A Student’s Dictionary of Psychology and Neuroscience 7th Edition

Book Preface

Times move on, and changes happen fast, so we have updated the entire volume of this, our latest edition of A Student’s Dictionary of Psychology and Neuroscience. Our coverage of both general psychology and neuropsychology has been signifi-cantly extended, and we have included many other relevant psychological concepts which have arisen from socio-technological developments. These include the areas of well-being and mental health, internet-based research and psychotherapy, and statistical and methodological developments. We hope that this means that those studying psychology, neuropsychology, nursing, or any other related fields will con-tinue to find this dictionary a useful support for their studies.
As ever, our mission to explain rather than simply define means, we hope, that following up all of the relevant cross-references to a given topic should allow the reader to acquire a reasonably full overview of the area. In that sense, we have often referred to this dictionary as a kind of random-access textbook, rather than just a dictionary of major terms. Since our belief is that many of the people who use it in this way will be doing so in order to help them to write an essay, we have also included useful tips on how to go about this at the end of this book. Essays are one of the more common forms of assignment in psychology, but the tips are just as relevant for someone trying to put together an introduction or a discussion for a research project.
Apart from the inclusion of recent terminology, and the extension of our cover-age of neuropsychology, our older definitions have been updated: the first edition of this dictionary was published back in 1988, since which time psychology has moved on in many ways. We have also included some time-tested classic references at the end of the book, as well as a list of common abbreviations. We hope you will find all these features useful.

Nicky Hayes and Peter Stratton

Contents
About the authors
Preface
Acknowledgement
A–Z of psychology and neuroscience
Appendix 1: Key references
Appendix 2: Study notes – how to write an essay Appendix 3: List of abbreviations