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spontaneous alternation

the instinctive, successive alternation among the options available in a situation involving discrete choices or exploration. For example, in a learning and memory experiment, a rat in a T maze tends to choose the left arm on one trial, the right arm on the next, then the left arm again, and so on.

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Psychology term of the day

September 8th 2024

number

number

n. in linguistics, a grammatical classification of nouns, pronouns, and any words in agreement with them according to whether they are singular or plural (or in some languages, dual). In English, number is most commonly expressed by the plural noun ending -s (e.g., boy, boys) and in the inflection of the verb to agree with the number of the subject (e.g., The boy runs; The boys run).