Psychologist

The applicant's answer should relate their expertise and specialization areas. Potential specializations within the field of psychology include assessment, child development, cognitive psychology, group therapy and psychoanalysis. While the applicant should exhibit skill and experience in all areas of psychology and therapy, they should convey their specific strengths and specialty in this response. They should enumerate relevant prior experience. What to look for in an answer:

Enumeration of strengths relevant to the position

Description of special skills or interests in the field

Evidence of a motivation that is in line with the kind of psychology

Clinical psychologists typically have experience in different counseling settings. For example, some candidates specialize in individual therapy with adults while others work primarily with children. Some therapists enjoy and have experience in marital or partner therapies whereas others may be very strong at running group sessions. Matching your applicant's understanding with the type of sessions demanded the most at your practice will be important. What to look for in an answer:

Experience in the setting you require

Understanding of individual, marital and group therapy

Willingness to grow into new areas

auditory nerve one of the basic structures of the ear formed by the axons of all the hair cells on the basilar membrane, this structure carries information about sounds to the brain for further processing

borderline personality disorder a personality disorder characterized by distrust, impulsive and self-destructive behavior, and difficulty in controlling anger and other emotions

concrete operational stage in Piaget’s theory, the developmental period from about ages six to eleven, at this time, the child has acquired mental operations that allow her or him to abstract some essential attributes or reality, such as number and substance, but these operations are as yet applicable to only concrete events and cannot be considered entirely in the abstract

distinctiveness the extent to which a person’s behavior is unique, that is the extent to which a given behavior does or does not occur across different situations, in Kelley’s theory, this is one piece of information used to determine whether people make dispositional or situational attributions for behavior

anal stage according to Freud, the second stage of childhood development, which occurs between one to three years of age, in which psychic energy becomes focused on anal activities, such as defecation

behavioral medicine an interdisciplinary field which encompasses scientific research, education, and practice focusing on the relation between behaviors to health, illness, and related physiological problems

culturally sensitive therapy therapy designed to be responsive to variations of values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors across cultures, when dealing with disadvantaged groups, it avoids blaming the victim and recognizes that behaviors defined as abnormal by the dominant society may be coping strategies necessary for survival

diffusion of responsibility a decrease in a person’s individual sense of responsibility to help in an emergency that occurs when bystanders are present, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely a helping response is to occur

artificial intelligence the programming in a computer that instructs it to behave in intelligent ways, as in simulating human knowledge and skills to accomplish a task, as well as the branch of computer science concerned with such programming

blind spot the place on the retina where the optic nerve exits the eyeball that lacks rods or cones, the brain fills in information to compensate for the lack of receptors in this area

attachment behaviors the signals, e.g., crying, smiling, reaching, and clinging from infants that trigger responsiveness in caregivers, increasing the likelihood of attachment

Cannon-Bard theory the perspective that suggests that when we are exposed to emotion-provoking events or stimuli, we simultaneously experience both physiological arousal and the subjective experience of emotions

culture a people’s way of life, including material goods, social institutions, and the symbols, concepts, values, beliefs, norms, habits, skills, and other learned capabilities acquired by human beings and transmitted across generations

binocular disparity when both eyes are focused on the same object, the difference in the retinal position of the object’s image in the left and right eyes provides a cue for depth perception

autoimmune diseases a class of diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, that are characterized by a disruption of the chemical communication system that regulates the immune system, instead of attacking antigens, the immune system attacks healthy tissues of the body and causes inflammation or deterioration

amniocentesis a medical technique used after the sixteenth week of pregnancy whereby a sample of amniotic fluid is drawn from the amniotic sac surrounding the fetus, an analysis of the fluid enables doctors to determine whether the fetus has certain chromosomal abnormalities

differentiation a progressive change from the general to the particular and from the simpler to the more complex which characterizes embryological development, according to some theorists, the same patters holds for the development of behavior after birth