak and write to find patterns, problems, and ways to improve understanding.
communication apprehensionnoun: A person feels anxious about beginning or continuing communication with other people.
communication channelsphrase: The routes or methods people use to send information, such as talking, writing, email, or formal reports.
communication deviance (CD)noun: Unclear or hard-to-follow communication makes it difficult for speakers and listeners to maintain shared attention and understanding.
communication disorderphrase: A group of conditions causing trouble understanding, using, or producing speech and language.
communication engineeringnoun: Engineers apply scientific knowledge to design and develop technical systems that carry information between locations.
communication ergonomicsnoun: This specialty studies how tools, systems, and procedures help or hinder people exchanging information during shared work.
communication networknoun: The pattern of message exchanges within a group shows who communicates with whom and how often.
communication overloadnoun: Incoming information exceeds what a person or computer system can process or use effectively.
communication skillsphrase: The ability to understand others and share ideas clearly in speaking, writing, reading, and listening.
communication skills trainingphrase: A treatment that teaches clear speaking, active listening, and helpful feedback to improve relationships and solve conflicts.
communication systemnoun: An organized way parts of the body send and receive messages, especially through neurons, which are nerve cells.
communication theorynoun: Studies how information is sent, received, and understood through signals, language, and other messages.
communicative actnoun: A spoken or unspoken action conveys information to someone else, whether intentionally or accidentally.
communicative competencenoun: A person knows how language works and can use it suitably with different people in different situations.
communicologynoun: This field combines studying and improving communication with knowledge about hearing, speech, language difficulties, and expressing experiences and feelings.
communitasnoun: A social group experiences strong togetherness and common purpose, often supported by rituals or traditions.
communitynoun: A group of people in one place or with shared ties who feel connected and work within common systems.
community action groupnoun: Residents organize together to campaign for changes that address particular problems in their local area.
community carephrase: Support and treatment provided in everyday community settings for people with disabilities or mental health needs.
community competencenoun: An organized community can achieve and manage shared results, or its members believe it has that ability.
community controlnoun: Researchers select a comparison group from the study group's local area to help match relevant background conditions.
community correctionnoun: Courts impose consequences other than conventional imprisonment, aiming to reduce repeat offenses and support participation in society.
community ergonomicsnoun: This approach applies human-centered design to connect disadvantaged communities with resources and address the accumulated effects of social hardship.
community inclusionnoun: Communities welcome people with disabilities and encourage their full participation across education, work, relationships, and everyday activities.
community integrationnoun: People with disabilities receive support to participate in everyday community life and build connections with people without disabilities.
community mental healthphrase: Providing prevention, education, and treatment services within a local area instead of mainly in institutions.
community mental health center (CMHC)phrase: A local center that offers prevention, treatment, and recovery services for mental health problems.
Community Notification Actnoun: Known as Megan's law, this legislation required public access to information about registered people convicted of sexual offenses.
community prevention and interventionnoun: Residents, professionals, and local groups organize programs to prevent community problems and respond when problems occur.
community psychologynoun: This branch studies how people and community systems influence each other, applying findings to improve well-being and prevent problems.
community residencenoun: A staffed neighborhood home offers daily assistance and practical learning, often supporting residents who have developmental or intellectual disabilities.
community servicesphrase: Local programs and facilities that support health, mental health, daily living, and well-being outside hospitals.
community social workernoun: A professional connects residents with government officials and advocates for improvements addressing local needs and barriers.
community speech and hearing centernoun: A clinic staffed by specialists assesses and treats difficulties involving speech, language, hearing, and communication.
community-based participatory researchphrase: A research method where community members help plan, do, and use a study on local problems.
community-centered approachnoun: Local organizations coordinate prevention and treatment efforts around the needs of people in the community they serve.
comorbiditynoun: Having two or more disorders at the same time in one person.
companionate grandparentnoun: A grandparent maintains an affectionate, close bond with grandchildren without regularly taking responsibility for their daily care.
companionate lovenoun: A loving bond centers on emotional closeness and steady affection, with less emphasis on intense passion.
companionate marriagenoun: Spouses build their marriage around affection, trust, and companionship, usually sharing equal standing and flexible responsibilities.
comparable formnoun: A different version of a test uses similar content and measurement properties to assess the same abilities or characteristics.
comparable worthphrase: The idea that jobs needing similar skill, effort, and responsibility should receive similar pay, regardless of gender.
comparable-forms reliabilitynoun: Researchers estimate test consistency by measuring how closely people's scores agree across different, carefully matched versions.
comparative analysisnoun: Researchers compare behavior across species, cultures, or age groups to understand patterns of similarity and difference.
comparative cognitionnoun: Researchers examine thinking, learning, and other mental processes across species to understand their similarities, differences, origins, and workings.
comparative effectiveness research (CER)noun: Studies compare existing healthcare approaches to learn their benefits, drawbacks, and effectiveness for different people under different conditions.
comparative judgmentnoun: A person evaluates a sensory stimulus against another stimulus or a standard, such as deciding which sound seems louder.
comparative linguisticsnoun: Researchers compare languages to uncover their historical connections through patterns of resemblance and difference.
comparative methodnoun: A research approach examines behavioral similarities and differences across species, cultural groups, or ages to better understand a phenomenon.
comparative neuropsychologynoun: Researchers compare how brains and nervous systems relate to behavior across species, especially following brain damage.
comparative psychologynoun: A branch of psychology studies other animals' behavior to understand those animals and gain insights into human behavior.
comparative risknoun: An estimate compares someone's chance of an outcome with other groups, taking relevant personal or group characteristics into account.
comparative trialnoun: A study compares people receiving a treatment with people receiving another treatment or none to evaluate its effects.
comparatornoun: An information-processing unit checks a value against another value or target and may trigger adjustments when they differ.
comparator hypothesisnoun: A conditioning theory proposes that responding requires a learned cue to predict an automatic-response trigger better than the cue's absence does.
comparisonnoun: Looking at two or more groups to find meaningful differences, often by comparing their average scores.
comparison groupphrase: A set of people whose scores are used as the standard for judging one person's test results.
comparison level (CL)noun: In interdependence theory, past relationships shape the expected balance of benefits and costs used to judge a current relationship.
comparison level for alternatives (CLalt)noun: In interdependence theory, expected benefits and costs of other relationships or being alone provide a standard for deciding whether to stay.
comparison processnoun: People assess their own abilities, qualities, or performance by considering how they measure up against selected others.
comparison stimulus (Co)noun: In sensory testing, a presented sound, light, or other input is judged against a reference input.
comparison-wise error ratenoun: The probability of a false positive applies to one particular statistical comparison within a study containing multiple comparisons.
compartmentalizationnoun: In psychoanalytic theory, a psychological defense keeps conflicting thoughts or feelings mentally separate, reducing awareness of their clash.
compassionnoun: Caring concern for someone who is suffering, along with wanting to comfort or help them.
compassion fatiguenoun: Caregivers may develop exhaustion and stress symptoms through prolonged work supporting people who have experienced trauma.
Compassionate Friendsnoun: A voluntary support organization connects families grieving a child's death with others who offer understanding, companionship, and shared support.
compassionate lovenoun: A caring form of love centers on easing others' suffering and helping them thrive.
compatibilitynoun: A good fit where people's traits, attitudes, or goals match or balance each other well.
Compazinenoun: A brand name identifies prochlorperazine, a medicine used for nausea and vomiting that also has psychiatric uses.
compensable job factorsnoun: Job features such as required skills, effort, responsibility, and workplace conditions are used to decide pay.
compensationnoun: Making up for a weakness by building strength or using another ability instead.
compensation effectnoun: Group performance improves when some members increase their effort to make up for teammates' actual or assumed shortcomings.
compensatory damagesnoun: A court orders this payment to cover someone's losses or suffering caused by another party's wrongful conduct.
compensatory educationnoun: Special educational programs help children facing social or economic disadvantages develop thinking skills and social abilities.
compensatory eye movementsnoun: The eyes move against head motion to help keep the viewed scene or target steady.
compensatory mechanismnoun: A thinking process uses available strengths or strategies to work around a weaker or lost mental skill.
compensatory nystagmusnoun: Rhythmic eye movements return after the second inner-ear balance organ loses function, following recovery from the first organ's loss.
compensatory reflexnoun: An automatic response works against another response, partly or fully offsetting its effects.
compensatory self-enhancementnoun: After disappointing feedback, someone highlights unrelated personal strengths to defend their sense of worth or others' opinion of them.
compensatory taskphrase: A group job solved best by averaging members' answers, often beating one person's guess.
compensatory trackingnoun: A person adjusts a control to counter an indicator's movement and keep it inside a target region on a display.
competencenoun: Having the skills and ability to handle tasks or problems effectively and shape what happens.
competence motivationnoun: An inner drive pushes people to build skills, handle challenges effectively, and gain a sense of mastery.
competency evaluationphrase: A psychologist checks whether a defendant can understand court and help with their defense.
competency to stand trialphrase: Having enough present understanding to grasp court proceedings, work with a lawyer, and make choices during a criminal case.
competency-based instructionnoun: Students progress toward individual learning goals at their own speed, with teacher guidance and monitoring in a setting without competition.
competent reservoirnoun: An organism can host a particular disease-causing agent and efficiently contribute to its spread.
competing response trainingphrase: A behavior therapy method teaches noticing habit warnings and doing an incompatible action instead of the habit.
competitionnoun: A setup where you can succeed only by doing better than other people or groups.
competition by resource defensenoun: Animals limit others' access to resources by defending the space containing them, rather than competing directly over each resource.
competition for resourcesphrase: When people or animals need the same limited things, they must compete to get enough.
competition routinenoun: A planned sequence of actions, inner speech, and mental pictures is used during competition to support performance.
competition tolerancenoun: A person accepts situations requiring competition and responds constructively when competing with others.
competitive bargainingnoun: People negotiate over limited resources, seeking a larger share for themselves that leaves less for the other side.
competitive goal structurenoun: A situation makes reaching one's goals depend on surpassing others or keeping them from reaching theirs.
competitive goalsnoun: These aims require individuals or groups to surpass rivals seeking the same outcome.
competitive motivenoun: A drive leads someone to seek better personal outcomes while holding back others' progress in social or performance situations.
competitive reward structurenoun: Rewards depend on individual performance, with one person's success reducing what other members can receive.
Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI)noun: This questionnaire assesses competitors' current worries, bodily signs of anxiety, and confidence shortly before their event begins.
competitivenessnoun: A personal tendency to enter contests and judge how well you did against similar others or clear goals.
complementnoun: A word or phrase completes a sentence's meaning by adding information required by another part.
complementaritynoun: In a pair relationship, each person's different traits fit together and help create balance.
complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)noun: Health approaches outside conventional medicine are called complementary when added to usual treatment and alternative when used instead.
complementary classnoun: Within a specified overall set, this group contains every item excluded from a chosen category.
complementary classificationnoun: Items from different categories are grouped together because experience connects them within a shared setting or theme.
complementary colorsnoun: These color pairs sit directly across from each other in a circular arrangement of hues.
complementary distributionnoun: Variants of one speech sound occur in separate sound environments, so each appears where the others do not.
complementary identificationnoun: In psychoanalytic theory, a therapist identifies with someone important to the client and experiences feelings associated with that person's role.
complete block designnoun: Researchers group similar participants into blocks, then assign conditions so every condition occurs once within each block.
complete counterbalancingnoun: A study uses every possible ordering of its conditions to help account for effects caused by their sequence.
complete factorial designnoun: A study includes all combinations of the levels of two or more factors being investigated.
complete-case analysisnoun: Researchers analyze only records containing values for every variable needed, excluding records with any required information missing.
completion testnoun: A test asks someone to fill missing parts of text, numbers, symbols, or pictures.
complexnoun: A linked set of hidden feelings and ideas that strongly shape a person's behavior.
complex behaviorphrase: An activity with many actions and choices done quickly in sequence or at the same time.
complex cellnoun: A visual cortex neuron responds to suitable edges or bars across its receptive area, often favoring a particular movement direction.
complex comparisonnoun: A statistical comparison combines results from at least two groups and compares that combination with results from other groups.
complex emotionnoun: An emotional experience combines several more basic feelings into a richer whole.
Complex Figure Testnoun: A drawing assessment compares copying a detailed design with recreating it from memory to examine visual skills and remembering.
complex ideasnoun: In historical associationism, abstract understandings were proposed to develop through combining and comparing basic sensory ideas.
complex motivesnoun: Several desires operate at once, supporting the same goal or pulling a person toward conflicting goals.
complex of ideasnoun: A linked cluster of thoughts, feelings, and memories allows recalling one part to bring other parts to mind.
complex partial seizurephrase: A seizure affecting part of the brain that causes altered awareness, repeated movements, and unusual feelings or sensations.
complex reaction timenoun: The measured interval runs from a signal appearing to making the response selected from several possible responses.
complex regional pain syndromenoun: A lasting pain condition, usually affecting a limb, causes pain beyond expected injury effects, with sensory, movement, or skin changes.
complex schedule of reinforcementnoun: A learning arrangement combines simpler rules governing when a behavior receives reinforcement.
complex sentencephrase: A sentence with one main idea part and at least one dependent part that cannot stand alone.
complex tonenoun: A sound contains multiple frequency components rather than a single frequency.
complex traumaphrase: Long-lasting harm from repeated, often early, upsetting experiences, especially abuse or neglect in close relationships.
complexity factornoun: In studying responses to art, this dimension describes how numerous and varied a work's elements are.
complexity hypothesisnoun: One hypothesis links consciousness to changing neuron groups within the thalamus and cortex that coordinate while carrying distinct information.
complexity of an attitudenoun: An attitude's complexity depends on how many distinct kinds of relevant information support a person's evaluation.
complexity theorynoun: Studies how many connected parts can create orderly patterns even when exact outcomes are hard to predict.
compliancenoun: Changing your behavior because someone directly asks you to do something.
compliant characternoun: In Horney's historical theory, this personality pattern seeks affection through yielding to others as protection against deep insecurity.
complicated griefphrase: Long-lasting, unusually severe grief after a loss that keeps daily life from recovering.
complicationnoun: An extra illness or problem develops during another disorder or while a medical procedure is being done.
complication experimentnoun: A study presents simultaneous events while directing attention toward one to investigate differences in their perceived timing.
component evaluationnoun: An evaluation examines individual parts of a program and how those parts connect with its results.
component instinctnoun: In historical psychoanalysis, a proposed part of sexual drive has its own bodily source and particular goal.
componential analysisnoun: An analysis separates task performance into basic mental processes to study their roles, timing, organization, and errors.
componential subtheorynoun: Within Sternberg's intelligence theory, this account distinguishes mental processes for directing tasks, carrying them out, and acquiring needed knowledge.
components of an attitudenoun: Feelings, beliefs, and information about past actions or future intentions provide different foundations for an evaluation.
compos mentisadjective: This legal description means mentally capable of understanding a transaction and taking responsibility for one's actions.
composite figurenoun: In psychoanalytic accounts of dreams, one person or object combines characteristics drawn from several people or objects.
composite hypothesisnoun: A statistical claim allows multiple possible population distributions by leaving at least one relevant value unspecified or variable.
composite reliabilitynoun: A measure estimates the consistency of a combined score formed from several items or ratings.
composition of movementnoun: The organization and timing of nerve and muscle activity work together to produce a movement.
compoundnoun: A whole made by combining two or more parts that work together as one unit.
compound action potentialnoun: An electrical recording combines nerve impulses from multiple fibers activated together within a nerve.
compound bilingualnoun: A person regularly uses two languages learned through roughly equal exposure to both during the same period.
compound eyenoun: An eye found in insects and certain other animals contains many small visual units, each gathering light.
compound probabilitynoun: The chance of multiple independent events occurring together or in sequence is calculated by multiplying their individual probabilities.
compound reaction timenoun: The elapsed time includes recognizing a presented signal, selecting its matching response, and making that response.
compound reflexnoun: Several automatic bodily responses are triggered together as a group.
compound schedule of reinforcementnoun: A learning procedure applies several reinforcement rules to one response, alternating them, sequencing them, or using them together.
compound sentencenoun: A sentence joins multiple clauses that could each stand alone, often using connecting words such as and or but.
compound stimulusnoun: Several simpler signals are presented together as one combined stimulus.
comprehensionnoun: Understanding the meaning of words, messages, or ideas.
comprehension testnoun: A measure that asks what someone would do in a real-life situation to judge practical understanding and judgment.
comprehensive functional assessmentnoun: A broad evaluation examines someone's strengths, preferences, everyday skills, disabilities, and support needs, often drawing on several professional perspectives.
comprehensive mental health centernoun: A local facility or network offers a wide range of mental health services, including prevention, treatment, and recovery support.
compressed speechnoun: Recorded speech is processed to play faster while keeping the spoken message understandable.
compressionnoun: Physical squeezing of nervous tissue can interfere with movement, feeling, memory, or awareness, depending on its location.
compression of morbiditynoun: A hypothesis proposes that delaying chronic illness can reduce the portion of life spent with illness or disability before death.
compromise formationnoun: In psychoanalytic theory, a hidden wish appears in altered form, partly expressing the wish while satisfying psychological defenses.
compulsionnoun: A repeated action or mental ritual done to ease anxiety, often linked to an obsession.
compulsion to repeatnoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes an unconscious pull to recreate earlier traumatic patterns in an effort to gain mastery over them.
compulsive characternoun: A personality pattern emphasizes inflexible perfectionism, strong duty, and excessive concern with details and order.
compulsive disorderphrase: A mental disorder marked by repeated acts a person feels driven to do, despite harm or unwanted urges.
compulsive drinkernoun: A person experiences a powerful urge to drink alcohol that feels difficult or impossible to control.
compulsive eatingnoun: A recurring, difficult-to-control drive leads someone to eat excessively, sometimes in response to emotions or learned patterns.
compulsive exercisernoun: A person feels compelled to do moderate or intense exercise regularly, often every day.
compulsive gamblingphrase: A repeated urge to gamble that becomes hard to control and causes serious problems in life.
compulsive laughternoun: Persistent laughter does not fit the situation and appears difficult to control, sometimes without the person's awareness.
compulsive orderlinessnoun: An overwhelming need for exact arrangements or cleanliness causes intense anxiety when things differ from the expected order.
compulsive perseverationnoun: A person keeps repeating a response or following a strategy beyond its usefulness and struggles to stop or switch.
compulsive personalityphrase: A rigid, perfectionistic personality style marked by overcontrol, orderliness, and strong need to follow rules.
compulsive personality disorderphrase: A long-term pattern of extreme perfectionism, control, and rule-following that harms flexibility and relationships.
compulsive repetitionnoun: A person feels driven to repeat unnecessary actions, often to reduce distress or uncertainty.
compulsive stealingnoun: Repeated theft of unneeded items follows urges that feel difficult to resist, with tension beforehand and relief or pleasure during stealing.
compulsivenessnoun: A tendency toward driven, repetitive, or rigid behavior can occur in obsessive-compulsive conditions.
compunctionnoun: A person feels guilt or uneasiness about something wrong they have done or are considering doing.
computational epistemologynoun: This field explores knowledge and meaning through computer models, feedback systems, and connections between a system and its surroundings.
computational formulanoun: An equation gives the mathematical steps needed to work out a statistical value.
computational linguisticsnoun: Researchers use computing methods to model language, test ideas about language processing, and build tools for handling speech or text.
computational metaphornoun: This comparison presents thinking as the manipulation of symbols, similar to how a computer processes information.
computational modelnoun: An explanation proposes that mental processes work through ordered operations on internal representations, much as digital computers do.
computed tomography (CT)phrase: A scan that uses many X-rays and a computer to make detailed cross-section pictures of body tissues.
computer adaptive testing (CAT)noun: A computerized test adjusts question difficulty using earlier answers and stops when its ability estimate reaches a chosen precision.
computer addictionnoun: A debated label describes difficult-to-control computer use that causes distress or interferes with everyday responsibilities and relationships.
computer anxietynoun: Someone experiences strong worry or fear about computers or using them that exceeds the situation's actual danger.
computer literacynoun: A person understands basic computer functions and can use computers and networks effectively for everyday tasks.
computer modelnoun: A computer-based representation imitates a real system or process so researchers can examine and change its parts.
computer networknoun: Several computers connect through wired or wireless links so they can exchange information and share resources.
computer of averaged transientsnoun: An instrument averages repeated electrical brain responses to events, making their shared pattern clearer against unrelated background activity.
computer phobianoun: Intense fear about computers or their use is greater than the actual danger involved.
computer programmingnoun: People write instructions in a computer language to tell a machine how to carry out tasks.
computer simulationnoun: Researchers run a programmed version of a mental process to explore predictions from a theory of thinking.
computer slanguagenoun: People use informal expressions and specialized vocabulary when communicating about computers or interacting online.
computer-assisted diagnosisnoun: Software organizes and compares patient information with stored clinical knowledge to help professionals identify possible disorders.
computer-assisted instruction (CAI)noun: Computer programs teach through exercises, explanations, games, or simulations that can be adjusted to individual learners.
computer-assisted psychotherapynoun: Specially designed computer programs deliver therapeutic activities under the supervision of a trained therapist.
computer-assisted testingnoun: A computer helps deliver or support an assessment of abilities, knowledge, or other characteristics.
computer-managed instructionnoun: Software analyzes student progress to help teachers choose individual lessons, without students working directly with the software.
computerized assessmentnoun: A computer collects someone's answers or task results and compares them with existing records to help evaluate psychological functioning.
computerized diagnosisnoun: Computer programs help identify disorders by comparing a patient's information with databases of symptoms, earlier cases, and clinical knowledge.
computerized therapynoun: A trained therapist oversees treatment activities provided through a computer program designed for therapy.
Comrey Personality Scales (CPS)noun: A questionnaire for people aged 16 and older measures eight personality dimensions using ratings of 180 statements.
COMTabbreviation: The abbreviation names catechol-O-methyltransferase, an enzyme that helps deactivate chemical messengers such as dopamine.
COMT genenoun: This gene provides instructions for making catechol-O-methyltransferase, an enzyme involved in deactivating dopamine and related chemical messengers.
Comte’s paradoxnoun: This philosophical puzzle asks how the mind can study itself objectively while serving as both investigator and subject.
CONabbreviation: A required government approval before a health care service can open, grow, or add major equipment.
conariumnoun: In Descartes's historical theory, the pineal gland served as the meeting point where the mind and body could influence each other.
conationnoun: The active side of motivation turns thoughts, feelings, and desires into purposeful effort and action.
conativeadjective: An action or mental process involves willing, striving, or starting activity toward a goal.
concaveationnoun: Repeated contact with young animals brings out maternal care in an unmated female without hormonal changes from pregnancy or nursing.
Concealed Figures Testnoun: A visual assessment asks someone to find which of four complicated drawings contains a given simple shape.
concealed measurenoun: Researchers record information without interrupting people or making them aware that they are being measured.
concentrationnoun: Mental effort aimed steadily at one thing while ignoring distractions.
concentration-camp syndromenoun: A historical label describes lasting trauma symptoms among concentration camp survivors, including anxiety, depression, repeated troubling thoughts, and survivor guilt.
concentrative meditationnoun: A meditation practice directs attention toward one chosen focus, such as a sound, image, or thought.
conceptnoun: A mental category that groups things, events, or qualities that share important features.
concept acquisitionnoun: Through examples, a person learns the shared features that help identify a category of things, actions, or relationships.
concept formationnoun: People develop general ideas by identifying features that connect particular examples and distinguish a category.
concept hierarchynoun: Related categories are arranged in levels, with broad groups above increasingly specific groups.
concept learningnoun: A person learns which features connect examples so they can recognize members of a general category.
concept-discovery tasknoun: An activity asks someone to work out the hidden rule separating examples that belong to a category from those that do not.
concept-formation testnoun: An assessment examines how someone develops general categories and how well they have learned those categories.
concept-identification tasknoun: Participants examine examples and nonexamples to discover the rule deciding whether something belongs in a category.
conception rationoun: In population studies, this compares the number of males conceived with the number of females conceived.
conceptual apraxianoun: A person has major difficulty using tools because their knowledge of the tools' purposes or appropriate actions is impaired.
conceptual classificationnoun: Items are sorted according to a shared purpose or category, such as grouping several kinds of vehicles together.
conceptual complexitynoun: An idea becomes harder to understand as it includes more abstract concepts and more complicated connections among them.
conceptual dependencynoun: A structured network represents sentence meanings for computers through linked actions, objects, and details describing them.
conceptual disordernoun: A disturbance affects thinking or the ability to develop abstract ideas from broader concepts.
conceptual disorganizationnoun: Speech becomes hard to follow because ideas wander, connect unclearly, or include unusual invented words, suggesting disorganized thinking.
conceptual formulanoun: A precise statement in words explains what a statistical concept means, rather than giving steps for calculating it.
conceptual imagerynoun: Mental images represent ideas or show how ideas connect with one another.
conceptual modelnoun: A visual map showing how ideas are related to each other or to their features.
conceptual nervous systemnoun: A hypothetical model represents how the nervous system works and helps researchers explore possible explanations of behavior.
conceptual replicationnoun: Researchers test the same underlying idea using different methods to explore whether earlier findings support a broader theory.
conceptual systemnoun: An organized framework of thinking abilities, emotional awareness, experiences, and beliefs helps someone make sense of the world.
conceptual temponoun: A person's usual approach to mental tasks ranges from responding quickly to carefully considering options before answering.
conceptual testnoun: A memory task draws on the meaning of information and can assess memory with or without conscious remembering.
conceptualizationnoun: Making general ideas from experiences or learned information, especially when the ideas are abstract, or not concrete.
conceptually driven processingnoun: Existing knowledge and expectations guide how someone interprets incoming information.
conceptually guided controlnoun: Broad ideas and organized knowledge direct thinking toward goals that have already been established.
Concertanoun: This brand of methylphenidate is a stimulant medicine used to help manage attention and impulsivity in ADHD.
conciliationnoun: People or groups work toward agreement when their interests or goals conflict, sometimes with help from a neutral person.
concinnitynoun: An artistic design has harmony when its individual parts fit well together and support the overall arrangement.
conclusionnoun: A claim or general rule supported by evidence at the end of an argument or study.
concomitancenoun: Different events or features occur together, sometimes understood as expressions of a shared underlying reality.
concomitant variablenoun: A factor varies with the measured outcome and may be included in analysis to account for its influence.
concordancenoun: In twin research, both twins show the same trait, symptom pattern, or disorder.
concordance ratephrase: Shows how often both relatives in a pair have the same trait or disorder.
concordant identificationnoun: In psychoanalysis, a therapist's emotional response involves identifying with the client's perspective and sharing an understanding of their experience.
concrete attitudenoun: A thinking style emphasizes specific objects and immediate experiences, with limited attention to abstract ideas or general categories.
concrete imagenoun: A remembered mental image contains particular sensory details, such as a certain flavor, sound, or texture.
concrete intelligencenoun: A person can understand physical objects and skillfully handle or change them.
concrete operationnoun: In Piaget's theory, a child mentally works with real objects and understands logical relationships, including how parts fit into wholes.
concrete operational stagephrase: From about ages 7 to 12, children think logically about real things and less from only their own view.
concrete picturephrase: A mental image of a real thing or event, with little or no abstract thinking.
concrete thinkingphrase: Focusing on what is directly seen or happening now rather than ideas, patterns, or possibilities.
concrete wordnoun: A word names something physically existing that can be perceived through the senses.
concreteness effectnoun: People tend to remember words naming physical things more easily than words naming abstract ideas.
concretismnoun: Jung proposed a pattern of thinking or feeling tied closely to immediate sensations, with little ability to consider abstract meanings.
concretizationnoun: Thinking becomes restricted to specific details and immediate experience, making abstract ideas difficult to understand.
concurrence seekingnoun: Group members strive to maintain agreement by avoiding disagreement or debate, especially while making decisions.
concurrent medical auditnoun: A systematic review checks diagnostic and treatment practices while a patient is still receiving care.
concurrent operantsnoun: Multiple actions that affect the environment are available together and can be performed either together or in alternation.
concurrent reviewphrase: Checking during treatment whether a psychiatric admission was necessary and should continue.
concurrent schedules of reinforcementnoun: Different available actions each have their own reinforcement rules operating simultaneously, allowing a person or animal to choose among them.
concurrent therapynoun: Two treatments take place during the same period, or different family members receive therapy during overlapping periods.
concurrent validityphrase: Shows whether a test matches a related measure taken at about the same time.
concurrent-chains procedurenoun: An initial choice leads to one reinforcement schedule, which must be completed for a primary reward before choosing again.
concussionnoun: A mild brain injury from a hit or sudden movement that briefly disrupts thinking, memory, or behavior.
condensationnoun: Several ideas, feelings, or meanings merge into a single mental image or symbol, especially in descriptions of dreams.
conditionnoun: A person's medical or mental health problem, such as a disorder or illness.
conditional clausenoun: A dependent part of a sentence states a possible condition, often beginning with words such as if or unless.
conditional dischargenoun: A patient leaves a psychiatric facility subject to requirements, such as attending follow-up appointments or following a medication plan.
conditional discriminationnoun: Learning which response earns reinforcement depends on another cue that changes what counts as the correct choice.
conditional positive regardnoun: Someone offers acceptance and appreciation only when another person's behavior meets their standards.
conditional probabilityphrase: The chance of one event happening when you already know another event happened.
conditional reasoningnoun: A person draws conclusions using statements that say what follows if a particular condition holds.
conditional strategynoun: An organism adjusts its behavioral approach to suit current circumstances, changing strategies when those circumstances change.
conditionedadjective: Learned through experience, especially when behavior changes because events or consequences are linked.
conditioned aversionnoun: A learned dislike or urge to avoid something develops after it becomes associated with an unpleasant experience.
conditioned avoidance response (CAR)noun: A learned action prevents or delays an unpleasant event, or makes it less frequent or intense.
conditioned emotional response (CER)noun: A previously neutral cue starts triggering a negative emotion, often fear or anxiety, through learned associations.
conditioned escape responsenoun: A learned action ends an unpleasant stimulus that is already happening.
conditioned inhibitionphrase: A learned cue that signals the expected event will not happen, weakening the usual conditioned response.
conditioned place preference (CPP)noun: A person or animal develops a preference for a location because it has become associated with rewarding experiences.
conditioned reflexnoun: A cue produces a learned reaction after being associated with something that already triggers a response.
conditioned reinforcementnoun: A consequence strengthens behavior because earlier associations with other rewards have given it reinforcing value.
conditioned reinforcernoun: A learned reward gains power by being linked with something that already feels satisfying, like food or comfort.
conditioned response (CR)phrase: A learned reaction triggered by a previously neutral cue after it has been paired with something meaningful.
conditioned stimulus (CS)phrase: A previously neutral cue, after repeated pairing with something automatic, starts to trigger a learned response by itself.
conditioned stimulus preexposure effectnoun: Prior experience with a cue alone slows later learning that the cue predicts another stimulus.
conditioned stimulus–unconditioned stimulus interval (CS–US interval)noun: The measured time separates presentation of a cue used in conditioning from presentation of a stimulus that naturally triggers a response.
conditioned suppressionnoun: An ongoing reinforced behavior decreases when a cue associated with an unpleasant event appears.
conditioned taste aversionphrase: After a food makes someone sick, they may quickly and strongly avoid that taste for a long time.
conditioningnoun: Learning through experience that makes behaviors more or less likely to happen again.
conditioning apparatusnoun: Equipment used in animal learning experiments presents events and allows researchers to study how responses develop or change.
conditioning of attitudesnoun: Likes, dislikes, or judgments develop or change through associations with pleasant or unpleasant experiences and through behavioral consequences.
conditioning therapynoun: A psychological treatment uses learning principles to change unhelpful behaviors and reduce symptoms, including changing the consequences that maintain behavior.
conditions of worthphrase: Feeling lovable only when you act in ways that earn other people's approval and praise.
condomnoun: A thin covering worn over the penis during sex helps prevent pregnancy and reduces transmission of many sexually transmitted infections.
conduct disorder (CD)phrase: A lasting pattern of serious rule-breaking and aggression that violates others' rights and goes beyond typical childhood defiance.
conductionnoun: The carrying of electrical activity through a nerve, muscle, or similar body tissue.
conduction aphasiaphrase: A language problem where understanding stays fairly good, but repeating spoken words is hard and speech has sound mistakes.
conduction deafnessnoun: Hearing is reduced when problems in the outer or middle ear prevent sound from reaching the inner ear effectively.
conduction time (CT)noun: The travel duration of a signal, such as a nerve impulse, is measured between two locations.
conduction velocitynoun: The speed of a nerve impulse describes how quickly it travels along a nerve cell's signal-carrying extension.
conductivitynoun: A material or tissue has this property when it allows energy or signals to pass through it.
conenoun: A retinal cell that works best in bright light and helps you see color and fine detail.
cone opsinnoun: A light-sensitive protein in retinal cone cells that helps you see color.
confabulationnoun: Memory gaps get filled with made-up details that the person truly believes are real.
confederatenoun: A secret helper in a study pretends to be a participant and follows a planned script.
conference methodnoun: Employees learn by discussing workplace problems together, sharing ideas, and evaluating possible solutions.
confidence interval (CI)phrase: A sample-based range that likely contains the true population value at a chosen level of certainty.
confidence levelphrase: Shows how often a confidence interval from many samples would include the true population value.
confidence limitnoun: Either endpoint of a confidence interval marks a boundary of the estimated range for a population characteristic.
confidentialitynoun: A duty to keep a client's private information from being shared without permission or a legal reason.
configural displaynoun: A visual display combines several measurements into one meaningful shape whose changes indicate a system's condition.
configural learningnoun: An individual learns to respond to a combination of cues as a distinct pattern, beyond responses to separate cues.
configural superiority effectnoun: People sometimes identify visual features more easily when those features form an organized pattern than when shown separately.
configural-cue approachnoun: An experimental approach proposes that combined cues guide responses through their overall pattern rather than through separate parts.
configurationnoun: The way parts are arranged to make an overall pattern or whole form.
configurational analysisnoun: A psychodynamic model guides assessment and therapy by examining difficult mental states alongside defenses, identity, relationships, and personal concerns.
confinement studynoun: Researchers examine how limited living space, time spent there, and group size affect people's bodies, minds, and performance.
confirmable propositionnoun: A statement qualifies when an experiment could provide evidence supporting it or showing it to be false.
confirmationnoun: Getting the expected result strengthens the behavior that produced it.
confirmation biasphrase: People notice and trust information that fits what they already believe, while overlooking evidence against it.
confirmatory data analysisnoun: Researchers use planned statistical tests to evaluate specific questions or predictions established before examining the relevant results.
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)noun: A statistical method tests whether observed measurements fit a proposed pattern of underlying traits that cannot be measured directly.
confirmatory researchnoun: A study tests specific predictions developed before the evidence used to evaluate them is examined.
conflictnoun: A clash between opposing wants, beliefs, actions, or feelings within a person or between people.
conflict behaviornoun: Actions arise when competing motives are active together, sometimes producing hesitation, switching directions, or an unrelated activity.
conflict of interestphrase: Personal goals or benefits clash with professional duties, making fair and unbiased decisions harder.
conflict resolutionphrase: Reducing disagreement between people or groups by actively finding workable solutions through discussion and compromise.
conflict spiralnoun: Disagreement intensifies as each side answers the other's actions with increasingly negative or extreme reactions.
conflict theoryphrase: A view that fights between people or groups grow naturally when power or resources are shared unequally.
conflict-free spherenoun: In ego psychology, a proposed part of mental functioning develops and operates independently of inner conflict.
confluencenoun: A coming together of separate parts, such as motives or perceptions, into one combined whole.
confluence modelnoun: A disputed theory proposes that family size and birth order shape children's intelligence through the family's changing intellectual environment.
conformitynoun: Changing your behavior or beliefs to match other people or group rules.
confoundnoun: A hidden extra variable mixed with the one studied, making it hard to know what caused the results.
confounded comparisonnoun: Groups differ in multiple relevant ways at once, preventing researchers from separating which difference explains their outcomes.
confounded effectsnoun: The influences of multiple factors on an outcome cannot be separated using the available study design or data.
confounding variablephrase: An outside factor that changes with the independent variable and muddies what caused the results.
confrontationnoun: A therapist's direct challenge that helps someone face mismatches between what they say, feel, and do.
confrontation namingnoun: A person is shown an object or picture and asked to say its name.
confrontational methodnoun: A behavior-change approach pressures people to admit perceived shortcomings, although research has not supported its effectiveness and resistance may increase.
confusability indexnoun: A numerical measure estimates how easily users might misunderstand a symbol, display element, or other object.
confusionnoun: A disturbed state with unclear thinking, poor decisions, and trouble knowing the time, place, or who people are.
confusion effectnoun: Unpredictable movements or calls among grouped animals make it harder for a predator to single out one individual.
confusion matrixnoun: A table compares predicted categories with actual categories, showing both correct classifications and the kinds of mistakes made.
confusion of responsibilitynoun: Bystanders may avoid helping because they fear others will wrongly blame them for causing the problem.
confusional arousalnoun: A person partly wakes from nonrapid-eye-movement sleep, seems awake but remains confused or unresponsive, and usually remembers little afterward.
confusional psychosisnoun: A historical psychiatric category describes recurring confusion with rapidly shifting emotions, sometimes alternating anxiety with silence and reduced movement.
confusional statephrase: A person stays awake but becomes disoriented and unable to think clearly or speak coherently.
congenernoun: A fermentation byproduct in alcoholic drinks can affect their taste, smell, color, and possibly the severity of hangovers.
congenitaladjective: Present at birth, whether caused by genes, development, or events before delivery.
congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH)noun: Inherited conditions disrupt adrenal hormone production, usually reducing cortisol and often increasing androgens, with effects on growth and sexual development.
congenital anomalynoun: A difference in body structure or function exists when a baby is born, though it may be discovered later.
congenital cataractnoun: Clouding of an eye's lens exists at birth or develops shortly afterward and can interfere with the development of vision.
congenital characternoun: A trait exists when someone is born because of inherited factors or influences during pregnancy or delivery.
congenital color blindnessnoun: An usually inherited difference in color vision exists from birth and makes certain colors difficult or impossible to distinguish.
congenital deafnessnoun: Little or no hearing is present when a person is born, whatever its cause.
congenital defectnoun: A medical condition involving body structure or function exists from birth, even when it becomes noticeable only later.
congenital glaucomanoun: An early developmental eye condition causes excessive internal fluid pressure that can damage the optic nerve and reduce vision.
congenital hypothyroidismnoun: Too little thyroid hormone is available from birth, potentially affecting brain development and growth if the condition remains untreated.
congenital oculomotor apraxianoun: An early developmental condition makes starting purposeful eye movements difficult, especially sideways, so children may turn their heads to shift gaze.
congenital rubella syndromenoun: Rubella infection during pregnancy can cause a pattern of conditions affecting a baby's hearing, eyes, heart, and development.
congenital sensory neuropathy with anhidrosisnoun: A condition present from birth prevents pain sensation and sweating, making injuries and overheating harder to detect or manage.
congenital trichomegalynoun: A rare syndrome combines unusually long eyelashes and eyebrows with short stature, retinal deterioration, and developmental difficulties.
congenital visual agnosianoun: An early brain development difference makes recognizing objects or faces by sight difficult despite adequate basic vision and general abilities.
congenital visual impairmentnoun: Reduced or absent vision exists at birth or develops shortly afterward, shaping how a child accesses visual information.
congruencenoun: Match between a person's real feelings, self-view, and outward behavior.
congruent validitynoun: Evidence supports a test's intended meaning when its scores relate strongly to scores from other measures of similar qualities.
congruity theorynoun: A theory predicts that people adjust attitudes toward a message and its source when those evaluations conflict, depending on their strength.
CONJabbreviation: This abbreviation means conjunctive reinforcement, where a reward requires completing at least two reinforcement schedules, in any order.
conjoined twinsnoun: Identical twins sometimes develop with their bodies physically connected, and the exact cause remains uncertain.
conjoint analysisnoun: Researchers study choices between options with different combinations of features to estimate how much each feature matters.
conjoint behavioral consultationnoun: A school psychologist guides parents and teachers in jointly planning and evaluating support for a student's behavior and learning.
conjoint schedulenoun: Several reinforcement rules operate at the same time for one behavior.
conjoint therapyphrase: A counseling approach where partners or family members meet together to work on relationship problems.
conjugate movementsnoun: Both eyes move together in a coordinated way as their direction of gaze changes.
conjugate reinforcementnoun: A feature of reinforcement changes predictably with a feature of behavior, such as its speed or strength.
conjunctionnoun: In probability, joining two events with "and" always makes them no more likely than either event alone.
conjunction searchphrase: Finding something defined by a combination of features, usually by checking items one by one.
conjunctival reflexnoun: An eyelid closes automatically when the membrane covering the eye's white surface is stimulated.
conjunctive conceptnoun: A category applies only when every required feature is present together.
conjunctive motivationnoun: In Sullivan's theory, people can seek genuine, enduring satisfaction instead of brief relief or substitutes.
conjunctive reinforcement (CONJ)noun: Reinforcement becomes available only after every requirement of multiple schedules is met, regardless of completion order.
conjunctive taskphrase: A group job succeeds only when everyone finishes, so the weakest member sets the pace and quality.
Conn’s syndromenoun: The adrenal glands produce excessive aldosterone because of a problem within those glands, often raising blood pressure.
connateadjective: A condition described this way already exists when a baby is born.
connected discoursenoun: Several linked sentences form a meaningful whole, such as a conversation, story, or argument.
connectionismnoun: An approach explains thinking through many simple processing units working together in networks.
connectionist modelnoun: A theory represents knowledge across connections among simple processing units, with activity spreading through the network.
connector neuronnoun: A nerve cell links other nerve cells within the brain or spinal cord.
Conners’ Comprehensive Behavior Rating Scales (Conners CBRS)noun: These questionnaires gather parent, teacher, and youth reports about emotional, behavioral, and school difficulties in ages six through eighteen.
Conners’ Rating Scales (CRS)noun: These questionnaires help assess attention, activity level, impulse control, and related difficulties in children and teenagers.
connotative meaningnoun: A word carries suggested feelings and associations beyond its literal meaning, often shaped by culture.
CONOPSabbreviation: Continuous operations are military activities that proceed without stopping and can strain performance through sleep loss.
consanguineous familynoun: An extended family includes relatives such as grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles beyond parents and their children.
consanguinitynoun: People have a biological family relationship because they share an ancestor.
consciencenoun: An inner voice that judges your actions by learned moral rules and feelings about wrongdoing.
conscientious objectornoun: A person refuses military service because religious or moral convictions oppose participation in war.
conscientiousnessnoun: Being organized, responsible, and hardworking is one of the Big Five personality traits.
conscious (Cs)adjective: Aware of yourself, your thoughts, or what is happening around you.
conscious access hypothesisnoun: This proposal suggests that consciousness brings otherwise separate brain functions together so they can coordinate their work.
conscious automatismnoun: A historical view holds that physical processes generate conscious experiences, while those experiences cannot cause physical changes.
conscious intentionnoun: A person knowingly chooses a goal or purpose to guide an action.
conscious memorynoun: Stored facts and personal experiences can be brought deliberately into awareness.
conscious mentalismnoun: This theoretical view treats thoughts, feelings, and intentions accessible to awareness as real and as the main causes of behavior.
conscious momentnoun: A brief stretch of experience feels like the present, sometimes proposed to span roughly two to four seconds.
conscious processphrase: A mental action you notice happening and can usually guide on purpose.
conscious resistancenoun: In psychoanalysis, a client deliberately keeps newly noticed, previously unconscious material from the analyst, sometimes because sharing feels uncomfortable.
consciousnessnoun: Being awake and aware of yourself, your thoughts, and what is happening around you.
consciousness of freedomnoun: People feel able to choose their decisions and actions when no obvious force or pressure compels them.
consciousness raisingphrase: Guided discussion that helps people better notice their own needs, values, goals, or problems.
consciousness studiesnoun: Researchers across psychology, brain science, and philosophy investigate awareness, subjective experience, and how these relate to physical processes.
consciousness-altering substancenoun: A psychoactive substance changes how someone experiences awareness or perceives the world.
consensual driftnoun: Observers working together gradually develop similar scoring errors, so their agreement can hide growing inaccuracy.
consensual eye reflexnoun: The pupil in one eye automatically narrows when bright light enters the other eye.
consensual validationnoun: With a therapist's guidance, a person checks how accurately they understood an experience against how others understood it.
consensusnoun: Shared agreement among group members about a judgment, decision, or view of someone.
consentnoun: A person's voluntary permission for treatment or research after learning what will happen, including possible risks and benefits.
consentiencenoun: An older concept attributes a supposedly less developed form of consciousness to animals other than humans.
consequateverb: To arrange for a particular consequence to follow a behavior is to consequate that behavior.
consequentnoun: An event or condition follows from another; in an if–then statement, it is the claim introduced by then.
consequent variablenoun: A measured feature is associated with a study's main outcome and is predicted using that outcome.
conservationnoun: Understanding that an amount stays the same even when its shape or appearance changes.
conservation of resources theory (COR theory)noun: This theory proposes that people seek and protect valued resources, experiencing stress when those resources are lost or threatened.
conservation psychologynoun: Psychologists study how people think and act toward nature to encourage behavior that protects ecosystems and resources.
conservation withdrawalnoun: Stress can bring social withdrawal and reduced activity, interpreted as a response that saves energy and supports recovery.
conservatismnoun: An attitude favors established ways, traditions, or existing arrangements and may include hesitation about change.
conservativeadjective: Describes a statistical test that avoids false positives but may miss real effects because it has low power.
conservatorshipnoun: A court appoints someone to manage specified affairs for a person whose condition limits their ability to manage them independently.
considerationnoun: Good leaders show warmth and care toward workers' feelings, which lowers conflict and builds trust.
consiliencenoun: Wilson proposed that knowledge about human life can be unified through basic principles of physics and biological evolution.
consistency checknoun: Researchers examine whether related answers, records, or calculations fit together to help detect possible mistakes.
consistency motivenoun: People seek confirmation of their existing beliefs about themselves, even when those beliefs are unfavorable.
consistency theorynoun: These theories propose that people are motivated to keep their beliefs, attitudes, and understandings compatible with one another.
consistent estimatornoun: A statistical rule produces estimates increasingly likely to be near the true population value as samples grow sufficiently large.
consistent mappingnoun: A search task keeps each item in one role throughout, either something to find or something to ignore.
consistent missingnoun: In experiments investigating claimed psychic abilities, guesses repeatedly fall below the success rate expected from chance.
consolidationnoun: The brain process that turns new learning into a more lasting memory over time.
consolidation hypothesisnoun: A proposed memory model holds that repeated brain activity first maintains fragile memories, which later become more resistant to disruption.
consolidation periodnoun: The time after learning when a new memory becomes more stable varies with the memory process involved.
consolidation theorynoun: One proposed explanation for spaced learning says recognizing a repeated item leads to creating an additional memory representation.
consonancenoun: Harmony occurs when a person's beliefs, feelings, or actions fit together, or when a message matches its intended meaning.
consonantnoun: A speech sound made when airflow is partly or fully blocked somewhere in the mouth or throat.
consonant trigramnoun: A sequence of three consonant letters, usually forming no word, provides material for studying verbal learning and memory.
Consonarnoun: This trade name identifies brofaromine, an antidepressant that reversibly blocks mainly the enzyme monoamine oxidase A.
conspecificadjective: An animal or other organism described this way shares its species with another organism being considered.
conspicuitynoun: An object's ability to catch attention makes it easier to notice among surrounding items.
conspicuous consumptionnoun: People buy and display costly goods to gain social standing or protect the standing they already have.
constancynoun: Seeing an object as staying the same size, shape, or color even when conditions change.
constancy lawnoun: A historical psychoanalytic proposal holds that mental activity moves toward equilibrium and a stillness associated with nonliving matter.
constancy of the IQnoun: A person's intelligence test scores tend to stay fairly similar across repeated testing, although development and circumstances can change them.
constancy principlenoun: A historical psychoanalytic idea proposes that mental energy tends to stay balanced or return to a lower, steadier level.
constancy scalingnoun: The mind adjusts perceived features, especially size, to account for viewing conditions and keep objects looking relatively unchanged.
constantnoun: A value that stays the same while other parts of a problem or study can change.
constant comparative analysisnoun: Researchers repeatedly compare and label descriptive information, adjusting categories and explanations as additional material reveals new patterns.
constant errornoun: Directional measurement bias is calculated by averaging errors while keeping the positive or negative sign of each error.
constant stimulus methodnoun: Researchers randomly repeat preset stimulus levels near a sensory boundary to estimate the level detected on half the trials.
constellationnoun: A cluster of related ideas linked by a shared theme or mental connection.
constipationnoun: Having bowel movements that are hard to pass or happen less often than usual.
constituentnoun: A word or group of words that acts as one part of a larger sentence.
constitutionnoun: A person's basic physical and psychological makeup includes inherited characteristics and, in broader usage, influences from experience and surroundings.
constitutional disordernoun: A condition or pattern of behavior is attributed to features of a person's bodily structure or functioning.
constitutional factornoun: A basic bodily characteristic or inherited tendency is thought to help shape personality, temperament, or vulnerability to certain disorders.
constitutional psychopathic inferiornoun: An outdated, stigmatizing label was historically applied to people whose difficulties were later associated with antisocial personality disorder.
constitutional typenoun: A category groups people by bodily features, sometimes using historical proposals that connect physique with personality or mental disorders.
constrained associationnoun: A task requires responses to a cue to follow a stated rule, such as supplying a word's opposite.
constraint commitmentnoun: A person stays in a relationship because leaving would bring outside costs, such as financial difficulties or lost social connections.
construalnoun: A person's interpretation gives meaning to their own characteristics and actions or those of other people.
constructnoun: An abstract idea in psychology, like intelligence, built from simpler observations and used to explain behavior.
construct validitynoun: Shows how well a test truly measures the trait or idea it is supposed to measure.
constructional apraxiaphrase: A person cannot accurately copy or build what they see, such as drawings, block designs, or puzzles.
constructional praxisphrase: Ability to copy, draw, or build designs by organizing shapes correctly in space.
constructionismnoun: People build their own understanding by fitting new experiences into what they already know.
constructive alternativismnoun: In George Kelly's personality theory, people can interpret their world through different possible frameworks rather than one fixed understanding.
constructive conflict resolutionnoun: People or groups settle disagreements through cooperative approaches, including negotiation, compromise, and adjustments that support a workable agreement.
constructive confrontationnoun: Employees openly examine workplace problems and plan improvements together in discussions designed to avoid blame or punishment.
constructive copingnoun: Helpful ways of managing stress use realistic understanding and suitable actions to address problems, emotions, or interpretations.
constructive memorynoun: Remembering combines stored details with general knowledge, which can fill gaps or change parts of an experience.
constructive obediencenoun: Following an authority's instructions produces benefits for the person obeying or for the wider community.
constructive playnoun: Children play by arranging and changing materials to make something, such as a model, structure, or other creation.
constructive theory of perceptionnoun: This approach proposes that perception forms as the mind unconsciously combines sensory input with expectations, context, and past experience.
constructive thinkingnoun: An ability to handle everyday problems effectively allows a person to solve them with relatively little stress.
Constructive Thinking Inventory (CTI)noun: A self-report questionnaire measures adults' experience-based thinking habits, including superstition, rigid categories, unrealistic optimism, and defensiveness.
constructivismnoun: People actively build understanding of the world using what they already know to interpret new experiences.
Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES)noun: A student questionnaire assesses how much classroom learning supports actively building understanding, helping teachers reflect on their teaching assumptions.
constructivist psychotherapynoun: Therapy helps people examine and reshape the meanings they give experiences so they can understand and approach problems more helpfully.
constructivist theory of emotionnoun: This theoretical approach proposes that emotions develop through social interactions and cultural experience rather than arriving fully formed at birth.
consultantnoun: A trained expert hired to give professional advice or services about problems, treatment, or recovery.
consultation-liaison psychiatrynoun: A psychiatric specialty integrates mental health assessment and care into treatment for people receiving medical or surgical services.
consulteenoun: The person, often another professional, who gets advice from a consultant to help a client.
consultee-centered consultationnoun: A mental health specialist helps a caregiver or professional strengthen their skills and understanding for supporting people in their care.
consultingnoun: Giving expert advice to people or organizations to help solve problems or improve work.
consulting psychologynoun: Psychologists provide expert guidance to organizations and their members on issues such as assessment, teamwork, training, and organizational change.
consumernoun: A person, parent, or organization that gets and uses psychological or health services.
consumer activismnoun: People work to protect buyers' and service users' rights, including fair treatment, safety, quality, and informed choices.
consumer behaviorphrase: How people or groups choose, buy, use, and get rid of goods and services, and the decisions around it.
consumer characteristicsnoun: Buyers' personality traits and psychological motives help researchers understand purchasing choices and plan advertising.
consumer counselingnoun: Guidance helps individuals make thoughtful choices about managing their money and handling personal financial decisions.
consumer educationnoun: Programs teach people to evaluate products, services, and advertising, understand markets, and make informed purchasing decisions.
consumer innovatornoun: A buyer belongs to the earliest group to try a newly introduced product or service.
consumer neurosciencenoun: Researchers study brain activity and related bodily responses to understand people's product preferences, purchasing decisions, and reactions to advertising.
consumer psychologynoun: A field of psychology examines how people choose and use goods or services and how marketing influences those choices.
consumer researchnoun: Systematic studies investigate buyers' preferences, motives, and behavior, including how packaging, branding, and personal characteristics affect choices.
consumer surveynoun: A research method asks people about their product preferences to help guide decisions about what businesses offer.
consumer-driven health carenoun: A health financing approach gives people greater spending responsibility, often combining insurance with high deductibles and special health accounts.
consumer-jury techniquenoun: A research method asks typical buyers to judge proposed advertisements before a campaign begins.
consumer-run drop-in centernoun: A welcoming community space offers informal mental health recovery support and activities organized by the people who use it.
consumerismnoun: A pattern of buying and using products beyond basic needs can reflect a strong focus on possessions and spending.
consummatory pleasurenoun: Enjoyment occurs when a desire is satisfied, such as while eating food that someone wanted.
consummatory responsenoun: The final action in a natural behavior sequence achieves its goal, such as eating after searching for food.
consummatory response theory of reinforcementnoun: A proposed learning theory explains reinforcement through excitement produced by consuming a reward, rather than through reduced need.
contact behaviornoun: Actions exchanged between people during an interaction can include both close personal encounters and ordinary business dealings.
contact comfortphrase: The calming, healthy effect babies or young animals get from close touch with a soft caregiver.
contact desensitizationnoun: A therapist demonstrates gradually more challenging ways to face a fear, then supports the person in practicing each step.
contact hypothesisphrase: Friendly contact between different groups can lower prejudice, especially when they meet as equals without competing.
contact languagenoun: An improvised communication system develops when people without a shared language need to understand one another.
contagionnoun: The spread of emotions, ideas, or behavior from person to person through a group.
containmentnoun: In object relations theory, a caregiver or therapist helps someone make overwhelming feelings understandable and manageable.
contaminationnoun: Outside influences, such as expectations or prior knowledge, distort how data are gathered or judged.
contamination obsessionnoun: Repeated, unwanted thoughts or fears about contamination cause distress and can be difficult to dismiss.
contemporaneitynoun: A psychotherapy principle directs attention toward what the person is experiencing during the present moment.
contemptnoun: A feeling of looking down on someone as bad, beneath you, or worthless.
contentnoun: The thoughts, feelings, and mental pictures a person is aware of at a given moment.
content analysisphrase: A method for counting and coding themes or words in messages to study patterns objectively.
content psychologynoun: A historical approach, especially early structuralism, studied conscious experiences and the sensations, images, and feelings within them.
content validitynoun: How well a test covers the full range of skills or behaviors it is supposed to measure.
content wordnoun: A word carries a meaning about things, actions, qualities, or ideas beyond its role in sentence grammar.
content-addressable storenoun: A memory model proposes that information is stored and found through its features, such as meaning or timing.
content-referenced testnoun: An assessment judges someone's mastery of material against a specified standard rather than other people's performance.
content-thought disordernoun: A disturbance in what someone thinks involves several fragmented delusions, meaning beliefs held firmly despite strong contrary evidence.
Contention Scheduling System (CSS)noun: A proposed mental mechanism selects among learned routine actions when familiar cues activate competing habits.
contentiousnessnoun: A tendency to argue or become involved in disputes can shape how someone interacts with other people.
contents of consciousnessnoun: The particular sensations, thoughts, feelings, and images someone is aware of make up their experience at a given moment.
contentual objectivism versus contentual subjectivismphrase: A historical debate asks whether psychology should study observable behavior or people's private conscious experiences.
contextnoun: The surroundings and conditions around something that shape how it is noticed, remembered, or understood.
context cluesnoun: Nearby words and sentences provide hints that help a reader identify or understand an unfamiliar written word.
context reinstatementnoun: Recreating an event's surroundings, mentally or physically, supplies cues that may help someone remember the event.
context shiftingnoun: During conversation or therapy, someone abruptly changes topics, often to move away from an issue that causes anxiety.
context theory of meaningnoun: Titchener's historical theory proposed that words and concepts gain meaning through mental images linked with particular groups of sensations.
context-independent learningnoun: Someone learns a skill or strategy without tying it to one particular situation where it will be used.
context-specific learningnoun: Learning is demonstrated only under the setting, circumstances, or internal state in which it originally occurred.
contextual analysisnoun: Researchers evaluate information while considering how the setting where it was gathered influenced the people or behavior studied.
contextual associationnoun: A learned connection links information or an experience with its surrounding setting, which can later help bring it to mind.
contextual interference effectnoun: Mixing tasks or practice settings can slow initial learning while improving later memory and use in new situations.
contextual subtheorynoun: Within Sternberg's triarchic theory, intelligence involves effectively adjusting to, changing, and choosing environments, with success depending on the setting.
contextualismnoun: A theoretical viewpoint holds that surrounding circumstances help shape events and their meaning, including what people learn and remember.
contextualizeverb: To understand something by fitting it into a mental framework you already have.
contiguitynoun: The closeness of events in time or place helps the mind link them together.
contiguity learning theorynoun: Guthrie's historical theory proposed that a stimulus pattern becomes linked to a response when both occur together.
contiguity of associationnoun: A mental link forms between things because they are experienced near each other in time.
contiguity principlenoun: A learning principle proposes that events or ideas become connected through closeness in time or location.
continencenoun: The ability to regulate urination, bowel movements, or sexual urges allows a person to control their expression.
continental philosophynoun: This loose category groups philosophical movements rooted mainly in mainland Europe, including existentialism and phenomenology.
contingencies of self-worthnoun: Areas such as achievement or social approval become conditions on which a person's sense of personal value depends.
contingencynoun: A link where one event changes how likely another event is.
contingency awarenessnoun: Someone recognizes that events are connected or that the occurrence of one is related to another.
contingency contractnoun: People agree on specific behavior changes and spell out the consequences that will follow those behaviors.
contingency managementphrase: Giving rewards whenever a target behavior happens to increase it, especially in substance use treatment.
contingency modelnoun: The best leadership or management style depends on the situation, task, workplace, and people involved.
contingency tablephrase: A chart that shows how often two category variables go together in the same cases.
contingency theory of leadershipnoun: A family of theories proposes that leadership success depends on how a leader's characteristics fit the group's situation.
contingency-governed behaviornoun: Actions arise directly from experienced reinforcement relationships, without deliberate reasoning or reliance on verbal rules.
contingentadjective: Depending on a certain condition or event happening first.
contingent aftereffectnoun: Following visual exposure, a changed perception of one feature depends on another feature, such as color depending on line orientation.
contingent negative variation (CNV)noun: A slow negative electrical shift, measured at the scalp between warning and action signals, reflects anticipation or preparation.
contingent probabilitynoun: The chance that an event occurs is calculated given that another specified event has occurred.
contingent reinforcementphrase: Giving a reward, or sometimes removing something unpleasant, only after the wanted behavior happens.
continuance commitmentphrase: Staying with a workplace mainly because leaving would be costly, risky, or hard to manage.
continued-stay review (CSR)noun: A reviewer checks whether someone still needs inpatient treatment and whether the current facility provides an appropriate level of care.
continuing bondnoun: An emotional or symbolic connection with someone who has died remains part of a grieving person's ongoing life.
continuing care retirement community (CCRC)noun: A residential community offers older adults different housing and care options as their support needs change.
continuing care unit (CCU)noun: A hospital department provides ongoing care after the most urgent phase of a serious or long-lasting illness.
continuing educationphrase: Licensed professionals must keep learning to stay current and competent to practice safely.
continuing medical education (CME)noun: Doctors continue learning after their professional degree to strengthen the knowledge and skills they use in patient care.
continuitynoun: An ongoing, connected pattern over time, without major breaks or sudden jumps.
continuity hypothesisnoun: This proposal explains learning as gradual gains through practice and reinforcement, rather than sudden understanding.
continuity of carephrase: Ongoing, well-coordinated treatment that continues across providers or settings so a client is not left without help.
continuity of germ plasmnoun: Weismann's historical theory proposed that hereditary material continues across generations through reproductive cells, independently of changes acquired by other body cells.
continuity theorynoun: This theory proposes that people tend to preserve familiar personal qualities, interests, activities, and relationships as they grow older.
continuity versus discontinuityphrase: Researchers debate whether development happens through gradual changes or through relatively sudden shifts between distinct stages.
continuousadjective: Able to take any number value within a range, including decimals between whole numbers.
continuous avoidancenoun: In this learning procedure, each specified response delays a regularly scheduled unpleasant event, without a separate warning signal.
continuous controlnoun: A device lets a person adjust an output through ongoing movement across a range of positions.
continuous distractor tasknoun: During an ongoing item sequence, participants periodically recall what followed an earlier item while keeping the remaining sequence in memory.
continuous distributionnoun: A statistical pattern describes values that can fall anywhere within a range, including between any two measured points.
continuous groupnoun: A counseling or therapy group accepts additional members after its meetings have already begun.
continuous improvementphrase: Making work processes a little better all the time instead of waiting for one big fix.
continuous movement tasknoun: A purposeful physical activity keeps going without a built-in endpoint until someone chooses or needs to stop.
continuous operations (CONOPS)noun: Military activities run around the clock, requiring coordination and potentially reducing sleep and performance.
continuous panelnoun: A lasting group of selected consumers is surveyed repeatedly to track changes that may reflect a wider population.
continuous performance test (CPT)noun: An attention test asks someone to keep responding to selected signals while withholding responses to other signals.
continuous rating scalenoun: A rating tool allows answers at any position along a range instead of limiting them to separate categories.
continuous recognition tasknoun: A memory test presents items one after another and asks whether each has appeared earlier in that sequence.
continuous reinforcement (CRF)phrase: Giving a reward after every wanted behavior during operant conditioning, which means learning from consequences.
continuous spectrumnoun: A sound's frequency representation spreads energy across a continuous range rather than containing only separate frequency components.
continuous variablephrase: A measured quantity that can take any value within a range, including decimals between whole numbers.
continuum approachnoun: This view places behavior along a range from effective functioning to serious difficulty, treating differences as matters of degree.
continuum of carephrase: Coordinated support that changes over time, matching a person's changing needs across services and settings.
contra-prefix: This prefix adds the meaning of opposition or being against something to a word.
contraceptionnoun: Methods or devices are used to prevent pregnancy, often by keeping sperm from fertilizing an egg.
contractnoun: A written agreement between people that spells out duties, rewards, and what happens if rules are broken.
contract plannoun: A student signs an agreement to meet a behavior or learning goal, often with specified rewards or consequences.
contractilitynoun: Living tissue, especially muscle, has the ability to shorten or develop tension when stimulated.
contractionnoun: A tightening or shortening of muscle fibers that creates force or movement.
contracturenoun: A muscle becomes persistently shortened or tight, making stretching and normal movement difficult and sometimes causing lasting disability.
contradictory representationnoun: One mental image blocks an incompatible image of the same thing, potentially interrupting thoughts that depend on that image.
contralateraladjective: Describes a body part or effect occurring on the side across from another structure or injury.
contralateral controlphrase: Each brain hemisphere mainly directs movement on the body's other side.
contralateral deficitnoun: Brain damage causes reduced ability or function in the body on the side opposite the damaged brain area.
contralateral eyenoun: An eye is described by its position across the body's midline from a particular structure being discussed.
contralateral hemispherenoun: One half of the cerebrum lies across the body's midline from the body part being considered.
contraprepared learningnoun: Learning certain connections is proposed to be especially difficult because those connections run against a species' evolved biological tendencies.
contrastnoun: Seeing differences seem bigger because one thing is judged beside or after another.
contrast analysisnoun: A statistical method tests focused questions about differences among group averages or how closely results match a prediction.
contrast codingnoun: Researchers assign numerical weights that total zero to group categories, allowing statistical tests of particular comparisons.
contrast detectornoun: A nerve cell or proposed processing mechanism responds to visual differences, such as boundaries between brighter and darker areas.
contrast effectnoun: Comparing two things close together can make their differences seem bigger than they really are.
contrast errorphrase: A rating mistake where someone's score is pushed up or down by how others in the group perform.
contrast illusionnoun: An object's apparent size, brightness, color, or other visual feature changes because nearby objects differ in that feature.
contrast polaritynoun: The direction of a brightness difference indicates whether a visual object is lighter or darker than its background.
contrast sensitivitynoun: A person's visual ability determines how small a brightness difference can be before a pattern becomes undetectable.
contrast-sensitivity function (CSF)noun: A graph shows how the ability to detect brightness differences varies as a pattern's repeating elements become more closely spaced.
contrastive analysisnoun: Researchers compare how two languages are organized to understand differences and similarities that can guide language teaching.
contrastive rhetoricnoun: This theory proposes that languages and cultural writing traditions differ in how arguments and other texts are organized.
contravolitionaladjective: Something happens against a person's wishes or beyond their ability to control it.
contrecoupnoun: A brain injury occurs across the head from the place where an impact happened.
contributing causenoun: A factor helps produce an outcome but cannot bring about that outcome by itself.
controlnoun: The power to direct events, body functions, behavior, or what happens in a situation.
control adopteesnoun: These adopted children provide a research comparison because neither their birth nor adoptive parents show the condition under investigation.
control analysisnoun: A trainee conducts psychoanalytic treatment with an experienced analyst's guidance, including help understanding personal reactions to the patient.
control conditionphrase: The comparison group in a study gets no treatment or a fake one.
control devicenoun: An assistive system's mechanism sends a person's commands to equipment that changes something in their surroundings.
control discriminabilitynoun: A control's design determines how easily someone can distinguish it from others and identify what it will do.
control experimentnoun: A follow-up study checks whether an earlier result came from the proposed cause rather than another factor.
control function logicnoun: A control produces an effect that matches what users reasonably expect from the way they operate it.
control groupphrase: In a study, the comparison group gets no new treatment or a standard one for judging effects.
control of action modelnoun: This model proposes that automatic selection handles familiar actions, while supervisory attention guides choices when situations require deliberate control.
control ordernoun: The relationship between a control and its output determines whether an adjustment changes position, speed, or another movement property.
control procedurephrase: A study step used before research to keep groups equal on outside factors that could affect results.
control processesnoun: Mental operations manage how information moves through thinking, coordinating activities such as attention, remembering, and making decisions.
control question test (CQT)noun: A polygraph method compares bodily reactions to investigation questions with reactions to questions about troubling past behavior.
control theorynoun: People guide their actions by checking results against a goal and adjusting until the mismatch shrinks.
control variablephrase: A factor that could affect results but is kept steady or adjusted for so it does not confuse findings.
control-mastery theorynoun: A therapy theory proposes that people test unconscious childhood beliefs about safety and relationships to overcome barriers to healthier lives.
control–display rationoun: An ergonomic measure divides how far someone moves a control by how far its displayed target moves.
controllable turnovernoun: Employee departures through resignation or dismissal are counted as potentially controllable within a workplace turnover classification.
controlled associationnoun: A task asks someone to respond to a prompt according to a rule, such as supplying an opposite word.
controlled attentionnoun: Attention focuses on selected information while other available information is set aside.
controlled drinkingnoun: A harm reduction approach aims to limit alcohol consumption for people with relatively mild drinking problems.
controlled observationnoun: Researchers watch and record behavior using planned procedures and consistent conditions.
Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT)noun: A verbal fluency test asks people to produce words beginning with assigned letters to assess executive and language abilities.
controlled processingphrase: Using attention on purpose, with effort, to think through information carefully.
controlled samplingnoun: Researchers select study cases using procedures that reduce inclusion of characteristics considered unsuitable for the study.
Controlled Substances Act (CSA)noun: A 1970 U.S. federal law regulates certain substances according to concerns about misuse, dependence, safety, and medical use.
controlled trialphrase: People with the same problem are put into treatment and comparison groups to test whether a new help works.
controlled-exposure techniquenoun: An advertising research method presents advertisements to a small audience under arranged conditions and measures reactions.
controlling goalnoun: An objective, usually chosen by someone else, must be met before an outside reward becomes available.
controversial childnoun: A peer-rating category describes a child receiving unusually many positive and negative nominations, with roughly average overall preference.
contusionnoun: A bruise develops when an impact damages small blood vessels and blood collects within tissue.
convalescent centernoun: A care facility provides ongoing nursing and rehabilitation for people needing less intensive treatment than an acute hospital offers.
convenience samplingphrase: Choosing participants because they are easy to reach, which often creates bias and weakens generalization to others.
conventional antipsychoticnoun: An older class of medicines treats psychosis, including symptoms such as hallucinations and severely disorganized thinking.
conventional levelphrase: At this moral stage, people judge right and wrong by social rules, approval, and obeying authority.
conventionalismnoun: A personality tendency involves rigidly following established customs and strongly insisting on accepted social rules.
convergencenoun: Both eyes turn inward to focus the same object on each retina, helping depth and single vision.
convergence theorynoun: A theory proposes that collective action forms when people who already share interests, values, or traits gather together.
convergent evolutionnoun: Distantly related species independently develop similar features because they face similar environmental demands.
convergent productionnoun: Guilford's intelligence model proposes an ability to generate a correct answer or select the most suitable solution.
convergent strabismusnoun: An eye alignment condition causes one eye or both eyes to point inward, potentially disrupting coordinated vision.
convergent thinkingnoun: A thinking process uses orderly reasoning to narrow possible solutions down to the correct or most promising choice.
convergent validityphrase: Shows up when a test gives similar scores to other tests measuring the same idea.
conversationnoun: People taking turns speaking to share ideas, information, or feelings and understand each other well enough.
conversation analysisnoun: Researchers examine how spoken exchanges are organized, including how speakers take turns and build shared understanding.
conversational inferencenoun: Listeners use context and cultural expectations to work out meanings that speakers leave unstated.
conversational maximsnoun: Grice proposed four expectations for conversation: truthfulness, enough information, relevance, and clear expression.
conversational repairnoun: A speaker or listener adjusts an ongoing conversation to correct a mistake or clear up misunderstanding.
converse accidentnoun: A reasoning error treats an unusual case or limited evidence as enough support for a broad rule.
conversionnoun: Unconsciously turning mental conflict into real physical symptoms, like blindness or paralysis, without a medical cause.
conversion anesthesianoun: A functional neurological symptom involves genuine loss of bodily sensation that does not fit recognized neurological disease patterns.
conversion disorderphrase: Someone has movement or sense problems that seem neurological but do not match known nerve disease patterns.
conversion hysterianoun: A historical name described conversion disorder, involving genuine movement or sensory symptoms that conflict with recognized neurological disease patterns.
conversion nonepileptic seizurenoun: An involuntary seizure-like episode occurs within diagnosed conversion disorder without being caused by the electrical activity responsible for epilepsy.
conversion paralysisnoun: A functional neurological symptom prevents voluntary movement in a body part, with findings inconsistent with recognized neurological disease patterns.
conversion seizurenoun: A seizure-like event associated with diagnosed conversion disorder occurs involuntarily and is not driven by epileptic electrical activity.
conversion symptomnoun: A genuine difficulty with movement or sensation shows clinical features that conflict with recognized neurological disease patterns.
conversion therapyphrase: A discredited, harmful practice that tries to change a person's LGBTQ+ identity or expression.
convictionnoun: A strong feeling that a belief matters deeply and is part of who you are.
convolutionnoun: A fold or twist in a structure often describes the folded surface of the brain.
convolutional neural networknoun: An artificial learning network slides filters across data to detect features and combine them into recognizable patterns.
convoy model of social relationsnoun: A theory maps a person's changing relationships across life into three surrounding circles representing different degrees of closeness.
convulsantnoun: A substance can trigger convulsions, often by weakening the nervous system's signals that normally limit activity.
convulsionnoun: Muscles contract forcefully without voluntary control, producing sustained stiffness or repeated cycles of tightening and release.
convulsive disordernoun: A form of epilepsy involves repeated seizures that include involuntary, forceful muscle contractions.
convulsive therapynoun: A treatment deliberately produces a generalized seizure using electricity or chemicals to address a mental disorder.
cooingnoun: Soft vowel-like sounds babies make when they feel calm, pleased, and comfortable.
Cook’s distance (Cook’s D)noun: A regression statistic measures how strongly one observation affects the fitted model by comparing results with and without it.
cookiesnoun: Small files saved by websites help track what a user does online and remember preferences.
Coolidge Assessment Battery (CAB)noun: A 225-item self-report questionnaire assesses personality disorders, several other mental health conditions, and executive abilities using an older diagnostic framework.
Coolidge effectnoun: Sexual interest or activity can increase when a human or other animal encounters a new mating partner.
Cooper–Harper Handling Qualities Rating Scalenoun: A rating tool guides pilots through decisions about aircraft handling, task performance, and the effort needed to compensate for difficulties.
cooperating teachernoun: An experienced classroom teacher supervises and guides a trainee as they practice teaching students.
cooperationnoun: Working together with others helps people reach a shared goal or goals that fit together.
cooperative breedingnoun: A reproductive system involves group members helping raise offspring, often while only a main pair reproduces.
cooperative educationnoun: A school-organized program combines academic learning with employment that provides practical experience, ideally related to the student's field.
cooperative goal structurenoun: A task is arranged so people reach their aims more easily through shared success and working together.
cooperative learningphrase: Students learn in small groups where everyone helps, works face to face, and reviews how the group is doing.
cooperative motivenoun: A personal drive encourages working with others and helping them accomplish their aims.
cooperative playphrase: Children play together in an organized way, sharing ideas, rules, and often a common goal.
cooperative reward structurenoun: A system gives rewards according to shared group achievement, so members benefit from helping one another succeed.
cooperative trainingnoun: A school program combines students' chosen career placements with classroom teaching and coordinated monitoring of their workplace progress.
cooperativenessnoun: In Cloninger's personality model, a character dimension describes how accepting, helpful, and considerate someone tends to be toward others.
cooperativitynoun: Binding at one site on a receptor or enzyme changes how readily molecules bind at its other sites.
coordinate bilingualnoun: A person uses two languages learned separately in different settings, with their mental representations thought to remain relatively independent.
coordinationnoun: The ability of body parts or muscles to work together smoothly during movement or action.
coordination lossnoun: A group produces less than it could because members' efforts do not fit together effectively.
coordination of secondary circular reactionsphrase: During infancy, combining familiar actions to reach a goal, such as moving a pillow to grab a toy.
coordinative structurenoun: Several forces or components work together toward one goal, such as muscles combining to move an arm.
coparentingnoun: Parents manage their shared role in raising a child, sometimes supporting each other and sometimes working at cross purposes.
COPDabbreviation: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease involves lasting airflow restriction that makes breathing difficult and can affect emotional and cognitive functioning.
Copernican theorynoun: The astronomical model places the Sun centrally, with Earth and the other planets traveling around it.
copicidenoun: A person seeking to die deliberately provokes a police response intended to cause their own death.
copingnoun: Using thoughts and actions to handle stress when life feels harder than your resources can manage.
coping behaviornoun: An action used to handle stress or perceived danger may be habitual and can help or worsen the situation.
coping imagerynoun: A therapy technique pairs relaxation with mental pictures previously helpful in managing anxiety during feared situations.
coping mechanismphrase: A way, conscious or automatic, of handling stress to lower tension and anxiety.
coping potentialnoun: A person's judgment of how successfully they could handle demands depends on the resources they believe are available.
coping strategyphrase: A conscious action or way of thinking used to handle stress or change your reaction to it.
coping stylephrase: A person's usual way of handling stress, fear, or difficult situations.
coping-skills trainingphrase: Teaching practical ways to handle stressful situations by improving thoughts, actions, and emotional control.
copro- (copr-; kopro-; kopr-)prefix: This word part adds a meaning involving feces, filth, or obscene language to a larger word.
coprolagnia (koprolagnia)noun: A sexual interest involves experiencing arousal from seeing feces or imagining them.
coprolalianoun: Uncontrollable blurting of obscene words, often seen in Tourette's disorder and some brain-based conditions.
coprophagianoun: A behavior involves consuming feces, whether one's own or those of another organism.
coprophemia (koprophemia)noun: A person uses obscene language to bring about sexual arousal.
coprophilianoun: An intense interest centers on feces or related objects and words, sometimes involving sexual attraction.
coprophrasianoun: Unwanted obscene or profane speech occurs involuntarily and can accompany certain neurological conditions.
copulanoun: A linking verb connects a sentence's subject with words that identify or describe it.
copulationnoun: Sexual intercourse involves physical mating, typically including genital insertion, with details varying across species.
copulatory locknoun: In some animal species, a physical connection temporarily holds mating partners together and can limit mating with others.
cordocentesisnoun: A prenatal procedure uses a needle through the pregnant person's abdomen to collect umbilical cord blood for testing.
core areanoun: An animal or group's most heavily used part of its usual range often contains important food or shelter.
core conflictual relationship theme (CCRT)noun: A psychodynamic method examines recurring relationship stories through a person's wishes, others' responses, and the person's reactions.
core emotionnoun: An emotion such as joy or fear is proposed to belong to a basic set recognized across cultures.
core gender identitynoun: In psychoanalytic theory, an early sense of one's gender is proposed to become established around the second year.
core hoursphrase: The set part of a workday when everyone must be at work, even with flexible schedules.
core knowledgephrase: Built-in mental systems help babies understand objects, numbers, places, and people before much learning occurs.
core relational themesnoun: In appraisal theory, judgments about what events mean for one's goals, self, and coping possibilities help shape particular emotions.
core temperaturenoun: The temperature deep inside the body reflects the warmth of its internal organs.
coreometernoun: An instrument measures pupil diameter, supporting studies of how the eye responds to different stimuli.
CORFingabbreviation: Cutting off reflected failure means distancing yourself from an unsuccessful group to protect how you feel about yourself.
Coricidinnoun: A brand of cold medicines includes some products containing dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant with effects relevant to psychology.
Corino de Andrade’s paramyloidosisnoun: An inherited amyloid disease involves abnormal protein deposits that damage nerves, causing weakness, sensory changes, and other bodily problems.
corneanoun: The clear front covering of the eye admits light and supplies much of the focusing power needed for vision.
corneal reflection techniquenoun: Researchers track eye movements by recording changes in light reflected from the eye's clear front surface.
corneal reflexnoun: The eyelids close automatically when contact with the cornea triggers a protective nerve response.
Cornelia de Lange syndromenoun: A rare genetic condition affects development, with varying combinations of growth differences, physical features, learning difficulties, and behavioral challenges.
Cornell Medical Index (CMI)noun: An older health questionnaire gathers information about physical symptoms and emotional difficulties to help identify concerns needing assessment.
cornu ammonisnoun: The horn-shaped hippocampal region contains areas labeled CA and helps support learning and memory for facts and events.
corollary dischargenoun: A copied movement command helps the brain predict resulting sensations and compare them with actual feedback.
corona glandisnoun: A raised ring forms the rear edge of the penis’s enlarged tip.
coronal planenoun: An imaginary flat surface divides the body or brain into front and back portions.
coronal sectionnoun: A vertical body or brain slice follows a flat surface that separates front portions from rear portions.
coronary artery bypass graft (CABG)noun: Surgery creates a new route around narrowed or blocked heart arteries using another blood vessel to improve heart muscle blood supply.
coronary heart disease (CHD)phrase: A heart disease caused by narrowed arteries that reduce blood flow to the heart muscle.
coronary thrombosisnoun: A blood clot forms or remains within an artery supplying the heart and may obstruct blood flow.
coronary-prone behaviornoun: Certain behavior patterns, especially hostility, have been proposed to increase the likelihood of disease in arteries supplying the heart.
coronavirusnoun: A virus belonging to a family with crownlike surface spikes can infect humans or other animals and cause various illnesses.
corp-prefix: This word part contributes the meaning of a body or an organized structure.
corporanoun: Researchers use this plural of corpus for collections of language samples or, in anatomy, distinct bodily structures.
corporaladjective: Something described this way concerns the physical body or bodily experience.
corporal punishmentnoun: This punishment uses physical force to cause pain with the aim of changing someone's behavior.
corporealadjective: Something described this way has a physical, material existence rather than a spiritual nature.
corpse phobianoun: A person experiences lasting, excessive fear of dead bodies.
corpusnoun: A main body or clearly separate structure in the body, especially in brain anatomy.
corpus callosumnoun: A thick band of nerve fibers connects the brain's left and right halves.
corpus callosum agenesisnoun: The nerve bridge connecting the brain's two halves develops incompletely or does not form before birth.
corpus cavernosumnoun: Each of two upper columns inside the penis contains tissue that fills with blood during an erection.
corpus luteumnoun: A temporary ovarian structure forms after an egg's release and produces progesterone, supporting the uterine lining.
corpus mammillarenoun: Either small, rounded brain structure beneath the hypothalamus belongs to the limbic system and helps support memory.
corpus planningnoun: Deliberate efforts reshape a language's spelling, writing system, grammar, or vocabulary, often to establish shared standards.
corpus spongiosumnoun: A column of erectile tissue surrounds the penile urethra and broadens to form the penis's tip.
corpus striatumnoun: This grouping of deep brain structures includes the caudate, putamen, and globus pallidus and helps regulate voluntary movement.
correct detectionnoun: A participant correctly reports noticing a target that actually appears during a detection task.
correct rejectionphrase: In signal detection, correctly deciding that the target stimulus is absent.
correctionnoun: An adjustment added to scores or analyses to reduce error and make results more accurate.
correction for attenuationphrase: A statistical adjustment that estimates how strong a relationship would be without measurement error weakening it.
correction for continuitynoun: A statistical adjustment improves an approximation that treats separate possible values as though they lie along a smooth scale.
correction for guessingnoun: A test scoring method subtracts points for wrong answers so entirely random guessing earns zero points on average.
correction procedurenoun: During learning, the same stimulus conditions continue or return after particular responses, usually mistakes, or after missing responses.
correctional facilitynoun: An institution holds people processed through criminal or juvenile justice systems, often with a stated goal of rehabilitation.
correctional psychologynoun: This branch of forensic psychology applies assessment, treatment, and behavioral knowledge within detention, rehabilitation, and community supervision settings.
corrective advertisingnoun: Companies are required to publish advertisements that address false beliefs created by their earlier misleading advertising.
corrective emotional experiencephrase: Healing change can happen when someone has a new emotional experience with a therapist or other key person.
corrective lensnoun: An optical device placed directly on the eye or held before it changes light's path to improve sight.
corrective therapynoun: An older name for kinesiotherapy describes planned, gradually progressing exercise used to improve physical functioning and support well-being.
correlatenoun: One measured factor that tends to change along with another factor.
correlated samplesnoun: Data sets are linked because measurements come from the same participants repeatedly or from people connected to one another.
correlationnoun: Shows how strongly two things change together, usually in a straight-line pattern.
correlation analysisphrase: Statistical methods that measure how strongly two or more variables change together, without proving cause.
correlation barriernoun: A proposed limit restricts how strongly intelligence test scores can relate to outcomes such as academic achievement or life success.
correlation coefficientphrase: A number from -1 to +1 showing how strongly two scores change together in a straight-line pattern.
correlation matrixphrase: A square table showing how strongly every pair of variables in a set is related.
correlation rationoun: A statistic called eta measures relationship strength by comparing group averages, allowing patterns that curve rather than follow straight lines.
correlational fallacynoun: Someone mistakenly concludes that one thing causes another simply because the two are associated.
correlational redundancynoun: In artistic patterns, some combinations of elements appear more often than others, limiting variation and making those combinations more predictable.
correlational researchphrase: Researchers watch how two or more things change together without changing the situation themselves.
correspondencenoun: How much someone's action seems to match a lasting personality trait, like seeing cutting in line as rudeness.
correspondence biasnoun: People tend to explain someone's behavior through personal traits while giving too little weight to surrounding circumstances.
correspondence problemnoun: The visual system must determine which features across different images belong to the same objects or locations.
correspondence trainingnoun: A behavioral intervention rewards young people when actions match their promises or when their reports accurately match completed actions.
correspondent inference theorynoun: This theory explains how observers infer lasting traits from someone's actions, especially choices seen as free, intentional, and unusual.
corridor illusionnoun: Identical figures in a corridor drawing seem different in size because the apparently more distant figure looks larger.
corroborationnoun: Extra evidence that backs up a claim or theory, though support alone does not prove it true.
cortexnoun: The outer layer of an organ, especially the brain, where much higher processing happens.
cortical activationnoun: Neural activity increases in regions of the cerebrum's or cerebellum's outer covering during stimulation or task performance.
cortical amaurosisnoun: Vision is lost because the brain's primary visual cortex is damaged, even though the eyes may remain structurally normal.
cortical amnesianoun: Memory loss occurs because brain damage or another neurological problem disrupts the ability to remember.
cortical areanoun: A region within the cerebrum's outer gray matter can be distinguished by its cellular structure, function, or both.
cortical atrophyphrase: Loss of brain cells in the brain's outer layer, which can cause thinking or vision problems.
cortical barrelnoun: In whiskered animals, a small neuron cluster in touch-processing cortex represents sensory input from a corresponding facial whisker.
cortical blindnessphrase: Loss of sight caused by damage to the brain's visual cortex, even though the eyes still react normally.
cortical centernoun: A specialized region of the cerebrum's outer tissue supports a function, receives sensory signals, or sends movement signals.
cortical columnnoun: A vertical grouping of connected neurons extends through multiple cortical layers, often sharing related response properties.
cortical controlnoun: The brain’s outer layer directs bodily activities or supplies recorded signals that computers translate into artificial limb movements.
cortical deafnessphrase: Hearing is lost because sound-processing areas in the brain's cortex are damaged, even though the ears still work.
cortical dementiaphrase: Memory and thinking problems caused by damage to the brain's outer layer, as in Alzheimer's disease.
cortical dysplasianoun: The cerebral cortex develops with an unusual tissue structure, including differences in cell arrangement, size, or shape.
cortical evoked potentialnoun: A measurable electrical response arises in the cerebral cortex following a stimulus, such as a sound or light.
cortical hearing lossnoun: Hearing is reduced because damage affects higher brain regions that process sound.
cortical inhibitionnoun: Neural processes suppress activity arising in the outer tissue of the cerebrum or cerebellum.
cortical laminanoun: A single sheetlike layer of nerve cells forms part of the cerebral cortex's structure.
cortical layersnoun: Distinct bands of nerve cells form the outer tissue of the cerebrum and cerebellum, with different cellular arrangements.
cortical lesionnoun: An area of abnormal or damaged cerebral cortex may be present from birth or develop later.
cortical localizationphrase: Different parts of the cerebral cortex handle different mental and body functions.
cortical magnification factornoun: This measure describes how much cortical space represents a given amount of visual angle, usually favoring the center of gaze.
cortical mapnoun: An orderly arrangement of cortical neurons represents sensory features, body locations, or movement systems through their positions.
cortical neuronnoun: A signaling nerve cell has its main cell body located within the cerebral cortex.
cortical potentialnoun: An electrical voltage arises from the activity of nerve cells located within the cerebral cortex.
cortical processnoun: A mechanism operating in the cerebral cortex contributes to mental activities, from initial information processing to complex planning.
cortical sensory aphasianoun: Brain damage causes difficulty understanding language, while speech remains flowing but may contain incorrect or meaningless words.
cortical-arousal factornoun: Berlyne proposed an aspect of responses to art reflected in ratings toward alertness and power rather than drowsiness and weakness.
cortical–subcortical motor loopnoun: A brain circuit connecting motor cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus helps monitor movements and arrange their sequence.
corticalizationnoun: An evolutionary process involves increasing reliance on the cerebral cortex for functions previously handled mainly by other brain regions.
cortico-prefix: This word part indicates a connection with a cortex, an organ’s outer layer, often the brain’s.
corticobasal degeneration (CBD)noun: A progressive brain disease involving abnormal tau buildup damages cortical and basal ganglia regions, affecting movement and thinking.
corticobasal syndromenoun: A worsening neurological pattern combines movement-control problems with difficulties performing learned actions, usually affecting one side more strongly.
corticobulbar fibernoun: A nerve fiber carries signals from cerebral cortex to brainstem nerve-cell groups involved in controlling head and face movements.
corticofugaladjective: This describes nerve pathways carrying signals away from the cortex of either the cerebrum or cerebellum.
corticomedial groupnoun: A collection of amygdala nuclei processes mainly smell-related signals and sends information to areas regulating bodily and behavioral responses.
corticonuclear fibernoun: A nerve fiber links cerebral cortex with brainstem nuclei, helping transmit commands for movements such as speaking and swallowing.
corticopetaladjective: This describes nerve pathways carrying signals toward the cortex of either the cerebrum or cerebellum.
corticopontineadjective: This describes connections between the brain’s cerebral cortex and its pons, a structure within the brainstem.
corticospinal fibernoun: A nerve fiber in the corticospinal pathway carries signals from cerebral cortex toward spinal circuits that help control movement.
corticospinal tractnoun: A nerve pathway carrying movement commands from the brain's cortex down to the spinal cord.
corticosteroidnoun: A steroid hormone from the adrenal cortex helps control stress, metabolism, salt, and water balance.
corticosteroid therapynoun: Medical treatment uses drugs resembling adrenal hormones to replace missing hormones or reduce inflammation.
corticosteronenoun: An adrenal hormone helps regulate energy use, and researchers measure its blood levels as one indicator of stress.
corticostriatonigral degenerationnoun: This historical name describes corticobasal degeneration, a progressive brain disease that can disrupt movement and thinking.
corticotropinnoun: A pituitary stress hormone that tells the adrenal glands to release corticosteroids, chemicals that help the body cope.
corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF)noun: A hypothalamic chemical messenger stimulates pituitary corticotropin release, helping regulate daily hormone rhythms and the body’s stress response.
cortisolnoun: A stress hormone that raises blood sugar and helps the body respond to pressure.
cortisonenoun: An inactive steroid becomes cortisol in body tissues and can be supplied as medicine when corticosteroid hormones are insufficient.
coruminationnoun: Two people repeatedly discuss personal difficulties and painful feelings so extensively that other conversation topics get crowded out.
coryzanoun: An ordinary cold often brings a runny nose as a prominent symptom.
COSCabbreviation: Military leaders use these programs and actions to reduce stress difficulties, recognize problems, and help personnel recover and work together.
cosleepingnoun: A parent and infant sleep close enough to touch, including arrangements with nearby separate sleeping surfaces.
cosmetic surgerynoun: Surgical procedures are performed primarily to change physical appearance according to a person’s goals.
cosmic consciousnessnoun: A reported state involves feeling united with the universe, historically proposed by Richard Bucke as humanity’s highest awareness.
COSRabbreviation: A person's psychological response to trauma during military activity can involve anything from slight distress to serious difficulties.
cost analysisnoun: A structured calculation identifies what providing a program costs over a specified period from a particular payer’s perspective.
cost containmentnoun: A program aims to keep spending under control while organizing and delivering its services.
cost of concurrencenoun: Performance drops when another task occurs simultaneously, even when the person is instructed to prioritize the task being measured.
cost-effectiveness analysisphrase: A way to compare programs by how much money each spends for one unit of helpful outcome.
cost-minimization analysisphrase: Compares treatments that work equally well to find which one costs less, including delivery and care expenses.
cost-offset analysisnoun: An evaluation estimates how an intervention reduces other expenses, such as later healthcare use, separately from its health benefits.
cost–benefit analysisnoun: An evaluation compares a program’s expenses with its benefits by expressing both in money.
cost–reward analysisnoun: A social psychological model proposes that people are more likely to help when expected rewards are greater or costs are lower.
cot deathnoun: An infant younger than one year dies unexpectedly, usually while asleep, and the death remains unexplained after thorough investigation.
Cotard’s syndromenoun: A rare syndrome involves firmly believing that oneself, body parts, or the world no longer exist, sometimes alongside severe depression.
cotherapynoun: Two therapists jointly provide treatment for an individual, couple, family, or group.
cotwin controlnoun: Researchers compare a twin with a particular experience or treatment against their twin who did not receive it.
couchnoun: In psychoanalysis, a patient lies on this sofa to relax and let thoughts flow freely.
cough suppressantnoun: A medicine reduces coughing, often by acting on brainstem mechanisms that regulate the cough reflex.
coulrophobianoun: A lasting, intense fear of clowns can lead someone to avoid them or experience strong distress when they appear.
counselingnoun: Professional help for personal, school, work, or relationship problems using listening, guidance, and sometimes tests.
counseling processnoun: A counselor and client work through conversations to clarify concerns, explore options, and address the client’s difficulties.
counseling psychologyphrase: This field helps people handle life, relationships, school, work, and stress by building strengths and adjusting well.
counseling relationshipnoun: A professional connection grounded in empathy, honesty, and warmth helps a counselor and client work toward change.
counseling servicesnoun: Organizations provide trained professionals who help individuals, families, or groups manage personal difficulties and make decisions.
counselornoun: A trained professional who helps people understand problems, make choices, and change behavior in healthier ways.
counterargumentnoun: A response that challenges specific parts of an argument, message, or thought.
counterattitudinal advocacynoun: A message argues for a position that conflicts with a person’s existing attitude.
counterattitudinal behaviorphrase: Acting in a way that goes against what a person says or feels they believe.
counterattitudinal role playnoun: Participants act out a role that requires expressing views opposing their own beliefs.
counterbalancingnoun: Changing the order of study conditions across people helps prevent practice, fatigue, and order effects from skewing results.
countercathexisnoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes redirecting mental energy from unconscious wishes into opposing or related ideas that keep those wishes outside awareness.
countercompulsionnoun: A new compulsion develops to oppose an earlier one that cannot continue, eventually replacing it and preserving the compulsive pattern.
counterconditioningnoun: Changing a learned trigger by pairing it with a new response that cannot happen with the old one.
counterconformitynoun: A person deliberately opposes accepted group standards because resisting them matters more than expressing an independently chosen position.
counterculturenoun: A social movement develops shared values and ways of living that actively challenge the dominant culture.
counterfactualnoun: A thought about how the past could have happened differently, often starting with "if only."
counterfactual thinkingphrase: Mentally replaying events with different outcomes, often causing regret or sometimes relief.
counteridentificationnoun: In psychoanalysis, an analyst identifies with a client’s inner experience, experiencing an empathic form of countertransference.
countermeasurenoun: During polygraph testing, a person deliberately tries to influence the results to avoid being judged dishonest.
countermeasure-intervention programnoun: An organized intervention aims to reduce negative effects caused by problems in how a social system operates.
counterphobic characternoun: A proposed personality pattern involves enjoying risky activities, interpreted in psychoanalytic theory as a way to master anxiety.
counterproductive work behavior (CWB)phrase: Employee actions that harm coworkers or the organization, such as theft, bullying, or breaking important rules.
countershadingnoun: An animal’s darker upper surface and lighter underside help it blend into its surroundings from different viewing angles.
countershocknoun: A historical procedure applied mild electrical stimulation after an electroconvulsive treatment seizure, intending to reduce confusion or memory problems.
countershock phasenoun: In Selye’s stress model, the body responds to initial shock by activating sympathetic nerves and increasing adrenal cortex hormones.
countersuggestionnoun: A therapist offers an opposing suggestion to weaken an earlier suggestion or firmly held idea.
countertransferencenoun: A therapist's personal feelings toward a client, shaped by the therapist's own past, can affect treatment.
coupled oscillatorsnoun: A mathematical model links repeating processes that influence one another, helping explain coordinated rhythms such as alternating leg movements.
couples counselingnoun: Professional support helps romantic partners address relationship difficulties, often through brief work on specific problems.
couples therapyphrase: A therapist helps both partners together work on personal and relationship problems affecting how they get along.
coupon-return techniquenoun: Advertisers evaluate printed advertisements by counting coupons readers mail back, sometimes comparing responses to different advertisements.
couragenoun: The ability to face a difficult challenge despite meaningful risks can involve physical action, emotional endurance, or defending beliefs.
coursenoun: How a disorder or treatment usually changes over time, including how long it lasts and whether it returns.
course modifiernoun: A pattern in a disorder, such as seasonal changes or repeated episodes, helps predict or changes its development over time.
court-ordered treatmentphrase: Mental health care or evaluation a judge requires someone in a legal case to receive.
courtesan fantasynoun: A fantasy involves being a courtesan, a companion receiving financial support for intimate relationships, or imagining having such a companion.
courtshipnoun: Behaviors used to attract and assess a potential partner can prepare animals for mating or help people develop romantic relationships.
couvadenoun: Some expectant fathers experience physical symptoms during their partner’s pregnancy, with psychological factors proposed as possible contributors.
covariancenoun: A statistic showing whether two variables rise together or move in opposite directions around their averages.
covariance matrixnoun: A square table displays each variable’s variance along its diagonal and how pairs of variables vary together elsewhere.
covariatenoun: A related variable is included in an analysis to account for its effect on the main outcome.
covariationnoun: A pattern where changes in one measured thing go along with changes in another.
covariation principlenoun: People judge something as a possible cause when it appears with a behavior and disappears when that behavior is absent.
covenant marriagenoun: A legally recognized marriage arrangement requires premarital counseling and agreement to more limited reasons for divorce.
cover memorynoun: Psychoanalytic theory proposes that an apparently unimportant childhood memory can hide another, more emotionally significant experience from awareness.
cover storyphrase: A believable false explanation for a study's purpose, used so participants do not change their behavior.
coveragenoun: The health services and costs a person's insurance plan will pay for.
covering-law modelnoun: This proposed account explains an event by logically deriving it from general scientific laws together with relevant starting conditions.
covertadjective: Hidden from direct view or public notice, whether by accident or on purpose.
covert attentionnoun: Visual attention focuses on a place other than the spot where the eyes are looking.
covert behaviornoun: Private activities, such as imagining, cannot be directly seen by others and must be reported or inferred.
covert conditioningnoun: A behavioral therapy method uses imagined actions and consequences to try to change behavior in everyday situations.
covert desensitizationnoun: A therapy method pairs relaxation with imagining increasingly feared situations, aiming to reduce anxiety gradually.
covert extinctionnoun: A therapy exercise involves imagining an unwanted action without its usual reward, aiming to make that behavior less likely.
covert incestnoun: A parent crosses emotional boundaries by relying on a child for the intimate support normally sought from an adult partner.
covert modelingnoun: A therapy exercise involves picturing a role model, imagining acting similarly, and visualizing helpful results.
covert negative reinforcementnoun: A therapy exercise pairs an imagined action with relief from an imagined unpleasant situation, aiming to strengthen that action.
covert orientingnoun: Attention shifts toward a different visual location while the eyes remain directed at the same spot.
covert positive reinforcementnoun: A therapy exercise pairs a desired action with an imagined pleasant result, aiming to encourage the action in everyday life.
covert rehearsalnoun: Mentally repeating words or actions helps a person remember information or prepare to speak or act.
covert reinforcementnoun: A person mentally practices a wanted action followed by a pleasant outcome, hoping to make the action more likely.
covert responsenoun: An internal reaction, such as a thought, feeling, or bodily change, is usually inferred or measured indirectly.
covert sensitizationphrase: Using imagination, a person pairs a bad habit with a disgusting outcome to make the habit less appealing.
covert speechnoun: A person talks to themselves without audible speech, sometimes making tiny movements of the muscles used for speaking.
COVID-19abbreviation: Coronavirus disease 2019 is an infectious illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 that often affects breathing and can affect other body systems.
COWATabbreviation: This verbal fluency assessment measures how readily someone generates spoken words starting with assigned letters, helping evaluate language and executive skills.
Cowper’s glandsnoun: Two small glands near the penis base release fluid into the urethra that contributes to semen.
Cox regression analysisnoun: A statistical method estimates how predictors relate to an event’s immediate likelihood over time without specifying the baseline hazard’s shape.
CPabbreviation: A movement disorder caused by early brain injury that affects muscle control and coordination.
CPAabbreviation: The Canadian Psychological Association represents psychologists in Canada and supports psychological science, professional practice, education, and ethics.
CPIabbreviation: A personality test that measures normal social traits and everyday behavior patterns.
CPPabbreviation: Conditioned place preference develops when rewarding experiences make a person or animal favor the location associated with them.
CPQabbreviation: The Children’s Personality Questionnaire uses self-reported answers from children aged eight through twelve to assess fourteen personality dimensions.
CPR feesabbreviation: These healthcare payment guidelines use charges typical of an area to help decide how much providers receive for services.
CPRTabbreviation: Child–parent relationship therapy guides caregivers through playful interactions to better understand their children and support changes in feelings and behavior.
CPSabbreviation: The Comrey Personality Scales use questionnaire responses to assess eight personality traits in people aged sixteen and older.
CPTabbreviation: A structured therapy that helps people with trauma change unhelpful thoughts and feelings about what happened.
CPZabbreviation: Chlorpromazine is an antipsychotic medicine used to reduce symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, with possible movement and sedation effects.
CQTabbreviation: The control question test compares bodily reactions to investigation questions and broader questions intended to provoke concern during polygraph testing.
CRabbreviation: A learned reaction that happens after a cue has been linked with something important.
CR10 scalenoun: Borg’s category-ratio scale combines number ratings and verbal labels to describe how intense a sensation feels.
cracknoun: A smokable form of cocaine produces rapid, brief stimulant effects and is relevant to studying substance use and addiction.
crack babynoun: An outdated, stigmatizing label was applied to infants exposed to crack cocaine before birth and often suggested exaggerated developmental predictions.
cracking facadesnoun: In Rogers’s encounter groups, participants are encouraged to move beyond social appearances and express their genuine feelings and experiences.
Cramér’s Vnoun: A statistic measures the overall strength of association between two categorical variables, with values ranging from zero to one.
crampnoun: A muscle contracts involuntarily and painfully, often making movement uncomfortable until the contraction eases.
cranialadjective: Toward the skull or relating to the head, especially in brain anatomy.
cranial anomalynoun: A difference in skull size, shape, or structure develops before birth and may occur alongside differences in brain development.
cranial bifidanoun: A developmental condition occurs when the skull fails to close before birth, sometimes involving missing or protruding brain tissue.
cranial capacitynoun: The space inside a skull is measured as the volume it can contain.
cranial diameternoun: The greatest distance across a skull measures its width from one side to the other.
cranial divisionnoun: This parasympathetic branch sends signals from the brainstem through cranial nerves to help regulate organs and glands.
cranial electrical stimulationnoun: A historical treatment applied weak electrical currents across the head to encourage relaxation or sleep for depression, anxiety, or sleeplessness.
cranial indexnoun: A head shape measurement divides its greatest width by its greatest length, then multiplies the result by 100.
cranial nervenoun: One of twelve paired nerves that start at the brain and carry sensing or movement signals.
cranial pia maternoun: A thin, blood vessel rich membrane hugs the brain directly, following its folds as the innermost protective covering.
cranial reflexnoun: An automatic response uses cranial nerves, such as blinking when something touches the eye's surface.
craniofacial anomalynoun: A structural difference affects the skull and face, usually beginning before birth.
craniofacial dysostosisnoun: An inherited condition called Crouzon syndrome involves early skull bone fusion, altered facial growth, and possible vision or neurological difficulties.
craniographynoun: An older method studies skull structure through photographs and drawings based on measurements and anatomical landmarks.
craniologynoun: A field examines human skull structure, including its dimensions, overall form, and other physical features.
craniometrynoun: Researchers systematically measure skull dimensions and landmarks to describe and compare their physical structure.
craniosacral systemnoun: This alternative name identifies the parasympathetic division, whose nerve pathways begin in brainstem and sacral regions.
craniostenosisnoun: Skull joints close too early, changing skull growth and sometimes affecting brain development.
craniosynostosis syndromenoun: Early joining of skull bones changes head shape and may increase pressure around the brain, especially when several joints close.
craniotelencephalic dysplasianoun: A developmental condition combines early skull joint closure, a protruding forehead, and intellectual disability, sometimes with brain tissue extending through the skull.
craniotomynoun: A surgeon temporarily removes a section of skull bone to reach the brain for an operation.
craniumnoun: The bony enclosure surrounding the brain forms the upper and back portions of the skull.
cranknoun: An informal street label names methamphetamine, a stimulant drug, particularly in a form that can be smoked.
crashnoun: The depressed, tired, and irritable period that can follow stimulant drug highs or heavy use.
cravingnoun: A powerful, hard-to-stop urge to use a substance or repeat a rewarding behavior.
crazenoun: A brief wave of intense enthusiasm spreads quickly among many people, often around a fashion, activity, or product.
CRBabbreviation: Clinically relevant behavior includes session behaviors showing everyday problems, improvements, or a client's understanding of what influences those behaviors.
creatine kinase (CK)noun: An enzyme found in muscles and brain tissue helps manage cellular energy, and raised blood levels can signal tissue damage.
creationismnoun: A belief holds that a higher intelligence brought the universe into existence, with some versions rejecting biological evolution.
creative arts therapynoun: Therapy uses activities such as painting, music, movement, or drama to support emotional expression, understanding, and personal change.
creative dramaticsnoun: Spontaneous pretend play, especially with children, supports imagination, communication, and wellbeing through participation rather than a finished performance.
creative geniusnoun: An exceptional ability enables someone to produce highly original work that makes an important contribution to society.
creative imaginationnoun: A mental ability generates strikingly new ideas that may seem to go beyond simply rearranging familiar thoughts.
creative intelligencephrase: In Sternberg's theory, the mental skills used to invent, imagine, explore, and handle new ideas.
creative synthesisnoun: Combining ideas, mental pictures, or associations produces a whole with qualities fundamentally different from those of its separate parts.
creative thinkingphrase: Making a new idea or solution by combining old ideas in an original way.
creativitynoun: Making new and useful ideas, solutions, or products by combining imagination with flexible thinking.
creativity measurementnoun: Psychological assessments estimate creative abilities through tasks that examine originality, idea generation, flexible thinking, or unusual solutions.
credentialingnoun: Checking a health provider's training, license, and work history to decide what services they may provide.
credible intervalnoun: A Bayesian range has a stated probability of containing an unknown quantity, given the observed data, prior information, and model.
cremasteric reflexnoun: An automatic muscle contraction lifts a testicle toward the body when the inner thigh is stroked or exposed to cold.
creolenoun: A complete language develops through sustained contact among different languages, combining inherited features with new patterns of its own.
crepitationnoun: A crackling or grating sound occurs within the body, including sounds from the lungs or rubbing joint surfaces.
crepuscular animalsnoun: These animals show their greatest activity around sunrise or sunset, when daylight is dim.
Crespi effectnoun: A sudden reward change shifts learned performance beyond the level expected if the new reward had been used all along.
cretinismnoun: An outdated, offensive label described congenital hypothyroidism, in which insufficient thyroid hormone from birth can affect growth and intellectual development.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD)noun: A rare, fatal brain disease involving misfolded prion proteins rapidly impairs thinking, memory, and movement.
CRFabbreviation: Giving a reward after every correct response, which builds a new behavior quickly.
CRHabbreviation: A brain hormone that tells the body to begin the stress-response chain.
cri du chat syndromenoun: Missing genetic material from chromosome 5's short arm causes a condition often involving developmental delays and a distinctive, high infant cry.
crib deathnoun: An infant under one year dies unexpectedly, usually during sleep, and the cause remains unexplained after a thorough investigation.
cribriform platenoun: A thin, hole-filled section of skull lets smell-sensing nerve fibers reach brain tissue just above the nasal cavity.
crime control modelnoun: A criminal justice approach prioritizes public safety and order through efficient investigation, apprehension, and processing of people suspected of crimes.
criminal anthropologynoun: A discredited historical approach claimed that inherited physical features could identify people supposedly born with a tendency to commit crimes.
criminal commitmentnoun: Court authority places someone in psychiatric confinement following an insanity acquittal or for evaluation of their ability to participate in trial.
criminal convictionphrase: A court's formal finding that someone committed a crime and is legally guilty.
criminal intentphrase: A person's guilty state of mind when doing an act, showing they meant to break the law.
criminal profilingnoun: Investigators use details of a crime to infer possible offender characteristics and narrow their search for suspects.
criminal psychologynoun: A psychology specialty studies mental processes, feelings, and circumstances behind criminal behavior to inform assessment, prevention, and rehabilitation.
criminal psychopathnoun: An older label combines repeated lawbreaking with a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder.
criminal responsibilitynoun: Legal accountability for a criminal act depends partly on the person's mental capacity and relevant state of mind when it occurred.
criminal typenoun: A historical classification grouped people who repeatedly broke laws under the unsupported assumption that they inherited a criminal disposition.
criminally insaneadjective: An outdated legal description applies to defendants judged not criminally responsible because of a qualifying mental condition.
criminologynoun: This field examines lawbreaking, why people offend, and how society tries to stop and punish it.
crisisnoun: A highly stressful situation that overwhelms coping and often demands quick decisions or change.
crisis centernoun: A support facility offers urgent counseling or connects people facing crises with appropriate services.
crisis counselingphrase: Quick professional help given right after a trauma or disaster to keep people safe and coping.
crisis interventionphrase: Short-term counseling that helps people regain safety and coping after a sudden emotional emergency.
crisis intervention servicenoun: An organized service provides immediate practical or emotional support during personal crises, emergencies, or disasters.
crisis managementnoun: People coordinate staff, supplies, information, and decisions to handle a sudden threat and limit its effects.
crisis teamnoun: A trained group helps people manage emotional and psychological reactions during emergencies and afterward.
crisis theorynoun: A collection of ideas explains how crises begin, affect behavior, and may be prevented or resolved.
crista (crysta)noun: A sensory ridge inside each semicircular canal's widened end contains hair cells that detect changes in head rotation.
criteria of evaluationnoun: Chosen standards guide how researchers judge a program's effects and whether it meets its goals.
criteria of the psychicnoun: Historically proposed signs in an organism's body and behavior were intended to indicate consciousness.
criterionnoun: A standard used to judge, compare, or test how well something matches a goal.
criterion contaminationphrase: Happens when a score is changed by outside factors, so it no longer cleanly measures the target trait.
criterion cutoffnoun: A selected threshold marks the minimum score needed for a particular classification or decision.
criterion dataphrase: Information such as supervisor ratings or absence records used to judge how well someone does a job.
criterion dimensionsnoun: Separate aspects of work performance, such as accuracy and productivity, provide standards for evaluating an employee.
criterion groupnoun: People with an established characteristic take a test to help check whether it measures that characteristic accurately.
criterion problemnoun: A philosophical puzzle asks how we can identify knowledge when judging examples and choosing standards each seem to require the other.
criterion scorenoun: The target score used as a standard for comparison or as the outcome predicted in regression, a score-prediction method.
criterion validityphrase: Shows how well a test matches or predicts an important real-world outcome or standard.
criterion variablephrase: In research, the outcome being predicted or explained by other variables.
criterion-based content analysis (CBCA)noun: An assessment method examines features of children's accounts of alleged abuse to judge credibility, with debated accuracy.
criterion-referenced testphrase: Measures whether someone met a set standard for the material, not how they compare with others.
criticaladjective: Needed for something important to happen or for a process to work normally.
critical bandnoun: A frequency interval around a target tone contains noise components that contribute strongly to making that tone harder to hear.
critical care unit (CCU)noun: A specialized hospital department provides continuous monitoring and intensive medical support for people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries.
critical flicker frequency (CFF)noun: A flashing light reaches this rate when its separate flashes begin to look like steady illumination.
critical life eventnoun: A major life occurrence demands substantial adjustment and may shape a person's later beliefs, attitudes, or development.
critical periodphrase: An early window when certain experiences must happen for normal development, or the skill may never fully form.
critical pointnoun: In therapy, the moment a client clearly understands the problem and chooses a helpful way to address it.
critical rangenoun: A biological measurement needs to stay within these limits for the body to remain healthy.
critical regionnoun: A set of possible test-statistic results leads researchers to reject the null hypothesis under their chosen decision rule.
critical thinkingphrase: Carefully checking ideas or solutions for mistakes helps you judge evidence and solve problems wisely.
critical valuenoun: A numerical boundary separates test-statistic results that reject the null hypothesis from those that do not.
critical-incident stress debriefing (CISD)noun: A structured group intervention reviews a traumatic event and emotional reactions, aiming to reduce distress despite uncertain benefits and possible worsening.
critical-incident technique (CIT)noun: Researchers collect and analyze specific workplace episodes to identify behaviors and conditions linked with especially successful or unsuccessful performance.
CRMabbreviation: Customer relationship management uses combined records of customers' past purchases to predict what they may need later.
Cro-Magnonnoun: A historical name describes early members of our species who lived in Europe during the later Paleolithic period.
Crocker–Henderson odor systemnoun: A historical theory classifies smells by rating four proposed basic qualities: acidic, burnt, caprylic, and fragrant.
Cronbach’s alphaphrase: Shows how consistently items on a test measure the same thing, from 0 to 1.
cross sectionnoun: A slice through an object or organ reveals its internal structure along a chosen plane.
cross-activation theorynoun: One proposed explanation links synesthesia to extra connections between neighboring sensory brain areas that remain after normal developmental trimming.
cross-adaptationnoun: Adjusting to one sensory stimulus changes how sensitive someone is to a different stimulus.
cross-addictionnoun: A person experiences dependence on multiple substances during the same period.
cross-classificationnoun: Researchers sort people or observations using combinations of categories from at least two variables.
cross-classification tablenoun: A grid displays counts or percentages for combinations of categories belonging to two variables.
cross-conditioningnoun: An initially neutral cue gains a learned response by accidentally coinciding with something that naturally produces that response.
cross-correlationnoun: A statistical measure describes how closely corresponding values in different data series vary together.
cross-correlation mechanismnoun: A proposed hearing process compares sound timing between the ears to help determine where a sound originated.
cross-correspondencenoun: Supposedly independent mediums produce matching or complementary messages attributed to one spirit, without establishing that spirits caused the match.
cross-cuingnoun: Information from one sense helps identify something when the more direct sensory information is unavailable.
cross-cultural approachnoun: Researchers compare particular social practices across cultures to examine their similarities and differences.
cross-cultural psychologyphrase: Studies how people's thoughts, feelings, and actions are alike or different across cultures.
cross-cultural researchphrase: Studying thoughts and behavior in different cultures to find what is similar, different, and truly universal.
cross-cultural testingnoun: Psychological assessment across cultural groups requires checking that tests measure the same qualities fairly and meaningfully.
cross-cultural treatmentnoun: Psychological care involves a therapist and client with different cultural backgrounds, requiring attention to how those differences affect treatment.
cross-dependencenoun: One substance can prevent withdrawal from another substance that produces similar effects on the body.
cross-dimension attitude consistencynoun: Different aspects of what someone knows about a subject support similarly positive or negative judgments to a greater or lesser degree.
cross-dressingnoun: Wearing clothes usually linked with another gender for expression, performance, or sexual excitement.
cross-educationnoun: Practicing with one body part improves the performance of another body part that was not directly trained.
cross-eyenoun: An eye alignment condition involves either eye turning inward, which can interfere with the eyes working together.
cross-fosteringnoun: Researchers study offspring raised by nonbiological parents to help separate inherited influences from the effects of upbringing.
cross-functional teamnoun: Employees from different departments and levels of authority combine their expertise to address a shared task or problem.
cross-gender behaviornoun: Someone adopts clothing, gestures, speech, or roles that their society traditionally associates with a gender different from their own.
cross-lagged panel designnoun: Researchers repeatedly measure the same people's variables, testing whether earlier levels of each predict later levels of the others.
cross-linkage theorynoun: A proposed explanation of aging suggests that accumulating links between protein molecules change tissues and reduce how well they function.
cross-modal associationnoun: The brain links information from different senses, such as matching an object's appearance with how it feels.
cross-modal matchingnoun: An object first explored through one sense can later be recognized through a different sense.
cross-modal perceptionphrase: Combining information from different senses, such as sight and sound, to understand one event or object.
cross-modal transfernoun: Someone recognizes an object using a different sense from the one used during the original encounter.
cross-modality matchingnoun: A person adjusts a stimulus in one sense to match the perceived strength of a stimulus in another sense.
cross-nasal adaptationnoun: Smelling an odor through one nostril temporarily reduces sensitivity to that odor in the other nostril.
cross-productnoun: A collection of products results from multiplying every value of one variable by every value of another.
cross-sectional analysisnoun: Researchers examine measurements collected at one time to compare people, groups, or characteristics.
cross-sectional designphrase: Compares different groups, often different ages, at one moment to spot differences without tracking change over time.
cross-sectional samplingnoun: Researchers collect measurements from a sample at one time, sometimes including people of different ages or developmental stages.
cross-sequential designphrase: Tracks several age groups over time so researchers can compare ages now and changes as people grow.
cross-situational consistencynoun: A person's psychological characteristic appears in similar ways across different social settings.
cross-tabulationnoun: A table or summary shows counts or percentages for combinations of categories from two variables.
cross-talknoun: Errors arise when parts of two tasks interfere with each other while someone performs both simultaneously.
cross-tolerancenoun: Getting used to one drug can make a similar drug have less effect.
cross-trainingnoun: Teaching workers several different jobs so they can fill in for each other and increase flexibility.
cross-validationnoun: Checking a prediction method on a new part of the same data shows whether it will hold up.
crossbreedingnoun: Animals reproduce with unrelated or distantly related partners belonging to their own species.
crossed aphasianoun: Language difficulties follow damage in the brain's right half, an unusual location for damage causing aphasia.
crossed disparitynoun: The eyes receive differently positioned images of an object nearer than the surface where their images normally align.
crossed dominancenoun: A person's preferred hand and dominant eye belong to different sides of their body.
crossed reflexnoun: An automatic bodily response happens on the side opposite the location that received stimulation.
crossed-extension reflexnoun: When one leg pulls away from something painful, the other automatically straightens to help support the body.
crossed-factor designnoun: An experiment tests every possible combination of the levels of two or more manipulated factors.
crossing overnoun: Matching chromosomes swap corresponding DNA sections while egg or sperm cells form, creating new genetic combinations.
crossover designnoun: Each participant receives multiple treatments over separate periods, with the treatment order differing between participants or groups.
Crouzon syndromenoun: A genetic condition causes skull bones to join too early, affecting head and facial growth and sometimes vision or brain pressure.
crowdnoun: A temporary group of people in one place paying attention to the same thing.
crowd behaviorphrase: How people act when they gather briefly and focus on the same event or thing.
crowd psychologynoun: This field studies how gathering in crowds shapes people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
crowdingnoun: Stress and tension people feel when too many others share too little space.
CRSabbreviation: Conners’ Rating Scales are questionnaires that help assess attention, activity, and related behavioral concerns in young people.
crusnoun: An anatomical name describes the lower leg or a body structure shaped like a leg.
crus cerebrinoun: A bundle at the front of each cerebral peduncle carries movement signals from the cerebral cortex toward lower nervous structures.
crutchnoun: Something a person leans on to cope, often without fixing the deeper problem.
crying-cat syndromenoun: Missing material from chromosome 5 causes a genetic condition involving developmental differences and a distinctive high-pitched cry during infancy.
cryo-prefix: This word part adds the meaning of cold or freezing to a larger word.
cryogenicsnoun: This branch of physics investigates extremely cold conditions and how materials behave under them.
cryonic suspensionnoun: A deceased person's body is preserved at extremely low temperatures in the unproven hope that future technology could revive them.
cryostatnoun: A refrigerated instrument keeps tissue frozen while cutting very thin slices for examination under a microscope.
crypsisnoun: An animal avoids being noticed by staying still, blending into its surroundings, or using other concealing behavior.
cryptarithmeticnoun: An arithmetic puzzle replaces digits with letters, requiring the solver to discover which number each letter represents.
cryptesthesia (cryptaesthesia)noun: A claimed experience involves gaining information beyond known sensory channels, such as supposed telepathy or clairvoyance.
cryptic female choicenoun: After mating, female reproductive processes influence which male's sperm fertilizes eggs, without requiring conscious decisions.
crypto- (crypt-)prefix: This word part adds the meaning of something hidden or concealed to a larger word.
cryptogramnoun: A coded message substitutes letters for other letters, and the solver must discover the substitutions to read it.
cryptomnesianoun: Someone mistakes a previously encountered idea for their own new creation because they have forgotten its source.
cryptophasianoun: A private way of speaking develops between people, especially twins, that others find difficult to understand.
cryptophoric symbolismnoun: A person expresses an experience or idea indirectly through a metaphor, sometimes as part of therapy.
cryptophthalmos syndromenoun: A rare inherited condition causes skin to cover the eyes and can affect other structures, hearing, and development.
cryptorchidismnoun: One or both testicles have not moved down into the scrotum during development.
crystanoun: A sensory ridge inside each inner-ear semicircular canal contains hair cells that detect changes in head rotation.
crystal gazingnoun: Someone stares at a shiny or transparent object to prompt mental images or claim visions of hidden events.
crystal healingnoun: An unsupported treatment practice claims that crystals can improve physical or mental health by influencing an alleged bodily energy field.
crystallizationnoun: How strongly an attitude lasts over time and stands up against efforts to change it.
crystallized intelligence (crystallized ability)phrase: Stored knowledge and learned skills built from education and life experience, such as vocabulary and facts.
CSabbreviation: A once-neutral cue that triggers a learned response after being paired with something important.
CS–US intervalabbreviation: In conditioning, this measures the time separating a conditioned stimulus (CS) from an unconditioned stimulus (US).
CSAabbreviation: The Controlled Substances Act is a United States law regulating certain drugs according to misuse risks and accepted medical uses.
CSAIabbreviation: The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory assesses a person's immediate anxiety about competition, with later versions also measuring confidence.
CSERPabbreviation: A chemosensory event-related potential is a measurable electrical brain response to chemicals producing smell, taste, or sensations such as nasal tingling.
CSESabbreviation: This questionnaire assesses people's views of their groups, their worth as members, others' opinions, and how belonging shapes their identity.
CSFabbreviation: The clear liquid around the brain and spinal cord cushions and protects the central nervous system.
CSI effectnoun: A proposed influence of television crime dramas raises jurors' expectations of scientific evidence and may affect their verdicts.
CSRabbreviation: Combat stress reaction describes psychological responses to traumatic military events, ranging from mild distress to severe difficulties.
CSSabbreviation: The idea that a conditioned cue can stand in for the unconditioned stimulus.
CTabbreviation: A talk therapy that helps people notice and change unhelpful thoughts.
CT scanabbreviation: A brain imaging test that uses X-rays and computers to create detailed cross-section pictures.
CTDabbreviation: Short for cumulative trauma disorder, this condition involves muscle, tendon, or nerve problems caused by repeated overuse or improper use.
CTIabbreviation: The Constructive Thinking Inventory is a questionnaire assessing habitual thinking styles and how people handle everyday experiences.
CTSabbreviation: Short for carpal tunnel syndrome, this condition involves pressure on the wrist's median nerve, potentially causing numbness, tingling, or weakness.
CTTabbreviation: A way to understand test scores by separating true ability from random measurement error.
CTZabbreviation: The chemoreceptor trigger zone contains brainstem cells that detect certain chemicals and help set off nausea and vomiting.
cube modelnoun: This attribution model explains judgments about behavior's causes using consistency over time, differences across situations, and agreement with others' behavior.
cubic difference tonenoun: An extra tone can arise within the ear at twice the lower input frequency minus the higher input frequency.
cubicle etiquettenoun: Shared expectations guide considerate behavior around office cubicles, including managing noise, smells, cleanliness, and coworkers' privacy.
cuckoldrynoun: In animal behavior research, a female with a social partner mates with another male, potentially producing offspring her partner raises.
cuddlingnoun: Holding someone gently and closely can express affection, offer comfort, and support attachment, especially between caregivers and children.
cuenoun: A signal or hint that helps behavior, such as bringing back a memory or predicting what comes next.
cue exposurephrase: A treatment exposes someone to triggers for substance use while helping the craving weaken and fade.
cue reactivitynoun: Learned reminders of a reward, substance, or activity can trigger mental and bodily responses, including craving or urges.
cue reversalnoun: A previously learned signal changes to predict the opposite outcome, requiring the learner to update its meaning.
cue-controlled relaxationnoun: A person practices pairing a word with relaxation so that the word can later help bring about calm.
cue-dependent forgettingphrase: Memory fails when the reminder present during learning is missing during recall.
cue-overload principlenoun: A memory prompt becomes less useful for finding a particular memory as more memories become connected to it.
cued panic attacknoun: A sudden episode of intense fear and physical symptoms almost always follows encountering or anticipating a particular situation.
cued recallphrase: Remembering learned information when given a hint linked to it during study.
cued speechnoun: Hand shapes and placements accompany speech movements to make otherwise visually confusing speech sounds distinguishable for deaf or hard-of-hearing people.
cul-de-sacnoun: In maze studies, a passage ends without another way out, so the learner must return through the entrance.
culpabilitynoun: In its legal sense, being held responsible for criminal conduct makes a person subject to legal penalties.
cultnoun: A contested label describes religious or similar groups with strong authority, tight member bonds, and separation from wider society.
cult of personalitynoun: Excessive admiration centers on a leader and is often deliberately encouraged to strengthen that person's authority.
cultural absolutismnoun: This view proposes that common standards can be used to understand and judge beliefs and behavior across cultures.
cultural adaptabilitynoun: People or groups can adjust to unfamiliar cultural expectations, traditions, and ways of living in a different community.
cultural anthropologynoun: This field studies how human communities develop and maintain customs, meanings, beliefs, and social institutions.
cultural assimilationnoun: People adopt the dominant group's cultural identity and practices while giving up or reducing connections to their original culture.
cultural biasphrase: Judging people or tests through your own culture's values can lead to unfair conclusions.
cultural blindnessnoun: Strong reliance on one's own cultural assumptions makes it difficult to recognize how people from other cultures understand things.
cultural competencephrase: Having the knowledge and skills to work respectfully and effectively with people from different cultures.
cultural conservenoun: A story, custom, object, or other lasting creation preserves a community's knowledge, values, discoveries, or skills.
cultural consonancenoun: A person's beliefs and everyday life match, to varying degrees, shared ideas about how people should live within their cultural settings.
cultural deprivationnoun: Social barriers such as poverty or discrimination can limit opportunities to access and participate in a society's cultural activities.
cultural determinismnoun: This theory proposes that a society's organization and cultural environment largely produce its members' characteristics and behavior.
cultural diversitynoun: Different cultural traditions, identities, beliefs, and practices exist across communities or alongside one another within a society.
cultural driftnoun: A community's customs, expectations, and values gradually shift over time without anyone directing the overall change.
cultural epoch theorynoun: This largely discredited historical theory claimed that every culture develops through an identical sequence of social and economic stages.
cultural ergonomicsnoun: This specialty studies cultural influences on work and uses that knowledge to design systems people can operate safely and effectively.
cultural genocidenoun: A group's heritage, values, and ways of living are systematically destroyed, commonly through the actions of a more powerful group.
cultural heritagenoun: Shared customs, language, values, and creations passed down through generations that help a cultural group keep its identity.
cultural learningphrase: Passing along learned behaviors and knowledge accurately between people and generations through imitation, teaching, and working together.
cultural memorynoun: Members of a community share understandings of past events through personal recollections, stories, symbols, monuments, and traditions.
cultural monismnoun: This view favors minority groups adopting the dominant culture, claiming that cultural differences weaken a society's unity.
cultural neurosciencenoun: This field investigates relationships between cultural experiences and the brain processes involved in thinking, feeling, and behavior.
cultural normnoun: A shared expectation within a culture guides which actions people consider acceptable, appropriate, or desirable.
cultural parallelismnoun: Similar cultural practices develop in geographically separate groups believed to have had no contact with one another.
cultural pluralismnoun: Different cultural groups maintain their identities within a shared society while having equal standing and access to power.
cultural processnoun: Cultural values pass between generations and change as each generation responds to the conditions and influences around it.
cultural psychologyphrase: Studies how culture shapes people's thoughts, feelings, and actions through everyday relationships and social settings.
cultural relativismphrase: People and practices should be understood within their own culture, not judged by another culture's rules.
cultural residuenoun: Older beliefs or customs persist when cultural adjustment falls behind changing technology, economic conditions, or other aspects of life.
cultural sensitivityphrase: Understanding and respecting another group's values and adjusting your behavior to work well with them.
cultural specificity of emotionsnoun: Cultural settings influence which situations bring about emotions and how people express those emotions.
cultural tailoringphrase: Changing a study or treatment to fit a group's culture so people understand it and benefit more.
cultural test biasnoun: A test unfairly advantages certain cultural backgrounds when its content, format, or procedures distort measurement of the intended ability.
cultural transmissionnoun: People pass cultural knowledge, customs, beliefs, and rituals to younger generations through teaching, observation, and shared activities.
cultural turnnoun: Scholars increasingly placed culture at the center of explanations for human behavior, social issues, and historical events.
cultural universalismnoun: This perspective holds that shared standards can apply when interpreting and evaluating ideas, values, and actions across different cultures.
culturally loaded itemnoun: A test question relies on particular cultural experiences, potentially making answers reflect background familiarity more than the ability being assessed.
culturenoun: Shared beliefs, values, language, and customs learned in a group and passed down across generations.
culture boundadjective: An attitude, practice, or behavior is shaped by a particular culture and is uncommon beyond that cultural setting.
culture changenoun: A community's beliefs, customs, values, or practices become different over time, sometimes through contact with other communities.
culture clashnoun: An encounter reveals differing customs, values, or expectations between cultural groups, sometimes creating misunderstanding or disagreement.
culture complexnoun: A connected group of customs, beliefs, and activities centers on one important feature of a community’s life.
culture conflictnoun: Tension arises between cultures or within someone pulled toward different cultural expectations and loyalties.
culture lagnoun: Some cultural beliefs or practices change slowly and become poorly matched to newer social, economic, or technological conditions.
culture leadnoun: One part of a culture develops or changes more quickly than the rest.
culture of childrennoun: Children share customs, beliefs, and social rules that differ from adults’ and spread through interaction with other children.
culture of honorphrase: Some groups teach that people must strongly defend family reputation and personal respect when challenged.
culture patternnoun: Related traditions, beliefs, and activities form a recognizable group around a central feature of cultural life.
culture shocknoun: Entering an unfamiliar culture or facing major cultural change can bring confusion, loneliness, anxiety, or distress.
culture traitnoun: A particular belief, custom, skill, or object helps describe an aspect of a culture.
culture-bias theorynoun: This theory proposes that measurement methods can unfairly favor people from some cultures over people from others.
culture-bound syndromenoun: This historical label describes culturally distinctive patterns of distress or symptoms that may not fit standard diagnostic categories.
culture-fair testnoun: An assessment aims to reduce advantages linked to cultural background, although some cultural influence can remain.
culture-free testnoun: An idealized assessment would remove all cultural bias, but completely achieving that goal is probably impossible.
culture-relevant testsnoun: These assessments use carefully checked tasks and content suited to the cultural setting of the people taking them.
culture-specific syndromenoun: This historical label names culturally distinctive patterns of symptoms or distress that may fall outside standard diagnostic categories.
cumulantnoun: A numerical summary describes a feature of a probability distribution, such as its average, spread, or asymmetry.
cumulative continuitynoun: The results of someone’s actions build up over time and help steer the direction of their life.
cumulative distribution function (CDF)noun: For each possible cutoff, this function reports how likely an outcome is to fall at or below that cutoff.
cumulative educational advantagenoun: Knowledge built through learning over time gives someone an increasingly useful advantage.
cumulative frequency (CF)noun: A total counts observations up through a chosen value or category in an ordered sequence.
cumulative frequency distributionnoun: A table lists ordered values, their individual counts, and the combined count through each value.
cumulative percentagenoun: Percentages are added across successive categories, showing the share included so far and eventually reaching 100 percent.
cumulative probabilitynoun: The combined chance of obtaining a result no higher than a chosen value ranges from zero to one.
cumulative probability distributionnoun: A graph shows, for each value, the probability of a randomly selected observation being no higher than that value.
cumulative recordnoun: A continuously updated tally or graph tracks accumulating observations, often showing the total responses during a learning experiment.
cumulative rehearsalnoun: A memory strategy repeats each new item together with previously presented items, keeping earlier information in practice.
cumulative relative frequencynoun: The fraction of all observations included up through a chosen value combines the proportions at earlier values.
cumulative response curvenoun: A graph tracks total responses over time, with steeper sections showing faster responding and flat sections showing pauses.
cumulative scalenoun: An attitude measure orders statements so that agreeing with a stronger statement implies agreement with every weaker one.
cumulative trauma disorder (CTD)noun: Repeated overuse or strain can gradually damage muscles, tendons, or nerves, causing ongoing pain or fatigue.
cuneateadjective: Something with a wedge shape, tapering toward one end, can be described using this adjective.
cuneate fasciculusnoun: A sensory nerve pathway in the spinal cord carries upper body signals upward to the cuneate nucleus in the brainstem.
cuneate nucleusnoun: A cluster of brainstem nerve cells receives sensory signals carried upward through the cuneate fasciculus.
cuneate tuberclenoun: A raised area on the back of the medulla contains the cuneate nucleus, which receives upper body sensory signals.
cuneusnoun: A wedge of brain tissue lies on the inner occipital surface, above the calcarine groove, and contributes to vision.
cunnilingusnoun: This sexual activity involves using the lips or tongue to stimulate the vulva, including the clitoris.
cupulanoun: A jellylike cap inside an inner ear semicircular canal bends with fluid movement, helping the body detect head rotation.
curarenoun: Plant extracts block acetylcholine signals where nerves meet skeletal muscles, causing paralysis, and have been used in learning research.
curative damagesnoun: Money awarded through a civil lawsuit goes to charity on the claimant’s behalf to address a related social problem.
curative factorsnoun: Processes within group therapy, such as shared hope, belonging, and learning from others, help people make beneficial changes.
curiositynoun: A natural urge to explore, notice, and learn more about new or interesting things.
current materialnoun: Details about a client's current feelings, relationships, and life events used to understand their inner emotional patterns.
curricular field experiencenoun: Students gain knowledge through workplace participation or observation connected to their studies, often earning course credit.
curriculumnoun: The planned courses and lessons students are expected to learn in a school or program.
curriculum developmentnoun: Educators plan learning content and teaching materials around clear concepts, evidence, educational expectations, and ways to check progress.
curriculum-based assessmentnoun: A broad evaluation combines tests, observations, and other evidence to judge how well students have learned specified course content.
curriculum-based measurementnoun: A focused assessment measures student performance using tasks drawn from the curriculum being taught.
curve fittingnoun: Statistical methods choose a mathematical line or curve that closely matches observed data while reducing prediction errors.
curvilinearadjective: Describes a relationship that rises one way, then turns and goes the other way.
curvilinear regressionnoun: A statistical method models a curved relationship in which equal predictor changes can correspond to different amounts of outcome change.
Cushing’s syndromenoun: Prolonged exposure to excessive cortisol or similar medicines causes bodily changes and can affect mood and thinking.
cusp catastrophe modelnoun: A mathematical model describes how gradual changes in two controlling factors can produce sudden, large shifts in an outcome.
custodial carephrase: Help with basic daily needs for people with long-term disabilities, usually without providing actual mental health treatment.
custodial casenoun: A legal proceeding determines who should hold custody of a child and take responsibility for the child’s care.
customnoun: A culture's accepted way of acting in certain situations, passed down from older to younger generations.
customary, prevailing, and reasonable fees (CPR fees)noun: A reimbursement standard uses typical local charges to help determine payment for health care services.
customer relationship management (CRM)noun: Companies combine stored customer information, including past purchases, to anticipate needs and guide their relationships with customers.
cutaneousadjective: Something described this way involves the skin, including its structures, sensations, or responses.
cutaneous experiencenoun: A feeling such as warmth, itching, or touch arises when sensory endings within skin are activated.
cutaneous perceptionnoun: The brain becomes aware of touch, temperature, and other skin stimulation by processing signals from skin receptors.
cutaneous perception of colornoun: An alleged ability allows someone to identify colors through skin contact without using vision.
cutaneous rabbit illusionnoun: Rapid taps at separated skin locations can seem to include taps in untouched places between them.
cutaneous receptive fieldnoun: A particular patch of skin provides sensory input to a specific nerve cell or nerve pathway.
cutaneous receptornoun: A specialized sensory ending within skin detects stimulation and starts nerve signals that contribute to bodily sensations.
cutaneous sensenoun: A sensory ability uses skin receptors to detect contact, pressure, warmth, cold, vibration, or painful stimulation.
cutaneous-pupillary reflexnoun: The pupil automatically widens in response to scratching the cheek or chin.
cutoff scorephrase: The lowest test score needed to qualify for a category, decision, or passing result.
cuttingnoun: Deliberately injuring your own skin, often by making cuts, usually as a way to cope with intense distress.
cutting off reflected failure (CORFing)phrase: People protect their self-image by weakening their connection to a group that performs poorly or loses status.
CVabbreviation: The abbreviation can mean cardiovascular, concerning circulation, or curriculum vitae, a document listing education and professional accomplishments.
CVAabbreviation: Short for cerebrovascular accident, this means a stroke caused by blocked brain blood flow or bleeding.
CVLTabbreviation: This assessment measures verbal learning and memory by asking people to remember spoken words under several conditions.
CVSabbreviation: Short for chorionic villus sampling, this prenatal procedure examines placental tissue to check for certain genetic conditions.
CWBabbreviation: Short for counterproductive work behavior, this covers employee actions that interfere with an organization's functioning or its members' goals.
cyanopsianoun: A change in color vision makes objects appear unusually blue or covered by a blue tint.
cyberbullyingnoun: Bullying done through phones, social media, or other online messages meant to hurt or shame someone.
cybernetic epistemologynoun: This approach examines knowledge through feedback systems, including how meaning and interaction with an environment support knowing.
cybernetic theoryphrase: Explains families as self-correcting systems that use feedback to keep patterns steady or restore balance.
cyberneticsnoun: This field studies how living things and machines communicate, regulate their activity, and adjust using feedback.
cybersexnoun: People engage in sexual communication or activity with each other through digital technology, usually while physically apart.
cyclenoun: A repeating pattern of events or changes that happens over time, sometimes at regular intervals.
cycle of violencephrase: Describes repeating stages in abusive relationships: calm affection, rising tension, and then violence, often worsening over time.
cyclicadjective: A process follows recurring phases, with different states returning over time.
cyclic adenosine monophosphatenoun: A molecule called cAMP carries signals within cells after certain receptors respond to neurotransmitters or hormones.
cyclic AMP (cAMP; cyclic adenosine monophosphate)noun: A cellular messenger, cyclic adenosine monophosphate, helps translate certain neurotransmitter and hormone signals into changes inside cells.
cyclic datanoun: Measurements show a recognizable pattern that returns over time, often across repeated periods.
cyclic GMP (cGMP; cyclic guanosine monophosphate)noun: A molecule called cyclic guanosine monophosphate relays signals inside cells, including neurons receiving messages from other neurons.
cyclic nucleotidenoun: A ring-containing molecule, such as cAMP or cGMP, helps convert incoming chemical messages into actions inside cells.
cyclical vomiting syndromenoun: A condition causes repeated episodes of intense vomiting, separated by periods when the person generally feels well.
cyclobenzaprinenoun: A medicine reduces short-term muscle spasms through effects on the nervous system and can cause sleepiness.
cycloid psychosisnoun: A disputed diagnostic concept describes recurring psychotic episodes with rapidly changing disturbances in thinking, mood, or movement.
cyclopean eyenoun: A theoretical viewpoint between the eyes represents their combined visual information when explaining spatial perception and eye movements.
cyclophorianoun: An eye tends to rotate out of alignment when coordinated viewing with both eyes is interrupted.
cyclopianoun: A rare condition present at birth involves a single central eye cavity, with eye structures partly or completely fused.
cyclosporine (cyclosporin)noun: A medicine suppresses immune activity to help prevent transplant rejection and treat some conditions involving excessive immune responses.
cyclothymic disorderphrase: A long-lasting mood problem with milder high and low periods than full bipolar disorder.
cyclotropianoun: One or both eyes are rotationally misaligned, with a clockwise or counterclockwise twist that can disrupt coordinated vision.
Cylertnoun: A former brand name identified pemoline, a stimulant used for ADHD that was withdrawn in some countries over liver risks.
CYPabbreviation: The abbreviation means cytochrome P450, a family of enzymes that chemically process many substances, including psychiatric medicines.
cyproheptadinenoun: A medicine blocks histamine and some serotonin effects, treating allergies and sometimes conditions involving excessive serotonin activity.
cystathionine synthetase deficiencynoun: An inherited enzyme shortage disrupts homocysteine processing, causing a form of homocystinuria that can affect development and blood vessels.
cystathioninurianoun: An inherited shortage of the enzyme cystathionase disrupts amino acid processing and increases cystathionine in urine.
cyto-prefix: This word part signals that a biological word concerns cells.
cytoarchitecturenoun: The layout of cells within tissue, especially brain tissue, helps distinguish regions with different structures and functions.
cytochrome oxidasenoun: An enzyme in mitochondria helps cells use oxygen to release usable energy, with activity patterns useful for studying vision.
cytochrome oxidase blob (CO blob)noun: A small region of primary visual cortex has especially high cytochrome oxidase activity and contains neurons involved in color processing.
cytochrome P450 (CYP)noun: A family of enzymes chemically changes many substances, including psychiatric medicines, influencing how the body handles drugs.
cytogenetic mapnoun: A chromosome diagram uses numbered staining bands as landmarks for locating genes and other chromosome features.
cytokinenoun: A small protein released by cells carries messages that help coordinate immune activity, including inflammation and fever.
cytologynoun: A branch of biology examines how cells form, what they contain, and how they work.
cytomegalovirusnoun: A herpes-family virus often causes no noticeable illness but can affect hearing and development when infection occurs before birth.
Cytomelnoun: A brand name identifies liothyronine, a thyroid hormone medicine sometimes added to antidepressant treatment when response is insufficient.
cytoplasmnoun: The material inside a cell membrane but outside its nucleus includes fluid and many working cell structures.
cytosinenoun: A chemical base represented by C helps encode genetic information in DNA and RNA.
cytoskeletonnoun: A network of protein fibers inside a cell supports its shape, organizes its contents, and helps materials move.

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