L Flashcards
A theory postulating that each gustatory neuron type comprises a private circuit (labeled line) through which is signaled the presence of its associated primary taste quality
- The taste is perceived exclusively as a product of activity in that labeled line; activity in neurons outside the labeled line contributes only noise
Labeled Line Theory of Taste Coding
In psychological assessment, classifying a patient according to a certain diagnostic category
- Patient labeling may be incomplete or misleading, because not all cases conform to the sharply defined characteristics of the standard diagnostic categories
Labeling
The sociological hypothesis that describing an individual in terms of particular behavioral characteristics (ie; labeling) may have a significant effect on his or her behavior, as a form of self fulfilling prophecy
Labeling Theory
Inappropriate lack of concern about the seriousness or implications of one’s physical symptoms, often seen in conversion disorder
La Belle Indifférence
Liable to change or disruption
- Labile affect, for example, is highly variable, suddenly shifting emotional expression
Labile
Scientific study conducted in a laboratory or other such workplace, where the investigator has some degree of direct control over the environment and can manipulate variables
Laboratory Research
In anatomy, the complex system of cavities, ducts, and canals within the temporal bone of the skull that comprises the inner ear
- The bony (or osseous) labyrinth is a system of bony cavities that houses the membranous labyrinth, a membrane lined system of ducts containing the receptors for hearing and balance
Labyrinth
A jagged tear or cut: a wound with rough, irregular edges
Laceration
A knowledge elicitation technique that is used in interviewing to impose a systematic framework upon questioning so as to reveal complex themes across answers
- In this, a respondent replies to a series of “why?’ probes, thus requiring him or her to expose and explain choices or preferences and justify behavior in terms of goals, values, and personal constructs
- This is concerned with linkages between concepts elicited from the participant (eg; attitudes and beliefs associated with a particular consumer product), and provides greater scope for probing salient issues while optimizing the often limited time available with respondents
Laddering
The theory that changes acquired by an organism during its lifetime, for example, through use or disuse of particular parts, can be inherited by its offspring
- Evidence for such inheritance of acquired characteristics, however, is lacking [Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829), French natural historian]
Lamarckism
- A system for expressing or communicating thoughts and feelings through speech sounds or written symbols, comprising a distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and phonology
- Any comparable nonverbal means of communication, such as sign language or the languages used in computer programming
Language
The process by which children learn language
- Although often used interchangeably with language development, this term is preferred by those who emphasize the active role of the child as a learner with considerable innate linguistic knowledge
Language Acquisition
A hypothetical faculty used to explain a child’s ability to acquire language
- In the early model proposed by U.S. linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897 - 1941), it is an inherited mechanism that enables children to develop a language structure from linguistic data supplied by parents and others
- As reinterpreted by U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky (1928 - ), however, this contains significant innate knowledge that actively interprets the input: only this can explain now a highly abstract competence in language results from a relatively deprived input
Language Acquisition Device
The adults and older children who help a young child to acquire language
- Children learn language in and from conservation: family members talk to them, tailoring their language to the children’s level of comprehension and often using higher pitch and exaggerated intonation
- This is conceptualized as essential to language learning and may interact with the language acquisition device of the younger child
Language Acquisition Support System
A culture bound syndrome in Malaysia and Indonesia characterized by an exaggerated startle reaction, imitative behavior in speech and body movements, a compulsion to utter profanities and obscenities, command obedience, and disorganization
Latah
In psychoanalytic theory, the stage of psychosexual development in which overt sexual interest is sublimated and the child’s attention is focused on skills and peer activities with members of his or her own sex
- This stage is posited to last from about the resolution of the Oedipus Complex, at about age 6, to the onset of puberty during the 11th or 12th year
Latency Stage
In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious wishes seeking expression in dreams or fantasies
- This unconscious material is posited to encounter censorship and to be distorted by the dream work into symbolic representations in order to protect the ego
- Through dream analysis, this may be uncovered
Latent Content
Learning that is not manifested as a change in performance until a specific need for it arises
- For example, a rat allowed to explore a maze without reward will later learn to find the goal more rapidly than a rat without prior exposure to the maze
Latent Learning
A hypothetical, unobservable characteristic that is thought to underlie and explain observed, manifest attributes that are directly measurable
- The values of these are inferred from patterns of interrelationships among the manifest variables
Latent Variable
Toward the side of the body or of an organ
Lateral
Either of two small oval clusters of nerve cell bodies on the underside of the thalamus in the brain that relay information from cone rich areas of the retina to the visual cortex via optic radiations
Lateral Geniculate Nucleus
A four stage pattern of recovery from lesions of the lateral hypothalamus induced in nonhuman animals
- The stages are marked by: (a) an initial inability to eat and drink (aphagia and adipsia); (b) continued inability to drink and poor appetite for food (adipsia anorexia); (c) improving appetite but continued avoidance of water; and (d) the establishment of new, altered feeding and drinking habits and a stable, albeit lower, body weight
Lateral Hypothalamic Syndrome
The region of the hypothalamus that may be involved in the regulation of eating
- Lesions of this in animals results in fasting and weight loss
- Stimulation of that part of the brain increases food intake
Lateral Hypothalamus
In perception, a mechanism for detecting contrast in which a sensory neuron is excited by one particular receptor but inhibited by neighboring (lateral) receptors
- In vision, for example, this is seen in neurons that respond to light at one position but are inhibited by light at surrounding positions
Lateral Inhibition