Glossary A

Associationism refers to a philosophical doctrine maintaining that complex ideas are the sum of smaller, more elemental ideas joined together. It examines how events or ideas can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning. Moreover, Associationism is the philosophical belief that mental phenomena, such as learning, remembering, and imagining, can be explained in terms of the Laws of Association.

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(Loosening of) Associations refers to illogical and disturbed thought processes; one of the "four A’s” used to identify the splitting of external reality found in schizophrenia. Loosening of Associations also means disordered patterns of though, inferring a cognitive deficit. (see Eugen Bleuler) The other "A's" are: Ambivalence, Autism and Affect.

Associative Agnosia refers to a form of Visual Agnosia in which perceptual Processing is fairly normal, but there is an impairment in the ability to derive the meaning of objects. (See Visual agnosia).

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The Associative chain theory refers to a theory favored by behaviorists that explains the formulation of a sentence as a chain of associations between the individual words in the sentence.

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Associative learning refers to the formation of simple associations between various stimuli and responses.

Associative network refers to a very large system of schemas that are linked together on the basis of shared meaning or shared experience. Associative network is one way to conceptualize the way in which information is organized in memory

Associative play refers to a form of social discourse in which children pursue their own interests but will swap toys or comment on each other’s activities.

Deutsch: Assoziatives Verschieben / Español: Desplazamiento Asociativo / Português: Deslocamento Associativo / Français: Déplacement Associatif / Italiano: Spostamento Associativo /

Associative shifting refers to a Thorndikean concept that describes a process whereby a response is gradually shifted to a situation entirely different from that in which it was learned. One way of doing this is to change the initial stimulus very gradually, a process called fading.

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