SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL term for a small group of people in close enough physical proximity for each person in the group to interact directly with each of the others. Such a group is usually no more than six to eight people.

Incomplete pictures which can only be completed correctly if the subject perceives the underlying unity and wholeness of the picture.

A PAPER-AND-PENCIL TEST given simultaneously to a large group of people.

In zoology, the choices an animal has built into its behavioural repertoire when faced with an intruder to its territory. The term is also used of human BEHAVIOUR in the face of threat, though it is more often misused to over-simplify behaviour that is far more complex than any animal behaviour. Inability to engage in either fight or flight is a frequent trigger for STRESS.

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.

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

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 chronic state of irrational ANXIETY that cannot be pinned down to any specific source but can attach itself to anything and everything.

A biological theory about the development of the embryo which stresses the influence of the environment. The interaction of embryo and environment produces new properties that were not present in the fertilised egg, or ZYGOTE. In certain psychological theories, especially those of ERIK ERIKSON, epigenesis refers to a sequence of developmental stages that must be followed to attain psychological maturity.

The tendency to regard the group one identifies with, especially one’s ethnic group, as superior to any other. Like EGOCENTRICITY in individuals, it involves the inability to step outside the perceptual framework of one’s own group and see life from the viewpoint of a different group.