semiotics

n. the study of verbal and nonverbal signs and of the ways in which they communicate meaning within particular sign systems. Unlike semantics, which restricts itself to the meanings expressed in language, semiotics is concerned with human symbolic activity generally. As an academic discipline, semiotics developed within the general framework of 20th-century structuralism, taking as its premise the view that signs can only generate meanings within a pattern of relationships to other signs. Also called semiology. [introduced by Charles S. Peirce]

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Psychology term of the day

July 27th 2024

object constancy

1. in object relations theory, the ability of an infant to maintain an attachment that is relatively independent of gratification or frustration, based on a cognitive capacity to conceive of a mother who exists when she is out of sight and who has positive attributes when she is unsatisfying. Thus, an infant becomes attached to the mother herself rather than to her tension-reducing ministrations; she comes to exist continuously for the infant and not only during instances of need satisfaction. This investment by an infant in a specific libidinal object indicates that he or she no longer finds people to be interchangeable.

2. see perceptual constancy.