hyperreflexive

H4Y4P3E1R1R1E1F4L1E1X8I1V4E1

adjective

Involving overreaction in a reflex response.

Scrabble 35
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Meanings

adjectivehyperreflexive (not comparable)
  1. not comparablemedicineInvolving overreaction in a reflex response.

    The patellar reflex is typically normal or may appear hyperreflexive.

    2013 -, Curtis W. Dewey, A Practical Guide to Canine and Feline Neurology, →ISBN, page 389
    3 more examples

    It is velocity dependent, and there is a hyperreflexive tendon jerk. On the other hand, clinical rigidity is bidirectional, not velocity dependent, and there is no hyperreflexive tendon jerk.

    2012, Robert J. Person, Roger Thies, Physiology, →ISBN, page 49

    Animal studies of cannabinoids reveal widely varying behavioral effects, but several appear consistently. One is a hyperreflexive response to specific stimuli accompanying the overall sedative effects.

    2013, Mark S. Gold, Marijuana, →ISBN, page 44

    Not only are the reflex arcs functioning in the hind limbs despite the damage to the spinal cord at L1 to L2, but the reflex responses are hyperreflexive.

    2015, Thomas P. Colville, Joanna M. Bassert, Clinical Anatomy and Physiology for Veterinary Technicians, →ISBN, page 250
  2. not comparableTending toward abnormally high levels of introspection.

    This hyperreflexive “turning backward” toward the self is incompatible with more spontaneous, world-directed forms of activity.

    2013, KWM Fulford, Martin Davies, Richard Gipps, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, →ISBN, page v
    3 more examples

    But Artaud describes certain strange transformations of facial awareness that one might imagine occurring under conditions of prolonged withdrawal and hyperreflexive contemplation — conditions in which the normally implicit and inner is extruded into a state of quasi-externality.

    2000, Dan Zahavi, Exploring the Self, →ISBN, page 171

    Secondly, however, as Sass (1998, 2000) suggests, metarepresentation and a certain degree of overmonitoring of experience can be generated in hyperreflexive experience, when processes that are ordinarily tacit (processes that I normally do not have to monitor explicitly or consciously) come to the subject's attention.

    2003, Tilo Kircher, Anthony David, The Self in Neuroscience and Psychiatry, →ISBN, page 350

    The passage describes a lived face that, under conditions of hyperreflexive awareness and diminished self-affection, seems to be turned inside out, flattened and extruded until it becomes a kind of fluid mask — a fragile lived membrane of squirming sensitivity and kaleidoscopic pattern that seems to lift off from his head to float independently in the air.

    2004, Shaun Gallagher, Stephen Watson, Philippe Brun, Ipseity and alterity: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intersubjectivity, →ISBN, page 87
  3. not comparablemathematicsHaving a bounded local distance of operators in a nested algebra or reflexive subspace

    In contrast to the subspaces of all C-symmetric operators, we show that the subspaces of all skew-C symmetric operators are reflexive and even hyperreflexive with the constant #92;kappa(#92;Cˢ)#92;leqslant 3..

    2016, Chafiq Benhida, Kamila Kliś-Garlicka, Marek Ptak, “Skew-symmetric operators and reflexivity”, in arXiv

Origin

From hyper- + reflexive.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

hyperreflexive. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hyperreflexive

MLA

“hyperreflexive.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hyperreflexive. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hyperreflexive,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hyperreflexive.

Source: hyperreflexive on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.