abstraction

1. the formation of general ideas or concepts by extracting similarities from particular instances. The precise cognitive processes by which this occurs remain a subject of investigation.

2. such a concept, especially a wholly intangible one, such as goodness or truth.

3. in conditioning, discrimination based on a single property of multicomponent stimuli. —abstract vb.

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Psychology term of the day

March 9th 2025

true experiment

a study in which participants are assigned at random to two or more experimentally manipulated treatment conditions or to a treatment group and a control group. This type of experiment is in contrast to quasi-experimental designs, such as natural experiments and field experiments.