| receptive | Sensitive or responsive to stimulus. (05 Mar 2000) |
|---|---|
| receptive aphasia | Aphasia in which there is impairment in the comprehension of spoken and written words, associated with effortless, articulated, but paraphrasic, speech and writing; malformed words, substitute words, and enologisms are charcteristic. When severe, and speech is incomprehensible, it is called jargon aphasia. The patient often appears unaware of his deficit. Synonym: fluent aphasia, impressive aphasia, posterior aphasia, psychosensory aphasia, receptive aphasia, Wernicke's aphasia. (05 Mar 2000) |
| receptive field | That part of the retina whose photoreceptors (rods and cones) pertain to a single optic nerve fibre. The response of a neuron to stimulation of its receptive field depends on the type of neuron and the part of the field that is illuminated; an "on-centre" neuron is stimulated by light falling at the centre of its receptive field and inhibited by light falling at the periphery; an "off-centre" neuron reacts in exactly the opposite fashion; that is, it is inhibited by light falling at the centre of its receptive field. In either case, the net response depends on a complex switching action in the retina. When an entire receptive field is equally illuminated, the response of receptors at the centre of the field predominates. (05 Mar 2000) |
| acquired character | A character developed in a plant or animal as a result of environmental influences during the individual's life. (05 Mar 2000) |
| recessive character | An inherited character determined by an allele in homozygous state only. See: dominance of traits. (05 Mar 2000) |
| mendelian character | An inherited character under the control of a single locus (although perhaps modified by genes at other loci). (05 Mar 2000) |
| character | In current usage, approximately equivalent to personality. The sum of the relatively fixed personality traits and habitual modes of response of an individual. (12 Dec 1998) |
| character analysis | Analysis of the defenses and personality traits that characterise an individual. (05 Mar 2000) |
| character armor | A habitual pattern of organised defenses against anxiety. (05 Mar 2000) |
| character disorder | A term referring to a group of behavioural disorder's, now replaced by a more general term, personality disorder, of which character disorder's are now a subclass. (05 Mar 2000) |
| character neurosis | A subclass of personality disorders. (05 Mar 2000) |
| classifiable character | A character that allows individuals to be sorted into distinct but not quantitative classes, e.g., blood types. (05 Mar 2000) |
| compound character | An inherited character dependent upon two or more distinct genes. (05 Mar 2000) |
| sex-linked character | An inherited character determined by a gene on a gonosome. See: gene. (05 Mar 2000) |
| denumerable character | Classifiable character that is also countable (e.g., number of progeny, number of teeth). Synonym: discrete character. (05 Mar 2000) |