Change

Changes in the brain and body over time: from growing up, experience, hormones or injury.

The gradual development of the brain and body on a rough biological timetable.

The brain reshaping its connections through experience, such as practice.

The hormone surge at puberty, which reshapes body, brain and mood.

Through plasticity, healthy areas can slowly take over some functions of the damaged area.

Maturation and practice are gradual. A rise in hormones or a brain injury can change behaviour suddenly.

It is a main engine of how and why behaviour changes over time.

Neuroplasticity (practice strengthens pathways) and maturation (planning regions develop).

The view that behaviour is decided by biology, leaving no real choice.

The brain is changed by what we do, and the same biology leads to different lives in different surroundings.

A lasting change in what someone does, driven by learning and experience.

We learn that two things go together, and we learn from what follows our actions: rewarded behaviour is repeated.

Repeating an action in the same situation until it becomes automatic.

Deliberately using rewards and consequences to change behaviour.

A sticker chart that rewards a child each time they tidy up.

Behaviour that was learned can be relearned. Many therapies are built on this.

Gradual exposure for phobias, or replacing cues and rewards to break a habit.

Behavioural: learning reshapes what you do. Biological: the brain or body itself changes.

Learning (conditioning), habit formation, and behaviour modification.

Something that holds an old behaviour in place: a habit, a reward that comes at once, other people, low confidence.

Promotion encourages a healthy behaviour in everyone. Prevention stops a problem before it starts. Intervention helps those who already have it.

Learning from consequences: behaviour that is rewarded is repeated.

Measuring the same behaviour at more than one time point and comparing.

Measure a behaviour, do something, then measure again to see if it shifted.

Testing the same people several times so each person is their own comparison.

Following the same people over months or years, measuring repeatedly.

Doing better on a test because you have taken it before, not because anything has really changed.

It shows what would have changed anyway: the season, growing older, events that affect everyone.

Extreme scores drifting back toward average on a retest, with no real change.

Consistent (reliable) measure, a comparison group, and a change big enough to matter.

Change can only be shown by comparing the same behaviour across time.

Different groups are compared at one time. It shows a difference between groups, not a change.

A measurement taken some time after a treatment ends, to see whether the change has lasted.

How common a problem is in a population. If a prevention campaign works, prevalence falls.