Derived from the Latin word for ‘acting, doing’, it is taken to mean ideation, planning, sequencing and executing a skilled movement. Thus, it asserts that cognition directs the performance of functional, every-day, movements such as tool use (e.g., writing with a pencil) with adjustments arising from feedback. It is a term that is more commonly used occupational …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Pragmatics
The study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, the addressee, and other features of the context of utterance. One example is the effect that the context of utterance, generally observed principles of communication and the goals of the speaker have on the speaker’s choice of expression and …
Posture
State of the body consisting of the maintenance of relationships between body parts (body-referenced definition based on an egocentric coordinate system definition), relationships between body and environment (environmental-reference based on an exocentric coordinate system), and with reference to the gravitational vector or field (another environmental-referenced definition, but based on a geocentric coordinate system). Posture has …
Prader-Willi syndrome
A genetic disorder, originally identified by John Langdon Down (1826-1896), with congenital symptoms of hypotonia and minor physical stigmata, later characterized by some cognitive impairment, gross overeating that can lead to obesity, adipositas, hypogenitalism, and various other symptoms not always present such as self-mutilation of the face. The syndrome occurs in about 1/15000 births and …
Postural control
Refers to the ability to maintain (neural control of) body equilibrium or a specific bodily orientation. See Centre of gravity, Centre of mass, Feedback, Feedforward, Fine motor abilities, Hierarchical models of motor control, lMuscle tone (or power), Nystagmus, Posture, Premotor cortex, Vestibular system
Positive reinforcement
In operant conditioning, a reward that reliably follows a behavior and increases the likelihood that the behaviour will be produced again. Four types of positive reinforcers are typically considered, but which are not necessarily mutually exclusive: natural reinforcers (occurring directly as a consequence of a particular behavior), tangible reinforcers (offering rewards such a money that …
Posterior distribution
Probabilitydistribution of a variable in a probabilistic model conditioned on observeddata. For example, if μ isa variable in a probabilistic model, and x isdata that is a function of, then the probable values of given observed values of isthe posterior distribution written as P(μ|x). See Bayesian learning, Likelihood function, Poisson distribution, Prior distribution
Population thinking
The view that measures of central tendency such as the mean and median are abstractions from reality. What is real is variation both within and between individuals with regard to physical and behavioral traits, and there is no such thing as the ‘average person’. See Typological thinking, Theory of natural selection
Population (statistics)
The persons or other subjects of the investigation from which the study participants have been selected and to which the study findings are to be generalised. See Population (biology and ecology), Population genetics, Variable
Population genetics
The branch of genetics that studies the ways in which the frequencies of different alleles in populations of organisms change as a result of natural selection, mutation, genetic drift and gene flow as well as other process and their mechanisms (e.g., assortative mating). It became a cornerstone of the Modern synthesis due to work of …