Find over 25,000 psychological definitions


phonemic restoration effect

a psycholinguistic phenomenon whereby a person listening to speech recordings in which phonemes have been replaced by white noise or have otherwise been made inaudible does not notice the interruption. It is assumed that the listener’s perceptual mechanism must have restored the missing phonemes. This is considered strong evidence for an active process of speech perception.

Browse dictionary by letter

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Psychology term of the day

December 22nd 2024

family

family

n.

1. a kinship unit consisting of a group of individuals united by blood or by marital, adoptive, or other intimate ties. Although the family is the fundamental social unit of most human societies, its form and structure vary widely. See biological family; extended family; nuclear family; permeable family; stepfamily.

2. in biological taxonomy, a main subdivision of an order, consisting of a group of similar, related genera (see genus).

3. a collection of mathematically or statistically related entities. For example, a set of statistical tests conducted when there are more than two groups for an independent variable within an analysis of variance constitutes a family of tests. See also family-wise alpha level; family-wise error rate. —familial adj.