: A termintroduced by Piaget; reflective abstraction is any personal activity thatderives knowledge by reflecting on one’s own operations are activities, forinstance by reflecting on action-result relationships, or relationships betweenvarious actions or operations performed in a particular context. Reflectiveabstraction may be triggered by cognitive conflict, e.g. the experience thatthe application of a particular operation leads …
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Reductionism
In general, the belief that statements or expressions concerning one level of organization can be replaced by simpler ones at a lower level. In its most radical form, it holds that all matter, both organic and inorganic, is made up of atoms and molecules, and therefore the theories, laws and models applicable to these basic …
Recombinant DNA (rDNA)
In genetic engineering, a broad range of techniques for forming DNA from different types of organisms. It refers to cutting up a sequence of DNA molecules and combining or splicing it with another sequence of the same or different organism in a new way, thus recombining it. Recombinant DNA technology provides large amounts of identical copies …
Red nucleus
A pale pink structure consisting of a large group of cells located in the ventral medial mesencephalon. Together with the substantia nigra, it forms sub-cortical ‘hotspots’ of the extrapyramidal system. It receives inputs from the cerebellar nuclei and cerebral cortex, and projects the ipsilateral inferior olive by means of the central tegemental tract and the contralateral spinal cord …
Recognition memory
Memory that occurs when a previously perceived stimulus is re-presented and registered as familiar. For example, a subject may recognise a voice, face, or visual pattern as being familiar, based on past exposure to it, even though there was no recollection of the stimulus before it was re-presented. People have excellent recognition memory for faces …
Reciprocal assimilation
Integration of one scheme into another. For Piaget, ‘touch teaches vision’ in the development of reaching so a visual scheme is assimilated to a scheme for touching. Results in a more complex scheme, which enables more proficient performance of an action. See Assimilation, Scheme
Reciprocity
The return of like behavior between individuals who are interacting with one another. For example, if one person is insulting, the other is insulting and if one person is supportive, the other is supportive See Bi-directionality, Bi-directional relationships, Communication, Conversational context, Co-regulation, Interaction
Recency effect
In contrast to the primacy effect, the elevated recall for words at the end of a list, due presumably to items being stored in and retrieved from short-term memory. See Primacy effect, Recall, Recall memory, Sensory, short-term (STM) and long-term memory (LTM)
Receptive field
The area of a sensory surface such as the retina or other receptor surfaces like the skin that will excite a neuron. For example, a neurone might have a receptive field in a small part of the skin surface, or the retina. See Dendrite, Neuron, Retina
Recapitulation theory (or biogenetic law)
The brainchild of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). The theory held that an ontogenetic sequence is a recapitulation in proper order of the corresponding sequence in phylogeny, with the absolute time from conception to maturation remaining the same from ancestors to descendants. In other words, organisms repeat the adult stages of their ancestors during their own ontogeny (metaphorically, they …
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