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Acculturation -- There are actually a couple of different meanings to this word (given in no particular order). The first definition here relates to the effects of groups or societies on people..."The modification of the culture of a group or individual as a result of contact with a different culture." or "The process by which the culture of a particular society is instilled in a human from infancy onward." Acculturation may also refer to a cognitive process that is similar to Piaget's "assimilation", as can be seen in this definition of acculturation: "the process of assimilating new ideas into an existing cognitive structure."

Alexithymia -- This term was requested by a student and is a term we are not very familiar with. As a result, we searched for a definition and found the following...we hope you find it useful:

Sifneos (1972) coined the term alexithymia to designate a group of cognitive and affective characteristics typical of many patients with psychosomatic illnesses. It is thought to be a personality trait that is characterized by a decreased ability to communicate feelings, a decreased ability to identify feelings, a cognitive tendency toward detail and external operations or events, and a paucity of imaginative thought, dream recall, or fantasy (Taylor, 1994).

Anal Retentive (anal stage of development) -- The anal stage of motivational development is characterized by the child's central area of bodily concern in the rectum. Bowel movements become a source of pleasure to the child. The child may defecate to receive pleasure. However, gaining pleasure from defecating brings the child into conflict with the parents regarding toilet training. Freud claimed that delays during this stage (or this stage occuring prematurely) can cause fixation. Fixation during the anal stage can result in anal retention in which a person exhibits compulsive cleanliness, ordderliness, or fussiness.

Applied Research -- as opposed to basic research, applied research is the type of research which is conducted to solve practical problems, find cures to illnesses, develop therapies with the purpose of helping people, and other similar types of practical problem-solving research.

Attitudes -- Attitudes can be defined as an affective feelings of liking or disliking toward an object (which can be basically anything) that has an influence on behavior. As Don Forsyth describes in his text book (Our Social World), an attitude is not a feeling, a cognition, or a form of behavior; instead, atitudes combine all three components in an "integrated affect-cognition-behavior system." What this all means, is that attitudes are made of three components that all influence each other. If one compnent changes, then it influences the entire attitude structure. In addition, each components not only has an influence on the attitude structure as a whole, but also on each other component. Although many people think attitudes are pretty simple (you like something or you don't. That's it...fuggetabowtit), you can see that attitudes are actually quite complex and dynamic.

Aversion Therapy -- like other types of behavior therapy, aversion therapy is based on the principles of learning (conditioning) and is done to eliminate the presence of some maladaptive behavior. This is done by pairing the maladaptive behavior (which is in some way rewarding to the person who engages in it -- like smoking) with a stimulus that is unpleasant. What happens then is that the pleasant behavior becomes less pleasant and decreases over time until it is gone completely.