Keith E Rice - Glossary

Ap-Az

Aphasia: a partial or complete loss of language functions due to brain damage.
Eg: Broca's Aphasia is a disruption to speech production caused by damage to Broca's Area.

Acquiescence Response: a respondent to a questionnaire or in an interview agrees with one item because they’ve agreed with the immediate previous items when, if asked about the item on its own, they might not have given the same answer.

Archetypes: according to Carl Gustav Jung (1919), inherited, unconscious ideas and images that are components of the Collective Unconscious.

Arcuate Fasciculus: a major nerve pathway connecting Wernicke’s Area with Broca’s Area.

Damage to the neurons in the pathway leads to Conduction Aphasia - sufferers of which can understand language but their own speech does not make sense and they cannot repeat words.

Arousal: the body's level of alertness and activation as reflected in certain physiological responses such as heart rate or muscle tension.

Articulatory-Phonological Loop: see Working Memory Model.

'As If' Frame: an NLP exercise in which the individual imagines they have already achieved a desired state or outcome or overcome a limiting belief (maladaptive schema). They then associate into that state, absorbing its qualities. The exercise gives powerful insights into how to achieve a desired state and on occasion may even free someone from a limiting belief.

The concept has its roots in the ‘As If’ philosophy of Hans Vaihinger (1924) who held that sensations and feelings are real but the rest of human knowledge consists of pragmatically justified ‘fictions’.

Ascription: the occupying of jobs, authority within the family and political roles on the basis of inheritance or fixed characteristics such as gender and race.

Asperger's Syndrome: see Autism.

Assimilation: see Accomodation.

Assimilation-Contrast Effect: from the work of Muzafer Sherif (& Carolyn Wood Sherif, 1969), this is the recognition that the more extreme someone's views are in a conflict or disagreement, the more they will reject other views - even those which are more moderate versions of their own - such is the contrast they draw. On the other hand, someone with relatively moderate views is more likely to at least partially assimilate the views of moderates on the other side.
Don Beck (2003) has done some work on mapping vMEMES to the Assimilation-Contrast Effect and come to the conclusion that BLUE and below are more likely to contrast while the emergence of ORANGE in the hierarchy substantially increases the possibilities of assimilation.

Association: a connection or link made between two things that are often presented together - eg: milk and mother.

Association Areas: parts of the cerebral cortex involved in higher-order processing - such as associations between sensory and motor activity as well as language.

Association Hypothesis: George Williams' (1975) explanation of parental investment - that the adult left in closest proximity to the embryo will be the one that tends to care for the offspring. Where external fertilisation takes place, this will usually be the male; where fertilisation is internal, this will be the female.

Attachment: generally taken to mean a binding affection; in Developmental Psychology it is used more specifically with reference to the strong and reciprocal emotional tie between an infant and its primary caregiver(s) which causes the desire to maintain proximity.

Attachment Deprivation: the detrimental effect when separation from an attachment figure is lengthy enough for bond disruption to take place. (The separation does not necessarily have to be continuous; repeated short-term separations within a close time frame can also be damaging.)

In Developmental Psychology research into the effects of attachment deprivation has largely focused on the damage to infant attachment to the mother or primary caregiver. However, attachment deprivation can also occur (in different ways and with different effects) in all emotionally-significant relationships in all ages of life.

Attachment Disorder: a behavioural disorder caused by the lack of an emotionally secure attachment to a caregiver in the first two years of life, characterised by difficulties in forming healthy relationships. Other common symptoms, especially in children, are poor impulse control, chronic anger, and antisocial tendencies. See also Reactive Attachment Disorder.

In Integrated SocioPsychology terms, the PURPLE vMEME has not had its safety-in-belonging needs met, resulting in RED dominating in the selfplex as a compensation - usually in unhealthy ways.

Attachment Figure: the preferred object of attachment - eg: a parent for a young child.

Attachment Type: from working with Strange Situation procedures, Mary Ainsworth & Sylvia Bell (1970) identified 3 ways in which infants attached to their mothers (or primary caregivers):-

Type B - Secure: infants are confident to explore the world when mother is present, show distress in her absence and greet her warmly when she returns
Type C - Anxious-Resistant: infants show signs of anxiety even in mother's presence, are considerably distressed in her absence and will be both clingy and angry when she returns
Type A - Anxious-Avoidant: infants show little or no concern in the mother's absence or pleasure when she returns

Mary Main & Judith Solomon (1986) later identified a fourth type:-

Type D - Disorganised: infants - often those who have been abused or whose mothers are chronically depressed - show no set pattern of behaviour in mother's presence or absence.

The type of attachment formed can be seen as reflecting the health of the PURPLE vMEME. The famous 'Love Quiz' (1987 & 1993) studies demonstrated the importance of attachment types influencing relationships in later life, particularly romantic/sexual ones.

Attention: the focusing of perception leading to heightened awareness of specific stimuli, resulting in further processing of the information.

In Richard Atkinson & Richard Schiffrin’s Multi-Store Model of Memory (1968), attention is the means of transferring information from the sensory stores to short-term memory.

Attribution Bias: a systematic way of behaving when making attributions which leads to mistakes in explaining both your own behaviour and the behaviour of others,

Attribution Theory: developed from the work of Fritz Heider (1958), this approach is about the attribution of causality and whether it is dispositional (you are the maker of your own fortunes) or situational (you are at the mercy of external forces).
Building on Heider's work, Julian Rotter (1968) established that people do tend to attribute one way or the other in most things throughout their lives - though the degree of directional attribution will vary (as on a scale) from issue to issue. Rotter concluded that an individual's preference for dispositional or situational attribution may lie in innate tendencies, with contextual reward or punishment refining the degree of attribution.
The concepts of Attribution Theory have influenced 'positive thinking gurus' from Dale Carnegie (1936) through to Stephen Covey (1989) and beyond.
However, just using a dispositional-situational approach is often too simplistic for many people in many situations. The finer attributional structure of the Cognitive Triad enables much deeper analysis of how vMEMES influence meta-stating patterns.

Atypical Anti-Psychotic Medication: is a group of anti-psychotic drugs used to treat psychiatric conditions. Some atypical anti-psychotics, such as clozapine, are used in the treatment of Schizophrenia. Others are used to deal with such conditions as Mania and psychotic agitation.

Atypicals are a group of unrelated drugs united by the fact that they work differently from typical anti-psychotics. Most share a common attribute of working on serotonin receptors as well as dopamine receptors.

Auditory Cortex: the part of the cerebral cortex dedicated to hearing, located in the temporal lobes.

Authoritarian Personality: the type of person famously identified by Theodore Adorno (Adorno et al, 1950) as having rigid beliefs, being hostile towards other groups and non-conformists and likely to be highly submissive to the 'correct authority'.
Adorno was one of the many behavioural scientists in the post-World War II era investigating how supposedly 'ordinary, decent' Germans could have carried out large-scale barbarous and horrifically-cruel acts under the Nazis. His work led him to conclude that the answer lay in personality traits and that such people were authoritarian personalities.
Coming largely from a Psychoanalytic background, Adorno attributed the prejudice of the Authoritarian Personality to repressed resentment against bullying and overstrict paternal behaviour in childhood being displaced against ‘permissible targets’ such as ethnic minorities or ‘sexual deviants’. In Integrated SocioPsychology terms, this kind of person would have a very high quotient of the BLUE vMEME in their selfplex, possibly working at times in a vMEME harmonic with PURPLE and quite possibly fuelled in extremes by Psychoticism.

While the Authoritarian Personality is Adorno et al’s most well-known characterisation, in fact their research uncovered a range of prejudices which can be mapped to vMEME dominance. See Comparison Map.

Autism: a mental disorder characterised by 'self-orientation'.
The disorder becomes apparent in early childhood and typically involves avoidance of social contact. abnormal language and 'stereotypic' behaviours - eg: rocking or obsessive routines.
Most people with Autism have low IQ and often associated neurological problems such as epilepsy. However, those with Asperger's Syndrome, while displaying the characteristic symptoms of Autism, typically have higher than average IQ.

Autistic Savant: someone with Autism who demonstrates remarkable ability or skill in a particular area - eg: the ability to produce detailed drawings from memory.

Autistic Spectrum Disorder: is a term that includes the subgroups within the spectrum of Autism. There are recognised differences between the subgroups within the spectrum - though these are not yet fully defined or understood.

Autokinetic Effect: a visual illusion where a small spot of light is viewed in darkened room and appears to be moving - though it is, in fact, stationary.
Famously used by Muzafer Sherif (1936) in his experiments to establish the principles of Informational Social Influence.

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS): this controls involuntary muscles, such as those of the stomach and the heart, and the endocrine system which produces and distributes hormones. There are two branches of the ANS which work antagonistically to maintain homeostasis:-

Sympathetic - arouses
Parasympathetic - relaxes

Aversion Therapy: based on Classical Conditioning, this therapy eliminates undesirable behaviour by associating the behaviour with something unpleasant - eg: giving alcoholics a drug that makes them vomit every time they consume alcohol.
While it is often highly effective, many people in Psychiatry and Psychology have serious ethical concerns about the use of Aversion Therapy.