associative–dissociative strategy

a plan of shifting one’s attentional focus between internal (associative) feedback (e.g., breathing rate, muscle soreness) and external (dissociative) stimuli (e.g., what others are doing, the scenery). Athletes in endurance activities use such strategies to check body functions at specific times and to pay attention to external stimuli at others.

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Psychology term of the day

February 15th 2025

predecisional negative shift

that component of the readiness potential that precedes any conscious awareness of a wish to act. Investigations with electroencephalography suggest that it can be detected some 350 ms before the individual reports a decision to make a movement and some 550 ms before the movement occurs. The finding is controversial because it implies that behavior is instigated nonconsciously and hence that free will is illusory; the ecological validity of such experiments has also been questioned. [reported by U.S. physiologist Benjamin Libet (1916–2007)]