Now more commonly referred to as the BAYLEY SCALES OF INFANT DEVELOPMENT.

Literally, head to tail. Usually refers to the process of maturation in humans and animals where the sequence of physical development proceeds from the head downwards.

See PROXIMODISTAL.

A well-known American test for assessing the development of infants and young children.

It is a standard series of measurements used primarily to assess the motor (fine and gross), language (receptive and expressive), and cognitive development of infants and toddlers, ages 0-3. This measure consists of a series of developmental play tasks and takes between 45 – 60 minutes to administer. Raw scores of successfully completed items are converted to scale scores and to composite scores.

According to ERIK ERIKSON, the acquisition of a sense of basic trust in oneself and in the world is the major task to be accomplished during the first twelve to eighteen months of life. Basic trust is acquired if the infant’s physical needs are met, if NORMAL biological maturation occurs and, most important, if the infant is loved and cared for by a mother who is herself trusting and self-confident.

The term now used for the group of disciplines that study the MIND, including COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY and artificial intelligence.

The order of birth of the children in a family. Psychologists have long been interested in the possible connections between birth order and PERSONALITY TRAITS but so far the evidence is slight.

See NEED FOR AFFILIATION.

Used mainly in PSYCHOANALYSIS to refer to the psychic energy a patient invests in a person, place, idea or thing. EMOTIONS associated with the object of cathexis may be keenly aroused whenever it is re-encountered.

The electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain in order to study their functions.

In GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY, this refers to the perfect INTEGRATION of an organism and its environment.

A term used in SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY in the study of attitude change. It refers to someone who changes their attitude in the opposite direction from that being advocated to them.