Which term refers to a psychological condition that can be caused by emotional factors, characterized by memory loss?

Prepare for ASU's PSY101 Exam 2. Utilize comprehensive study guides with multiple-choice questions. Understand psychological concepts and processes. Ace your test!

The term that refers to a psychological condition characterized by memory loss and potentially caused by emotional factors is amnesia. Amnesia specifically involves memory impairment that can stem from various causes, including psychological stress or trauma, leading to significant gaps in a person's recall of events or information. This type of memory loss can occur in various forms, such as retrograde amnesia, where an individual struggles to remember events that occurred before a certain point, or anterograde amnesia, which affects the ability to form new memories.

In the context of emotional factors, psychogenic amnesia is a form of memory loss driven primarily by psychological elements rather than physical brain injuries or diseases. This links well to the concept of how emotional states, such as trauma, can disrupt an individual's normal memory function, resulting in significant gaps in personal history or learned information.

Other terms listed involve different conditions: dissociative identity disorder relates to a disruption in identity and consciousness, dementia refers to a decline in cognitive function due to disease processes affecting the brain (commonly seen in conditions like Alzheimer's), and fugues pertain to a dissociative disorder where an individual may suddenly travel away from home and have an inability to recall their past, often linked to identity disturbances. While these options

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