A leading British exponent of BEHAVIOURIST PSYCHOLOGY noted for his contributions to the theory of PERSONALITY and the construction of personality tests. He has been a controversial figure in the debate about RACE and IQ.

From the Latin word for ‘flight’, a fugue is a relatively long period of AMNESIA in which a person leaves his home, forgets his past and goes off to start a new and very different life somewhere else. When the UNCONSCIOUS conflict underlying the amnesia has been dealt with, the person will remember his old life and IDENTITY and forget the period of the fugue.

BEHAVIOUR expected of all the members of a group.

See NORM.

The CONSCIOUS and explicit recollection of something. This form of memory is usually what is lost in amnesia, unlike IMPLICIT MEMORY.

One of the common forms of psychological disturbance classified as SCHIZOPHRENIA. It is characterised by giggling and silliness and displays of inappropriate EMOTIONS.

A child supposedly reared by animals in the wild. Such tales are part of the folklore of pop psychology and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

The exchange of information between people by any means, whether verbal (in speech and writing) or NON-VERBAL. The study of this field involves contributions from PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL SCIENCE, computer science, logic and linguistics.

A situation where a subject is forced to choose one of a given series of judgements even though none of them may seem to be appropriate.

A tabulation of the number of times something occurs in a study.

A pioneering attempt, by the American psychologist Arnold Gesell, to produce a timetable for the usual appearance of physical abilities in infants and young children.