Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
36 results found in Psychology.
- Perceptual Integration (Perceptual Binding)
- The process by which the brain combines information arriving through different sensory channels — vision, hearing, touch, proprioception — into a single coherent percept of an object or event. Percept…
- Place Attachment (Sense of Place)
- Place attachment is the emotional and cognitive bond a person forms with a particular location — a home, neighbourhood, city, or landscape — built up through memory, repeated experience, social ties, …
- Planning Fallacy
- A well-documented cognitive bias, identified by Kahneman and Tversky and elaborated by Buehler and colleagues, in which people systematically underestimate how long their own tasks will take and overe…
- Proteus Effect
- The Proteus Effect is a phenomenon, first described by Yee and Bailenson (2007), in which the appearance of a person's avatar influences how they think, behave and interact in virtual or augmented env…
- Satisficing
- A decision-making strategy where users select the first option that appears "good enough" rather than evaluating all possibilities to find the optimal choice. Coined by Herbert Simon, satisficing is c…
- Savoring
- An emotion-regulation strategy involving the mindful noticing, appreciating, and intensifying of positive experiences — past, present, or anticipated future — to support subjective wellbeing. Savoring…
- Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM)
- A nonverbal pictorial instrument developed by Bradley and Lang (1994) for measuring the affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance. Respondents select from a row of stylised manikin figur…
- Social Cognitive Theory (SCT, Social learning theory)
- A psychological framework developed by Albert Bandura that explains how people learn through observing others, building self-efficacy, and interacting with their social environment. In the context of …
- Social Proof
- A psychological and behavioural phenomenon in which people rely on the choices, ratings, and reviews of others as evidence when making decisions under uncertainty. In digital accessibility contexts, s…
- Sociocultural Learning Theory (Sociocultural Theory, Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory)
- A theory of learning developed by Lev Vygotsky that argues cognitive development and knowledge acquisition are fundamentally social, mediated by language, culture, and interaction with more knowledgea…
- Technophobia (Technology Anxiety, Computer Anxiety)
- An irrational fear or anxiety about using technology, often manifesting as avoidance of computers, smartphones, or websites. Technophobia can stem from negative past experiences, fear of making mistak…
- Tower of Hanoi (Tower of Hanoi Task, Tower Task)
- The Tower of Hanoi is a classic cognitive assessment puzzle used in neuropsychology and educational research to measure multi-step planning and executive function abilities. The task requires moving a…
- Transitional Object (Comfort Object)
- A concept from developmental psychology, introduced by D. W. Winnicott, referring to a soft, often tactile object - a blanket, stuffed toy, or similar - that a child uses to support self-soothing and …
- Unity Assumption
- A concept from multisensory-perception research (Welch and Warren, 1980; Welch, 1999) describing the observer's implicit judgement that signals arriving through different senses originate from the sam…
- Valence-Arousal Model (VA Model, Circumplex Model, Valence-Arousal Space)
- A two-dimensional model of affect, introduced by Russell (1980), that represents emotional states along two orthogonal axes: valence (pleasant versus unpleasant) and arousal (activated versus deactiva…
- Zeigarnik Effect
- A psychological phenomenon identified by Bluma Zeigarnik in 1927 describing the tendency for people to remember interrupted or incomplete tasks better than completed ones. The effect explains why part…