Affective Reactions–Psychotic reactions marked by extreme mood swings.
Anxiety–A general uneasiness of the mind characterized by irrational fears, panic , tension and physical symptoms including palpitations, excessive sweating and increased pulse rate.
Assessment–The process of gathering information about children in order to make educational decisions.
Baseline Data–An objective measure used to compare and evaluate the results obtained during some implementation of an instructional procedure.
Compulsion–A persistent , repetitive act which the individual cannot consciously control.
Confabulation–The act of replacing memory loss by fantasy or by some reality that is not true for the occasion.
Defense Mechanisms–The unconscious means by which an individual protects itself against impulses or emotions that are too uncomfortable or threatening. Examples of these mechanisms include the following:
Denial– A defense mechanism in which the individual refuses to admit the reality of some unpleasant event, situation, or emotion.
Displacement-The disguising of the goal or intention of a motive by substituting another in its place.
Intellectualization-A defense mechanism in which the individual exhibits anxious or moody deliberation, usually about abstract matters.
Projection-The disguising of a source of conflict by displacing one’s own motives to someone else.
Rationalization-The interpretation of one’s own behavior so as to conceal the motive it expresses by assigning the behavior to another motive.
Reaction Formation-A complete disguise of a motive that it is expressed in a form that is directly opposite to its original intent.
Repression-Refers to the psychological process involved in not permitting memories and motives to enter consciousness but are operating at an unconscious level.
Suppression-The act of consciously inhibiting an impulse, affect or idea, as in the deliberate act of forgetting something so as not to have to think about it.
Delusion–A groundless, irrational belief or thought, usually of grandeur or of persecution. It is usually a characteristic of paranoia.
Depersonalization–A non-specific syndrome in which the individual senses that he has lost his personal identity, that he is different, strange or not real.
Echolalia–Refers tothe repetition of what other people say as if echoing them.
Etiology–Refers to the cause/s of something.
Hallucination–An imaginary visual image that is regarded as a real sensory experience by the person.
Magical Thinking–Refers to primitive and pre-logical thinking in which the child creates a outcome to meet his fantasy rather than the reality.
Neologisms-Made up words that only have meaning to the child or adult.
Obsessions–A repetitive and persistent idea that intrudes into a person’s thoughts.
Panic Attacks–A serious episode of anxiety in which the individual experiences a variety of symptoms including palpitations, dizziness, nausea, chest pains, trembling, fear of dying and fear of losing control. These symptoms are not the result of any medical cause.
Paranoia–A personality disorder in which the individual exhibits extreme suspiciousness of the motives of others.
Phobia–An intense irrational fear, usually acquired through conditioning to an unpleasant object or event.
Projective Tests–Methods used by psychologists and psychiatrists to study personality dynamics through a series of structured or ambiguous stimuli.
Psychosis–A serious mental disorder in which the individual has difficulty differentiating between fantasy and reality.
Rorschach Test–An unstructured psychological test in which the individual is asked to project responses to a series of 10 inkblots.
School Phobia–A form of separation anxiety in which the child’s concerns and anxieties are centered around school issues and as a result he/she has an extreme fear about coming to school.
Symptom–Refers to any sign, physical or mental, that stands for something else. Symptoms are usually generated from the tension of conflicts. The more serious the problem or conflict, the more frequent and intense the symptom.
Syndrome–A group of symptoms.
Thematic Apperception Test–A structured psychological test in which the individual is asked to project his/her feelings onto a series of drawings or photo’s.
Wechsler Scales of Intelligence–A series of individual intelligence tests measuring global intelligence through a variety of subtests.
