Glossary A

Glossary A

- Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 310- 230 B.C.) : Aristarchus of Samos is sometimes called the Copernicus of antiquity who speculated that the planets, including the earth, rotate around the sun and that the earth rotates on its own axis, and he did so almost 1,700 years before Copernicus.

Aristotle (Greek, 384–322 B.C.) was a disciple of Plato erroneously believed that the heart is the source of all mental processes.

Arithmetic mean refers to an average that is calculated by adding up a set of quantities and dividing the sum by the total number of quantities in the set.

Army Alpha refers to an intelligence test which wasdeveloped during World War I and used by the army for soldiers who can r

Army Beta refers to an intelligence test developed during World War I and used by the army for soldiers who cannot read.

Arousal refers to a state of alertness and mental and physical activation of a human. It is an activation in any of the body's systems (e.g., activation of the sympathetic nervous system or the cerebral cortex).

- Arousal function : Arousal function in Hebb’s and Hull’s theories, the motivating function of a stimulus. That aspect of the stimulus that relates to attention or alertness. (See Cue function. )

Arousal theory refers to the general class of theories that assume behaviour is partly a function of the general state of arousal (excitation) or de-arousal (inhibition) of the cortex and/or other brain structures.