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phoneme

n. in linguistics, a speech sound that plays a meaningful role in a language and cannot be analyzed into smaller meaningful sounds, conventionally indicated by slash symbols: /b/. A speech sound is held to be meaningful in a given language if its contrast with other sounds is used to mark distinctions of meaning. In English, for example, /p/ and /b/ are phonemes because they distinguish between [pan] and [ban] and other such pairs (see minimal pair). —phonemic adj.

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Psychology term of the day

March 28th 2024

performance anxiety

performance anxiety

apprehension and fear of the consequences of being unable to perform a task or of performing it at a level that will raise expectations of even better task achievement. Test anxiety is a common example of performance anxiety. Other examples include fear of public speaking, participating in classes or meetings, playing a musical instrument in public, and eating in public. If the fear associated with performance anxiety is focused on negative evaluation by others, embarrassment, or humiliation, the anxiety may be classified as a social phobia.