| 释义 |
stimulus|ˈstɪmjʊləs|
Pl. stimuli |ˈstɪmjʊlaɪ|.
[Originally a mod.L. use (in medical books) of L. stimulus goad, of doubtful origin; perh. f. root *sti- in stilus: see stylus.
Cf. F. stimulus (Phys.), stimule (Bot.); Sp., Pg. estimulo, It. stimulo, stimolo (and popular forms in dialects, e.g. Milanese stombol, Veronese stombio, Sardinian strumbula), Rumanian stramur.
The following quot. exemplifies the mod.L. medical use:
a1614Platerus Observ. in Hominis Affectibus i. (1641) 255 In Impotentia [etc.] Ad stimulum addendum, primum exterioribus illud tentare volui, jubens perinæi regionem..calide inungere oleo nucum in quo Formica & Cantharides decoctæ fuerint. ]
1. Phys. Something that acts as a ‘goad’ or ‘spur’ to a languid bodily organ; an agency or influence that stimulates, increases, or quickens organic activity.
1684tr. Bonet's Merc. Compit. xix. 694/2 The Indian Chocolad..both increases Seed and adds a stimulus. 1732Arbuthnot Rules of Diet in Aliments, etc. 276 By weakening the force of any Stimulus. 1750J. Theobald App. Medulla Med. Univ. 55 In all Cases where the Nerves want a Stimulus to help them to perform their destined Offices. 1821Scott Kenilw. xx, One of those unfortunate persons, who, being once stirred with the vinous stimulus, do not fall asleep like other drunkards, but [etc.]. 1843R. J. Graves Syst. Clin. Med. x. 115 An attack of pneumonia, coming on in fever, frequently acts as a stimulus to the economy. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) V. 68 The physician..would tell us that you cannot restore strength by a stimulus.
b. Stimulating property, action, or effect; stimulation or quickening of organic activity.
1684tr. Bonet's Merc. Compit. xix. 695/1 That..such Medicines be made use of as comfort the vital faculty, and yet have a gentle Stimulus withal. 1758E. Wright in Phil. Trans. L. 598 This salt is not only astringent, and consequently a strengthener, but at the same time acts with a gentle stimulus. 1785Paley Moral Philos. iv. ii. (1818) II. 13 As the liquor loses its stimulus, the dose must be increased. 1841A. Combe Physiol. Digestion (ed. 3) 292 They are less stimulating... Indeed, from this very want of stimulus, they are apt to disagree with weak stomachs, unless seasoned. 1847W. C. L. Martin Ox 178/2 Common salt as an aperient often acts well..perhaps from the stimulus it gives to the stomach. 1861F. Nightingale Nursing 73 It is not a sleeping dose he wants, but food or stimulus.
2. a. gen. An agency or influence that stimulates to action or (const. to) that quickens an activity or process.
1791W. Enfield Hist. Philos. II. i. 18 Among the philosophical works of Cicero, we do not now find his Hortentius,..which Augustine confesses operated upon his mind, as a powerful stimulus to the pursuit of wisdom. 1793Brit. Critic II. 362 We should expect even the voluntary productions of the pen, without this violent stimulus, to be sufficient to support the honour of the society. 1803Windham Sp. (1812) II. 154 Measures so chosen.., as to become a powerful stimulus to recruiting. 1830Miss Mitford Village Ser. iv. 80 note, A person of great..talent, who,..if she were prompted by either of those two powerful stimuli, want of money or want of admiration, to take due pains—would..become a clever writer. 1833H. Martineau Loom & Lugger i. i. 12 There is no stimulus to improvement like fair competition. 1834Marryat P. Simple xv, The ship..reminded me of a goaded and fiery horse, mad with the stimulus applied. 1863Fawcett Pol. Econ. i. v. (1876) 63 Gold may have been the primary stimulus of Australia's prosperity. 1873Spencer Study Sociol. viii. 194 The needs of defence and attack were the chief stimuli to the cultivation of arts.
b. A quickening impulse; also, in generalized sense, quickening influence, stimulation.
1794Brit. Critic III. 518 Those young Academicans..will receive from the perusal of his book a powerful stimulus to their ambition. 1833H. Martineau Vanderput & S. vi. 99 The turn of exchange had given such a stimulus to importation. 1849C. Brontë Shirley i, Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? 1856Kane Arctic Expl. II. xviii. 189 Their health improved under the stimulus of a new mode of life. 1865M. Arnold Ess. Crit., Joubert (1875) 319 They become..a source of stimulus and progress for all of us. 1911T. B. Kilpatrick N.T. Evangelism iii. 76 These questions will come to him with rebuke and stimulus.
3. a. Phys. Something that excites an organ or tissue to a specific activity or function; a material agency that produces a reaction in an organism.
Developed from the older physiological sense 1.
1793T. Beddoes Calculus, etc. 191 Those stimuli which..act continually more or less upon the irritable fibre, are, heat, light, nourishment, air, the circulation of the blood, the stimulus of generation, and the nervous stimuli. 1837P. Keith Bot. Lex. 224 Life is that energy, or attribute, of organized structures which renders them capable of receiving and of obeying the impulse of stimuli. 1848Carpenter Anim. Phys. 19 Muscles..are composed of a tissue which has the power of contracting suddenly and forcibly, when peculiar stimuli are applied to it. 1880C. & F. Darwin Movem. Pl. 4 The tip is sensitive to various stimuli, especially to very slight pressure. 1900W. S. Hall Text-bk. Physiol. 52 Stimuli classified. The following forms of energy act as stimuli for most cells: (i) Heat, (ii) Light, (iii) Electricity, (iv) Mechanical Stimuli, (v) Chemical Stimuli.
transf.1851Mill Dissert. & Discuss., Enfranch. Women (1859) II. 438 What makes intelligent beings is the power of thought; the stimuli which call forth that power are the interest and dignity of thought itself.
b. Influence or effect in calling forth some specific reaction of a tissue; irritation of a nerve or other sensitive structure.
1785Cullen Instit. Med. i. (ed. 3) 73 The force of contraction, or the vigour of muscular fibres, will be always as the force of stimulus, and the vigour of the animal, nervous, and inherent powers taken together. 1837P. Keith Bot. Lex. 327 Rest, which they thus obtain after having been exposed throughout the day to the stimulus of light. 1841Penny Cycl. XXI. 181/2 The infusion of tobacco, and hydrocyanic acid, appear to destroy completely the sensibility of the heart, so that it no longer responds to the stimulus of the blood. 1872Huxley Physiol. viii. 187 The great majority..of the movements of the body..are the effect of an influence (technically termed a stimulus or irritation) applied..to the ends of afferent nerves. 1882Gaskell in Jrnl. Physiol. IV. 67 Since then the ventricle does not contract after the auricle because separate stimuli pass from the sinus to the ventricle along nerve fibres, but does contract [etc.]. 1900W. S. Hall Text-bk. Physiol. 75 The following laws of electrical response may be formulated: Law I. The make stimulus is kathodic; the break stimulus is anodic.
c. Psychol. Any specific change in physical energy or an event (whether internal or external to the organism) which excites a nerve impulse and gives rise to a reaction.
1894Creighton & Titchener tr. Wundt's Human & Animal Psychol. 16 The processes of motion which, by their operation upon our senses, give rise to sensations, we commonly denominate stimuli, or more particularly sense-stimuli... Thus we regard the sound-waves of the air or the light-waves set up in surrounding space as stimuli corresponding to our sensations of sound and light. 1919J. B. Watson Psychol. i. 9 The goal of psychological study is the ascertaining of such data and laws that, given the stimulus, psychology can predict what the response will be; or..given the response, it can specify the nature of the effective stimulus. 1957E. R. Hilgard Introd. Psychol. (ed. 2) 596/1 Stimulus, some specific physical energy impinging on a receptor sensitive to that kind of energy... Any objectively describable situation or event..that is the occasion for an organism's response. 1980E. L. Deci in E. Staub Personality ii. 43 People do not respond to objective external stimuli; they respond to stimuli as they perceive them.
4. Nat. Hist. A sting, a stinging hair. rare (? only as Latin).
1760J. Lee Introd. Bot. iii. xviii. (1765) 213 Stimuli, Stings, keep off naked Animals by their venomous Punctures. 1764Berkenhout Clavis Angl. Bot., Stimuli, stings: a species of Arma growing upon some plants for their defence... Linnæus divides the stimuli into pungentes and urentes. 1796Withering Brit. Plants (ed. 3) I. 84 Stimuli, stings. 1866Treas. Bot. 1100/2. 1909 Century Dict. Suppl., Stimulus. 6. In entom., a stinging-hair.
5. attrib. and Comb., as (sense 3 c) stimulus-complex, stimulus control, stimulus-error, stimulus intensity, stimulus-object, stimulus-pattern, stimulus-situation, stimulus-threshold, stimulus-value, stimulus-word; stimulus diffusion (see quot. 1940); stimulus generalization, the fact that the response elicited by one stimulus can also be elicited by other stimuli associated with but not identical to the original; stimulus-response, abbrev. form of stimulus-and-response, used attrib. or as adj. to denote this process, esp. when considered as the basic element in the study of sense preception, learning or behaviour modification; = S-R s.v. S 4 a.
1924R. M. Ogden tr. Koffka's Growth of Mind 87 Fine differences in the stimulus-complex may lead to opposite reactions. 1954W. H. Melching in E. L. Wilkes Secondary Reinforcement (1966) ii. ii. 143 The presence (or absence) of the buzzer during conditioning and extinction was assumed to be an important component of the stimulus complexes. 1956Psychol. Monogr. LXX. v. 2/2 A method which involved a greater degree of stimulus control than has usually been achieved in research on discrimination. 1979H. K. Rodewald (title) Stimulus control of behavior.
1940A. L. Kroeber in Amer. Anthrop. XLII. 1 (title) Stimulus diffusion. Ibid., It is the idea of the complex or system which is accepted, but it remains for the receiving culture to develop a new content. This somewhat special process might therefore be called ‘idea-diffusion’ or ‘stimulus diffusion’. 1978Language LIV. 207 If diffusion is to be thought of as operating between the sub-areas, it can only be ‘stimulus diffusion’.
1909E. B. Titchener Text-bk. Psychol. I. §66.218 The observer tends to judge, not in terms of sensation, but in terms of stimulus... This error,..is known technically as the stimulus error. 1949Mind LVIII. 452 The Stimulus-error and the Constancy Hypothesis are particular forms of this fallacy.
1943C. L. Hull Princ. Behavior xii. 183 The reaction involved in the original conditioning becomes connected with a considerable zone of stimuli other than, but adjacent to, the stimulus conventionally involved in the original conditioning; this is called stimulus generalization. 1977in Honig & Staddon Handbk. Operant Behavior xi. 316/2 Another possibility is that the mechanism underlying conditioned reinforcement is stimulus generalization.
1909Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. XX. 4 A progression of stimulus intensities such that the differences of corresponding sensation between any consecutive pairs are equal to one another. 1933Psychol. Abstr. VII. 538/1 The relationship between stimulus intensity and duration in the motor nerve of the frog.
1921Psychol. Rev. XXVIII. 398 The dependence of a stimulus-object upon its setting is especially familiar in the case of contrasting colors or objects. 1970Jrnl. Gen. Psychol. Apr. 151 The strength with which an unfamiliar stimulus-object elicits a particular mediational process.
1924R. M. Ogden tr. Koffka's Growth of Mind iii. 137 The phenomenon corresponding to a given stimulus-pattern. 1950Mind LIX. 187 A red shape presents a stimulus pattern that I react to immediately.
1921Psychol. Rev. XXVIII. 390 The response member of a stimulus-response couple may consist of a group of reactions. 1927L. L. Bernard Introd. Social Psychol. viii. 109 Tropism is not a stimulus-response process in the same sense that reflexes and instincts are. It makes use of stimulus-response mechanisms. 1957E. R. Hilgard Introd. Psychol. (ed. 2) i. 21/1 Stimulus-response theory (or S-R theory, as it is commonly called) asserts that all behavior is in response to stimuli. 1964E. A. Nida Toward Sci. Transl. iii. 40 In most actual instances of communication, verbal symbols enter into a chain of stimulus-response situations. 1980Dædalus Spring 23 This evidence of central control over receptors..affected the picture of the stimulus-response relationship that had dominated psychology for decades.
1923Ogden & Richards Meaning of Meaning iii. 139 The excitation of part of an engram complex, which is called up by a stimulus..similar to a part only of the original stimulus-situation. 1977A. Giddens Stud. in Social & Polit. Theory i. 76 All descriptive predicates, however ‘theoretical’, are learned in conjunction with definite stimulus-situations.
1897C. H. Judd tr. Wundt's Outl. Psychol. 254 The stimulus from which the resulting psychical process, for example, a sensation, can be just apperceived, is called the stimulus-threshold. 1935L. Bloomfield in C. Hockett Bloomfield Anthol. (1970) 310 His audience will respond only to the exact stimulus-value of his words. 1962Science Survey XV. 251 Now the ‘stimulus value’ of a moving object depends not only on the actual capacity of the eye to detect and evaluate movement, but [etc.].
1905Psychol. Bull. II. 249 The influence of the grammatical form of the stimulus-word on the reaction is rather striking. 1971Jrnl. Gen. Psychol. Apr. 281 Stimulus words were carefully selected in order to control for associative response frequencies. |
