Keith E Rice - Glossary

A-Al

Ablation: the surgical destruction/removal of brain tissue.

Abnormal Behaviour: is behaviour that differs from the norm. Conventionally in Psychology and Psychiatry, abnormal behaviour is defined by one or more of 4 ways:-

Statistical Deviation - measured in standard deviations from the mean (average) in a set of scores of behavioural and/or linguistic responses in a population sample, this is a means of describing difference statistically
Deviation from Social Norms - though cultural relativism means 'social norms' will vary from culture to culture and in sub-cultures
Failure to Function Adequately - simply not coping with life
Deviation from Ideal Mental Health - 'ideal mental health' being represented by the tendency to Self-Actualisation (the Actualising Tendency) found in the writings of Abraham Maslow (1943, 1956) and Carl Rogers (1961) and paralled in Don Beck's (2002) concept of the Prime Directive.

Abnormal Psychology: the branch of Psychology concerned with atypical or abnormal behaviour.

Absolute Morality: the concept that the ends cannot justify the means - that some acts are intrinsically immoral regardless of intention or consequence.
This sort of thinking is typical of the BLUE vMEME at its peak.

Accommodation: the term has several different meanings in Sociology and Psychology:-

Robert Park & Ernest Burgess (1921) saw accommodation as a fundamental social process, analogous to biological adaptation, by which societies achieve adjustment to their environments.
a similar usage is applied in race relations where accommodation is a process in which ethnic groups adjust to each other’s existence and coexist without necessarily resolving underlying differences and conflicts. By contrast assimilation is the process by which a minority group adopts the values and patterns of behaviour of the majority group or host culture, ultimately being absorbed by the majority group. Not only will this process involve change for the minority group but the absorption will often bring about change in the majority group.
The PURPLE vMEME, with its emphasis on tribal distinctions, will tend to accommodate rather than assimilate whereas GREEN, with its everybody-is-equal motif, will tend to demand assimilation.
the accommodation-assimilation contrast is also used by the great Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget (1928) who explained that, when new information (incoming memes) will not fit with existing schemas - ie: it cannot be assimilated - then cognitive development takes place as a result of adaptation between the individual's existing schemas and the environmental pressure to accommodate the new information. This results in the modification of existing schemas and/or the formation of new schemas. Effectively the individual has to fit in with the perceived realities of the external world.
Of course, some minor adaptation will take place in assimilation.

Acculturation Strategy: the decisions and actions members of ethnic groups take in balancing the preservation of their own cultural identity with the amount of contact they have with other cultural groups.

Acetylcholine (ACh): a neurotransmitter which generally has an excitatory effect.
It has been associated with REM sleep in that drugs which block ACh prevent the continuation of REM sleep while drugs that stimulate ACh synapses start REM sleep.
ACh is also released at the synapse between motor neurons and muscles.

Acoustic Coding: the encoding of words in terms of their sound, using information stored in long-term memory.

Actor-Observer Effect: a kind of Attributional Bias in which individuals tend to explain their own behaviour in situational terms whereas, when observing the same behaviour in another, they would use dispositional terms.

Action Frame of Reference: in Talcott Parson’s contributions to Structural Functionalism, the action frame of reference (1937) is a synthesis of core premises and categories that is fundamental to all sociological understanding.

The concept is centred on the idea that the ‘unit act’ represents any and all meaningful instances of human social behaviour. The 5 elements of the unit act - actors, ends, means, conditions and norms - are essential to all social action.

Action Potential: the wave of potassium-sodium ion changes that passes down an axon when a neuron fires. This is the basis of transmission in the nervous system.

Action Slip: an everyday error that occurs in the context of an action sequence - that is, a sequence of actions that we have practised so often they have become automatic. An action slip is a sort of absent-minded error that results in omitting a stage in the sequence or carrying out the sequence of part of it in the wrong order.

Active Listening: the process of listening closely to the verbal, paralinguistic and non-verbal aspects of a person’s communication.

Actualising Tendency: the term used by Carl Rogers (1961) and generally accepted and used in Humanistic Psychology for a motive that exists in everyone to develop into the highest level of thinking - ie: they are self-actualised. This can be compared to Don Beck’s (2002) concept of the Prime Directive. See Self-Actualisation.

Adaptive Value: The property of a given genotype that confers fitness to an organism in a given environment.

Addiction: a behaviour over which a person has little control and which has harmful consequences.

People addicted to a substance typically recognise they are harming themselves but feel unable to stop their addictive behaviour.

Adrenal Gland: an endocrine gland located adjacent to and covering the upper part of each kidney. The adrenal medulla (inner region) produces the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline. The adrenal cortex (outer region) manufactures glucocorticoids like cortisol and sex hormones such as androgens.

Adrenaline: aka epinephrine, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands which increases physiological arousal.

Adrenocorticotrophic Hormone (ACTH): a hormone released by the pituitary gland which stimulates the adrenal glands. ACTH is produced in large amounts at the start of the fight-or-flight stress reaction.

Aetiology: the study of what causes a mental or physical disorder.

Aetiological Validity: the extent to which the cause of a disorder is the same for each sufferer.

Affectionless Psychopathy: see Reactive Attachment Disorder.

Afferent Nerve: conveys impulses from the sense organs to the spinal cord or brain.

Agentic State: the feeling of being under the control (an agent) of a 'higher authority' - which absolves the individual of taking personal responsibility for their actions. ("I do as I'm told." "I'm just following orders.")
Where PURPLE and especially BLUE are dominant in the individual or collective vMEME Stack, then this kind of blind obedience is likely to occur. However, those lower down in RED's 'power pecking order' may also behave as agents of the more powerful.

Agonist: a drug which has the same effect as a naturally-produced neurotransmitter.
Eg: Diazepam (Valium) decreases anxiety by enhancing GABA activity. Alcohol also acts as a GABA agonist - hence expressions such as "one to steady the nerves".

Agoraphobia: primarily this is the fear of leaving the security and safety of home or familiar people.

Secondarily, it is the fear of open/public places/spaces.

Alienation: a psychological or social state characterised by one or another type of harmful separation, disruption or fragmentation which sunders people from groups they would normally belong to or feel identification with.

For example, members of the electorate might feel distanced from the political process and powerless in relation to it.

Karl Marx (1844) used the term particularly in relation to ‘modern wage labourers’ who, via the mechanics of Capitalism, have little or no ownership of their own lives or the products they create.

All Quadrants/All Levels: is one of the key constructs in the philosophy of Ken Wilber (1996). It provides a structure for mapping all levels or stages in any line of development through Wilber's 4 Quadrants. In essence Wilber's Quadrants are derived from the intersection of two lines, Exterior-Interior (aka Tangible-Intangible, Obective-Subjective) and Individual-Collective. This gives the 4 Quadrants of :-

Upper Right - Exterior Individual: can be read as the individual's own behaviour (considered objectively) but is used more
often to describe the physical development of the individual's brain and nervous systems
Upper Left - Individual Exterior: the development of the indvidual's subjective consciousness - which can go from pre-cognitive
sensory awareness through the development of cognition and motivation and can include the transpersonal (spirit)
Lower Right - Exterior Collective: considers the structures and systems in which people live and operate, from the family to the
planet - studied in Structural Functionalism
Lower Left - Interior Collective: represents the cultural values, meanings, worldviews and ethics shared by the members of any
form of collective grouping - studied in Symbolic Interactionism and Memetics

The 4 Quadrants are outlined and illustrated in Peter McNab's Article, 'Aligning Neurological Levels - a Reassessment' (1999).
4Q/8L can be viewed as an application or subset of All Levels/All Quadrants which uses the vMEMES of Spiral Dynamics to map the development of motivation.

Recently Wilber (2006) has proposed that each Quadrant has an inside - the subjective experience of being in that Quadrant - and an outside - how the Quadrant appears objectively from outside the experience. In this he is very much reflecting the work of George Herbert Mead (1934) and his concept of I (the acting self)/me (the socially-perceived self).

Allele: one of the two or more forms of a gene.
At the same position on each set of paired chromosomes is a gene for a particular characteristic such as eye colour. These two variations of the same gene are termed 'alleles'.

Alogia: a condition in which speech is drastically reduced in amount or content or both. Unlike aphasia, the symptoms aren’t due due to brain damage but are more the result of a thought disorder such as Schizophrenia or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Alpha Bias: see gender bias.

Alter: as a result of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) an individual may experience more than one ‘person’ living inside them. These other ‘persons’ are often termed ‘alters’ for alternative persons. While the whole concept of MPD is debated in the most contentious terms amongst psychologists and psychiatrists, the alter is said to have a totally different psychology, including different memories, thoughts, outlook and morality to the main ‘person’ in the individual’s psyche. See Dissociative Identity Disorder or Multiple Personality Disorder?.

Alternate Hypothesis: the alternative to the Null Hypothesis. Researchers using the scientific method consider they can reject the Null if they achieve a statistically significant result from an inferential test - in which case the Alternate Hypothesis is accepted.
The Alternate Hypothesis - sometimes known as the Experimental Hypothesis when an experiment is conducted - is best expressed as a simple testable statement containing the variables to be studied and how they are to be measured.